Black Tide

by Brendan DuBois

  "It looked like it worked," I said.

  "I'm still here," he said, grinning. I made a show of flipping through my notes. I looked over at Justin and saw his hand beginning a tap-tap dance with a pencil, and I knew it was time to go. Sources and people you interview always tell you a lot, even if they don't say a single word. I could always come back or call later. I told him I was finished. He nodded and said, "I want to show you one more thing before you head out."

  We went through the office again and Cassie looked up at me with a wide smile and said, "I do hope you get up here again, Mr. Cole. And I'll make sure to check on your magazine the next time I'm at a newsstand."

  I gave her my "polite-but-I'm-interested-against-my-common-sense" smile and said, "Buy a subscription if you can. Believe me, the magazine could use it."

  I was still hearing her laughter as Justin brought me into the gift shop. The two older ladies were in there, going through a rack of postcards, and there were a couple of kids with their noses pressed up against a display case. He stopped before a poster stand, one of those metal contraptions with cardboard backing that show posters that are for sale.

  Justin said, "The director and trustees want to think the theft is behind us, and that we have to look forward to the future, but I know better. The public knows better." He started flipping through the poster display, the metal rods squeaking as he went past posters that showed a Monet, a Picasso and a photograph of the antique furniture from the second floor gallery.

  "Here," he said, stopping for a moment. "Look at these. These are prints of those paintings, done to exact size."

  Even as posters, their colors were vibrant, and if I had been standing some distance away, they might have looked real. Justin's voice became dreamy again as he described each print, and his hands practically caressed the slick paper. The first showed a fisherman alone in a dory, out on a wide ocean, looking over his shoulder at a schooner on the horizon. He shared his dory with fish and gear. The sky was dark and menacing, with a cloudbank of sorts heading toward the distant schooner.

  “Fog Warning," Justin said. "Painted in 1885. You know, you can't really see the fisherman's face, but you can sense the danger, the tension. The fisherman is alone out on the ocean, and fog is heading to his schooner. He only has minutes to reach the schooner before it disappears. There's a race on, a race for life. Events like this happened every day out on the Grand Banks."

  "So I've heard," I said. "Many of those fishermen didn't even know how to swim, and in those waters it wouldn't have taken long to die of drowning or from the cold."

  ''A lonely death," Justin said. Another print came into view. Two men stood on the deck of a ship wearing foul-weather gear. In their hands they held navigation instruments, sextants or octants, I wasn't too sure. In the gray sky, heavy storm clouds were breaking up and the sun's rays were just bursting through.

  "This was painted in 1886," Justin explained. "Eight Bells. It's been called one of the finest portrayals of men on the sea ever made. See the story here, Lewis? Two men 'shooting the sun,' trying to determine the exact position of their ship. That's the apparent story. But look beyond that, Lewis. Look at the weather, their hunched shoulders, the shape of the clouds. They must have survived a terrible time of it, out on the open sea during a terrible storm, and now, only just now, do they have a chance to breathe and take stock, and the first thing they do, they try to find out where they are."

  "Sounds like someone's life philosophy," I said, and Justin rewarded me with another smile as he flipped to the next poster, and even I recognized this painting. A black man on the steep sloping deck of a dismasted sloop. The waves were high and threatening, and off in the distance was the curving funnel of a waterspout. In the foreground, traipsing through the waters as if waiting for their meal, were a school of sharks. One of the sharks had its head breaking the surface, the cold eyes showing a very long patience.

  "The Gulf Stream," I said. "Considered one of his best."

  He nodded, gazing at the figures on the print. "Painted in 1889, it took years of preparation and work. Homer spent a lot of time in the Caribbean. You know, it must have been so different from his years in Maine, being in such an exotic place, all that heat and hot sand. When this was first exhibited, people were shocked at how strong, how vital it was. Homer even ran into criticism for depicting this man in such desperate danger without showing some conclusion or hope."

