North Harbor

by Kennedy Hudner

  Finley shrugged. “Makes sense, doesn’t it? You know some of these guys out there can get pretty rough if someone even comes into their territory. But poaching? Hell, poaching is the cardinal sin of lobstering. Worst thing you can do. Apparently, Mitchell has been doing this for years and a lot of people knew it, but never caught him at it.” He shrugged again. “I think he got caught by the wrong guy and the guy popped him, then set his boat on fire to cover it as best he could.”

  Corcoran rocked his head slowly in thought, then nodded briskly. “Write it up,” he ordered Finley.

  “You want me to keep poking around to see if I can figure out who did it?”

  Corcoran snorted. “To find them, you’ll have to find the gun they used, and that gun is at the bottom of the ocean by now.” He pursed his lips in thought. “Ask around for two more days, then report back to me and we’ll see.”

  Finley stood up.

  “Oh, and I need you to go up to Bangor today to get the transcript from the Coroner’s Inquest in the Hadley case. They have it waiting for you at the Court House.”

  Finley stared at him for a moment. Corcoran stared back.

  “Sir, you’ve just told me I only have two days to finish the murder investigation of Henry Mitchell, and now you want me to drive up to Bangor to fetch a transcript? Can’t somebody else do that?”

  “Fit it in, Finley,” Corcoran told him sternly. “You’re the newest man on the force, so you get the scut work. That’s the way it is. Dismissed!”

  Finley left the office. He should have been fuming, but he wasn’t. He knew now, beyond all doubt, that Corcoran had been bought off.

  ______________

  Bruno Banderas had to go to Portland, Maine to find what he was looking for: a used Shockwave Magnitude 30, thirty feet long, with a 650-horsepower inboard. The owner swore it could do seventy miles per hour, which Banderas doubted. But maybe it could do sixty, which would be fast enough.

  The asking price was $52,500.

  “And if I paid in cash, now?” Banderas asked with a polite smile. Even his polite smile scared people. He unzipped the bag he was carrying and spilled wads of fifties and hundred-dollar bills onto the table. He knew he was announcing that he was in the drug trade, but he also saw the raw greed in the man’s eyes.

  They settled for $45,000, cash. The owner threw in the trailer and thirty minutes later, Banderas drove off with the go-fast boat. A day later it had been painted a matte black, the extra seats had been ripped out, the engine had been tuned, and a new GPS system had been installed.

  The following day, Mateo, the boat pilot from the home country, took the Shockwave out for a shake-down spin. He came back three hours later, grinning ear to ear. “Es muy rápido!” he said enthusiastically. The boat had reached sixty-seven miles per hour, admittedly in calm waters.

  Banderas nodded, satisfied. That damn boat would pay for itself in one night’s work.

  Chapter 12

  Defending the Catch

  Calvin steered the She’s Mine into the dock. It had been a good haul, twenty lobsters in twenty-two traps. Helped make up for the days when he only got two lobsters in twenty-two traps, and God only knew there were enough of those. He kept out two lobsters for his grandparents and four for supper. He hesitated, then threw another into his bag. Just in case. He threw the rest of the lobsters into a second bag and tossed it up on the dock, finished tying off his skiff and climbed up the ladder, only to find himself facing three people he’d rather not.

  Little Guy LeBlanc and his two cousins, Paul and Martin LaPierre, stood at the top of the ladder, smirking at him. Martin held Calvin’s bag of lobsters. Calvin felt a little clutch in his stomach. Little Guy was the son of Guy LeBlanc, who was the younger brother of Jean-Philippe LeBlanc, the head of the LeBlanc clan and a big shot in North Harbor. Calvin’s brother, Jacob, worked for Jean-Philippe.

  Little Guy and the two LaPierre brothers were a year older than Calvin and they liked to hang around the docks, generally causing mischief that no one called them on, because nobody wanted to get on the wrong side of the LeBlanc clan.

  “Hey, Calvin,” Martin smirked. “Pretty impressive catch you got here, eh? Must be hard work bringing in a dozen lobsters. You got yourself a future in lobstering, yes, sir.”

