Port City Black and White

by Gerry Boyle

  Rum. He tasted lime, too, and sugar. Maybe nutmeg? He sipped again. Turned to the meal, ate it mechanically. If Mia had been there, they’d have talked about it, the spices, the curry. It was Mia who’d told him there were hundreds of different curries, that chefs blended them. Interesting, but mostly he enjoyed listening to her, the sound of her voice, her expressions. For all the years he’d lived alone—alone on the boat, alone growing up, with Nessa passed out in her chair—this new “alone” was different. Mia had filled a void in his life that he hadn’t admitted existed. And with her gone, the hole in his life seemed bigger. It made him ache all over. It pressed down on him like a crushing weight.

  He drank more of the punch, felt like it was growing on him. He went over the events of the day: a sad story with a bad ending. He felt emotionally drained. Suddenly exhausted.

  Brandon got to his feet. Carried the tray and cup along the side deck. Halfway to the stern, he lost his balance in the dark and had to grab for the rail. The half-empty cup slid, hit the deck and rolled under the rail, into the water. “Damn,” Brandon said, easing his way along, jumping down to the stern deck, staggering slightly.

  The rum. He felt it. He wasn’t much of a drinker, another thing that kept him from fitting in with Mia’s crowd. For him two beers was plenty. Too many years spent watching Nessa drink herself into a stupor.

  He slid the hatch shut behind him, left the tray by the galley sink, stepped down into the berth. Kicking off his flip-flops, Brandon fell to the mattress, took a deep breath, and felt sleep sweep over him like he was drowning.

  Brandon slept as fog settled over the harbor. Someone coughed on one of the boats. A car horn sounded on the Portland side, the sound drifting over the water. Gulls cried and squawked on their roost on the shed roof. A bilge pump kicked in, followed by the gurgle of running water. A lobster boat got under way at one of the Portland piers and chugged out into the channel, running lights quickly fading into the haze. Its wake rolled silently across the harbor and swept under the floats. Fenders creaked. Hardware rattled.

  Outside the fence, there were slow footsteps. Then a pause. A barely audible squeak as the gate swung open.

  You could swear he was getting bigger, but could that be? In just a few days?

  Maybe the mom hadn’t fed him much, and now he was finally getting enough calories. The magazines talked about how babies didn’t grow steadily but in spurts.

  And it wasn’t just the growing—his legs getting fatter, his little belly hanging over the top of his diaper like a beer gut. He was also getting stronger, lifting himself up on the sides of the playpen, standing there and rocking like a gorilla in a cage. When he was out of the playpen, he’d push himself up on his arms, and now he was starting to crawl. He’d move forward, a few inches at a time. He’d look surprised when he realized he’d traveled across the floor, and he’d grin if you said, “You’re crawling! Good boy, Sam!”

  He did know his name—well, not his full name, not yet, but Sam—that was certain. And that meant the rest of it was fading from his memory bank. One of the websites had said that year-old babies only retained information for a month. That meant that in a few weeks, everything in the first year of Sam’s life would be erased. It would be like none of it had ever happened.

  Mary-Ellen Murphy was a light sleeper. She said it was because Robert snored; he said it was because she had a guilty conscience. In the sprawling house in Marblehead it wasn’t an issue, with lots of room to spread out. In warm weather, she liked to go out onto the big screened porch and sit with a cup of coffee, classical music on NPR. She’d put her feet up and watch the dawn unfold, the pink glow seeping up past the horizon. On the Hinckley she had to go up on deck, which was okay if they were anchored, or even on their mooring. But in a marina like this one, she didn’t want to turn lights on, or music, the boats all lined up. But the snoring . . .

  He was going great guns and she was awake at three. She lay there for a few minutes, listening to the snorting and snoggering, and then reached for a sweatshirt and shorts and got up.

  On the aft deck she got dressed, slipped on her sandals and stepped off. They were at the harbor end of the float, the nice marina guy setting them up with a big slip with easy access. Mary-Ellen had this idea that she could walk up to the bridge that overlooked the harbor, look out on the city and the harbor lights. She’d be back before Robert awoke, and maybe she wouldn’t even tell him where she’d gone, not have to listen to him say she was out of her mind, walking around a strange city at that hour.

