Port City Shakedown

by Boyle, Gerry

  “This wasn’t a love nest,” Mia said.

  Brandon checked the waste tank, found it had been pumped. The water tanks had been topped off, as had the fuel. He checked the head and it glistened. Most charter returns needed a full day of clean-up; this boat could go out on charter this minute. Just hand over the key.

  Doc was going to love this.

  Brandon went to the chart table, slid the drawer open. The charts were in place, in order, from southwest to northeast, Kittery to Lubec. Before coming up, Mia looked around one last time; the cabin windows had been washed, inside and out. The pots and pans were clean, the sink scoured.

  It was like the boat hadn’t gone anywhere at all.

  Brandon ran a hand over the electronics, pushed the power buttons on radar, radios, the GPS. It booted up, asked if he wanted to enter waypoints for a new trip.

  He didn’t.

  Behind him, Mia said, “What’s that do?”

  “You tell it where you want to go, it tells you the course to get there,” Brandon said. “Or you can let it tell you where you are, and it saves that information, tells you where you’ve been.”

  He scrolled down, pressed buttons, navigated his way to the saved waypoints.

  Brandon pushed the button.

  The most recent saved trip showed on the screen, a list of numbers: longitude and latitude. Brandon knew some by heart. He saw the bell at the harbor entrance, the buoy between Peaks and Cushing islands.

  “So here they are, left the harbor, moved out beyond islands before swinging northeast, starting the run up to Boothbay Harbor.”

  Brandon leaned closer. Looked at the numbers.

  “Huh?” he said.

  “Huh what?”

  The longitude and latitude showed the course of Ocean Swell had been almost due east. The GPS said it had sailed out into the bay and beyond, almost 150 miles, nearly to the western tip of Nova Scotia.

  He bent and squinted at the screen.

  “What?” Mia said.

  West of Yarmouth, Nova Scotia, the boat had turned northwest, crossing to the southern edge of the Bay of Fundy, then due west back to Maine. The last leg was a straight shot southwest following the Maine coast.

  If this was the course Lucky and Irina had followed, they’d gone to Bar Harbor via Nova Scotia.

  Brandon’s mind whirled through the possibilities.

  Perhaps someone had been tinkering with the GPS, had set coordinates for a trip they might take but hadn’t yet. With Lucky’s experience, a trip like that would be a breeze. But these waypoints weren’t in the reference folder. They were in the folder of the trips the boat had taken.

  Someone else could have sailed this course before Lucky and Irina took the boat. But Doc’s idea of an adventure was an overnight up to Camden Harbor.

  “What’s the matter?” Mia said.

  “This says the boat went almost all the way to Nova Scotia.”

  “When?”

  “It doesn’t tell you that. But it’s set to automatically save waypoints from previous trips. Doc did that because he hates fog and he tended to do the same trips over and over.”

  He looked at the next set of numbers. Doc running home from Camden in the rain.

  The trip before that. Hard to tell, but it looked like the time Doc had taken the O.R. nurse for a weekend in Boothbay.

  “Who would take this boat to Canada?” Mia said.

  “Lucky could. He could take this boat to England if he wanted to.”

  “But they went to Bar Harbor. They talked about the restaurants.”

  “I know. It must be screwed up.”

  “Maybe Irina was fooling around.”

  “She doesn’t have much fooling in her,” Brandon said.

  “Maybe she was bored,” Mia said. “Whatever, they sure brought it back clean.”

  “I know. They should charter every boat we have here, have the owners pay them. Waste tank is pumped, fuel and water topped off. I mean, they really went above and—”

  “Brandon.”

  The voice was distant, high-pitched and quivery like a gull’s.

  Nessa.

  Brandon turned, saw her at the end of the dock. She was waving, calling them back. He jumped to the rail, untied the lines, and Mia climbed over and into the Whaler. Brandon swung over, stepped the helm, and Mia shoved them off. He started the motor, swung around, and saw Nessa still at the end of the dock, still waving. But there was someone with her.

  A man.

