Port City Black and White

by Gerry Boyle

  “Taken seriously?” Brandon said. “Every dirtbag says they’re gonna sue. Don’t give me this bureaucratic bullshit.”

  “Brandon,” Mia said. “Easy.”

  The story ended with Sergeant Perry saying Blake was performing his duties satisfactorily.

  “It’s like baseball,” he said. “Some players always want the extra base, dive for the ground ball. Same in law enforcement. Some officers just tend to be in the action, to want to be in the thick of things,” Perry said. “Officer Blake appears to have that quality.”

  Calls to Blake’s field training officer, Katherine Malone, were not returned. Blake declined comment. “Go to hell,” he said.

  Brandon shook his head.

  “That son of a bitch. That wasn’t on the record. And Dever, he’s gotta be the one. Well, what goes around, comes around. My turn will come, and—”

  “Brandon, don’t,” Mia said. “Let it go.”

  “And you’re on the front page of the paper,” Brandon said. “For helping your friend? That piece of—”

  “Brandon,” Mia said. “Stop. It’s okay.”

  “No it isn’t. It’s—”

  “It is what it is. It was a very public thing.”

  “But why drag it all back up? That’s news?”

  “It’s still there. It’ll always be there. It’s just part of us. Part of who we are.”

  “And every time I come anywhere near a fatality somebody’ll trot this out again? This is bullshit.”

  “Brandon.”

  “What?”

  Mia took his hand in hers, stroked it gently.

  “Remember what they told us. Put it in boxes. Don’t seal them up, but close the lid.”

  “That was bullshit, too,” Brandon said.

  Mia waited. Clasped his hand in both of hers. “No, it wasn’t. And deep down you know that.”

  “I don’t need any goddamn therapy. I just don’t need for it to be in here all over again. When I’m on the street, ‘Oh, you’re the cop who killed the guy.’ And this asshole we arrested for domestic violence. Like he’s a victim, his girlfriend there, scared shitless of the son of a bitch. I should have—”

  “Brandon, let it roll off. For me.”

  He looked at her.

  “I’m just trying to protect you,” he said.

  “But you’re not. You’re all angry and swearing. And we just had Lily and Winston and that guy dead. It’s all so horrible, I could just—”

  “It’s okay.”

  “No, it’s not. And it’s because you’re not thinking of me. You’re not thinking of us. You’re only thinking of yourself.”

  Brandon didn’t answer.

  “We’ve got to be together, baby,” she said. “It’s the only way.”

  “We are,” Brandon said.

  “I used to think so,” Mia said. “Now I’m not so sure.”

  “Sorry,” Brandon said.

  She looked away, took a deep breath.

  “I’m thinking of going home to see my mom, just so you know . . .” Mia said.

  She got up from her chair and, with the blanket still wrapped around her, went back inside and below. Brandon stared out at the boats, the harbor, the gulls. Saw none of it.

  A few minutes after eight o’clock, pans rattling in the galley, Winston and Lily’s cheery voices, chipper and refreshed. Brandon had already eaten a bowl of cereal. He said he had to check on the marina, stepped off the boat, walked up the float to the yard. It was overcast and still, headed for afternoon rain. He passed white-haired Mrs. Forsythe from Windrunner, walking back to her boat with her little terrier on a leash, plastic bag in her hand.

  “Morning, Mrs. Forsythe,” Brandon said.

  “Morning,” Mrs. Forsythe said, but looked away and hurried past.

  What to say to your local rogue cop?

  At the office, he unlocked the door, went in and checked the answering machine. Three calls: two selling marine parts. The third, at 7:58, from Matt Estusa at the Tribune. “Hi, Brandon. Sorry to have to do the story without you. Love to talk, today or anytime. Left a message at the PD, too.”

  He’d left his cell number. Brandon wrote it down, left the office, locking the door behind him, and went out to the truck.

  Twenty minutes later he was sitting in the parking lot of the South Portland Dunkin’ Donuts, sipping a coffee, listening to the news on public radio. Oil well leaking in the Gulf of Mexico. Marine from Kansas killed in Afghanistan. Task force set up to bring jobs to northern Maine. New York man killed in a Portland home invasion, identified as Renford Gayle.

