Glass Eels, Shattered Sea

by Charlene D'Avanzo

  “Leonard,” I said. “This cookie is terrific.”

  He patted the bulge above his belt. “Ann’s a good cook. Toll House. New England’s best recipe.”

  Swallowing my second bite, I asked, “So Ann’s on the mainland?”

  “Yup. Six-month run—dentist and doctor, plus clothes and food shopping. She’s meeting with a couple of her clients too. She’ll be back tomorrow and sorry she missed you.”

  I nodded. Islanders this far from the coast limited the number of expeditions to “America.” Gasoline was expensive and uncertain weather could make return trips dicey. Many, I suspected, also preferred the security of a limited patch of ground where everyone knew everyone’s business and took care of each other.

  “So Ann has clients?” I asked.

  “Yeah,” he said. “A couple of women she counsels on the phone and sees when she’s off-island. Don’t ask me what she helps them with, since I take off when she talks to them. But it brings in a little money.”

  I glanced at Connor. He was still fixed on his cookie, and I assumed he wanted me to be the first to ask about Jack.

  33

  “Leonard,” I said. “Let’s talk about why we are here. When Jack was a kid he spent summers on Little Moose. I believe he’s here now and that you know where.”

  “Ayuh,” Leonard said. “When he was a little boy, Jack came out here with his dad. Awful, just awful, what happened to Nelson. I feel real bad for Jack, so I’m doin’ what I can for him.”

  Listening, I sensed that helping Jack filled a void in the aging man’s life. “Leonard, that’s really good of you.”

  “Well, I guess prob’ly. Mara, when you’re ready I’ll take you to where Jack’s hiding out. He knows you’re coming.”

  I stood. “Great. Let’s go.”

  He held up his hand. “There’s something you should know. Jack’s health has got kinda bad these last few days, and I’m guessing someone on the island found him.”

  “Heroin?” I asked.

  Closing his eyes, he shook his head. “I’m afraid so. Prepare yourself. He’s hard to look at.”

  The forest behind Leonard’s home was thick with spruce, pine, oak, and maple. We plowed through underbrush and climbed over and around downed branches. While I couldn’t see any evidence of a trail, Leonard clearly knew where he was going. Finally, we stepped out of the tree-tangle into a sunny patch of grass and ferns. Rooted on this patch of higher ground was a tiny cottage with peeling white paint.

  Jack sat on a bench alongside the house. As we walked closer, I understood what Leonard meant. Slumped over, Jack epitomized “wasted”—gaunt and haggard, he looked twice his age.

  I sat next to him on the bench and said, “Hi, Jack.”

  Studying his hands, Jack coughed a couple of times and finally managed a hoarse, “Hi.”

  Connor walked over and I added, “Um, this is Connor Doyle, my very good friend. He brought me out here.”

  There was no response, so I kept going. Placing my hand for a moment on his scarecrow arm, I said, “Hiding out here, that was smart.”

  After a moment, Jack whispered, “Dad.”

  “Your coming out here, that was your father’s idea?”

  “Last thing he said.”

  I kept going with that. “Your dad’s idea, it was a good one. But now I’m worried you are in real danger out here.”

  If Jack was apprehensive, he didn’t show it.

  “Jack, the eel traffickers are ruthless people. If they find you on the island, they’ll kill you.”

  Jack was a mute scarecrow. I glanced over at Leonard, who just shook his head. I guessed he had tried to talk with him earlier, with the same outcome.

  I tried a different tack. “I’ve been talking with the Operation Broken Glass people. I’d like to tell them where you are. They could get you into some kind of witness protection program.”

  Jack looked at me with bloodshot eyes for a moment, then let his head drop. Slurring the words, he said, “I’m stayin’ here.”

  On the way back to Leonard’s house, the three of us discussed Jack’s reaction and behavior.

  “You were right, Leonard,” I said. “Jack just isn’t the same person.”

  “And it was heroin for sure. I’ve seen it too many times before,” Connor added. “Pinpoint pupils, sluggish behavior, bad judgment.”

  “Isn’t heroin expensive?” I asked.

  “It’s cheap at first—five to ten bucks a bag,” Connor said. “But once you’re addicted, the cost skyrockets to hundreds of dollars a day.”

  “But Jack’s not a lobsterman. How’s he going to get that kind of money?”

  “Not from me, that’s for sure,” Leonard said. “I might have twenty bucks in the house. Finances are Ann’s department.”

  “But what can we do about this?” I asked. “Just leave Jack out here to wallow in his addiction?”

