‘Good mornin’.’ It was Pam. ‘What was that?’
Kelly turned. She wasn’t wearing any more now than when he’d put the blanket on her, but Kelly instantly decided that the only time she’d surprise him again would be when she did something predictable. Her hair was a medusalike mass of tangles, and her eyes were unfocused, as though she’d not slept well at all.
‘Coast Guard. They’re looking for a missing boat. How’d you sleep?’
‘Just fine.’ She came over to him. Her eyes had a soft, dreamlike quality that seemed strange so early in the morning, but could not have been more attractive to the wide-awake sailor.
‘Good morning.’ A kiss. A hug. Pam held her arms aloft and executed something like a pirouette. Kelly grabbed her slender waist and hoisted her aloft.
‘What do you want for breakfast?’ he asked.
‘I don’t eat breakfast,’ Pam replied, reaching down for him.
‘Oh.’ Kelly smiled. ‘Okay.’
She changed her mind about an hour later. Kelly fixed eggs and bacon on the galley stove, and Pam wolfed it down so speedily that he fixed seconds despite her protests. On further inspection, the girl wasn’t merely thin, some of her ribs were visible. She was undernourished, an observation that prompted yet another unasked question. But whatever the cause, he could remedy it. Once she’d consumed four eggs, eight slices of bacon, and five pieces of toast, roughly double Kelly’s normal morning intake, it was time for the day to begin properly. He showed her how to work the galley appliances while he saw to recovering the anchors.
They got back under way just shy of a lazy eight o’clock. It promised to be a hot, sunny Saturday. Kelly donned his sunglasses and relaxed in his chair, keeping himself alert with the odd sip from his mug. He maneuvcred west, tracing down the edge of the main ship channel to avoid the hundreds of fishing boats he fully expected to sortie from their various harbors today in pursuit of rockfish.
‘What are those things?’ Pam asked, pointing to the floats decorating the water to port.
‘Floats for crab pots. They’re really more like cages. Crabs get in and can’t get out. You leave floats so you know where they are.’ Kelly handed Pam his glasses and pointed to a Bay-build workboat about three miles to the east.
‘They trap the poor things?’ Kelly laughed.
‘Pam, the bacon you had for breakfast? The hog didn’t commit suicide, did he?’
She gave him an impish took. ‘Well, no.’
‘Don’t get too excited. A crab is just a big aquatic spider, even though it tastes good.’
Kelly altered course to starboard to clear a red nun-buoy.
‘Seems kinda cruel, though.’
‘Life can be that way.’Kelly said too quickly and then regretted it.
Pam’s response was as heartfelt as Kelly’s. ‘Yeah, I know.’
Kelly didn’t turn to took at her, only because he stopped himself. There’d been emotional content in her reply, something to remind him that she, too, had demons. The moment passed quickly, however. She leaned back into the capacious conning chair, leaning against him and making things right again. One last time Kelly’s senses warned him that something was not right at all. But there were no demons out here, were there?
‘You’d better go below.’
‘Why?’
‘Sun’s going to be hot today. There’s some lotion in the medicine cabinet, main head.’
‘Head?’
‘Bathroom!’
‘Why is everything different on a boat?’
Kelly laughed. ‘That’s so sailors can be the boss out here. Now, shoo! Go get that stuff and put a lot on or you’ll look like a french fry before lunch.’
Pam made a face. ‘I need a shower, too. Is that okay?’
‘Good idea,’ Kelly answered without looking. ‘No sense scaring the fish away.’
‘You!’ She swatted him on the arm and headed below.
‘Vanished, just plain vanished,’ Oreza growled. He was hunched over a chart table at the Thomas Point Coast Guard Station.
‘We shoulda got some air cover, helicopter or something,’ the civilian observed.
‘Wouldn’t have mattered, not last night. Hell, the gulls rode that blow out.’
‘But where’d he go?’
‘Beats me, maybe the storm sank his ass.’ Oreza glowered at the chart. ‘You said he was northbound. We covered all these ports and Max took the western shore. You sure the description of the boat was correct?’
‘Sure? Hell, we did everything but buy the goddamned boat for ’em!’ The civilian was as short-tempered as twenty-eight hours of caffeine-induced wakefulness could explain, even worse for having been ill on the patrol boat, much to the amusement of the enlisted crew. His stomach felt like it was coated with steel wool. ‘Maybe it did sink,’ he concluded gruffly, not believing it for a moment.
