Aloha, Lugosi! The Gretch Bayonne Action Adventure Series Book #4 Read online

  As we pushed down Hawaii Alley, Crumby and I could only speculate on the answers.

  “The Chicago boys were probably just on a fishing trip,” the captain said. “They run into the Nazis, whom they hate, and shoot them in the head.”

  “There’s got to be more to it than just that,” I replied.

  “If I were a betting man,” the captain said, “my money would be on the Nazis. They probably caught up with them shortly and sank their ship. Like they did the Japanese vessel.”

  It suddenly dawned on me that the U-boats we’d been seeing might not be German after all. The Japanese had submarines too. And they were in the Pacific. German U-boats had only been in the Atlantic. There was no way in hell they could get them to this part of the world.

  “What if the Nazis somehow got a hold of Japanese subs?” I asked. “That would explain a lot of things.”

  “How the hell would they do that?” Crumby asked.

  “I don’t know,” I replied. “They could have hijacked them. But either way, it would make sense then for the Japanese to be looking for them. And it would explain why that Japanese ship was torpedoed right in front of our eyes.”

  “They said two of their boats had gone missing,” Crumby replied. “Maybe they were talking about submarines.”

  It was way more than I wanted to think about, but there it was, staring us in the face. Nazis, Japanese war ships and the Chicago mob. It was a powder keg of a combination. People were bound to get killed. And we could be next.

  We sailed past several big rocks over the next few hours, but none of them had any life on them. The captain had been awake for forty-eight hours, so I took the wheel so he could go down to his room and get some shut eye. Shortly after I, too, became sleepy and left the duties up to Barber and Sharkey.

  “Keep going through the night,” I ordered. “And if we hit something, let me know right away.”

  “If we hit something,” Barber replied, “you will damned well know it!”

  On my way up the great mast to the crow’s nest, I thought I saw something just below the surface of the water near us. I couldn’t be certain, but it was either a whale or a damned U-boat.

  As darkness fell around us, the sky lit up like my Aunt Sallie’s Christmas tree. She used so many candles that one year, the damned thing caught on fire. The Hoboken Fire Department managed to put it out before it completely destroyed the house. My uncle just rolled his eyes as the entire neighborhood watched laughing.

  “Whatever makes her happy,” my uncle had said.

  Hiwanda was already asleep so I cuddled up next to her and pulled the blanket up over my head. For the first time in ages, I had strange, vivid dreams again.

  I was sitting in my room at the Hoboken School for Boys, trying to finish a short story about an elderly basket weaver whom I’d met in the city. She made these incredible baskets of all shapes and sizes and sold them on the streets. As if that weren’t amazing enough, the lady had been blind from birth.

  No one could figure out how she did it. I was having great difficulty trying to explain how such a thing could happen. I simply couldn’t finish the story, so I just sat there, waiting for the words to come to me. I hadn’t thought about that story for years.

  A voice came from outside my window that I didn’t recognize. “You should just stop,” he said.

  “I did,” I answered. “In fact, I can’t go on with this any longer. It is very frustrating.”

  “You don’t have to explain,” the voice said.

  “But I want to,” I answered. “I want to understand! How can I finish the story if I don’t?”

  The voice did not respond so I opened the window. “Hello?” I asked. “Are you still there?”

  There was no answer. I turned back to the typewriter and finished writing the story.

  Many people wonder how the blind lady can complete such beautiful baskets without the aid of sight. You could call it a miracle. She weaves all the colors of the rainbow together until each one is a masterpiece, no two alike. She doesn’t need to see. She just feels it. That is how she does it!

  The voice outside my window suddenly came back. “You are done now,” the voice said. “Go back home.”

  “I may have finished the story,” I replied, “but I haven’t found Lugosi. That story is not done.”

  I don’t know who the hell I was talking to in my dream, but whoever it was, they weren’t encouraging me to carry on my search. And that made me that much more motivated to do so. I decided right then and there that if need be I would spend the rest of my life looking for Lugosi. And damned the voices!

