Night of the Tustumena

by Arne Bue

  "Only problem is we're running this," Henderson said.

  "I don't like this one damn bit. This is my ship."

  "You don't have any choice, Captain, sir."

  "Anything at all happen to one passenger or one crew member because of this, Henderson, I'll be all over you like a shark."

  "Keep and eye on Nakano. Everyone will be safe, Captain."

  Trooper Henderson disconnected. Sewell stepped out into the darkness of the wing where Second Mate Harry Lingenberry paced about. Sewell looked down at the people moving around on the dock. Lingenberry looked at Sewell as though about to ask what was going on, but Sewell wasn't in any mood to talk about Henderson and silenced the Second Mate with a dark look.

  Nakano was still in the phone booth. It looked as though he'd hung up the phone and was just standing there, doing nothing in particular.

  "Lingenberry," Sewell said, "get Elaine, tell her to come to the bridge."

  CHAPTER THIRTY

  During the two hour run from King Cove to Cold Bay, Captain Sewell stayed on the bridge with Elaine, hating all the while the idea of people controlling his decisions about his own ship. He had the radiotelephone with him, waiting for news on the Sentra.

  Thirty minutes before docking in Cold Bay a call came from Henderson.

  "Talked to King Cove police," Henderson said.

  "Dick?"

  "Before we get to that, the King Cove police said they appreciated your restraint in not opening the trunk."

  Sewell gripped the phone. He thought he'd seen more liquid dripping from the back of the Sentra to the dock as the car drove off, but it'd been too far to see anything for sure.

  "Was Dick in there?"

  "Someone cut him real bad. He's dead," Henderson said. "I m sorry."

  The Cold Bay dock was coming up. Elaine was looking up at Sewell with asking eyes. He shook his head, said to her, "Dick is gone." Elaine drew back, hands over her face. The helmsman had heard, had been waiting for the news. He'd been a friend of Dick's for years. He began to openly cry.

  "Who? Who would do this?" the helmsman was saying. Elaine was standing by the man. The helmsman held onto the wheel, choking back sobs.

  Henderson said, "The driver didn't know what was in the trunk. He was a local guy, paid fifty bucks to come get the car, leave it in town with the keys in it. He threw up all over his pants when he saw Dick."

  "Who paid him?" Captain Sewell asked.

  "A Japanese guy in Sand Point."

  "Not Mr. Nakano?" Captain Sewell asked.

  "No. We're having a drawing done from the guy's description of him, contacting Sand Point, looking for this guy."

  "What about Nakano?" Captain Sewell asked.

  "Business as usual, Captain. Hands off, but watch him."

  "I'm placing him under ship's arrest." Sewell heard Henderson snort. Henderson wasn't going to give up control.

  "Captain, Nakano's only a possible at this time. We think the Sand Point man is the prime."

  Sewell was shaking his head, pacing stiff-backed, the radiotelephone to his ear. There is no one else, he was thinking.

  Henderson was saying, "Tustumena ties up, picks up locals or people who look like locals, going one port to another."

  Henderson was right, Sewell had to admit. On and off, quick trips. Mr. Nakano was only a possible.

  Henderson was saying, "Only thing we have on Nakano is he takes trips to the Chain. Like you been saying, he sketches, takes pictures."

  Yeah, right, a quiet, innocent-looking man. Polite, smiles, speaks broken English. Walks with a limp. Couldn't be him. You got to be kidding. No good reason to make a ship's arrest? He couldn't arrest a man because of his nationality, enjoys voyages, sketches? Can't arrest a tourist? Sewell must calm himself, gather himself up again. The shooting at Northway Mall seemed to rise out of the gray weather off the bow. He'd not acted quickly when Joyce died. He'd just stood there. It'd happened so fast. One bullet. Now a murder on his ship. Dick. He'd act now, if he could. Henderson was still talking.

  "We found some more in that car," Henderson said.

  "What?"

  "Several thousand dollars in meth."

  "Sand Point," Captain Sewell said.

  "Looks that way, but it could have come right off the Tustumena."

  "That's all I need to hear. I'm going for Nakano, cuff him up in his stateroom," Sewell said.