  She stepped off the boat lightly, paused to look out at the harbor, the skyline fuzzy in the fog, like an Impressionist painting. Yes, like Monet had painted it, she thought, everything fuzzy and the light playing on the fog.

  Mary-Ellen Murphy smiled and turned away and started down the dock. And then she saw more light, an odd sort of flickering, up near the ramp. For some reason it reminded her of a screensaver on a computer, and she even wondered for a moment whether someone had left a laptop on deck and those psychedelic swirly patterns were playing over and over . . . But didn’t the screens go blank after a while? Otherwise—

  And then she smelled it. The smoke. Ran toward the boat and saw the flames, in the stern of the old cruiser. The marina guy’s boat. “Fire!” she shouted, but it barely came out, and she tried again, this time as loud as she could.

  Brandon could hear them, the Somali pirates. They were boarding the boat, had their AK-47s, rocket launchers. He was below, trapped in the engine compartment, trying to get out. Could hear them shouting, “Where is he? Where is he?” Except it was in Arabic. Somehow he understood, knew they were looking for him.

  He tried again to get up, got his legs loose, but they were heavy, weighted down. He struggled to get the weights off, but his arms wouldn’t move, and they were coming in. He had to get to his radio, put in a call, 911, officer needs help. Where was Kat? What if Kat wasn’t working? He had to get out, get his gun, before they started shooting, shoot first—but what if it wasn’t justified? They were going to kill him . . . pirates don’t care if you die.

  And then he felt himself falling, twisting, the pirates yelling. They’d thrown him overboard and he fell for such a long time, trying to scream but nothing coming out, and then he landed—

  Got to his knees. Smelled smoke. Had he landed in Hell? Thought of Big Liz and her devil people. And then he saw the flames, the flickering light and shadows. The aft deck. The fuel tanks.

  Brandon lurched to his feet, went up the three steps, saw the flames tonguing the hatch door. He fell back, stumbled on his leaden legs, grabbed the side of the berth to steady himself, stepped up. Grabbed for the hatch handle, missed, and fell off the berth. He caught himself on the starboard berth, climbed back up, reached again.

  He caught it this time, half hung from it, then pulled it down and over and pushed.

  The hatch didn’t open.

  He repeated the steps: pull, yank, push. It didn’t budge.

  “In here,” Brandon shouted. “I’m in here. In the cabin. The bow.”

  He dropped to the floor, crawled to the bow locker, flung the door open. His rifle was there and he pulled it out, stood in the center of the cabin and, holding it by the barrel, rammed it upwards.

  The hatch held. He slammed it again, glancing off the aluminum hinge. Again. Again.

  He could hear sounds, voices through the crack. He squatted, rifle in hand, and exploded upwards—and the hatch blew open, something rattling on the deck above his head.

  Brandon jumped, got his arms through the hatch, swung in the air as he pulled himself up. Arms. Shoulders, his bare torso against the cool deck, his legs squirming through.

  He got to his feet, moved to the side deck, climbed the rail, and jumped. He hit the float, stumbled and rolled. Lay still.

  “Over here,” a woman shouted, and she ran to him, the lady from the Hinckley.

  “Anyone else on board?” the woman said.

  “No,” Brandon sai
d. “I’m alone.”

  He sat up, watched as barefoot men pounded by them, in boxer shorts, shirtless, all carrying fire extinguishers. There was a swish, a hiss, another, someone shouting, “Just empty it, for God’s sake.”

  And then it was quiet. The woman stood by him, awkwardly patted his bare shoulder.

  South Portland cops were there, four patrolmen, a sergeant, the shift commander, a big guy with a barrel chest, looked like he’d played football. A fire truck came, and Rescue, but the fire was out and Brandon wasn’t hurt, so they left. A state fire investigator was called, but she was coming from Pownal so it would be a while.

  They were waiting, standing on the dock by Bay Witch, when Kat showed up, hurrying down the ramp, looking skinny in her track suit without her body armor. She nodded at the South Portland cops, and she and Brandon bumped fists and she looked at him, in borrowed jeans and sweatshirt, the boat, the crime-scene tape across the stern.