  Chapter Forty-Five

  Crumby had a theory that he shared with me about why the Chicago mob would be on the islands. His guess was as good as mine, so I shut my mouth and listened.

  “You remember that island with all the gunpowder?” he asked.

  “Would that be the one we were tied up on and then blew the hell up?” I asked.

  “Yes,” he answered. “Now don’t be a smart-ass!”

  “You think Grass Man was getting ready to make a deal for the goods with the mob?” I asked.

  “It makes sense,” he replied. “They would probably be up for a stash like that, don’t you think?”

  “I don’t think so,” I said. “They use Tommy guns at best. They wouldn’t need that damned much gunpowder, but that’s about all Grass Man had. In a large quantity, mind you.”

  “Unless they wanted to blow something up,” Crumby replied. “Like submarines.”

  Just one of those barrels would have lit up a ship the size we were on like nobody’s business. And that bastard was sitting on at least one hundred.

  “And even small caliber weapons require gunpowder,” Crumby continued. “Grass Man probably stole them from the Chinese. And got as far as Hawaii Alley to meet up with a buyer.”

  It was as good a theory as any. The gangsters went to retrieve the gunpowder only to discover we had lit it up and blew the top off the whole damned island. If that were the case, they probably had no idea what had actually happened. They may have figured they couldn’t find him. After all, the island looked like the damned volcano had consumed it overnight.

  “In the meantime,” Crumby hypothesized, “they run into the Nazis, and as you say, all hell breaks loose.”

  “It makes sense,” I replied. “But if that is the case, who killed the Nazis on Coast Guard Island?”

  “The gangsters!” Crumby yelled. “Don’t you see?”

  “I guess I don’t,” I answered.

  “You are from America!” Crumby said. “You should know more about Chicago gangsters than I do! But even I know they are very rough characters! Somehow they got the edge over those three men we found buried and executed them!”

  Crumby was right. Al Capone had led a large group of very ruthless people. One of them could take out a small army, no problem. They were probably pissed off that they’d come so far only to discover their goods weren’t there. The Nazis no doubt were in the wrong place at the wrong time. And apparently at least one of the mob was a fan of mine. A copy of my book had been buried with one of the Nazis.

  Speck interrupted us to report that yet another island was coming up that we should check out. He said this one had a boat moored near it and it was flying an American flag.

  “That’s the best news I’ve heard in a long time,” I said.

  I climbed the mast to get a better look only to discover the boat Speck was referring to was not flying an American flag after all. It was a Canadian flag.

  “It’s a giant maple leaf!” I yelled. “Not red, white and blue!”

  “I must have been mistaken then,” Speck said.

  “It’s okay, Speck,” I replied. “Don’t worry about it. At least they aren’t flying a damn Nazi flag.”

  “What do those look like?” he asked.

  “Never mind,” I answered.

  I went back down to the pilot room to consult with Crumby about the up
coming island. Our conversation quickly returned to our concern about the damned Nazi U-boats and what the hell they were doing here to begin with.

  “You didn’t read my book on the Graf,” I told the captain.

  “No,” he replied. “But you have been wanting to tell me about it since day one. So go ahead.”

  “I took the Graf from New York to California,” I explained. “There were two Nazis aboard. In the end, the airship was blown to pieces. And I still think they had something to do with it.”

  “I know,” Crumby answered. “I said I didn’t read your book, but I sure as hell heard about the Graf disaster. You’d have to be living under a rock not to have.”

  “They got away with it,” I said. “We came very close to figuring out exactly who was responsible, but in the end, we could never really prove it.”

  “I don’t know about all of that,” the captain replied. “But I do know a lot of strange things are going on here. I thought they were following us for the treasure, like my cousin Alex was. But now I am not so certain.”

  “They’re still following us,” I said. “You know that, don’t you?”