  ''And what did Homer tell them? To go to hell?"

  Another smirk. “Close enough. What he said was so funny that I've even memorized it. He wrote back once, saying, 'The criticisms of The Gulf Stream by old women and others are noted. You may inform these people that the Negro did not starve to death. He was not eaten by the sharks. The waterspout did not hit him. And he was rescued by a passing ship which is not shown in the picture.'"

  I laughed along with Justin and said, "Sounds like a guy I'd like to share a beer with."

  "Well, Homer would have gone along with that. He did like his drink."

  Justin then shook his head as he let the poster display slap back into shape. "Such art, such artistry. Before the theft sales of those posters were only so-so during our special exhibit, but after the theft, they just kept on selling and selling. Those three prints are our bestselling posters in the gift shop and every few months we have to restock them. Can you believe that?"

  I remembered a trip from two years back and said, "I can. Once I went to the Kennedy Space Center in Florida, and the most popular photograph they sold in their gift shop was one that showed the crew members of the Challenger. Sometimes people like souvenirs of bad times, Mr. Dix. Makes them feel indestructible."

  “Maybe so, maybe so," he said, shaking his head again as if couldn't believe he lived in a country such as this. "Here, let walk you out."

  The center lobby had about ten or fifteen visitors, and their voices echoed against the tall ceiling and the pillars. I shook his hand as he opened the entrance door and I thanked him again for his time, and then he stood erect, gazing out to the street, as if he were looking for two men dressed as Manchester cops.

  "I want them back, Mr. Cole," he said, the sudden strength his voice making me take another look at his expression. "Some days I don't care what it takes. I just want those Winslow Homers back."

  He looked at me as though he was almost shocked at his outburst. "But please don't put that in your story, all right?"

  As I walked out the door and into the warm July day, I headed to my Range Rover. Crossing the street, I thought again of what Felix had told me a few days ago, about his problem, and I thought of how much emotion Justin Dix had put into those words, about wanting the Winslow Homers back. There was something odd there, and it didn't strike me until had been driving for five or six minutes. When he told me how much he wanted those paintings back, I believed him.

  But from the tone of his voice, I wasn't sure if he wanted them back for himself or for his museum.

  Chapter Seven

  It was early afternoon by the time I left the Scribner Museum. I drove to downtown Manchester, which is built around a long main thoroughfare called Elm Street, and is one of the oddest avenues in the world: start out from the downtown and head north, and you'll go from twenty-story office buildings to businesses to residential homes in a space of five minutes, and then you'll come to a dead end. Travel that distance about two and a half miles in the other direction, and you'll also come to a halt. I believe it's the only main street in a large city in America that stops at two dead ends.

  On this hot day I wasn't in the mood for measuring distances or dead ends and instead I stopped at a restaurant called BookBinder's. It had a bookstore in the corner, and after lunch I spent a pleasant ten minutes or so there, just browsing through the shelves, seeing what new history books were available. For some reason books feel and smell better in bookstores than they do at home, with their pages stiff and crisp and that fresh smell of ink and paper that promises so much. On my way out of Bo
okBinder's, I passed a pay phone in its tiny lobby and underneath its shelf a Manchester phone book was hanging from a metal cable. From looking at the inside cover, I saw that Bainbridge was one of the towns contained in the directory and it took me a moment only to find "Dummer, Craig 57 Mast Road Bainbridge." I wrote down the phone number in my reporter's notebook, and then, just as I was putting the book back underneath the pay-phone counter, I looked again and saw this listing: "Fuller, C. 12 Trenton Lane Bedford."

  I wrote down that number, too.

