by P. J. Tracy
“An anonymous tip.”
“That’s right. An e-mail right out of the blue.”
“I suppose it was untraceable.”
“It was.”
Roadrunner said, “Kind of a cool thing to hand over to your bosses if it turns out legit, huh?”
John looked from one face to another. No one was smiling. “Very cool,” he said finally. “Very cool indeed.”
EPILOGUE
IT SEEMED THAT JOHN SMITH HAD FALLEN JUST A LITTLE bit short of every goal he’d ever set for himself. As a kid, he’d wanted to be a superhero with a cape; instead, he’d ended up as a Fed with a blue suit. In college he’d wanted desperately to be one of those glorious golden young men who raced in the America’s Cup and called out magical phrases like “Hoist the mains’l! Man the helm!” or some such thing.
Surprisingly, he’d turned out to be a natural sailor, but never found a crew that would take him on because he couldn’t remember all those pesky nautical terms. They’d always seemed a little silly to button-down John. Like “hard a’starboard.” Who thought up such things? Why not just say “Turn right”? Everybody knew what that meant. Which was, of course, the whole point. Every exclusive club had to have its own parlance.
How strange, then, that after so many near-misses, well into the second half of his time on earth, he was learning to excel at life—the one thing he’d never really aspired to.
Once a year for all the years he’d been with the Bureau, he’d taken the boat south to the Keys; sometimes all the way to the Caribbean. For two weeks he’d dance the boat through waters that had too many colors to claim one, watched sun and moon and ocean mingle like a trio of lovers, and felt his mind slow down and finally bob and drift like a piece of flotsam on the swells. He’d stop at any port where he liked to mingle with strange and interesting people who didn’t know him, which gave him license to laugh and joke and be someone else. He ate bar food on rickety piers while his bare feet swung over the water, and sometimes drank with women whose names he couldn’t remember. Two weeks a year. Less than eight percent of his adult life.
He closed his eyes and smelled salt, heard the ticking of the rigging against the mast and the ruffle of heavy cloth in the breeze, and then felt the wind in his hair for the first time in years. He hadn’t had it cut for three weeks now, an all-time record. Maybe he’d let it grow long like Harley’s and wear it in a ponytail, just another gray-haired man reverting to the wild.
He opened his eyes when he heard the familiar clicking up the three steps from the galley, then the soft padding of bare feet. He watched as Grace and Charlie crossed the teak deck to the bow. They both liked to stand up there where the wind was always strongest, whipping Grace’s hair back, making her look like one of those figureheads the Vikings used to put on the prows of their ships. Charlie stood with his head poked through the rails, the wind blowing his tongue sideways out of his mouth.
John liked watching them.