  They docked, Mia climbed out and tied the bow. Brandon shut off the motor, fastened the stern line, heard footsteps behind him as he crouched over the cleat. He turned and stood and the guy held out his hand. Wholesome looking, with a pistol on his right hip.

  “Detective O’Farrell,” he said. “I need to ask you a few questions.”

  Brandon nodded. “Sure.”

  “I understand you rode with Officer Griffin.”

  “Yes.”

  “When was the last time?”

  “Yesterday.”

  “What were you doing?”

  Brandon told him: Crystal’s house, looking for Joel Fuller, his buddy Kelvin. Sitting in Crystal’s driveway. He told the detective why, the short version.

  “And you left there. Then what?”

  Brandon went through it. The guy at the paving company, Kelvin’s injury. Their talk down on the dock.

  “Then he dropped me at my truck, headed home. His shift was over. I think he had baseball or something. With his kids.”

  “That’s the last you saw him?”

  “Yeah.”

  A sinking, sick feeling.

  “Sounds like you guys got along,” O’Farrell said.

  “We did,” Brandon said, the feeling overpowering now. “We do.”

  “Mr. Blake, I’m sorry to tell you this. We found Officer Griffin shot to death this morning at 5:45 at the Washington Avenue project.”

  Brandon reeled, a wave of nausea.

  “But we don’t think he was killed there. We think he was shot someplace else and then he and the car were dumped.”

  He moved closer, eyes narrowing.

  “Tell me more about Fuller and his friend.”

  Brandon’s mind was racing, Griffin and baseball and dragging Fuller out of the funeral and the two boys.

  He focused.

  “Fuller wants me to pay him money. Because I got in a fight with his mother. Broke her nose, but it was an accident. He made, I guess you could call them, veiled threats to burn my boat. Last night somebody killed a cat and put it in my grandmother’s bed.”

  The detective took notes on a white pad with a black leather cover. “Where was this?”

  “South Portland. Right up the road.”

  “And you think it was this Fuller?”

  “He’d be high on the list.”

  “Where is he now? You and Griffin have any idea?”

  “There’s a camper,” Brandon said.

  “Where?”

  “I don’t know. Maybe around Kelvin’s house someplace? Maybe not.”

  “We’ll start looking,” O’Farrell said. “I mean, could be totally unrelated, but this is a start. And I think we could use you.”

  “You want me to help with the search?”

  “No,” the detective said. “I think you’d be more help here.”

  Brandon looked up as gulls flew over, eyeing the two men to see if they were fishing, if there was food to be scavenged.

  “Bait,” he said.

  “Right,” O’Farrell said. “Even though they may be halfway to Florida, if they did this. If they didn’t do it, we need to know that, too.”

  “He was a good guy,” Brandon said. “He has two boys. I mean, they play baseball. Practiced with them for hours. He was just telling me about hitting one of them grounders. Over and over.”

  “Way it usually is,” the detective said. “The shitheads live to be ninety.”

  They stood for a moment on the gently rocking float, and Br
andon felt the weight of all of it settle onto him, like a block of stone slowly lowered onto a flatbed. And then he felt an odd sense of déjà vu. It was the stunned stillness that follows the news of an unexpected death, a protector removed, the realization that you’re exposed, alone.

  He could feel it now just as he had as a kid. First Nessa shrieking and crying, holding him by the shoulders. A blur of people: bartenders, waitresses, Nessa’s neighbors, an old couple, their names forgotten, knocked on Nessa’s door. They brought candy, like it was some weirdly reversed trick or treat.

  And then the quiet. Nessa passed out in the chair in the living room. Brandon going up to bed by himself, lying there in the dark, not crying, like some four-year-olds might, just realizing that from now on, he was on his own.

  But Nikki had been taken away by fate, a rogue wave, an auto-piloted freighter chugging through the night. This time, at least there was a culprit. A perp. A bad guy. A cop killer.

  “Whatever it takes,” he told the detective.

  “We’ll get the sons of bitches,” O’Farrell said. “Don’t you worry.” Brandon already was.

