Billingsgate Shoal (7 page)

"Of course. Like a title to ea car."

"Uh, no. The title is the Documentation
Certificate that we've already looked at. This certificate actually
corresponds more closely to the certificate of origin of a car,
telling who made it where."

"Gotcha."

"Thing is. Thing is this: sometimes people fake
them."

"Why?"

"Well think about it awhile. Sometimes it's
advantageous to make a boat vanish or appear. Suppose a fisherman's
down on his luck, and how many aren't these days? He's got a boat
that's losing money and can't keep up the payments. The boat is a
dead duck. So he hauls it someplace where it can be altered, mostly
in the superstructure—you know, cabins, wheelhouse, anything but
the hull, which stays. Metal boats are better because. they can be
made to look new more easily . . ."

I had settled back into my chair like dandelion fluff
on a doormat. I was all ears.

"He gets a boatbuilder to do the alteration.
Fine. Then the big thing: he pays the boatbuilder to put his name to
one of these—"

He waved the Master Carpenter's Certificate at me
again.

"Now let's return to our fisherman friend who's
broke. 'What's happened to your boat?' people ask. 'Sunk,' he says,
and files a big fat insurance claim. How can anyone dispute him? We
can't find a trace of it. A lot of claims say the boat was stolen,
not sunk. But the net result is of course the same. What happens? Six
weeks later a 'new' boat emerges from the boatyard, with a new name
and documentation number.

But of course it's really the old boat on which the
fisherman has now collected his insurance coverage and paid off the
mortgage, and given the builder a sizeable chunk too. The results: a
free boat. No more debts."

"Ah hah! Very clever."

"Ah yes. But remember: just as the owner has
defied the law, the boatbuilder who does the alteration and
deliberately falsifies a carpenter's certificate has his head in the
noose too. Maybe more so, because if caught in perjury—which this
is—he cannot ply his trade any longer. He is in what fishermen call
'deep shit.' "

I walked over to the window and looked down at the
cars crawling along toward the North End. Behind them was Boston
Harbor. In the far distance, through the bluish-gray haze, I could
see tiny specks of fishing boats returning. They each trailed a
white-gray thread of wake.

"The
Penelope
was built in Gloucester by Murdock's boatyard, Daniel Murdock, owner.
Here's his signature."

I looked at the small square of paper and copied down
the name.

"All I want to do is talk with Kinchloe for a
few seconds," I said. "It's so frustrating to be unable to
reach him."

'
"He might be living aboard his boat. That
could explain the in transit."

"I bet that's it. So how do I—locate the
boat'?"

He shrugged his shoulders.

"Hang around the harbors. Talk to the
harbormasters and other fishermen and boaters. I don't know. We can't
help."

"I'm wondering if he has a post office box."

"They won't tell you; that's confidential. You
may inquire about a company but not an individual?

"I've got a way to find out. My brother-in-law's
a cop."

"Ahhh. Let me know if you uncover anything
interesting, OK?"

"Sure will. And, Mr. Ruggles, thanks a lot."

"My job; don't mention it. Buzz me anytime you
have a question."

I left the building and headed home. The more I
pursued the green boat and her owner the stranger it appeared. Then I
remembered I had photographs of her, and of somebody on board. The
developed negatives were hanging in the dustproof cabinet in my
darkroom. When I arrived I took out the long strips of film, cut them
into convenient lengths, and ran a contact sheet. I examined the tiny
pictures, just slightly bigger than postage stamps, with a loupe. I
had taken six shots of the boat as we had passed it. I selected two
shots of the boat and enlarged them. One shot was a side view
directly I off her beam, the other a view of her stem off her
starboard quarter.

There was another shot that looked interesting. It
was of one of the crewmen, or perhaps Kinchloe himself, that I had I
snapped with the telephoto lens. I enlarged this negative as much as
possible so that his head almost filled the 8 x 11 inch paper. The
tiny speck on the celluloid was blown up perhaps fifty times its
original size, which resulted in a portrait that was so grainy it was
impressionistic. It was as if Georges Seurat had painted the
portrait. Nevertheless, it sufficed. The man wore a faint dark beard,
had thinning hair, a prominent and handsome nose, and two whitish
specks that were interesting. One was a white line around his neck,
directly under the Adam's apple. It was probably a choker necklace,
made of puka shells. Somehow, it didn't seem to fit on a middle-aged
man in New England, as out of place as a walrus in Death Valley.

