Calamity (Captain Grande Angil Mysteries)

by Robert G. Bernstein

  She seemed satisfied with this and asked me what I charged. I told her, and said I would need a week in advance. If I thought it was worth going beyond a week I would call her. She agreed and wrote me a check.

  I escorted her out of the house and back to Zeke’s side of the limo. He walked her to the passenger side and held the door open while she got in. He reached down and carefully pushed the pleats of her dress into the car then closed the door and walked around the front to the driver’s side where I was standing. He looked me straight in the eye and spoke to me for the first time.

  “If you hurt her or cheat her, I’ll kill you,” he said.

  3

  I was on my way to Portland the day the first meaningful weather event of the season hit. It was the day after my meeting with Jenny Bowers, the day I officially went on the P.I. clock, and, coincidentally, the first day of winter. It started at zero four hundred as rain, even though temperatures were in the twenties. It turned to sleet and freezing rain, then to heavy, accumulating snow and back to rain and freezing rain by zero eight hundred. Leave it to a Maine winter to give you rain, freezing rain, sleet and heavy snow, all in the span of a few hours. Needless to say the roadways were a horrific mess. On the brighter side the schools were already closed for Christmas vacation so traffic was light.

  A lot of people don’t realize what happens when a cold, arctic front drops in from the North over a warm southerly flow. You either get warm air over cold, which gives you sleet and freezing rain, or cold air on top of warm, which gives you wet snow or rain. Either way, you’re in for a very crappy day.

  My old Land Rover 109 rattled down the road like a half-rotten streetcar, reminding me that I had to turn the corner on the Twenty-first Century and buy a new, trustworthy vehicle. Don’t get me wrong, I loved the old girl, but with two hundred and fifty thousand miles, a heater that only worked some of the time, no radio, and an electrical system with questionable motives, it made driving through days like these difficult, to say the least. At the moment, both windshield wipers were snapping back and forth with a beat reminiscent of a nineteen seventies syncopated funk song, which is to say if you weren’t giving the road ahead your utmost attention you could be brain-twisted into a delirious hypnagogic state.

  I had pulled in a favor from a marine patrol friend who in turn called a friend of his at State Police Headquarters. The friend of a friend looked through the archives for me and promised to send me copies of the police report, such as it was. As he recalled, the file contained a record of repeated telephone inquiries from Mrs. Bowers and not much else. I wasn’t surprised. State Police, or any other law enforcement agency, would not initiate an investigation unless the Coast Guard had uncovered some evidence of criminal activity. For example, local law enforcement would be brought to bear if the Coast Guard determined a person had operated a vessel under the influence of drugs or alcohol, and if during the performance of that person’s duties an accident, injury or death occurred.

  By the time I got to Coast Guard Headquarters in Portland the precipitation had turned to rain. Streets were covered in about four inches of slush. Cars and trucks driving through the waterfront district had to splash through pools of standing water, much to the aggravation of store front owners, who had their hands full trying to clear the snow and ice away from in front of their stores. If you were from Maine, or you’d lived here a long time, you took these kinds of days in stride. If you were from away, as they say up here, you might be going through the day with kind of a short fuse.

  I used my TWIC (Transportation Worker Identification Credential), my Merchant Mariner Z-card, my drivers license, and my P.I. license to get on base. One or two would have sufficed but I was trying to make a point, which the two young Coasties behind the glass partition didn’t seem to care one hoot about. They called upstairs and told me to go through the security door and wait. I did as I was told.

  Master Chief Sam Byner was in his thirties. He had the big bones and build of a man who came from farming stock, like from a family out west where they have thousand acre ranches and kids that get up at three in the morning to tend their chores before learning to rope and drive cattle. He had sandy red hair thinning over a big head, an easy smile and that Master Chief’s take-charge and get-her-done attitude. I don’t know where it’s written in the military manual. Maybe it’s in the U.S. Constitution. But some day I’d like to meet a Master Chief who wasn’t short and stocky and built like a three-gauge steel fireplug.

