Chicago Lightning

Joseph Stomel, married to Bud’s mother, Wilhilmina. But I had no intention of talking to anyone there, as yet. This was strictly a point of reference for the eventual tailing of Gollum.

That was Friday, and between the college and the Pasadena run, I’d earned my hundred bucks. I spent all day Saturday with my wife, and friends, enjoying our premature summer vacation.

Then I went back to work Saturday night, though I looked like a tourist in my blue sportshirt and chinos. The camera I had with me was no tourist’s Brownie, however, rather a divorce dick’s Speed Graphic loaded with infrared film and the world’s least conspicuous flash.

It was around ten o’clock when I turned right off State Highway 55, my rental Ford gliding across the low- slung spit over the mouth of an inlet of landlocked Newport Bay, dotted by sails, glistening with moonbeams, dancing with harbor lights. Seaside cottages clustered along the bay shore, but grander dwellings perched on islands in the lagoon-like bay, California-style Riviera-worthy stucco villas, a suitable backdrop for the fleet of yachts and other pleasure crafted moored here.

My behind was moored in a booth in the Beachfront Cafe, a chrome-heavy diner with a row of windows looking out on the dock and the peaceful, soothing view of lights twinkling and pleasure crafts bobbing on the moon-washed water. I ate a cheeseburger and fries and sipped coffee as I kept watch; I had a perfect view of the sleek cruiser, the Mary E. A few lights were on in the boat, and occasional movement could be made out, but just vague shapes. No different than any number of other boats moored here, gently rocking.

Overell had told me that he and his wife would be entertaining their daughter and her beau aboard the cruiser, having dinner, talking out their problems, perhaps even coming to some sort of understanding. What I had in mind was to follow the young lovers when they left this family powwow.

Since Bud lived at home with his mom, I figured the couple would either go to some lover’s lane to park, or maybe hit a motel. Either way, my Speed Graphic would collect the evidence needed to nail Bud for statutory rape. It’s not elegant, but it’s a living.

Around eleven I spotted them, comng down a ladder, stepping onto the swaying dock: Bud and Louise. Hazel-haired, taller than I’d imagined her, she did have an admirable top-heavy figure, which her short-sleeved pale blue sweater and darker blue pedal pushers showed off nicely. Bud wore a yellow sportshirt and brown slacks, and they held hands as they moved rather quickly away from the boat.

I was preparing to leave the cafe and follow them up to the parking lot, and Bud’s car-Mrs. Overell had given me the make and color, and I’d already spotted it, a blue Pontiac convertible, pre-war, battered but serviceable-only, they threw me a curve in addition to Louise’s.

The couple were heading up the ramp toward the cafe!

Absurdly, I wondered if they’d made me-impossible, since they hadn’t seen me yet-and I hunkered over my coffee as the lovebirds took a couple of stools at the counter, just about opposite my window booth.

At first they were laughing, at some private joke; it seemed rather forced-were they trying to attract attention?

Then they both ordered burgers and fries and sat there talking, very quietly. Even a trained eavesdropper like me couldn’t pick up a word. Perhaps they’d had a rough evening with her folks, because periodically one would seem to be comforting the other, stroking an arm, patting a shoulder, reassuringly.

What the hell was going on? Why did they need a burger, when presumably that luxury cruiser had a well- stocked larder? And if they wanted to get away from her parents and that boat, why hang around the dock? Why not climb in Bud’s convertible and seek a burger joint that wasn’t in her parents’ watery backyard?

Such thoughts bobbed like a buoy in my trained snoop’s mind as the couple sat at the counter and nibbled at their food. It was a meal any respectable young couple could down in a matter of minutes. But forty-five minutes later, the two were still sitting on those stools, sometimes picking at barely eaten, very cold-by-now food, often staring soulfully into each other’s eyes. Every other stool at that counter had seen at least three customer backsides in the same span.

I was long since used to boring stakeout duty; but it was unnerving having my subjects so near at hand, for so long a time. I finally got up and went to the men’s room, partly to test whether they’d use that opportunity to slip away (again, had they made me?), and partly because after three cups of coffee, I needed to take a piss.

When I got back, Bud and Louise were still sitting on their stools, Louise ever so barely swivelling on hers, like a kid in a soda shop. Frustrated, confused, I settled back into my booth, and glanced out the window, and the world exploded.

Actually, it was just the Mary E. that exploded, sending a fireball of flame rising from the cruiser, providing the clear night sky with thunder, hurling burning debris everywhere, making waves out of the placid waters, rocking the pier.

Rocking the cafe patrons, too, most of them anyway. Everyone except the employees leapt to their feet, screaming, shouting, running outside into a night turned orange by flame, dabbed gray by smoke.

Almost everyone-Bud and Louise were still just sitting at the counter, albeit looking out the window, numbly.

Me, I was on my leapt to but then I settled back into the booth, trying to absorb what I’d seen, what I was seeing. I knew my client was dead, and so was his wife-two people I’d spoken to at length, just the day before-as that cruiser was already a listing, smoking shambles, sinking stern first into the bay’s eighteen feet.

Finally, the couple headed outside, to join the gathering crowd at the water’s edge. I followed them. Sirens were cutting the air, getting closer, closer.

Louise was crying now, hysterical, going from one gaping spectator to another, saying, “My father was on that boat! My mother, too! Somebody save them-somebody rescue them…somebody has to rescue them!”

The boy friend remained at the side of the stricken girl as she moved through the crowd, making her presence blatantly known, Bud’s boyish face painted with dismay and shock and reflected flames.

I went to my rental car and got my Speed Graphic. I wouldn’t even need the flash-plenty of light.

Snagging shots of the dying boat, and the distraught daughter and her beau, I heard the speculation among the boating-wise onlookers, as to the explosion’s cause.

“Butane,” one would say.

“Or gasoline,” another would say.

But this ex-Marine wasn’t so easily fooled.

Butane, hell-I smelled dynamite.

Before long, the Coast Guard arrived, and fire trucks, and police from nearby Santa Ana and Orange County Sheriff’s Department personnel. The Chief of the Newport Beach Police showed, took over the investigation, questioned the tearful, apparently anguished Louise Overell and promptly released her, and her boy friend.

Pushing through the bustle, I introduced myself to the chief, whose name was Hodgkinson, and told him I was an investigator who’d been doing a job for Walter Overell.

“A job related to what happened here tonight?” the heavyset chief asked, frowning.

“Very possibly.”

“You suspect foul play?”

“Oh yeah.”

“Where are you staying, Mr. Heller?”

“The Beverly Hills Hotel.”

That impressed him-he didn’t realize it was a perk of my security work for the hotel. “Well, obviously, Mr. Heller, I’m gonna be tied up here quite a while. Can you come by the station tomorrow sometime? Tomorrow’s Sunday-make it Monday. And if I’m not there, I may be back out here.”

“Sure. Why did you let those two kids go?”

“Are you kiddin’? We’ll be dredging her parents’ scorched corpses outa the drink before too long. It’s only decent to spare that girl the sight of that.”

Only decent.

Sunday I took my wife to the beach at Santa Monica-she was only a few months pregnant and still looked great in a swim suit. Peggy was an actress and recently had a small role in a Bob Hope picture, and even out here her Deanna Durbin-ish good looks attracted attention.