by Doug Burgess
“I’m not here about that.”
“Something to do with Emma, then? Did they find Arabella Johnson?”
“No, no.” There is a crack along the wooden surface of the desk that looks like a dried riverbed. Billy stares at it. “Actually, it’s about that rich fella over on Fogland Point. Rhinegold. He say anything to you that night you had dinner?”
“Quite a bit. You didn’t seem very interested.”
“Oh, well, I’ve been busy…” He runs a hand nervously through his hair. “The thing is, David, he’s gone. Vanished on Halloween night. Been missing three days now.”
Whatever I expected, it was not this. There is a long pause, punctuated by the Waterbury eight-day clock on the opposite wall. “How?” I finally ask.
“Had a big fight with his wife, apparently. Dunno what it was about; she’s not talking, but the neighbors heard them screaming pretty fierce.”
“Neighbors?” I repeat incredulously. “There isn’t anyone near that place for miles.”
“Picnickers on the beach,” Billy clarifies. “That’s what they say they were doing, anyway. Chances are they were probably toking, but who cares? Anyway, they heard her storm off the boat and drive away in that fancy Mercedes. Not long after, Rhinegold raises the anchor and slips out into the bay. That’s the last anyone saw of him. Just after one in the morning.”
“Crew?”
“All ashore, over in Newport at some Halloween party at the Red Parrot. He gave them the night off.”
“And the boat’s just…gone?” I ask. “What about GPS?”
Billy nods. “Should have kicked in the moment he got out in the bay. But that’s the funny thing. The tracker went dead. The boat just disappeared into the fog.”
“Could he have disabled it?”
“Sure, if he wanted to. But he still couldn’t beat radar. There was a crowd of ships passing up and down the coast that night. Two tankers, a bunch of freighters, even the Norwegian Dawn out of New York taking leaf-peepers up to St. John. They all kept records of radar contacts. Nothing. Well, almost nothing.”
“Almost?”
Billy traces a finger absentmindedly along the crack. “We had a patrol boat out that night. For the drunks, you know. There’s always a few that go out and get so liquored up they can’t find their way home. At about 10 p.m., they heard a big boom and saw something orange up ahead. Turned the boat around and went for a look. But you know, the fog. They kept passing over where they thought it was, but there was nothing there. Must have been ten, fifteen leagues offshore. Captain figured it was some idiot shooting off flares.”
Or the General Kearny, I think idiotically. But, no, that was Christmas. “You think he brained Emma and tried to make a run for it?”
“Looks that way, don’t it? But there’s not a mite of evidence. Still, I figured there might be some chance he let something slip, or that wife of his. Alicia.”
“She’s not Alicia, she’s Crystal from New Jersey. And I have a feeling Marcus Rhinegold is not Marcus Rhinegold. Dunno who he is, but you might start with looking at orphanage records in Bensonhurst from about thirty years ago.”
There is nothing else for it but to tell him the whole story from the beginning, which I do. After about five minutes, we both study each other in silence. I can hear Grandma’s snores from the other room. “So,” Billy says heavily, “you think that when you guys were on the balcony together…when he offered to let you use his bed…that he was…making a… pass?”
“That wasn’t a pass, Billy. It was more like a head-on collision.”
His brow furrows. “A gay pass?”
“That’s what they generally call it when one man propositions another man.”
Now the crease between his eyes is so deep you could stick a pen in it. “So he didn’t know that you’re a…I mean…”
I try to repress a sigh. “The word is trans, Billy. Or FTM, if you prefer. Female to male. Transgender. Take your pick. And no, to the best of my knowledge, he had no idea. I didn’t tell him. The whole thing was excruciating enough as it was.”
“Yeah, I bet.” He’s not thinking of Marcus now but of our last conversation, the day before I left for graduate school. The day I broke his heart. “But you don’t like men. Anymore.”
Useless to try to explain. Not again. “Just to be clear,” I ask, “do we think this is a wreck at sea, a fugitive, or a homicide?”
