Salvage

by Stephen Maher

  Mayor stared back, then looked out the window and picked up his pen. “Okey-dokey,” he said. “My bad. In that case, I’ll tell you you’re a damn fool to have risked yourself in that way.”

  He turned back to Scarnum and smiled — the same charming, warm smile he had used earlier. “But I’m glad to have the payday.”

  Mayor switched on the recorder. “There,” he said. “That’s better. Now. Please continue.”

  When Scarnum finished telling how he went aboard the Kelly Lynn at the mooring and checked that there was no corpse aboard, Mayor kept his head down, scribbling.

  “Thank you,” he said finally. “That concludes the statement of Phillip Scarnum,” and he gave the date and time and switched the recorder off.

  “OK,” he said and pushed the pad across to Scarnum. “Read that, please, and see if it’s all right. Meanwhile, let me do a registry search on the Kelly Lynn.”

  He turned to his computer and did some typing while Scarnum read.

  He had the answer before Scarnum finished and was waiting for him with an odd expression on his face when Scarnum signed and dated the bottom of the statement.

  “It’s SeaWater,” said Mayor bluntly. “It’s one of Falkenham’s boats.”

  Scarnum stared at him, expressionless, but his cheeks flushed.He sat mute until the lawyer started to babble nervously, reading the entry.

  “Fishing vessel Kelly Lynn, registered by SeaWater in 2004, forty feet, built at Thibodeau’s Shipyard.”

  Scarnum interrupted him. “Where’s your bathroom at?” he asked him.

  Mayor stood to show the way, but Scarnum interrupted him again, lifting his hand. “I’ll find it,” he said, holding up his hand. “I’ll be right back.”

  Then he walked outside, without glancing at the receptionist, and stood on the porch of the little house and smoked a cigarette.

  When the cigarette was done, he walked back in with a rigid smile on his face. He nodded to the receptionist and stepped back into Mayor’s office.

  “All right then,” he said, smiling. “It’s one of Falkenham’s boats. That should make it easier to get paid. Man’s got no money problems I know about.”

  Mayor turned on the big smile again, standing as Scarnum came in. “You got that right,” he said. “That should make this easier.”

  He looked at his watch. “I might even get their people on the phone this afternoon. Why don’t you go back home and keep an eye on that boat? I’ll give you a call when I know what’s what.”

  Scarnum smiled back. “All right,” he said, “though I gave my phone a dunking last night. Tell you what, give Charlie a call and leave a message. I’ll call you back.”

  Mayor stood to shake Scarnum’s hand. Scarnum thanked him and turned to go but stopped in the doorway, with his back to the lawyer.

  Mayor said, “I’ll try to get this done quick and clean. Don’t expect to have to bother you much.”

  Scarnum turned back to him, without a trace of a smile. “Yeah,” he said, gazing past Mayor, out the window, his face stiff, his mouth pursed. “I don’t want to have to talk to Falkenham. I’d rather tow the fucking boat back out to the ledges and leave it where I found it than have anything to do with him.”

  Mayor laughed nervously. “That shouldn’t be necessary,” he said. “This is pretty straightforward.”

  On the way home, Scarnum stopped at the liquor store and got himself a quart of Crown Royal.

  Charlie was puttering in the yard, waiting for news. He appeared to have a witticism he wanted to share, but when he saw Scarnum’s face, and the brown liquor store bag in his hand, he bit his tongue.

  “It’s one of Falkenham’s boats,” said Scarnum. “Lawyer says we ought to keep an eye on her, not let anyone get aboard her.”

  Charlie stared at him. Scarnum offered a thin smile. “Suggested if you see any strange cars pulling up you ought to do some rat hunting.”

  Charlie laughed. “I believe it is rat season,” he said. “Been thinking it was time for a rodent roundup.”

  “Lawyer’s gonna call when he has news,” said Scarnum. “I’m going down to my boat for a time.”

  “All right, partner,” said Charlie, and he watched his friend slink down to the wharf.

  When Charlie came down an hour later and knocked on the side of the boat, Scarnum was sitting at the salon table with a glass and an ashtray, listening to Hank Williams. A third of the whisky was already gone.

  Scarnum got up and opened the hatch. His face was puffy, his hair was mussed, and his eyes were red.

