Billingsgate Shoal (9 page)

The other guy is Tommy Desmond, the immensely
handsome Irishman from the D Street section of Southie. He can hit
the speed bag and the heavy bag like a pro. The only thing he can't
fight off is women. I yelled out a greeting to him as I ran around
the gym. He was busy with the heavy bag.

"Oh my Jesus! Doc, how ya been?"

Whap!
The big bag jumped
up and swung near the ceiling. Tommy circled it with a look of
detachment in his icy blue eyes, a sheen of sweat beginning to glow
on his big shoulders. Nobody can hit the bag like Tommy. He stands
there gazing at it, his blue eyes darting back and forth as the heavy
bag swings on its big chains. Then, almost lazily, languidly, he
begins the crouch, the sideways lean. . .the bag is swaying and
spinning slowly. Tommy's crouch deepens, the lean lengthens, the arm
begins to snake around slowly.
WHAP!
The bag is gone.

I had given him money once for a "charity"
called NORAID. Supposedly it was to help the poor widows and orphans
of Ulster. In reality it was to supply money to buy arms for the
Provisional Wing of the IRA. After I found this out I gave no more
money to Tommy. It was less because of my political stance on the
issue than my hatred for violence. I think he understood; we were
still friends.

I finished the run, took a sauna and a shower, and
walked out by the wrestling mat. I saw two big bearded black men with
shaved heads in white karate suits sternly circling each other. They
rocked and parried on their toes, trying for a chance to take each
other's heads off with their feet.

When I left the Boylston Street Union, I hoofed it
over to the Cafe Marliave. I ordered an antipasto deluxe, a small
spaghetti Bolognese, and a split of Bardolino. I hardly ever eat
lunch, so when I do, I do it right. I pumped coins into the phone and
called the Globe. After a lot of hee-hawing on the other end, and
spending half my life's savings in small coins, I was informed that
Peter Scimone was really a stringer who lived up in Gloucester. I got
his number and called him. I said I'd lay three crisp tens in his
hands for a series of eight by ten glossies of the
Windhover
he photographed a month ago. He said for three crisp tens he'd begin
running the prints instantly, and they'd be ready for me when I
arrived.

Scimone lived down near the water in East Gloucester,
just on the borderline of the artists' colony called Rocky Neck. It
was a shack, but nicely kept up and decorated with many potted plants
hung from macrame holders. Peter emerged from his darkroom with four
prints of the
Windhover
.
I glanced at them and was instantly on edge, and excited. Even at
first blush the missing
Windhover
and the phantom
Penelope
were very similar.

Scimone had done the job quickly on a moment's notice
for the local Gloucester paper, and the print was a year old when the
Globe bought it. He didn't remember much about any of it. A
gray-haired man sat on the deck of the boat with two other men. On
the dock behind the boat was an attractive young lady with long blond
hair. Scimone knew nothing about her, had not seen her before or
since. I paid him and left with the prints.

On the way back through town a name, crudely painted
with a big brush on a mailbox caught my eye. The name was Murdock,
and the house was near the water. I pulled over and walked to the
mailbox. If it was Daniel Murdock, and he couldn't construct a boat
any better than he could write his name on his mailbox, I wouldn't
want to be out in a millpond on one of his vessels.

I knocked at the door which, like the house, wasn't
in very good repair. I waited. The gulls cried and cars whispered by
behind me on the road. A curtain fluttered in a window above me. A
voice called out asking me what I wanted.

I said merely that I wished to speak to the owner,
Mr. Dan Murdock.

"I've got a boat that needs work on it. Where
can I reach .him?"

"Who wants to know?"

"Doesn't he do repair work?"

"Who wants to know? He ain't heah."

"Where can I find him?"

"Try the Schooner Race or the Harbor Café.
He'll do it. . .if he's not too drunk. He owe you money?"

"No. I just want to talk with him briefly."

