Billingsgate Shoal

by Rick Boyer

  Shortly after three-thirty we were entering the breakwater at Plymouth. We slid around in the big harbor for an hour while I glassed everything in sight from Whimsea's cabin, looking for anything interesting or unusual. We went over to the smaller harbor of Duxbury with the same negative results. Then we cruised around the north side of the big bay across from North Plymouth. I showed Jim the Cowyard, Gray's Beach, and where I'd seen the Rose. We went in real close to the big cordage pier where the draggers were tied up. The boats floated on the still brown water. A man on the wharf came out of a warehouse underneath a big corrugated steel door. He was wheeling a dolly with steel wheels on it. The cart was piled high with cartons and the steel wheels made a racket on the concrete. That was all that was happening.

  "Big deal," said Jim.

  "Yeah I know."

  Then we heard the faint clacking of a solenoid and another big steel door began rolling upward in the brick building. A lift truck whispered out, holding crates aloft on its pincers. A man in a yellow helmet was driving it. The crates said Ocean Spray on the sides.

  "This is so exciting I can't stand it."

  "Let's swing by close, then go into town and get some bait."

  We crawled right up to the big pier and watched the few figures moving back and forth along it, We were close enough for me to glimpse a grisly relic strung up alongside the Cyclone fence that marked the terminus of the big dock. I hadn't noticed it on my previous visit; It was a codfish head, cut off right behind the gills, suspended on the fence with a stevedore's hook. It was as big as a bushel basket. Flies swarmed over it.

  "Will you look at that. Must've been a five-footer," said Jim. "Why do you suppose they've done that with it?"

  He shrugged and spun the wheel lazily in his big hands. He eased the sticks forward and the engine whined.

  "Dunno. Trophy maybe. Or else it's a warning to stay out of the yards when the gate's shut."

  It was a grim reminder, and I thought of Angel's face staring at me from the oven rack. We picked up speed and soon landed at the main marina, where I bought Jim an early supper (apparently the entire trip, not just the fuel, was to be courtesy of Yours Truly) and we fueled the Whimsea's tanks and bought an ample supply of quahogs. These would be affixed to heavy hooks and dragged slowly (or simply rested) on the mollusk beds around the James Longstreet, a tempting treat for tautogs and other fish. While we waited for dusk prepared the bait, shucking it from the shells and cutting it into convenient-sized nuggets. We sucked down some of the St. Pauli Girl beer we'd brought along and listened to the radio. I was hunkered down in the cockpit out of the breeze so I removed my shirt, soaking up the last precious bit of sun,-even though it was thoroughly filtered by clouds. Jim pored over the charts of Cape Cod Bay.

  Dusk came, and we left Plymouth Harbor.

  We rolled out past the big break water again. A line of herring gulls stood on it, beaks to the breeze, most with one foot tucked up in their tummy feathers. They said skirl, skirl, skirl . . .

  When we got to the James Longstreet the sun had been down forty minutes. It was growing dark fast. The old wreck looked more ominous than I'd ever seen it. Its bridge looked like a giant hunk of brown Swiss cheese. The hull was partially collapsed in the middle, where a lot of the steel reinforcing rods were visible, entwined in the concrete hull. The fly-boys from Otis were pretty good shots, I guessed. They'd nailed the old Liberty Ship right in the belly. In fact the midsection of the old hull was so full of holes and cave-ins that occasionally you could see clear through it to the dark bluish purple of the water on the other side. We crept in close; I DeGroot had his eyes glued to the fathometer fastened above the helm. It was a black box with a dial in the center, marked in feet and meters. A blip showed on the dial at zero feet, which was where the sound signal was emitted from Whimsea via a metal sounder in her hull. Another blip was appearing on the dial opposite the sixteen-foot mark. Whimsea rolled and lurched forward; the wreck loomed bigger and bigger. Suddenly the blip jumped back and forth, and settled up toward its mate at the zero end of the dial.

  "Shit!" said Jim as he reversed and throttled up. But it was too late. There was a thump and a shudder, and then a slow heavy scraping sound. Whimsea stopped. It was falling tide; if we didn't get moving soon, we'd be there for the duration. Jim and I ran a flashlight all around the inside of the hull. Nothing. That was good at least. We had been going slow enough and reacted soon enough so that the boat was sill in one piece.

  "What was it?"