The other speck was in the middle of his right ear.
It was scarcely noticeable, but it was there. If the man were not
deeply tanned, perhaps I would have missed it altogether. He wore a
hearing aid.

I looked again at the neck. Thick neck. Prominent
Adam's apple. The man was strong—heavily muscled and fit. A thick
neck with heavy jowls means fat. It is often associated with heavy
drinking. But thick necks with clean chins and bulging Adam's apples
tell a different story: muscle in abundance; no fat.

This man, whoever he was, was a curious collection of
contradictions. The thinning hair and hearing aid clearly told me he
was middle-aged. Perhaps we were contemporaries at forty-seven—maybe
he was a bit older. Still he wasn't ancient. Why would he be deaf?
Then I thought of a logical reason: perhaps he was a diver. The
hallmark of the scuba diver is broken eardrums.

The beard, "surfer" necklace, and
extraordinary fitness all bespoke a man who's trying his damndest to
look younger. I have a special sympathy for those people, being one
myself. But the picture had a strange quality to it. The man
resembled one of the yachting crowd; he certainly seemed out of place
aboard a trawler. Then I remembered Ruggles telling me the boat was
noncommercial. Yet she didn't even faintly resemble a pleasure craft.

I took the pictures into the living room and showed
them to Mary, who was reading a book on Chinese porcelains.

"See what I mean? See that dark line inside the
hull?"

"You mean this, the line that's slanting'?"

"Yeah. That is left by oil slick and dirty bilge
water. Look how high up it is. I'd say it's a wonder she made it into
Wellfleet. She was close to going down, even with her pumps working."

"Is this the man we saw'? He looks kind of neat.
He looks like a pirate or something."

"He does at that. And he's elusive too. Your
brother is going to help me, I hope."

Detective Lieutenant Joseph Brindelli wanted to know
why. I explained, and he reluctantly agreed to see about the PO box.
He called back ten minutes later with the news that Wallace Kinchloe
did indeed have a post office box at the main Boston office.

"It's number twenty-three nineteen, but you
can't get into it you know."

"Sure I know, I just want to drop him a line."

And I did, asking him if he had seen a scuba diver in
the harbor when he had his boat repaired. I had the postcard in my
hand and was just about to drop it in the mail when I reconsidered.
According to official records
Penelope
was a new boat. Brand-new. And yet, thinking back on my photographs,
I wouldn't have described the boat as new. It wasn't old and beat-up,
true . . .but new would not be the first word that would pop into my
head if I were asked to describe her. I followed a hunch and called
Reliable Marine Service in Wellfleet. The raspy 'voice on the other
end told me I had the old man on the line. I asked for Sonny and in
ten seconds was speaking to him. His voice was deep and hollow, and I
pictured him in my mind's eye as big and fat.

"Do you remember a green fishing boat you welded
a patch onto earlier in the week?"

"Sure. Who you?"

"I'm a guy trying to find the owner. Listen:
would you say, judging from what you saw of the boat, that she was
new?"

"New'? How new?"

"Brand-new."

"Naw! She's six to eight years old at least.
Tell by the steel. Maybe older. Somebody's yanking your chain,
buddy."

"Thank you. Bye."

"Mary," I said that evening as I poured her
glass of wine, "there's something fishy about that fishing boat.
And it doesn't make me any more eager to have to visit Sarah Hart.”

To make matters worse, Mary got a phone call later in
the evening and informed me that she had to fill in at the hospital
for Irene Hamilton who'd called in sick. This meant I was to drive
down to The Breakers alone and comfort Sarah. It was not a cheery
prospect, and one would almost suspect that Mary was trying to get
out of it were it not for the fact that she has seen more death and
done more comforting and grief therapy than an army chaplain at
Verdun.

