The Fisherman Read online

  Winter pressed the muzzle of his 9 mm pistol against Gorky’s neck. “Maybe when we leave your ship you ain’t alive,” he said. His voice was unemotional, which made the threat seem more real.

  Gorky laughed. He motioned for the crewmember to put his handgun away. When the revolver disappeared, Winter removed the semi-automatic from Gorky’s neck.

  O’Leary saw sweat on Gorky’s brow and knew he had won this battle. He swiveled around in his seat and said, “That case better have my money in it.”

  The seaman placed the briefcase on the table and stepped back.

  O’Leary looked over his shoulder and stared at the goon. “Move out of my fucking space. Other than Gordon, I don’t like people behind me.”

  Gorky motioned again, and O’Leary kept his eyes fixed on the captain’s, listening to the sound of the sailor walking away. He sat still until he heard the metal door slam. He nodded to Winter, who stepped to the side so that he was in Gorky’s line of sight.

  “You can count it if you would like,” Gorky said.

  “No need for that. But just to be sure there are no little surprises in that case, open it.”

  Once again, Gorky laughed. “Jimmy, Jimmy, you show so little faith.”

  “That’s why I’m still alive—open it. If that fucking thing is rigged and I go, you’re coming with me.”

  Gorky opened the briefcase and turned it so O’Leary could see it contained money. If there was anything else in the briefcase, it was under the cash. Winter removed a pack of bills and riffled through each one, ensuring the stacks were not all one dollar bills with a single hundred on top to mislead them.

  O’Leary tossed a cloth laundry sack on the table. “Put the money in this. I wouldn’t want to take such a fine briefcase.” Gorky laughed again and did as asked. As Winter had, Gorky flipped the end of each stack so Jimmy could see there was no filler in them before placing them in the sack. When he finished transferring the cash, he slid the sack across the table.

  “I like doing business with a cautious man,” Gorky said.

  “Like I said, it keeps me alive.”

  “Would you like to see the cargo?”

  “Sure, why not.”

  Gorky stood and motioned for O’Leary to precede him. O’Leary smiled and deferred.

  “Always the careful man.” Gorky laughed again.

  “Yuri, you laugh too fucking much. It makes me wonder what you’re planning.”

  “Jimmy, think how dreadful life would be if we could not laugh.”

  Winter picked up the sack, and they followed Gorky out of the galley. They descended more metal stairs, working their way deeper into the bowels of the ship, where they again followed a series of passageways so narrow that Winter’s shoulders brushed the walls.

  O’Leary soon lost his sense of where they were. He knew it would take him hours to find his way out of the labyrinth. He looked at Winter, who sensed his boss’s unease and smiled back. “Don’t worry, boss. I’ll get us out of here,” he said.

  Gorky led them past several small doors with bars in the windows.

  O’Leary glanced into one and saw several soiled mattresses and nothing else. “Who uses these?” he asked.

  Gorky stammered when he answered, “W-we also carry passengers occasionally.”

  “It doesn’t seem very luxurious to me.” O’Leary was skeptical. Why would anyone pay for such a crappy room?

  “This is a freighter,” Gorky said, “not a luxury liner.”

  “Must be a cheap ticket,” O’Leary commented as he walked away from the tiny cell.

  They came to a small door and Gorky opened it, stepping through in front of O’Leary.

  “What’s your cargo?”

  “This trip I carry bananas and fruit from Mexico.”

  O’Leary cast a wary glance at the hold full of hanging bundles of yellow-green fruit. “Wonderful. There’s probably a million spiders and shit in here.”

  “It’s not so bad. Although from time to time we do see tarantulas. . . .”

  “Gordon, if a goddamned hairy spider comes for me, kill it. Then kill Yuri for keeping such a filthy ship.” O’Leary turned to Gorky. “We’ll have a crew here first thing in the morning to off-load.”

  _________________

  Jimmy O’Leary and Gordon Winter walked across the parking lot. “Something ain’t right on that boat,” O’Leary said.

