I picked up the phone.
I was in a better frame of mind. Slightly. My insurance, for which I pay a small fortune, would adequately cover lost revenues caused by the injury. Additionally, I was pleased to discover that the policy-especially designed for surgeons-also provided for a sizeable cash settlement for any incapacitating injury to the hands, regardless of prognosis of recovery.
So I had eight weeks of paid vacation until my wrist mended which would happen, I was assured-and enough cash to pay for the Ella Hatton , which we'd bought earlier in the spring. I could grasp with my left hand slightly, despite the cast.
Still, I was in pain and irritated at my forced idleness. Young Jeremy was fortunate indeed to have escaped my wrath. I dialed the number given to me by directory assistance. It rang twice and a woman answered. I asked for Mr. Babcock.
"Mr. Babcock? Is this Mr. Jack Babcock of Newport?"
"Yeah it's me. Who's this?"
"Mr. Babcock, I'd like to buy your boat."
"Who is this?"
"Name is Adams, Charles Adams. Do you own a boat, sir?"
"Yes but she's not for sale. That is… uh… unless you'd like to talk about it, I guess."
Obviously business was booming for Babcock, as it was for almost all independent fishermen in New England. No doubt five grand down and a promissory note and I could become a skipper tomorrow, and Babcock could get another job with a bright financial future, like dispensing detergent in the local Laundromat.
"Didn't I see your boat up in Wellfleet the other day?"
"Nope. Never been up there. I'm out of Newport."
"Oh. What's your vessel's name, may I ask?"
"She's the Penelope. Hate the name. Wife's dear-"
"Uh… I must have it confused with another-can you quickly describe the boat please? Then I'll leave you alone."
"Sure. Sixty-two feet, white with red gunnels. Built in Gulfport, Mississippi, six years ago. Twin Cummins diesels-"
"Oh sorry, you know I made a mistake. It must have been another Penelope I saw."
"She's a beaut, no foolin'. Besides the engines she's got loran and radar. Long-range VHF radio. Four berths. I could transfer the mortgage and-"
I called the other six in the course of the day. Four times I spoke with the wife since the owner was out fishing. The only two vessels that could possibly match the boat I saw in Wellfleet were far away; one in Bath, Maine, the other in Elizabethtown on Martha's Vineyard. I was impressed by the statistics I had copied from Merchant Vessels too; the descriptions offered by the skippers and their wives matched the figures in the book very closely.
Next I called the Massachusetts Boat Registry. It didn't take more than a few seconds to discover there was no boat of Penelope's description registered in the state. There was a sailboat named Penelope out of Rockport. That was it. So much for that.
Since it was late, I decided to check the USCG Regional HQ next morning. I went in person. Driving Mary's Audi with my cast was easy since there was no gearshift to contend with. I parked in the lot behind the Boston Garden, walked by North Station, through the Garden, and found myself on Causeway Street. It's a typical Boston street: dirty, noisy, crowded and charming. The Green Line trolley tracks run over it, just like the way the El tracks cover Wabash Street in Chicago. I heard the rattle of the trolley and the cooing of millions of pigeons. It seems you never see baby pigeons or pigeon nests, and you hardly ever come across a dead one either. They must spring up spontaneously from breadcrumbs or something and disappear into thin air when they kick the bucket.
I entered the big headquarters building. On the fourth floor I found Lieutenant Commander James Ruggles. To my surprise, he had Penelope's documentation certificate in front of me in less than ten minutes. Well, it seemed to wrap up the little puzzle. I asked Ruggles if he could give me the owner's name and address so I could contact him. He stared at the page.
"New vessel,. Penelope, noncommercial vessel-"
"Noncommercial?"
"Yup. What it says. Built this year. Hailing port is Gloucester. Officially that's the port that should be on the vessel. Penelope is technically in violation."
Then that explained everything. It explained the grounding, I as suggested by McNab at the Nauset station: new boat, new skipper. It explained even the rather bizarre behavior of the boat and her crew once inside the harbor. Finally, it explained Penelope's absence from Merchant Vessels.
"Who's the owner?"
Ruggles hesitated a second.
"Why do you want the name. I'm obliged to provide it, but mind if I ask?"
