The Rackham Files (6 page)

That's how it had been with me and Quent, and it happened again with Norm. The reason he and his staff assistant had still been at the office was that the Goldman suite and Sonmiani's office were over-and-under, in one of the smaller of those old Alameda buildings respiffed in the style they call Elerath Post-Industrial. I guessed that Sonmiani did a healthy business because the whole two-story structure was theirs.

It was a few minutes after five, but Goldman had said he'd leave the front door unlocked. Following the signs, I moved down a hallway formed by partitioning off a strip from the offices, which I could see through the glassed partition. One man was still in there, wearing a headset and facing a big flat screen. He looked up and waved, and I waved back, and he motioned for me to continue.

The place must have once doubled as a warehouse to judge from the vintage—now trendy again and clean as a cat's fang—freight elevator. I obeyed its sign, tugging up on a barrier which met its descending twin at breastbone height. It whirred to life on its own, a bit shaky after all those years of service, and a moment later I saw a pair of soft Bally sandals come into view under nicely creased allosuede slacks. A pale yellow dress shirt with open collar followed, and finally I saw a tanned, well-chiseled face looking at mine. Hands on hips, he grinned. I couldn't blame him; I'd forgotten how I was dressed.

We introduced ourselves before he jerked a thumb toward the glass door of what might have been an office, but turned out to be his digs. "Sorry about the time," I said, as he ushered me into a big airy room with an eclectic furniture mix: futon, modern couch, inflatable chairs, and a wet bar. And some guy-type pictures, one of which had nothing to do with ships. I thought it would stand a closer look if I got the time. "I tend to forget other people keep regular hours," I added.

"Couldn't resist your opening," he said, with a wave of his hand that suggested I could sit anyplace, and I chose the couch. "Anyone looking for the same crew member I'm looking for, is someone I want to meet. Besides, I've never met a real live—ah, is 'pee-eye' an acceptable buzz phrase?" He had heavy expressive brows that showed honest concern at the question, and big dark eyes that danced with lively interest. "And if it's not, would some sour mash repair the damage?" His accent was Northeast, I guessed New York, and in Big Apple tempo.

"Maybe later," I said. "But P.I. is a term always in vogue."

"As long as I'm on Goldman time, I'll have a beer," he said, and bounced up like a man who played a lot of tennis. He uncapped a Pilsener Urquell from a cooler behind the bar, dipped its neck toward me, then took a swig of the brew before sitting down again. "We've about given up on Park, by the way. Do you suppose the dumb slope has gotten himself in some kind of trouble?"

I admitted I didn't know. "That's what the client wants us to find out. At this point, we're hoping his personal effects aboard ship might point us in some direction. With your authorization, of course, Mr. Goldman. That's what we had in mind."

He nodded abstractedly. "Don't know why not. And hey, my father is Mr. Goldman, God forbid you should mix us up." His grin was quick and infectious. "It's Norm; okay?"

I'd intended to keep this on a semiformal level but with Norm it was simply not possible. I insisted on "Harve," and asked him if he ever felt ill at ease dealing with Moslem skippers. He got a kick from that; a ship's captain might be Allah on the high seas, said Norm, but they knew who signed their checks. "No, it's the poor ragheads who aren't all that easy about me." He laughed. "But Sonmiani's directors include some pretty canny guys. As long as I keep cargoes coming and going better than the last rep, what's to kvetch about?

"Actually the skipper probably will anyway. Gent with a beard, named something-Nadwi. A surly lot, Harve, especially when they're behind schedule." He stopped himself suddenly, shot a quick glance at me. "I don't suppose it's my bosses who put you onto our man's trail. Nobody's told me, but they don't always tell the left hand what its thumb is doing. In a way I hope it is them."

"Against my charter to identify a client, but let's just say it's someone worried about a young guy who's a long way from home," I said. A hint that broad was, as Quent had said, bending the rules a bit but that wasn't why I felt a wisp of guilt. I felt it because I knew our real client wasn't a deceased Korean.

