Port City Shakedown

by Boyle, Gerry

  A woman wanting to talk to Sam about business opportunities. A guy asking if his Sundowner 22 was still in storage (it was), and sorry about not paying the bill last year or two. It was three.

  There was a knock on the door.

  Brandon looked up, still scribbling names and numbers.

  “Hey, Brandon.”

  Doc Lynch, white-haired and whiskey-cheeked, came in, waited as the last caller said his number, and the machine beeped.

  “No nibbles on a charter?”

  “It’s on the Web, Doc,” Brandon said. “On the board. But there are a lot of boats out there.”

  “Bargain for three thousand a week,” Doc said.

  “Not a bargain, Doc, unless somebody’s looking for a bareboat and your boat stands out. Ocean Swell is a nice boat, but there are a lot of boats out there.”

  “Well, pitch it hard, Brandon. I’ll make it worth your while.”

  “She’s number one on my list.”

  “I mean, 46-feet. Six-foot-eight headroom in the main cabin and salon. Sleeps seven, for real, not a bullshit seven. You got that on there?”

  “Not a bullshit seven. Got it.”

  “And the pressurized hot and cold.”

  “Yup.”

  “Handles easy,” Doc said. “Meticulously maintained. Spotless throughout. New radar, state-of-the-art GPS, autopilot.”

  “Gotcha,” Brandon said.

  “Full shore power, remember. Plug-in heater. Cabins heat up good.”

  “You don’t have to sell me, Doc. She’s a very nice boat.”

  “Might as well have somebody enjoy her before the so-called wife gets hold of her.”

  “How’s the divorce coming?” Brandon said.

  “They’re bleeding me, Brandon. Hanging me by my feet like a stuck pig. I need this charter.”

  “I’ll talk it up, Doc,” he said.

  “Don’t ever get married, Brandon.”

  “Not likely.”

  “If I only knew then what I know now.”

  Brandon remembered the nurse, from a certain angle looked like Christina Aguelera. The last straw for Mrs. Doc.

  “Hey, but if she wants to play rough, I can play that game. Her lawyer, smarmy son of a bitch, hope he doesn’t think I’m gonna roll over. I don’t get mad, Brandon, but I sure as hell get even. It’s the Irish in me. We know how to hold a grudge, let me tell you.”

  Doc’s eyes narrowed, glistened. The look of revenge. Second time that day.

  The afternoon went by in a blur. Ice machine (a broken hose), a tender with an outboard that wouldn’t start (screw fell out of the carburetor), the guy with the unpaid storage bill backing up to his boat with a pickup, starting to write a check, Brandon sending him off for cash.

  A complaint about loud partying on Absolut, Johnny promising to keep it down, the season off to its usual start. Clearing stuff out of the way of the Ericson, getting ready for the morning launch. A salesman looking for “the boss,” disappointed when Brandon said he was it.

  And finally, after six, up the wooden steps that led over the stern of Bay Witch, Brandon’s Cavalier cruiser. He turned back. Looked out at the yard, the owners coming and going, the gate now propped wide open with a dock cart.

  Security had included Doc Lynch’s yappy poodle, but the poodle had gone with the wife.

  Brandon climbed aboard, the boat rocking almost imperceptibly as he stepped into the cockpit. He went to the cabin door, opened it, stepped down and in. It was close and hot and he reached up to turn on the fan, rigged to suck air up through the bow hatch. He glanced at the cabinet, the door closed, an old Marlin rifle leaning inside.

  The gun had belonged to his grandfather, who he’d never known. Brandon had simply taken it from this grandmother’s attic with a box of old shells. He was thirteen, and he rode his bike out of town, the gun in its canvas bag tied to the cross bar, turning off when the woods seemed deep enough.

  Like most things, shooting a gun was something Brandon had learned on his own.

  Turning to the galley, he bent to take a beer from the refrigerator. Picked out a bottle of Geary’s ale, grabbed a book and flashlight off the berth, went back topsides, and walked up to bow. He sat in the canvas chair on the foredeck in the deepening dusk and took a long swallow, looking out across the shimmering water, now green against the sunset.