“Damned if I know.” The phone in his pocket buzzes. He excuses himself and goes out onto the back porch. I can see him through the window, pacing back and forth, wreathed in the fog of his own breath. After a few moments he comes back in. “You said something about the Molinari family, right?”
“Yeah. Marcus was afraid of them. Thought they were after him. Does that name mean anything to you?”
“No. They’re not local. But I ran it by the staties up in Providence. The sergeant there knew it right away. Big outfit, based in El Paso. Trucking, some gambling, women. Mostly drugs and illegals. They pack them into the trucks and hustle them across the border. Pretty rough bunch. But they also happen to be the largest stakeholders in a local business. Any guesses as to which one?”
“Allie’s Donut and Tack Shop?”
“All—no, smartass, Ocean State Building and Loan.”
Ah. Plundergate.
“And something else you said checks out, too,” he admits. “There’s no record of a Marcus Rhinegold anywhere, no birth certificate, no social security number. But the captain just got a call from Boston. They’re sending down two FBI guys tomorrow. It sounds like your Rhinegold, whoever he is, was one of theirs. They don’t sound too happy. I’m figuring maybe it was them that sent him to Little Compton in the first place, and it all has something to do with the Building and Loan scandal.”
For a moment I envision a group of vectors—the local police, the state police, the FBI, the Molinaris—all converging at Fogland Point. And Crystal, of course, roaring back down the driveway full of drunken recrimination. Oh, Marcus, I think, I really hope you made it to Mexico.
But somehow I kinda doubt it.
* * *
That same afternoon a news van rolls by, then another, and another after that. By six the whole wharf is covered with camera crews, sound booms, and newscasters pointing to the empty harbor as if it were magically about to produce Marcus Rhinegold. The missing yacht is a big story, and even the stations out in Boston and Cape Cod have picked it up. On the way to dinner I pass by the crowd and catch fragments:
“Coast Guard officials continue their search for the Calliope, but officials tell us there is little chance…”
“Yacht was registered to a corporation called Oceanos Holdings. There is no record of any such company and no information about its alleged proprietor, Mr. Marcus Rhinegold…”
“Mrs. Rhinegold continues to remain inside her home on Fogland Point and has refused all requests for comment. The local police tell us they cannot rule out the possibility of foul play…”
“Sir!” A microphone shoved into my face. “Do you have any thoughts on the recent disappearance of Mr. Rhinegold and his yacht?”
I am clearly meant to play the role of Local Character. “No comment,” I growl. But at the end of the pier they’ve struck gold. Batty old Mrs. Thurman is standing there in her pink bathrobe and curlers, holding court. “Oh, yes,” she tells them magisterially. “I think it’s shocking, absolutely shocking. Worst thing to hit this town since Hurricane Andrew.”
“Do you have any theories yourself on what might have happened?”
She looks at the reporter with scorn. “It’s perfectly clear what happened, young man. Bennett’s changed suppliers. They used to get their clams from Legal Sea Food, and those were very good, nice strips with plenty of meat on them. Best clam strip dinner in town, and reasonable, too. But Dan Fogle is cheap. Everyone knows this. So n
ow he gets his clams from Associated, and they have bellies in them. Do you know what a clam belly tastes like? Do you?”
The reporter looks at her for a moment. His microphone has gone slightly limp. “But what about the disappearance of Mr. Rhinegold?”
“Rhinegold?” Mrs. Thurman repeats, much mystified. “Rhinegold? Never heard of him. But I’m not surprised he’s gone. Won’t be a soul left in this town, if Fogle keeps jacking his prices. Let me tell you…”
It’s no better at the Boy and Lobster. The place is a local dive, with nothing going for it except a decent shepherd’s pie on Wednesdays and a total absence of Grandma, which has become an attraction. I left her with a carton of Brigham’s coffee ice cream and a TBS marathon of Murder, She Wrote; that gives me at least a couple hours. The Boy and Lobster has a few nets strung on the rafters and a grimy brass binnacle in the corner, but otherwise is no different than any other bar. Usually on a Wednesday night, there’s only a handful of patrons. Tonight it’s packed. There are a few familiar faces: Wally the Postman and his wife are regulars, though tonight she’s put on a spangled black vest and covered her arms with rhinestone bracelets. She’s three gins in and already becoming expansive. Wally stares into his ale and looks sour. At another table sit Aunt Irene and Aunt Constance, sharing fish and chips. They wave me over.
