"We have no suspects at this time," the Coast Guard information officer stiffly informed him. "Anyone could have done this."
"The sign on his face, it has meaning?" Sirio pressed.
"He may have painted his face this way."
"For what reason?"
"Maybe he was a hockey fan. They like to paint their faces to show support for their favorite team."
"Hockey! Tomasso is Sicilian. We do not follow hockey. That is for others."
"I think that blue symbol is a French-Canadian team's emblem or something. I don't follow hockey, either."
Sirio Testaverde took possession of Tomasso's abused body and, after turning him over to the Kingsport Funeral Home, went to the United Fishermen's Club and began speaking to any who would listen in a low, urgent voice.
"It is the damn Canadians that did this to my son's only son. The Testaverde name stops in this century because of what these scum have done," raged Sirio Testaverde.
"Canadians?" someone asked incredulously.
"Have they not seized our boats?" Sirio countered.
This was allowed.
"Do they not compete for the same fish as we?" Sirio added.
This, too, was admitted.
"They have come into our waters for as long as I am alive and on the seas, and after they exhaust our waters, they close off their own. We are excluded from the Grand Banks. Did we exclude Canadians from our waters? No. We did not. This is inherently unfair. Something must be done."
"It is their waters to close," a reasonable voice said.
"The waters belong to no one but the strong. To those strong enough to take fish from them. We are Sicilians. And Americans. We are strong. Canadians are weak. We will take their fish if we so wish."
"What if they try to stop us?"
Sirio Testaverde shook his sun-shiny fist in the smoky club. "Then we will take their boats and their lives."
On any other night Sirio Testaverde's exhortations would have been dismissed as the bitter grievings of an old man who has come to the end of his bloodline.
But in one corner of the club, set high on a rude shelf, a television set poured down its flickering kinetic light. The network news was on. No one was paying much attention to it. Neither was it being ignored entirely.
"We will take what is ours because we are men," Sirio was saying. "For too long we get a poor price for our landings because we compete with Canadian fish that is trucked in to the Boston Fish Pier, already dressed and cooled. First they overfish our waters, then they overfish their own. Now they send their damn fish to our markets. They are swine."
A fragment of a report caught the attention of a man seated closest to the TV. He turned up the volume.
"...In New York, UN Secretary-General Anwar Anwar-Sadat has made a claim that is creating quite a stir in diplomatic circles," the mellow-voiced anchor was saying. "It seems, according to the Secretary-General, that a U.S. Coast Guard cutter and a submarine suspected to be of Canadian origin-French-Canadian origin, to be precise-clashed in disputed waters on the Grand Banks with the result that the sub was sunk with all hands aboard. In Ottawa, Canadian officials vigorously deny this story. From Montreal, additional denials. Yet the Secretary-General is insisting the report is true and furthermore that, like the current fishing crisis, it is a sign that individual nations cannot be trusted to oversee their own territorial waters, and that a UN high commission be established to patrol and safeguard the high seas, incidentally protecting the much-overfished stocks that are the cause of so much international friction these days."
"See!" Sirio said, pointing to footage of the UN Secretary-General addressing a group. "See. The damn wog is correct. No one owns the sea. Let us take what is ours!"
In other times Sirio Testaverde's demands would have fallen on deaf ears. For these were hardworking men who rose with the sun and, when they at last returned to port, slept for days afterward.
But times were tough. Massachusetts had surrendered to Maine the distinction of being the most successful fishing state in the nation. These were men who owned their own boats, their own businesses, but had no control over their product. They were farmers of the sea, and their crops were in perpetual failure.
"We must take!" Sirio ranted.
Others began to vent their own grievances.
Soon Sirio's gravelly calls were taken up by younger, more vigorous seamen.
The hour grew late and the voices grew angry and, as word spread, the smoky hall filled with many out-of-work fishermen.
"I say," Sirio Testaverde shouted, pounding the table at which he sat, "that we assemble an armada and take what belongs to us by virtue of our superior might."
The scarred and cigarette-burned table shook with the vehemence of Sirio Testaverde's slamming fist. All around the room, other fists struck old wood, and voices, low and sullen, grew high and agitated.
That night an armada was assembled. It slipped out of the Kingsport waterfront and made its way north to the richest fishery in the entire world.
They were sailing into history.
IN ST. JOHN'S, Newfoundland, Canadian Coast Guard Petty Officer Caden Orlowski received his orders by wireless and asked that they be repeated.
"You are to arrest and detain any United States vessels operating near our waterways."
"In our waterways? Or did I hear incorrectly and you said 'near.'"
"Upon any pretext board and detain any and all U.S. vessels you encounter near our waterways."
"Fishing vessels, you mean?"
"Any and all U.S. vessels," his commander repeated somewhat testily.
"Aye, sir," said Petty Officer Orlowski, who then turned to his helmsman and said, "Steer a straight course south. We are hunting American vessels."
The helmsman turned from the wheel and made dubious eye contact.
"You have your orders, as I have mine," Orlowski repeated.
The helmsman fell to his duties.
Aboard the Canadian Coast Guard cutter Robert W. Service, the word spread. They were hunting American maritime vessels. No one knew why, for certain. But all understood where the order had come from.
It could only originate from the office of the minister of fisheries, who had only a year before closed off the Pacific salmon fisheries to Canadian fishermen. Obviously that had been only phase one. This, then, was phase two.
Orlowski had another word for it.
Damage control.