by Robert White
“He was. This is a small neighborhood. When we opened the office, he started coming in. We would give him the occasional errand to run, try to be nice to him, you know. I’m afraid you won’t learn much around here, and, if you will excuse me, I must be getting back to my work.” Another cold smile.
“I don’t suppose you could tell me where he lived? I’d like to speak with his wife.”
“I’m afraid that wouldn’t be appropriate. Now if you would excuse me…”
No smile now, and I was smart enough to realize that what she meant was if I would excuse myself, from the premises. I left, feeling her cold eyes on me the whole way out. The little bell rang again.
It took a good twenty minutes to run down a phonebook, only to find three relevant listings. They were all within walking distance, so, after checking my truck, I started out.
At the first house, a bungalow on Emerson, a neighbor told me “he’ll be home after four,” and then watched me suspiciously all the way to the corner. There was no answer at the second, a triple-decker on Fourth near I. At the third, on Springer Street, the woman who answered the door assured me that not only was her husband still among the living, but should in no way be confused with “that Jack Nolan.”
I walked back to my truck and drove out of the city, back to Hull. The rain continued to drizzle down. Traffic was light and the beach was deserted. I drove through town and ended up at the town dock by the yacht club. The AndiB was tied up, stern-to, loading bait. I smiled at the name I had seen so many times, making the connection. Joe Buscelli was talking with the dealer. My former student, Chris, was filling bags, while Joe’s regular sternman, Alex, humped boxes down the ramp. They all seemed oblivious to the rain, steadily working in their orange Grundéns. Joe looked my way. I waved and he stared for a few seconds, then turned and walked down to his boat.
I drove back through town, stopped at Riddles for some groceries, and made my way home. Some chores and a tasteless supper were followed up by interleague play. The Sox took out the Phillies with ease, and I headed for bed with just as much confusion and unease in my mind as when I woke up. Eventually, sleep came.
Tuesday-6:00 AM
A series of thoughts sequentially pummeled my mind upon awakening, causing it to veer across the entire emotional spectrum: I was having dinner with Lauren that night; I would probably see Andrea during the course of my day at work; Eddie was still dead; Sharon was still in the I.C.U., and not doing well; Kounadis was pressuring me to continue his homicide investigation into areas he had been warned away from.
The day itself was strangely similar to the one just a week ago, the morning Eddie washed up on the rocks out on Rainsford Island. High pressure, blue skies and a cool, easy northwest wind accompanied me as I biked down to Nantasket Pier to begin my day of work.
I was not too surprised when the dark blue Ford Taurus that had been pacing me across town followed me down the pier and two guys in suits got out and approached. I kept my back to them and let them wait a bit while I pretended to adjust a few things on my bike.
“Mr. Smith?”
I turned and looked at two men who could have been twins, or maybe father and son, as there was an age difference. Both were wearing blue suits, white shirts with red ties, and shiny black lace-up shoes. Judging by the look of expectation on his face, it was the older one who had addressed me. The younger guy was looking around, affecting a casual cool.
“That’s me,” I said, offering a hand that was ignored.
“I’m Special Agent McKenna, this is Special Agent Dunn. We are with the Federal Drug Enforcement Agency.” He flashed me an I.D. I thought about trying to take it and actually read it, but his demeanor told me that would not be a good idea. Instead, I stood quietly, attentively, waiting.
McKenna waited with me a few extra beats before continuing. “Mr. Smith, we were curious about some of your activities yesterday.”
“Some of my activities? What do you mean?” I began running through the previous day, the hospital, Southie.
“You were spotted at a campaign office in South Boston, and also walking around the area, ‘randomly, but seemingly with purpose,’ was the report.” McKenna motioned to his partner. “We were just wondering what you were up to?”
“I was trying to find out some information about a man named Jack Nolan. He was killed out in the harbor last week. So was my cousin. I was curious about who he was.”
“What made you check at Councilor Donnelly’s campaign office?” This came from Dunn, earning him a sideways glance from McKenna.