I quickly told him about Allan's death, and my desire to lay at least some of the guilt to rest. He listened keenly and with patience, then looked back to the papers on his blotter. He rubbed his chin with his fingertips.
"Wallace Kinchloe, of Boston, owns the Penelope. His address is Five Blossom Street. That's right up the street; you I shouldn't have any trouble-"
He stopped in midsentence.
"What's the matter?"
"Nothing. The address is familiar though. Here's the phone number. If you want to try it there's a pay phone down the hall. Good luck. Come back and let me know what you've found out."
I called the number. A musical voice oozing forced cheerfulness answered. It was the Holiday Inn. Stunned, I asked for Wallace Kinchloe. He wasn't registered. Was he ever registered there? They wouldn't say. I returned to Ruggles's office.
"Guess what?" I asked him.
"I already know. It's the downtown Holiday Inn. I just remembered."
"He isn't there either. Is there anything else on the documentation? How about a post office box?"
"Nothing. Tell me the story again."
So I did. Lieutenant Commander Ruggles continued to stroke his chin thoughtfully.
"According to this, Wallace Kinchloe was born in Danbury, Connecticut, August 4, 1913. He resided in Cohasset until a little over two years ago. Now he is listing his address as temporary, which fits with the Holiday Inn. Under remarks are two words: in transit.
"In transit?"
" 'In transit.' Not much to go on. Here's more though; the boatbuilder who built Penelope is required by law to fill out one of these."
He waved a small square of paper at me. It had a fancy engraved border, two signatures, and some sort of. government seal. Very official.
"This is a Master Carpenter's Certificate, which states that such-and-such a vessel actually was constructed at such-and-such a time and that delivery of said vessel actually took place at a certain time by a certain party. OK?"
"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.
Distant gulls cried, a faint plaintive eeeyonk, eyonk, yonk-yank-yank. The groaner buoy bleeped. The dune grass hissed, gray-green as it bent to the wind. It would have been a lovely evening under ordinary circumstances.
"Charlie, the water's ready. Time to put them in."
She had stopped at the lobster pool and bought two gigantic specimens for dinner, no doubt to cheer me up. But it didn't.
The thought of the two big crustaceans scurrying and crawling their way into oblivion in the scalding water did not appeal to me at all. As one who worked on people's teeth and I mouths I was acutely aware of pain. If death must be done, then best do it quickly, cleanly, with the proper equipment. I fetched an ice pick from the back entry and then took the lobsters from the refrigerator. I grabbed them by their middles; they flung their arms out and backward in a futile attempt to take my hands off. Their big claws were immobilized by the pegs and thick rubber bands, and I was glad. I inserted the steel point quickly and forcefully down between each animal's head and thorax. It made a noise like a stapler. They didn't say or do a damn thing; when I picked them up their bodies dangled like latex. I dropped the limp corpses into the boiling water and put the butter on to melt. The dinner helped some; we sat outside and watched the sun go down. It hit bottom just when the bottle of chablis did.
The next morning at eleven they buried Allan Hart. The funeral was bad enough, but to watch Jack and five other young men carry the casket down the church aisle and out of the hearse to the grave was unbearable. It was that first shovelful of dirt that got me, and his mother. She wept openly, I silently, with little convulsive shudders and throat squeals.
My fault… my fault…
We had Sarah and the rest over to the cottage afterward. Extremely glum. Boy was I glad when it was over. Then I sat and stared out across the water for the rest of the day. Life is boring and death is terrifying. And here we are dangling on spider silk, caught right in the middle.
The next day Mary went to a local art fair. When she returned we sat at the kitchen table eating two small chef salads. She had brought a copy of the Globe with her that somebody had left behind at the fair. She flipped through it absently, and I saw a picture flash by that I wanted to retrieve. I found it. It was a picture of a boat. White and low-slung with a small cabin, it was a lobster boat. I read the story. The boat, out of Marblehead, had disappeared almost two weeks ago. It did not look good for the skipper, a certain Andrew D'Corzo.
The article had set me to thinking. I had planned to make contact with Daniel Murdock, the boatbuilder who had signed the carpenter's certificate, as soon as I returned to Concord. But I remembered what Lieutenant Ruggles had told me in his office about vessels appearing and disappearing. Perhaps I should look for a boat that had recently disappeared and would roughly fit the dimensions of Penelope. If indeed the boat I saw wasn't new, then she had to have a previous life: What better way to discover it than to check on boats recently lost?