  Lily Lawrence and Winston Clarke, the alleged victims. Lawrence the shooter, the incident still under investigation. Nothing about Mia or him. Too hard to explain in thirty seconds.

  The door opened. Kat climbed in. Her hair was tucked under a white baseball cap. She was dressed in running shoes, spandex tights over muscular calves, a shell that said SUGARLOAF MARATHON, 2007.

  “Did you run here?”

  “Over the bridge. Could see your boat.”

  “Still floating?”

  “High and dry.”

  “Good to know. When I left they were making breakfast. Might’ve burned it to the waterline.”

  “Who?”

  Brandon told her: the food, the talk, the sex in the vee berth.

  “I guess that’s how some people react to stress,” Kat said. “Sex as medication.”

  “I suppose.”

  “Of course, most people are the opposite,” she said.

  She leaned down, took a coffee out of the tray on the floor, a muffin out of the bag. She opened the coffee and steam rose. Kat smelled it and smiled.

  “The way to a woman’s heart, Blake,” she said.

  “Good to know,” Brandon said. “May need it.”

  She sipped, looked at him.

  “Trouble in paradise?”

  “Ah, it’s tough being with me.”

  “But tougher being without you?”

  “Not necessarily.”

  “It may not be you, Blake,” Kat said. “It’s tough being with any cop.”

  “The combination—being with me and a cop—I don’t know. It may be too much for her.”

  Kat sipped again, looked out the window the other way. “I’d hate to see that,” she said.

  “Me, too.”

  “So what are you doing about it?”

  “At the moment? Sitting here with you.”

  “That’s a start,” Kat said. “I’m gay. Better than sitting here with somebody’s gonna jump your bones.”

  Brandon smiled.

  “Like they’re lined up.”

  “Hey, if I was bi—”

  “Are you?”

  “Not in the least.”

  “So we’re both safe,” Brandon said.

  “Yes,” Kat said. “We are.”

  Brandon sipped his coffee, rolled the window down to let out some of the moist air.

  “You read the story,” he said.

  “Yeah.”

  “You think I’m doing a bad job?”

  Kat hesitated. “Not bad.”

  “But not good.”

  “You’re doing fine. Just the one thing.”

  “What?”

  “Not seeing the gray,” Kat said. “You see everything so black and white.”

  “It’s how I raised myself,” Brandon said. “There’s right and there’s wrong.”

  “Not the way the world works—not all the time. Not in our business.”

  “But if not in this business, then where? There are laws. If you break them, we arrest you. That’s why I got into this. It was the only place I could think of where the rules totally mattered. It’s what we do.”

  “And we talk to mentally ill people. And drug addicts. And prostitutes. And idiots. And people who need their cars unlocked. And tourists and lost kids.”

  “I’m not a social worker,” Brandon said. “I got into this to put bad guys away.”

  “O
ughta be in homicide, Blake,” Kat said.

  “Maybe I will.”

  “Not if you can’t deal with people. Get ’em to talk to you. Figure out what makes them tick.”

  “I can do that.”

  “Not with your mind locked up tight.”

  Brandon thought for a moment, relived getting in Chantelle’s face. What the hell’s the matter with you?

  “What did you think of the brass’s comments?” he said.

  “I think they circled the wagons.”

  “Is that why you didn’t call Estusa back? Didn’t want to lie and say I was a good cop?”

  “I’ll lie anytime,” Kat said. “I just don’t like talking to the press.”

  They both sat, sipped, stared. The day had started low, was sinking. He steeled himself, the way he always had, growing up alone, watching other kids from a distance. Friggin’ reporter, he thought. Some wife-beating dirtbag and he takes the guy’s side. The cop is always guilty until proven innocent.

  “I want you to do something for me, Blake,” Kat said.

  “Try to understand the socioeconomic causes of criminal behavior?” Brandon said.

  “That, and stop being such a hard-ass. And try to work this out with Mia. Try real hard.”

  “She says I don’t like her friends,” Brandon said.

  “Do you?”

  “Not really.”

  “Why not?”