  "Dunno. But it was dumb to come in here. Why the hell do I listen to you? I suppose this place is full of shoals and rocks that aren't marked. Maybe they're big hunks of the James Longstreet, who knows? Of course it's not supposed to matter because we're not supposed to be here. And if the CG has to haul us off, we're going to look mighty silly and get fined to boot."

  He gunned the engine once more, making the needle on the tachometer approach the red line. There was a grinding shudder as the propwash worked the boat loose. We shot backward and Jim cut the twin engines back.

  "I'm not going back in there. It's a labyrinth of obstacles around that hulk."

  So I talked him into letting me use the life raft. We inflated it with the compressed air bottle and soon I was in it, bobbing and rowing along to the old Liberty Ship. I got there quickly; the little rubber boat flipped right along over the nasty stuff that projected up from the sandy bottom. It wasn't hard to figure out how the Penelope tore a gash in her steel skin. Up close, the topsides of the ship loomed over me like a three-story apartment building. I paddled along toward the series of big holes in her beam. I looked back at the Whimsea. Jim hadn't set the hook, but was purring along in a semi-stall two hundred yards off the Longstreet's port quarter. The boat's shape was faint, and growing fainter in the darkness and light fog. I could see her running lights clearly, that was about all.

  I reached out and touched the Longstreet. I felt the rough concrete with my hand, and grabbed a projecting steel reinforcing rod and pulled the rubber raft along to the first big hole. The seawater poured through this, and I glided into the bowels of the ship. It was like being in an old wrecked cathedral. The superstructure of the bridge towered above me, black and ragged against the dark purple sky. All the portholes were devoid of glass, which had no doubt been blown out long ago by the concussion of. the bombs. It was like a giant corpse with all its eyes poked out. Generally, it wasn't inviting, and the cold and the dark, and the sound of sloshing water, did not improve it either.

  I took the waterproof spotlight and swept it around. There were plenty of nooks and crannies to hide anything your heart desired inside the old hulk of the Longstreet. There were bent railings, blown-away doors, exposed corridors, old hatchways, smashed and twisted bulkheads, Ventilating ducts, stanchions, wells, supporting members—it was a maze of pulverized concrete and twisted, rusty steel. I shined a flashbeam all around me. I saw nothing out of place though. No crates, plastic-wrapped bundles, or anything else that caught my eye. I heard two quick beeps. Jim was telling me he wanted to split. I rowed out through the big hole and started back to the Whimsea, which was now almost totally invisible. The chop had picked up, and the tiny raft pitched around uncomfortably. I heard another boat and saw a set of running lights sweep past out behind the Whimsea.

  "See anything?" asked Jim as he helped me back aboard. I told him, and he told me another boat had been snaking around in the prohibited zone.

  "Maybe they thought Whimsea was in trouble."

  "They didn't say anything. Just cut around me in a wide circle and left. Blue hull, white topsides. About our size. Let's get on back while we can still see our hands in front of our faces."

  We slid and rolled a bit all the way back to Plymouth in the following sea. We used the compass and RDF a lot because of the poor visibility. We passed the outer light at the end of the breakwater and turned to port when we approached Bug Light in the harbor's middle, then made our way slowly back toward the marina. During my visi
t to the target ship, Jim had caught a tautog, which we cleaned and wrapped in foil. We got a slip at the yacht club's pier; at this time of year there were plenty available. We had a nightcap and turned in. It was one-thirty in the morning. After ten minutes DeGroot was sawing logs. I lay in the upper bunk, my head inches from the wooden cabin top. I heard the very faint patter of light drizzle begin on the roof. I tossed and turned. I rolled on my side and looked down at Jim. He was sleeping like a baby, that big Dutch head immobile on the foam rubber pillow covered with a canvas print of code flags and buoys.

  Jim had a basic calmness and world view which allowed him to march through life with minimal distraction and regret. He had enough Nordic discipline and stubbornness to shrug aside doubt and reluctance. I admired this, perhaps because I was a bit the opposite. Though never lacking in self-confidence, I seemed to view the world as a series of booby traps, a labyrinthine obstacle course of surprises and gross injustices, complete with Minotaurs at strategic locations., Whimsea swayed and rocked ever so slightly; the faint patter of light rain increased. Hell, I should go to sleep in no time. Should. . .

  I slid out of the rack, opened the rear doorway and climbed the three steps up to the cockpit deck. I stood there just outside the door under the overhang of the cabin roof. I felt, well, wistful.

