Billingsgate Shoal

by Rick Boyer

"Penelope."

  "So you know her name and port, so why'd ya ask, mister?"

  "I'd like to get the owner's name. Call him. You know that kid who drowned? Well I want to know if anybody on the boat saw him; I think he might have gotten swept up in the propwash. Can I have his name? Would you mind?"

  "Don't have it."

  "Well didn't you till out a work order'?"

  "Naw. The guy showed us his money and we went to work. What makes you think the boy got in trouble with her?"

  "I'm not sure. I just want to check. I want to reassure myself he didn't get in trouble under her."

  He spat a thin stream of dark brown juice over the engine block. He cocked his head slightly with an amused look. Then he shook his head just a tad.

  "Mister, I don't know much about you, but I'll say this on a hunch: you overthink things. Right? Am I right? Now when you take a leak, do you think about your kidneys working? Yeah, I bet you do. I don't, mister. That's the difference. This is a hard business. Somebody comes to you, you take them on. You don't have time to think. You've gotta make the buck. Savey-voose?"

  "I understand. I just want to know one more thing. Did they say what caused the damage?"

  "Yeah. Said they hit something."

  "Well what?" .

  "Now there you go 0verthinkin' again, mister. It wasn't my business. Why don't you ask him?"

  "Good idea. How?"

  "You got the boat's name and her home port. Go to the Coast Guard and look up the registry. But he never said his name. I didn't ask either. He paid cash and left. Nice new bills. . .could've been ironed they were so crisp."

  "Thanks for the help. I'll go to the Coast Guard. But you can't remember any other detail that might help me? Anything?"

  He picked up the gasket and placed it on the engine block, then hefted up the massive head and placed it over the gasket. Sonny's daddy· was amazingly strong. He had also apparently reached the end of his hawser as far as my presence was concerned. He flung a set of engine bolts into his left hand and held a big Snap-On ratchet wrench in the other and glared at me.

  "Mister, I'm a busy man. I've told you all I know about that gawdamn boat. If you want to talk to Sonny, come back on Tuesday. We're closed Mondays. Otherwise, please git. Know what a rottweiler is?"

  "Uh huh."

  "Good. Know what they can do when they're angry?"

  "I've heard," I answered, and began to scan the place.

  "Well we keep one out back. Name's Roscoe. Turn him loose in here at night to keep an eye on things, ya know? Well he likes to meet people, but usually it tums out they're not so tickled to see him—"

  I thanked the man and left. I didn't dawdle. I hadn't the slightest interest in meeting Roscoe, dog lover that I am. I got in the car and cast a final glance at Reliable Marine Service. I started up and did a circle on the pavement.

  "Toodle-loo Roscoe," I whispered, and headed up toward the Coast Guard station at Nauset Beach. A gash and a torn seam weren't at all the same thing. I found that interesting.

  When I got there the beach parking lot was jammed. I knew it was a tiny station; there was a chance they couldn't help me. I parked and fought my way through throngs of vacationers to the tiny office at the base of the lighthouse. There was a transmitter there and a young man in uniform behind a government-issue gray metal desk. The black plastic tag on his right shirtfront said McNab.

  I identified myself as the person who had reported the stranded vessel. He retrieved the report instantly.

  "Here it is. Shortly after you called we diverted one of our aircraft to the site. The pilot tried to raise the skipper on the distress frequency but there was no response. Nor was there any distress call, for that matter. We sent the plane back as the tide rose, but the vessel was gone. We're assuming the grounding was intentional."

  "She limped into Wellfleet all right, Just barely, but she got there. I want to get in touch with the skipper. Can I look up the boat?"

  "Sure. She'll either be registered with the Commonwealth of Massachusetts or another state or, if she's over five tons, she'll be in one of those big books there on the shelf. Do you know her name?" `

  We. thumbed through Merchant Vessels of the United States, an enormous two-volume tome that listed every vessel in American waters engaged in commercial activity that was over five net tons. Penelope was a popular name for boats. I counted over sixty of them, arranged alphabetically by their owner's last name. There was no Penelope that listed Boston as her home port.

  "Do you think she is over thirty-two feet? It's at that length usually, that a vessel approaches five-ton capacity."