  "Captain, sir, you make a move like that, you'll screw up any possibility of us making a case. And if you're wrong, Nakano can take the State to court, false arrest. We do not know for sure Nakano has anything whatsoever to do with this. Back off. Keep the ship on course."

  Sewell looked over to his Chief Mate.

  "Elaine, get in touch with Juneau. Let Kelly know about Dick." Elaine ducked into the passage, into the Master's Quarters.

  Henderson was saying, "But Captain, sir, sir?"

  "Yes, Trooper Henderson," Sewell said bitterly.

  "Keep a close eye on Nakano."

  "You re an asshole, Henderson." Sewell dropped the radiotelephone and headed for the crew's mess.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

  Daylight did not send the rain and wind away, but no matter to Mr. Nakano, as long as the ship finished this last of all voyages. The sky and the sea were as one, gray as an old man's beard. The ship sailed onward, with desolate waves following, Captain Sewell guiding the Tustumena to Cold Bay.

  Redbeard, when money was plentiful, stayed in a motel in Cold Bay, one an airline operated. Redbeard said during the Vietnam war the military provided fuel for fighters and other aircraft at Cold Bay so they could fly across the Pacific and into the conflict. Redbeard said a great deal, mostly about nothing Mr. Nakano observed. But the big man never spoke recklessly of the meth route. His was not a mouth spouting what should remain hidden as was the habit of the deceased Jeffrey Johnson of Sand Point.

  At quarter to nine, morning, Friday, September 30, Mr. Nakano looked from the top deck solarium through the rain-streaked plexiglass panes, past the revolving Racal-Decca radar antenna.

  He'd eaten the breakfast of biscuits and sausage, gravy and potatoes, a $5.00 special, not a meal to compare with wife Misako's presentations, or the Kumagoro Restaurant breakfasts in Anchorage.

  The only problem with Redbeard, as with Jeffrey, was the shortage.

  The shortage.

  A corrosive surge of acrimony shook him. Where had Mr. Nakano erred with Redbeard? Why the shortage? Why was his breathing coming so fast and his heart pushing his blood? Mr. Nakano gripped the hand-rails. He reached inside, and as though to save him, a meditation floated up:

  A master in his dealings with a servant should observe five things: He should assign work that is suitable for the servant's abilities, give him proper compensation, care for him when he is in ill health, share pleasant things with him, and give him needed rest.

  He concentrated on the rotating radar antenna, concentrated until the turning horizontal blade shaped into a torii, a Shinto portal.

  His heart and mind slowed as Anna Knight mouthed something over the loud speaker. It was 10:15.

  Once again, we have a 10:30 scheduled departure from Cold Bay.

  On the port side, the Cold Bay pier hugged foreboding waters under gloomy skies. In the hazy distance the wharf face reminded Mr. Nakano of the keel of a sunken barge. He caught in the causeway a bleak metallic shimmer from the blue rain and gray light.

  Redbeard had visited Mr. Nakano in confidence in his stateroom on other trips. He would do so again if he boarded in Cold Bay. If not here, he'd be in Dutch Harbor, for that was the way the man with the red beard always worked. The last time the drug delivery supervisor he'd appointed came aboard, he'd knocked on Mr. Nakano's stateroom door at three in the morning voicing a desire, he'd said, to talk about the Cold Bay pier. Perhaps, Mr. Nakano had speculated, at that early morning hour Redbeard had become lonely, or and this was more likely he needed to release burning issues that always plagued him and kept the man from
sleep. Mr. Nakano could easily have ignored the big man, left him in the passageway, but knowing Redbeard, this would cause an increase in the volume of pounding on his door, a disturbance a night watchman may well question.

  Mr. Nakano had allowed him entrance.

  He was not interested in Cold Bay wharfage at three in the morning, but that morning he'd politely presented an attentive face. Are not business relationships better when one pays the other the courtesy of listening? Perhaps a story on a different level would surface. Maybe Redbeard really wanted to talk of matters of great import.

  Redbeard's marble eyes floated out from under woolly brows, and he'd looked at Mr. Nakano from inside himself like an animal looking out from the brush.

  "T-shaped pier in Cold Bay is steel pipe piling, prestressed deck paneling, and concrete pile caps," the big man had said. "The wharf face, 122 meters. The approach from the shore to the dock, a little over 550 meters. Three and a half meters wide. Two turnouts. Depth alongside the wharf, about 9 meters at mean low water." Almost like a chant.