Norm was understanding. He said he'd seen Park Soon exactly once, and that, while he was making his own inquiries, a couple of the crew who had their papers had claimed they saw the engineer in a bar. "They may have been mistaken. Or—hell, I don't know. You couldn't pick a more suspicious mix than we have on the
Ras Ormara.
Schmucks will lie just for practice. You can't entirely blame them, you know. Some skippers skim company food allowances intended for the crews, though I don't believe Nadwi does. I won't have it, by God, and our skippers know it. There's a backhander or two that I can't avoid in half the foreign ports. A lot of their manning agencies are corrupt—"

"Backhander?"

"Kickback, bribe. It's just part of doing business in some ports, and the poor ragheads know it, but they never get a dime of the action. Same-old, same-old," he chanted, shook his head, and took another slug of Urquell.

His shirt pocket warbled, and he tapped it without looking. "Goldman," he said, not bothering to keep the conversation private from me. I was struck by the openness of everything, the offices, Norm's apartment, his dealings with people.

"I'm about squared away here, guv," said a voice with a faint Brit flavor. "Thought I'd nip out for a bite."

"Why not? You've been on Kaplan time for," Norm consulted a very nice Omega on his wrist, "a half hour. Oh! Mike, would you mind running up here a minute first? Gentleman in an unusual business here I want you to meet."

The voice agreed, sounding slightly put-upon, and after he rang off I realized it must be the man I'd seen in the office. It was obvious that Norm Goldman had the same view of formalities that I did, but something about his decisive manner said he might crack a whip if need be. I decided he was older than I'd first thought; maybe forty, but a very hip forty.

Then I took a closer look at that framed picture on his wall, a colorful numbered print showing one formula car overtaking another as a third slid helplessly toward a tire barrier. It was the Grand Prix of Israel, Norm said, adding that he was a hopeless fan. I said I shared his failing; worse, that I had half the bits and pieces of an off-road single-seater in my workshop awaiting the chassis I'd build. He crossed his arms and sighed and, beaming at me, said he might have known.

A quick two-beat knock, and Mike Kaplan entered without waiting. He was swarthy and slim, with very close-cropped dark hair and a nose old-time cartoonists used to draw as a sort of Jewish I.D. His forearms said he'd done a lot of hard work in his time. I got up. Norm didn't, waving a hand from one of us to the other as we shook hands. "Mike Kaplan, Harve Rackham. Mike's my second, and when we're both out of the office, our young tomcat Ira Meltzer holds down the fort. Ira's not in his rooms—where the hell is Ira—as if it were any of my effing business," Norm added with a smile.

Mike said how would he know, and Norm shrugged it off. "Let me guess," Mike said to me. "Wrestler on the telly?"

"That's me," I said, and pulled up my pants. "Harve, the Terrible Tourist."

"Come on," Mike said, because Norm was chuckling.

"I didn't know they existed anymore, Mike, but you are looking at a private eye. In disguise, I hope," said his boss, enjoying the moment. When Mike didn't react, he said, "As in, private investigator. You know: Sam Spade."

Mike Kaplan's face lit up then, and his second glance at me was more appraising and held a lot more friendly interest. "Personally, I'd be inclined to tell him whatever he wants to know," he said to Norm. I must have outweighed him by fifty kilos.

"If you knew, you might. But that would more likely be the job of the
Ras Ormara
's skipper," Norm replied. "You're better at those names than I am."

Mike shook his head in mock censure. "If you worked at it as I do, you'd get along better with them," he said. "Captain Hassan al-Nadwi, you mean." As Norm nodded, Mike Kaplan went on, "And what do we need from that worthy?"

I told him, and admitted we needed to look at the engineer's effects as soon as possible—meaning the next day.

Mike allowed as how al-Nadwi would put up a pro forma bitch, but it shouldn't really be a problem if I didn't mind a lot of silent stares, and people on board who suddenly seemed to know no English at all. He said he'd call the skipper, stroke him a little, lean on him a little. Al-Nadwi knew who held the face cards. Piece of cake, he said.

Norm said he gathered I wasn't working alone, and I told him about Quentin Kim, apologizing for the oversight. "If Park Soon left any notes in Hangul," I said, "it'd be Quent who could read them. He speaks Korean, of course; that's probably why he got the case. I'd be just as useful chasing down other leads."

Norm donated a quizzical look. "I didn't realize there were other leads."