  Bainbridge was ten minutes from Manchester and was a town that reminded me of the real New Hampshire, not the idealized towns you see in Hollywood movies or on the evening news every four years when there's a presidential primary being conducted in our snow and ice. Through the help of a wonderful gazette I keep in my Range Rover that had road maps of everyone of New Hampshire's 269 cities, towns and land grants, it was an easy drive, though I'm sure it's not one that drivers in vehicles with Massachusetts or New York license plates have made that much. It's off the main highway, so it's probably bypassed by the tourists in the summer, the leaf-peepers in the fall and the skiers in the winter and spring. The downtown consisted of a branch of the Fleet Bank, a few shops and two gas stations, and the mandatory town common with the Civil War statue in the center. Though it was a hot and steamy day, I drove with the windows down and the air conditioner off. Air conditioners in moving vehicles give me a headache.

  I could tell from the size of many of the homes and their lots that this was a bedroom community for those people fortunate enough to be doing well in a state with low or nonexistent state taxes and whose property taxes were among the highest in the country. The homes I saw in this part of town were large and well groomed, and many had the obligatory Volvo or Audi in the driveway.

  Driving my Range Rover, I knew that at least the vehicle I owned would fit in, but I had serious doubts about its sole occupant.

  After another five minutes or so going down some back roads leading off from the town common, I made it to Mast Road, and saw the other half of Bainbridge.

  In most of the towns in this part of the state, there's always a Mast Road, and it's usually located in the hills. The first roads that came in here were built in the 1600s and 1700s, when the tall pines --- property of the King --- made wonderful masts for the Royal Navy. The roads that were hacked through the wilderness were named Mast Road, and from the bumps and jolts I received as I went to Craig Dummer's residence, it felt as if this road hadn't been repaired since the days of the Hanover kings.

  This half of Bainbridge was not a bedroom community, and it definitely wasn't a place that would have been highlighted in any tourist brochure. Yet I didn't mind driving down this road, for it was a part of New Hampshire that was real, and would always be real, no matter which politicians were in the state, running for President, or how much money the tourists brought in each year to the ski areas and liquor stores. The homes were a mixture of small working farms and residences, of old colonials and single-story ranches, and trailers with rusting sides.

  A few of the homes had two or three junked cars or washing machines in their front yards, and as I drove slowly, looking for No.57, I could see that I was being watched: The old lady in baggy sweat pants at the trailer with the wood-frame addition hanging up her laundry. A farmer and his son working on a John Deere tractor. An older couple sitting on their front porch. They all looked at me as I drove by, and I knew that in a few minutes it would be known that a stranger had been passing through this part of town, driving a foreign vehicle. The neighborhood may lave been rural, but they looked out for each other.

  At a set of mailboxes that said “57 - 59 Mast Road," I made a right onto a dirt driveway that led into a wooded area for about a hundred feet and which dribbled off onto a front lawn that was packed earth --- 57-59 Mast Road was a two-story duplex, with separate entrances at each end, and with brown paint that was flaked and peeling. There were no cars around, but there were ruts in the ground near both ends of the house that showed where me vehicles had been parked. I got out of the Range Rover and headed to the right side of the house. A stairway of about a half dozen steps led up to a small deck and a door, and the arrangement was mirrored on the left side. Crickets chirruped in the tall grass and a crow was chattering at me as I went to the door. A nameplate under the doorbell said "Kotowski." Wrong end of the house. I rang the doorbell a couple of times and peered through the door anyway and it looked like no one was home. There was an open kitchen area and a living room in the distance which I could make out, but no television, no radio and no lights were on.

  I got down from the deck and went over to the other side. The windows were open on the second floor of the duplex, letting in the slight breeze, and the afternoon seemed much hotter than the morning. At the left side of the house, the nameplate said “Dummer." Ah, another success story for the inquisitive and investigative reporter. But the doorbell went unanswered, and when I peeked through the window again, I saw a silent house. This one was dirtier than its partner. Dishes were piled high in the sink and there were a couple of cardboard pizza containers on the table. In the living room area there was a scattering of newspapers and magazines and a pile of clothes. Craig Dummer didn’t seem to be doing that much with himself this time around.