  "Over. Positive. I put her length at forty or maybe a bit more."

  "Hmmmm. Then she could be new, just documented. Or she could be a noncommercial vessel. You can have a hundred-footer and not have to document it if it's not used for commercial purposes."

  "Like a yacht?"

  "Exactly. And quite a few trawlers, or trawler-type vessels, are converted into pleasure boats."

  The first Penelope listed was owned by Jack Babcock of Newport, Rhode Island. The second was owned by Jesse Bullock of Galveston, Texas. Probably a shrimper. And so it went. There were Penelopes that caught salmon and crab out of Seattle, Penelopes that hunted sailfish and marlin out of Key West, Penelopes that seined for smelt from Sheboygan, that shoved coal barges down the Illinois River, etc., etc. There were seven Penelopes in New England, but none of them were from Bean Town. I copied down all the information listed after each name. This included the vessel's dimensions and tonnage, and her documentation number—which is not the one you sometimes see on the boat's bows. The documentation number is engraved or embossed into the vessel's main beam below decks.

  "There's one other thing," said McNab, leafing through the book. "The boat could have listed her home port on the transom instead of her hailing port."

  "What's the difference?"

  The hailing port is the one that should be listed under the vessel's name. It's the place where she berths, where her skipper lives . . . her home. The home port may not in fact be the vessel's true home—"

  This enigma was sounding more and more as if it had been created by government bureaucracy.

  "—but is the port office where the vessel has filed her papers. This is technically not kosher, but some boats do it, particularly ones that tramp around the seaboard a lot."

  "So you're suggesting that one of these other Penelopes could be the boat I saw?"

  "It's possible. There are ten documentation offices in New England, and so ten possible home ports. But a boat can be documented in one port and show another on her transom."

  "But wait a minute. Boston is a home port, right? So if a boat berthed in Boston and was also documented in Boston, then we'd see her listed in this book, right?"

  "Uh, right."

  "If a boat has been documented in Boston but berths in, say, Nahant, then she would still be listed here under Boston, right'?"

  "Uh, yeah. Even though her transom would say Nahant."

  "I'm sorry, Mr. McNab, but this is getting murkier instead of clearer."

  "OK tell you what," he said. He tapped a pencil, eraser side down, on his blotter officiously, he scowled profoundly, and cleared his throat a few times. I was waiting in the wings. Pretty soon now, he was going to explain it all.

  "It's uh, confusing—" he ventured.

  "Do you have the slightest idea what's going on about this?"

  "No."

  At least it was a straight answer.

  "Let's try this: supposing a vessel is documented in one of the nine New England ports other than Boston, but spends a considerable amount of time in Boston, OK? Suppose she's documented in New Bedford but hangs out around Boston. Would she then list Boston on her transom? Is that what you were thinking'?"

  "Exactly, sir. Thank you."

  "Fine. So my job now is to contact these New England skippers who own boats called Penelope and find out."

  "What? Find
out what?"

  "Find out if they laid eyes on the kid, who drowned in the harbor day before last. He was a friend of mine."

  "Why do you think they would have seen him?"

  "Because I sent him out to look at the Penelope, and I don't like myself much for having done so. I think I might have been indirectly responsible for his death."

  "Wow. No wonder you feel so bad. Who wouldn't?"

  Just exactly what I wanted to hear. It made my day.

  I left the tiny office with the names of the seven local boats carrying the name Penelope. According to McNab we couldn't find the name because the boat was new, was a noncommercial boat, or there was a foul-up with the port listings. The third possibility seemed the least likely to me since none of the vessels listed matched the green trawler's dimensions. To me the most likely explanation was a new boat and an inexperienced skipper. That would also explain the damaged hull—no doubt caused by faulty navigation—and the grounding on Billingsgate.

  And then—I thought of poor Sarah Hart, alone now. I still had to go pay my respects. I wasn't relishing the task, and maybe that's one reason I wasn't paying attention as I headed back to the car.

  It happened as I was leaving the path and entering the big parking lot at the top of the beach. Even now as I think about that instant I am wracked with pain. I was walking out between two cars (not the brightest thing to do, I'll admit when a kid on a moped hit me. More specifically, he hit my wrist. He crushed my poor wrist between the tail fin of an aging Cadillac, Eldorado and his handle bar, which was traveling at a nice clip.

