by Ed Teja
IN HARM’S WAY
A Martin Billings Story
Book 3
A Novel of Caribbean Crime and Suspense
ED TEJA
Published by Float Street Press
Copyright © 2021 by Ed Teja
All rights reserved
Cover photo by Pok Rie from Pexels
“Let us read and let us dance —
two amusements that will never do any harm to the world.”
— Voltaire
This book is a work of fiction, the characters, incidents, and places are products of the author’s imagination and are not to be construed as real. It's good to pretend that none of it happened. If you were there when it all went down and remember things differently, that's okay.
1
A long, slow swell came from the East, passing north of the island of Tobago, moving across the Northern edge of Trinidad then kissing, in succession, each of the three bocas separating Trinidad from Venezuela at the northern end of the Gulf of Paria.
The swell, glowing under a full moon, lifted great swaths of the Caribbean up gently, soundlessly, and then lowered them again, setting them back down gracefully.
We’d been running parallel to that swell since passing through Boca de Navios and losing the protective lee of the small island of Huevos — one of the teeth in the Dragons’ mouth, which is what they call the passageway from Trinidad north into the Caribbean Sea.
The swell rode along with us, a relentless movement, a constant companion that would lift all 120-feet of IRREPARABLE HARM, my dry cargo freighter. She’d rise to the peak and pause, listing to port before rolling to starboard as she slid down the other side of the glassy swell.
The smoothness of that motion, its slowness, always proved impossible for the autopilot to handle and made steering a constant, tiring task for any human pilot. That had Ugly Bill and I taking turns on watch, trading off every hour throughout the night as we traveled slightly west of due north, hauling a small cargo the 150 miles from Chaguaramas, Trinidad to Sister Islands in the Lesser Antilles.
The Sisters is a single country that consists of two lovely tropical islands — St. Agnes and St. Anne — situated to the west of St. Vincent. St. Agnes, the larger of the two sisters, is the seat of government and home to several plush all-inclusive resorts; the less developed St. Anne, half the size, is a destination island that attracts the yachts that plied the Caribbean. Predictably, its main attractions, besides tropical beaches, tropical weather, and friendly people, include a reasonable chandlery, waterfront bars, and a decent boatyard. Being at the lower end of the Lesser Antilles, where hurricanes were less frequent, didn’t hurt a bit, either.
Near morning, with Bill at the helm, I went out on the bridge wing and stared out to the east watching the first light of dawn begin to redden the sky. Being out here, hauling cargo between islands, could be a meditative business at times. The work we did might not be of major consequence, but it didn’t hurt anyone. That was important to me. I’d done enough harm in my life. Far too much.
I’d walked away from that life and put the money I’d earned doing that harm into this freighter, this life. Naming her IRREPARABLE HARM keep me from forgetting, from pretending I was a nice guy, a good sort — the kind of person I wanted to be. Nothing would undo or atone for all the things I’d done but, much to Bill’s dismay, I tried to be a force for good. I wanted to help people in small ways, maybe even just by bringing them supplies at a fair price, sometimes even lending a hand to people in trouble that I ran across. People who showed up in HARM’s way — that was Bill’s sarcastic take on it.
The twinkling of lights from the city of St. George’s on the island of Grenada appeared to the east of us. As we got into the lee of that picturesque island, it sheltered us from the swell and the rolling began to calm.
I went in to stand next to Bill, my eyes instinctively glancing over the gauges. “Should be smooth passage from here on,” I said. Then I tapped the radar display. “We might get a little ugliness from that storm to the west, though.”
Ugly Bill, his face gleaming with determination, held the wheel and stared out into the welcome first light of morning. “Don’t put a goat mouth on us,” he said.
Sailors tend to be superstitious people, and his phrase was one that islanders used to mean that you shouldn’t want to talk about something bad happening because it might give the universe ideas. I figured the universe had shown me it was capable of coming up with all sorts of bad things. Anything I worried about was petty ante. In this case, the only trouble the storm should cause us is to make us unwilling to enter port until it passed by. We could safely stand off in deep water while it blew by.
“We got us a couple of hours to go yet,” he said. “Now that the sea’s a bit flat, one of us —” he scowled in my direction, “the one doing nothing, better make some more coffee.”
I slapped his back. “First, I’ll pop down and make a last check of the cargo, take a peek in the engine room, and then I’ll make that coffee.”
As unlikely as it was that the cargo had shifted in the last half hour, which was the last time I’d checked it, when you are hauling someone else’s property, when you get business from referrals, you need to be careful, and pay close attention. It’s good to know if anything bad happened before you call the owner and tell him you are unloading it.
Under any circumstances, the job of hauling cargo between islands makes for a precarious livelihood; it’s a business with thin profit margins to begin with, as it has lots of competition. It’s hard to get the word out about what you do, and most of the business comes from referrals — word of mouth. The reputation of a skipper and the boat means a great deal. Shipping customers care about reliability, and that means delivering cargoes on time and intact.
