The Right Jack

27

IT had taken several phone calls the previous afternoon to locate Victor Earle. Or rather, to locate someone who knew him, since he did not seem to own a telephone. The landlady at his boarding-house sounded reliable and she had promised Sigrid to tell Earle to expect her the next morning, Tuesday, around ten.

"You don't have to come," she'd told Alan Knight, but he pointed out that she could hardly drive herself the length of Long Island with one arm in a sling and besides, he wanted to see this thing to the end.

Mantausic, on South Oyster Bay, was a scruffy little sea town, the kind that could be found all up and down the Atlantic coast. Unlike the towns that serviced Fire Island a little further east, Mantausic had never drawn a white-wine-and-brie crowd, and it did not pull down the shades or roll up its waterfront after

Labor Day. Mantausic was home port to a small fleet of charter boats and October had always been a good month for blues, weakfish and flounder.

Dedicated sportsmen from all over Brooklyn, Queens or Nassau would arise before daylight and drive through the dawn hours to be at the dock by sailing time at six A.M., tackle boxes and coolers in hand.

It was a little past ten and all the boat slips were empty as a car from the Navy's motor pool drove slowly along Front Street looking for the repair shop where Victor Earle was said to work.

Petty Officer Schmitt had been left in the city and Sigrid sat on the front seat beside Alan Knight and peered through the windshield.

"There it is," she said, pointing to a tin-sided garage with a sign over the open sliding doors that read 'Kryschevski's Marine Repairs-Diesel Engines our Speciality.'

"Sorry," said Mr. Kryschevski, straightening up to wipe his hand on a grease-smeared rag, when they inquired for Earle. "'Fraid you've got a little wait. The Margie Q was short-handed this morning so Vic went out with her."

"Out where?" asked Sigrid. "Maybe we could-"

"Out on the water," said the mechanic. "Don't you worry though. The Margie Q's only a half-day charter. They don't go all the way out. Just do a little bottom fishing off the point. They'll be back around twelve-thirty, one o'clock."

"We thought he worked here," said Knight.

"Does. But when things are slow like they are right now, Vic picks up a day now and then on the water.",

"Has he worked for you long?" j

"'Bout a year now, off and on." Kryschevski walked over to a drink dispenser, pushed in some coins, and popped the top of a diet cola. He took a long swallow, eyeing them carefully all the time. "Vic in trouble again?"

"What makes you ask that? Has he been in trouble before?"

"No, no." Kryschevski took another swallow. "Not really. There was that business with the Peconic Pearl. You're

Navy though, aren't you? Not Coast Guard."

With prodding, Kryschevski described a little scrape the Peconic Pearl had gotten herself mixed up in late one night back in the summer. The Coast Guard accused her of rendezvousing with a Colombian freighter a few miles off shore and perhaps taking on a few bales of drugs. By the time they overtook her and searched her, though, the Peconic Pearl seemed to be clean and there was no proof.

"Was Early aboard the Pearl that night?"

"Yeah. The Coast Guard was around next day to talk to him."

"What about this past weekend?" asked Sigrid.

"This weekend?";

"Friday night or Sunday morning?"

"Well, Friday night he helped me work on the engine of the Seabreeze II till after midnight. Sunday? I don't know. Seems like he might've gone out on the Pearl Sunday. You'll have to ask him."

Kryschevski told them they were welcome to wait inside the garage, but Sigrid and Knight decided to poke around the small town instead.

It had rained during the night and heavy gray clouds overhead promised more, but they left the car parked near the berth of the Margie Q and walked up the main street, a tree-lined thoroughfare that led directly from the waterfront. They walked past two pharmacies, a bank, a grocery, and a tackle shop-the usual small town assortment-and paused before a window full of what would be antiques over in the Hamptons but were here unpretentiously labeled Frank's Used Furniture.

They had excellent coffee in the Chowder Bowl, browsed through the reduced book table at the Inglenook Book Shop, and read all the tombstones in the tiny graveyard surrounding the Mantausic Anglican Church at the end of First Street.

Beyond lay a marshy area that had been designated a wildlife refuge for sea birds. Knight was ready to explore it, but Sigrid became uneasy whenever her feetl eft concrete, so they turned back.

It was a little past eleven.

They crossed to the other side of the street and Knight paused in front of the Lobster Pot Café. "Want another coffee?"

