Mash Up Page 9

  “How can I help you, Mrs. Ahab?”

  “I understand you solve people’s problems, Mr. Ishmael.”

  I shrugged. “Depends what they are, ma’am. I can recommend a good doctor.”

  She frowned. “I don’t require the services of a physician. My problem is… shall we say, of a delicate nature.”

  A high-class dame, all right. I could tell from the way she spoke that she’d had some schooling. Which was good. The ones with class have money. “Perhaps you can tell me about it.”

  “It involves my husband, Mr. Ishmael… Captain Ahab, master of the whaling vessel Pequod. Perhaps you’ve heard of him?”

  I shook my head. “Name doesn’t ring a bell, sorry. A lot of ships come and go out of New Bedford, and you can’t throw a rock without hitting a captain.”

  “Certainly you’d recognize my husband if you saw him. He is older than I, his hair and beard already white with age. But his most noticeable feature is his left leg, which has been replaced by a wooden peg from the knee down.”

  “You’ve just described half the sailors in town. The other half have pegs on their right legs.”

  A smile flickered uneasily at the corners of her full lips. “Yes… quite so,” she said, putting a clamp on her amusement. “Nonetheless, my husband is quite distinctive, not only in appearance, but also by his recent behavior, which has lately become rather strange.”

  She nervously looked down at the bare wooden floor. I’d once had a nice oriental rug there that had come all the way from China, but I had to throw it out after one of my former clients bled all over it. The room was warm, so I stood up to open a window. From outside came the morning sounds of the wharf: the creak of sail lines, the curses of workers loading and unloading heavy crates, wagon wheels rattling across cobblestones.

  “Tell me about Captain Ahab,” I said.

  “You know how sea captains are, Mr. Ishmael. They’re home for only a few weeks, maybe a month or two, then they’re off to sea again. Although I wasn’t expecting this when I married my husband, I’ve become accustomed to his long absences. He has accumulated some small measure of wealth from his voyages, which has allowed us to live in comfort.”

  She wasn’t telling me anything I didn’t already know. The mansions of sea captains were among New Bedford’s most stately homes. They often had so-called widow’s walks, and sometimes the lady of the house got tired of standing out there, watching for the sails of her husband’s ship to appear upon the horizon. I’d entertained the wives of more than a few captains, in a discreet way that involved entering and leaving through the kitchen door. They were rich, young, bored, and eager for the company of a gentleman who didn’t smell of whale oil and blubber.

  But Mrs. Ahab didn’t fit the type. One look at her solemn brown eyes, and I knew that she hadn’t come here to see if I’d scratch an itch. “I take it that his behavior has become unusual even for someone in his line of work.”

  “Yes, it has, Mr. Ishmael.” She shifted from foot to foot, the frilled hem of her bustle whisking the floor like a broom. How she’d managed to climb a flight of stairs in that thing was beyond me. “When he returned from his last voyage, it was obvious that he had changed. And it was not just that he now had a wooden leg, which he told me he’d lost while climbing up a topsail. My husband has always been a serious man, but this time he was aloof, distant. As if his mind was elsewhere.” She hesitated. “He’s become obsessed with someone named Moby.”

  “Moby?”

  “Yes. Moby… Moby Dick.”

  “Sounds like a woman.” I was thinking of someone I knew with the same surname: Crazy Phil, who hung out in grog shops, raving about things no could understand. Perhaps Moby was his sister…

  “This is what I’ve come to suspect, yes. I know women aren’t usually allowed aboard whaling vessels, Mr. Ishmael, but a sea captain can bend the rules if he so desires. If my husband were to take a mistress…”

  “All captains have a mistress, ma’am.”

  “I’m not talking about the sea!” Her dark eyes flashed. “I’m talking about a woman who is sharing my husband’s cabin aboard the Pequod. He’s going on another voyage very soon, and if he has a… a hussy… who has become his secret lover, I want to know who she is.”

  I was startled by her anger. Yes, Mrs. Ahab definitely strolled her widow’s walk alone. “I understand. So you want me to…”

  “Find out who this Moby Dick is, Mr. Ishmael. I don’t want the Pequod to leave port without knowing whether my husband will have a woman in his cabin.”

