Black Tide (14 page)

He left by going back through the sliding-glass doors, leaving me alone at the table. As I finished my ice water, I wondered I had been looking at the next chief of police for Tyler, New Hampshire. It certainly seemed likely.

Then the waitress with the long hair and denim miniskirt dropped off our check. I looked to see if Roger had left any money, and all I saw was his dirty plate, cold French fries, rolls and some napkins. About then I smiled and thought he'd fit right in at the Tyler police department, and he'd know how to handle the town manager and the three selectmen who ran this town.

On my way back to my Rover I took a stroll along the Strip, just to work off some of the dinner and to see the sights. It was about 7 P.M., and the day was still well lit. Many of the people walking along the crowded sidewalk were still wearing their bathing suits, though some of the women had slipped on shorts for the sake of whatever modesty was alive in these times. At the center of the Strip is the Beach Palace, an old two-story wooden building that stretches over two blocks and contains the Palace Ballroom, which offers concerts and comedy shows during the summer, along with the annual Miss Tyler Beach beauty pageant. Around the Beach Palace are video arcades, jewelry stores, T-shirt emporiums, bars, restaurants and fried-dough and popcorn stands.

Most of the people walking along the Strip seemed to be families, and there were a lot of wide-eyed kids eating ice-cream cones and holding hands. Even with the trash in the gutters and the idiot electronic sounds coming from the arcades and the dusting of beach sand that got into everything, the people on Tyler Beach this night seemed to be at peace with each other. An illusion, I'm sure, but I was content.

I rounded a corner and headed for the police station, and one of those special moments just reared up and tickled at my mind. A group of laughing kids were walking up the sidewalk, talking about the night ahead. A Jaguar XJ-12 rumbled down the street, two young women in the front seats, with long black hair and wearing identical dark sunglasses. Out on the horizon, past the flat marshlands and the woods that hid Route 1, the sun was easing its way down, giving everything out there a pinkish glow. Birds rose and dove out on the marsh, and even the one-story police station looked magical. And at that fleeting moment, it felt good to be alive, and I remembered, as I always do, my own debts, my own obligations. Before reaching my Range Rover, I went to an ATM machine on the street corner, withdrew two hundred dollars, and decided I had something to do before going home.

About an hour later, after spending most of the previous time at a Market Basket supermarket, I drove down a side street off Route 286 in Falconer, Tyler's poorer cousin to the south, and pulled into the small parking lot of a church. The building was white and had a little steeple, and it belonged to a small fundamentalist group that didn't have very many members in this part of the state. But in its basement it had something special for the people of Tyler, Falconer, Tyler Falls and the other towns in this part of Wentworth County, and that's where I was headed this summer evening.

It was still light, though fast approaching dusk, as I parked at the rear basement entrance to the church. I had planned on just giving the boxes of groceries at the rear door, knowing that people started rolling in about that time, but a man was there to meet me as I got out, and I felt the faint flush of self-consciousness as he shook my hand.

"Henry Larson," he announced. "I'm the minister here, and we do appreciate your donation, ah, Mr…."

"Cole," I said, opening up the rear tailgate. "Lewis Cole, of Tyler."

The Reverend Larson was about my age but slimmer. He had on gray polyester pants, black dress shoes and a white short sleeve shirt, and had two pens clipped in his shirt pocket. He was nearly fully bald and his hair along the sides of his head as closely trimmed. He was quiet but smiling as we worked, and in his eyes you saw an utter belief and conviction about what he was doing and about the basic goodness that was out there. It was a feeling that I envied him for having. He helped me carry the boxes of groceries to a kitchen area in the basement, which was already beginning to fill up. Long tables with light pink paper tablecloths were lined up on the floor of the basement hall, and about twenty or so people were standing in a line where the evening meal was being served, cafeteria style. The people were all of ages, weights and heights, and they didn’t say one word as they waited to be served. The Chambers of Commerce in this part of the state may hate to admit it, but we do have our poor, our homeless and those people along the edges that just can't make it. Along the walls were homemade banners consisting of cloth and cutout letters that contained Bible verses, but it didn't seem as if the people in the line were interested in reading them just then. Maybe later, when a more direct hunger was taken care of.

After we had packed the boxes away, the good reverend again shook my hand and said, "We're going to have a service here in a while, if you'd like to join us."

I smiled and gave him the most polite shake of my head that I could, and said, "I have other commitments, but thanks for the offer. "

"Well, if you can't do that, Mr. Cole, then I do insist you sign our Memory Gift book," he said, and from a desk in the kitchen area he took out a brown, leather-bound book. It had cream-colored pages and he opened it up for me and said, "We ask that people who give us donations at least sign this book, and maybe note in whose memory the donation was made."

I took the book and placed it on a stainless-steel counter. The pages were set in ledger style, and the reverend had opened up the book to a blank page. "What for?" I asked.

He smiled, ever confident, ever unshakable in his faith and belief. "Each service we hold up this book and give prayers for all of the names contained within it. Each and every service, Mr. Cole. Without you and these benefactors, we wouldn't be able to do our work.”

Something about what he said made sense, so I took out a pen and under "Name and Address" wrote, "Lewis Cole, Tyler, N.H.," and in the "Remarks" section, I wrote, "In memory of Trent, Carl, Cissy, and the others."

No doubt I was breaking the law and a solemn agreement in writing down those three names, but so what. I was in a church. That was considered a sanctuary in most quarters and I would leave it at that, and would leave my fear in this building.

And I would also leave out the name of George Walker.  He would have to seek salvation from somebody else.