"Not really."

"Too bad they don't have a movie or something."

"You didn't have to come," Sigrid reminded him.

"I wanted to come. I just didn't know we'd have to hang around doing nothing for three hours in the world's most boring town."

"Why don't you buy a paper and go read in the car?" she suggested, drifting on to the next shop.

It was a small beauty parlor with a dozen or more sun-faded pictures in the windows of an eclectic range of hair styles, from rock punk to country club conservative.

"That cut would look good on you," said Alan, pointing to a multilayered style very short on the top and what looked like a rattail hanging down the back.

Mantausic on a gray Tuesday morningd id not seem to have provided the fortyish 'tyoman inside the shop with any customers and she peered out at them with a hopeful air. Sigrid shook her head.

"What makes you so afraid of looking feminine?" Alan asked curiously. "Worried that you can't command if the troops find out you're a woman? Or that Oscar Nauman will wrestle you to the nearest bed?"

"Don't be an ass," she snapped and started past.

Possessed by a sudden spurt of mischief, he grabbed her free hand and brashly tugged her into the shop. "Good morning," he caroled before Sigrid could protest. "Do you have time to style my friend's hair?"

"I think I can work her in," the woman answered solemnly. "Let's see. Yes, I believe station three has just opened up."

To Knight's complete surprise, Sigrid strolled over to that chair and sat down without any argument.

"You'll really do it?" he asked, stunned. Sigrid flashed a wicked smile at himt hrough the mirror and spoke to the woman. "I haven't been able to shower with my arm bandaged like this. Could you give me a shampoo?"

"And a cut," said Alan Knight, refusing to give up.

"And a cut," Sigrid agreed serenely. "I usually take about an inch off every month, but that's something else I can't do with my arm out of commission."

The beautician began pulling pins from the braided bun at the nape of Sigrid's neck. "Did you break your arm?" she asked in a sympathetic tone.

"I meant a real cut," Alan protested. "Throw away your inhibitions.

"Go away, Alan," Sigrid said. "I'm not going to have you stand there and nag me for the next forty minutes. Go torpedo something in the bay."

"A real cut," Alan begged the beautician. "Something wild and completely different."

"I'll meet you back at the car," Sigrid said in a voice that brooked no further argument.

He went.:

The beautician loosened the thick braid. "Your hair's as fine as babys ilk. Doesn't hold much curl either, does it?"

She lifted the soft dark mass in her capable hand and looked at Sigrid in the mirror, considering the younger woman's thin face, high forehead, and wide gray eyes.

"Have you ever worn bangs?" she asked.

At 12:35, the car door opened and Sigrid got in beside him. Alan Knight lowered his newspaper and his jaw dropped.

"Don't say a word!" Sigrid said in a strangled voice. "Not a single word. I mean it, Alan."

A light misting rain had begun and Sigrid stared through the windshield, straight out at the steel gray water. One of the half-day charter boats had returned but it was not the Margie Q.

"Couldn't I please say just one word?"

"Well?"

"Wow!" he breathed.

She looked at him anxiously. "Honest? Do you like it?" f

"It's terrific," he assured her. "God, it looks great! I can't believe you really did it."

Gone was the bun and the pulled-back severity. The silky dark hair was now feathered and full on top and very short on the sides and back. Wisps of bangs softened her high forehead. Freed of the heavy mass of hair, the newly defined shape of her head sat more elegantly on her long neck.

She ran the tips of her fingers through the ragged bangs experimentally. "It's going to be easier to take care of, I think. Ida showed me how to use a blow-dryer to give it more body."

"Ida?"

"The beautician. She was really rather nice."

"I bet she could sell Chryslers to the Japanese," said Alan, peering at her more closely. In the overcast daylight, it was hard to tell. "Are you wearing blusher?"

"What do you know about blusher?"

"My six sisters," he reminded her. "And is that eye shadow too?"

Sigrid tilted the rearview mirror so shec ould examine her face. "It's not too much, is it? I've never felt comfortable with makeup before, but Ida took some of the mystery out of these things."

She opened the pink plastic bag she'd brought from the shop to show Knight an assortment of small bottles and tubes.

"I always thought you had to use a lot and I hated all that thick goop. It's the first time anybody's ever explained the theory to me," she confessed almost shyly. "Ida says there are books in the library."

