Port City Shakedown

by Boyle, Gerry

  PORT CITY

  SHAKE DOWN

  by Gerry Boyle

  Copyright © 2009 by Gerry Boyle

  All rights reserved.

  Cover photograph © Chad Henning/Getty Images. Used with

  permission.

  ISBN: 978-0-89272-795-7

  5 4 3 2 1

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Boyle, Gerry, 1956-

  Port City shakedown / by Gerry Boyle.

  p. cm.

  ISBN 978-0-89272-795-7 (trade hardcover : alk. paper)

  1. Interns (Civil service)--Fiction. 2. Police--Oregon--Fiction. 3. Portland (Or.)--Fiction. 4. Psychological fiction. I. Title.

  PS3552.O925P67 2009

  813’.54--dc22

  2009007580

  For Vic, my constant,

  from start to finish.

  I am grateful for the generous assistance of sailors Dan McCarthy and Ave Vinick, who read the manuscript, paying close attention to all things nautical. Special thanks to my other readers (you know who you are) for their consideration of Brandon and Mia. You will meet again.

  “When beholding the tranquil beauty and brilliancy of the ocean’s skin, one forgets the tiger heart that pants beneath it; and would not willingly remember, that this velvet paw but conceals a remorseless fang.”

  —Herman Melville, Moby Dick

  CHAPTER 1

  It was a little after five on a cold afternoon in May. Drizzle speckled the wind-shield, the smell of low-tide mudflats coming into the cruiser, mixing with the odor of Griffin’s stale hazelnut coffee.

  This was on a side street off of Congress, the harbor side. Griffin was at the wheel, Brandon Blake riding shotgun, a misnomer since he didn’t have any gun at all, just a Kevlar vest and an I.D. that said, “Portland P.D.” In smaller letters, “Intern.”

  Griffin had said he’d cover Brandon’s back, which Brandon wondered about, whether that implied Brandon would go in first. Not that it mattered, not yet. It had been three days and they hadn’t done anything dangerous: rousted a couple of old drunks who would keel over in a strong wind, took reports on a bunch of burglaries with the burglars long gone, Griffin spending most of the time in between talking about his kids.

  Brandon tried to be polite, Griffin a nice guy and probably a good dad, but going on and on, Brandon finding it hard to relate—not having kids, not having a father—only half listening like he was now.

  Then Griffin pulled over, the cruiser sliding to a stop. Griffin jumped out.

  He reached back for his baton, slipped it from its holder on the cage and held it in front of him, one hand on the grip, the other eight inches up.

  The ready position.

  Blake jumped out, too, stood by the hood, and watched. A scruffy guy on a bike coasting by, turning to see what the cops were doing, the older one with his baton out, ready to swing.

  “Tied up two-two, bottom of the sixth, two out, man on third,” Griffin was saying. “Three and one, hitter’s count. Infield in. Jeremy’s hitting like four hundred, already ripped a hard foul, vicious line drive just wide of third. So what does he do?”

  He paused.

  “This is a kid, remember. Little League,”

  “I don’t know,” Brandon said.

  The motor whuffed softly like a sleeping dog, the guy on the bike still circling.

  Griffin punched the air with the nightstick.

  “He lays down a bunt, first base line. Pitcher goes for it, first baseman breaks. Second baseman comes over to cover, but he’s late. Jeremy beats it out.”

  Griffin beamed, all white teeth and thatchy brown hair—the boy inside the cop. “Run scores. We—“

  Something on the radio stopped him. Brandon turned and listened, Griffin already heaving himself into the seat, no smile now. Brandon scrambled back, the passenger door still open as the tires screeched.

  “What is it?” Brandon said.

  “Fight.”

  “Where?”

  “Funeral,” Griffin said, swinging across traffic onto Congress, lights and siren forcing cars to the side of the road.

  “Whose?” Brandon said.

  “Inmate, county jail.”

  Griffin hit the klaxon horn, squeezed between a bus and oncoming traffic.

  “The inmate’s dead?”

  “Somebody in his family.”

  “So they fight at the funeral?” Brandon said.