"How's the wrist?" asked Mary.
"Still hurts. And I can't drive golf balls. I can't beat you at tennis. I can't swim. I can't practice my trade except to remove stitches from previous extractions?
"What makes you so sure you'd beat me at tennis? And anyway it's your left wrist."
"How could I serve?"
"Oh. That brat. Did you ever decide on an appropriate torture, by the way?"
"Yes, I have in mind a dual program for the lad: the Agony of the Thousand Cuts to be followed by Impalement. Well?"
She nodded approvingly as she popped the last forkful into her mouth.
I got the number of Murdock's boatyard in Gloucester and called all day without an answer. Then I called the Boston office of the Coast Guard. At the Department of Marine Safety, they informed me that the USCG kept a case log-a file-on all recently missing boats, regardless of size or purpose. They had various investigative procedures to track them down too, like phoning likely harbors and boatyards. If the errant skipper left a float plan, or indicated even vaguely his plans of destination, the Coast Guard cutters would traverse the probable routes, looking for the vessel or wreckage of same. After a "reasonable time," the files were closed, with the vessel and crew presumed lost. I asked what a reasonable time was, and was told it varied. If a vessel disappeared during a violent gale, the reasonable time was not as long as under other conditions. This seemed to make sense.
"Where can I get a list of vessels lost during the last month or two?"
"From where, sir?"
"From the entire New England region, but especially from the Cape and the Islands northward to, say, Portsmouth."
"We have that information here. It's available to the public."
I thanked him and hung up. Mary was in the hallway in front of the mirror trying on a new straw hat. She canted it at various angles and spun on her toe.
"Honey, I'm going to put my unexpected vacation to use. I'm going to locate the Penelope."
"That's good. How?"
"Tomorrow I'm going up to Boston and through some files. Then I'm going to track down some boatbuilders and reporters."
"You could work on the gutters and repair the broken window in the garage."
"Can't. Are you forgetting the wrist?"
I was at the outskirts of the city in a little over an hour, and shortly thereafter was pulling Mary's car into the lot behind the Boston Garden. I turned left on Causeway Street and went right past the regional Coast Guard headquarters to the smaller building next door that housed the Boston station.
There I was shown the files that contained the case logs. I began to scan them, starting with cases that occurred in May. Some of these were already marked for abandonment; the CG was assuming the boat lost, the crew dead. Two of these were draggers that disappeared in heavy weather over Georges Bank. I went through all the files. As might be suspected, the recent cases were more numerous. Presumably these would be whittled down as people gave up hope and as boats were found. I imagined they found quite a few of them tucked away in small coves and in big marinas, the owner with his case of whiskey and his girlfriend explaining lamely that geez, they just seemed to forget about the time…
One case caught my eye immediately. It stuck out like Ayer's Rock. It was a boat named Windhover that disappeared-or rather failed to report back-June 25. She was out of Gloucester, and her dimensions matched those of Penelope to a T. Windhover disappears end of June in calm weather (so the report said). Penelope appears, having been allegedly built in same port, in Wellfleet two months later.
The Windhover was a noncommercial vessel engaged for a the purpose of "archaeological salvage" (this phrase directly from the report). I remembered now Ruggles's comment as shown on the Penelope's documentation certificate, that she was also noncommercial. Most of all, her home port stuck out: Gloucester.
Penelope had allegedly just been built by Mr. Daniel Murdock of Gloucester. But Sonny Pappas, who'd repaired her, said she wasn't new. I felt little bells tinkling in the back of the gray matter.
The Windhover's owner was a man named Walter Kincaid, of Manchester-by-the-Sea, a posh town just south of Gloucester. I left the Coast Guard and started up toward Beacon Hill with the name ringing in my head. Walter Kincaid. Walter Kincaid. Where had I heard that? I was standing on the corner opposite the Saltonstall Building on Cambridge Street when it came to me: Wallace Kinchloe. Wallace Kinchloe was the owner of the Penelope. Walter Kincaid-Wallace Kinchloe.