  Byner introduced himself and we shook hands. He asked if I had eaten.

  “There’s some decent chow here,” he said. “How about we do this over breakfast?”

  I said it was a fine idea and we walked into the commissary. Byner had a file folder with him. It was about half an inch thick. He tucked it under his arm as we both got trays and walked through the cafeteria isle. I grabbed a large spoonful of scrambled eggs, three sausage links, a couple of slices of bacon, two pancakes with blueberry syrup, a cup overflowing with fresh fruit, and a coffee. I was eating light that morning.

  Byner had the same, except he took twice as much sausage and bacon and grabbed four slices of buttered toast. We sat at a table in the corner overlooking the harbor and started eating like a pair of ravenous wolves.

  “You eat like this every day,” I said.

  “Hell no. Sometimes we get hungry.”

  I smiled.

  “I remember you from the Inspected Passenger Vessel Safety Seminars,” he said. “Haven’t seen you in a couple of years.”

  “The good old days when people paid to go out on boats,” I said.

  “Charter business is kind of slow, huh?” he said.

  “If it gets any slower it’ll be running backwards.” I forked a bite of sausage and ate it with some scrambled egg. Byner was right. Food wasn’t bad.

  “You probably never did much during the winter, anyway, did you?” he said.

  “I had the duck hunters, and a commercial charter or two. I ran the pilot boat. It paid the bills.”

  We finished our plates in silence, drank some coffee, went up to the counter and got refills. I still had fruit salad to munch on. Byner got a cookie about as big as a Frisbee.

  “Charter biz why you started this private cop thing?” he said.

  “Yes, and no,” I said. “I mean, I needed to find work but at the same time it was something I always wanted to do.”

  “You been doing it long?”

  “About three months.”

  “Does it pay?”

  “I’ve been paid a week’s wage in three months.”

  “That’s not great.”

  “Business can only pick up,” I said.

  He nodded.

  “You mind me asking what you charge.”

  I didn’t mind. The Marine Safety Office crews in the Coast Guard were always interested in what guys like me were doing, whether it was our boat businesses or our times shipping-out. These men and women wanted something for themselves down the road, for when they got out or retired. I wished I had more positive news for them.

  “I get one hundred sixty dollars an hour plus expenses and mileage,” I said. “Try to work a sixty hour week.”

  “If you worked two weeks a month you’d make a decent living,” he said.

  “Right now I’ll be happy with one week a month. One week every three months isn’t going to cut it.”

  “I hear ya,” he said. He finished his cookie and followed it with the last few drops of his coffee. He made a big point of tilting his head back and upending his cup, then he wiped the table clean with his left hand, placed the cup on his tray and moved the whole mess over to the next table. I did the same with my tray while he positioned Aaron Bowers file in front of him and opened it. He took four glossy photographs off the top of the file and handed them to me. They were pictures of a smashed-up wooden lobsterboat that had been salvaged and laid on its side at a boat yard.

  “We salvaged the boat off Hammond Ledge and looked it
all over,” he said. “We didn’t find anything to suggest it had been scuttled. Boat had been badly mangled by the time we got to it but it was obvious it had hit a ledge. Skeg, rudder, stern post and garboards were all chewed-up, consistent with a catastrophic grounding.”

  I looked over the photos quickly. They didn’t have much of a story to tell. Thirty-eight foot to forty-two foot wooden lobsterboat. Round bilge. High sided. Plenty of flare. Looked like a custom build from a shipwright I knew of on Vinalhaven. Two hundred and fifty-thousand dollar boat. I could see two radar domes and antennas for duplicate VHFs and GPS receivers, and one antenna for a satellite radio.

  “I assume it had full electronics and an EPIRB and that she would have passed inspection.” I said.

  “Boat was loaded. We had given it a courtesy safety inspection a few months before. She had everything up to code. Life Jackets, Survival Suits, Fire Extinguishers, Papers, Emergency Raft and EPIRB. It was the EPIRB that brought us out there the day of the incident. Boat was nice. Captain on the other hand, well, let’s just say he wasn’t exactly Dudley Do-Right. He’d been in court before.”