  “My fee is ten dollars a day, plus expenses.” That was more than what I usually charged, but she clearly wasn’t going to have to sell the household silver.

  “You’ll have it, Mr. Ishmael… along with my gratitude, if my suspicions are confirmed.” It may have only been my imagination, but something in her eyes hinted that she’d express her gratitude in an interesting way.

  That made me smile. “Very well, then, ma’am. I’ll take the case.”

  * * *

  Mrs. Ahab had just left my office and was beginning to hobble downstairs when the front door slammed and someone started coming up. A shriek of horror, then the clatter of patent leather shoes running the rest of the way down the stairs. I closed my eyes, shook my head. She’d just met my partner.

  “You need to stop frightening people like that,” I said as he came in. “We can’t afford to lose any more clients.”

  “Wang dang doodle.” Queequeg rested his harpoon against the wall, then removed his beaverskin stovepipe and hung it on the hat rack. As tall and solid as a mainmast, his walnut-brown skin was etched with so many tattoos that he looked like a lithograph. Queequeg was from somewhere in the South Seas – Samoa, Tahiti, Fiji; I was never quite sure – and he was probably too weird for even that place. I guess that’s why he came to America; here, he fit right in. He was big and scary, the best goon in New England.

  “Yeah, that’s our new client. Some looker, huh?” Queequeg shrugged as he sat down and reached into his overcoat pocket for his pipe. “She wants us to see if her husband is cheating on her. Ever heard of some guy named Ahab?”

  “Poppa poppa ooh mow mow mow ooh mow mow mow.”

  “Yeah, I know he’s a captain. She told me that already. The Pequod’s his tub. What I’d like to know is whether he’s knocking boots with someone who isn’t his wife.”

  “Ooh ee ooh aah ahh.” He lit his pipe, blew a smoke ring at the ceiling. “Ting tang walla walla bing bang.”

  “Yeah, I was thinking the preacher might know something. He’s pretty sharp about stuff like this.” I stood up and walked around the desk. “By the way, did you manage to shake down that deadbeat Hawthorne? He owes us some serious bucks.”

  Without a word, Queequeg reached into his other coat pocket and pulled out a gnarly object about the size of an apple. He handed it to me, and I looked down to see two tiny eyes and a mouth that had been sewn shut. I sighed. No one was going to read a sequel to The Scarlet Letter any time soon.

  “Great,” I muttered. “Just great.” I gave the shrunken head back to my partner. “I didn’t mean for you to take me literally. A threat would have sufficed.”

  “Bum bum bubbagum bum bum.”

  “All right, never mind. Can I borrow your harpoon, at least? I left mine in New York.” Stuck in someone’s chest, I might have added, but didn’t. No sense in encouraging my partner. He was bloodthirsty enough already.

  “Wamma bamma ding dong.”

  “Thanks. I’ll bring it back.” I picked up the harpoon, slung it over my shoulder. “See you later.”

  “Shaboom shaboom.” Standing up, he walked over to a wall cabinet, opened it, and added the head to his collection. I was glad he’d remembered to shut the cabinet the last time he was here. If Mrs. Ahab had seen how he treated clients who didn’t pay on time…

  * * *

  The Whaleman’s Chapel was located a couple of blocks from the waterfront. You wouldn’t think
that a church would get much business in that neighborhood – hell, the best whorehouse in town was just up the street – but I guess a lot of sailors wanted to get right with the big guy before they shipped out again, because Father Mappel held services there every morning. I’d never had much use for religion, but the preacher and I weren’t strangers. He was one of my best sources for what was happening on the street.

  Father Mappel was winding up the daily sermon when I arrived. The door was open, so I stood in the foyer. The Whaleman’s Chapel looked pretty much like any other run-down, working-class church on the outside, so it wasn’t until you went in that you saw that it wasn’t the place where your folks dragged you every Sunday. The first time I saw Father Mappel’s pulpit, I thought it was pretty clever that he’d had one built to resemble a ship’s bow, complete with a rope ladder dangling from its side. It wasn’t until later that I learned that the pulpit really was what it looked like. After a schooner ran aground on a sandbar in the Boston harbor, the preacher had it salvaged and towed to New Bedford, then removed its bow and installed it in his church. Pretty impressive, even if it was overkill.