  Charlie was grinning on the dock, holding his ball cap in his hand. “I hate to interrupt your getting drunk,” he said, “but the lady of the house wonders if you’d like to join us for a bowl of chowder.”

  “No b’y,” said Scarnum. “Tell Annabelle thanks, but I’m more thirsty than hungry, if you know what I mean.”

  Charlie giggled. “I might know exactly what you mean, you old fucker,” he said. “I’m thirsty meself.”

  “Lord fuck,” said Scarnum, stepping back with an exaggerated sweep of his arm. “Come the fuck down, then, and have a drink of whisky, you old saltwater cowboy.”

  Charlie grinned. “By the Jesus, that’s some kind of you, Phillip,” he said. “I’d be too shy to ask, of course, but since you’re kind enough to offer, I’d love to have a wee taste of your whisky.”

  As he climbed into the cabin, he noted the level of the whisky in the bottle. “B’y, I’ll thank you for the drink tonight, but tomorrow you’ll thank me for taking it,” he said.

  “Why’s that?” said Scarnum, digging out a glass and pouring his friend two fingers of rye.

  “’Cause you won’t be quite so fucking hungover,” said Charlie, and he held up his glass for a toast. “To the Kelly Lynn.”

  Scarnum joined the toast and drained the whisky in his glass. He poured himself another three fingers.

  “Seemed to me I should help you celebrate your salvage,” said Charlie. “Pretty fucking good going, me son.”

  “Yuh,” said Scarnum, nodding. “I just wish it wasn’t one of Falkenham’s boats.”

  Charlie nodded into his whisky. “Yes b’y,” he said. “I wouldn’t think you’d want anything to do with him, but then again, what the fuck’s it matter whose boat it is?”

  He fixed Scarnum with a steely gaze. “What matters is that you’re going to get paid,” he said. “This’ll change your life, Phillip. You ought to get a good payday from that old boat. A serious payday. What’s she worth? Near two hundred, I’d guess. They won’t give you that much, but it ought to be a fair piece, since she’d be smashed to shit if you hadn’t hauled her off the rocks.”

  Scarnum grinned at him, but his eyes weren’t smiling.

  “You want to, you could get a bigger boat to live on,” said Charlie. “Christ, you could buy a fucking house with that kind of money, if you wanted, use Orion the way most people use their boats — take it out for a sail on a nice day, week or two of holidays out the bay. You could settle down some if you want. Christ, you’re not too old to start a family.”

  Charlie stopped his little speech when he looked up at Scarnum’s face and saw that his smile had turned into a scowl. His jaw was set and his eyes were cold.

  “I told Mayor that I’d rather haul the fucking thing back out to where I found it than talk to Falkenham,” he said.

  Charlie laughed and Scarnum took a gulp of whisky. “I told him seven years ago that if he ever showed his fucking face down here I’d cut him open like a flounder,” he said. “And I haven’t changed my mind on that.”

  “As I recall,” said Charlie, “we haven’t seen him down here since.”

  “No,” said Scarnum, “and every time I see him in town, he turns around and walks the other way. That’s the way I fucking like it.”

  “I’d say he got the message,” said Charlie. “So what are you going to do with the money? Mayor give you any idea how much it might be?”

  Scarnum was
gazing out the porthole. “You have no idea,” he said, and he turned to look at Charlie. “You have no idea how much I regret not killing him when I caught him with Karen.”

  His hands knotted into fists on the table in front of him. “I could have smashed his fucking face in, and I don’t think a jury’d a convicted me. Hard to convict someone of beating a man when he catches him fucking his woman. Maybe they’d a got me on manslaughter, put me inside for a year or two. But I’d a got out, he’d still be dead and Karen would be back in Toronto, and I’d be able to walk down the street without the risk of running into either of them.” He drained his whisky and looked out at the bay.

  Charlie looked down at his glass. “Phillip, old buddy,” he said. “I’m no Doctor Phil, but I’m not sure that you’re demonstrating the, uh, healthiest mental outlook here, me son.”

  Scarnum fixed him with a hard look, then broke into a grin. Then he started laughing hard. Charlie joined him, giggling.

  “No b’y,” said Scarnum. “I believe you might be right.”

