Читать книгу The Cover Girl Killer - Richard A. Lupoff - Страница 7

CHAPTER ONE

One boy’s skin was a chocolate brown; the other’s, almost black. The lighter-skinned boy held a fishing rod in his left hand, a glittering Lake Tahoe salmon, easily a seven-pounder, in the right. The fish tried to flip out of the boy’s control but he held it tightly. “Come on, Jamie!”

The darker-skinned boy pointed a Sony Handycam, his eye pressed to its canted viewfinder. “Hold him still, I can’t take your picture if you won’t hold him still.”

Jamie Wilkerson pressed record. The Handycam whirred. The late afternoon sun glinted off the surface of Lake Tahoe. There was no wind; the surface was still. The boat, a 28-foot Bayliner, trolled toward the center of the lake, barely maintaining headway, following its Maxim/Marinetek fishfinder.

Over the purr of the Bayliner’s Volvo Penta engine, a distant whup-whup-whup became audible. Jamie swung the Handycam away from his friend and the struggling salmon, swept it up the snow-covered slopes on the western shore of the lake. A black speck had appeared against the brilliant blue sky. The speck was approaching the lake.

“Hey!” Hakeem White complained. “You’re supposed to be taking my picture. That’s just some old heli - ”

He stopped in the middle of the word. The helicopter seemed to wobble in mid-air. Its familiar whup-whup-whup sound developed a sickening syncopation. Hakeem dropped the lake salmon. It flexed the muscles of its silvery tail and launched itself over the stern of the Bayliner and splashed into the cold lake.

Jamie Wilkerson kept the Handycam focused on the helicopter.

Hobart Lindsey and Marvia Plum, relaxing in the Bayliner’s half-open cabin, lowered their coffee cups and clambered onto the afterdeck to stand with Marvia’s son and his friend. Even Captain MacKenzie, keeping one hand on the Bayliner’s helm, shaded his eyes with the other as he watched the helicopter slow to a hover overhead.

The helicopter shuddered in midair, then rotated slowly on its vertical axis. It dropped toward the Bayliner.

MacKenzie yelped and shoved the tourist boat’s throttle forward. Its 350 horsepower engine responded and the boat leaped ahead. Lindsey grabbed Hakeem and Marvia Plum grabbed Jamie to keep the boys from being flung into the lake. If they were, their orange lifejackets would keep them afloat—but even a brief exposure to the frigid water could endanger their lives.

Somehow, through it all, Jamie kept the Handycam focused on the helicopter and the record button pressed.

The helicopter splashed down twenty yards behind the Bayliner, at the exact spot the boat had occupied when the ’copter began its plunge. Captain MacKenzie swung the Bayliner in a tight circle and headed back toward the foundering ’copter. He clicked the boat’s Cybernet radio into life and called through to Lake Forest, on Tahoe’s north shore.

He shoved the Bayliner’s gear lever into neutral and the boat slowed as it approached the ’copter. “Bart,” he yelled, “get on the blower—Coast Guard should be coming up. Tell ’em what happened—I have to handle this!” He barreled past the paying passengers and grabbed a downrigger. Jamie and Hakeem danced around him, trying to stay out of his path. Marvia Plum pulled the boys away from MacKenzie.

Lindsey had the Coast Guard station on the blower now. “A helicopter just crashed—it’s in the middle of the lake. We’re right next to it.”

A voice from the radio said, “We got a distress call from them. We’ve got a cutter headed out there now.”

“What do you want us to do?”

The voice said, “Don’t go under with the chopper.”

Beyond MacKenzie, Lindsey could see the helicopter foundering deeper into the lake. It looked like an old glass-bubble Bell ’copter, the kind popular with TV traffic reporters. He thought he could make out two figures inside the bubble. Only one of them was moving.

