The posh Mobile Bay Marina sat a quarter of a mile up the beach from the Grand Hotel. The information Charlie needed was strictly proprietary. Finally, a task suited to a horseplayer.
At the track, a fortune could be made with the knowledge that a favorite was running just because “he needs a race,” meaning he’s not fit to win, so the jockey will “school” him-just let him experience competition. Much of Charlie’s “job” had been wheedling such intel from grooms. The attendant in the Meadowlands owners and trainers parking lot often proved an oracle-just not often enough. At Aqueduct, the refreshment stand workers were Charlie’s best sources. Amazing what an owner would let slip while waiting for his seventh Big-A Big-B-thirty-two-ounce beer-of the day.
In the waterside village catering to the Mobile Bay Marina, the Grand Hotel, and a cluster of golf and beach developments, Charlie posed as a tourist. He was interested in chartering a yacht, he told the eager-to-serve proprietors in three of the quaint art galleries and boutiques crammed onto the short main street. He learned that the marina’s veteran harbormaster, known to all as Captain Glenny, viewed her job as part sheriff and part priest. Refueling a cabin cruiser took in excess of an hour, during which time returning yachtsmen regaled her with their adventures. In twenty years on the job, she had become their friend and confidante.
Charlie sensed such a woman would look upon any bribe with indignation. Were Bream among her charges, she would alert him within moments.
Charlie took a page from the Post and Daily News beat reporters at the track. Their jobs, consisting of little more than reporting the order of finish and adding a dash of commentary, placed them at journalism’s lowest rung. Nevertheless, their status as members of the media induced complete strangers to speak with the sort of candor psychiatrists rarely attain from their patients. The limelight acted as a powerful stimulant, even the few particles of limelight emanating from a department whose existence newspapers didn’t like to acknowledge.
Charlie’s cover began with a stop at a nearby Sears. He bought a baggy pair of khakis, an oxford shirt, Hush Puppy knockoffs, and an extra-large synthetic wool parka. The idea was to look like a journalist as well as hide his identity from Bream.
In the same mall, Charlie hit Cheapo’s, an office supply store. For $4.99 he printed himself business cards using the same name that appeared on his forged New York driver’s license, John Parker, and billing him as Editor at Large for South, a new lifestyles magazine based in Tampa. He chose Tampa because it was far enough away from Mobile to preclude Do you know? questions. Also Tampa was the only place in the South where Charlie had actually spent time-albeit all of it at Tampa Bay Downs.
The Mobile Bay Marina stayed open twenty-four hours. It was probably never more inviting than when Charlie arrived, the bay a pastiche of blues and silver, the sun having brought the air to the precise temperature at which being outdoors felt most invigorating. Rustic docks and gleaming hulls and spars swayed with the mild current. From the parking lot, he saw no one about, though there might be yachtsmen below deck. He wasn’t sure how to pass through the big entry gate without drawing their attention. Then he spotted the OPEN TO THE PUBLIC sign.
It felt like a gift.
The instant he set foot on the pier, a middle-aged woman burst out of the harbormaster’s office. She was stout and might have been pretty if she hadn’t appeared poised to bark at him. Her spiky hair was cut short, exposing a sizable collection of gold earrings, worn only on her left ear.
“How can I help you?” she asked with a none-too-subtle undertone of “You are obviously not a wealthy yachtsman or someone a wealthy yachtsman would want to see, so what the heck are you doing here?”
“I’m a reporter,” Charlie said.
She looked him over. “Doing something on the G-20?”
“Actually I write for South Magazine.”
“Uh-huh. Don’t know it.”
So much for the Limelight Effect.
“Lead times what they are, my story won’t run until the spring issue. We’re doing a piece on the prettiest harbors in the South, and so far this one gets my vote. Could you by any chance direct me to the harbormaster, Glenny Gorgas?”
“I’m Glenny.” She took in Charlie’s mock surprise. “Short for Glendolyn.”
“Pretty name.”
She warmed, but only by a degree. “So how can I help you?” He needed to find out which yachts had arrived in the last day or two. This time of year, the number wouldn’t be high.
“Do you, by any chance, have time to give me the dime tour?”
They walked the docks for twenty minutes, Glenny paying no attention to the sprawling golf course or the tennis courts, or the resort hotel itself, a town’s worth of pert three-story brown clapboard buildings, many of which loomed over the marina. Her focus was on the two hundred or so yachts, which she referred to as if they were their owners. Passing a sleek and towering catamaran, she said, with pride, “He made a hole in one last weekend.”
This was the opening Charlie had been waiting for. “Here in Mobile?”
“Mr. Chandler has a condo on the course at the Grand.” She smiled. “Sailing for him is an excuse to play golf.”
“Do a lot of the boat owners have homes here?”
“A few have condos here, but most live close enough, up in Montgomery or Birmingham. A handful in Tennessee.”
“How many people do you see during the winter?”
She sighed. “Winter’s a lonely time to be a harbormaster.”
He stopped, pointedly looking around. There was no sign of anyone, just the groans of ropes holding yachts to docks. “Is anyone here now?”
The harbormaster brightened. “Actually, I had two parties in yesterday, and one the night before that. January and February I get the occasional excursion to the Caribbean or Mexico.”
With manufactured fascination, Charlie scribbled each in his notebook. “It must be fun, when the people come back, to hear about their adventures?”
Glenny’s step added a skip. “Best part of the job.”
“Heard any good stories lately?”
“I’m expecting a really good one any time now, actually.” She pointed to an empty slip at the end of the far dock. “Anthony and Vera Campodonico, retired couple, spent their whole careers at Auburn-he used to be a dean. Now they go down to the Caribbean and South America looking for lost civilizations and stuff like that. He actually writes books about it.”
Probably not Bream, Charlie thought, given the Campodonicos’ ages.
Glenny strode ahead. “And of course there’s Mr. Clemmensen-Clem Clemmensen. Great guy. He just got in from Martinique.” She smiled at a relatively plain cabin cruiser. “Even when he goes on fishing trips ‘just to do some thinkin’,’ as he says, he comes back with yarns that involve either a girl or a barroom brawl, or a barroom brawl over a girl. Lately he’s been cruising around trying to figure out what to do with the rest of his life. He made a bundle in flight simulator software and basically retired last year at forty. Not bad, huh?”
“Sounds like a good story,” Charlie said, struggling to keep a lid on the high-voltage conviction surging through him that flight simulator software was a chapter in a cover story: Clemmensen was Bream.
Motion on the pier behind them seized their attention. Heading their way were two men in dark suits and sunglasses, one white and the other black, both athletic, clean-cut, and in their late twenties. Their stride was all business.
Once within hailing distance, the black man asked, “Charles Clark?”
Charlie tried to appear relaxed.
The men shared a nod. He’d failed.
“We’re Secret Service,” the white man said. “We were hoping to talk to you privately, sir.” For Glenny’s benefit, he added, “We have to interview everyone in the vicinity with out-of-state tags. Standard operating procedure.”