Port City Shakedown

by Boyle, Gerry

  She thought of her father, all the things they’d never talked about, that he didn’t really know her at all. She told herself she’d write him a long letter, if they got back. She looked over at Brandon, tense and unblinking, and thought how sad it would be to finally fall in love only to see it end so soon.

  CHAPTER 49

  The coordinates: 43, 40 north, 68, 10 west. That would put them a hundred miles west of Yarmouth, Nova Scotia, fifty miles shorter than their last trip.

  It was getting busy in the shipping lanes closer to Yarmouth, they’d been told. A change of plans.

  It was a little after ten p.m., seventeen hours since they’d left Portland Harbor, circling now, then heaving to, then falling off the wind again. Waiting.

  Lucky had been at the helm for nearly the whole trip, Irina taking over when he had to go below to the head. While he was below he’d eaten an energy bar and washed down two amphetamines with a Red Bull. The trip out was rough; the run back would be worse. Lucky reached into his pocket. He felt his pills and was reassured.

  Back in the cockpit, he took the helm. Irina stood by the rail, clipped on by her safety line, peering out at the blackness, the white streaks of the wavetops.

  Lucky took the microphone, went to channel 67.

  “Baltic Star, Baltic Star,” he said. “This is Sea Ranger.”

  No reply, just static. The volume was turned all the way up to be heard over the wind whipping through the rigging, the slam of the hull against the sea, the spray spattering against their foul weather gear, the creak of the mast bent by the wind.

  Irina scowled, wiped the salt spray from her face. Clenched her teeth. They sailed on in the dark.

  Another half-hour, another three miles to the east. Lucky kept on eye on the GPS, the compass, wondered whether to keep going or heave to and wait. He called again.

  There was static, then a scratchy voice saying, “Go ahead, Sea Ranger.”

  Irina heard the accent, a little bit of home. She pointed to the north, off the port side. There was a red speck in the darkness. Lucky didn’t reply, just reached for the light switch, flicked the running lights off. On. Off. On.

  On the deck of the ship, a spotlight glared, then went dark.

  “Like a fine Swiss watch, baby,” Lucky said. “Why don’t you make sure everything’s ready below.”

  He sailed on toward a point below the ship’s stern. In fifteen minutes, the ship had grown to a dark shape against the cloud-gray sky. Lucky started the motor, furled the reefed main, swung into the wind, Ocean Swell pitching as it sliced into the waves. He heard voices blow out of the darkness. The sound of another motor starting.

  A spotlight glared on, moving toward the sailboat, the beam swinging crazily as the smaller boat pitched. Irina dropped fenders over the side, then stood by the rail and waited.

  “Time to be charming, my dear,” Lucky said.

  “Shut up and drive the boat,” Irina said. “I know how to do my job.”

  CHAPTER 50

  A tracking dog sniffed out the place in the brush where Fuller and Kelvin had scattered the soil soaked with Griffin’s blood. There were police SUVs back in the woods, a crime lab van in Crystal’s dooryard, cruisers—marked and unmarked—with radios that squawked and woke the baby.

  Crystal held her, afraid the cops would take her away. There was a nice one, a woman detective named Jackie who made Destinee smile, but more mean ones. There was one angry cop who started out nice but then made Crystal cry, saying, “You don’t help us, you know what you’ll get as an accessory to this? Fifteen years, easy. Maybe you’ll get out to see your daughter graduate from high school. And you know what? She won’t know you. You’ll be a total stranger.”

  As Crystal sobbed, the woman detective patted her shoulder. The detective looked at her, hard and cold with his red cheeks, and finally said, “You think about it.”

  They went outside with the other cops.

  Crystal went in the bedroom with the baby, took a swig of Captain Morgan from the bottle on the table. The cops had found it in the TV stand when they’d searched the house, looking for anything that might tell them where Kelvin and Fuller were holed up. Crystal sat on the bed, the baby beside her. When Crystal tried to hold her, she cried and thrashed. Crystal stood, was gathering her daughter up when her cell phone rang in the bag on the bureau.

