The Big Both Ways (30 page)

As the village came into sight, George heard the engines on the steamship slow and felt a new vibration in the deck. A moment later there was a shrill grinding clatter coming from belowdecks and a bell sounded in a compartment somewhere under his feet. Then the ship slowed even more and an alarm bell sounded on the deck where he stood.

A ship’s steward came walking briskly along and asked all of the passengers to please report to their lifeboat stations. He said repeatedly not to go back to their rooms for any of their luggage but to report immediately.

George stood in a crowd and put on his canvas life preserver. He smelled no smoke and the
Admiral Rodman
didn’t show any sign of listing. It was a fine morning and the winds were calm. The older passengers fanned themselves and did not laugh when a young man called for a band to play “Nearer My God to Thee.” Men smoked cigars and women stood on tiptoe, trying to see over the shoulders of the people around them and hoping for a sliver of information. A sailor came to the station to explain that the ship had lost power but there was a tug coming to tow them to the dock in Craig. Once the tug was alongside, the passengers would be allowed to go back to their business on ship. A steward started handing out cups of bouillon to the crowd and the atmosphere took on the nervous gaiety of a temporary crisis.

The old reverend who shared George’s table at dinner came walking down the covered deck with his life jacket wrapped tightly around his narrow chest.

“I overheard the engineer tell the steward that the bolts in the main coupling have failed. He’ll be able to make repairs in Craig but it will take several days at least.” The reverend seemed pleased
with himself—comfortable, George supposed, in having privileged information.

“Several days?” George asked.

The reverend said “yes,” then continued walking down the covered deck with a peculiar pigeon-toed gait, looking for some other lucky soul to share his information with.

The steamship line served wine with a special dinner of salmon and halibut the night after the ship was taken to the wharf for repairs. Some of the passengers spoke of disembarking and finding other means to travel north. Although he knew he should be eager to get to Juneau and establish his headquarters for the search, George was secretly grateful for the time to spend in the village.

They had not been allowed to disembark that night while the ship was getting settled in for repairs. The next morning George got up early to clear customs and be one of the first ashore. He had planned to walk directly to the small boat harbor to see if any dories with a woman and girl had been seen down the coast. But as he turned the corner of the wharf onto the commercial street fronting the pier, he heard someone’s voice rising above the clatter of cranes and carts rolling along the planks.

“Detective,” a young man called out, and George turned. The red-faced boy was carrying a dispatch case slung over his shoulder and as he came to a stop he fumbled with it. “Detective Hanson, from Seattle?” the boy asked, straightening the front of his shirt.

George heard the young man’s voice, but he did not respond right away. He knew the young man would have news from Seattle, and he didn’t want news from Seattle. George was just realizing that news from Seattle was the thing he was trying to outrun onboard the steamship headed north.

“I have come from the territorial marshal’s office in Ketchikan,” the young man blurted out, and he stepped forward and tugged on the bottom of his suit coat in hopes of straightening out his appearance. “There are several telegrams here for you,
and a package addressed to you came up on the plane. My chief wanted you to get them as soon as possible since the ship won’t be in Ketchikan for some time.”

“All right,” George said, looking at the young man who continued to fidget with his uniform. “What’s your name, son?” George asked in a calm voice.

“I’m Walter Tillman, sir.”

“Good. I’m George,” he said, and extended his hand. The young officer pumped George’s hand up and down enthusiastically. Then they both stood silently for a moment. People getting off the ship pushed around them on the muddy street.

“Do you have something for me, Walter?”

“Oh … yes.” He dug in the dispatch case to get out the papers. “Here you are, sir.”

“Good,” George said, taking the packet of papers. “Now, is there a place where we can sit and maybe get a cup of coffee? Policemen in Alaska do drink coffee, don’t they, Walter?”

“Oh yes, sir. We can mug up across the street.” The young man pointed timidly down the street, and gestured for George to walk ahead of him.

“Lead on,” George said, and waved as if the young police officer were a sheepdog and he wanted him to work.

He opened the envelope Walter Tillman had given him, and the murder that had brought him north settled like a fog down the street. A folder was topped by a telegram from the captain and it was short:
See Ketchikan P.D. package, to follow
.