  “Hey,” Griffin said, “we all grieve in different ways.”

  CHAPTER 2

  A funeral chapel in a strip mall. Low, vinyl-sided place looked like it used to be a restaurant. Two cruisers out front, Portland black and whites, at the side door a green and white van from the county jail.

  “I’m off,” Griffin barked into the mic and swung out of the car, slipping his baton into his belt. Griffin didn’t say not to, so Brandon followed.

  They heard muffled shouting as two stolid funeral parlor guys in dark suits swung open the double doors.

  Griffin strode by, hand on his pepper spray. There were inner doors, too, and he yanked one open and moved in, Brandon behind him.

  A casket at the center of the room, pink lining and an old lady in a light blue dress, like an egg in an Easter basket, the only one not shouting or screaming. To the left, two deputies working their way to the door. There was a guy between them. Handcuffed, small, and skinny, wearing a suit, the jacket two sizes too big, like the clothes in the after picture in those diet ads where people lose fifty pounds. One of the deputies, gray-haired and stout, was fending off two other guys—collared shirts, no jackets— who were trying to get at the skinny guy, the inmate? The deputy sprayed the guys, got them and a woman behind them, who put her hands to her face and shrieked.

  Chairs scraped. A vase of flowers wobbled, then fell and broke.

  Griffin waded into the crowd to the right, flinging people aside and shouting, “Police. On the floor.”

  Brandon went in on Griffin’s left. “Police,” he shouted, leaving off the intern part, feeling like he was watching himself in a movie. He moved between some kids who were standing on chairs to see. Approached the outer ring of spectators, a woman screaming, “You hated her, you two-faced piece of shit.”

  Brandon shouted again. “Police, back off,” and a big guy actually did, leaving an opening. Brandon slipped through, found himself standing over a tangle of women on the floor: an older one, red-headed, big and wide and thick-legged, and a younger one with short black hair. They were pounding on another woman, her blonde hair all askew. It was a writhing knot of limbs, tattoos flashing, arms pumping, legs splayed, the woman on the bottom missing a high-heel shoe, her black stockings torn. The sound of fists hitting flesh and bone, a growling coming from the young woman on top as she flailed away, jaw clenched.

  Blood sprayed. The woman on the bottom looked dazed, wasn’t defending herself.

  “Police,” Brandon shouted again, and the older woman turned. He stepped in, started to pull her back, her upper arm big and soft, like tofu.

  “Get your fucking hands off me,” she said, and somebody hit Brandon in the back, then the side of the head. He held onto the red-haired woman, lifted and pushed her aside. Reached for the flailing woman, felt someone kick him in the leg, grab his arm.

  “Come on, now. Stop it. Calm down,” Brandon shouted as the flailing woman landed a right, the blonde woman real bloody now, her mouth and nose painted with dark red streaks, like lipstick run amok. Someone landed on Brandon’s back, the red-haired woman, heavy and soft, breasts pressing against him, the smell of sweat and cigarettes and perfume, nails digging into his neck like talons. He had her partner by the shoulders, but let go to pull the hand off, clawing at his chin now, the blonde woman coughi
ng, the women all gasping, “You bitch.”

  Brandon tried to lift himself, couldn’t with the weight of the big woman, felt her nails digging into him, clawing at his mouth, slashing at his eyes, scratching just below his eyebrows. He let go of everyone, braced himself, and threw an elbow up and back, hit the red-haired woman in the face and the hand fell away. Brandon turned and saw the big woman sitting on her butt, blood streaming from her nose, dripping from her chin onto her white sweater.

  She cupped her hand under the flow and bellowed.

  The blonde woman with the bloody mouth started to crawl toward her stray shoe. The woman who had been punching her staggered to her feet. Brandon slipped through the women to the side of the room, stepped aside as deputies dragged the skinny guy in the big suit toward the door. Griffin was behind them with another guy, older and bigger, his shirt torn to show a swaying gut, an unidentifiable blue tattoo on his hairy shoulder. He was cuffed behind his back, pepper-sprayed eyes red and swollen, shouting blindly, “You all suck.”