In a heavy sea, the constant pressure of that rolling motion means it doesn’t take a lot for a heavy cargo to chaff through a line or strap and begin to careen around the cargo hold. That not only damages the cargo but having pallets of cargo slamming into bulkheads can cause extensive and expensive damage the ship.
I glanced into the engine room first. Although the gauges on the bridge monitored things, gave us an idea of how things were running, a human eye could spot a spray of water from a broken cooling hose or oil before any damage was done. Again, all looked good. The work we’d had done in Trinidad was more preventative than corrective, but even that could create problems as well as solve them.
Next, I went forward. Dropping down into the cargo bay I noted, happily, that everything was in place and the cargo looked secure — pleasant news after a long night passage. Even so, I walked through the space, checking and rechecking the strapping, making sure it was taut and not about to be chewed through by the constant friction.
Reassured that all was well, I emerged on deck savoring the intensifying tropical sun on my face. Night passages are fine, but the dawn seems to fill me with a warm, glad-to-be-alive feeling that never ceases to amaze me.
As I came aft from the cargo hatch, I saw Bill waving and turned to see a fishing boat heading south, coming straight at us at a good ten knots.
Bill stepped out onto the bridge wing from the open door of the wheelhouse to shout: “Hey, Jackson!”
Jackson, the captain of the fishing boat, waited until the last moment to swing his boat to a new course so that we passed each other port to port with a few feet separating us. Then he waved back.
“I go to come back,” he shouted. “There’s a…” the wind caught his words, whipping them out to sea.
“What did he say?” I asked Bill as I came up the ladder. “Di
d you catch it?”
He shrugged. “Something about a yacht. Can’t be important.”
Bill doesn’t like yachts much. Thought I’d mention that.
Jackson hung out of the wheelhouse and shouted: “Catch me at The Barracuda this night.”
Bill cupped his hands around his mouth to ask: “You buying?”
Jackson laughed and waved. “I be drinking,” he shouted back. Then, as the fishing boat plowed into our wake, he called out something else, but again his words trailed off in the wind, an unintelligible sound.
I came into the wheelhouse and filled the espresso pot with water and coarsely ground dark French roast coffee beans before putting it on the gimbaled stove and lighting it.
Bill followed me in and scanned the radar, the gauges. “Everything good below decks, worry wart?”
“Perfect. All secure. Riding well.”
“Course it is,” he snorted. “I was the cargo master for this load.”
When the coffee perked, I poured us each a mug and handed one to Bill.
Wanting more of the morning sun, I took my mug outside, onto the wing of the bridge and let it warm my face. After a minute, I went down the ladder to stand at the railing and looked northwest, the direction where St. Anne would appear as we closed the distance.
A strange peace comes with standing on the deck of a ship underway and staring out like that, over the water. At least it does for me. With the gentle rumble of the engines under my feet and sound of water rushing against the hull, I stare at the horizon and dream about the places beyond it — a mix of lands I’ve never seen and of those I’m going to see again. I looked forward to our return to St. Anne, which I found to be one of the lovelier and friendlier places our travels took us.
In general, the Caribbean is a magical place, especially with the resorts and other high-end tourist garbage hidden from sight or, as in this case, tucked away on another island. When I’m on St. Anne, I can almost pretend investors never discovered the place, even though, the way things have worked out, sometimes it seems that Columbus had to have some Chinese or New York real-estate tycoon along on his first trip.
Standing there, even daydreaming as I was, a mariner continuously scans the horizon. It’s an automatic and ingrained reflex, almost unconscious. Ugly Bill tells me the Buddhists call it mindfulness, but for me it’s just awareness. Even though that alertness is there all the time, it intensifies as you approach a shoreline — any shore. Few ships go down in open sea compared to the number that end their lives on treacherous coastlines.
I can’t say precisely what I look for in those moments, but it’s safe to say that you automatically dismiss the familiar, the safe, and stay on high alert for things that shouldn’t be there — trying to remain aware of danger. You can’t take the sea for granted. Not ever.
I don’t know how long I’d been at the railing, as it’s nearly a meditation, but part of me knew we were coming within sight of the southern, rocky tip of St. Anne, traveling through waters we knew well, and I had a good visual memory of the place.
Bill had us on a course that would give French Reef a wide berth. That’s the name of a shoal that lies a bit to the south of St. Anne’s commercial harbor. It’s hardly a treacherous area, but the current runs westerly at about three knots, setting you down to the west.
From our current position, choosing a course that led directly into the harbor would be asking for trouble. If you misjudged things even slightly, if the current was a hair stronger than you calculated, or your compass heading off a bit, you could find your boat coming to an abrupt, expensive, soul-crushing, and screeching halt on the reef, just a short hop from safety, but just as hard aground as if she were miles away from a snug harbor.
Now, as we approached the island at a steady 10 knots, the peaks of the hills on the southern tip came into view. That’s when I saw it. HARM lifted on the residual, but diminished swells, giving me a view of something in the distance — a something that shouldn’t be there, a lump on the horizon where no lump should be.
I scrambled up the ladder to the bridge.