  “They’re okay. I mean, they’re nice enough. Just sort of presumptuous. Patronizing. They all grew up with money, families. It’s like I’m a novelty or something. Lily, the shooter, she asks all these questions, but it’s because she’s never seen a cop up close before. She’s rich, gets some check from the family company, doesn’t have to work.”

  “They can’t help what they were born into,” Kat said.

  “They can help how they treat people.”

  He stopped.

  “Exactly, Blake,” Kat said.

  Another pause. They were quiet but comfortable like that, all those hours in the cruiser. Cups moved up and down. Kat finished her muffin, wiped her fingers. People walked into Dunkin’ Donuts in pairs like animals marching onto the Ark.

  “The baby,” Kat said.

  “Winston says the duppy—that’s the Caribbean version of the ghost—the duppy could make the Youngs watch that movie.”

  “Just to mess with Fatima’s head?”

  Blake nodded.

  “So we need a duppy detector?”

  “I guess,” Brandon said.

  “Is that all we’ve got?” Kat said. “I mean, seriously. Three days the kid’s been gone, and we’re talking about ghosts.”

  “The boat is back tonight.”

  “What? The fishing boat?”

  “Marie G. And Booker.”

  “You’re thinking—”

  “We should meet it at the dock. Talk to Booker again.”

  “How ’bout we tell O’Farrell and he can send a detective.”

  “He knows us. Tell him we just want to catch him up.”

  “What are you thinking, Blake?”

  “He grabs the kid while Toby is at sea. He stashes him with a friend or something, and then they trade places. Now Booker’s gone. Toby’s back, but you don’t suspect a guy who was fifty miles offshore when it happened.”

  “And the goal was?”

  “Get the kid away from Chantelle. Wait a month or two, then split. Say there are too many bad associations in Portland. You’re gonna try fishing in Alaska or Florida, whatever. You move around a couple of times, and then Booker, or whoever has Lincoln, that person delivers him to you.”

  “Big risk to take,” Kat said. “Kidnapping? Class A felony. They could get twenty years.”

  “It’s his kid,” Brandon said. “People’ll do anything for their kid.”

  Kat glanced at him. “Present company excepted,” she said.

  “Right,” Brandon said. “You and me, we were raised by wolves.”

  Kat smiled, reached for the door handle.

  “How’s Miss Shooter doing, by the way?” she said.

  “Lily? She’s okay. Pretty jolly, actually.”

  “She oughta be,” Kat said. “Heard this morning, the guy she shot was a serious badass. Long sheet. Drug smuggling, armed robbery, extortion, aggravated assault. Just got out of a medium-security lockup, Altona, a few months ago.”

  “Huh. Who told you that?”

  “Chooch. I stopped at my locker this morning.”

  “So our friends really dodged a bullet.”

  “Or two, probably to the back of the head,” Kat said.

  “And Mr. Gayle, he has bad luck. He gets out of prison in New York, gets sent on a drug delivery to Maine, then decides to rob a random restaurant owner. Gets popped by a trust-funder.”

  “Lesson here, Blake: Even if you’re a badass, don’t turn your back on the girl in the J. Crew.” And Kat was out the door, trotting away.

  Brandon sat for another twenty minutes. Mulled over most of it: the baby, Renford Gayle and his unlikely demise. Mia, his future with her, with the Portland PD. He felt like he was circling, not finding a way to break through. Finally he tossed his coffee trash in the garbage can, got in the truck, and drove back to the marina. He was going through the gate as Lily and Winston were coming up the float.

  He braced himself, put on a smile.

  “There he is,” Lily said. “We thought you’d gone undercover.”

  “Brandon can’t sit around and chitchat,” Winston said to her. “Gotta get ready to hit the streets.”

  “First there’s things to do here,” Brandon said.

  “Well, you might want to stop back at the boat,” Lily said. “Your darling girlfriend has some news.”

  She dangled it, gave Brandon a hug, a peck on the cheek. Brandon waited until the gate clanged behind them, then walked down the float to Bay Witch.

  Mia was in the galley, squirting the counter with cleaner, swiping with a cloth.

  “What’s up?” Brandon said.