  Brandon pressed through the mourners, two groups shouting at each other. A kid threw a hymnal. Someone threw it back, pages fluttering. Brandon ducked, looked to see where the book had come from, turned, and was face to face with the skinny guy, still held by his handcuffed wrists, like a dog on a short leash.

  Narrow face, upper lip stuck out over bad teeth. A goatee and straight greasy hair. Dark, close-set eyes that flicked across the room.

  Then back at Brandon. He returned the stare as they stood there, stuck by a bottleneck at the door.

  “Who the fuck are you?” the inmate asked.

  For a moment Brandon didn’t answer, just held the guy’s gaze, not backing down. “You from the jail?” he said.

  “My grandmother, it’s her funeral. You don’t got a name?”

  “Blake.”

  “You know why I wanna know?”

  Brandon shook his head.

  “That was my ma you beat the shit out of.”

  “Shut up,” the deputy said, and he gave the inmate a hard shove from behind. The inmate lurched and recovered. From deeper into the room, more shouting, another skirmish flaring up.

  “Where you from?” the inmate said. “The goddamn neighborhood watch?”

  Brandon stared, didn’t answer. The inmate smiled, a cold carnivorous grin. The crowd moved, the deputy stumbled, and the inmate fell into Brandon, hung on with his chin digging into Brandon’s shoulder blade. His mouth was close to Brandon’s ear.

  “Eye for an eye, dude,” the guy said through clenched teeth. “Times fuckin’ ten.”

  CHAPTER 3

  They were riding back along Commercial Street, on the inner harbor, the long way back to the P.D. Letting the Sheriff’s office handle the arrests, the big hairy-bellied guy taking the hit for the whole clan.

  “Rest of ’em can crawl back in their holes,” Griffin said.

  Brandon looked out at a tanker, offloaded, hull riding high, readying to leave port, diesel smoke billowing from its stack. He pictured the same stretch of river a hundred years ago, schooners floating up on the tide, pilots rowing out to meet them.

  One of the hazards of reading history books, you were always picturing things that were long gone.

  “You did alright back there,” Griffin said.

  “Thanks,” Brandon said, picturing the inmate, his black eyes shining. “This Fuller guy—“

  “Scumbag,” Griffin said.

  “Think he’s all talk?”

  “Hard to say. Mostly it’s been nonviolent stuff: theft, stolen goods, fraud. Charged him once with arson, but it got dropped. Some guy over in Westbrook ratted him out for selling pot, so Fuller threw a Molotov cocktail through his window. Or somebody did. Awful hard crime to prove, arson. Fire went out anyway. Isn’t as easy as it looks in the movies.”

  They had gone under the ramp of the bridge that spanned the harbor: Portland on one side, South Portland on the other. The downtown sidled up to the water on the Portland side; oil tanks and marinas across the water. The islands of Casco Bay showed dimly through the mist.

  It was a well-used harbor, fishing giving way to condos like everywhere else. They drove past the container terminal, the ferry terminal, too, the ferry gone to Nova Scotia, parking lot mostly empty.

  Brandon pointed across the harbor.

  “I’m right over there,” he said.

  Griffin pulled over and they sat, the radio chirping softly, like a baby bird in a nest.

  “Where?” Griffin said.

  “There.”

  Brandon pointed out over the harbor, white mooring buoys showing against the blue water, the surface rippled like sand on a beach. Brandon loved to watch the way the wind played the water, never the same way twice.

  “See all those boats? I have a slip over there.”

  “You live on a freakin’ boat?”

  “Yeah.”

  Griffin looked at him again, more closely.

  “What is it? A yacht?”

  “An old Chris-Craft. A cabin cruiser, you’d call it.”

  “Why?”

  “Why what?”

  “Why don’t you live in a house?”

  “Kind of a long story,” Brandon said.

  Griffin stared across the harbor at the tangled nest of masts and moorings. “Winter, too?”

  “Sure,” Brandon said. “You frame it in with plastic. Heat it with propane.”

  “Don’t think I could do that,” Griffin said. “Claustrophobic, you know?”

  “It’s not for everybody.”