  CHAPTER 40

  At midnight they were still awake, lying side by side in the narrow berth, their hands clasped between them, the red light of a police radio blinking on the shelf by the bed. It had started to rain and blow, little squalls that skipped across the harbor, the patter on the deck above them hollow and faintly musical like someone flicking fingers across a drum.

  “You think she’ll be okay?” Mia said.

  “Detectives in the house and I saw two outside.”

  “You know, this is a different topic, but she seemed almost afraid of Lucky.”

  “I know.”

  “Maybe the past all coming back?” Mia said.

  “I don’t know. She seemed to pull back from him, like a recoil.”

  “Do you think they didn’t get along? Back then?”

  “He said how much he liked her,” Brandon said.

  “Then what would it be?” Mia said.

  “Angry that he’s alive and Nikki isn’t? But definitely something. She was drunk when we left. Getting drunker.”

  “Is that what it was like, living with her?”

  “She checked out early and often,” Brandon said. “Kinda funny. It was the one thing I could really count on.”

  “That must’ve been hard for a kid.”

  “Only for the first few years, when I still believed her when she told me something. ‘You and me, we’re gonna go to the circus. Brandon, how ’bout we go to a movie on Saturday? Would you like to go to a hockey game, Brandon? We’ll get pizza.’”

  “Didn’t happen?”

  “No. Meant it when she said them, but then she forgot.”

  “So you retreated? Into yourself, I mean.”

  “You have to,” Brandon said. “You make it so you don’t need anyone else.”

  The hull of the boat trembled in a gust and rain sprayed the porthole above them. Mia squeezed his hand.

  “How long did that go on?”

  “Still the way it is.”

  “Do you need me?” Mia said.

  Brandon hesitated.

  “Yes.”

  You know you can believe in me, right?”

  “Yeah, I do.”

  “There have been other girls, though. What about them?”

  “I didn’t let them in,” Brandon said.

  “Why me?”

  “You know what it’s like.”

  “Right, it’s like we’re sort of alone together.”

  “When I’m with you, the rest of the world sort of fades out,” Mia said.

  Brandon turned on his side and leaned over and kissed her on the cheek. Mia turned, and they kissed.

  “I think I need to be really close to you right now,” Brandon said. “Is that strange? With everything that’s happened?”

  “No,” Mia said, and they kissed again. “I feel like I need to hold you. Take you and hold you.”

  She slipped her tank top up and off, and they embraced, there in the cabin, the two of them setting out to become one.

  And they did, making love slowly and deliberately, with a relentless, pressing fierceness. And then they kissed a last time and slept, Mia curled with her breasts against Brandon’s back. He felt her relax, her breathing find an easy rhythm. He reached down with one hand to the floor of the cabin.

  Touched the cold metal of the rifle barrel.

  It was a thunk, like a cat landing on a roof. Brandon rolled off of the berth, reached for the gun, his boxers. He heard another step in the cockpit. A scratching at the locked cabin door.

  It was early, but after dawn. In the dim light he saw Mia’s eyes wide open, fixed on the door. In a crouch, he slipped his shorts on, moved through the cabin with the rifle pointed low in front of him.

  Another rattle, a faint scratching. The sound of someone shifting his feet. Brandon reached for the bolt with his left hand, crooked the rifle in his right. His finger on the trigger, he reached up with his thumb and unscrewed the safety.

  Slid the bolt slowly across. Turned the latch and yanked.

  “Freeze,” Brandon said, leveling the gun.

  “Whoa,” Doc said. “Don’t shoot. It’s me.”

  He was standing by the door, a piece of paper in his hand. Brandon lowered the rifle.

  “Easy, Brandon, just leaving you a note. I mean, what the hell.”

  “Sorry, Doc,” Brandon said. “There’s been some stuff going on.”

  “Be careful with that thing. Could hurt somebody.”

  Brandon stepped up and out of the cabin into the cool morning. He closed the door behind him, leaned the rifle against the gunwale. Doc, in khaki shorts, a fleece vest that said “Black Dog Tavern,” moved close and whispered, “I didn’t want to knock. Didn’t know if you had company.”

  “Mia’s asleep,” Brandon said.