  Brandon opened the book to the marked page: Crime Scene Investigation: Chapter 4. There was a list, and Brandon’s eyes ran over it. “Establish the perimeters of the crime scene and document this location by crime scene photographs and sketches, including written documentation. . . . Reconstruct aspects of the crime in formulating the search. . . . Ascertain the legal basis for the search prior to any seizure of evidence. . . .”

  He flipped the page. The flashlight beam showed a picture of a man, the eyes covered with a black strip. Asphyxia due to drowning, the caption said, noting the foam coming out of the man’s mouth. Brandon flipped more pages. A woman on a bathroom floor, blood pooled under her head, eyes still staring, stabbed by her husband. A chapter heading on the top of the page: The Psychopathic Personality Stalker.

  Brandon closed the book. Stood and slipped down the ladder, and into the cabin. He opened the cabinet, took out the faded green canvas gun case. Slipping the rifle out, he ran his hand over the wooden stock. Reached and opened a locker over the settee bench and rummaged. Found a box of .22 shells. Sitting on the bench, he slid the rod from the magazine tube under the barrel. Dropped in 18 shells, counting them out one by one. Slid the rod back in.

  He looked at the cabinet, glanced back to the bow. Walked over and laid the gun carefully down on the narrow shelf beside his berth.

  The barrel was pointed toward the cabin door.

  CHAPTER 5

  Word had gotten around that Criminology 203 was a gut, which was why, as Brandon looked around the classroom, he saw one guy sleeping, his head on his arm, mouth open, a girl with her phone on her lap tapping out a text, another guy with one earphone in, the iPod in his pocket.

  Brandon sat in the front, by the window. Next to him was the girl from Minnesota who wanted to be a writer. Mia, “after Mia Farrow.” When she’d said that during introductions the first day, nobody in class had known who Mia Farrow was except for Brandon, raised by a grandmother who drank wine and snored in front of old movies on TV. Professor Shurstein knew because he was old.

  Mia was already out of Colby, a graduate student. She was slight and blonde, attractive if not pretty, narrow face and prominent nose with a little bump. She and Brandon were the serious students, and after the first class she’s moved next to him, stayed there ever since. The other students were glad to have them to provide cover.

  The chapter du jour was “Crime and Punishment” and Shurstein was talking about the number of inmates in American prisons and how it kept going up and up. Suddenly he paused, ran his hand through gray Groucho Marx hair, and said, “Why?”

  The class looked up and froze, like rabbits hearing a rustle in the brush.

  “Why are there so many people behind bars?” the professor said. “Where do they all come from? Why can’t they obey the rules?”

  There was silence, students sitting stock still like they were camouflaged and any movement might give them away.

  “Drugs,” Mia said. “And laws that address the symptom but not the root cause of the problem.”

  “Which is?”

  “Hopelessness.” The other students looking at her, a gelled-hair guy rolling his eyes. “Their lives are dead ends.”

  “So, assuming that criminals are made and not born, and I think we can agree about that, the crack addict who mugs you on the street was not always a drug addict and a criminal. He wasn’t born bad. How do we intervene? How do we break the cycle?”

  “You can’t,” Brandon said. “We’re all the product of our experiences. Millions of people are already out there. Full of flaws, reproducing. You lock them up. You keep sticking your finger in the dike. Some l
earn from their mistakes. Mostly you deter enough people to keep society working.”

  “You’re saying ‘corrections’ is a misnomer, Mr. Blake?” the professor said.

  “Not all of them,” Brandon said. “But I ran into a guy yesterday. He’s in and out of jail. Robbery, burglary, assault. He’s inside right now. His family are mostly outlaws of one sort or another. He’s never gonna play by the rules. He just can’t. Isn’t in his DNA.”

  “He could reform himself,” Mia said. “Find religion or something. You read all the time about murderers, they find Jesus in prison, or Islam. Turns their whole lives around.”

  “Religious faith can be a powerful thing,” the professor said.

  Brandon smiled.

  “I don’t think so,” he said. “Not this time.”

