Nobody’s Hero (Ben Koenig #2)

Chapter 76

While Koenig prowled the Lower East Side, Chinatown and SoHo, Jakob Tas, Cora Pearl and Konstantin were doing some prowling of their own. They were in New Silloth, a fishing village in Maine. It had a thriving arts community, but the tourists hadn’t yet found it. Not in the kind of numbers that turned villages into amusement parks. New Silloth’s primary source of income was still the lobster and haddock they pulled out of the gin-clear water, not ice cream and ‘I ? Maine’ T-shirts.

They’d just eaten fried-haddock sandwiches, extra pickle, extra tartar, in a café that stayed open for the whiting and cod fishermen. One cold beer each. The fish was delicious, caught that morning and perfectly cooked, but Tas hadn’t enjoyed his. He was anxious, and his meal wasn’t sitting right. It was heavy in his stomach. Like cement.

Or a tumour.

Which was ironic, he thought. It was a tumour that had started all this. Lit the blue touchpaper. And it was the tumour that made him uniquely qualified for this job. His last job. He winced. Thinking about what was in his stomach made him think about the pain. It was back. The last of the fentanyl had leached from the patch on his arm. He had two patches left but didn’t want to use a fresh one yet. They made him drowsy, and this was a critical part of the operation. He needed to be alert for the boat.

Except there was no boat. It was late. It was late and he didn’t know why. If there was a problem, the Australian was supposed to call. Tas checked his cell again. Made sure he had a signal.

‘Don’t worry, boss,’ Pearl said. ‘He’ll be here.’

Tas frowned. He didn’t like relying on others at the best of times. The Australian had come highly recommended, but Tas hadn’t worked with him before. He was untested. And until proven otherwise, untested meant unreliable. But nor did he like looking weak. And he’d caught Pearl sneaking glances lately. Like she knew there was something wrong. Maybe she’d seen the patch. She’d only ever looked at him with fear. Now he thought he could see pity. He didn’t like that either.

He slipped his phone back in his pocket. ‘Let’s get some fresh air,’ he said.

Konstantin and Pearl finished their beers while he paid the cheque. He left a large tip. Large enough to be remembered.

As soon as they were away from the lights of the café, he grabbed Pearl by her hair. Pulled her head back and pressed a punch-dagger into the soft part of her lower jaw. He pressed until he drew blood. The punch-dagger was short-bladed with a T-shaped handle, designed to be held in a closed fist with the blade protruding between the middle and ring fingers. When it wasn’t being used, it was concealed in his belt buckle. A custom job, not off the shelf. Good enough to fool airport security. Tas kept it sharper than an obsidian scalpel.

‘Do I look worried, Cora?’ he said quietly.

She gulped. Carefully. ‘No, Jakob,’ she whispered.

‘Then why did you tell me to stop? Are you giving orders now?’

Pearl recognised a rhetorical question when she heard one. She didn’t respond.

‘What about you, Konstantin? Do you think I look worried?’

Konstantin, who rarely spoke, was saved when Tas’s cell rang.

The punch-dagger was out of Pearl’s throat and into Tas’s belt buckle faster than the eye could see. It fitted with a barely audible snick . Tas grabbed his cell and pressed the answer icon.

‘Yes?’ he said. The Australian talked. Tas listened. He ended the call and said, ‘ETA thirty minutes. Apparently, he had to cut his speed. The engine prop was vibrating, whatever that means.’

Pearl had grown up near the ocean. She knew what a vibrating engine prop meant, but she wasn’t saying. Not while blood dripped from her chin. She had seen Tas kill people for talking back. Instead, she said, ‘He couldn’t let us know?’

Tas ignored her. He checked his watch. ‘I want the truck here in exactly twenty minutes.’

Tas had chosen New Silloth because it was a working fishing village. It had a slipway big enough to haul trawlers out of the sea. More than big enough for the truck. Tas heard it before he saw the lights. A low rumble, like a sleeping bear.

Pearl rounded the corner in the truck, then reversed down the slipway. The commercial boat trailer she towed was fully submergible. She backed up until only the bow stop and winch were above the water. She put the truck in park and waited.

