White Cargo

6

Cat climbed out of the pool behind his house and walked up and down on the flagstones for a moment, breathing deeply. This was so much easier than it had been in the beginning, he thought. He’d been as weak as a kitten when he had gotten out of the hospital. He’d started swimming laps to stretch his chest muscles, damaged by the shotgun blast, and he’d learned to enjoy the workouts, as much as he was capable of enjoying anything. It was better than sitting in a chair, staring straight ahead. He’d done enough of that.

He had lost thirty pounds in the hospital and nearly another twenty since. He weighed the same as he had the year he graduated from high school, and he felt in better shape, strong, tanned, and fit. He still surprised himself when he encountered a mirror — slim, clean-shaven, and close-cropped for the first time in years. He had gained the new fitness with swimming and with hitting tennis balls back at a machine. They were both suitably solitary activities. He had played tennis a couple of times at the club and discovered he didn’t want the company; he preferred to sweat in solitude.

Someone called to him from the back of the house. Cat turned to see Wallace Henderson, a retired Atlanta police captain, now a highly regarded private investigator, approaching. With a feeling of dread, he shook the man’s hand and offered him a chair at poolside while he got into a terry-cloth robe. He knew what was coming.

“It’s come to this, Mr. Catledge,” Henderson said. “My people and I have spent nearly three months and a considerable sum of your money running down every conceivable lead and theory of this case. We have telephoned or seen every dentist in San Diego and the surrounding Southern Californian communities and found two who have a son named Denny; one was a junior in high school and one was three years old. We have checked the crew lists for the last ten years on the yacht races this Denny says he sailed. Nothing there. We have liaised with the State Department and the Colombian police; the Colombians have distributed the artist’s sketches based on your descriptions of the two men — you didn’t get a good enough look at the woman for a description; they’ve circulated a description of your wristwatch and the engraving on the back. We’ve had the Colombian Navy and the U.S. Coast Guard on constant lookout for a sportfishing boat called Santa Maria — turns out that’s a very common name for a boat in Latin American countries — and there’s been no sign of such a boat. We’ve had a salvage company look at the possibility of raising your yacht and recovering the bodies, but she sank in more than a thousand fathoms of water and is unrecoverable.

“The fact is, sir, I don’t think that I can, in good faith, take any more of your money. I was a police officer for twenty-five years, and I’ve been a private investigator for nearly ten, and I tell you, I have never dealt with a case with so little to go on and so many dead ends. Now, there’s a chance that one or more of the queries we’ve made might produce some sort of answer sometime in the future — maybe they’ll find the Santa Maria, for instance — but that is unpredictable and entirely out of our hands.

“I’m not going to tell you, Mr. Catledge, that you should forget that your wife and daughter were murdered and your yacht sunk; I’m not going to tell you that we’ll never know why or that the people who did it will never be brought to justice. But I have to tell you that, right now, I don’t know of a single other way to make that happen.” The man shifted uncomfortably in his seat. “I just don’t,” he said with finality.

“Captain, we could send a couple of operatives down there,” Cat said, trying to keep the desperation out of his voice.

Henderson shook his head. “No, sir — I mean, we could do that; I could, through some of my colleagues, probably find a couple of Latinos who could blend in down there, but the Colombian police — thanks to the pressure you brought on the State Department — did what I consider a first-class job of investigation in Santa Marta. You’ve read the translated reports; no outsider I could send in there could possibly do half as well. At least you’ve got the interest of the police down there. If they turn up something, we’ll hear about it.”

Cat heaved a sigh. “I suppose you’re right,” he said, wearily. “I’ve paid you for your skill and advice, and you’ve given me both, Captain Henderson, and I’m grateful to you.” He stood. “I guess I’m just going to have to wait until something new turns up.” He offered his hand. “Send me your bill for any work outstanding.”

Henderson took his hand. “I want you to know, sir, that I consider this a personal defeat for me. But I’ve given it my best. I hope you’ll call me if you hear anything new.” The man left.