  She put Destinee back down on the floor, grabbed the phone, didn’t recognize the number.

  “Yeah.”

  “Hey.”

  “Where the hell are you?” Crystal hissed. “You know what you’ve done, you stupid son of a bitch? You know how many cops are here? Yelling at me, saying I’ll never see my baby again? Huh? You stupid son of a bitch.”

  “I didn’t do nothin’,” Kelvin said, his voice low, a whisper.

  “Then you get the hell in here and you turn him in.”

  “They’ll lock me up. He’ll blame me.”

  “Of course he will. He’s a lying sack ’a shit. I told you that a thousand times. A million times. You come in first, get a deal.”

  “I’ll turn him in from somewhere else.”

  “Where?”

  “Wherever I can get to. That’s why I need money. I gotta get outta here.”

  “Where’s he?”

  “In the bathroom. In a Wendy’s.”

  “Call 911 right now.”

  “I can’t.”

  “Kelvin.”

  “No. I ain’t gonna go to prison.”

  “So the two of you are still in town?”

  “I need a hundred bucks, Crystal. You gotta help me. You know I love you. I’m sorry for everything. I really am.”

  Crystal started to deny it, but couldn’t. In his own goofy way, Kelvin did love her, she thought. But he totally sucked at being a father, had no idea where to even begin.

  “How?” she said.

  “Go shopping. Groceries or something. Then go to the McDonald’s on St. John Street, two o’clock. Park out back. Go in, buy some food, eat in the car. Get out and toss the bag in the trash can, the one up by the trees at the back of the lot. Put the money in the bag.”

  “How you gonna find it? They all look the same.”

  “I’ll find it. I’ll be watching.”

  “They’re gonna follow me.”

  “Let ’em. Lead ’em all over the place. Especially after McDonald’s. They can’t stick a cop on every place you stop.”

  “He know about this?”

  “No. I’m gonna split on him.”

  “You gotta testify against him, Kelvin. It’s your only chance. He’d do it to you and you know it.”

  A long pause.

  “I don’t know. I’ll think about it.”

  “Kelvin.”

  “Yeah.”

  “You promise or no money.”

  “Okay.”

  “Your word on your mom’s grave?”

  Kelvin hesitated. He’d liked his mom. He’d liked his mom a lot.

  “Okay.”

  “Say it.”

  “I swear on my mother’s grave.”

  “Okay. Two o’clock.”

  “Thanks, Babe.”

  Crystal rang off. Held the phone for a few seconds, turned, and scooped Destinee up from where she was crawling across the floor. She wiped the dust off of Destinee’s feet and hands, went to the front door, looked outside. The cop Jackie and the Irish-named detective were in an unmarked car, Jackie turned in the seat as she started to back the car out onto the road. Crystal went out the door, broke into a trot as she crossed the door-yard. As Jackie put the car in gear, Crystal stepped into the road, baby in her arms, and waved the car down.

  Kelvin hung up the phone. He was in front of an empty Ames store on St. John Street. Wendy’s was across the parking lot on the other side of the street.

  “That was good,” Fuller said, leaning back in his big sunglasses and Yankees hat, a gray sweatshirt that said “Maine” on the front in letters made of pine cones. His hand was under th
e sweatshirt, on the Ruger in the front waistband of his jeans. “The Wendy’s thing. Dude, that was fucking choice.”

  CHAPTER 51

  They idled into the marina in the rain just before eleven, a little chop kicking up in Portland Harbor but flat calm compared to offshore. Brandon backed Bay Witch into the slip. Mia stepped off and was bent over cleating the bow lines when Doc appeared at the top of the ramp. He waved and started down.

  “Where you been?” he said, strolling up as Brandon shut off the motor. Mia was tying down the stern and Doc gave her backside an involuntary glance.

  “Shakedown cruise,” Brandon said. “Seeing if the radar worked, that kind of thing.”

  “Picked a nice morning for it. Hope you’re paying your first mate here. You get outside the islands?”

  “A little bit.”

  “Blowing pretty good?”

  “Twenty-five, higher gusts, right smack out of the south,” Brandon said.