  Mr. Nakano was sleepy. Redbeard's wharfage facts simply affirmed for Mr. Nakano the Tustumena was safe in the approach as long as the winds were not fierce. But the man's eyes had become inky cavities, and from the look, Mr. Nakano knew Redbeard was not here to spew out meaningless facts about a dock. There was more.

  "You know, Cold Bay is in the Izembek National Wildlife Refuge", Redbeard had said.

  "Ah." Nakano felt a little more awake, though not that interested.

  "I once worked for the Department of Interior," Redbeard said.

  Mr. Nakano suspected what was coming. The Brant, again. Redbeard's peculiar focus was the Brant, Branta bernicla, a small, black-necked goose near the size of a Mallard. Redbeard was single-minded to the point of obsession in this. Once started on the subject of the Refuge or "Interior" as he called the U.S. Department of Interior, he spoke of nothing else.

  "Brant are important," he'd said. "I worry about them. Maybe too much. Everyone says the bird causes me trouble. But it wasn't the bird. It was the Refuge Manager."

  Ah, yes, the Refuge Manager again. Mr. Nakano suspected this would take awhile. Hoping to shorten Redbeard's vituperations, he said, calmly, "Also, it was the Refuge Operations Specialist and a Wildlife Biologist. You have told me of this many times before." Maybe Redbeard would leave and let Mr. Nakano sleep.

  But such was not the case.

  "All of them turned against me. They forced me out. I had a good job there on the Refuge."

  Redbeard had been a Wildlife Biologist. Once.

  Redbeard wished to earn a great deal of money in the summers so he could follow the Brant to Mexico for the winter. He said he did that last winter, and the winter before.

  Redbeard continued, "I ever tell you about them?"

  "Yes, many times," Mr. Nakano had said. But as usual, saying so did no good.

  "Brant first show up here from Mexico in mid-April," Redbeard said. "They stick around for only about two weeks, then they leave for breeding."

  Redbeard looked off into the space between them in the stateroom. Mr. Nakano believed Redbeard was happy with life as long as he could speak to someone about these birds, so Mr. Nakano sat still as the stone fox messenger statues near the Shinto shrine in Tokyo. He tried to understand.

  "After the breeding," Redbeard said, "they head back to Izembek Lagoon. They start coming in late August and they build to a peak by about, say, 20 September. My best work with them is from 15 September to 15 October, when they're feeding in the lagoon on the eelgrass."

  Redbeard spoke often of Izembek Lagoon. He'd save up money for supplies, leave Cold Bay, bike the Grant Point Road to get to Island Cove, Lucky Cove, Izembek Slough, Quarter Point or Halfway Point, along the shore of the lagoon. Mr. Nakano could tell Redbeard in his mind had already left the stateroom and was there at one of his favorite sites.

  He said, looking off, "I set up at the lagoon. Tent, sleeping bag, 35mm, bird-bands, cook stove, net, scope, the Winchester, microscope, slides. Redbeard looked out over an imaginary expanse, and extended his arm and moved it across the horizon, saying, "The largest bed of eelgrass in the world is there, 45,000 acres."

  Mr. Nakano politely forgave, as before, the clumsy-looking man. An obsession cannot be turned off. Obsessions have lives of their own, and must run their course. Mr. Nakano had trouble turning off his own memories of the appointed supervisor Redbeard and his constant talking about this one bird. He also had difficulty when he tried to shut out the pictures of wife Misako and son Kano. Of late, he was unable to stop the visitations of his mother and father in the reflections of windows so they could discharge their shame upon him.

  Redbeard had said, "They take off for Mexico, oh, say from 21 October to 22 November, along in there. Brant should be studied year-round. You understand, don't you? In summer and fall I'm with them out there in Izembek Lagoon. Then I overwinter in Mexico with them. I get more data there. I even have my own special leg-bands, different from Interior's."

  Redbeard mentioned an incident that, in Mr. Nakano's estimation, caused Interior to relieve Redbeard of his duties.

  Redbeard said, "I spotted an idiot shooting at my Brant. I roughed him up, but I did not point my Winchester at him, and I did not fire at him that I can remember. The Refuge Manager says I did, and the others said I did, too, but I don't remember any of that."