  He held up his glass, toasted Charlie, and knocked it back. “That’s what the whisky’s for,” he said and winked.

  The sun hadn’t quite set when Charlie climbed out of Orion and made his way up to the house, where Annabelle was waiting for him.

  Alone on the boat, Scarnum drank the rest of the whisky, until he was in a stupor. He vomited in the head and fell asleep fully dressed on his V-berth.

  Scarnum was awake, with a terrible headache, a mouth like sandpaper, and a bursting bladder at 4:00 a.m.

  He emptied his bladder in the cramped head, grabbed a cup of water and a smoke, and went on deck.

  Hunched over in the cockpit, drinking his water and smoking his cigarette, he looked out over the inky waters of the Back Harbour — the black silhouettes of the moored boats against the dark grey of the water, which dimly reflected the porch lights from the houses along the other shore of the bay.

  All in all, he thought, things could be worse. A few Tylenol, a few quarts of water, and another few hours of sleep, and he’d probably feel all right by the time the sun came up. And what did he care if he’d salvaged Falkenham’s boat? His money was as good as anyone’s.

  Scarnum was spending the money in his head when he saw the fellow in the canoe.

  He was paddling straight up the bay, toward the Kelly Lynn, paddling very carefully, using what they called the “Indian stroke,” the quietest way of moving a canoe, without even lifting the paddle out of the water.

  Without thinking about it, Scarnum found himself cupping his cigarette in his hand to hide the glow. He pinched the heater between his fingers and dropped the smoke in the water. Careful to keep his silhouette low, he crept off his boat and onto the dock. He moved, bent at the waist, along the dock to the corner nearest the Kelly Lynn. He stepped onto Charlie’s old wooden Cape Islander and crouched behind the wheelhouse and peeked up through the window and watched the canoeist paddle up the bay. Scarnum couldn’t see the man’s face, but he could see that he was wearing dark clothes, and he could see that he knew how to paddle a canoe.

  The man steered the canoe on the far side of the Kelly Lynn and then behind the boat. Scarnum could see the man looking along the docks before he paddled the canoe toward the stern.

  Scarnum ducked his head down and looked around. At his feet was an old marine battery — the size of a car battery. It had a plastic carry strap on top and a tangle of wires coming from its terminals. Scarnum yanked the wires loose. He hefted the battery, jumped up onto the dock, and swung it back and forth in his arm. He ran a few steps back down the dock, then turned and ran to the end, swinging the battery back behind him like a bowling ball as he ran. At the end of the dock he let it fly, aiming it at the canoeist, who was holding on to the stern of the Kelly Lynn and getting up, ready to board.

  The man in the canoe turned at the noise just as the battery glanced off the stern of the canoe and hit the water with a splash. The canoe turned in the water and the man was knocked on his arse to the bottom of the canoe.

  “Get off my fucking boat, you cocksucker,” Scarnum bellowed. He looked around for something else to throw and spied an old plastic bucket filled with rusty nuts and bolts. He dug in and whiffed one at the canoeist, who was now scrambling for his paddle.

  The bolt hit him in the back as he started to paddle hard down the bay.

  “You like that, you cocksucker?” bellowed Scarnum. “What do you want with my fucking boat?”

  Scarnum’s next throws missed, and the canoeist was soon behind the Kelly Lynn and out of sight.

  The light in Charlie’s house went on and Scarnum knew the old man would soon be out.

  By then, though, the canoeist would be long gone. Scarnum jumped into Charlie’s twelve-foot aluminum runabout and cranked on the little two-horsepower outboard. It was a temperamental old two-stroke Evinrude, and he had to fiddle with the mixture knob and choke and crank it a few dozen times before it coughed to life.

  By the time he headed off down the bay after the canoeist, he could see Charlie walking down to the dock, wearing his pajamas and rubber boots, with his flashlight in one hand and a shotgun cradled over his forearm.

  Scarnum gave him a wave and opened up the Evinrude and took off down the bay. The canoeist was hammering the water now, paddling hard, switching from side to side, aimed for a rocky beach near the mouth of the little bay. Scarnum might have caught him but the damn Evinrude sputtered out after a few minutes and Scarnum had to fiddle with the mixture knob again before it would start.