  Crumby took one hand off the wheel and pointed to his left. I went outside the pilot room and onto the deck, looking out into the ocean below us. I couldn’t see anything, but I am pretty sure the captain had. Even if he had imagined it, the threat seemed real. My fear of monsters in the ocean didn’t stop with Shark Man or giant squids. They only began there but ended with the most fearful creatures of all. Human beings.

  Chapter Forty-Six

  The ship that was moored next to the island was a nice one. Similar in size and style to the Professor’s boat, it had to have cost a small fortune.

  We took Speck with us this time, and I managed to convince Hiwanda to wait behind. As usual, we each carried Winchesters and Speck even had a small bag filled with sticks of dynamite that I didn’t even know were on the Eclipse.

  “Why are you bringing those?” I asked.

  “In case you want to blow something up,” Speck answered.

  Shortly after starting up the hill I spotted a familiar sight. It was a man behind a motion picture camera. For some reason, they were making a movie here, and I couldn’t have been happier.

  We stopped and watched them for a bit. There were four men. Two had cameras, another held a long pole that must have had a microphone on the end of it. The fourth man was standing next to a large tree.

  “What the hell are they doing?” Crumby asked.

  “They’re filming!” I replied. “Just be quiet! We don’t want to interrupt their shoot!”

  The men soon spotted us but kept going about their business. After about ten minutes, they came walking towards.

  “They don’t seem to be carrying any weapons,” Speck said, peering through his ever-present binoculars.

  “They obviously haven’t run into some of the characters that we have,” I replied. “Just smile and wave to them.”

  “What brings you men here?” one of them asked as they approached us cautiously.”

  “We are looking for my friend,” I explained.

  The man introduced himself as Gilbert Radenor, a Canadian documentary filmmaker. He introduced his crew, and explained that they were going up Hawaii Alley to try to capture the feel of the Pacific islands.

  They hadn’t stopped at many of the islands, he said, for fear of being robbed. And no, they hadn’t seen Lugosi and his wife.

  Out of the blue, Crumby asked if they’d seen any submarines.

  “Absolutely,” Radenor replied. “Several times. The Japanese subs.”

  “They aren’t German then?” I asked.

  “German?” he shot back. “No, they are Japanese made. We’ve seen them almost every day. I think they are trying to scare us off.”

  “That was our feeling too,” I said.

  “Have you encountered any other strange things?” Crumby asked.

  “Outside of the submarines, just their laughable ploys at trying to trick us,” Radenor replied.

  “Like what, for example?” I asked.

  “The phony ghost ship,” he laughed. “They project this image of a small vessel up from their sub using mirrors and lights. The effect is quite good actually, but being a filmmaker, it didn’t fool me.”

  “The Lenora?” Crumby asked.

  “I guess so,” he replied. “It’s a simple trick, but they have more elaborate ones as well.”

  “Go on,” I said.

  “They’ve hired actual actors to play ghosts,” he continued.

  “We’ve seen some ghosts,” Speck commented.

  “The two men dressed up like old time pirates?” Radenor asked.

  “Yes,” I replied. “We spoke to them.”

  “And the little girl in the blue dress on the hill?” he asked.

  “Now wait a minute,” Crumby said. “You are saying those were actors?”

  “Absolutely,” the filmmaker replied.

  “But she made our dinghy come back,” Crumby said. “With a red rope that shot through the sky.”

  “Nothing more than a flashlight,” Radenor explained. “With a red cell on the lens.”

  “Son of a bitch!” I yelled. “I knew it!”

  “Then how did they get our boat to stop, turn around, and come back to the beach?” Crumby asked. “Explain that!”

  “They probably employed a hook on their submarine to grab the dinghy and take it back to the island,” Radenor said.

  “What do you suppose their motive is?” I asked.

  “I’m not sure,” Radenor replied. “To keep the tourists away, I suppose. They probably want to keep the islands for themselves. As a sort of midway hold in the Pacific.”