“I had heard he helped out there sometimes.”
“Where did you hear that?” McKenna asked sharply.
I didn’t answer right away, thinking. After the pause got too long, I decided not to say anything.
McKenna stared at me. Dunn looked around the pier some more and then turned back to me. “Look, I understand that you are curious about what happened to your cousin. But you need to let law enforcement do its job.”
I instinctively knew better than to tell them that yesterday’s activities were pretty much at Kounadis’ request. I remained quiet.
McKenna chimed back in. “Is there anything you need to tell us? Any information you would like to share?”
I shook my head. “No, I basically got shut down yesterday.”
Dunn handed me a business card. “Call if you think of anything that might be useful. We all want the same thing here.”
“So are you guys working on my cousin’s case now?” I asked.
“I’m afraid we can’t comment on that. Give us a call if you think of anything.” Dunn started to walk away. McKenna gave me a hard look and then followed his partner back to their car.
I watched them until they drove away, and then headed into the office. My cell rang almost instantly. It was Kounadis.
“What did those clowns want?” he asked when I said hello.
“Where are you?” I asked.
“Across the way, parked at the beach, I’m walking over now.” He hung up. A few minutes later he climbed the trailer steps and entered the office.
“So what did they want?” As usual, Kounadis had no inclination for pleasantries.
“I’m not sure. I think they were warning me off, more than anything.” I mentally reviewed the encounter. “They seemed upset that I visited Donnelly’s campaign office yesterday.” I filled Kounadis in on my previous day and its marked lack of results, trying to be as complete as possible.
He listened quietly until I was done, and then he turned away for a moment, looking at the floor and tapping his heel. Finally, he spun around and purposefully stalked out the door. “I’ll be in touch. Let me know if anything comes up,” he called over his shoulder as he went down the steps.
“Wait. Who were those guys? What is going on?” I asked as I followed him out, only to be ignored.
I went back inside and tried to work at my desk, pushing paper around for an hour or so while my thoughts reeled. Finally I got up and headed down to the patrol boat. A nice thing about my summer job, I get to mess about in boats anytime I want. And as a wise man once wrote: ‘There is nothing –absolutely nothing- half so much worth doing…’
The tide was just about high as I cut across the bar off Bumpkin Island. A school of fish was working in tandem with the birds just on the other side, making an oily slick of slashed bait on the surface. Bluefish, no doubt, but there would be a handful of striper cows beneath it all, cleaning up on the chaos. A pair of center console skiffs worked the edges, throwing plugs with spinning gear, enjoying the easy hook-ups. Across the bight, a swarm of Optimist dinghies ran down the channel, the children aboard jibing and tacking randomly in their own chaotic dance, herded patiently by a crew of teenagers in chase boats.
Apart from the action surrounding her, Highlander rode quietly at anchor, her stern toward me, trailing her inflatable. I scanned her decks but saw no sign of Andrea. I felt a definite, involuntary p
ang of disappointment, which I followed up with a conscious self-scolding as I advanced the throttle and headed out towards the gut.
Tom was in the office when I returned, on the phone and looking upset. I only caught the angry tone as he hung up sharply and worked to compose himself.
“Everything okay?” I asked.
“Oh, it’s nothing.” He grabbed up a folder and started thumbing through the forms inside, taking time to get himself back together. “Pretty good numbers on the mooring permits so far…”
I wasn’t sure what that meant, so I let it go, waiting to see what was what.
“How are things with Lauren?” He asked, after a bit.
“I’ll know more tomorrow. We’re having dinner tonight.” I kicked at the edge of the desk a bit. “She wants to talk about ‘us’ things.”
“Well good luck. I hope like hell you two can figure this out.” He got up to leave. “Like I said before, it’d be a damn shame if you didn’t.”
I nodded and headed over to the desk, letting him pass by on his way to the door. He stopped and put a hand on my shoulder like he wanted to say something else, then turned and left.