  “He’s carrying more than fruit,” Winter replied.

  “Do those compartments have you wondering, too?”

  “If that Russian prick is carrying passengers,” Winter said, “they ain’t willing ones. Those rooms looked more like jail cells than passenger berths. I wouldn’t put it past these slimy bastards to be smuggling in women.”

  “That’s quite a leap, Gord.”

  “Maybe not. There’s been talk of Konovalov bringing in women from Eastern Europe and Russia. The sons of bitches promise them jobs and a better life. Of course, they got to pay off their passage first.”

  O’Leary stared back at the rusty hull of the tramp freighter. “Whatever it is, it’s a hell of a lot more profitable than South American bananas. Find out who his broker is. Before I accuse the sonuvabitch of trafficking in white slaves, I want some answers.” O’Leary spat and gave the ship another hard look.

  “Don’t hold back, boss,” Winter quipped. “Tell us how you really feel.”

  O’Leary spun on Winter—something he rarely did. “Forcing young women and kids to be whores ain’t a jokin’ matter, Gord.”

  Winter realized that he’d crossed the line. Jimmy O’Leary had been known to kill pedophiles without reservation. It was not a subject that he took lightly. “Sorry, boss.”

  4

  The stench enclosed Willard Fischer like a putrid cocoon, a homing signal for flies. Hundreds of them buzzed around and landed on his face and sweaty, naked torso. He ignored them and trudged along the dock, barely noticing the weight of the buckets he carried. With each step, the sticky pink swill splashed and slopped over the sides of the pails and stuck to his bare legs. Fischer ignored the itching as the foul-smelling feast attracted more of the voracious flies.

  Fishing, both commercial and charter, was hard work, but it was all he knew. He had never done anything different, nor worked anywhere else, either before or after inheriting the business. His chaotic thought process switched, jumping from one subject to another. All thoughts of the hardships of fishing dissolved into an image of the stern visage of his father. The old bastard had only done one decent thing in his life: he’d died. Fischer knew without a doubt that before dying the old sonuvabitch was pissed because he knew that, of his two sons, the imbecile would inherit the business. Somewhere in the depths of hell, the miserable shit was ranting and raving, giving a new meaning to eternal damnation and making hell an even more miserable place for everyone there—even Satan. For the thousandth time that month, Fischer ground his teeth and swore he would show the rotten son of a whore that he was worthy, and in turn, he would leave it to his son—when he finally got a woman who could give him one.

  When he thought of his heir, he stopped on the pier, set the slop buckets down, and turned to stare at the house. His eyes settled on the upstairs windows. Hers was the middle of the three. He hoped this one would finally give him the heir he desperately needed. If not, he would have to make yet another trip into Boston. With a violent shake of his head, he dismissed the thought. Frustrated by his three-year search for a satisfactory mate, he muttered, “This has to be the one.”

  He turned away from the house, picked up the buckets, and trudged toward the boat. Without pausing, he walked up the wooden gangplank. Similar to a tightrope walker, he extended his arms out to his sides. Using the buckets for balance as the ramp bent, he bounced with each step he took. Placing the pails on the deck, he opened the bait well. He pushed the first of the metal pails aside and poured the contents of the second into the small compartment. A stiff breeze blew in from the Gulf of Maine, cooling his
sweaty chest and coating it and his face with the fine mist that blew back from the compartment.

  Fischer watched the bucket’s contents splash against the walls, coating the interior like thick pink paint. He straightened and noticed that some of the chum had missed the opening and landed on the deck. Mindlessly, he picked up the bit of meat and threw it into the well.

  He set the empty pail down, picked up the second container, and poured it in. Fischer set the bucket beside the first and reached inside the bait well, stirring the mixture of ground bone, meaty tissue, and blood until it was the desired texture. He stood and used his hand to squeegee the pink stew from his arm, chest, and face.

