North Harbor

by Kennedy Hudner

  For others, there was affection, perhaps even respect, but so much distance. She played golf while he went fishing. But when they got home the questions were perfunctory and without any real interest. Talk at dinner was about family logistics, but it might as well have been a business meeting. They were respectful and faithful, but there was no sharing, no reading to each other some news story they wanted to share, and no joy. Two bodies pulled into the same bed by the gravity of everyone’s expectations. Gabrielle had decided early she would never have a life like that. There has to be something more, something shared, some deep appreciation for what each other is going through and the simple desire to share all of the little things that make up a life.

  But she didn’t speak of this. Calvin had to make his own choices. She knew that, too.

  She took a deep, shuddering breath. Men could be so stupid.

  ______________

  They got back to the dock in good time, unloaded the traps and locked them in a storage bin his Uncle Paul let him use. A subdued Gabrielle told him she was tired and drove home. Feeling that he had missed something, something important, Calvin walked to where his bicycle was chained to a post, then stopped and cursed.

  Both tires had been slashed. And next to the bike was a pile of his lobster buoys. Calvin promised himself that when he next saw Little Guy, he would teach him a lesson he would never forget.

  But he didn’t see him again until it was too late.

  Chapter 33

  Monday Morning – Preparations

  On Monday morning, Bruno Banderas returned to North Harbor with three large boxes and four experienced shooters – hard men who would do what they were told, without any inconvenient qualms.

  The boxes were for installation on LeBlanc’s lobster boats.

  The shooters were for Frank Finley. And his family.

  Banderas spent much of Monday afternoon and evening with Jean-Philippe LeBlanc, helping him install the gear on LeBlanc’s lobster boat. The gear was clever. Each lobster boat would be equipped with a Benthos DRI-267 Dive Ranger, which emitted an interrogator pulse to a depth of 600 feet. Each of the drug packages they were looking for had an attached acoustic transponder. When the pulse from the Dive Ranger pinged the transponder, the transponder would reply with a ping of its own. That sound would be heard by a hydrophone towed behind each of the lobster boats, which would measure the acoustic range and bearing. The location of the package could often be determined with one ping by the transponder. If not, the lobster boat would turn ninety degrees to its present course and ping the transponder again within a few minutes. With two readings, the exact location of the package could be calculated.

  At least, that was the theory.

  “They tell me that this is good equipment,” Banderas told LeBlanc. “High-end commercial quality. We don’t have the licenses we need for military-grade stuff, but this is good. The man in Sinaloa, he tells me Benthos makes good shit. It should be, for what we paid.”

  They had enough Dive Rangers to equip three lobster boats.

  “What’s the effective range of these things?” Jean-Philippe LeBlanc wanted to know.

  Banderas shrugged. “They tell me one hundred to five hundred meters, but that the packages are supposed to be floating only twenty feet below the surface.”

  LeBlanc looked disgusted. “Do these idiots have any idea how fuckin’ big the ocean is? Even if we line up the three boats side-by-side, at most that will only cover fifteen hundred meters, a little less than a mile. Christ on a crutch, we got hundreds and hundreds of square miles of water and islands out here.”

  Banderas sighed. Killing people was so much easier than this. “Sinaloa tells me that you have something called the Eastern Maine Coastal Current. It sweeps through this area, through all of these islands off of North Harbor and Stonington. The packages were dumped into the Current and should arrive somewhere in here most likely Wednesday or Thursday, but you’ll start looking tomorrow just in case.”

  “And if the packages don’t hang up on an island or somehow just pass through, then what?” demanded LeBlanc.

  “Then we move the search south and west.”

  “And you don’t think it will look funny when three of my boats are out doing sweeps instead of hauling lobster traps?”

  “Nothing is perfect,” Banderas said calmly. “I suggest that we don’t use the same boats every day, but swap them onto your other boats. You have six boats. Three can hunt for the packages while the other three hunt your lobsters.”

  LeBlanc looked at him sourly. “Three days, maybe more? I’m gonna lose a lot of money chasing your dope around the ocean.”

  Banderas nodded. Wallace had anticipated this. “For each day you are searching, you will be paid fifty thousand American dollars, in cash. No taxes. Sinaloa told me to remind you that the Cartel is very generous with those who help them.”

  LeBlanc snorted. “Like I’ve got a choice, huh?”

  Banderas said nothing. Nothing need be said.

  LeBlanc was already thinking. The gear was easy to move, so he could swap the boats around without too much trouble. But he didn’t trust all of the crews enough to let them see what they were doing. He could tell them it was some sort of high-tech bottom survey, but then they’d have to mark the place where they found a package and come back for it. He rubbed his chin. Scuba gear, wetsuits and all that shit. He’d have to have some on every boat, unless he used a fourth boat, something smaller, not a lobster boat. Send them the position and then move on, still pretending to do the “bottom survey.” The small boat could run in and pick up the package. That would take care of the crew issue. He’d only need trusted men in the small boat, carrying the divers. Use one of his brothers. Have to think about that.

  “All right, let’s go test this equipment and make sure our end works.” LeBlanc grinned savagely. “And aren’t you fucked if the transponders don’t work or the packages just sank when they got tossed into the ocean?”

