“You know twine?” asked Quin with more than a note of surprise.
“I fished my way through school. I had to mend to receive a full share.”
“No shit. Thanks.”
Thinking that I might like to impress Lincoln with my newfound knowledge of meteors, I engaged Eddie further while his father cut and fixed the mistake he probably had searched for and not been able to find. “I know nothing about the night sky. What would be the easiest star for me to identify?” I asked.
“That would be Sirius. It’s found in Canis Major, or Big Dog. That’s why we astronomers refer to it as the Dog Star.”
Quin snickered nastily at Eddie’s inclusion of himself in the group “astronomers.” “In ancient Greek times,” Eddie continued resolutely, “the dawn rising of Sirius marked the hottest part of the summer. You’ve probably heard the expression
‘dog days of summer.’ ”
“Yes, I have.” This was perfect material for conversation with Lincoln. “How do I find this Dog Star?”
“Follow Orion’s belt twenty degrees southeast to the brightest star in the sky. One fist held at arm’s length is roughly ten degrees of sky. You can find Orion, can’t you?”
Faster than I could confess my ignorance of astronomy, Quin displayed his astronomical impatience with his son’s avocation. “Okay, Galileo. Back to work on this net. Miss Bunker has more important things to think about than the s l i p k n o t
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stars.” Though I begged to differ, I thanked Eddie for the primer and promised to get a real lesson from him one clear night here on the dock with his telescope and inferior tripod.
As I followed Quin up the ladder to the bridge, I couldn’t help but think what an odd young man his son was. With the exception of his knowledge of astronomy, Eddie seemed quite unusual. Shouldn’t he be obsessing about girls and cars at seventeen? Too much marijuana, I assumed. And the anger he had nearly lost control of was downright scary, I thought.
I couldn’t help but wonder about the six-hundred-dollar tripod. Eddie, I determined, was weird to the point of being frightening. Quin, on the other hand, was just rude.
Entering Fearless’s wheelhouse, I was taken aback by the extent of damage to every single piece of electronic equipment. Not only were the displays smashed, cords were severed and housings were crushed, exposing innards. “Wow.
What a mess,” I said as I pulled a pad and pen from my bag.
“Yup. All totaled. Can’t even get parts for most of this stuff anymore. Guess I’ll need new equipment,” Quin said.
As I picked through the rubble, listing manufacturers and models of all the broken machines, what struck me most was Quin’s nonchalance about the complete malicious destruction of his property. I had participated in many criminal investigations of property damage in my old line of work. In cases involving this degree of sabotage, recipients of such brutal treatment usually described feelings of nausea, disbelief, and personal violation. Many were moved to tears. Quin was un-emotional. In fact, his biggest concern was not who had done this and why but, rather, how soon he would get a check to re-
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place what had been destroyed. The first and only call he had made was to the insurance company.
As I did my work, Quin made the most annoying sounds with his tongue against the roof of his mouth. When he had managed to drive me almost insane, I said, “The insurance company requires that you report this to the proper authorities.”
“Why? I wouldn’t press charges. Christ! I should thank whoever did this.”
“The insurance company will not consider your claim without an accompanying police report.”
“Yeah, yeah, yeah . . . I’ll get someone down here pronto.
I wonder if Clyde Leeman has any official forms.” He snickered at his joke, which I found quite cruel. As I continued writing and snapping pictures, Quin chewed and spat fingernails and played with the zipper of his coveralls and picked a sore on his pockmarked cheek until it bled. By the time I’d finished and climbed back onto the dock, I was certain of two things: Alan Quinby was the most annoying man I had ever met, and he had destroyed his own electronics. But Quin’s lack of integrity was not really my problem. My job was to survey and report the damage. I would not be asked to offer any opinions.
I said, “See you,” to Eddie, who never looked up. As I walked by the telescope and tripod, I hesitated and backed up to a position from which I could look through it. I stood on my toes to line up my right eye. In the center of the circular view was a ceramic red tugboat dangling from the bottom of a window shade.