  “Just stopped to see if Lucky and Irina got off okay.”

  Doc looked toward his mooring, the white buoy straining on its chain in the wind. “Guess they did. Hope they find a nice spot to hole up. I know they were planning on dinner in Kennebunkport.”

  Mia looked at Brandon, smiled.

  “I’m sure they’ll be fine,” he said. “For Lucky, this is just a little breeze.”

  “Yeah, but Irina, she’s no blue-water sailor,” Doc said. “Don’t want to scare her off. Got my own selfish reasons. I’m thinking they like the boat enough, might decide to take her off my hands. One bad experience, she could say, ‘No more sailing for me. Santa Fe here we come.’”

  Brandon shut off the instruments, made sure to save the last route on the GPS.

  “They hug the coast, they’ll do okay,” Doc said. “Pop in any harbor along the way. Supposed to clear tonight, wind shifting to the east then northeast. Looks like they’ll be beating back home.”

  “No problem if you’re not in a big hurry,” Brandon said.

  “Hey, doesn’t matter to me. They can take two weeks if they want. Especially when they bring her back as clean as they do. But listen—”

  Doc dug in the front pocket of his rain jacket, brought out a small plastic bag. He held it up. Inside was a piece of paper with handwriting on it.

  “Didn’t want to get it all wet. Thought Irina might want it back,” Doc said. “Wanted to talk to her. Ask her if she has a sister, might want to come over to the States, live the American dream.”

  He winked. Held out the bag. Brandon stepped off the stern onto the dock and took the bag, held it up.

  “A note?”

  “Yeah, but look at it. That’s not English.”

  Mia reached over, took the bag from Brandon, and looked at the paper.

  “Cyrillic,” she said. “It must be hers.”

  “Changed a bulb in the aft cabin,” Doc said. “It was stuck up behind the light. Probably put it up there while she was scrubbing things down below. I was gonna give it to her, but then I got working, forgot about it. Figure it’s a letter to her relatives or something. Quite a lot to say, all that tiny writing.”

  “Probably telling them all about her sailing adventure,” Mia said.

  “Maybe,” Doc said. “But I’d give it to her directly, if I were you. My first wife, before we split, I found a note she got in little tiny handwriting like that. Let’s just say it wasn’t from me, and it wasn’t a grocery list.”

  He looked at Mia.

  “Just in case it’s not a letter to grandma back home.”

  Doc turned.

  “Be good, kids,” he said, and started back up the dock to the ramp. Brandon looked at Mia.

  “USM,” he said.

  “Slavic languages,” she said.

  “We don’t need to know all of it,” Brandon said.

  “Just a general sense,” Mia said.

  “If she’s having an affair—” he said.

  “It’ll be our secret.”

  “What’s one more?” Brandon said.

  The offices for Slavic languages were in a wood-framed house a block over from the law school. Brandon parked the truck in a faculty slot out back and walked up the wooden ramp to the back door, opened the door and went in.

  Mia, on the phone with Nessa, stayed in the truck.

  There was a small room, a desk with a computer. The computer was on, somebody’s e-mail box on the screen. They heard a toilet flush and water running, and a young woman came around the corner from a hallway. She was pale, thin, plain. Dark hair pulled back, glasses. A student worker.

  “Hello,” Brandon said, smiling.

  “Hi,” she said.

  “I’m a student here,” he said. “I’m looking for someone who reads Russian.”

  “Everybody here reads Russian,” the young woman said, with a teasing shake of her head. “This is Slavic languages. It’s kind of, like, essential.”

  “Oh, good,” Brandon said. “I need something translated. It’s short. A letter.”

  “There’s nobody here right now,” she said, leaning on her desk. “They’re at a conference.”

  “Oh, too bad,” Brandon said.

  “But you could leave it and I could give it to one of the professors when they get back tomorrow,” she said.

  “How ’bout if I leave a copy?”

  “Sure,” the young woman said, vaulting from her chair. He handed her the letter: one page, written on both sides. She took it and walked to the copier. It spat out a page and she turned back and handed Brandon the original.