The window slammed shut and I walked toward the car.
But I stopped, and chanced to look back beyond the tiny frame house
toward the harbor, whose slimy water, coated with prismatic and
rainbowesque swirls of petrochemicals, gave off a heavy aroma. A
shack was back there, perched over the harbor like a stork over a
lily pad. I began ambling down the gravel lane toward it, I was
curious to see the spot of
Penelope's
conception and delivery.

I heard the window slide up again with a clunk.

"He ain't heah! Mistah, go away!"

But stubborn soul that I am, I kept at it. When I was
halfway to the shack, I heard the ring of a phone inside it. It rang
once. That's all.

I stood in front of the doorway. The place was dark
inside. I peered in through the windows. There was the looming dark
shape of the bows of a big boat silhouetted by the shiny harbor water
behind it. I tried the door. It wouldn't budge. But why only one
ring? Had the caller hung up after only one ring? No. Murdock was in
there, in amongst the tools, timbers, and old beer cans that lay
strewn everywhere. I looked again through the windows of the dismal
place, but nothing moved in the dark. I pounded on the door, then
peeked again. Then left. The single ring was probably a warning
signal sent by his wife. Lord knows how many people were anxious to
make contact with Mr. Murdock. From his apparent drinking habits and
the slovenly state of his operation, I guessed that he owed quite a
lot of people money.

"Mrs. Murdock? Mrs. Murdock!"

Curtain flutter. Window up again.

"Mistah, look he ain't—"

"I know. Listen, tell him a man wants very much
to speak to him about the
Penelope
.
Tell him I'll call again in a couple of days, OK?"

Window slam. No answer. I
left for The Breakers. It had been a tiring day. As I drove back down
to Eastham the vision of poor Sarah Hart stayed in my mind. I saw her
in tears, pushing her fragile wrists through the broken glass of her
window.

* * *

As soon as I arrived I sat at the leather-topped desk
in the study corner of the living room and switched on the brass
student lamp. I laid out the photos that Scimone had given me, and
next to them the eight by tens of the pictures I had taken of the
Penelope during her brief sojourn in Wellfleet. I studied the
photographs for twenty minutes. At first it was obvious they were the
same boat. Then for a while I saw how it was clearly impossible that
they could be. Then I saw it was possible. The common dimensions were
one factor, but I knew that the forty-foot—or thereabouts—length
is one of the most common for bay trawlers. But the bows did flare
out in exactly the same way. The sweep of the gunwale lines were
congruent. These things, I knew, could not be altered. But what of
the things that could be altered?

The superstructures of the two vessels were very
different: the
Windhover
had a lot of cabin space, the cabin extending far forward and leaving
only enough foredeck for a crewman to stand and heave a line; the
Penelope
, typical of
commercial fishing boats, had a small wheelhouse with a lot of
foredeck. The
Windhover
however, preserved her work-boat appearance by retaining the tiny
round portholes (invariably the mark of an older vessel) on her
topsides just under the foredeck, whereas Penelope had instead the
more modern rectangular single ports located roughly in the same
place. In fact, I mused as I studied the pictures, exactly in the
same place. Squinting my eyes slightly and glancing quickly from
Scimone's photo of
Windhover
to my own pix of
Penelope
,
I saw that the ports, which are very uncommon on small fishing craft,
were located congruently on the two boats, except
Penelope
had one longish porthole instead of two round ones close together.
And how difficult would it have been to cut out the intervening metal
between the two ports with a power hacksaw to make one big one on
each side?

"Do you want beer?"

"No."

"Do you want coffee?"

"No."

"Tea?"

"No."

"Me?"

"No."

"Hey what the hell is this—"

I felt a sharp kick in my calf.

"Come 'ere, Mary. Look at this."
 