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fairly certain that nobody had seen me look through the telescope, I left it in the hands of the inferior tripod as I walked the pier at a consciously metered pace. If anyone were watching me now, they would see that I was neither nervous nor in a hurry to escape their view. I stopped before entering the shadow cast by the plant, faced the sun and stretched my arms wide, and threw my head back. Embracing the day and enjoying the warmth on my neck, I took a deep breath of the salt air, with all of its aromatics infused by the processing of fish and salting of bait. If the telescope had been employed even part-time to track my comings and goings, I now had the upper hand. Sure, I was creeped out that someone may have been spying on me. But I had nothing to gain by being apprehensive.
I couldn’t dillydally long. I had a lot to accomplish today.
Under the auspices of my “real” job, I had to survey two fishing vessels. The longtime owner of these sister ships had applied for hull insurance for the first time, a red flag to the insurance company.
Brokers and underwriters were loosening ties and rolling
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up sleeves in hot-flash-like response to new policies, inflated hull values, and increased claims by boats engaged in the cod fishery. The marine insurance industry had learned from hard-won experience the impact of poorly executed government regulations. Stringent legislation tended to become severe to the point of suffocating the participants whom the regulations were intended to protect. I had long ago observed that desperate people do desperate things. It’s a simple matter of survival. Fishermen who had been diligent about paying soaring premiums and had never filed even the smallest claim were cashing out with unexplainable total losses of boats in waters too deep for recovery or investigation. This tendency to collect from the insurance company what had been paid in over decades had become, in some areas, a default retirement plan. The overwhelming sense of entitlement had trickled down to crew members. A back injury was the deck worker’s 401(k). In many cases, I was becoming aware, it was not possible to distinguish legitimate claims from bogus ones. As a result, my workload was far heavier than what someone in my position would have experienced a few years ago.
Absolutely any proposed change to a policy or vessel was scrutinized. My task was to see that Green Haven, Maine, did not become what Gloucester, Massachusetts, was in the 1980s. An astonishing number of Gloucester men had decided to not go down with their ships or without a fight.
They had tried to take the marine insurance industry with them.
In all honesty, the real job was not a lot of fun. Even after only a few days on the job, I had figured out that marine in-s l i p k n o t
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surance surveying and investigating was rarely exciting or stimulating, which, I was easily able to convince myself, was all the more reason to dabble in things I was not paid to do—
like solving the murder of Nick Dow. Not that boredom alone was enough to make me do the things I was doing. But I did believe in our system of justice and was willing to work to see that Dow’s murderer didn’t skate. Handy, I thought, that in this case my extracurricular activity did have strings attached to my real employment. The Sea Hunter was a major connection, and I vowed to get aboard the boat to snoop before nightfall.
As mundane
as the surveying gig could be, it was my only source of income. So, off I went in search of the sister ships Desperado and Witchy Woman, while trying to recall what other song titles fleshed out the Eagles’ greatest-hits album that I had listened to over and over as a teenager. An image of Manny Gomez (the first of a string of Cuban boyfriends) playing the air guitar and lip-synching “Lyin’ Eyes” sprang to mind. I put the past back in the depths of my personal archive when I spotted the two vessels rafted together along the end of a very rickety pier.
Picking my way along the dock, being careful to step over the many broken planks and spaces where planks were missing, I realized that I had found the low-rent district for half a dozen unfortunate fishing boats. The first two had weathered remains of Marshal stickers plastered to their windows.
“Stickered” boats were legally tied up for unpaid bills or neglected mortgages, and these particular vessels appeared to have been abandoned some time ago. Sea grasses and kelps
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stretched in the current from just below waterlines that were no longer visible under scales of rust. Net drums and cable spools had been stripped bare. Even the hydraulic hoses and fittings had been scavenged. Anything of any value to anyone was long gone, similar to what happened to cars that broke down in the neighborhood where I had grown up. I was strangely at home among the derelicts.