After hitting some paperwork for about forty-five minutes, I succumbed to impulse and lifted the receiver off its cradle. Star six nine resulted in some rings, followed by a disembodied voice: “you have reached Special Agent Douglas McKenna, Federal Drug Enforcement Agency. Please leave your name and a callback number.” I quickly hung up.
The bar at Tosca was three deep when I arrived that evening, a few minutes early. I worked through the crowd hoping to get a beer and was rewarded instead with a view of my wife, looking smart, beautiful and sophisticated, and drinking a martini of some sort. She was smiling and talking with a pair of young, well-dressed guys. I must have been staring a bit because one of them touched her arm and pointed to me. Lauren looked up, then drained her glass and came over to me, suddenly looking nervous. I leaned in to kiss her and was offered a cheek.
“I was a bit early, so I had a drink. I hope you don’t mind.” She looked cautiously at me. “How are you? Any word on Sharon?”
I told her I was fine, that Sharon was hanging on but not well, still unresponsive, and still in the I.C.U. The hostess came and took us to a table in the back. We sat quietly and pretended to study our menus. As my eyes adjusted to the semidarkness, I realized she was quietly crying.
“Oh, John,” she said, “I am so sorry.”
The evening went downhill from there, the upshot being uneaten dinners, more crying, and an agreement to make the divorce as amicable as possible. I guess I wasn’t surprised, deep down I knew this was coming. As we said goodnight in the parking lot, Lauren seemed to be back to her confident self. I was feeling strangely numb.
I got home a bit after ten and watched the end of the Sox game, but could not have told the score when I went in to bed. Sleep eluded me as I replayed the evening’s conversation. It had been mostly calm and rational, all sadness, no anger. Lauren spoke of growing apart from me, the nature of her love changing. I told her, truthfully I think, that I only wanted for her to be happy. We agreed to use a mediator to work out the agreement, to try our best to keep it from getting contentious. I finally fell asleep just as the morning sky was beginning to brighten.
Wednesday-7:00
I forced myself to get up and moving, even though I could have slept in. My summer schedule had me working Tuesdays, Saturdays and Sundays, plus the odd fill-in as needed by Tom, so the next few days were all mine to do with as I pleased. I took my coffee out on the back deck and took stock of my life over the past week or so. What a mess. Someone had killed my cousin and had tried to kill his wife. The cop assigned to the case seemed to be asking me, without asking me, to help with the investigation. When I did poke around a bit, the DEA came and warned me off. It seemed that my boss was connected to it in some way. And my wife, who was also working on the case, had asked me for a divorce. And then there was Andrea, who kept spiking up in my thoughts, making me feel guilty but not sure what about.
I drove out to the high school and parked in the empty lot. Except for the secretary in the office, the building was deserted. My fish were anxious to see me, flocking to the surface for food. I watered a few plants and did some general tidying up. The school always seemed a different place in summer, no longer defined by its occupants and their activities. I finished my chores and got out.
The day was shaping up to be a hot one, hazy sunshine with increasing humidity. Back at the house, I gathered up my nine weight fly rod, my saltwater fly box, and a length of stainless leader material, then filled a cooler with ice from the freezer and headed to Allerton Harbor and my boat. With any luck, the school of blues I saw the day before would still be feeding somewhere in the bay.
I found them in pretty much the same spot, pushing bait up against the bar off Bumpkin Island, working up toward where Highlander swung on her anchor. Today there was no inflatable tied off her stern. I got upwind of the school, shut down my motor and tossed out a blue and white deceiver tied on a 2/0 hook. The hook-up was almost instantaneous.
Bluefish are an often maligned species, with a strong, fishy flavor and oily flesh that is quick to get mushy even when refrigerated. They are often cursed as trash fish by striped bass fishermen, who actively try to avoid hooking them and can’t set them free fast enough when they do, carefully avoiding their razor teeth. But pound for pound, few fish give as good a fight and are as fun to catch. And, if cooked simply and immediately, they taste great. Sure they taste like fish, but why should that be a negative for a fish? They also take smoke really well, like most oily fish, and, once smoked, are not only delicious but will keep for a long time. Catching enough fish to fill the smoker was today’s goal.