  Chapter 34

  Monday Morning

  On Monday morning, Calvin turned back from Sheep Island early and swam slowly back to shore. He couldn’t get Gabrielle out of his mind and his arms and legs felt leaden. When he got back home he sat at the kitchen table, disconsolate, not even drinking his post-swim cocoa.

  “What’s the matter,” his mother asked, “didn’t the seals come out to play this morning?

  “Aw, not that,” he mumbled. “I told you about how Little Guy and his cousins cut my traps and then slashed my bike tires, right?”

  Danielle nodded, not saying anything. Her sons were not usually forthcoming about what was bothering them, so when it happened, she just let them talk.

  “Yeah, well, when I saw that the traps had been cut, I sorta thought they were gone for good. Lost, at a hundred bucks per pop! But Gabs got all Mr. Spock about it and made me realize I could find them and that getting them out of the water wouldn’t be that hard. And she helped like a trooper. I mean, the water was cold and she’s not used to it like I am, but she dove for the traps and hooked a bunch. We got out of the water and she wrapped up like a mummy in a big towel and we had hot tea and it was really nice.” He paused, shaking his head.

  “C’mon, don’t leave me hanging. The suspense is killing me,” his mother prodded.

  Calvin sighed. “Then Gabs starts crying. She’s going to college at the end of the summer and she’s all upset and I tell her that I can plan on coming down to see her, but she just clams up, won’t say another word.” He threw up his hands. “I didn’t know what to say!”

  Danielle wondered if they were sleeping together yet, but decided that now was not the time to bring it up.

  “So, Calvin, what do you think Gabrielle is worried about? Do you really think she’s worried about you not getting to see her, or something else?”

  “Is there any more bacon?” he asked.

  Danielle snorted. “You answer the question and I might be willing to cook some bacon,” she retorted. “You�
��re smart, figure it out.”

  He blew out a breath. “Yeah, well I don’t always feel so smart.”

  She smiled. “When it comes to emotions, particularly the emotions of an eighteen-year-old girl, you are just as dumb as anybody else in this family, male or female.”

  “Tell me something I don’t know,” Calvin muttered.

  Danielle looked at him fondly, her very smart, very ignorant boy-man. “Well, answer me this, if you were in her shoes, what would worry you about leaving your boyfriend behind?”

  He looked at her blankly, proving once again that even smart men could be incredibly dumb when it came to the life of emotions. “Okay, Calvin,” she asked. “If you stay here and become a full-time lobsterman, what will you do every day?”

  “Go out on the ocean and set my traps and harvest the old ones for lobsters,” he answered, using the tone of voice that suggested this was rather obvious.

  “Okay, and what will you do the next day?” she asked patiently.

  “Why, pretty much the same thing,” he said. “The only real variables are the weather, how big a catch I get and the market price for lobsters.”

  “And the next day?”

  “Same thing as before.”

  “And meanwhile, what will Gabrielle be doing?”

  He started to frown, but then realized that it was a question with serious consequences. While he was out on his beloved ocean, Gabrielle would be starting new classes each semester, meeting new people, talking about the same sort of things that fascinated him – ideas, issues, developing technology and what its impact might be – only she would be talking about it with other people, not him. Or at least, he admitted to himself, not in the same way she would talk about it with him.

  Calvin closed his eyes for a minute, his thinking pose. His face went slack, what Danielle thought of as his ‘Village Idiot’ look. Then he opened his eyes and his face reanimated, startling her like it always did. One moment he was gone, the next he was back again, her Calvin.

  “She wants me to go to school,” he said evenly. “Because she’s afraid that if I stay here and become a full-time fisherman, she’ll lose me, that we’ll be too different, maybe that she’ll no longer really understand what makes me tick.” He paused. “Or that I won’t understand what makes her tick.”

  Danielle blinked. He got there much quicker than she had thought he would.

  “Do you disagree?” she asked, putting some more bacon in front of him. How many households, she wondered, went through three pounds of bacon a week?

  “I don’t know,” he said.

  “Hmmm…”

  “I mean–” but then he fell silent again.

  Danielle poured herself another cup of coffee and sat down at the kitchen table. Didn’t say a word, just sipped her coffee.

  “Aw, there’s nothing wrong with being a fisherman,” he protested. “There are lots of lobsterman who have been trapping since they got out of high school. It’s hard work, but they make a good living, have families.”

  “It’s one way to make a living,” Danielle said noncommittally.

  “I can earn good money,” he said stubbornly.

  “Money is important.”

  He stared at her reproachfully. “I know what you’re doing, Mom.”

  “I’m just sipping my coffee…and listening to my son work through a problem.”

  Calvin snorted and went back to pushing his cocoa mug around in small circles. “Duke is pretty far away. And expensive.”

  “It’s the best marine biology program in the country, that’s why you applied, Calvin. Duke is also offering you a very good financial package, even if you don’t join the swim team. If you do, it’s almost a free ride. And anyway, Durham has an airport.”

  Calvin looked morosely at the tabletop. Danielle went around the table and gave him a hug, more for her benefit than for his. “I know this sounds funny, but sometimes when you really get stuck on making a decision, you have to ask what is it that you are more afraid of: staying here in North Harbor, or going to college and finding that you like it?”