He was touched by her delight in her new look yet he couldn't help laughing. "Trust you to approach the frivolity of makeup in a rational, systematic way."

"I don't have six sisters," she replied with some of her usual tartness.

Ahead of them out in the bay, the shape of a trim little fishing boat emerged from the foggy gray of sky and water.

The Margie Q was heading in.

Val Sutton had remembered Victor Earle as short and getting thin ont op. Seventeen years later, Earle was completely bald. Even his eyebrows were scanty. All the hair on his head seemed to have repositioned itself around his mouth. His top lip supported a thick brown handlebar moustache that swirled out with exuberant panache on either side of his mouth. He had very pale blue eyes and a disconcerting stare.

After identifying themselves, they had led him to a table in the Lobster Pot Café and he had followed without protest, still wearing his rubber waders. His yellow slicker hung across the back of his chair. He gazed straight into the eyes of his questioners and long minutes seemed to pass before he blinked. The last time Sigrid had seen that sort of unblinking gaze was in the eyes of a man who had killed and then sodomized the bodies of three small boys.

There seemed to be a momentary pause between the end of each question and the beginning of his response, almost like the two-second delay when a question is bounced off a satellite to someone being televised halfway around the world. Earle answered them willingly enough, but thats pacy stare and the hesitation before his response made Sigrid suspect he might be on drugs.

Earle expressed neither surprise nor resentment at being sought out by the police and only minimal curiosity that they should be interested in Red Snow.

"Hell of a way to die," he told them, his fingers tapping the rubber waders. "Messing around with C-4."

"Is that what it was?"

"That's what Fred said. I never messed with that stuff. M-4's and Uzis, even hand grenades, okay, but-"

"Fred? Fred Hamilton? When did he tell you that?"

Victor Earle turned his pale-eyed stare upon Sigrid. "In France. One of those resorts on the Mediterranean."

"Where is Hamilton now? Still in Europe?"

Earle continued to gaze at her. "Yeah, he's still there."

His moustache twitched up and down and it took a moment to realize that he was laughing. There was no sound and no change in the expression in his eyes, just that jerk of brown handlebars andt he flash of teeth beneath.

"He loaded his needle with the wrong stuff one night and woke up dead the next morning." [

"When?"

"Seventy-one. April, I think it was."

"What about the girl that was with him?"

"Brooks Ann?" He shrugged. "Who knows? She split. She was walking the streets for rent money and one night she didn't come back. Probably went home with one of the Johns."

"Did you ever hear of any others getting out alive from that burning lodge?" asked Sigrid,

"Nah."

As the interview continued, they learned that Victor Earle did not watch television or read the papers, so he claimed to know nothing about the Maintenon bombing or John Sutton's death. In fact, he seemed not to know who Sutton was.

"McClellan? Nah. I was never at McClellan."

Alan Knight showed him the group photo taken of the McClellan SDS group and asked him whom he recognized. Hep icked out Fred Hamilton, a couple of the women, and Tris Yorke, but not Sutton. Even when they pointed to him, Earle shook his head.

Then they spread out the photographs taken at the hotel over the past weekend. Knight had remembered to bring along Sigrid's magnifying glass for studying the tiny faces in the background.

Absentmindedly rubbing his bald head, Earle moved the glass methodically across the pictures. A surprising number of cardplayers and hotel workers were to be seen in the background and the two officers pointed to those of main interest: Haines Froelick, Vassily Ivanovich, Molly Baldwin, and, of course Ted Flythe. He admitted knowing none of them.

"Who are those geeks?" he asked, pointing to a view of the Bontemps Room Sunday afternoon.

The photographer had taken it in an attempt to get Flythe's profile without her target noticing, so Flythe was well to the right of the picture. On the left, Madame Ronay seemed to be instructing the remaining busboys and Mr. George,t he head steward. Every face was in sharp detail.

Sigrid explained who they were.

Earle's pale blue eyes gazed vacantly into her face. "This George guy. He works for her?"

"They all do. It's her hotel," Knight said impatiently. "Do you recognize them? Have you seen this George before?"

Another pause.

"Nah.

Before they started the rainy drive back to town, Sigrid telephoned headquarters and left a message for Eberstadt or Peters to start checking Mr. George's background.