Tas ignored the truck and stared out to sea. He didn’t look away until he could see the boat’s tricoloured mast headlight, the single fixture that did the work of the port, starboard and stern lights. Garish, but commonplace in a village like New Silloth.

The Australian turned on the dock LEDs and slowed the boat. By the time he nudged up against the trailer’s bow stop, he’d all but stopped. He leaped onto the bow, reached down for the trailer winch, and hooked it on to the tow eye. He turned the winch handle until the boat was pressed tight against the bow stop, then attached the safety latch. With the boat secure, he raised the engines so the propellers wouldn’t catch on the slipway. Judging by the scars on the concrete, not everyone remembered. Pearl put the truck in drive and slowly hauled the trailer and boat out of the water. The NorseBoat stank of the ocean it had been pulled from.

The Australian banged the side of the cab while the trailer was still on the inclined slipway. The truck stopped. The Australian grabbed a wrench from his tool bag and walked to the stern of the NorseBoat.

‘What are you doing?’ Tas asked. He needed to be seen, but he also needed to be on the road before the town woke up.

‘Removing the drain plug,’ the Australian explained. ‘Gets the water out of the bilge.’

He was a fleshy man. Had an accent like that asshole from Crocodile Dundee . The one with the stupid knife. He had sun-bleached hair. A dimple in his chin that looked like a butt crack. And he only had one ear. He’d definitely had two when Tas had hired him. He’d counted them.

‘What happened to your ear?’ Tas said.

‘What?’ the Australian replied.

A man wandered out of the shadows. He was carrying a bait box and three fishing rods. He was bowlegged and walked like a croquet hoop. He had a wind-beaten face and calloused hands. If you cut him in half, you’d see the word ‘local’.

‘Fine-looking boat,’ the man said.

Konstantin glanced at Tas. He ran a finger across his throat. Tas shook his head. It was important he gave them someplace to start looking for him, but he wanted to leave breadcrumbs, not bodies.

‘Not mine,’ Tas said. ‘Belongs to the person I work for.’

‘Ain’t it the way,’ the man said. ‘Working stiffs do the work, the boss gets the boat. But hey, I bet he hardly uses it. I reckon you guys have got a bit of fishing done, though. Am I right? Take it out for a test drive. Make sure everything’s working right. Maybe take some beers and some live bait at the same time. What he don’t know don’t hurt him. Am I right? Shame to see a girl like this tied up all year.’

Tas smiled. ‘Well . . .’ he said. ‘We did land a couple of swordfish last year.’

The man whooped. He put down his bait box and high-fived Tas and Konstantin. Konstantin didn’t know whether to smile or set him on fire. He went for a smile. It looked like he was laying an egg. Smiling didn’t come naturally to Konstantin. Not unless he was holding his chain saw.

‘What’s up with her?’ the bowlegged man said, pointing at the NorseBoat. ‘We have fine marine engineers around here. Boys who piss seawater and crap oysters.’

‘She’s getting a refit over in Denver,’ Tas said. ‘Then the owner wants to spend some time in the Pacific. Think it’s got too cold for him around here.’

‘The Pacific,’ the man sneered. ‘What a pussy. The Atlantic’s the only real ocean. A man’s ocean. Any ocean you can fish while wearing a grass skirt ain’t no ocean. Am I right?’

Tas offered him his hand. It acted like a full stop on the conversation. ‘We need to get going,’ he said. ‘Good fishing, my friend.’

The bowlegged man trundled off. Tas waited, hoping he would slink into the darkness, then turn to watch them leave. The man did exactly that. He thought the shadows hid him. They didn’t. The shadows were where Tas lived. He knew when they didn’t look right.

‘Cells,’ he said.

Konstantin and the Australian handed Tas their cell phones. Pearl threw hers out of the cab window. Tas made a show of removing the SIM cards and bending them in half. He did the same with his own cell. He walked to the end of the town’s pier and dropped everything in the sea.

Breadcrumbs.

Tas had other cell phones, but he was glad to be rid of this one. The connection between him and Stillwell Hobbs was finally severed.

He wiped away the sweat that had beaded on his forehead and thought about his next fentanyl patch. He’d slap one on as soon as they were on the road.

They had a long journey ahead of them.