New friend or not, there are times when you see you're about to step over the line. That can reach around and bite you or your friend sometimes in ways you can't predict. I said, "There may not be. If there were, I couldn't discuss them. 'Course, if Quent stumbled on one, it wouldn't surprise me if you got wind of it later." I let my expression say,
the game's a bastard but rules are rules.
 

"I respect that. Can't say I understand it, but I respect it," said Norm.

"Good," I said. "So for all I know, Quent may come alone to the ship and send me off in another direction."

Norm's reaction warmed my heart. "But—I was going to go along because you were," he said. "Spring for lunch, pick your brains about racing—uh-unh; you've got to go along, Harve."

"I'll try, but it's Quent's call. He's my boss," I said.

A sly half smile, and one lifted brow, from Norm. "Well," he said softly, reasonably, "just tell him the real call is Norm Goldman's. And Goldman is an unreasonable asshole."

Mike Kaplan laughed out loud and jerked his head toward Norm while looking at me. "I've been saying that for ages," he said.

After Kaplan promised to set up a visit to the ship for me and Quent, he left us. I told Norm that just about cleared my decks for the day, and said I'd take one of those Czech beers if the offer was still open. We jawed about our tastes in racing—I couldn't see his fascination with dragsters; he thought karts were kid stuff. He showed me around his place while we discussed Norm's good luck in falling heir to a floor of rooms that split so nicely into three apartments. Whatever Sonmiani paid their seamen, Norm and his staff obviously were in no fiscal pain. Finally, we bonded a little closer over the fact that both of us placed high value in working with people we liked.

I promised Norm he'd like Quent because they shared a subdued sense of humor, though he might find my old pal oddly conservative considering the career he chose. That was the chief way, I said, that Quent's ethnicity showed.

Norm said believe it or not, I'd find Kaplan had a touch of the prude. He added that it couldn't be the man's Liverpool upbringing, so maybe it was the Sephardic Jew surfacing in him. It was a comfort, he said, to know he could be gone a week and feel confident that the office was secure in the hands of Mike Kaplan. I'd find Ira Meltzer a frank Manhattan skirt-chaser, he said, which could get a bit wearing but Ira was a real
mensch
for hard work.

I tried to call Quent about the good news, but got his tape. I didn't call Dana Martin because I didn't want to seem secretive, and I sure wasn't going to talk with a Fed in front of Norm.

And when he suggested we go looking for dinner—on him, or rather on Sonmiani, he reminded me—I said it might be better if we called a pizza in because I was tired of people looking at me funny. I was catching on to his dry humor by then, and laughed when he said with a straight face that he couldn't imagine why they might.

"Pizza's a good idea," he said, "but we could order it from anywhere. How about from your workshop?"

He was as serious about it as most race-car freaks, and the idea of a forty-minute drive didn't dismay him. It was long odds against a deliveryman finding my place, I said, but we could pick that pizza up on the way. He'd be driving back alone for the first few miles on dark country roads, I cautioned. He said he had a decent Sony mapper, so he was up for it if I was, but if I had any objection we could do it another time.

Objection? Hell, this would be the first time I could recall that I'd had two guests in one week, and I said as much while we rode the rocking old elevator down.

Eventually, using our phones while he followed me out of town in his enviable, cherried-out classic black Porsche Turbo, I suggested we save time by my cobbling up a couple of reubens on my woodstove. He agreed, and when we hit the country roads I tried Quent again without success.

Now I could call our pet Feeb, who sounded slightly impressed that I was still at work. She liked it even better that Sonmiani's people were receptive to our private search and would help us snoop aboard ship, the next day.

Quent, she said, had taken the LOC-8 with its hidden spectral analyzer after playing with it under lab tutelage. She thought he might be cruising around Richmond trying to find crewman Hong Chee. Reception, especially in some of the popular basement dives, wasn't all that reliable. I told myself Quent could cruise the ethnic bars better as a singleton and besides, I was working in a way, schmoozing with a guy who could hinder or help us. No doubt Quent would call me when he was ready.

Dana wasn't so happy with my suggestion that the Feds canvass airline reservation lists scheduled for the next few days, just to see if they got any hits on the
Ras Ormara
's crewlist. Did she think it was pointless? Maybe not entirely, she admitted, before she hung up. I still think Dana was simply pissed because she hadn't already gotten around to it.