  The other two snickered and Little Guy snatched the bag from his cousin. Without looking inside, he said, “I think all of these lobsters are too small. You should have thrown them back!” He raised the bag in one hand. “I am going to do my civic duty and return these illegal lobsters to the sea!”

  Calvin had just spent two and a half hours pulling traps, rebaiting them and moving them out to rocky shallows surrounding Ram’s Island. There might only be thirteen lobsters to sell, but they were hard-shelled and would probably bring him more than seventy bucks.

  He smiled. “Yeah, yeah, Guy, but it’s late and I’ve got to sell them and get home.” He held out his hand for the bag.

  Little Guy stepped back, his face suddenly crafty. It was too soon for the fun to stop. And besides, he didn’t really like Calvin Finley, with his cop father and his fancy artist grandfather and his college pretensions. “Tell you what, Cal, I’d be willing to sell you these lobsters at a good discount and then you can sell ‘em to Cadot’s. Whadda you say, two bucks a lobster?”

  Calvin considered. He really didn’t want to take on Little Guy LeBlanc. For one thing, he was a big guy, running to fat, perhaps, but not to be underestimated. For another, the two cousins were with him and three-to-one odds always sucked. Besides, Calvin’s dad would tell him not to break the law. His mother would say to turn the other cheek. And his grandfather…his grandfather… He knew what his grandfather would say.

  “C’mon, Guy,” he said, “I gotta get going. Let me have my lobsters.”

  Guy smiled, delighted. “No, no, Cal, I’ve got to protect these poor, undersized lobsters.” He looked at his cousins. “What do you say, guys, shall we liberate them?” He held the bag out over the water, ready to tip it over and spill the lobsters into the harbor.

  Okay, thought Calvin.

  He took a diagonal step, not confronting Little Guy directly, but moving within arm’s reach and positioning himself near Martin LaPierre, the smaller and lighter of the two cousins. Then he faced the second cousin and spoke.

  “Listen, Paul, can’t you talk some-”

  Without finishing the sentence, he backhanded Little Guy across the nose with his left hand, then punched Martin hard in the sternum with his right. Little Guy’s nose exploded in pain and his eyes flooded with tears. He staggered backwards, dropped the bag of lobsters to the dock and clutched his face with both hands. On his right, Martin stumbled back one step, then another…which was one step too far. With a wail, he fell ten feet into the oily harbor water.

  Calvin looked at Paul, who hadn’t moved. “Paul, I got nothing against you, but I’ve got to sell my catch and go home for supper.”

  Paul nodded slowly. “You shouldn’t have hit Guy,” he warned Calvin. He didn’t say anything about his brother.

  “Maybe,” Calvin nodded agreeably. “Why don’t you help your brother out of the water.” Glancing warily at Little Guy, who was still clutching his nose, Calvin picked up the bag of lobsters and started down the dock, then thought better of leaving his boat untended once Little Guy got functional again. He walked back, jumped down to his skiff, untied it and motored all the way around to the other side where Cadot’s was. The dock area was crowded with fishing boats and lobster boats a lot bigger than the She’s Mine, but he squeezed in, tied her up under the dock where the larger boats wouldn’t crush her, and then climbed the ladder.

  He knew that he’d just made an enemy, but he was still too young to understand the unholy wrath of the Law of Unintended Consequences.

  He would learn, soon enough.

  Chapter 13

  The Test Run

  With Mateo at the wheel and Banderas riding shotgun, they took the Shockwave out to the drop
point at night. Banderas sat with a chart of the surrounding waters and a GPS repeater in front of him. They took the boat out of Stonington and headed northeast, keeping their speed – and thus their noise – low as they crept past Russ Island, Camp Island and then the north side of Bold Island, avoiding the shallows and sandbars around The Shivers and Devil Island.

  The radar showed dozens of small islands and large jutting rocks. As Banderas glanced repeatedly at the GPS, he saw that many islands did not have names. Looking up and peering into the darkness, he could see nothing. The boat chugged along. To Banderas – no seaman – it was like driving a car through a dark tunnel without headlights.