  “Can I leave a phone number?” he said.

  She liked that better, dug for a piece of paper and pen. He wrote his name and cell number and handed the paper back.

  “You’re Brandon?”

  “Yeah.”

  “I’m Samantha.”

  “Nice to meet you, Samantha,” Brandon said. She made a great show of stapling the paper to the copy of the letter.

  “Anything you can do will be appreciated.”

  She said she’d do her best, maybe someone would come in at the end of the day. Brandon thanked her and she smiled again. He went out the door, down the ramp. In the office, the young woman, a first-year Russian Studies major, looked at the letter. She held it up, scrutinizing the tiny handwriting.

  “Huh,” she said, and dug in her bag, took out a phone. She flipped it open and punched in a number and said, “Hey. … What are you doing? … Listen, can you help me with a translation? … No, it’s not for class. … Somebody brought in this, like, weird letter. … Some guy who says he goes here. … I’m not sure. I think it’s like somebody writing to their family. … Hard to say ’cause I don’t really know the vocabulary, but I think it’s got something to do with a boat. And I’m not sure, but I think it’s somebody who’s, like, really unhappy.”

  She paused. Frowned.

  “No, that’s okay. I’ll do it myself. … Hey, I was gonna tell you, the guy who brought it in? He’s kinda hot. … You snooze, you lose. Too late. Ha, ha.”

  Samantha smiled, put down the phone, and reached to the floor to a backpack. She unzipped a pocket, took out a book, and laid it on the desk by the letter. It was a Russian-English dictionary. She put a pencil on a word in the first line.

  “Sadness?” she said. “Shame?”

  She opened the dictionary. Her e-mail beeped. She ignored it.

  CHAPTER 52

  Brandon put on a blazer and khakis. He had dug the jacket from his closet at Nessa’s. She was on the porch sipping her first glass of Chardonnay of the day. The first glass was the most special, the way the soothing mist settled over her with the first swallow. She sat in her chair and, because of the wind and rain, waited for a boat to appear in the stretch of bay.

  When it didn’t, Nessa watched the waves, the waters streaked by the wind, the dark clouds rolling like tumbleweed toward the horizon.

  “Where’s the service?” she said, when Brandon appeared in the room.

  “Cape Elizabe
th. The Catholic church.”

  She gazed out at the sea, sipped her wine.

  “It’s a big show, isn’t it? When a policeman is killed.”

  “They stick together,” Brandon said.

  “Nikki didn’t have a church funeral,” Nessa said. “Told me a hundred times she didn’t believe in them. She wanted her ashes scattered on the bay. Couldn’t even do that.”

  “I know.”

  “The other hard thing when someone is lost at sea like that, is you don’t know how long to wait. Are you giving up on them? What if they’re on a raft? What if they were picked up by a freighter and they have amnesia, hit in the head with one of the masts when the ship went down?”

  “Nessa.”

  “It’s possible.”

  “Nessa, don’t,” Brandon said.

  “She’d be forty-one.”

  “Nessa. I’m going.”

  “They have this computer thing now. You put somebody’s picture in when they’re twelve or fifteen or whatever and you hit a button and it ages them. Shows what they’d look like.”

  Brandon stood to the right of her chair, watched her fingers circling the stem of the wine glass.

  “She’s gone,” he said.

  “Of course she’s gone,” Nessa said.

  She drank, her hand trembling as she raised the glass.

  “Let me sit here and have my little dream. That’s not so much to ask, is it?”

  Another drink, the wine caressing someplace behind her eyes. And then a jab of reality, like someone had tapped her shoulder. Nessa’s eyes widened.

  “Where did you go so early?”

  Brandon hesitated, then said, “Down to the boat.”

  “In the middle of the night?”

  “It was morning, sort of.”

  “Why’d you have to go? You can share a room with her here.”

  “We took the boat out, Nessa.”

  “Today?”

  “Yes.”

  “Why?”

  “We followed Lucky and Irina in Doc’s boat.”

  “You followed them?”

  “Only for a few miles.”

  “Where did they go?” Nessa said, a knowing tone in her voice.