  I had been conked on the head and thrown in the drink, attacked twice, been gnawed on by a dog, had a pistol held to the nape of my neck, my hand broken, my wife mad at me, my dog killed, my kids perhaps in danger, two people killed, and all I had to show for it was standing out in a twenty-eight-foot motorboat in the rain. Somehow it lacked something.

  "Somehow it lacks something," I murmured to myself.

  I wanted an answer.

  I went back into the cabin and pulled on a pair of blue jeans, a long-sleeved jersey, and a navy blue turtleneck sweater over that. I put on thick wool socks of navy blue and my Topsiders. I pulled a dark wool watch cap down over my head. My beard, now almost luxuriant, was mostly black. I liked the way it broke up my face and covered the light outline of my jaw.

  I put my wallet in my hip pocket. If the police saw the Midnight Skulker slinking around the docks, they'd want to know who in hell he was, especially clad like a cat-burglar.

  The note I wrote said:

  2 A.M. Went over to cordage pier in N. Plymouth.

  Should be back by 4 A.M., if not, raise hell.

  Doc.

  I left this smack in the middle of my pillow, set the alarm for 4 A.M., and left. I was unarmed except for my folding hunter knife, which I had slipped into my jeans rather than wearing it on my belt in its leather pouch. My Bull-Barrel was at home. Anyway, I had the feeling it had brought me bad luck before. The only other thing I carried was a flashlight, a black steel one that was waterproof, and pretty hefty. The pier was lighted with overhead lamps in steel reflectors spaced about thirty feet apart. I strolled along nonchalantly. If anyone asked, I was out for a midnight walk, which of course was true. Off to my right at .the state pier I could see the Mayflower II, and at the pier's base the Doric stone mini-temple housing Plymouth Rock, a bathtub-sized boulder upon which John Winthrop, Miles Standish, and Company set foot when they landed in the New World—or so they say.

  I ambled on and passed the shopping center with its clam joints, bait and tackle shops, the souvenir stands complete with carved wooden sea captains (hand-carved in the Philippines), ships in bottles (made in Macao), Yankee scrimshaw (plastic, made in Taiwan), miniature whaling harpoons (Hecho en Mexico), and little brass ship's lamps (from India). It was very American.

  I broke into a slow, determined jog when I hit Water Street. While a lone walker might be arrested at two in the morning, a solitary jogger is admired. In about fifteen minutes I was in North Plymouth, at the gateway to Cordage Park. I was stumped right away; the big outer gate was closed and chained. Four strands of barbed wire guarded its top; and ran along the top of the entire tall Cyclone fence that enclosed the park. But I noticed a small stream that cut beneath the road and made its way, encased in concrete banks, into the park. It obviously emptied into the harbor. Where the creek, road, and tall fence met was a bridge railing of metal pipe. But the fence ran along both sides of the concrete bank.

  Nevertheless I had a vague hunch that if I could work my way fifty yards or so down the creek the fence would be less formidable. I ducked under the bridge railing and saw the dark water sliding by. It gurgled around light-colored rocks, old logs, pieces of old wire fencing, and junk. No headlights approached on the road. I lowered myself gingerly down onto one of the rocks, and step-stoned my way the first twenty feet. Then a low, mucky ledge of slime formed at a slow bend, and I tested it, walked on it. It didn't smell so great but it held me up. I kept my eyes on the Cyclone fencing just above my head. I waded in shallow water that was cold and stinky the last forty feet until I saw the fence bow out. There was a four-foot gap in it at the top of the concrete river channel. I grabbed the top of this wall and drew myself up under the fence. The outer fence had been breached. But there remained the inner one, which had appeared to be pretty tight indeed when I saw it previously.

  There were lights on here and there in the complex of buildings. The nearby buildings were newer than the others, small wooden things with sloping shingled roofs. They resembled houses. Behind them were several huge warehouse-type sheds, then the really big buildings on and near the wharf that comprised the old factory. The entire place was absolutely still and deserted. For all its size I would have been surprised if there were no night watchmen. I left the side of the fence and waited between two small spruce trees for a few minutes. My feet were turning to ice. Nothing happening. As Jim and I had seen, the wharf was hardly Grand Central Station during working hours. At night it was like the innermost chamber of Tutankhanien's tomb. I kept in the shadows and skirted the edge of the park where no lights shone. If someone had been watching me I would certainly be visible, but they'd have to be looking. I didn't think anyone was.