  “My dad’s coming,” Mia said.

  “What? When?”

  “In forty-five minutes. He called from New Hampshire.”

  “Not much notice.”

  “He flew into Boston this morning.”

  “To come here?” Brandon said.

  “He has business in Boston. He said he grabbed an early flight.”

  “It’s a spot check. Coming to see how you really are.”

  “If it was that, he wouldn’t have called at all,” Mia said.

  “How long’s he staying?”

  “I don’t know. The day? He has meetings early in the morning.”

  Brandon sighed.

  “I’ll do the helm,” he said.

  He picked up wine bottles, plates. Wiped the table and settee down. He brought the dishes to the galley and Mia washed them. Brandon took the trash off, threw it in the dumpster. Back on board, he washed down the foredeck, the windscreen, coiled lines. He was wiping down the brass when Mia shouted up, “He’s here. I’ll meet him at the gate.”

  “Pipe the admiral aboard,” Brandon muttered.

  He took a deep breath, headed for the stern.

  They came down the float, father and daughter. Brandon met them on the dock, took Carl Erickson in. He was tall, tanned, handsome, with Mia’s green eyes. His hair was thick, silver at the temples. He was wearing a black polo shirt with the name of a country club on the left breast in gold. His khakis were creased and his loafers looked soft and expensive. He wasn’t wearing socks.

  His jaw was set hard, and when he leaned forward to shake Brandon’s hand, he looked him in the eye, held his gaze. Brandon stared back, his jaw clenched, too.

  “Brandon,” Mr. Erickson said.

  “Mr. Erickson,” Brandon said.

  “I’ve heard a lot about you.”

  “Don’t believe everything Mia says.”

  “Read your local paper, too,” Mr. Erickson said. “They had it at the rest stop on
the turnpike.”

  He paused, let it sink in.

  “Don’t believe all of that, either,” Brandon said.

  They released their grips like sumo wrestlers backing off.

  “Come aboard, Daddy,” Mia said, and he did, stepping over the transom and pausing, hands on his hips.

  “Wood, huh?” Mr. Erickson said.

  “Yes,” Brandon said. “Built in the sixties.”

  “A lot of maintenance?”

  “Some. More if you let it go.”

  Mr. Erickson didn’t answer. Mia said, “Let me show you below.”

  She led the tour: the salon and galley, the stateroom and forward berth. Brandon led the way up to the helm and Mr. Erickson went up the ladder quickly, stood and scanned the controls.

  “Looks appropriately equipped,” he said, like this was a Coast Guard inspection.

  “Everything you need,” Brandon said. “We keep mostly to the bay.”

  “Must get rough here sometimes.”

  “It can.”

  “You spent a lot of time on boats?”

  “Kind of grew up here, right in this marina.”

  “Family have boats?”

  “Daddy,” Mia said. “You remember—I told you. Brandon’s mom died when he was little.”

  “Oh, yeah,” Mr. Erickson said. “Sorry. Some sort of boating accident?”

  “Yeah,” Brandon said. “Some sort.”

  “And your dad? Wasn’t there something about—”

  “I never knew my father,” Brandon said, a hard edge creeping in.

  “Well,” Mr. Erickson said. “That’ll toughen you up.”

  He said it like it was going to wilderness camp, having no parents.

  “Brandon’s very tough,” Mia said. “He has to be.”

  “Oh, you mean the police work,” Mr. Erickson said. “Read about that in the article, the fellow getting an attorney.”

  “They all say that,” Brandon said.

  “Well, you still need to protect yourself. I know you’ve only got this old boat here, but you still don’t want to end up on the losing end of a civil judgment. I don’t know the law in Maine, but in most states, police officers can be held personally liable for damages.”

  He paused as he looked around the helm. “Of course, you probably know that,” he said.

  “I didn’t do anything wrong,” Brandon said.

  “That’s a hell of a defense,” Erickson said, chuckling. “Hope your lawyer comes up with something a little more effective. Like the plaintiff’s history of violent behavior. A credible witness to say you gave him adequate warning, that he threw the first punch, that you had to subdue him to protect yourself and others.”