Cat got into the Porsche and drove. He was a fast driver and had the traffic tickets to prove it, but today he drove listlessly, carelessly. It had occurred to him more than once to take the car out somewhere and crash it into a tree or a bridge abutment and end the whole thing. All that had kept him going had been the hope of finding Denny and his cohorts, and now that seemed a remote possibility.

Ben and Liz had been wonderful, having him to dinner, inviting friends over, keeping him from becoming a recluse. There had even been a couple of attempts to fix him up with women, evenings that had fizzled. He simply had no interest in women, or, for that matter, anything else. Even the business, which had once given him so much satisfaction, had no further appeal for him. He had not spent more than a few hours at the office; the people there had tiptoed around him, and he hadn’t felt in the least necessary. Ben had been getting feelers about a takeover by a larger company, and that was fine with Cat, not that he needed the money.

He suddenly felt ill and pulled the car over. He sat on the grass verge of the roadway, fighting nausea, trying to think of something else to do for Katie and Jinx, for some reason to go on living, and not having much luck. Suddenly, there was a loud roar overhead, and a shadow passed across the car. Cat looked up and discovered that he was parked at the end of a runway at Peachtree Dekalb Airport, a general aviation field on the outskirts of Atlanta. He watched the light airplane climb, turn, and start back toward the field.

Cat started the car and drove around to the main entrance of the airport. Passing through the gate, he immediately saw a sign reading “PDK Flight Academy.” A few moments later he sat across a desk from a pleasant man who explained the flight-training program to him. Half an hour later he sat at the end of a runway in a Cessna 152 trainer and listened carefully to the fresh-faced young instructor seated next to him.

“Okay,” the kid was saying, “full throttle, keep the airplane on the center line, watch your airspeed, and rotate at fifty knots.”

Cat pushed in the throttle, and the little airplane started to roll. He steered with the rudder pedals, nervously watching the airspeed indicator. At fifty knots he pulled back on the yoke and the airplane leapt off the runway, leaving his stomach on the ground.

“Continue straight ahead and climb to three thousand feet,” the instructor said. A few minutes later they were over Lake Lanier, forty miles to the north of the city, practicing turns. Flying was something he’d thought about off and on over the years, but he had never had the time. Now he had nothing but time. An hour later, Cat had been issued a flight manual and enrolled in the flying school.

That night he stayed up late reading the manual. The next day he took a two-hour lesson. The day after that, another. He began flying every day the weather was decent, studying the manual and workbook whenever he was grounded. He registered in a weekend seminar to accelerate his academic training and passed the FAA written examination the following day with a perfect score. He soloed ten days after beginning his training and began flying the airplane alone on practice sessions and on cross-country flights. His concentration was total. He read every flying magazine he could get his hands on, every book he could squeeze in. He clung to the training doggedly, obsessively. It filled his life, left no room to think about anything else, and that was what he wanted.

In the middle of his fourth week of training, his instructor met him at the airplane after a solo flight. “I’ve scheduled you for a check ride with an FAA examiner for your private pilot’s license tomorrow morning at ten o’clock,” the young man said. “I’ll tell you, Mr. Catledge, you’ve set a record around here. I’ve never seen anybody work so hard and get so much packed into so short a time. I think you’ll do just fine on your check ride.” They spent an hour filling out forms and making sure Cat’s logbook was up to date, then Cat went home, buoyed with the idea that tomorrow, after a flying test he was confident he could pass, he would be a licensed private pilot. He started thinking about training for an instrument rating.

Back at the house, he changed into a swimsuit and went out to the pool. He dived in and began swimming slow, steady laps, balancing his kicks on each side, measuring his strokes, working every muscle. He swam twenty laps, then heaved himself onto the side of the pool, sucking in deep breaths. There was water in his eyes, and it took him a moment to realize that somebody was standing at the opposite end of the pool, staring at him. The figure was tall and slim, rather like the man he had been seeing in the mirror lately.

“Hello, Dell,” he said, finally, to his son.

The boy said nothing, just stood and stared blankly at him.

“You haven’t been around,” Cat said, trying to keep his voice neutral. “We’ve been trying to locate you. You’ve heard?”