So the next day found me trundling down to the Cape
again in the Audi. Just before noon I cruised to a stop in front of
the Hart house in Eastham. Sarah's car was there. Damn it. People
face death, and think about it differently. I have a hard time with
it. I didn't realize this fully until I left medical school and began
to practice. I suppose I had always assumed that I was in medicine to
conquer death, which is of course impossible. Ultimately every doctor
must lose all his patients. It was this difficulty that eventually
caused me to leave medicine and go into dentistry, and then—I
suppose in retrospect—a sort of compromise in the middle: oral
surgery. It was just about the time my third patient died that I
began to seriously reconsider medicine as my life's work. —

And it was after my third patient's death, as we drew
up the sheet and I felt the poisonous stares of his parents, that I
knew I was going to leave. The boy was Peter Brindelli, aged eight.
My nephew.

I walked up to Sarah's door and rang the bell. I

Grief is its own anesthetic. Thank God for that at
least. Allan Hart's mother, like so many grief-crazed parents I had
seen, was in that state between shock and. total surrender to the
paralysis of grief. As such, her behavior was surreal, as if she were
marking time before the axe was to fall. I remember clasping her
elbow, the slip and slickness of the black silk blouse alive in my
hand. She gazed up politely into my face. But her eyes had no life.
Those pretty Irish eyes (and she had to be Irish; the black hair,
cream skin, and light blue eyes confirmed it) stared at. me, looking
right past me.

"It's so thoughtful of you to have come,"
she lilted. "It's so comforting when—"

But then she bit her lip
quickly, to stop from shaking. Bit it till the blood came, and rushed
over to the window, looking out. She stood there blinking and wincing
for a while. Then I saw her hands move quickly, flash down into the
window panes, and I ran to her. I grabbed her wrists hard, but not
before she'd done the windows—not to mention her hands—a lot of
damage.

* * *

Mary pulled up to the cottage at quarter to five,
having finished her shift at three. She still wore her uniform. She
found me out on the deck gazing off over the ocean. In my right paw
was a gin and tonic big enough to float the
Queen
Mary
.

"Hi, Charlie!"

"Mary, I have just had one of the most harrowing
days in recent memory. I'm trying to put it back into the box and
nail the top down so it'll quit leaping out at me."

I told, her about my grim session with Sarah Hart.
How I'd washed her bloody hands and wrists in hot soapy water and she
hadn't even flinched. Not even when I smeared the cuts with tincture
of iodine. How I had confided in her about my guilt feelings, and
explained exactly what happened in the harbor. How she'd listened
passively as I told her, as if there was too much grief for doubt or
hate to enter her mind.

"She finally let it go after I was there about
twenty minutes," I told Mary. "It was like a seizure. She
screamed and clung to me, digging her nails in. She, rolled her eyes
and seemed to talk in tongues."

"I've seen it many, many times, Charlie. I can
never get used to it. It kills people you know. The grief and
depression can kill, sending people rushing after those who've died.
And she's a widow too."

"She told me Allan was a very good diver.
There's no reason to think he'd get into trouble, especially in the
harbor."

"Does she have any relatives?" '

"Yes. She's flying to Pasadena day after
tomorrow to visit her sister for a week or two."

"Thank heaven for that at least."

I grabbed a hiking staff and walked out onto the
flats, following the ebbing tide. It can be an unsettling feeling
going out there with nothing with you. It's hard to explain. It's
being too alone. I feel much better with other people, or just an
object like a cane or staff to take with me. Far out there I looked
back toward shore. Squinting, I could just barely see the tiny gray
square speck of The Breakers that jutted up over the low horizon.
Squinting still more, I could see a very faint motion above it. The
American flag. Then I pictured myself on the deck of the grounded
trawler with 7x50 marine binoculars a mile and a half farther out, on
Billingsgate. I could see plenty of The Breakers then. Plenty.
Especially if the owner happened to be prancing around on deck waving
a gaudy beach umbrella trying to get my attention. I could see him
just fine. Had they seen me? Did they remember me? Did it matter?
There were a lot of unanswered questions, and I didn't like any of
them. I walked around awhile, then went back to the beach at a slow
jog. I took a sauna with Mary and then a cold shower. During all
these maneuvers it was a constant hassle trying to keep my cast dry.
We changed into beachy things and ambled out onto the deck and
watched the tide move out, slow puddles of water-sheen beginning to
leave the lower pockets of the flats.