CHAPTER FIVE

I OVERSLEPT THE next morning; was up late playing
chess with Jack, who told me Tony suspected he'd caught the clap. I
told Mary and Jack shot me a look as if we had betrayed his 
brother. Mary took it in passively. After confronting kidney failure,
cardiac arrest, and terminal cancer every working day, gonorrhea was
a minor affliction. Her face remained impassive, and beautiful. Dark
olive skin, wide-set eyes, arched cheekbones, and mountains of black
hair, still no gray at forty-three. Her nose and profile look as if
they've been taken off a Roman statue. She cleared her throat.

"Have him call us and describe his symptoms to
me or Dad, and then he should have a culture taken at the nearest
clinic. Tell your brother he should be more choosy about whom he
sleeps with—God knows he's handsome enough to be picky. And tell
him to wear a condom too, that way we won't have to worry about
pregnancy as well. Clear?"

There was a husky grunt in response from Jack, who
said he had no idea she knew so much about it.

"About 'it'? Look, buster, I'm a nurse; I've
been married twenty-five years with two sons. Don't tell me about
'it.' "

I suggested we call Tony and extend our sympathy and
understanding. We did, and he seemed relieved.

"Thanks, Mom and Dad, And don't worry; it'll
never happen again."

"Of course not," said Mary, "and if
they give you medication, don't skip any pills; take them all."

Mary decided she'd go over to say good-bye to Sarah
Hart, who was leaving for Pasadena. Just after she left I dialed the
police station and spoke with Lieutenant Disbrow briefly. He said
they were treating Allan Hart's death as accidental. Did I have
anything to add or suggest? I said not at the present, but that I was
looking for the trawler
Penelope
,
and if Disbrow or any of the department saw her, could they let me
know?

"Mr. Adams, we cannot do this unless you file a
complaint or give us sufficient justification—"

"I understand. OK, forget it."

I called Bill Larson at the shack and told him to
keep an eye out. If Penelope reappeared, he was to call me at The
Breakers or up in Concord, pronto. This he agreed to. I showed Jack
the photographs and told him to do the same if she surfaced in Woods
Hole. Then I tried Murdock's boatyard again. The woman answered, her
voice slurred and heavy. When I mentioned the word
Penelope
the line went dead. There was no other avenue to follow. Obviously
the only way I was going to make contact with Murdock was to skulk
about and sneak up behind him and grab him. I just might do that.

Meanwhile I had another idea. It was perhaps foolish,
but it was something, and the weather looked lousy again. I might as
well drive up to Boston.

"Did you tell me you needed a new sportcoat?"
I asked Jack.

"Uh huh."

"Come up to Boston with me. We'll leave a note
for Mom. I'll take you to Louis's; they've got Harris tweed coats on
sale."

"You wanna go now?"

"Yes. The sale ends soon. Besides that, I want
to go to Post Office Square. I want to peek inside a post office box.
Let's get moving."

We spun out of the gravel drive as it started to
drizzle. I uncorked the vacuum bottle and poured coffee for both of
us. When we got into the city we parked in the underground below the
Boston Common. At Louis's Jack bought a steelgray jacket flecked with
blue and black. Having been thus bribed he was sent on two errands
for me while I walked over to the post office. One errand was to buy
some pipe tobacco at Ehrlich's. The other was to visit the Kirstein
Business Library just around the comer and find out all he could
about Walter Kincaid's Wheel-Lock Corporation;

Nothing in downtown Boston is far away; you can walk
across all of it in twenty minutes. In less than ten I was inside the
post office, my eyes scanning the ranks of postal boxes. Gee, there
were lots and lots of them. Finally, I located 2319, and enjoyed the
first piece of good luck I'd had. It was a lower box, barely three
feet from the floor. I dropped to one knee and peeked inside. Past
the gilded decals of big numbers I could see several envelopes. The
one on top was dark navy blue with a white border. The name on the
label said Wallace Kinchloe. Well, he wasn't lying about the PO box
anyway. The return address on the envelope was interesting though:
Queen's Beach Condominiums, Charlotte Amalie, St. Thomas. I took out
pad and pen and wrote it down.