I stopped to gut and bleed each fish as I went, but still managed to have a half-dozen in the box when the school suddenly dispersed forty minutes later. I knew it would reform in different spots around the bay over the next couple hours, but I had all I needed so I fired up my outboard and headed back to my mooring. As I was transferring my gear into my dinghy, the AndiB motored by, Andrea waving from the helm. I waved back, just in time to catch a dark look from her father, working back at the stern next to Chris and Alex. That was twice in a few days that Joe seemed less than pleased to see me.
I rowed in to the dinghy dock and humped the gear and the cooler of bluefish up to my truck. Just as I was starting the engine, my phone began to ring and Andrea’s face appeared in the open driver’s side window. I thumbed my phone to message and turned to greet her.
“Hey,” she said, “out getting some of those blitzing fish? They are everywhere. It looks more fun than catching lobsters.”
“Did you have a nice morning with your dad?” I asked, shutting off the engine and getting out of the truck.
“Yeah, it was okay. Weird at first, kind of awkward, but once we started pulling gear things were good.” She reached in and opened the cooler, made a face. “What are you going to do with these?”
“Brine them and smoke them. Then I’ll give some away, freeze some….” I looked up and saw Joe Buscelli headed toward us.
“Come on Andi,” he yelled from fifty feet away. “We gotta get moving.”
She looked from him to me and seemed a bit flustered. “I gotta go. My dinghy is on his mooring.” She started back towards the pier, then half-turned and called over her shoulder. “I’ll catch up with you later?”
“Sure,” I answered, not knowing what she meant by that.
Back at the house I filleted the fish and got them into a brine solution of kosher salt, brown sugar and ice water. I saved out a small piece of the fish, skinned it and seared both sides quickly in a bit of olive oil, then threw it between a couple slices of toast with a smear of mayo, a slice of tomato and a sprinkling of black pepper. A beer and a bag of chips completed my meal. I took it all out to the deck and ate slowly, thinking back over the past few days.
I must have miss
ed an earlier call in addition to the one I skipped, because when I checked my voice mail I had two messages, not one. The first was from Lisa Sheehan.
“Mister Smith? It's Lisa, Lisa Sheehan, from the campaign office. I thought you should know... that night... It wasn't a campaign meeting. Charlie... Councilman Donnelly I mean... well he and I.... anyway... I'm so stupid...”
The second was from Kounadis. “I'm at the hospital. It's not good. Call me.”
Excerpt from Soundings- a Nantasket Novella
Part Two- About Five Years Ago
Tuesday -8:00 PM
We had cleared the east end of the Cape Cod Canal around three that afternoon and spent the rest of the day reaching up the coast in a solid southwest wind. Now, with Minot Light behind us and Boston Light nearing off the starboard bow, Highlander (officially the navy blue hulled, eighty-five foot sloop that had replaced the original Highlander was called Return of Highlander, but that was too much of a mouthful for everyday use) was close-hauled and making nine or ten knots, looking to ride the incoming tide all the way down Nantasket Roads and into Hull Gut. The sun was drifting down toward the Boston skyline, silhouetting Andrea on the foredeck. Her gaze was focused intently at the shoreline to port, no doubt trying to pick out her childhood home. Her hands held the small belly-bump that was only obvious if you knew to look. I hoped she was thinking good thoughts.
I had mixed feelings about stopping in at Hull. It had been my home for a long time, but it was also a place I thought I had put behind me, a place now most strongly linked with sadness and loss. Life had continued on that summer, after my cousin Eddie was shot to death out in the harbor. After his wife Sharon was killed by a hit and run, by someone driving a stolen car. And, of course, after my wife, Lauren, had left me. Time passed. Andrea had sailed Highlander off to Maine, and then back to the Anguilla in the fall. I had spent my days either working or fishing, each day a numb copy of previous ones. Life had continued on, but without much flavor.