  “So you didn’t see Pig Man or Grass Man?” Speck asked.

  “No,” Radenor replied. “Who are they?”

  “Or Scarecrow Man?” Crumby added.

  “Of course he didn’t see them” I chimed in. “They’re all dead!”

  The filmmaker seemed a bit leery of us to begin with, but when I mentioned that people were dead, he and his crew quickly began loading their equipment into their dinghy.

  “In all fairness,” Speck said, “we only killed two of them. And that was strictly in self-defense!”

  “I wish you gentlemen the best of luck in finding your friend,” Radenor said nervously. “But we have to head back to Canada now. We have a deadline to meet.”

  “So you’re not going all the way to the end?” Crumby asked.

  “Would love to,” he replied. “But we have seen plenty. Besides, we’re about out of reels.”

  “Will your documentary be shown in Hollywood?” I asked.

  “With any luck it will premier there,” he said as they shoved off in their dinghy.

  “I know people in Hollywood!” I shouted. “I could probably help you with your film!”

  Radenor didn’t bother to reply. He just smiled and waved as they approached their nice, expensive motorboat.

  The filmmaker had explained what we had thought were ghosts and an eerie ship that had passed through us in the dead of night were fakes. They didn’t bother him a bit. In fact, he laughed at them. But without even trying, we had just scared the hell out of him.

  Chapter Forty-Seven

  Hiwanda was making incredible music with a harmonica when we got back to the Eclipse. She was totally submersed in playing. It was crude and wonderful at the same time. It sounded kind of blues and jazz, only sped up by ten times.

  “Where did she get that thing?” I asked Barber.

  “She found it down in the cabin,” he replied. “Alex must have left it there.”

  Hiwanda was sitting on the deck, leaning her back against the pilot room. She glanced up long enough to see we were back, smiled and waved, then went back to composing her masterpiece.

  We rose the masts and drew the anchors up, anxious to get on to the next island. The Canadians’ vessel had high tailed it back down the alley in the
opposite direction and were now nearly out of sight.

  “I would have liked to have asked them a few more questions,” I said to the captain as he steered us away from the island.

  “Like what?” he asked.

  “I wonder why he was so sure that the girl on the hill and the other men that we figured were ghosts were actors,” I replied. “Don’t you wonder that?”

  “It doesn’t really matter now, does it?” the captain asked. “He seemed like a pretty smart bloke. I imagine he has good reason to believe that.”

  “If he got them on film,” I replied, “chances are they could be identified.”

  “When you get back to Hollywood,” Crumby said, “look him up!”

  Hiwanda’s music accompanied us as we pushed on. It was intense, but soothing at the same time.

  “Speaking of Hollywood,” the captain said, “what are you planning to do with her when it’s time for you to go back?”

  It wasn’t the first time that the question had entered my mind. Life for Hiwanda would be vastly different from what she was used to on her little island in the Pacific. It could go either way. She would love it or hate it. But it was a chance I was going to have to take.

  “I’ll be taking her with me,” I answered.

  “She has never worn shoes, Bay,” the captain replied.

  Barber and Sharkey interrupted us in the nick of time. I didn’t feel like arguing with Crumby about women’s footwear.

  “Sharkey and I have been thinking,” Barber announced. I knew this couldn’t be good, so I braced myself and forced a smile.

  “What is it?” I asked.

  “When we get to the end of the alley,” he explained, “and it is time to go back, could we go whale hunting then?”

  “That is up to Bay,” the captain answered. “It is his charter both ways. There and back. That is what he paid us for.”

  I knew they weren’t going to catch a whale. The little harpoon they had was too small. Hell, the damned boat was too small. There was no way they could sack a whale unless one jumped up onto the deck and laid down. But every man has to have a dream. They have to have something to keep hoping for. At this point in our quest, I needed to give them that hope.