“What’s with the crowd?” I ask.
Constance grimaces. “Everybody wants to talk about that damn fool Marcus Rhinegold. Guess this is the only place to do it.”
She’s right. From every corner of the room that odd name echoes back, like a grotesquery of Wagner’s water maidens: Rhinegold, Rhinegold, Rhinegold. “I didn’t think it was that big a deal.”
“Mysterious millionaire goes missing? Hell, they’ll eat it up for days.”
“Billy Dyer came to see me,” I tell them without preamble. The two women exchange a look. Constance snorts into her beer. “Not about that. Well, I hope not. He wanted to ask me about my dinner with Marcus.”
“Finally!” Constance exclaims.
“Was there really that much to tell?” Irene wants to know.
They both seem elaborately casual, which is Yankee for caginess. “Yeah, I guess I didn’t say much about it,” I admit. For the second time that day, I tell my famous dinner party story, and this time leave nothing out.
“Always knew that wife was a bitch,” Constance grunts after I’ve finished.
“She was very sweet to us at the wake,” Irene objects. Aunt Irene likes to think the best of people.
“I’d love to know what they fought about that night.” An older man with thick glasses and a long gray ponytail, whom I’ve never seen before, turns around in his chair and says earnestly, “Yes, that’s what I’d like to know, too.”
“And what about that Starbucks kid she mentioned?” his wife adds. Her thin, nervous face is free of makeup, and her hair is tied into two long pigtails, one over each denim shoulder. “I wonder if the police have been up to talk to him?”
“Have we met?” I ask faintly.
“Barry Rosen,” he says, offering a chapped and calloused hand. “This is Renee. We’re snowbirds, here till Christmas.”
“You’ve got that Chris Craft down at Jackson’s Point,” Constance says intelligently. She recognizes people by their boats.
“Have you been listening to our whole conversation?” I ask.
“Certainly,” Barry admits, unabashed, “and it was very interesting. I, for one, had no idea Marcus Rhinegold was gay. That certainly adds a new dimension to the whole story.”
“Marcus Rhinegold was gay?” someone else bleats. “How do you know?”
“He made a pass at this fellow here,” Barry explains to the room, gesturing at me.
“I’m not sure what that proves,” Wally the Postman snarls from his corner. “You don’t know who you’re talking to there, Rosen.”
“Careful, Wally,” Constance says evenly.
“It’s okay, Aunt Constance.” Raising my voice slightly, I add, “Wally just misses trying to stare up my skirts, like he used to. Still hanging round under the bleachers at the junior high, Wally?”
The bar whoops with laughter, and Wally retreats to his beer. “What was that about?” Barry asks. Aunt Irene whispers in his ear. “Oh! How very rude.”
Now we have been absorbed into the general conversation. Various theories of Marcus’s disappearance are launched, hover tremulously in the air, and get shot down. Dr. Renzi wonders if the Calliope might have headed north instead of south, perhaps even been hauled into drydock. “What good would that do?” someone asks. Dr. Renzi shrugs, buries his nose in a whiskey sour. A man in a heavy blue overcoat suggests the yacht might have been swallowed up by a larger tanker. “You know, like in James Bond?” Someone else says aliens. Mrs. Wally makes a grand gesture, sweeping her gin and tonic over the room, and takes the conch. “It’s all about insurance,” she declares. “He took the boat out and blew it up. Now he can collect the insurance on it.”
“Wouldn’t he have to show up to collect?” Aunt Irene asks, with admirable patience.
“I don’t know how these big finance guys work, but he’ll find a way,” Mrs. Wally answers inscrutably.