MacKenzie had swung a heavy cable out on the boat’s downrigger. He climbed onto the stern gunwale and jumped toward the ’copter. Chilly water plumed around MacKenzie. Droplets hit Lindsey’s face like icy pellets. Lindsey could see MacKenzie struggling to attach the cable to the ’copter. The aircraft’s tail was pointing toward the Bayliner, and MacKenzie managed to clip the cable to the tail rotor mounting.

With a sucking noise the helicopter disappeared into Lake Tahoe. MacKenzie disappeared, then reappeared, gasping for air, clambering hand-over-hand along the downrigger cable.

Marvia Plum shoved Jamie and Hakeem behind her, toward the Bayliner’s cabin. Lindsey had dropped the ship-to-shore mike. He scrambled to the stern of the Bayliner. With Marvia at his side he stretched his arms over the gunwale. MacKenzie had reached the Bayliner. Lindsey and Plum grabbed him by the hands, then moved their grasp to his arms. Even after his brief soaking in the icy lake he was turning blue and his skin was frigid. They managed to haul him over the stern of the boat. He crashed to the deck and crawled toward the cabin.

Marvia Plum followed him.

Lindsey stood in the Bayliner’s stern, watching the lake surface where the helicopter had disappeared. The downrigger was playing out cable slowly. The ’copter was bulky, and it displaced its volume in water, reducing its own weight by an equivalent amount. Bubbles rose from it, bursting when they reached the surface of the lake.

Then a hand appeared, then another. Lindsey shouted, “Someone’s alive!”

Marvia Plum, still in her quilted jacket, and Captain MacKenzie, wrapped in a blanket, a knitted cap pulled over his dripping hair, tumbled back out of the cabin. MacKenzie yelled at the figure who was following his example, clambering hand-over-hand along the downrigger cable. The cable continued to play out, so the ’copter pilot’s progress was slower than MacKenzie’s had been.

When he was a few feet from the Bayliner, MacKenzie shoved a boat-hook over the gunwale and the bedraggled figure released the downrigger cable and grabbed the boat-hook. Lindsey helped MacKenzie haul the boat-hook back while Marvia Plum grabbed the survivor’s arm and pulled him over the gunwale. As he came over the gunwale, Lindsey saw that one of his legs stuck out from its socket at a crooked angle.

Now Marvia Plum tried to hustle the dripping man into the cabin. He screamed and collapsed. Lindsey realized that his leg wasn’t really attached to his body wrong: it was broken, and in more places than one. Lindsey scrambled to help Marvia with the man, dragging him on his back into the cabin and wrapping him in a blanket.

Captain MacKenzie picked up the ship-to-shore microphone and shouted at the Coast Guard. Jamie pointed the Handycam at the Coast Guard cutter approaching from the north.

The injured man shook his head, shoving himself upright on his elbow. He tried to climb to his feet but fell back, screaming in pain. He yelled, “I’ve got to get him out of there! It’s Mr. Vansittart!”

MacKenzie shoved past them. Lindsey could see him peering into the lake. He studied the downrigger. The cable had paid out to its end, revealing a polished metal reel. Lindsey could feel the Bayliner tilting. MacKenzie roared. “We’re going to founder!” He pounded his fist on the Bayliner’s gunwale, then tugged the heavy downrigger from its mounting.

It whipped into the air, missing MacKenzie by fractions, then arced over the Bayliner’s stern and splashed black water higher than the boat, disappearing beneath the surface after the helicopter.

The survivor lay on his back, a picture of despair. “It was Mr. Vansittart,” he moaned. “I tried to get him out but I couldn’t get him out.”

The Coast Guard cutter hove to alongside the Bayliner. A guardsman called, “We’re going to throw you a line, Bayliner. We’ll tow you to safety.”

Captain MacKenzie shook his head. “I don’t need a tow. He does.” He pointed at the lake, where the helicopter and its passenger had disappeared. “But I’ve got a badly injured man on board. I’m heading for port. He needs to get to the hospital.”