When I got home I decided I had been cold turkey for long enough and so I uncapped a Molson Golden Ale while calling Felix Tinios. The phone rang twice and all I got was Felix's answering machine --- which had a charming message: "At the tone leave a message" -- and so I did. I took a sip from the beer and unlocked the sliding-glass doors, removed the broomstick from the runner and went outside to the deck. Night was coming along just nicely, and out on the waters of the Atlantic, I noted the lights of the fishing boats, returning hesitantly to these shores after the
Petro Star
had fouled the waters with its cargo of alien oil. The scientists and oceanographers had said that in a while the ocean in this part of the world would recover, but it made one wonder at how many hits a system like this could take before just rolling over and giving up.

The
Petro Star
. I took a long swallow of the Molson and almost winced at how cold it was, traveling down my throat. That as a project I had ignored for a while, and one that was going to have to be left alone for a few more days. Something else was tickling my fancy, and I wanted to play with it, even though it meant that the nameless one, the man who had sent the
Petro Star
out, would go on unheeded and unfrightened, content that he was far away from his handiwork.

Still, I had patience. Most of the time. He and I would meet somehow, of that I was sure.

Out on the far horizon, a dot of light went by, moving fast, and along with the sound of the helicopter engine made me want to rush inside, but instead I stayed there, waiting, not allowing the old ghosts to chase me away, and in a few minutes the sound was gone.

About ten minutes later I was in my deck chair, feet up on the railing and halfway through with my beer, remembering that I had a damn column to write, when the phone rang. I went back inside, picked up the receiver and Felix Tinios said, "You called?"

"That I did," I said, looking at the bottle of Molson's in the inside light. It was almost empty and I decided it would be my solitary beer for the evening. "I've been thinking a bit about our last chat, and the request you made, about seeking my help."

He breathed some and said, "That so?"

"Yeah. You still looking for my calming influence, and for that 10 percent figure you quoted?"

"That's still there, Lewis. If you want it."

"I think I do, Felix. I really do."

"Well," he said, and there was a pause and he said again, "Well, Lewis, and don't take any offense, but I want to make sure that you're taking my advice. I don't need you boozy and slow. I need you on target and sharp."

There was another light out on the horizon, but it was too far away for any sound, and I was glad. I said, "Your safe house contains three Winslow Homers that were stolen from the Scribner Museum five years ago, and it's in Maine," and I hung up the phone. Then I went back outside, to see which stars would appear first in the evening sky.

After another five minutes and a long phone ringing session had passed, I went back inside and answered the phone when it rang again, and Felix said calmly, "That was a hell of a demonstration, Lewis. I'm just glad that I'm calling you on a pay phone. And I take back everything I said about you not being sharp."

"Forgiven and forgotten, Felix." Then his voice lowered. "How the hell did you figure the second part out?"

"Meet me tomorrow at ten. Then we'll talk. And, Felix, I want to see the paintings."

He laughed. "After what you just did to my heart rate, you deserve it." "Fine." We talked a bit more, and after I hung up, I washed out the beer bottle and put it in the green recycling bin. I then returned to the deck and sat there, just watching the waves roll in and crash against my cove, and every now and then catching the faint whiff of petroleum, reminding me of other commitments, other promises.

Still, it was good to be moving again.

Chapter Nine

The next day was Thursday and I waited for Felix in the sole parking garage in Porter, the northernmost community in Wentworth County and New Hampshire's biggest port. The famous shipyard here --- which once built a ship for John Paul Jones --- is nearly two hundred years old, and the town's port has driven a lot of the state's prosperity. Porter's history has run the gamut from the luxurious mansions of its merchants to the whorehouses which once serviced the various naval vessels which docked there. It's still a working port, with salt piles and scrap metal and the occasional tanker, such as the
Petro Star
.

Porter is now a popular tourist attraction because of its history and the fine Federalist homes and brick buildings which are crowded on the narrow streets. Through the foresight and hard work of some of the residents in the early 1960s, a lot of Porter's history was preserved and many of the city's older homes were saved from being torn down for parking lots or for those hideous concrete office buildings that look like they belong in a Tomorrowland at a Disney World. These spirited residents were welcomed with open arms by their fellow townspeople and businessmen in Porter, and their work was praised to the skies in the local newspapers during those controversial years. Right?

Of course not. They were criticized, yelled at and sued by everyone who thought they were standing in the way of progress. Some of them actually had to move out of state to escape the hate mail, and it took years before their work was appreciated. To this day that part of Porter's history isn't much talked about.

Still, their victories lived on. The parking garage I was in, for example, was built on a lot that once held a supermarket that had an enormous plastic revolving milk bottle at its entrance. The garage wasn't much of an improvement but it would do. This day it was practically full, and the main reason was the convenience of being downtown and the ridiculous price: twenty-five cents per hour, which would get you a few minutes or a few seconds of parking in Boston or New York. A few minutes earlier a station wagon with Connecticut plates had pulled in and the overweight driver, with sunglasses perched above his shiny forehead, said to his blue-haired wife, "Did you see that? Did you see how much they're charging? Quick, you gotta get a picture of me in front of the rate sign. They'll never believe this back home."

A few minutes after they had left, Felix Tinios rolled up, and I got my first surprise of the day. Just a few days ago Felix's red Mercedes-Benz convertible was parked near my house, but on this day he was driving a blue Ford Taurus. I took a look at the rear bumper and saw a square inch or two of sticky adhesive centered on the bumper. I got in and he deftly paid the parking attendant a quarter for the privilege of coming in to pick me up, and in a minute or two, we were in traffic. "I guess you know in your gut when something's serious, but when you see the proof, then it really becomes real," I said.