  I don't remember the instant of impact because I went into semiconsciouness during it or shortly afterward. I awoke to see some pendulous breasts in a scanty halter swaying over me. It probably would have been a great view under other circumstances. The spectators ohhhed and ahhhed at me. I rose into a sitting position and looked at my hand. The back was gashed open and bleeding; it looked like a slab of barbequed pork. That would heal in a few days without difficulty. It was when I tried to move the fingers that the pain got interesting. It was the deep-down, systemic pain—the kind you feel go up the very center of your arm into your I brain—that told me it was serious. The damage was not of the muscles or ligaments. Bones were broken. Of this I was certain as I tried to close my hand. The Cadillac's tail fin was badly dented. Old Knucklebrain on the moped had dealt both me and the car a good one. Except the car couldn't feel it. I moaned and was helped to my feet. Soon thereafter I came face to face with my accidental assailant, who'd also been injured—in a regrettably minor fashion—as he tumbled to the parking lot concrete after maiming me. His name turned out I to be Jeremy Knobbs. Now is it any wonder that a guy so cursed in nomenclature would run down innocent pedestrians in parking lots?

  I was in frankly awful pain, but refused assistance, not out of stoicism, but because I wanted to get home to Mary fast. She is a registered nurse. I wanted Mary. I wanted to cuddle my head into that deep Calabrian bosom and get sympathy. I wanted her to kiss me and say it was going to be all right.

  * * *

  "It looks pretty bad, Charlie," she said after looking at the left mitt for about four seconds. "This hurt?"

  I let out a scream like the charging bull elephant in the movie Ivory Hunters. Then I picked myself off the floor and wiped the thick rope of saliva from my mouth.

  "Hu1t, huh? You've broken at least one bone, maybe more. Let's get back to Concord, now. I'll pack the arm in ice; then put on a sling—"

  Don't remember much about the ride back to Concord. Two hours after entering Emerson Hospital's emergency room, Dr. Bryce Henshaw, noted orthopedic surgeon whom I'd never heard of (but was on call that night), was troweling a thick coat of plaster over the left wrist, now immobilized by la metal brace and insensitized by a big jolt of procaine. Colleagues and associates who know us stopped by to offer condolences. Didn't seem to help. Went home. Big drink. Felt better.

  Next morning I got a call from Jeremy Knobbs's father. His name was Jeremy too. It figured. It wasn't a good way to begin the day. I was quick to realize that I could not ply my trade as oral surgeon with one arm in a cast, and stood to lose a lot of dough. I was not overly fond of Jeremy Knobbs after what he'd done to me. After arranging with the senior Knobbs to speak with various attorneys and insurance personnel, I rang off and sulked.

  "Mary, I'm going down to the library and check out a book before I meet with Jeremy Knobbs. I want to do a little research so I'll know exactly how to handle this."

  "That's a good idea. What's the name of the book?"

  "Ancient Assyrian Tortures."

  "Oh Charlie, get off it. It was an accident. Also, you weren't looking where you were going, you admitted that."

  I rubbed my new cast and groaned. "If the kid had had any sense at all he wouldn't have been flying through that lot. It was an accident but it was his fault."

  "You're not really going to get a book on tortures are you? Why are you going to the library really?"

  "I'm going to get some fiction. God knows I'll have plenty of time on my hands—er, my hand—now that I'm unemployed. And I was thinking of researching tortures, if for no other reason than to soothe my troubled spirit."

  "Speaking of tortures, I once heard that crucifixion was the worst ever."

  "I've considered crucifixion for young Jeremy Knobbs. But I rejected it."

  "On religious grounds?"

  "Nah. Too swift."

  CHAPTER FOUR

  I PICKED UP the phone.

  I was in a better frame of mind. Slightly. My insurance, for which I pay a small fortune, would adequately cover lost revenues caused by the injury. Additionally, I was pleased to discover that the policy—especially designed for surgeons—also provided for a sizeable cash settlement for any incapacitating injury to the hands, regardless of prognosis of recovery.