  “Never a dull moment, Blake,” Kat said.

  “What else would you be doing, three a.m.,” Brandon said.

  “You’re right. I was up anyway, sitting around waiting for something to happen,” Kat said.

  “Somebody got it in for your boy here,” the big sergeant said.

  “Coulda told you that,” Kat said.

  “Jammed a chair in the trapdoor thing up front, poured some gas on the door back here.”

  “A woman from another boat couldn’t sleep,” Brandon said. “Saw the fire.”

  “Husband snores,” the sergeant said.

  They stared at Bay Witch, the black stain on the deck.

  “Somebody up there likes you, Blake,” Kat said.

  “And somebody down here doesn’t,” the sergeant said. “Me and Officer Blake were just talking about who that might be.”

  “The Anthonys,” Kat said. “Family of the girl who went off the bridge. The first one, with the baby.”

  “The brother,” Brandon said. “His name is Jason. Blames me for her jumping. Said I should pay for it. I figured he was just running his mouth.”

  “And remember the guy from Commercial Street, the domestic assault?” Kat said. “He was pretty pissed, too.”

  “I don’t know,” ” Brandon said. “He seemed like he was all talk.”

  “And what about the Otto brothers?” Kat said. “The Sudanese Warriors.”

  “Maybe,” Brandon said.

  “And there’s Mia,” Kat said.

  “Yes.”

  She told the sergeant about Mia seeing the guys parked outside on the Eastern Prom. The sergeant nodded.

  “They see her?” the sergeant said.

  “Yeah.”

  “Where is she now?” the sergeant said.

  “Minnesota,” Brandon said. “Went to see her mother.”

  “Smart move,” the sergeant said.

  Brandon hesitated.

  “For all kinds of reasons,” he said.

  The fire investigator’s name was Lucci. She had graying hair cropped short, wore a blue jumpsuit and baseball hat. They watched as she took lots of photos, scraped some ashes into a bag. She sealed the bag, dropped it into a backpack with the camera. Climbed back over the transom onto the dock.

  Lucci stood with them and they all stared at the boat.

  “Where are the fuel tanks on this thing?” she said finally.

  “Below that deck,” Brandon said.

  “Lucky you,” Lucci said.

  “That right?” Brandon said.

  “Well, maybe not. They poured the accelerant—gasoline—onto the floor there and lit it. But it’s the vapor that burns first and almost all of the heat goes straight up into the air. They’d been smart, they would have poured it on the walls, get it trapped under the roof.”

  “Nothing like a dumb arsonist,” Kat said.

  “Isn’t like television,” Lucci said. “Splash some gas, one match, poof, the whole thing goes up. Fire is a complicated thing, all those laws of thermodynamics at play. I’ve seen people pour a gallon of gas in their living room, light it up, in ten minutes they’ve got no fire, just a bunch of melted carpeting and a load of trouble. Your boat here, you got some scorched wood is all. Of course, another few minutes, if it’d had more time to burn down, gathering some momentum in the floor itself—”

  “Kaboom?” the sergeant said.

  “Maybe. Or maybe just a big old fire.”

  She turned to Brandon.

  “Boat all wood?”

  “Yeah. Plywood. Oak framing. Built in the sixties.”

  Lucci shook her head. “You’re living in a box made of kindling, my friend.”

  They shifted on their feet. Lucci reached in her breast pocket for a card, handed it to Brandon. “But hey,” the fire investigator said. “Probably they’ve shot their wad on the fire thing. Next time they’ll try something else.”

  “Thanks,” Brandon said. “Good to know.”

  The motion detector cost twenty bucks and change. Brandon set it up along the gunwale at the stern, on the port side. Anybody coming aboard at the stern would set off the alarm in the cabin.

  “What if they climb on the front?” Kat said.

  Brandon, kneeling to connect the wires to the electrical panel under the helm, said, “The bow.”

  “Whatever.”

  “I’d hear them. It’s pretty high to climb up there, and it’s right over my head.”

  “You didn’t hear them last night.”

  “No.”