  He went into the cabin, pulled on jeans and a T-shirt. “Just Doc,” he said to Mia, hunkered down under the quilt.

  Back in the cockpit, Doc was looking out at Ocean Swell, riding on its mooring. He turned, held out an envelope. Brandon opened it and saw $20 bills.

  “Finder’s fee,” Doc said. “Your friends, there. Man, that boat is clean. Cleaner than I’ve ever gotten it myself. They called me last night. Said they want to charter again, starting tomorrow for another week. Said they want to sail to Boston. I guess the lady’s seen New York, but that’s all. Come back, pick another destination.”

  “Good,” Brandon said.

  “Another six grand,” Doc said. “And cash. I can tell you who isn’t gonna see one goddamn penny.”

  Brandon smiled.

  “Her lawyer’d take the shoes right off my feet, if he could. Son of a bitch. And cash. I mean, I got five thousand of Lucky’s money just for the deposit. Another nine for the three weeks. All hundreds. I mean, what business is the guy in?”

  “He just said investments,” Brandon said.

  “What, some hedge fund? That where he got his name?” Doc said. “Maybe I’ll give him some of my money, if she leaves me any. But that’s your finder’s fee. Ten percent of the three weeks charter. That’s nine hundred bucks.”

  “You don’t have to—”

  “Hey, these big charter brokers didn’t do squat. You came through, buddy, you get the commission.”

  He turned to go, then crooked his head back.

  “Sorry to bother you.”

  He winked. Brandon smiled.

  “No bother. Hey, Doc.”

  Doc waited. Brandon took a step closer.

  “The GPS on your boat. What’s it save? Actual trips or ones you’ve charted out.”

  “Both, but one’s archived, the others are saved. Trips you chart, like if I decide to go to Camden, I chart that, file it in the archive. Don’t go that weekend, I got it there in the archive. Plus it saves six trips automatically. That can be a big help, let’s say you’re trying to get home in the fog. You just retra
ce your waypoints.”

  “You ever take the boat over to Nova Scotia?”

  “Nova Scotia? What the hell would I be doing way out there? You read The Perfect Storm, right? Things get nasty, I want to be able to run for it. Nova Scotia, that’s what, two hundred miles of open water?”

  “A hundred and eighty, Portland to Halifax,” Brandon said.

  “Screw that,” Doc said. “I’ll take Camden Harbor and a glass of Glenfiddich at the end of the day.”

  Brandon thought for a moment. “So saved trips are the ones the boat has gone on?”

  “Right. You look on there you’ll see Portland to Boothbay, Portland to Camden, Portland to Bar Harbor, Portland to Monhegan, a little rustic for my taste but she liked it, who knows why. Portland to Robinhood. Now that’s a nice spot, tucked away off Sheepscot Bay. Great restaurant. Took this intern from Atlanta once. Ricia—Denise had already told me to shove off.”

  “So where’s Lucky going next?” Brandon said.

  “Boston. Like I said—Irina, Lucky said she likes the big cities. I think she figures she paid her dues in Bar Harbor, Maine.”

  “On a forty-six-foot yacht? Not exactly roughing it.”

  “Whatever it was, they’re good folks. Boat’s spit-polished, stem to stern. You could eat off the goddamn deck.”

  Brandon nodded. Looked out over the marina. The wind had picked up, blowing damp and steady, and there was a wall of gray on the southern horizon.

  “When do they leave?” he said.

  “Tomorrow early.”

  “Southeast winds fifteen to twenty-five, visibility a mile or less in rain and fog,” Brandon said. “Supposed to be dirty weather through Thursday.”

  “Lucky’s sailed in worse than that,” Doc said.

  “I’m sure. But why drag yourself out in it if you don’t have to?”

  Doc shrugged. “So it gets uncomfortable, they put into Kennebunkport or Portsmouth, pick up a mooring, and sit tight. I wouldn’t mind staying below with her. Man, that accent.”

  “She isn’t gonna be thrilled,” Brandon said. “Doesn’t even like boats, never mind cruising in the rain and fog.”