* * * *

Hobart Lindsey, Marvia Plum, Jamie Wilkerson and Hakeem White sat on the edge of the big bed. All had showered and changed into warm clothes. They were eating Chinese food and watching CNN with the sound muted, waiting for Jamie’s fifteen seconds fame.

Hakeem was not very happy. “It was just ’cause I’m a better fisherman than you, Jamie. If you were a better fisherman you would have caught the fish and I would have had the camcorder and I’d be famous.”

“I’m going to be a TV newsman when I grow up. I’ve already got a start. And I’ve got a check coming, too.”

Marvia Plum hushed the two boys. “Look.” She hit the mute button a second time and the sound came back on. A talking head in the studio of CNN’s Reno affiliate was jabbering at the camera. The image on the screen cut to Jamie’s footage, starting with a flash of Hakeem’s grinning face, Jamie holding the camera on Hakeem’s lake salmon, then panning away to the tiny speck of the ’copter.

The studio announcer said, “These remarkable pictures were taken by a ten-year-old boy, Jamie Wilkerson, of Berkeley, California, vacationing at Lake Tahoe with his mother and best friend. The helicopter ran into trouble as it began to cross the lake en route from its passenger’s Belmont, California, home to a destination in Reno.”

On the TV screen the helicopter hovered, the whup-whup-whup of its blades hesitated and the ’copter shook, then began to whirl as it fell toward the lake. Almost miraculously, Jamie had kept the Handycam image steady and clear. Maybe the boy did have a future as a cameraman.

“The pilot, John Frederick O’Farrell of Mountain View, California, is a Viet Nam veteran who operates a private air-taxi service. He was rushed to Doctors’ Hospital in Truckee and is in Intensive Care, suffering from a compound fracture of the leg and internal injuries. A hospital spokesperson says that doctors are guardedly optimistic regarding O’Farrell’s condition. Coast Guard authorities at Lake Tahoe said that only the quick action of Captain Kevin MacKenzie of the Bayliner Tahoe Tailflipper saved O’Farrell’s life.”

The screen showed O’Farrell climbing out of the lake, Marvia Plum hauling him by one dripping sleeve while O’Farrell clung to the boat-hook that MacKenzie and Lindsey had passed to him. On the video tape, the injuries to O’Farrell’s leg were horrifyingly obvious.

Then the image cut to a still picture of a white-haired, business-suited man. The surroundings were unquestionably an office. Letters running across the bottom of the screen read, File Photo. The announcer furnished a voice-over. “Albert Crocker Vansittart was the last scion of a pioneer California family. A lifelong bachelor, Vansittart inherited a fortune estimated at fifty million dollars and ran its worth up to ten times that amount. A lifelong resident of Belmont, Vansittart was traveling to Reno on holiday.”

The scene cut back to Lake Tahoe. The news network must have hired a helicopter of its own and had it hover over the crash site. Now it was nighttime; the footage must have been shot within the past hour. A Coast Guard cutter had returned and its crew were working by floodlight, dropping lines into the black water. They hauled them back without results.

The announcer introduced a professor of marine geology from the University of Nevada at Reno. “Lake Tahoe is more than a quarter of a mile deep,” the professor intoned. “Once you get past the surface layers, the temperature is a uniform 40 degrees Fahrenheit, year round. We don’t really know what lies at the bottom of the lake—or who.” The professor allowed himself a little laugh. “But you can be sure, if anybody rode that helicopter to the bottom of the lake, he isn’t alive now.”

“Haven’t you tried this technique before, Professor, looking for Tahoe Tessie?”

“A lot of people laugh at Tessie, call her our own version of the Loch Ness Monster. But we’ve found some amazing species in recent decades. Why, no one believed that a live coelacanth could possibly be swimming around today, until.…”

Lindsey jumped when the telephone rang at his elbow. As he picked up the handset he glanced at his watch. It was 11:30 at night; it had been a long day and evening but everyone including the ten-year-olds was too energized to sleep. “Stand by for Mr. Richelieu.” Lindsey grimaced and mouthed his boss’s name. Marvia mimed back in alarm.