  The ship was nearly docked in Cold Bay. If Redbeard was here, Mr. Nakano would transact the largest and final exchange of the route.

  Two vehicles had parked on the Cold Bay wharf, a yellow van with the State of Alaska insignia on the door, and a white Chevy truck.

  Men stood on either side of the white truck. Mr. Nakano studied them. The man on the left wore brown rubber footwear that even from the solarium Mr. Nakano could see glint in the rain. And he wore steel-blue work pants and an insulated Navy-blue coat. He hadn't pulled up the hood. The man had a high forehead and thin black hair. He smoked a cigarette and looked off at nothing in particular.

  Mr. Nakano did not consider the man dangerous.

  The man on the other side of the Chevy wore corduroy trousers the color of sand, and a tan windbreaker, no hood. He had thick brown hair and his back was to the Tustumena. Such body language was a comfort to Mr. Nakano. Only those who studied the ship gave him concern; these men weren't interested.

  The man by the yellow state van wore blue jeans and a brown jacket, the hood up. He was cold, hands in his pockets. He wasn't waiting for disembarking passengers, and certainly wasn't studying the ship or passengers. He waited for the deckhand on the bow to throw a line, so he could help with the tie-up.

  A white Blazer approached the dock from land, driving the causeway. A few minutes later, a red Ford with a white cab followed. The drivers didn't get out, and Mr. Nakano couldn't tell much about them.

  Mr. Nakano stayed behind the solarium plexiglass. Below, passengers began walking about the dock in the rain. Some probably had gotten off to feel the steadiness of the dock and to stretch their legs and backs. One took a picture of the docked ship.

  A wet, wind-blown woman climbed into the Blazer. A young man no older than twenty wearing a Seahawk's cap got into the red Ford.

  The vehicles drove off toward the Cold Bay community, a comfort to Mr. Nakano.

  Passengers began to board.

  Redbeard wasn't here.

  He must be in Dutch Harbor.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

  A small group crowded the end of the ship's lounge, one of them a college student, a blonde girl in jeans. She recoiled against the bulkhead, clutching what looked like a pair of Red Wing hiking boots, the laces tied together. A man and a woman loomed above her, interested in the boots. The girl looked with pleading eyes over to the Captain.

  "Anything wrong?" Sewell asked. The man and the woman turned. The woman: muscular; deep lines roamed from the sides of her eyes, her chin darkened with stubble. Her husband's black eyes protruded from a seamed face overhung
with gnarled brows. The two looked at one another. They hurried past Sewell, forward into the foyer.

  "Thank God," the girl said.

  "What's going on?"

  "They're a bunch of jerks, if you ask me," the girl said through her teeth.

  "What're they doing?"

  "They want my boots. I told them to jump overboard. They started coming in a little too close for comfort until you came along."

  Sewell dashed into the foyer. They weren't there. He climbed the stairs to the sun deck, hurried past the staterooms. Cabin 210 was open.

  The Nelsons, Donna and Louie, rich honeymooners from Washington D.C., looked out at him through a wall of smoke. Sewell recognized the smell. Donna gave Captain Sewell a glazed stare, Louie wearing a bland, flat face.

  Louie said, "Hello, Cap." He waved his hand up toward his face in a sloppy, insulting salute.

  "What are you smoking?" Sewell asked.

  "Just cigs, Cap." Louie got up from the bunk and ambled forward. He closed the door in Captain Sewell's face.

  Sewell bolted down the stairs, ran into the observation lounge.

  There, he saw them, looking like gypsies. He slipped into the movie theater and looked them over through the curtains. They did not appear armed, his main concern; one, a man dressed as a woman, no doubt. Look at the two-day beard on his face, he thought. They're as conspicuous as a ship afire. They're eying the backpacks of other passengers, and their carry-on luggage and purses.

  The blonde girl entered the lounge. She carried her boots laced together around her neck. The gypsies stepped over to her, and one took the Red Wings in his hands, looked them over. He pulled the boots from the girl's neck. The girl yanked her boots out of his hands.

  Sewell swept the theater curtain aside. The gypsies looked up, dark, menacing eyes, the whites stained with brown streaks.