  I crept up alongside a building and. looked at the inner fence, the one that sealed off most of the big cordage factory and wharf from all the other parts of the park. The gate, open wide in the day, was slid shut on its roller track, wound with heavy chain and padlocked. This fence, too, was topped with barbed wire. The place resembled Concord Prison, except the wire was strung straight on slanted brackets instead of being wound in giant spirals, concertina fashion. I stood in the dark and shivered and looked at the big fence. It looked tight as a bloated tick. It ended against the wall of a smaller brick building at the far end of the factory, toward the south. I walked along this deserted stretch of fencing, around the small building, and saw that it was perched on a sea wall about twelve feet high. It was low tide and the flats extended along this wall and—believe it or not—led all the way back to the park on the sea side. So the way to penetrate these fences was to do so where they met the water. I climbed over the parapet, hung by the top of the wall with my good arm,. and dropped a few feet to the soft sandy muck. I then walked around the sea wall, under the low building, and up on the beach. I had simply walked around the fence. Of course it meant that at high tide I was trapped in the complex. But I still had a few hours to look around before the water came in. From the narrow beach, littered with flotsam, it was a short walk up to the roadway that ran around the factory on the harbor side and connected with all the courtyards and delivery routes on the other side. There were no lights on this side, but the whole place was sparsely illuminated by the water and overcast sky, which cast a faint metallic glow onto the buildings. An enormous vertical black cylinder was fastened to this side of the factory wall, with many big pipes issuing from it. It looked like a boiler tank, and probably was. Some of the pipes ran along the wall at waist level. I thumped one with my knuckle. Heavy cast iron. They were for steam all right, or had been once upon a time. They snaked all over the complex from building to building. They climbed walls, traversed rooftops, over courtyards, went into, under, over,
through buildings, sheds, and abutments.

  I walked along this narrow roadway that fronted the harborside. The big building was to my left. It was about four hundred feet long. At its end I found myself on the main roadway that led from the wharf and its warehouse all the way through the old factory complex, through the rest of what was called Cordage Park, and out to the highway. I saw the fence I had just circumvented. I walked up to it and peered through at the rest of the huge buildings on the other side of it. The roadway went straight ahead, and I saw the familiar series of courtyards created by U-shaped wings of the big factory buildings that opened off to one side of the road. Each courtyard was surrounded on three sides by walls six stories high. Big black pipes and high voltage wires crisscrossed these courtyards overhead.

  I planted my fanny on an old truck tire and thought for a minute. It sure didn't seem as if there was much going on. A sound reached me from several courtyards down the narrow service road. It was an engine grinding away. I supposed it to be some kind of generator or cooling, compressor. It sounded just like a semi-trailer truck idling at a truck stop. I rose up and walked toward the wharf. The end of the fence came back again and snaked around its far side. I noticed a foul stench as I walked, and saw the dark object stuck on the Cyclone wire. I remembered the severed codfish head, and went up to it. It was the biggest fish head I'd ever seen. The big eyes were gone, eaten out by maggots. All that remained were two holes as big as tennis balls in the leathery carapace of the skull. The mouth was bucket-shaped, like a bass's. The big hook came up through the lower jaw. The fish, when alive, could have swallowed a bowling ball without knowing it.

  I walked out to the wharf on the service road, the one Jim and I had seen the lift truck on, the same one that I'd spied the blue van on. Behind me the road went into the factory complex and the courtyards of the big buildings. I saw big dark shapes on the water. Four of them. The draggers sat stone still in the shallow water. There were no lights aboard them, not even little sparks on the spars, or cabin lights. Nothing. The wharf too was dark. I crept along the building, passing the big corrugated steel doors. There were small swing doors in between each one. There was a fifth boat behind the four big ones, a small cruiser. And I'd be damned if she didn't have a blue hull, white topsides. I moved slower now, keeping snugly against the warehouse wall on my right. The light was faint on this side of the buildings, the north side, and I knew I was invisible in the shadows in my dark clothes. When I was abreast the little boat I looked down at her for a long time. She was quiet and dark. It was too dark to read her bow numbers and I didn't dare show a light, so I sat and tried to remember things about her. I had been gazing and thinking for a few minutes when I saw a flickering motion out of the side of my left eye. I looked down toward the foot of the long dock and could see nothing; it was all dark. Then, looking back at the boat, the flickering came back. In dim light you can see much better out of the sides of your eyes than dead ahead. This is because the area of your retina where the image is focused is also the point on the retina where the optic nerve enters. Consequently it is almost devoid of the light-sensitive rod and cone cells.