  “How do you know?” Mia said. “How can you just write somebody off like that?”

  “You weren’t there,” Brandon said. “You didn’t look into his eyes.”

  As the clock on the wall ticked to 10:50, the students jumped up like the building was on fire. Shurstein shouted an assignment into the din of scraping chairs and retreated to his desk. As the crowd thinned, he motioned Brandon over. Mia stood by the door, waiting.

  “Mr. Blake.”

  Brandon nodded.

  “How many courses are you enrolled in?”

  “Just this one,” Brandon said. “I take one at a time.”

  “Why not more? You’re a very capable student. Why not full-time?”

  Brandon shrugged.

  “I work.”

  The professor took a step closer.

  “Wait a minute. Are you the one—”

  Shurstein glanced at Mia, back at Brandon.

  “—the one who pays cash,” he said.

  Brandon hesitated.

  “Something wrong with that?” he said.

  “No, not at all. And it’s none of my business, but if it’s financial, there’s assistance, you know.”

  “I don’t need any help,” Brandon said.

  Shurstein gave it another shot.

  “Loans, grants. That’s what they’re for.”

  “Thanks, but I pay as I go.”

  Shurstein looked at him like he was a museum specimen, a rare species.

  “I take it you’re on your own,” the professor said.

  Brandon shrugged, books on his hip.

  “I guess that explains why you’re more motivated than most.”

  “I don’t know. You’d have to ask them about their motivation.”

  “What do you do? For work?”

  “Work in a boatyard,” Brandon said.

  “And if you don’t mind me asking, how long does it take to come up with the money for a course.”

  “I worked for six months for this class. Saving on the side.”

  “Worth it?”

  “Yeah, except you coddle the deadbeats too much,” Brandon said. “They don’t do the work, I’d toss ’em.”

  “You’re a little tougher than me, I guess,” the professor said. “Like with your unsalvageable criminal. Acquaintance of yours?”

  “Briefly. He’s in jail.”

  “Maybe he’s being rehabilitated as we speak,” Shurstein said.

  Brandon looked at him, smiled.

  “What?” the professor said.

  “You put these people in jail so they can’t hurt anybody. Like a mean dog behind a fence.”

  Shurstein shook his head, peered through his big glasses.

  “Awfully hard for somebody your age.”

  “Nothing to do with hardness,” Brandon said. “I just don’t kid myself,” and he turned and walked away.

  CHAPTER 6

  Mia and Brandon were on the sidewalk, other students all around them. Guys in football shirts, baseball hats on backwards. Girls in jeans, tank tops, tattoos showing at bare waists like bugs crawling out of their pants.

  Brandon tried not to stare—at Mia. Blonde hair, reddish in the sunlight. The nose with the bump, but a pretty sort of bump. Pale blue eyes that would mesmerize him if he let them.

  “Where’d you see this guy?” Mia said.

  “A funeral,” Brandon said. “They had a funeral and a fight broke out.”

  “A fight at a funeral?” she said.

  “I guess the family has some issues,” Brandon said.

  “Why do you get the good stuff and I’m stuck in a lab watching somebody get DNA out of piece of gum?”

  “Sometimes you get lucky,” Brandon said.

  “So tell me,” Mia said.

  “Tell you what?”

  “Come on, Brandon. Tell me what happened.”

  He did, as they stood on the sidewalk, the crowd of students dwindling to nothing, cars pulling away. Soon it was just the two of them, Brandon describing the old lady in the casket, the women fighting on the floor. Mia was smiling, rapt.

  And then Brandon got to the part about Joel Fuller, the chin on his shoulder, an eye for an eye.

  “Times ten?” Mia said. “What’s that mean?”

  “That he does to you ten times what you did to him.”

  “Scary.”

  “I don’t know about scary. Just sort of crazy. This look in his eye, like his mind doesn’t work the way a normal person’s does.”

  “God, I wish I had been there,” Mia said, her blue eyes glowing. Brandon smiled at her, wondering how many girls would want to see a brawl close-up.

  “Why?” he said.