I trudged up the hill. The chimes at the Park Street Church boomed ten o'clock. I had a fifteen minute walk to Copley Square and the Boston Public Library. I crossed over Beacon Hill, just skirting the State House and dodging piles of dog shit that littered the old cobblestone sidewalks. On the average day in Boston you will smell four things, this being one of them. The other three odors are Italian cooking, garbage, and the Bay if the wind is right. I crossed the Boston Common, and made my way through clots of winos, dopers, religious fanatics, street jugglers, street musicians, thugs, pushers, and street crazies, to Boylston Street, where I turned right and headed up to Copley Square.
Once inside the library I made my way to the periodical room and scanned a series of microfilms of the Boston Globe. I asked for the last week in June and the first week in July. It wasn't long before I found the account of the missing boat. This is what I read: Windhover Still Missing GL0UCESTER-The research vessel Windhover, owned and operated by Walter Kincaid of Manchester, is still reported as missing. by the Coast Guard. The Windhover set out from Gloucester June 25, and has not been heard from or seen since. Mr. Kincaid, a retired businessman who founded the Wheel-Lock Corporation of Melrose, used the vessel for exploring various archaeological expeditions along the New England coast. According to his wife, Laura, Kincaid was headed to Provincetown as a first stop in an expedition that would take the Windhover down the outer Cape coast to the islands. The disappearance of the boat is all the more baffling to the Coast Guard because of the mild weather recently, and accompanying calm seas.
But what was really interesting was the photograph that went along with the aiticle. This was what I had been seeking. The Windhover looked familiar. Of course this wasn't surprising considering that she was a converted commercial fishing boat. Draggers, trawlers, and lobster boats look a lot alike. So in fact, do pleasure boats. Yet there was a certain lilt of the gunwale line, a rise and sheer of her stem particularly, that struck a familiar chord. I shunted the photograph around in the microfilm viewer machine with the knots on its sides. I read the credit on the photo's bottom: Globe Photo by Peter Scimone.
OK, I'd call him and get a print. I returned the microfilm and on the way back down Boylston Street stopped at the Boylston Street Union for a run and a sauna bath. I ran five miles around the gym floor; there is no track at the Boston YMCU. There is no pool there either. In fact there isn't anything except an old four-story stone building that's loaded with old musty locker rooms, an ancient gymnasium, and a healthy population of cockroaches. The lobby, if such I may call it, looks like the Greyhound bus station in Indianapolis in 1936. And that's doing it a favor.
Well then-you might well ask-what does the YMCU have? What it has or rather what it is, is a microcosmic slice of that place called Boston, thinly shaved, stained, and mounted in a slide. If you want to see Boston, don't go to Newbury Street. Newbury Street could be anywhere. The North End is good; it could only be in Boston, or New York, but it's all Italian. Likewise the city of South Boston (or Southie, not to be confused with the South End of Boston) is all Irish. Moreover these ethnic enclaves leave out groups like the blacks, Chinese, and Spanish-speaking Bostonians. But everybody's at the Union. Everybody. Guys named McNally and Ferreggio. Washington and Pekkalla, Chang, Papadopoulos, Garcia, Frentz, Jainaitis, Hudachko, and… and Adams. Just about every third guy who goes to the Union checks a piece at the front desk:. 38 police specials,. 22 autos, I've even seen a few. 357 magnums and. 45s too. They're cops, detectives, and prosecutors. We don't got no violence or trouble at the YMCU. Nope. Because the place is crawling with fuzz. And to help them out are the body builders, muscle freaks, and karate/Aikido addicts who can eat Buicks for lunch and break cement with their pinky fingers.
I have two friends at the YMCU. One is Liatis Roantis, the Lithuanian ex-mercenary who teaches martial arts. He spent some years with the French Foreign Legion and some with the U.S. Special Forces, where he taught guys how to kill people with their earlobes. Somebody once asked me to describe him. I said that if you took every Charles Bronson movie ever made and took all the characters that Bronson ever played and melted them down in a test tube, the result would be Liatis Roantis. I had taken four courses from him: beginning and intermediate judo and karate. Boy is he good. To mess with him in any way-especially after he's had about seven beers-invites death or severe permanent injury. He is a pit bulldog in human shape. '
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 Cafe. 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."