Billingsgate Shoal (19 page)

"KNOW WHAT YOUR problem is?" said the chief
as he put my letter down on his desk and peered at me over his
glasses. "You're crazy."

"I was hoping you weren't going to say that."

"What am I supposed to say for Chrissake? You
see a boat that looks like another and they both disappear. You ask
around and discover that a certain man's private life and his
business aren't all they were cracked pup to be—as if that's a
rarity. You get in a bar fight up in Gloucester—which, by the way,
you are too old to be doing—and later get hit on the head and
tossed in the drink. A hundred miles away, I might add, and two weeks
after you presumably saw
Windhover's
reincarnation down on the Cape. Now Doc. What
am I supposed to say?"

I felt like a naughty kid in the principal's office.
I stared idly out Brian's window and watched a gray squirrel hop
along a giant oak limb, fluffing its tail and chattering. The word
was getting around fast; even the squirrels knew I was crazy. A blue
jay shrieked, and the squirrel chattered and flipped its tail in
little quick jerks.

Brian Hannon picked up the phone and summoned an
aide. He told the aide to run down some background information on
James Schilling and Daniel Murdock.

"You did it. Why did you, if I'm imagining the
whole thing?"

"I don't want you to suppose anything from it.
Remember this: you still haven't a thing concrete to go on. It's one
pipe dream strung to another, all the way along. But I can get the
information, and will, if there is any to be got. I can do it without
pangs of conscience because doing so will indirectly protect you,
which is what I'm paid to do. We'll get back to you in a few days.
You can be reached at home?"

"No. We're taking off from the Cape tomorrow
early. I'll be spending two days or so getting
Ella
Hatton
ready."

"Who's she?"

"My boat."

"Oh I see. Getting her ready to take her out of
the water?"

"No. Getting her ready for a cruise around Cape
Cod Bay. I don't want anyone except you and the family, and Jim
DeGroot, to know where I am or how long I'll be gone. If you need me,
call Mary and leave a message."

"and what do you intend to do on this cruise?"

"I'm going to find the boat:
Penelope
,
Windhove
r. . .Whatever
the hell her name is, I'm going to find her if I have to pick up Cape
Cod by Provincetown and Buzzards Bay and turn it upside down and
shake it."

"That's a dumb idea."

"I didn't expect you'd think it was a great
idea. Mary is not too wild about it either."

I rose to go, but he detained me. He opened a small
metal filing case behind him and drew out my card. It was my
application to own and carry a handgun. These are very difficult to
get in Massachusetts. If you are caught toting a handgun and are not
so licensed, you are sentenced to a year in the can. No ifs, ands, or
buts. Chief Brian Hannon, after some debate, had granted me the
Permit to Carry two years ago when I took up target shooting. He
examined some slips of paper behind the card.

"Hmmm. Two additions since your original
purchase. Ruger Bull-Barrel auto target pistol, caliber 22. Browning
9 millimeter auto. Tell me, Doc, you're not thinking of taking these
along with you on your cruise are you'? And if you do, do you really
think you might need them?"

I paused at the doorway and turned.

"As Fats Waller used
to say: 'One never knows, do one?' "

* * *

"I still can't believe we went, Charlie,"
said Mary as she slid into the front seat. It was just before
midnight and we were leaving the Surf Theater in Wocasset.

"How did you like them?"

"I can't believe they're legal. Honest to God I
had no idea—"

"But how did you like them?"

"I think they're disgusting. I mean even the
titles."

"I don't know, I thought the titles were rather
clever, especially
A Hard Man Is Good to
Find
."

"Hmmm. What was the other one called?"

"
Genitals Prefer
Blondes
."

"Well it was disgusting."

"Well then I'm sorry I took you."

"You didn't like them, did you?"

"I think a little dirt every now and then is
nice. You sure you didn't like them even a little bit?"

She protested that she didn't. The movies exploited
both men and women she said, and debased sex. And furthermore, if
she'd any idea that they were that explicit and graphic she never
would have consented to go in the first place. And she would never go
again. I kept my mouth shut.

We had arrived back at The Breakers the day before.
All through the drive we discussed—argued actually—the merits and
disadvantages of my secret Bay cruise aboard the
Ella
Hatton
. I was propounding the former, she the
latter. I finally managed to convince her that I would be safe
because I would remain inconspicuously in the background: in small
bays and inlets, in snug harbors and along beaches.

We swung into the wide gravel drive, exited the car
and started up the back steps. The surf was loud. Mary had been
strangely silent during the ride back to the cottage, as if she I
were concentrating on something.

As soon as I shut the door behind us, she jumped me.
 

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

THE LIST GREW. The piles and stocks of supplies grew
consequently. These items were transported semi-surreptitiously down
to the
Hatton's
slip
in,Wellfleet Harbor where, incidentally, there had been no sign
whatsoever of
Penelope
.
My beard was half grown and emerging iron gray. Dark glasses and a
big floppy canvas hat helped further to keep my face hidden. With
Jack helping out, I managed to secure the cargo aboard the
Ella
Hatton
. It was two weeks past Labor Day but
the harbor was still full. The hard-core sailors didn't take their
boats out until late October. A few diehards have been known to leave
their boats in the water all winter, going on the assumption it won't
freeze solid. If it does, the boat has had it, crushed between packs
of moving ice like a grape in a wine press.

When we were finished, every cubby, hatch, and shelf
in the
Hatton's
interior was filled with canned hams, fresh corn and melons, cases of
soda water and beer, wedges of cheese, cigars and pipe tobacco, and
everything else needed for a couple of weeks afloat in comfort and
style.