  They were quiet as they looked out, Griffin thinking he wouldn’t last one night stuck in the bottom of a cabin cruiser in some little bed, the ceiling two feet from his head. “You never played ball, did you?” he said.

  Brandon shook his head.

  “I could tell,” Griffin said.

  “Nothing against it. Just never had the chance.”

  “That ’cause you always lived on a boat? No yard or anything? Couldn’t you play at school?”

  “Just never got into it, I guess,” he said.

  “Your parents live on the boat, too?”

  “For a while I lived in an apartment with my mother. But she died when I was little.”

  “Sorry. Your dad?”

  “AWOL,” Brandon said, flashing a smile. “Never reported for duty.”

  “Can’t understand people like that,” Griffin said. “Every minute I can, I spend it with my boys.”

  Brandon shrugged. Griffin reached across to the glove box, got out a small pair of binoculars, Nikons. He got out of the car and walked across the scrub and looked out at the water. Brandon followed. The tanker was spewing more diesel smoke against the gray sky now, waiting for the tide. The plume drifted away on the damp southeast wind.

  “So this boat of yours,” Griffin said, holding up the binoculars. “It’s on a dock?”

  Brandon nodded.

  “See the big dark-hulled sailboat, the one with the Jolly Roger. Look just to the right.”

  “Oh, yeah. Wood on the top.”

  “Right.”

  “You don’t have it anchored out in the middle?“

  “I get a slip free because I work there.”

  “And go to college?”

  “One class at a time.”

  Griffin didn’t say anything for a moment, just gazed out at the harbor.

  “This boat, Blake,” he said.

  “Yeah.”

  “Can you get to it from the land?”

  “Walk down some stairs and out onto the docks.”

  Another pause and Griffin said, “No security?”

  “A fence. The gate’s locked, but the owners are always leaving it open.”

  Griffin turned away from the water, started to walk back to the car. Stopped and looked back to Brandon.

  “Sometimes they surprise you,” he said. “Guy’s been stealing stereos out of cars and all of a sudden he pops somebody. Breaks into a house, the wife’s home. Had a guy
a few years back did that. Ties the lady to a chair, ends up strangling her with the cord to an iron. Can’t leave a witness. From punk to murderer, just like that. And sometimes they like it.”

  “The rush?” Brandon said.

  “The power,” Griffin said. “Pretty amazing thing to take somebody’s life.”

  They stood looking at the boats, all lined up.

  “If I was you sleeping on that boat,” Griffin said, “I’d have a gun. And more than one way out.”

  “There’s a forward hatch, but be tough to get out in a hurry. But I do have a gun.”

  Griffin glanced at him. “Loaded?’

  “Should it be?”

  Griffin shrugged. “Hard to tell these days, who’s gonna try to kill you and who’s just a regular asshole.”

  CHAPTER 4

  Brandon punched himself in with the security code, felt like a wimp for liking the sound of the chain-link gate snapping shut behind him. He crossed the yard, waved to a couple of owners, hurrying so they didn’t have a chance to press him into service. Yet.

  He unlocked the office, stepped in. The place was dark, the answering machine flashing frantically on the desk, a morning’s worth of calls. Bran-son closed the door, snapped on the lights, walked over and hit the button, grabbed a pad and pen.

  The usual real estate people trying to reach Sam, the owner of Windward Point Marina, one saying it was “imperative” that they have a conversation. “Good luck,” Brandon said. Sam was in an assisted living center outside Fort Myers, hadn’t had a conversation since his stroke. Maybe if the guy wrote him a letter.

  A woman with a sultry voice, saying she was looking for a place for her 28-foot Sea Ray. Brandon thought the name was familiar, the husband calling two weeks before.

  The owner of the 36-foot Bertram in slip A-12, saying the freshwater hose leaked all night, he couldn’t sleep. A guy from Cape Elizabeth, asking if there was a mooring available.

  Get in line, Brandon said to himself.

  A call reporting the ice machine was acting up—Johnny in the Absolut, in C-9, who would know. Dave Browne— with an E— asking if his sailboat, an Ericson 35, still was scheduled to launch the next morning. It was, last boat scheduled to go in on the lift.