An Incident At Bloodtide by George C. Chesbro

Author:George C. Chesbro
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Tags: Police Procedural, Hudson River Valley (N.Y. and N.J.), Criminologists, Mystery & Detective, Mongo (Fictitious character), Private investigators, Hard-Boiled, General, Women Sleuths, Traditional British, Fiction, Dwarfs
ISBN: 9781930253001
Publisher: Apache Beach Publications
Published: 2011-07-24T23:49:11+00:00

Chapter Nine

It must have been a pretty decent mantra, because, sure enough, I woke up in a hospital bed; I had a blinding headache and a taste in my mouth like rotting fruit, but the evidence seemed incontrovertible that I was alive. Garth was in the bed next to me, his eyes closed and his head swathed in bandages. Mary, her chalky pallor accentuated by the dark rings around her eyes, was sitting between us in a straight-backed chair. She smiled wanly when she saw I was awake, leaned over, and kissed me on the cheek.

"Hello, Mongo," she said.

"Garth?" I asked anxiously.

Mary nodded. "He has a severe concussion, and he may not be awake for another day or two, but the doctors think he's going to be all right." She paused, shook her head. "Somebody on a sailboat saw the two of you hanging on a rope off the rudder of a tanker across the river, and they radioed the ship. A couple of crewmen went over the side on a rope ladder, rigged up a sling, and hauled you aboard. The Sheriffs Patrol brought you to the hospital. You saved Garth's life, didn't you, Mongo?"

"That's our hobby, saving each other's life." I sat up, groaned when a searing pain shot down through my skull, pushed Mary's hand away when she tried to get me to lie back down. "How long have we been here?"

"In the hospital? Two or three hours. What on earth happened, Mongo?" She paused, laughed nervously. "I can't leave the two of you alone together. When I do, you either end up becalmed miles from home, or unconscious and hanging off the rudder of a ship."

"Yeah, well, we played pretty hard even as kids. Mary, Tom Blaine was murdered."

The tentative smile on her face vanished. "Murdered? You're sure?"

"I'm sure. He was murdered by the captain and crew of that particular tanker. They tried to do the same thing to us."

"But they helped rescue you."

"They didn't have any choice. We'd been spotted by another boat, and the captain of that boat probably radioed the tanker on channel eight, which all the barges and tankers monitor for emergency communications. Any other big ship in the area would have heard the call, and there was no telling who else the captain of the sailboat might have contacted. There were witnesses, and so they had to act. But the fact remains that they were in on the attempt to kill us. That's the ship Tom was trying to take samples from when he was killed. Garth and I sailed over to see if we could make a little eyeball-to-eyeball contact with the captain. While we were drifting around over there, somebody on board — probably the captain — made a radio call to somebody. A few minutes later a guy driving a cigarette boat and wearing a ski mask tried to mash us into the hull of the tanker. Then — "

I stopped speaking when I heard somebody else in the room clear his throat.

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