  For a moment I thought of leaving my business card in the doorway, but decided against it. I wanted to come upon him cold, have him tell me in his own words about what happened that night five years ago, when he and his partner let millions of dollars' worth of art walk out the front door. As I drove back out on Mast Road and into town, the air still not cooling me off, the early-warning system for this neighborhood was still in place, and at least a half dozen people took note of me as I went by. I resisted the temptation to give them a cheery wave.

  Four hours later that day I was back in Tyler Beach, having made an early dinner engagement with Diane Woods of the Tyler police department. I was hoping to take her to Grace's Beach House, which is on the south end of Tyler Beach. Grace's Beach House is owned by one Grace Grayson, a stocky and buxom woman in her late fifties who has short-cropped blond hair that's streaked with gray and who works in all parts of her restaurant, depending on her mood. Some nights she tends bar and on other nights she's the hostess, seating people at tables with views of Tyler Harbor and the strong lights of the distant Falconer nuclear power plant. But on all nights she's loud and demanding, sometimes telling the cowering tourists to "haul yer ass over to that corner table," and she loves to tell stories about her past --- she has claimed on several occasions to have been a porno film star in the 1960s, a gymnastics instructor in California and a gunrunner for a rebel group in Haiti.

  It's an odd place, and thank God it hasn't been written up yet in the Globe, but if you don't have reservations, forget about getting a table: the line to get in often spills out onto Atlantic Avenue.

  But reservations or not, dinner for us this evening consisted of hot dogs and Coke, and this sumptuous meal was shared on the front seat of Diane Woods's unmarked police car, a dark blue Crown Victoria with blackwall tires and a whip antenna on the trunk. Unmarked though it might be, it was also instantly identifiable to those Tyler residents who dabbled in things illegal, though it was useful for grabbing those out-of-towners who thought a beach town was a license to raise hell.

  We were about a block away from Grace's Beach House, and I looked at it longingly as we crawled north on Atlantic Avenue, behind the usual late afternoon flow of traffic from points such as Salisbury, Lawrence and Lowell. In this part of Tyler Beach, Atlantic Avenue is two lanes and both of them head north and it looked like Boston's Southeast Expressway during high commuter time. I had the window down and Diane was nervously tapping the steering wheel as she drove, balancing a half-eaten hot dog in one hand while driving. Both of my hands were free, as I had finished my own dinner earlier, but I wasn't sure if that was much of a prize: the hot dog felt like a lump of cold seaweed unmoving in my stomach
.

  I hadn't changed from my day's visit to Manchester and Bainbridge, and Diane was equally casual: white denim jeans and short-sleeved red shirt that was flapping over the waistband, the better to hide her .357 Ruger, detective shield and handcuffs. Diane swore under her breath as brake lights up ahead from both lanes lit up, and she said, "Look, Lewis, I know you wanted to go to Grace's and have a half-decent meal, but I've been sitting on butt all day and I was getting tired of it."

  I looked over at her and said, "Your butt looks pretty good from here."

  She said something that I'm sure the area third-graders would have been shocked to hear, coming from a police officer who loves to come in and talk to them. Diane said, "Some days I just get tired of sitting there, reading and rereading reports, making phone calls, trying to track down leads and taking phone calls from a whole host of shitmeisters, like the State Police and AG's office and our lovely friends in the news media. So you need to get out and get some fresh air, and I'm sorry, Lewis, I couldn't spend another hour or so just sitting. I needed to get my blood revving again."

  The low-slung police radio chattered the usual noises of a weekday summer evening at Tyler Beach, from a stolen car to a couple of drunks barricaded in their motel room, refusing to leave and tearing the place up. Around us was a mass of people, swarming three or four deep along both sidewalks. There was not a single parking space to be found. Cars that crawled past us had their radios going, and just by sitting still, you heard rap music going into metal and into hip-hop and rock. But no classical. I guess they had their own beaches to go to.