Richelieu said, “Lindsey, I’m surprised you’re still awake.” He sounded like Jack Nicholson on valium, Lindsey thought. “You’re not watching CNN by any chance, are you, Lindsey?”

Amazing. Did the man have bugs everywhere? “As a matter of fact, I am.”

“Do you know who died this afternoon?”

“You mean Albert Crocker Vansittart?”

“Go to the head of the class. That was you and your girlfriend in the, what was its name—”

“Tahoe Tailflipper.”

“God, you California people are so cute I want to throw up. Yes, I thought that was you. Well, Hobart Lindsey, International Surety’s hero du jour. I don’t know how you always manage to land in hot water, but you’re in it again.”

Lindsey shook his head. Obviously, Richelieu had never dipped his toes into Lake Tahoe. Lindsey had carried the telephone as far away from the TV as he could, closed himself in the bathroom with the cord snaked under the door. Too bad the lodge didn’t have cordless phones, but then guests would surely carry them away like souvenir towels.

“I don’t understand, Mr. Richelieu. Why am I in this? What does this have to do with International Surety? What does it have to do with SPUDS?” And why, Lindsey wondered, had the director of the Special Projects Unit/Detached Service, tracked him down to a lakeside lodge in Tahoe City long after business hours?

“Good thing Mrs. Blomquist and I were working late tonight and happened to turn on the set here in the office.”

Lindsey didn’t rise to that one.

“Vansittart has one of our flag policies. Had, I should say. I assume the coroner out there is going to certify that he’s dead.”

“Without a body, Mr. Richelieu?”

“Come on, Lindsey. Enough witnesses saw that ’copter crash. Including you of all people. And it’s on tape. And the pilot—what’s his name—”

“O’Farrell.”

“—says it was Vansittart.”

“Okay. Vansittart had an International Surety policy?”

“Four million dollars worth.”

“Four—four million?”

“That’s right. Been paying in on it since 1951. Biggest life policy I.S. ever wrote.”

“Well…well…I guess we’ll just have to pay off, then. If they can recover the body. Or, ah, once the coroner certifies that he’s dead. I don’t suppose we can wait seven years? And no double indemnity?”

Richelieu’s chuckle was oilier than Jack Nicholson’s. “No seven years. And no double indemnity, either. I looked. Give thanks for small blessings.”

Lindsey rubbed his eyes and looked at his watch again. It was quarter-to-twelve. Quarter-to-one in Denver. Sure, Mr. Richelieu and Mrs. Blomquist were working late. On a Friday night. Just like Nelson Rockefeller and his editor were when the Rock bought the farm.

“I don’t see why you called me, Mr. Richelieu. I’m on vacation. Well, a weekend getaway, anyhow. That’s a huge policy, and the death of the insured will have to be certified, but it still sounds like a job for the nearest branch office. Why don’t they just enter the event through KlameNet and—”

“You aren’t listening, Lindsey. This is a flag policy, understand? And there’s something peculiar about it, aside from the circumstances of Vansittart’s death.”

He paused, waiting for Lindsey to ask what was peculiar about Vansittart’s $4,000,000 policy.

Lindsey liked his job.

“What’s peculiar about Vansittart’s policy?”

“The beneficiary. Cripes, I’d never write a policy like this one, I don’t care who the insured was, I don’t care how much he was paying in premiums.”

Lindsey did not ask who the beneficiary was. He didn’t like his job that much.

Richelieu cleared his throat. “The beneficiary is the girl on the cover of Death in the Ditch.”

“What?”

“The girl on the cover of Death in the Ditch.”

“You’re kidding.”

“Lindsey, you know me. I hand-picked you out of that crummy little office you were in. I gave you your big break in this company. You know I don’t kid.”

“Right. Okay. Who’s the girl on the cover of Death in the Ditch?”