  By the time he was moving again the man in the canoe had too much of a head start. Scarnum watched him jump from the canoe onto the rocks and run up to an SUV parked in the shadows. As Scarnum’s boat approached the shore, he saw the tail lights of the SUV take off down Walker’s Road.

  Scarnum tied the canoe onto the stern of the aluminum boat and motored back to the dock, where Charlie sat waiting, sipping a can of Keith’s. Another one sat on the wharf next to him. The shotgun was cradled across his knees.

  “Holy Jesus, b’y,” he said as Scarnum tied up the aluminum boat. “Two salvages in three days.”

  Scarnum laughed and sat next to the other man. He opened the beer and drank half of it one long swallow. His hands, he noticed, where shaking.

  “Holy fuck,” he said. “That was fucking weird.”

  They sat in silence for a minute.

  “Fellow wanted to get aboard the Kelly Lynn, did he?” said Charlie.

  “Yuh,” said Scarnum. “He come up the bay in his canoe, paddling along very quietly. I was up having a piss and a drink of water when I spied him. So I snuck up and watched him from behind the wheelhouse of the Martha Kate.”

  He turned to look at Charlie. “I owe you a new battery.”

  Charlie cackled. “Don’t tell me you threw my hundred-dollar deep cycle marine battery at the cocksucker in the canoe, did you?”

  Scarnum grinned. “Time you got a new one, anyways. When I get my cheque for the Kelly Lynn, I’ll buy you ten batteries.”

  “So, did you hit the fucker?” said Charlie.

  “No, but I hit the canoe and scared the fucker off,” said Scarnum. “And I did hit him with a five-inch nut from that bucket, right in the middle of the back. I’d a caught him, too, if that old Evinrude woulda started. That’s what I’ll buy you, a new Honda for your runabout.”

  Charlie, who loved old American motors, scowled. “I don’t want no fucking Honda,” he said. “That Evinrude always starts for me. It’s just you fucking Newfies who don’t know how to run them.”

  Scarnum told him how the man in the canoe had gotten away in an SUV but had left the canoe floating in the water.

  They walked over to look at it, Charlie shining the flashlight on it. “Nice canoe to leave floating in the bay,” he said.

  It was a seventeen-foot Old Town Kevlar back country canoe — worth thousands of dollars.

  Charlie shone the light inside the canoe. “Lookee here,�
� he said and bent at the waist. Inside, under the bow seat, there was a stack of vinyl bags. Charlie pulled them out and dropped them on the dock. On the floor of the canoe, under the bags, there was a silver half-pint flask in a leather case.

  Charlie passed it to Scarnum, who unscrewed the lid and sniffed at it. He took a sip and passed it to Charlie, who also took a slug and grimaced.

  “Well, it’s not Canadian Club, I’ll tell you that,” said Charlie.

  It was whisky, though, Scotch whisky, thought Scarnum. It tasted of seaweed and peat. He took another drink and swished it around in his mouth. “Scotch,” he said. “Expensive Scotch, I’d say.”

  Charlie waved the flask away. “You tuck that away, my son.”

  He shone the light down on the vinyl bags.

  They were dry bags — the kind of heavy, watertight bags canoe campers used to keep their gear dry on camping trips — with heavy rubberized seals at the top.

  There were ten of them.

  “Well, that’s a queer thing, isn’t it?” said Charlie. “I wonder what a fellow would want ten dry bags for?”

  Scarnum said nothing.

  “How carefully did you look around the Kelly Lynn?” Charlie asked.

  “Not carefully enough,” said Scarnum. “I’ll go out and have another look now.”

  “Might be a good idea,” said Charlie.

  They stood looking at each other for a moment.

  Well,” said Charlie, “I s’pose I’ll get back into bed. I doubt that fellow in the canoe will be back tonight.”

  Scarnum put his hand on the old man’s shoulder. “Thanks, Charlie.”

  Scarnum got a flashlight and some gloves from his boat and paddled the canoe out to the Kelly Lynn.

  He started in the wheelhouse. He found the battery switch, which was off, and switched it on.

  Everything on the boat lit up: the running lights, the cabin lights, the big thousand-watt deck light behind the wheelhouse. All the instrument panels started to hum and come to life.