  So I had eight weeks of paid vacation until my wrist mended which would happen, I was assured—and enough cash to pay for the Ella Hatton, which we'd bought earlier in the spring. I could grasp with my left hand slightly, despite the cast.

  Still, I was in pain and irritated at my forced idleness. Young Jeremy was fortunate indeed to have escaped my wrath. I dialed the number given to me by directory assistance. It rang twice and a woman answered. I asked for Mr. Babcock.

  "Mr. Babcock? Is this Mr. Jack Babcock of Newport?"

  "Yeah it's me. Who's this?"

  "Mr. Babcock, I'd like to buy your boat."

  "Who is this?"

  "Name is Adams, Charles Adams. Do you own a boat, sir?"

  "Yes but she's not for sale. That is. . .uh. . .unless you'd like to talk about it, I guess."

  Obviously business was booming for Babcock, as it was for almost all independent fishermen in New England. No doubt five grand down and a promissory note and I could become a skipper tomorrow, and Babcock could get another job with a bright financial future, like dispensing detergent in the local Laundromat.

  "Didn't I see your boat up in Wellfleet the other day?"

  "Nope. Never been up there. I'm out of Newport."

  "Oh. What's your vessel's name, may I ask?"

  "She's the Penelope. Hate the name. Wife's dear—"

  "Uh. . .I must have it confused with another—can you quickly describe the boat please? Then I'll leave you alone."

  "Sure. Sixty-two feet, white with red gunnels. Built in Gulfport, Mississippi, six years ago. Twin Cummins diesels—"

  "Oh sorry, you know I made a mistake. It must have been another Penelope I saw."

  "She's a beaut, no foolin'. Besides the engines she's got loran and radar. Long-range VHF radio. Four berths. I could transfer the mortgage and—"

  I called the other six in the course of the day. Four times I spoke with the wife since the owner was out fishing. The only two vessels that could possibly match the boat I saw in Wellfleet were far away; one in Bath, Maine, the other in Elizabethtown on Martha's Vineyard. I was impressed by the statistics I had copied from Merc
hant Vessels too; the descriptions offered by the skippers and their wives matched the figures in the book very closely.

  Next I called the Massachusetts Boat Registry. It didn't take more than a few seconds to discover there was no boat of Penelope's description registered in the state. There was a sailboat named Penelope out of Rockport. That was it. So much for that.

  Since it was late, I decided to check the USCG Regional HQ next morning. I went in person. Driving Mary's Audi with my cast was easy since there was no gearshift to contend with. I parked in the lot behind the Boston Garden, walked by North Station, through the Garden, and found myself on Causeway Street. It's a typical Boston street: dirty, noisy, crowded and charming. The Green Line trolley tracks run over it, just like the way the El tracks cover Wabash Street in Chicago. I heard the rattle of the trolley and the cooing of millions of pigeons. It seems you never see baby pigeons or pigeon nests, and you hardly ever come across a dead one either. They must spring up spontaneously from breadcrumbs or something and disappear into thin air when they kick the bucket.

  I entered the big headquarters building. On the fourth floor I found Lieutenant Commander James Ruggles. To my surprise, he had Penelope's documentation certificate in front of me in less than ten minutes. Well, it seemed to wrap up the little puzzle. I asked Ruggles if he could give me the owner's name and address so I could contact him. He stared at the page.

  "New vessel,. Penelope, noncommercial vessel—"

  "Noncommercial?"

  "Yup. What it says. Built this year. Hailing port is Gloucester. Officially that's the port that should be on the vessel. Penelope is technically in violation."

  Then that explained everything. It explained the grounding, I as suggested by McNab at the Nauset station: new boat, new skipper. It explained even the rather bizarre behavior of the boat and her crew once inside the harbor. Finally, it explained Penelope's absence from Merchant Vessels.

  "Who's the owner?"

  Ruggles hesitated a second.

  "Why do you want the name. I'm obliged to provide it, but mind if I ask?"

  I quickly told him about Allan's death, and my desire to lay at least some of the guilt to rest. He listened keenly and with patience, then looked back to the papers on his blotter. He rubbed his chin with his fingertips.