  He stared across the empty quay, admiring the cove’s sparkling water. Turning his eyes downward, he saw his image reflected from the water’s mirror-like smoothness. Most people thought that the face staring back at him was ugly. The nose was bent and misshapen from being broken several times. The old bastard had never spanked his son—punching him in the face was more his style. Once he’d done it in front of a couple of other fishermen, and they’d told him to go easy on the kid. The old man had said, “The Bible says if you spare the rod, you spoil the kid.” He’d laughed and added, “Leastways, I ain’t never beat the bastard with no rod.”

  Turning his head slightly revealed what Fischer believed was the one thing that made everyone call him ugly. Rather than the round contour most people had, the right side of his skull was so flat as to appear concave. He barely remembered the day when the mast’s block and tackle had let go and whipped across the deck. The windlass had hit him so hard that it knocked him to the deck, fracturing his skull and bursting his right eardrum. Even though he could not remember the rest of that day, he did recall the old bastard screaming for him to stop malingering and to get to work. The old man had refused to take him to a doctor—said he needed him on the boat and if it still bothered him in a week or so, he would do something. His mother had tried to make him feel better and said he was like a puppy that was so ugly it was cute. He wished that his right eye didn’t turn inward—maybe then he’d be handsome. He studied himself for several seconds, admiring the left side of his face, which he believed was his best.

  A brittle female voice admonished him, “Vanity is a great sin!”

  He looked about, seeking his mother. As usual, she was out of sight, probably hiding somewhere in the woods along the shore.

  “Stop your fooling around and get to work!” He turned his head ninety degrees, so with his good ear he could hear his father’s voice better.

  “Ain’t fooling around, old man,” he muttered.

  He put his hands on his back just above his narrow hips and stretched. Vertebrae snapped loudly as he stressed them into place. He slammed the well’s lid shut, shook off the residual bits of flesh that clung to his arm, gathered the buckets, and left the boat. He still had at least fifty pounds to grind before his job would be finished. As he walked down the pier toward the ramshackle workshop, he swung the sticky pails, looking as carefree as a child.

  “Goddamn it, boy, get a move on!”

  “Hallet, don’t you use the Lord’s name in vain again!”

  _________________

  He entered the woman’s room. An acidic stench met him at the threshold; he knew immediately that she had puked again. He turned on the ceiling light.

  The naked woman lay on the bed, hardened vomit and waste caked on the mattress, and a fresh patch of spew lay near her head. Seemingly unaware of his presence, her legs kicked and her body thrashed about like a dinghy in thirty-foot swells. When she heard him enter and close the door, her bloodshot eyes turned to him.

  “Please,” she begged, “I need a fix.”

  He looked at her with a scowl bordering on contempt. He knew that she was in excruciating discomfort but had no sympathy; drug addicts didn’t rate it. He had gone through this with several of the others, and he knew that the worst of the withdrawal symptoms had passed. The bouts of vomiting and diarrhea had become fewer and farther between; however, the kicking and thrashing body movements were still evident, only not as severe as they had been during the first seventy-two hours. He was unmoved by her pleas. “No, it will be over in a few more days. You’re young and still healthy, so I don’t think you’ll die.” He refrained from adding that either way, he could not care less . . . there were plenty more women like her out there.

  His words angered her, and she leaped forward, stopping abruptly when she reached the limits of the chains that bound her. The woman fought against her bonds, eyes flashing with hatred, and spittle flew from her lips as she lurched toward him and screamed, “I’m dying, you fucking pervert!” Her strength seemed to give out, and she slid back on the fouled mattress and folded her legs into the fetal position. The chains he used to restrain her rattled when she wrapped her arms around her torso. He knew that her nervous system was hyperactive, and like the others had, she complained about muscle and bone pain. Each time her hands touched her feverish flesh she recoiled, and he knew that it felt like she was covered in third-degree burns.

  “I won’t have a junkie as my wife,” he said.

  “Wife? What woman would marry you, you ugly freak?”

  He ignored her taunts. He knew she didn’t mean what she’d said; it was just a ploy to goad him into giving her drugs.