“I have not the foggiest. That’s what International Surety is paying you to find out.”

“Sounds like a book. I mean—the girl on the cover. Kind of like that porn star who posed for the baby food label or the soap flakes package or whatever it was. But Death in the Ditch wouldn’t be baby food or soap. It sounds like a book.”

“Find out, Lindsey. And find the girl. We owe her three million dollars.”

“Whoa. I thought you said four million.”

“Right. I told you this was a flag policy. If we find the girl and pay the benefits, International Surety gets a twenty-five percent finder’s fee. That’s a cool million smackers.”

“And if we don’t find her? I mean, this sounds like a long shot. When did you say the policy was written?”

“1951.”

“After more than forty years, well, she may not even be alive. What happens if we can’t find her? Or if she’s deceased?”

“Then, Hobart, then.… I told you this was a flag policy. If we can’t find her, or if she’s deceased, the money goes to something called the World Fund for Indigent Artists. Sounds like Vansittart was hung up on artists and models. Wouldn’t be the first.”

“And you want me to find the girl.”

“Find the girl, right. Cherchez la femme.”

“How long do we have to find her?”

“Policy doesn’t specify. But we have to notify the artists’ fund, and once they smell four million bucks, they’re going to start pressing us hard.”

“And there’s no finder’s fee.”

“That’s right, Lindsey. I swear, young feller, you keep on showing your smarts like you been, you’ve got a bright future with this company.”

“I’ll get on it first thing Monday morning, Mr. Richelieu.”

A moment later Lindsey could have sworn that he felt a blast of heat come through the telephone line. Of course that was impossible, but.… “You’ll get on it first thing tomorrow, bucko. In fact suppose you get on it tonight. You’ve got your palmtop with you?”

“I have it.”

“It’s got a modem in it, right? Standard SPUDS issue, right? You do work for me, Lindsey, don’t you?”

“Right.”

“To work, then. You’re not on an hourly wage, Lindsey. To work.”

Lindsey opened the bathroom door. He could see Jamie and Hakeem silhouetted against the TV screen. They’d lost interest in CNN and switched channels to a Japanese monster movie. Something with two heads and lots of scales was breathing fire and flailing at a squadron of Korean War era jet fighters.

After a couple of jets crashed into a mountainside sending up plumes of black, oily smoke Lindsey quietly placed the telephone handset on its base. The boys did not budge. He pulled on his goose-down jacket and motioned to Marvia. She slipped into her own jacket and followed him onto the wooden walkway outside their room.

The lodge was separated from the lake by a broad lawn, covered now with drifted snow. The January moon reflected off the lake’s smooth surface. The Coast Guard cutter had apparently returned to its pier and the news helicopter to its base. Across the lake, a torchlight ski-party was visible as a cluster of tiny moving sparks.

Lindsey took Marvia’s hands in his own.

She said, “We have to go back, don’t we?”

He nodded.

“It was going so well. Like a real family.”

“I know. But Richelieu—”

She looked angry. “How did he know where we were?”

Lindsey laughed without humor. “I guess he was watching CNN.” He told Marvia about Richelieu and Mrs. Blomquist working late and just happening to turn on a TV in the office. “He must have had her calling every hotel and lodge at the lake, ’til she found us.”

Marvia grinned bitterly. “We should have registered as the Smith family.”

Lindsey looked down at Marvia’s face. The moon reflected from her dark eyes like two bright disks. Her dark face and short hair were silhouetted against the snow-field that stretched from the lodge to the lake shore.

“Let’s chase the boys into their own room. I can log onto the twenty-four-hour interlibrary net from my palmtop. Give me an hour or so, then we’ll can turn in.”

Plum pressed the palm of her hand to his face. Cold as the night air was, her hand felt warm on his cheek.

“You going to work until you fall asleep?”

Lindsey shook his head. She could always make him smile. He shook his head again to make sure she could see it in the moonlight.