Ella Hatton's
antique
appearance comes mostly from her rig. The wide, low sails and the
graff rig,the bowsprit and the jibboom all bespeak an earlier age:
the turn-of-the-century fishing and clamming industry on the Cape
where these boats originated. Also the wheel, tiny portholes, wide
rudder, and her soft, blocky lines have the plain, rugged look of a
commercial craft rather than the sleek, faintly fragile appearance of
the racing yachts.

She draws just two feet of water with her centerboard
up, which means that she can be beached. Also, because of her flat
bottom and wide shape, she sits perfectly upright when stranded on a
tidal flat. This is important because in Cape Cod Bay stranding is a
common, often times intentional thing, and a boat that sits level is
far more comfortable than one that lies on her side.

Jack and I finished stowing the gear after I had
placed the two twenty-five-pound blocks of ice into the icebox
beneath the cockpit seat. Then we closed the teak shutters, drew back
the main hatch, and locked up tight with a big brass padlock. In the
morning I would top up the fuel and water tanks and cast off.

"It seems to me we put about two tons of stuff
aboard," said Jack as he stood up on the dock looking down at
the catboat, "but she doesn't seem any lower in the water or
anything."

"She's as wide as a pie pan. Maybe that's why."

We went back to The Breakers for dinner.

A driftwood fire was crackling away in the grate. I
unrolled the charts on the low coffee table and we poured over them,
roughly outlining my mission. Mary was to be settled in at the
domicile in Concord with Joe, who was coming for an extended visit.
He loved his Beacon Hill flat, but a sojourn in the
countryside—particularly in fall—was an annual custom he looked
forward to. From my point of view, considering certain recent events
and possible future complications, I was glad an armed officer of the
law would be staying with Mary.

Tony had finished his summer job in New Hampshire and
was up in Acadia National Park camping with friends. Jack would
return to Concord with Mary in the morning; I didn't want him or any
of my family at The Breakers without me.

I told them I would head west along the inside of the
Cape first, nosing my way into the small harbors of Barnstable and
Sandwich. From there I would either head north to Plymouth, or south
through the Cape Cod Canal down into Buzzards Bay and the oceanside,
although I doubted this. Whatever was happening—if anything—was
happening in the Bay, or to the north.

Next morning after the breakfast dishes were cleaned
and put away, we shut The Breakers up tight, hiding all the valuables
and locking it. Then Jack and I dragged the twelve-foot Swampscott
dory up from the beach and put it on the roof rack of his Land
Cruiser. We stowed the tiny British outboard engine in the back and
headed for the harbor. I would tow the fiberglass dory behind the
Hatton
. It would
enable me to come ashore from any anchorage and provide easy dockside
access in any harbor I chose to enter. Besides these conveniences, it
was unsinkable (the
Hatton
,
with its lead ballast, was not) and would make a good lifeboat should
the
Hatton
swamp in a
heavy sea or dash herself to pieces on a ledge.

When everything was in order I kissed Mary good-bye
and reminded her that I would call once a day without fail. She clung
a bit too hard, too long. She was still worried.

Jack was to follow her to Concord and spend a few
days there, tentatively to arrive in Plymouth on the third day to
reconnoiter with me and the
Hatton
.

The two cars made tight turns in the harbor parking
lot, then glided up to the mainroad, turned, and vanished.

I made ready and cast off.

When I was clear of the harbor, I cut the engine to a
crawl and I began to watch my "telltales." These are strips
of fuzzy orange yarn tied to my stays. They blow in the wind and
indicate its direction. I wanted to be directly into the wind when I
raised the main. I winched it up and the boom and gaff flapped
spastically back and forth. The jib followed. The sails flip-flapped
stupidly until I turned the
Hatton
downwind a bit, until the telltales were parallel to the leading edge
of the sails as I hauled them tight. Then, a change came over
Ella
Hatton
. The sails caught. The boat heeled
slightly, and there was a sense of force, pressure, and function. I
cut the diesel. In a few seconds our speed picked up because the
slow-turning prop had feathered itself, thus decreasing the
resistance of the boat in the water. I trimmed the sails still more
and adjusted the
Hatton's
course.

When a sailboat is properly trimmed in a fresh
breeze—when the wind direction, hull, and sails are all in perfect
symphony—she trembles. It is a stiffening tremble, as in a woman
reaching orgasm—a vibrancy of energy and force that tells the
experienced helmsman that the boat is performing optimally.

With the engine cut, there was only the sound of
rushing water and the creaking of the sheets and blocks. I sat
holding the wheel and kept
Ella Hatton
heading south. Both sheets were fastened in jam cleats. These are
cleats that hold the lines by means of toothed cam gears, and can be
released immediately in a strong puff of wind. Jam cleats have made
solo sailing easier and safer. The
Hatton
bounced and dipped along; I watched the green-blue water slide past,
sending up never-ending streams of bubbles and tiny whirlpools of
silver air and water. Farther back the brine swirled white-gray in
endless filigrees of foam. There was the hiss and chuckle of moving
water. The hiss I find a particularly pleasant sound, the sound of
effervescence, like soda water or champagne.

I slipped the loop of heavy line over the longspoke
of the wheel and dove into the hatchway long enough to turn on the
radio. The dial was on the VHF channel l62.5—the weather frequency.
Amidst the buzzing, squelches, and droning came the steady voice of
the Weather Bureau.

". . . winds west, northwest five to
eight knots, freshening to ten to twelve knots by late afternoon. .
.barometer thirty point two and steady . . . seas one to three and
rising. . .forecast fair and windy tonight with partial cloud cover,
visibility nine miles. . .tomorrow windy and cool, with squalls
likely in the evening. . ."