  “That stuff you been shooting into your body is poison,” he said. “But in a few days it’ll get better, you’ll see.”

  “I’d rather die from poison than spend another minute here!”

  “Give it time—you’ll learn to like it.”

  He walked to the bed and looked at the mess that covered it. He debated whether to clean it and her or to let her lie in it. His nostrils flared when he breathed in the rancid air. To leave the room in this state was dangerous; if Mum smelled the foulness, she would never accept this woman. He left the room and gathered a basin of fresh warm water, soap, and a clean washcloth and towel.

  Even though the room was hot, goosebumps covered her flesh, and she screamed when he touched her. He ignored her ranting and cursing as he cleaned her body; then he picked her up, ignoring her cries of agony, and placed her on the chair beside the bed. He removed the fouled sheets and flipped the mattress over, ignoring the fact that the newly exposed side was no cleaner than the other. He put dingy, yellowed sheets on the bed and once again paid no attention to her rants and curses when he picked her up and placed her on the bed.

  “Can’t have Mum seeing you like this. She’s a good Christian woman and don’t like people who consume strong drink and do drugs.”

  She glared at him.

  “The last thing I want to do is meet your mother, you stupid son of a whore.”

  His face reddened, and he slapped her.

  “Don’t you ever call my mother a whore!”

  _________________

  Cheryl woke up and stared through the gloom at the ceiling. A light tapping came from someplace but from where she was uncertain. She was soaked with sweat, still dealing with delirium tremors, and was possibly hallucinating and hearing things. Still the incessant tapping continued, and she realized that it came from the adjacent room. Cheryl struggled to her knees and placed her ear against the wall. The tapping seemed to be coming from some point below her bed. She rolled off the bed and onto her hands and knees. Seeking the point of origin, she trailed her fingers along the wall. Several times, she stopped searching and raised her head to ensure that he wasn’t in the room. Once she knew she was alone, Cheryl resumed her quest. After several tense moments, her fingers detected an irregularity near the leg of the bed.

  She lowered her face until she was able to see that there was a hole in the wall. She placed her mouth by it and whispered, “Hello?”

  She replaced her mouth with her ear, and a voice said, “Help me.”

  “Who are you?”

  “Monique . . .”

  Cheryl inhaled sharply and caught her breath. She believed she knew this woman. Monique
had disappeared from the area around Arlington Street several weeks ago. “Monique, it’s Cheri.”

  “Oh my God, Cheri! We have to get out of here!”

  “How? He keeps me shackled to a beam in the ceiling.”

  There was no immediate response from Monique. Then Cheryl heard her crying. “Are you alright?”

  “Now that he has you, he’ll take me to the factory.”

  “The factory?”

  “It’s where he takes the women he’s done with.”

  There was a loud bang from Monique’s room, and Cheryl heard him shout. “What are you doing down there?” There was the sound of a scuffle followed by the loud reports of someone being slapped and beaten. Cheryl leaped into bed and curled up, trying to ignore the sounds coming from Monique’s room.

  She had no idea how long it was from the time she returned to her bed until she heard the lock on her door rattling. The door opened, and she opened her eyes enough to see while at the same time hoping he would assume that she was asleep. He stood framed in the door—a black demon silhouetted against the hall light. Behind him, lying on the floor, was the unmistakable figure of a human body. He stood there for several moments and then closed the door.

  Cheryl heard the rattle of the lock being engaged and then the sound of something being dragged. It took several seconds for her to realize that the figure on the floor was in all likelihood Monique.

  She started to drift off to sleep when she heard the whine of some sort of machinery. She lay in the darkness listening.

  The next morning he appeared in her room and made her stand against the opposite wall. He searched around her bed and then stood up. He smiled at her but said nothing. He left the room and returned in minutes, carrying a flat-bladed putty knife and a small plastic container. He squatted beside her bed and filled the hole in the wall, using the knife to smooth the Spackle. “That’ll put an end to that,” he said as he left the room and once again locked her in.