The skeleton of a fish that had been on the deck of one of the abandoned boats so long it no longer drew flies was further testimony to the number of moons that had waxed and waned since the host vessel had weighed anchor. Dock lines were mostly odds and ends of different sizes tied together with awkward knots. Chaffed and frayed, spring lines appeared to have outlived their ability to stand up to their names.
A rat the size of my toaster lumbered the length of a rusted deck and disappeared into a jagged black hole in a thoroughly disintegrating bulkhead. The only other sign of life on this sad pier stirred aboard my destination— Desperado.
Four young men—Webster’s definition of a motley crew—
stood with their hands in the pockets of jeans, the waistbands of which rested below their pelvic bones. With their boxer shorts exposed and baseball caps askew, they made me think I had happened upon Green Haven’s gangsta rappers. Three green contractor bags, fishermen’s suitcases, rested on the deck along with a lone canvas duffel that I assumed held the belongings of the boat’s captain. “Hello,” I called as I reached a stretch of dock that looked as though it might support all 135 pounds of me. The men looked up with what appeared to be disappointment. They were waiting for some-s l i p k n o t
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one, but not me. Getting no response to my greeting, I thought I would try again. “Who’s the Eagles fan?”
The men looked at one another and exchanged shrugs.
One man finally emerged as their brave leader when he flicked a cigarette butt into the water over the stern. “We like the Patriots. Are you lost, ma’am?”
Patriots? Ma’am? These men were younger than I had originally perceived. No need explaining the Eagles connection, I realized. That would only result in my feeling quite ancient. “No. I’m not lost. I’m here to survey these two boats for appraisals. I’m looking for the owner, Mr. Marten.”
“Hey, join the crowd. He was supposed to be here to settle up with us three hours ago.”
I interpreted this opening statement as an invitation to climb aboard, and I did. Noting the fully packed garbage bags, I said, “Looks like someone’s jumping ship.”
“Yes, ma’am. We’re all going home as soon as we get paid.
This boat is a death trap.” The other three guys nodded in agreement. “I hope we made enough to cover bus tickets. I tried to convince Mr. Marten to invest in a new net for us, but no way. We spent three days trying to repair that rag with nothing to work with.” He pointed to the net haphazardly wrapped on the drum and draping over the stern. I found it interesting that he was offering an apology for quitting. “If we had some rockhoppers, we could have fished the hard bottom and caught something more valuable than these damn starfish.” The man I now presumed was Desperado’s hired captain nudged a dried brittle star with the toe of his sneaker.
Brittle stars appeared in some abundance in the nets and cor-
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ners of decks of boats engaged in the cod fishery. I recalled their presence aboard Fearless.
Through continued conversation with the group’s spokes-man, whom I was told was indeed the captain, I learned that the young men were from a small fishing village down east.
They had responded to an ad in last month’s National Fisherman and had been hired with one short phone call. They had spent the last three weeks working like dogs, with dreams of record catches and promises of paychecks. They had hoped to return home at the season’s end with bulging bank accounts and bigger reputations. So far they had struggled not only to get the boat and themselves safely offshore and back in, but also to sell enough fish to cover the running expense—primarily fuel and groceries.
“My father warned me about accepting the boat sight unseen, but I just couldn’t bear the thought of working on the deck of his boat the rest of my life,” the captain confessed.
“Now I’ve dragged my friends away from paying jobs for this disaster.” His sincerity was touching. And the mention of his father’s warning confirmed this group’s age for me. Late teens and early twenties, I thought.
“Hey, man, we came of our own free will. We’re all in this together,” said one of the crew members. “Let’s just hitch-hike home. Marten isn’t coming. He knows we’ll take the money and run. Where else will he find four fools who’ll work for nothing?”