They walked into the café that was in a log cabin slumped along the mud street of the village. The front windows were hazy with steam and the air inside smelled of grease and cigarettes. There were two stools at the counter next to a narrow door back to the kitchen. Two men were eating breakfast and looked to be nursing hangovers. The waitress wore a white jumper with a red ribbon in her hair. The jumper was snug around her waist and the top two buttons of her blouse were undone. She smiled at the
policemen as they entered, but her eyes lingered on young Walter as they sat down.

The young man was tongue-tied, leaving George to ask the waitress for two cups of coffee and two pieces of pie. George wanted to just sit and enjoy the day, but the envelope in his hand felt as heavy as lead. He undid the brown ribbon on the file folder, reached in, and took out the photographs and telegrams.

The police photographs spilled out on the red countertop. The waitress, who was rounding the corner from the kitchen, got a glimpse of the pictures as they spilled out. She sucked in her breath and turned away quickly. They were black-and-white photos of crime scenes: men with skulls caved in and distorted faces like stretched rubber masks, overturned rooms, phone cords wrapped around soft flesh, and blood that looked black in the overexposing flash. On the backs of the photographs were names, dates, and Party affiliation. Someone had been busting up the radicals in Seattle.

There was a handwritten note clipped to the last photograph from George’s captain.
Sorry to mess up your vacation. Hell of a mess. You were right. Can’t rely on the Fs. Find Ellie Hobbes and the man she is with. Bring them in alive and we might be able to straighten some of this out. All the best
, and he signed his first name.

As George looked over the photographs, a dense sadness settled down through his head and into his chest. The waitress set his coffee down and he looked into the dark round reflection in the mouth of the cup.

“Was there anything else?” he asked Walter Tillman.

Walter reached into his pocket and took out a telegram. George read it while the young policeman awkwardly tried to chat up the waitress.

Departed for Alaska May 29: William Pierce 32, dock boss/McCauley Conner, 29, stevedore./Raymond Cobb, 31, club fighter. You have friends in common, but not for long.—Fatty
.

“I can arrange a flight for you to Juneau if you like,” Walter Tillman said.

“No,” George said, “I’ll stay on the ship a bit longer.”

Ellie was almost blind with nausea. The throbbing pain in her hand spread up her arm and sluiced all over her body. She listened to the harmonic thrum of the radial engine. The wooden Vega had a single overhead wing held on to the main fuselage by means of a steel strut that coupled inside the main cabin. While flying the plane, Willie made a show of reaching around and tightening the nut half a twist.

Ellie was caught in the push-pull of agony and exhilaration and she seemed to be slipping into some giddy fever dream of the first time she had been up in a plane. She had been sixteen and the pilot had a gold tooth tucked back in his smile. The first lift of the plane away from the dusty field had almost made her pass out. She could see the shrinking barn and cars, the dumbstruck kids staring up into the air with their mouths open and their hands shading their eyes. She had never seen the river from the sky, how it wound like a snake across the flat land, how the sections of corn and wheat were cut into straight lines like a checkerboard. A part of her would always be airborne from that day forward.

Now she was in the Vega and the sensation was exquisite. Taking off from the sea was smoother than the rutted field in Spokane. The inlets flowed out beneath her and the plane stayed in the corridor between the mountains. Mountain bluffs fell away under the plane, giving her a heightened sense of vertigo. Willie turned in his seat and gave her a bag to throw up in and she used it.

The Lockheed Vega was traveling at more than a hundred miles per hour past the stone faces where ice still clung to high rock ledges. She felt as if she were standing on the lip of a cliff about to be pushed over. The plane lunged up over an ice cornice. Ellie dug
her fingers into her legs. Then she threw up again. Willie turned around and yelled something to Ellie, but she only nodded her head that she understood when in fact she hadn’t. The mountains passed by the wingtips of the Vega and Ellie’s eyes tried to grab hold of them. All of the tethers between the earth and the sky seemed to be frayed, and she had the giddy, panicked exhilaration of being out of control. Blood dripped from her bandage and she scuffed at the droplets on the floor with her shoe.