  As usual, the sermon was the one about Jonah and the whale, retold in a weird amalgam of Jonathan Edwards-style hellfire-and-damnation and seaman’s vernacular that bore only a faint resemblance to the Old Testament version. It was the only sermon I’d ever heard the preacher deliver. I don’t think he’d changed his schtick in years. It went down well with the toothless wonders in the pews, though, and they never seemed to mind hearing it again, so the good reverend had never bothered to write something new.

  So I leaned against the door and watched while he wrapped things up. The offering plate was passed – a handful of coins, along with the occasional gold tooth someone no longer needed – and an off-tune recital of “The Old Rugged Cross” soon followed. The preacher waved a hand in a desultory sort of benediction, then everyone got up and shuffled out the door, either off to work or the nearest tavern for their own brand of communion.

  I waited until Father Mappel climbed down the rope ladder from the pulpit, then I left my harpoon in the foyer and walked down the aisle to meet him. “Nice sermon. Ever thought of buying a new one?”

  He’d just bent over to pick up one of the spittoons placed in front of the pews. “Careful, my son,” he murmured, standing up to glare at me. “The Lord dost not tolerate blasphemy. In the words of the prophet Ezekiel…”

  “Knock it off, padre. Save it for the civilians.”

  He sighed. “Sorry, Izzy. Get carried away sometimes.” He bent over again to pick up the spittoon, then grimaced. “Oh, for the love of… can’t these guys ever hit the thing?”

  “Are you kidding? How many eye-patches can you count when you’re standing up there?”

  “You got a point.” Father Mappel took a seat in the nearest pew. “Man, when I took this gig, I thought it would be easier than fishing. Kind of wish I was still working the lobster boats.”

  “Naw, you’re good at it.” I nodded to the offering plate on the altar. “Besides, look at all the tips you get.”

  “Sure. Two bits a day and all the leftover hardtack I can eat.” He ran a hand through what little hair he still had. “So what’s on your mind. Don’t tell me you’re here for confession… guy like you, that’ll take all day.”

  “Funny. Very funny. Ever hear of someone named Ahab? Captain Ahab, of the Pequod?”

  “Maybe. Name kinda rings a bell.” He squinted a bit, rubbed his forehead. “Y’know, I’ve always got a lot on my mind. Like collecting donations for the widows and orphans fund…”

  I fished a couple of coppers from my watch pocket and dropped them in the offering plate, then came back to sit down next to him. “Uh-huh, now I remember. Yeah, I’ve heard of him. Strange dude, even for this place.”

  “I know about the peg-leg…”

  “That ain’t half of it.” He lowered his voice. “The captain never set foot in here, but I get his wife in my confessional every Sunday. Man, if I could marry a woman, that’s the one I’d want… but from what she tells me, he’s been cold-cocking her since day one. I hear about it because I’m always having to give her penance for what she does to make up for it.”

  “She’s on the loose? I had the impression that she wasn’t… sort of.”

  “You’re right. She ain’t… but that doesn’t keep her from looking. She’s a walking Tenth Commandment violation, only in reverse. I’m tellin’ ya, Izzy, beneath that prim and proper exterior is one very repressed lady. If she ever got a guy in bed, she’d probably break his back.”

  “She hired me to see if her husband was fooling around. She thinks he is… someone named Moby.”

  “Yeah, she’s told me that, too. But you know as well as I do that women don’t go aboard whaling ships… they’re just not allowed, period. And believe me, if there was a slut in town who goes by the name of Moby, I would’ve heard about her. So there’s something else going on around here, and it ain’t no girl.”

  I was beginning to think that the preacher might be right. Whatever Ahab was obsessed about, it wasn’t a dame. But my client wasn’t paying me to tell her that her suspicions were wrong; Mrs. Ahab wouldn’t be satisfied until she found out who Moby Dick was. “Maybe his crew knows something,” I said.