Following some quiet discussion during which all four weighed in, they decided to wait a while longer. After all, they reasoned, Mr. Marten was bound to arrive eventually, s l i p k n o t
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since he was expecting the insurance lady. I thought it was hopeless, but I did not want to say anything that might add to their downtrodden spirits. I had witnessed similar scenes on many occasions. In Florida towns where commercial fishing was on the skids—Fort Pierce, St. Augustine, Mayport—
boats owned by investors who were not fishermen themselves were the first to circle the drain. Mr. Marten, I had learned from the paperwork, was an attorney who had invested in the fishing industry in the early 1970s, when there appeared to be no end to the resource. He had extracted every possible penny from his investment and had no history or intention of putting anything back in—until now, of course. He claimed to be applying for a loan for “improvements,” using the boats as collateral. The bank required a survey and full insurance.
Liquidation? Maybe. Red flag? Certainly.
“What about Witchy Woman?” I asked. “Is anyone aboard her?”
“No. They quit last week. The captain’s wife came and drove them all back home to Port Clyde. They said we were stupid to stay, and I guess they were right. How can he not pay us anything?”
He was not expecting an answer, I knew. So I excused myself to begin my job while they waited for money I knew they would never receive.
“You’re going inside?”
“Yes. I’ll start in the engine room bilge and work my way up to the top of the rigging. Good luck,” I said as I started toward the fo’c’sle door.
“You’re the one who needs the luck, from the engine room
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bilge right up the rigging,” the captain said tentatively. “We’re not responsible for the mess aboard here. We did our best, but she’s a wreck. Maybe you should wait for Mr. Marten.” The men shuffled their feet uneasily.
“I’ll leave the waiting to you. Don’t worry about me. I’ve seen it all.”
As I groped for a light switch on a tacky bulkhead, I wished I had thought to bring a pair of rubber gloves. When
I found and flipped the switch, I knew I had not quite seen it all but was about to further my education. Even the lightbulbs were greasy. I made my way down a slippery set of steel stairs to a dimly lit engine compartment. A thick, mealy coat of soot from an old exhaust leak frosted every surface like black powdered sugar. The diamond-plate steel decking was as slick as wet ice from what appeared to be years of grease, oil, and diesel fuel. Apparent total neglect of what I knew to be the heart of the boat said a lot about the vessel’s overall health. My first impression was that Desperado would be put on the critical list—not yet terminal but in a bad way.
Something stank. Perhaps the holding tank for the head had been leaking, I thought. I wished for boots and coveralls along with the rubber gloves I did not have. I crept slowly to the forwardmost space ahead of the engine, shone my flashlight down, and found a steel plate small enough to remove in order to inspect the bilge. The plate had an oval hole just big enough to use as a handle. Lifting and sliding the plate aside, I discovered the source of the stench. I had smelled some bad bilges in my day, but this one reeked.
Casting the beam from the flashlight down sent the re-s l i p k n o t
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mains of my breakfast in the opposite direction. I swallowed hard against the bile that rose in my throat as I bolted back up the stairs and out onto the deck the men had since vacated.
Leaning over the port rail, I hurled long, hard, and loud until dry heaves racked my weakening frame. Wiping tears from my eyes with a sleeve black from soot, I wondered what kind of human beings would defecate in the bilge with the entire North Atlantic Ocean surrounding them. I quickly recalled my intention to attend diesel mechanic school at the age of nineteen, and the advice of my mentor to try something else unless I wanted to spend my life in shitty bilges. Until now I hadn’t thought he meant it literally.
No, I thought, I had not seen it all. I had investigated through grime and squalor, but nothing like the filth, human waste, decay, and maggots here. My ribs ached and my throat burned by the time I had checked off the last item on the survey list for the Witchy Woman. The day had me questioning my new career. What had I done? Never prone to depression, I had always fought the urge to wallow in self-pity. I reminded myself that I had important work to do. Sadly, I wasn’t bothered by the possibility of Mr. Marten scamming the insurance company. Nor was I overly concerned about him ripping off his own employees. Sure, these were social injustices of the kind that would normally make me crazy. But I had more important things on my mind. There was a killer at large in Green Haven, and if I didn’t hustle back to Turners’ Fish Plant, I might miss an opportunity to gain another lead.
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