  “Go down in the bedroom,” Kat said, and she turned and left the salon. Brandon snapped the last wire in place, got up and went below. He heard Kat shuffle along the side deck, her legs moving past the porthole. He closed his eyes, heard her move to the center of the foredeck. When she knelt, he heard her knees thump against the plywood.

  She came back down, sat on the berth across from him. She was in shorts and a bicycle jersey, muscles defined.

  “Well?”

  “I could hear everything.”

  “Last night?”

  “I was really out,” Brandon said.

  “Were you drunk? Upset about Mia or something?”

  “Nah. Half a drink. I was just really tired.”

  “And emotionally spent?”

  “Maybe. Had something to eat and just crashed.”

  “That can happen when you’ve been all keyed up and—” The motion detector alarm went off. It was O’Farrell and Perry, the big sergeant in uniform. They were on the stern deck, staring at the black patch.

  “Who’d want to burn you up?” the sergeant said.

  “Let’s make a list,” O’Farrell said.

  Brandon looked at him, saw he wasn’t joking.

  Kat said, “I’ll start.”

  She rattled them off, the ones already mentioned.

  O’Farrell took it up: whoever killed Fatima, thinking Brandon was a threat. Cawley’s biker buddy, for the sex charge.

  “Seems extreme,” O’Farrell said. “Hasn’t even gone to trial.”

  Brandon said, “So what do I—”

  “You take a few days off, Blake,” Perry said. “Clean up your boat. Try to stay out of trouble. Go stay with friends or family.”

  He and O’Farrell turned toward the stern, then turned back. “Listen, Brandon,” O’Farrell said, his voice low. “You’re not a detective.”

  “You’re not even a full patrolman,” Perry said.

  “And when you’re not working, Brandon, you’re not working,” O’Farrell said.

  “There’s a reason you aren’t in a patrol car alone,” Perry said. “You’re like a pitcher, just up from the minors. You start in the bullpen. Work your way up to the rotation. If you’re lucky.”

  “We have a whole bunch of cops working on all of this,” O’Farrell said, “and they’re very experienced, and their investigation will get to the bottom of it. We don’t need—”

  “May be a bad day to say this, but Blake, you gotta take it a little slower,” Perry said. “You’re stirring shit up
everywhere you go.”

  “You don’t have to save the world,” O’Farrell said.

  “Go easy,” Kat said.

  “I didn’t take this job to go easy,” Brandon said. “Did you?”

  He sanded the burnt wood off, taking it down an eighth of an inch. While he worked, the other boat owners came by, watched and asked questions: Who would do this? Was it because he was a cop? Or was there some nutcase arsonist running around marinas? Was he going to fix the gate so it closed right? Wasn’t he lucky? What if Mrs. Murphy hadn’t been awake? What were the chances? Is that a motion detector? Should we all have them?

  Brandon answered their questions, the ones he could. Yes, to the gate. He did know there was an arsonist. He didn’t know if he was running around. Or she.

  It was 4 p.m. before he finished, the burnt area repainted gray. There was a blemish and the paint didn’t quite match, the old gray faded by the sun. Looks like hell, he thought. The good news? He wasn’t dead.

  Going below, he took a shower, his loaded gun on the tiny counter outside the stall. In the cabin, he dressed in jeans and a black T-shirt, dark blue running shoes, a black baseball cap, too. He came above deck, stepped out onto the dock. Turned to walk out to the Hinckley and thank his savior.

  And the boat was gone.

  He turned around, headed for the gate. He felt a little regret, more relief. As Mia had said, he didn’t like to owe anyone.

  The gate had sagged and he bent it back into place with a steel bar. He swung it open and shut, punching in the code each time, the gate swinging. Then he returned to Bay Witch, set the alarm, and went inside. He took a beer and a block of cheddar cheese from the refrigerator in the galley, a box of stoned wheat crackers from the cupboard. Parking himself in the salon, he sat with his back to the harbor, facing the yard. On the table beside him was a knife, for the cheese, and his loaded Glock 26, for all sorts of reasons.

  The morning air was still and humid on Granite Street, the pavement heating up under a hazy sun. Brandon sat in the truck a half block from 317, hunched back in the seat, watching the house. Perry had said to take a couple of days off, and Brandon was. He was off, sitting. Watching. The police radio was on the seat, turned down low.