  “Gets dark as all fuck out here,” Jean-Philippe said, reading his mind. “And there is a goddamn current that passes through these little islands when the tide turns. If you’re in the water, you’d better crawl up onto one of these dipshit islands, cause if you don’t, you are on a one-way ticket into the North Atlantic. God help you, because no one else will, that’s for sure.”

  They cleared the first mass of islands, crossed Jericho Bay and continued up and around Swans Island, then turned due east. The dark mass of Acadia National Park stood out under the stars on their port side. Two more miles and Mateo brought the thirty-foot Shockwave to a due north heading.

  “Better put on your seatbelts,” he said. “Might get a little rough!” Then he opened up the 650-horsepower, GT Performance engine and built up to full speed over a couple of minutes. The boat leaped ahead, engine growling with satisfaction. Mateo grinned wildly, nodding his head. “Ella está muy bien, ¿sí?”

  “Si!” Banderas shouted happily as the wind snatched off his ball cap. It disappeared into the night behind them.

  LeBlanc, who favored the stability of a forty-six-foot lobster boat, thought this plastic toy sailed like a cork bobbing in rough seas, but kept it to himself.

  It was just about eighty miles across the Gulf of Maine to the drop point. Mateo kept the throttle down to fifty miles per hour and they reached their destination in an hour and forty minutes. He throttled back and the boat slowed grudgingly to a halt.

  Banderas double-checked the GPS, then set a marker. Now they could find this spot again even in pitch darkness. He checked his watch: total time to get here was about two and a half hours.

  “How’s our fuel?” he asked.

  “We’re good,” Mateo assured him. “Plenty to get back.” He pointed northeast towards the point of Nova Scotia. “And there’s land about ten miles that way, if we had to get off the water fast. Ten minutes or less at full throttle. No sweat.”

  LeBlanc shook his head. “It ain’t the distance, for fuck’s sake, it’s the weather! Tonight is calm; the ocean’s flat as the girl I took to the Senior Prom. But we get a lot of storms out here, and some of them come up real fast. The waves get up, six, eight, ten feet, easy. This boat is just a toy, she’s not designed for big waves. If weather comes in, you’ll have to slow way down to keep from getting swamped.” He grinned evilly. “Then the Coast Guard will be all over your sorry ass. They got cutters, zodiacs and helicopters, all that shit.”

  Banderas did not like this big, loud lobsterman, but the man knew the sea, and he had a point. He suppressed a sigh. One more thing to worry about. It would be random chance whether the weather was calm on the night of the drop off.

  They turned the Shockwave around and returned to Stonington, where they quietly moored the boat at a private buoy they had rented and rowed ashore in a little dinghy. Once they left the harbor again for the drug pickup, they would not return here. They would go to North Harbor, where they had an arrangement with the police, and once the drugs were offloaded, they’d sell the boat and buy another.

  But first things first. When they got back to the condo where they were staying, Banderas called his contact at the Cartel and explained that any handover of the drugs could easily be foiled by weather. They needed a Plan B, Banderas explained to the voice of a person he had never met. The voice sounded American. He shrugged. Didn’t matter. All that mattered was that the product got delivered.

  ______________

  In Sinaloa, Mexico, Wallace listened carefully, eyes closed. Of course the weather could be a problem. Banderas might be a very effective killer, but he was clearly no brain trust. Wallace Moore already had a Plan B in place, but that had its risks as well. First, they had to try the go-fast boat and if that proved unfeasible, then, and only then, would they go to Plan B.

  After all, nobody in his right mind threw fifty pounds of pure heroin into the ocean if there was a safer way to deliver it. Christ, was he the only one who had ever heard of the scientific method?

  He terminated the call with Banderas and called his man on the Tampa Bay. Quietly and efficiently, he gave the man very specific instructions. “Understand?” he asked when he was finished.

  “Sí, Sí,” the man replied calmly. He was a good man, experienced and level headed. He had worked with Wallace before and understood the odd American was always nervous, but very smart. When the call terminated, the man went right to the workshop. There was much to do, and he wanted to get it done before his work shift started.

  Chapter 14

  The Warrior

  Luc Dumas walked around the marble block for the fiftieth time, studying every feature, every blemish, every shadow.

  Nothing.