“I guess you saw it too,” Bill said as I came in.
“But I can’t tell what it is yet.”
Bill snorted. “You know damn well what it is.”
“I do?”
“Hell, it’s gotta be a yachtie. One of them amateurs who doesn’t bother to look at the charts before hitting the go pedal.” Bill has no real fondness for, or patience with, yachties, the people who sail around in fancy, and expensive sailboats or more often, motor around in their fancy sailboats because sailing is far too much work.
“I still can’t tell a damn thing,” I said. “Take us close to her.”
Bill looked over at me. “Why the hell you want to go there?”
It was a reasonable question. Considering that it was just outside the harbor, in plain sight, and in fair weather, unless someone was hurt or we got a distress call, it wasn’t really any of our business. But someone was in trouble.
Bill watched my face. “We got ourselves a timeline,” he said. “We are hauling cargo, running a business here, Junior. Best we make a serious attempt to deliver our cargo on time for a change and maybe create a satisfied customer or two.”
It was all true, but I wasn’t having it. “For all we know, someone over there might need help,” I said. “If they got hurt or their radio is damaged, they couldn’t make a mayday call.”
“Jackson must have gone right by them on his way out,” Bill said. “If they were in any real trouble, he would’ve stopped. If it was just some fool who took a shortcut around the point and went where the water was way too skinny, he’d go on by.” Bill’s ugly face was crowned with a triumphant grin. “Seems he went on by. That’s probably what he tried to tell us, to leave the fools alone.”
“We don’t know for sure that he saw them,” I said. I nodded toward the east where a dark line had begun to appear. “That squall to the east will be here soon enough, and when it hits, being stuck on a reef is going to get really unpleasant quickly.”
“A squall will grind a boat to shreds,” Bill said, unhappy to have to agree.
“Jackson doesn’t always pay that much attention to the rest of the world, especially when he is hung over and going out fishing,” I said. “And he’s almost always hung over when he goes fishing.”
“And that, my Captain, is exactly why The Powers That Be, in their infinite wisdom, created far too many coast guards,” he said. “They might prove a serious nuisance when you are going about your business, but they do have a role to play in the larger scheme of things. If you go around rescuing everyone who gets in trouble, what will that do to their very reason for being?”
“Somehow I don’t see that as the most serious problem facing civilization as we know it.”
“And yet, it is. Your irresponsible and unconsidered enthusiasm puts entire livelihoods at risk, threatens the identities of people you don’t even know. Think of a young lad or lass who joins the l0cal coast guard, gets all that training, goes into the world pumped up with wanting to serve and protect, and then you slurp up every damn chance they have to do that very thing.”
“I see your point, obtuse though it is.”
“And this is such a serious thing that the Japanese have a word for it—two words, actually; they artfully combine the words for life and for purpose into one word: Ikigai.”
“You know we are in the Caribbean, not Japan, right?” I asked. “Japan is far, far, away?” I pointed east. “Out there somewhere.”
“Junior, despite your narrow world view, cross culturalism has significant value, and this is but one example. The Japanese understand the importance of this concept as a potent force in peoples’ lives, a motive force. Now I know you have trouble resisting acting like a hero; you might have such an intrinsic need or obsession in what passes for your psyche, Junior, but you have to think about other people once in a while. Consider what it m
eans to take away their ikigai.”
I pointed at the bump on the horizon. “Here in the moment, we don’t know what lies ahead. I just want to go take a look; or is there some Asian philosophy that makes that yet another evil desire?”
“I didn’t say you were evil, Junior, just selfish. Of course, we can take a look. We should peek in on their plight. Curiosity is a good thing. As old Samuel Johnson wrote: ‘Curiosity is one of the most permanent and certain characteristics of a vigorous intellect.’”
Despite his contrariness, Bill had already steered us onto a course directly for what we assumed was a stricken vessel, pointing HARM up so she’d arrive to slightly to windward and up current from what I could begin to make out as a sleek, black-hulled ketch. As we closed on her, I saw she was heeled over on the reef far enough that the spot where the fin keel met the hull was clearly visible. A bad sign.
I looked at my old friend and grinned. “I’m sure that if you wanted to help people, willy-nilly, as you claim I’m prone to doing, you’d find some appropriate, witty, and unchallengeable quote to justify your actions in a heartbeat.”
“How well you know me, Junior. Far too well to suit me at times.”
“You’ve gotten predictable. I can assume you will always take a contrary stance to defend what can be termed a dubious moral high ground. But I get your point, sort of.” I grabbed up my cell phone. “Tell you what… not wanting to upset anyone’s ikigai, I’ll call Sister’s coasties and see if they are available to help these most recent victims of their own sailing skills.”
“Now you are thinking,” he said. “Passing the buck is a time-honored nautical tradition. Nearly noble.”
I had the phone on speaker. Paul Everett, the Captain of the local Coast Guard patrol boat, answered on the first ring. “I hope you are calling to arrange a rematch on the pool table at The Barracuda,” he said. “The last time, you took unfair advantage of me.”