Gradually, three theories coalesce. First, that Marcus somehow managed to escape undetected, perhaps with outside aid. Second, that he was coerced into taking the yacht out by someone already hiding on board, who then murdered him and sank the Calliope. Third, that he was a victim of Forces Unknown. The consensus of the reasonable favors the first hypothesis; Mrs. Wally, having reluctantly abandoned her insurance scheme, becomes a late if passionate adherent to the third. “There’s funny things happen in fog,” she declares.
“It’s odd,” I whisper under my breath to the Aunts. “Nobody seems to be connecting it to Emma.”
Constance shrugs. “Why should they? Far as anyone knew, she was just a silly old maid who reached for the wrong pot. The rest is something Billy cooked up.”
“So you don’t think Emma was murdered?”
“No, I don’t. And certainly not by a twit like Marcus Rhinegold. For all we know, he could have stolen the Robie gold and be on his way to Mexico.”
Unfortunately, Constance raised her voice slightly at the end, to be heard over the sudden squawk of the television, and broadcasts her theory to the entire bar. There is a moment of complete silence.
“I thought that was just a legend?” one youthful voice pipes up.
Blithely unaware of what she is about to unleash, Constance grunts, “Real enough.”
“Yes, that’s quite true,” a well-dressed man with silver hair chimes in. “There is no question of the ship’s sinking or her cargo. They’ve been looking for it for years.”
“And Rhinegold must have found her.”
“How would someone like Marcus know where it is?” I ask, in spite of myself.
“He wouldn’t,” Aunt Constance answers. “But he might have known someone who did. They say the Patriarcha family’s been sniffing around here, sending divers down, running sonar scans. I wouldn’t be surprised if Rhinegold cottoned onto it somehow and decided to make a killing himself. So to speak.”
“Steal the gold and make a run for it,” someone else breathes, entranced.
“You saw inside the Calliope, David,” Irene reminds me, “Did you ever get a look down below?”
I didn’t. But I remember Marcus’s words: The whole interior had to be gutted as well… She’s got a huge gas tank now, in what used to be the depth charge storage. Plenty of space for a stolen hoard. “Isn’t this all a little fantastic?” I ask.
“What part?” Constance answers tartly. “The gay millionaire, the crazy blonde, the vanished yacht, or the Mafia?” When she says it like that, she has a point. “But if that’s what it is, he’s long gone, and the gold too.”
“What makes you so sure?”
Renee Rosen asks.
“Stands to reason, don’t it? Why would he leave before he did the job? No, he got the wife and crew out of the way, disabled his GPS, loaded the gold onboard, and made for open sea like Jack Robinson. The fog covered his tracks. He’s in Cuba by now, you may lay to it.”
“But what about radar?” I remind her.
Constance waves an airy hand. “There’s ways to get around that.”
“I’m not so sure,” Barry interjects. “That boat was too big to be missed, and too fast to be mistaken for a fishing boat or some such. And even if he made it out, satellites would pick him up sooner or later. Nobody can really disappear once they’re on open sea. If he was out there, chances are somebody would have found him by now.”
“I don’t think…”
“But that means the yacht could still be here!” Mrs. Wally cries shrilly. She teeters on her barstool and waves her glass for emphasis. “He could have wrecked in the fog!”
“Don’t you think we might have spotted him sitting out there in the middle of the harbor once it lifted?” Constance reminds her acidly.
“Plenty of places it could have gone aground without nobody seeing,” Wally the Postman offers, coming to his wife’s aid. “Coves, inlets, and whatnot. You should know that, Constance.”
Constance slams her drink down on the bar. “Don’t be daft, Wally. Either he’s underwater or he’s gone to Cuba.”
“But don’t you think it’s worth a look?” Mrs. Wally insists. “There might be a pile of money on the Calliope. And salvage rights, if there’s nobody left onboard.” Nobody alive, she means.
“I’ll tell you what,” Wally says, sliding off his barstool and thrusting out his chest importantly. “I’m gonna take the My-T-Fine out there tomorrow and have a look-see. Just as soon as I get done with my rounds.”
“That’s not a bad idea,” Barry agrees. “I might go out too.”
“And me,” someone else adds. Pretty soon the whole bar chimes in.