  “It’s real life,” Mia said. “I mean, my life is boring. I have a nice mom and dad. I grew up in a big house. I went to a good college. The typical American family.”

  “Maybe not so typical.”

  “My dad’s a lawyer and my mom’s in human resources and my broth-er’s in med school. Dartmouth. Gonna be a cosmetic surgeon, get rich. My dad, he says it’s time for me to forget this writer stuff and get a job, but he doesn’t, like, disown me about it.”

  “Pays for your school?”

  “Which is great, but I don’t know. Nothing big happens. I need to see lives that have drama and conflict and, I don’t know, big moments, events that change people.”

  Brandon paused, said, “Careful what you wish for.”

  They walked up the street, stopped by a new red Saab. Mia opened the door, tossed her bag on the passenger seat and turned back to him.

  “Actually, I did have one change in my life,” she said.

  “What’s that?” Brandon said.

  “You know that boyfriend I had?” Brandon nodded.

  “I don’t any more,” she said, and she reached out and tapped his hand. “Want to get coffee or something?”

  “Have to get back,” Brandon said. “The owners get cranky if there’s nobody on duty for too long.”

  “I’ll come visit.”

  “Sure.”

  “I can finally see this boat of yours,” Mia said.

  “I’m around.”

  He looked at her, the eyes, the softness of her neck. A dangerous girl, the kind you fall in love with, the kind it hurts to lose.

  Or not. Who was he kidding? A few coffees at Starbucks. She gets the stories she needs, writes them into her novel. Flashes the eyes, full of promises, then gone. Back to Minnesota. Her lawyer dad, the big house in, where was it she said? White Bear Lake?

  Brandon would be left with the girls from the Old Port, like the last one, who, standing by the bar, had said over the din, “Boats are really, like, awesome. They’re, like, great places to, like, party.”

  Mia waved as she pulled away. Brandon started up the street to his truck, parked under a maple with pale late-spring leaves, translucent against the gray sky.

  Tossing his book on the duct-taped seat, he got into the truck, pumped the gas. The old Ford started with a puff of blue smoke, like a magic trick. Brandon checked the mirrors, looked behind him. Pulled out and, as he started down the street toward Back Cove, he checked again.

  An eye for an eye, times ten.

 
CHAPTER 7

  Portland District Court was full, a dozen inmates from the jail in the dock. Defendants were in the rows of seats, families in the courtroom, little kids and wives and girlfriends coming to support Daddy as he stood before the judge, an attractive fortyish woman just appointed to the bench.

  She flipped through stacks of files, looked a bit confused. A lawyer rose from the seats, tall and rumpled, running a hand through his hair. He came through the gate, plunked a battered briefcase on the defense table, motioned to the row of inmates. The bailiff looked to the prosecutor, a harried young woman, hair tied back, and said, “Ready?”

  Joel Fuller got up from his seat. He walked to the defense table as the traffic-case people watched, wondering if his orange suit meant he was a murderer or something.

  “Joel W. Fuller,” the judge said.

  “Mister Fuller is here, your honor,” the rumpled lawyer said.

  “This is a petition for release?” the judge said.

  “Yes, your honor,” Fuller’s lawyer said. “Mister Fuller has completed four-fifths of a five-month sentence. He is eligible for release.”

  The judge tossed folders aside, finally opened one, flipped through a stack of documents.

  “I see you’re a regular, Mr. Fuller. And last time was for—”

  “Criminal threatening, your honor,” the prosecutor said, finding it just in time. “The defendant threatened to burn someone’s house down if they didn’t pay him for a four-wheeler.”

  “Which was stolen,” the judge said, still looking at the papers.

  “The defendant wasn’t aware of that,” the defense attorney said. “And he had no intention of burning anyone’s house. It was just talk. Hyper-bole, your honor, if you will. Street talk. That whole case was a series of misunderstandings.”

  “It’s been a whole lot of misunderstandings,” the judge said.

  “There are extenuating circumstances,” the defense attorney said. “Now my client just wants to go home and start over. He has obligations he needs to assume. There’s been a death in the family.”