  “They might.” Father Mappel shrugged. “Their hangout is the Spouter Inn, so you might check there.” He paused, then dropped his voice again. “Just be careful of Starbuck, their chief mate. He and his pal, second mate Stubb, are two galoots you want to avoid.”

  “Thanks, padre. I’ll keep it in mind.” I stood up to head for the door. “Blessings?”

  “Yeah, yeah.” He made the sign of the cross. “May the Lord bless you and keep you, yada yada. Now get out of here.”

  I retrieved my harpoon from the foyer and stepped out into the street. It was almost noon; the first winos would be showing up at the Spouter Inn to get a head-start on their drinking. Some of them might be Pequod men. Time to buy a few drinks and strike up a conversation or two.

  I hadn’t walked a hundred feet from the chapel before someone took a shot at me.

  * * *

  It didn’t even come close. The lead ball chipped a cedar shingle off the corner of the tackle shop I happened to be walking past; it missed me by about six feet. A half-second later, I heard the bang of the gunshot from across the street.

  Looking around, I saw a little guy with a mean face standing at the mouth of an alley. He’d lowered the flintlock pistol he’d just fired and was pointing the other one at me. If he’d bungled the shot so badly when he’d fired with his right hand, his aim probably wouldn’t improve when he fired with his left. I wasn’t taking any chances, though, so I dove behind a row of wooden kegs on the sidewalk in front of the shop. I’d barely taken cover when his second shot shattered a window pane behind me. Damned if he didn’t get better the second time…

  All around me, townspeople were either running for their lives or finding some place to hide. This wasn’t the first time shots had been fired in the streets of New Bedford; now and then, a couple of guys would settle an argument this way, usually after they’d had a few pints. The town constable would be here soon, but not soon enough. Whoever that character was, he wanted me dead. When I peered between the barrels, I could see that he hadn’t run off, but instead was standing behind a stack of old lobster traps. Probably reloading, which meant that he was carrying only two pistols.

  I began to count to fifteen.

  There’s three reasons why I carry a harpoon instead of a pistol or a musket. First, it looks tough. Second, carrying a harpoon in New Bedford is much less conspicuous than carrying a brace of pistols. The latter means you’re looking for trouble; the former means you’re looking for a job. My line of work requires a low profile, so it behooves me to appear to be just another harpooner searching for his next billet.

  And third, guns are for losers. They can be fired only once before you have to reload, and that mean
s half-cocking the hammer, pouring a dose of block powder into the muzzle, dropping in the ball, packing it down with the ramrod, priming the flash pan with a little more powder, closing the pan, then cocking the hammer all the way. If you don’t make any mistakes, the pistol won’t blow up when you fire it and leave you picking your nose with a hook for the rest of your life. And if you’re really fast, you can do all this in about fifteen seconds.

  Takes only a second to throw a harpoon.

  When I got to fourteen, I stood up from behind the barrels, raised my harpoon, and waited. A couple of seconds later, the killer stepped out from behind the lobster traps. Since I hadn’t returned fire, he probably figured that I was unarmed, hence a sitting duck if I remained where I was, or little more than a moving target if I tried to run for it. He hadn’t even bothered to reload his second pistol, that’s how confident he was that he’d get me on his third try.

  Wrong. Wrong. Wrong.

  The instant I saw his face, I let fly with the harpoon. I’d had lots of practice with the thing, so I knew just how to chuck it. There was a look of dumb astonishment on the killer’s mug as he caught a fleeting glimpse of what was coming his way, but there was no time for him to duck before it slammed into him. The harpoon’s iron barb, which Queequeg kept nice and sharp, went straight through his chest, entering the solar plexus and coming out through the middle of his back.

  I didn’t wait for him to finish dying before I strolled across the street to the alley. He lay on his side in a red pool that had already spread far enough to enter the sidewalk gutter, and his wide eyes and gasping mouth reminded me of a brook trout that some Indian had just speared. But he was still breathing when I crouched down beside him.

  “Hello, sweetheart,” I said.

  “H-h-h—” he coughed up some blood “—how d-did…?”