‘Wouldn’t that solve your problem?’ His attempt at levity earned him a growl, and Quartermaster First Class Manuel Oreza caught a warning look from the station commander, a gray-haired warrant officer named Paul English.
‘You know,’ the man said in a state of exhaustion, ‘I don’t think anything is going to solve this problem, but it’s my job to try.’
‘Sir, we’ve all had a long night. My crew is racked out, and unless you have a really good reason to stay up, I suggest you find a bunk and get a few Zs, sir.’
The civilian looked up with a tired smile to mute his earlier words. ‘Petty Officer Oreza, smart as you are, you ought to be an officer.’
‘If I’m so smart, how come we missed our friend last night?’
That guy we saw around dawn?’
‘Kelly? Ex-Navy chief, solid guy.’
‘Kinda young for a chief, isn’t he?’ English asked, looking at a not very good photo the spotlight had made possible He was new at the station.
‘It came along with a Navy Cross,’ Oreza explained.
The civilian looked up. ‘So, you wouldn’t think -‘
‘Not a chance in hell.’
The civilian shook his head. He paused for a moment, then headed off to the bunk room. They’d be going out again before sunset, and he’d need the sack time.
‘So how was it?’ English asked after the man left the room.
‘That guy is shipping a lot of gear, Cap’n.’ As a station commander, English was entitled to the title, all the more so that he let Portagee run his boat his way. ‘Sure as hell he doesn’t sleep much.’
‘He’s going to be with us for a while, on and off, and I want yon to handle it.’
Oreza tapped the chart with a pencil. ‘I still say this would be a perfect place to keep watch from, and I know we can trust the guy.’
‘The man says no.’
‘The man ain’t no seaman, Mr English. I don’t mind when the guy tells me what to do, but he don’t know enough to tell me how to do it.’ Oreza circled the spot on the chart.
‘I don’t like this.’
‘You don’t have to like it,’ the taller man said. He unfolded his pocket knife and slit the heavy paper to reveal a plastic container of white powder. ‘A few hours’ work and we turn three hundred thousand. Something wrong with that, or am I missin’ something?’
‘And this is just the start,’ the third man said.
‘What do we do with the boat?’ asked the man with the scruples.
The tall one looked up from what he was doing. ‘You get rid of that sail?’
‘Yeah.’
‘Well, we can stash the boat… but probably smarter to scuttle. Yeah, that’s what we’ll do.’
‘And Angelo?’ All three looked over to where the man was lying, unconscious still, and bleeding.
‘I guess we scuttle him, too,’ the tall one observed without much in the way of emotion. ‘Right here ought to be fine.’
‘Maybe two weeks, there won’t be nothin’ left. Lots of critters out there.’ The third one waved outside at the tidal wetlands.
‘See how easy it is? No boat, no Angelo, no risk, and three hundred thousand bucks. I mean, how much more do you expect, Eddie?’
‘His friends still ain’t gonna like it.’ The comment came more from a contrarian disposition than moral conviction.
‘What friends?’ Tony asked without looking. ‘He ratted, didn’t he? How many friends does a rat have?’
Eddie bent to the logic of the situation and walked over to Angelo’s unconscious form. The blood was still pumping out of the many abrasions, and the chest was moving slowly as he tried to breathe. It was time to put an end to that. Eddie knew it; he’d merely been trying to delay the inevitable. He pulled a small .22 automatic from his pocket, placed it to the back of Angelo’s skull, and fired once. The body spasmed, then went slack. Eddie set his gun aside and dragged the body outside, leaving Henry and his friend to do the important stuff. They’d brought some fish netting, which he wrapped around the body before dumping it in the water behind their small motorboat. A cautious man, Eddie looked around, but there wasn’t much danger of intruders here. He motored off until he found a likely spot a few hundred yards off, then stopped and drifted while he lifted a few concrete blocks from the boat and tied them to the netting. Six were enough to sink Angelo about eight feet to the bottom. The water was pretty clear here, and that worried Eddie a little until he saw all the crabs. Angelo would be gone in less than two weeks. It was a great improvement over the way they usually did business, something to remember for the future. Disposing of the little sailboat would be harder. He’d have to find a deeper spot, but he had all day to think about it.