  I handed Byner the photos. He took them and placed them to the side so he could go through the remainder of the folder page by page.

  “Fisheries violations?” I asked.

  Byner took the copy of the indictment out of the folder and passed it to me. I looked it over while he told me what was in it.

  “He got caught with shorts, about seventy pounds. Got nabbed for hauling somebody else’s gear and fishing more than eight hundred traps. He was halfway through a one-year suspension. That’s why he was scalloping with a diver.”

  “One thing doesn’t necessarily have to do with the other,” I said.

  “You’re right. We decided none of that had anything to do with what happened that day. Tanner did some stupid things. Going out on such a shitty day for starters. He tried to do right by the kid. He called us, and he made best possible speed for the nearest port. He tried to shave the northwest corner of Hammond Ledge and got caught. It happens. Other than that, he was a good captain and kept his boat in sound shape.”

  “Tell me about him,” I said.

  Byner referred to the file.

  “Thirty-five years old. Six-foot-four-inches tall, two-hundred pounds. Blue eyes. Blond hair. Tattoo of a dragon on his right arm. Patriots tattoo on his left shoulder. Four-inch scar on his chest. Born and raised on Vinalhaven Island, Maine. Father was a fisherman. Father’s father was a fisherman. Oh, yeah, and get this, he can’t read or write. He can catch lobsters like a son-of-a-gun but he can’t write his own name.”

  “Hard to imagine,” I said. “Right here in our own little backwater.”

  “The guy makes more money than God and he can’t write a check or read a contract.”

  I shook my head.

  “So, what happened that day?” I said.

  “I made you a copy of the transcript. You can take it with you. All I can add is that Tanner was very cooperative and very upset. He seemed to genuinely like this Bowers kid; I think he did his best to save him. When we gave up the search after seventy-two hours, Tanner borrowed a friend’s boat and went out looking for him himself. He searched for two weeks.”

  “You’re sure that’s what he was looking for?”

  Byner glanced at his watch. “What else would he be looking for?”

  I shrugged.

  “Hey,” he said. “I have a briefing in about ten minutes. I’d really like to talk to you sometime about the charter business, and check in on you to see how this private cop thing’s going, if it’s all right?”

  “Sure,” I said.

  Byner stood, gathered his things.

  “Anything else I can do to help, just give me a call.”

  “Hey, Chief,” I said, as he headed for the door. “One question. Did you call the mother or was it local law enforcement?”

  “Funny about that,” he said, turning to answer me. “We had no next of kin. We didn’t know of anybody to call. We didn’t know jack about her until she got in touch with us ten or so days after the accident. Believe me, it was not how we would have played it. I can tell you that, especially with her. “ He paused and stared at the floor a second. “Sad, what happened to her and all.”

  “What do you mean?” I said.

  He glanced at his watch.

  “The fire, her family, and then losing her only remaining son. Sad, very sad. I feel bad for her. Look. I wish I could stay and talk to you more about it but this is an important meeting. Let’s finish on the phone or meet up again next week. I’m up your way quite a bit. I really do want to pick your brain about the passenger business. Good seeing you again.”

  “Yeah,” I said. “Same here. I’ll call you.” He gave me a thumbs-up at the door and left.

  Fire. Family. Estranged son. Some detective I was turning out to be.

  4

  That night I roasted a whole chicken and ate it with mashed potatoes and Brussels sprouts. I had dry-rubbed the bird with Hungarian paprika, black pepper and garlic and slow-cooked it on the grill over a bed of cherry wood coals. While sitting at the computer and sipping some single malt I learned what I could about the accident. It didn’t take long for me to find the article about the Bowers family in the on-line archives of the Boston Globe. The fire had started in the basement and spread quickly through the house. Mrs. Bowers had been asleep alone in the bedroom. Her husband, a founding partner in a prominent law firm, had been on the couch watching television. The two kids were in their rooms.

