Lostport

Chapter 12

Ben had coffee with Ward Clancy Sunday morning. Couldn’t really get out of it. Ward spotted him outside putting trash in a can whose lid had gone missing and all but insisted he come in for a cup. Ben agreed and walked into a kitchen the same size and layout as his own but with far newer appliances, cabinetry and flooring. And coffee that smelled better than his.

Ward had worked for the canal his entire life—more precisely, for the New York Transportation Authority, which oversaw all canal operations—the last eighteen years as chief maintenance engineer.  Long retired, he now worked part-time giving tours of the Eastport Cave. “It’s the biggest tourist draw in town,” he said, “which either tells you something about the cave or the town, I’m not sure which.”

His wife had died two years before of uterine cancer and his kids were seeking their fortunes elsewhere. “My son moved to Syracuse—he’s a lawyer, you know—and my daughter, she’s all the way out in San Jose. Works as a trainer for one of the big software companies. But that’s how it is in Lostport,” he sighed. “All the young folks leave.”

“Lostport?”

“Sorry, I forgot you’re new in town. That’s what they started calling it when things went bad. Can’t say I blame them, with all the plants closing and everything. There really isn’t much work here for kids anymore. Back in the day, you had your pick of places to work. The canal itself—a hundred barges a day passed through here at its peak. Damn near put the railroad out of business. Plus the fur trade, the pulp and lumber mills, orchards, furniture makers. Same with all the towns that sprang up all along here: Rockport, Lockport, Brockport, Bridgeport, Gasport—well, you get my drift. They had to keep digging the canal deeper to accommodate the traffic, from four feet down to twelve, and widen it wherever they could. Hell, it’s forty feet across here in Eastport. But once the big highways were built, the interstates, the barge traffic slowed, then trickled, then disappeared. All you get now are pleasure craft and canal cruises. Yeah, most of the jobs here are gone or not worth getting. Unless of course you catch on with the government. Then you’re set for life, what with their pensions and benefits and all. Stuff most of us can only dream of.”

Ward poured them more coffee and said, “Which brings us to you. What do you see in Eastport that no one else does? What makes a man pick this town out of all others? What makes him look at Dorothy Hansen’s house and say, I’m going to move in there?”

Ben knew the conversation would eventually turn this way. What he was doing in Eastport, what work did he do. Not feeling up to faking it, he remembered a conversation he’d heard the night before in the Big Ditch, about black helicopters circling the lake and sinister frogmen in wetsuits scurrying down ropes to stamp out freedom and the American way. Remembered what Andy Summers had said about the biggest source of new jobs in the area.

He leaned forward and said, “Ward, I’m not at liberty to discuss that right now.”

Ward gave him a wink and a thumbs up and said, “I kind of figured that might be it. You’ve got the look about you, that’s for sure.”

“What look is that?” Ben asked.

“The ‘Don’t ask, don’t tell’ kind.”

“You got that right,” Ben said.

“I have a nephew who’d love to apply.”

“To what?”

“Gotcha.”

*          *          *

Ben called Andy Summers again when he got back home, now with a list of things to ask him: whether he had found out anything about Tom Jackson, why the county had refused him a gun permit and why Des McNaughton had come on to him like a heavy in a Bogart film. And again, he was told the cell was out of service. He looked up the number for the U.S. Marshals office in Buffalo and called there. When he asked for Summers, he was put on hold, and then a man came on the line and said, “This is Marshal Don Davis speaking. How can I be of help?”