  “What?” Calvin was confused.

  She picked up his plate and took it to the sink. “Think about it, Calvin. You can work through it. And while you’re at it, look up George Addair and his famous quote. Now hurry up or you’ll be late for school.” She smiled at him then, a mischievous, lilting smile, and walked out of the room.

  Leaving her baffled son wondering how she had done whatever it was she had just done.

  ______________

  Gabrielle Poulin locked the Ford Focus in the parking lot behind the high school and began walking towards the rear entrance, near the gym. As usual, there were a bunch of boys, and some girls, catching a smoke before classes began. No one was supposed to smoke on school grounds, but the school turned a blind eye to seniors in their last quarter, as long as they were discreet.

  On the way in she walked alongside Lois Lecompte, and they chatted about final exams and a new boy Lois was dating. As they neared the entrance, Gabrielle realized suddenly that one of the boys standing there was Martin LaPierre, Little Guy LeBlanc’s follower. The other two were Juniors she recognized, but didn’t know their names.

  When he saw her, Martin pushed off the wall to block her way.

  “I heard you’ve been goin’ out with Finley,” he said sullenly.

  Lois Lecompte frowned at him. “Martin, don’t be a jerk. Let us through or-”

  “Or nothing, bitch,” he said menacingly. “I wasn’t talkin’ to you, so shut up.” He turned back to Gabrielle and poked her in the chest with two thick fingers. “Your boyfriend is a wiseass and a troublemaker. He’s going to get what’s coming to him, so you’d better watch who you pal around with.”

  Gabrielle’s father had warned her about fighting. Before he had become a banker, he had served four years in the Marines. Once, at ten-years old, Gabrielle had gotten the worst of it in a fight with one of her brothers and had run crying to her father.

  “Well, Gabs, it’s like this,” he’d said sternly. “Rule One, don’t fight if you can talk your way out. Rule Two, if you can, stun your opponent and run to safety. I think you broke Rule One, don’t you? You teased your brother until he got mad and hit you, so it’s no use crying about it now, is there?”

  But Gabrielle had already stopped crying. Her father had never spoken to her about anything like fighting before. She stood for a moment, replaying in her mind what he had said.

  “But Daddy, what’s Rule Three? What if you can’t just hurt him and run away?”

  And now her father looked a bit contrite, and…sad?

  He sighed. “Rule Three, pumpkin, is that if you’re forced to fight and there is little hope of running away, then you have to remember that it isn’t always the strongest who wins, but the most ferocious. That’s the fight where you have to accept that you’re going to get hurt. Know it, but use it. Make them believe that you will take any pain, if you can at least hurt them. And if you get the chance, hurt your opponent so badly that neither he nor any others will bother you again.” Then he had looked very sheepish and mumbled, “And for God’s sake, don’t tell your mother I told you any of this.”

  But Gabrielle remembered. In middle school she ran to build her stamina, climbed ropes to the gym ceiling to make her strong, skipped rope to make her quick and took dance to make her coordinated. When high school came she took the intro to martial arts course in gym – the only one they allowed girls to take – and pestered her brothers until they taught her the rudiments of boxing and wrestling. Wrestling, she soon realized, wasn’t going to help her at all. She had to assume she would always be up against someone stronger and heavier than her. If she let them get close enough to wrestle, she was dead. No, her options were to talk her way out, run, or strike and run, or beat the crap out of them before they even realized they were in a fight.

  Now Gabrielle looked hard at Martin LaPierre, then turned her gaze to the two boys behind him. “And you
two?” she said in a strong voice. “You’re Juniors, right? Of course you are, no one in the Senior class would suck up to Martin, so you must be Juniors.” They looked at her blankly, confused that this slender girl was not showing any fear. Good, keep them off balance.

  “I’m going to go into the school now,” Gabrielle said evenly. “If Martin here plays the fool and tries to stop me, I’m going to hurt him. If you guys join in, three guys beating up one defenseless girl, you are going to get kicked out of school. Permanently. Your parents will have to send you to some other school, after you get out of jail.”

  Now they looked uncertain, which was right where Gabrielle wanted them. Divide and conquer, that’s the ticket. Not that she thought they wouldn’t jump in once the fight started. She just needed a moment of hesitation.

  “Hey, shut the fuck up, dammit,” Martin growled, leaning forward to push her hard in the chest. She staggered back three steps, almost losing her balance. Gabrielle used the motion to drop one sling of her knapsack off her shoulder and swing it in front of her, looking like she was trying to use it as a shield.

  “You’re so gross, Martin. Just because you’re smaller than everybody doesn’t mean you’ve got to pick on girls!”

  Get the hook in his mouth.

  Martin’s face suddenly infused with red. “You shut up! You’re just like Finley, all high and mighty, goin’ to some fancy school next year. Think you’re better than everybody else.”

  And give it a yank to set it.

  “You’re just a pussy, Martin,” she said contemptuously. “You’re mad because you tried to steal Calvin’s lobsters and he threw you into the harbor! Pussy!” she hissed.