  He sipped his wine and tried to control his emotions, which were lurching up and down worse than an adolescent suffering through his first romantic obsession. The door opened and his wife came in carrying a plate of food.

  “Even great artists have to eat,” she said in mild reproof.

  “What would I do without you?” he asked, kissing her cheek.

  “Starve to death in dirty clothes,” she said pointedly. “Hard to know which would kill you first.”

  “Now, now, no need to get snippy.” He took a bite of the sandwich she’d brought, then washed it down with a glass of wine and poured himself another.

  “You keep drinking like that, Luc Dumas, and your liver is going to jump right out of your body and hitchhike south to better weather.”

  “Just another way to lose weight,” he said. “Don’t be jealous.”

  Céline made a rude noise. Then the door opened and Stanley Curtis walked in, followed by Huckleberry.

  “Hi, Mr. Dumas!” he shouted excitedly. He turned to Céline . “Hi, hi, Mrs. Céline!”

  Luc Dumas stood up, formally shook Stanley’s hand and said what he said every day: “Stanley, thank God you’re here. There is so much work to be done. But I can’t work until this place is properly cleaned up.”

  Stanley laughed and nodded, his whole head bobbing up and down. “Oh, oh, I can help you, Mr. Dumas! Let me get started.” And with that he walked to the little closet in the corner and took out a broom and dustpan and began to meticulously sweep the work area.

  Céline looked at the happy man-child as he busied himself with the broom. She smiled at her husband as a tear trickled down her cheek, then pulled him down to her and kissed him softly on the mouth. “You are a very good man, Luc,” she whispered fiercely, “And I love you very much.”

  Dumas blinked in surprise. His wife of fifty-six years was many things, but demonstrative was not one of them. Céline, for her part, suddenly seemed to come to her senses. “I have work to do,” she said brusquely, pushing him away. “Don’t be late for dinner.” But she didn’t leave. Instead she looked at the huge block of marble, inspecting it critically, as one might study a hostile army arranged across the valley, ready to attack. She walked slowly around it, running her hand along the surface, feeling its grain and texture.

  “It’s good stone,” she said.

  Dumas nodded glumly.

  “Where are your drawings?”

  Dumas gestured to his work table and Céline bent over, studying the work drawings that he had prepared. They showed an Indian warrior on horseback, galloping forward, a spear raised in his hand, ready to throw. The ho
rse’s eyes were wide, nostrils flared, its ears flattened against its head, teeth showing as it charged down upon the enemy. The warrior’s face, in contrast, was calm. Almost serene. And there was just the faintest hint of a smile at the corner of his mouth.

  “Heavens!” she exclaimed. “Is he smiling?”

  Dumas wagged his head back and forth. “I don’t know yet.”

  She peered closer at the drawing. “Intriguing. Perhaps for him, it is not a fight to the death, eh? But doing what he loves.” She looked up. “Does he even care about the outcome, or is it enough for him to simply fight?”

  Dumas flapped his arms helplessly at the marble block. “Fight? Christ on a crutch, I’d be happy if he’d just peek out of the damn rock and say hello!”

  Céline slipped her arm through his and tugged him towards the door. “Come on, you are marinating in your own anxiety. Let’s go for a walk and clear your head. Stanley!” she called to the man-child. “We are going for a long walk to clear the cobwebs from Mr. Dumas’ foggy brain. Are you okay here alone?”

  Stanley paused in his sweeping. “Oh sure, sure, Mrs. Céline. And anyway, I’m not alone. I’ve got Huckleberry right here and Big Moose is just outside.”

  Céline smiled. Stanley’s world was so rich that a living dog and an inanimate tricycle held equal prominence in his life. “Okay, Stanley, we leave the studio in your capable hands. If we are not back by the time you finish, just turn off the lights and shut the door.”

  “Okay, Mrs. Céline, you can count on me.”

  “We always do, Stanley, and you have never failed us.” Stanley glowed at the compliment.

  Dumas looked forlornly at the untouched block of marble waiting impatiently for him to start.

  “Are you sure this is a good idea? I should really try to work on it.”

  “I’m sure,” Céline replied. Then she shut the door and they left his disappointment behind.