Dell did not move any closer, but nodded. “I’ve been out of the country. I read about it in the papers when it happened.”

“Why didn’t you come home? There was a memorial service; a lot of people were there.”

Dell seemed to think a moment before he replied. “I didn’t come home because there was nothing I could do for Mother and Jinx, and because if I had come home, I might have killed you. You killed them, after all; that’s how I see it.”

Cat nodded. “For once, we agree on something.”

“You accept responsibility then?” Dell asked, surprised.

“I do,” Cat replied. “One of the things about being an adult is, you have to accept responsibility for your actions. One of these days, maybe, you’ll learn about that.”

The boy’s face contorted. “You bastard. I should kill you now.”

“Maybe you should,” Cat replied, evenly. “You might be doing me a favor, and it shouldn’t bother you much. After all, in your business, people get killed every day.”

“I simply supply a consumer need, just like you,” Dell said.

“Sure, Dell, you go on telling yourself that. Never mind the human misery you and your kind cause. The money’s all that matters.”

“What about the misery you caused my mother and my sister?” he spat back.

“What about the misery you caused them?” Cat asked. “For two years your mother never went to sleep without fear of being wakened in the night by the police announcing your arrest or your murder. Your sister never mentioned your name outside the family, for fear of causing embarrassment to whoever might hear it. Your gifts to them were great — constant pain and suffering. The last night of their lives I sat at dinner and saw tears come to the eyes of both of them when your name was mentioned. To their credit, they both believed there might be something in you worth saving. I haven’t shared their hope for a long time now.”

“Well,” Dell said, “you needn’t devote any more of your time to thinking about me. You can think, instead, of how they would still be alive and well if you hadn’t been so stupid.”

“I’ll do that,” Cat said. “For as long as I live.”

“I’m moving to Miami,” Dell said. “You won’t be hearing from me again. That’s what I came here to tell you.”

“Finally, some good news,” Cat said, bitterly.

“Yeah, I’m moving on up,” Dell replied. “I’m plugged in at the source now; no more low-level dealing — I’m in management. I’ll bet I make more money this year than you do.”

“No bets on that,” Cat replied, trying hard to keep from running to the other end of the pool and beating his son to death. “Dealing in human misery has always paid well. All you have to do to win your bet is to live until the end of the year. From what I hear about your business, that won’t be as easy as you think.”

“We’ll see,” Dell spat at him, then turned and walked away toward the garden gate.

“We’ll see,” Cat echoed quietly to himself. He slipped into the pool again and began swimming long, slow strokes. Breathe deeply, he said to himself. Bleed the anger into the water. The boy was lost; forget about him.

It didn’t work.

Cat spent the evening sitting, staring uncomprehendingly at the bedroom television set. The flight manual lay in his lap, open and unread. His flight test the next day, something that he had been eagerly anticipating, seemed remote and uninteresting. He went to bed at midnight, wide awake, longing for oblivion, but he remained conscious for a long time. Much later, when he had slipped into a light and troubled sleep, he suddenly jerked awake. Something had wakened him, but what? There had been no noise.

Almost immediately, the telephone rang. He must have anticipated it, he thought. He glanced at the bedside clock: just after 4 A.M. Who the hell? He felt an unexpected stab of panic. The phone rang again. Fully awake now, unreasoningly frightened, he picked up the instrument. “Hello,” he said, rather unsteadily. He was greeted by a wave of static, coming, it seemed, from a great distance. “Hello,” he said again, this time more strongly.

Then, faintly but clearly, came a voice he would have recognized anywhere on earth, at any time of the day or night, awake or asleep, a voice he had given up hope of ever hearing again.

“Daddy?” the voice said.

Cat felt a great rush of adrenaline, a tightening of the chest and throat; he seemed unable to exhale.

Before he could speak, there was a turbulent scraping at the other end of the line, followed by a loud thud, then a distant, electronic chirp as the connection was broken.

He spoke repeatedly into the telephone, shouting, begging, until finally he was quieted by the persistent sound of a dial tone coming from the instrument.

He was left alone again, bereft, staring wide-eyed into the darkness.