The Vega buffeted up over another ridge and a huge expanse of water lay before them. Cumulus clouds sat fat-bellied and satisfied above the sea. Beneath them the ocean waves curled around the breaking rocks on the coastline. Three fishing boats rolled toward the north. They quickly slid under the wings of the plane and disappeared behind them.

They flew for an hour, and when Ketchikan came into sight Ellie leaned forward to see what to expect. A steamship sat at the pier and small boats cut across the channel. There was a church on the hill and cars were lumbering along the narrow waterfront road. White wooden buildings lay out in a small grid and tiny houses clung to the sides of a creek. It was a little wooden town set down on the spongy earth between the mountains and the sea. Ellie wondered how long the plane would be in town.

Willie swung around and yelled over the roar of the engine, “We’ll land in the channel. You can get a cab up to the hospital. I’m going to get some fuel and groceries, then I’m going to take off. You check in with the customs people when you get to the hospital.”

“When will you be coming back?” Ellie yelled.

Willie was looking straight ahead and picking his landing spot between the boats in the channel. “Don’t know that I’ll ever be back. Don’t get up here all that much.” He pulled the throttle back and nosed the plane down toward the water. As the water came closer, the weight in her stomach increased. There would be the hospital and questions, what names to use, and how to get back to Annabelle.

Ellie pushed back in her seat and felt the easy bump of the Vega’s floats settling down on the water. Once the weight of the plane settled, Willie advanced the throttle and the big plane scooted on step across the water’s surface toward a floatplane dock. He climbed out onto the float, took a line dangling from a strut, and tied it off to a dock cleat. He opened the passenger door and half carried Ellie down the ladder to the float, being careful not to get her blood on his jacket.

“Thanks,” was all she could manage.

“No problem, Blondie. I’ll ask around about you if I come back this way,” he said, still flirting with the injured woman, as if that was the only context he had for conversation with a female.

“Yeah, great,” Ellie said, and she let go of his arm.

“Oh, Christ,” Willie said, as Ellie began to pitch headfirst onto the dock. The pilot lurched forward and caught her by the shoulders. “Jeez … you’re a mess,” Willie said. Blood dripped from the bandages and Ellie’s face looked pale. “You want me to call an ambulance?”

“Don’t go to the fucking trouble,” Ellie said, and she lurched toward the ramp.

She walked south along the waterfront. No cabs came. When Ellie finally slumped down against a broken fence beside the harbor, a kid driving a beer truck stopped.

“Creek Street … Yvette,” was all Ellie could say. And the kid gave her a lift.

Halfway to town Ellie let out a low moan when the kid shifted gears and lurched along the narrow street near the wharf. He was in a hurry because he didn’t want to be caught with a dead whore in the boss’s truck.

The next morning Slip sat in the dory with Annabelle and her empty birdcage. Slip was wedging his tool kit underneath the middle seat with his money tin safely in place. The damned
yellow bird stood on the gunwales of the dory, peeping angrily as if every decision Slip made was the wrong one.

“Can you shut him up?” Slip asked the girl, who was squinting through her glasses at the chart.

“He won’t go in his cage. I tried.”

“He doesn’t have to get in his cage. I just meant could he quiet down a little. It’s hard to think.”

Annabelle started whistling. It wasn’t a tune so much as a meandering kind of warble that eventually settled into a sort of tune, and the bird began to sing along in his own way.

The two of them trilled away as Slip pulled on the oars and they glided past the waterfall. No one waved to them from the cannery. The kid who ran the hoist to lower the dory back into the water didn’t wait around to watch them go but had to get back to the line. Fishing boats were starting to come in more regularly now and the foremen were pushing their crews hard.

They passed their cabin and then the Filipino bunkhouse and the Chinese. A few women were hanging out laundry on the lines along the side of the house but no one bothered to wave. They swung wide past the Native encampment where some of the boys were rolling a barrel hoop along the ground. It toppled and spun on the hard-packed ground and the boys laughed, then stopped to look out at the dory. One of them recognized Annabelle, and he waved frantically. Annabelle waved back.