  The husband had apparently succumbed to smoke inhalation right away. He was unconscious on the couch when she found him and could only manage to push him onto the floor. When a flashover engulfed the living room she fled to the kitchen. She ran out of the kitchen door and around the house to the front door, forgetting it would be locked from inside. At this point, the home burst into flames, with smoke and gas venting through the open upstairs windows. She heard the children scream for help and decided to break in through the expansive bay window. She grabbed a patio chair and threw it through the glass. Wearing nothing but a long, synthetic nightgown, and in her bare feet, she climbed through the jagged opening of the window frame and through the partially engulfed living room. Her nightgown caught fire immediately and burned into her flesh but she kept going. At the top of the stairs, she found Aaron, nine-years old. She grabbed him by the wrist and dragged him out of the house through the back door, where she collapsed in the yard and passed out. Firefighters arrived and took both her and Aaron to the hospital.

  Mr. Bowers and the couple’s youngest son, Jeffrey, were killed in the blaze.

  I leaned back in my chair and shook my head. I tried to imagine the physical and mental torment this woman had suffered in order to bring herself back from the depths of hell. Indeed, it was a skin graft I saw yesterday on her neck. How many years of painful surgery and treatment had she undergone? How many years of therapy?

  I looked outside, at the mud in the cove shimmering in the December moonlight. Most of the snow had melted away and all that remained were a few patches of thin ice. It was about thirty degrees out there, with a brisk west wind blowing. Every so often my shudders would rattle from the force of a twenty-knot or more gust. In the distance, about a half-mile away, just beyond the low tide line, I could see Scara, my thirty-seven foot Cape Islander. I picked up my binoculars for a closer look. She was pointed toward the far shore, seesawing on her mooring as if she wanted to go one way one minute and another way the next. Her stern, when it crossed perpendicular to my point of view, reflected back at me as a tiny patch of ambient light, not enough to make out the name on the transom, but enough to know a name was painted there.

  The boat was called Scara for a reason. It was a matter of family importance. All my boats had taken a name based on my father’s ancestry, the lineage of which dated back to the Frankish Emperor Charlemagne. The original Angilbert, from which my last name had been derived, was a me
mber of the emperor’s inner circle and the only man permitted to marry one of Charlemagne’s daughters, Bertha.

  The Scara was an elite cavalry unit led by Charlemagne himself. In his later years, the Scara protected him.

  I had other boats named in honor of my father’s ancestry. There was Drogo, named after one of Charlemagne’s illegitimate sons. Hunchback, named after a son who Charlemagne had banished from the kingdom. Aquitaine, a small tug, named after son Louis’s appointed realm, and of course, I had boats with the names Conqueror and Emperor. Of all my boats, only Hunchback gave me trouble. She threw tons of water over her house in a short sea and rolled like a bloated whale in a ground swell. I finally sold her to a Chesapeake Bay crab fisherman who never went out beyond the breakwater.

  It was my mother’s idea to use my father’s ancestral lineage as a template for the names, as a way of honoring his memory. He had been a military man and had seen action in World War II and Korea, flying B-17s and then B-29 Superfortresses. He died on my birthday, July 23,1953, four days before the cease-fire and establishment of the Thirty-eighth Parallel Armistice Line. From what I understand, he had been running mock nuclear bomb strikes against select targets in North Korea. The program simulated all aspects of delivering atomic weapons using dummy bombs and heavy conventional bombs flown from airbases in Japan and South Korea. Apparently, during one of the last of these simulated missions, on a return flight through the Azores, an equipment malfunction caused his B-29 to crash on takeoff. He was the only fatality.

  My mother believed in symbols. She was born in an indigent shantytown on the French-German border to parents who belonged to the Yeniche tribe of people, loosely and perhaps incorrectly considered Gypsies because of their nomadic nature. During the war, the Nazis wiped out her entire family and all records of her ancestry. She managed to escape by way of partisans who asked her to lead a group of Jewish children to safety through Austria, then Spain, and Portugal, their final destination being Palestine. Sephardim took the children and created a foster home, where my mother lived and worked and where she happened to be when my father found her.