  Leonard shook his head. “That’s the thing. There’s just not a heck of a lot we can do.”

  “On our way back to the mainland this afternoon,” I explained, “I’ll call Lieutenant Dunn at Operation Broken Glass as soon as I get reception. I’ll tell him Jack doesn’t want to leave the island but not exactly why and let you know what he says. Sound okay, Leonard?”

  “Okay,” he said. “Phones are dicey out here, but you’ll connect eventually.”

  Leonard put some leftover beef stew on the stove and invited Connor and me to join him for lunch.

  Thanking him, I declined. “After that visit with Jack I need to clear my head. What’s a nice short walk?”

  Ladle in hand, Leonard looked up from the steaming pot. “Go past the harbor and follow the trail along the cliff there. It ends down at a little beach with rocky ledges and pools. People tell me we got pretty special tide pools out here.”

  “I read that. Be back in a half hour.” I lifted my raincoat off the hook and turned to ask Connor when he wanted to leave.

  He looked at his watch. “No more than an hour from now. Weather radio says winds will pick up this afternoon.”

  “Got it,” I said. “Be back in forty-five minutes at most.”

  Leonard’s “pretty special” was an understatement. Little Moose’s granite ledges, tide pools, and kelps were a marine biologist’s delight.

  It was low tide, which meant that the pools—shallow and bowl-shaped—were exposed and easy to get to. Refilled with seawater at high tide, pools like these support a marine forest in miniature. Brown seaweed fronds, no longer than my pinky, constitute the trees. Beneath them, short mats of bright-green algae are the rich undergrowth. Little herds of marine snails glide over the rock surface, leaving grazed trails behind, like lawn mower stripes in an unkempt front yard. If you touch the water with a finger, unseen little fish and shrimp dart about.

  Leaving my raincoat behind and careful not to slip on slick rocks, I picked my way down to the pools closest to the water. Beneath a strip of floating kelp, I found what I was looking for: starfish protecting itself from birds, like gulls and nosy biologists like me.

  If Leonard had been with me, I realized later, he surely would have noticed the approaching lobster boat. But entranced by tide pool ecology, I didn’t see the boat or its skiff heading right toward me. When something big scraped barnacles on the rock ledge below me, I finally looked up.

  34

  There were two men in the skiff. The short guy, who stood and glared at me, looked Asian and had close-set, ferret-like eyes, plus a goatee. All I could say about the rower, who had his back to me, was that he wore soiled bib overalls.

  “Get in the boat,” Ferret Eyes barked.

  Too startled to be scared, I said, “Who the hell are you?”

  He reached under his yellow slicker and showed me a gun. “In the boat. Now.”

  I glanced back over my shoulder. Except for two squawking gulls at the water’s edge, the beach was deserted. I could run for it but would probably end up with a bullet in the back. Bad option. I stood and wa
lked carefully through the kelp and over slick rocks, down to the little boat.

  Ferret Eyes had climbed over the middle seat to the bow. He pointed to the stern. “Get in.”

  Stepping into a rocking rowboat from a slimy rock ledge at the water’s edge was a tricky procedure. As I reached over to hold onto the bow, my feet slid and I ended up on my butt.

  Ferret Eyes snarled, “Christ. You a retard or somethin’? Get your friggin’ ass in this boat!”

  I grabbed a gunwale with one hand, the bow with the other, and fell on to the seat. At my feet, seawater sloshed over the boat’s ribs, taking a dark-blue lobster claw band from one side of the hull to the other. Clearly, this was a lobsterman’s dinghy.

  Ferret Eyes barked an order to his accomplice: “Row fast. Straight out. Then we gotta get back to the harbor before someone sees this leaking tub is missing.”

  As Bib Overalls leaned into his task and the oars clattered in the oarlocks, the reality of my plight sunk in. I was in an old rowboat on Maine’s freezing waters with two hit men who, I assumed, had a job to do: get rid of me. Whoever was behind my kidnapping was probably responsible for shooting Nelson. They had traced Jack out here, ended up with a twofer, and would probably spend some of their trafficking profits on champagne.

  Bib Overalls was a practiced rower, and we were at least a half-mile from shore in no time. Ferret Eyes looked around, saw no one, and said, “Good. That’s enough.” He stood and pointed at me. “You. Over the side.”

  The thug had a gun and would use it. I had no choice.

  I’ve fallen and been pushed into frigid ocean more times than any woman should, but I knew that springtime water off Little Moose would be like the Arctic with ice cubes. I leapt off the boat, crashed down through the surface, and very nearly passed out.

  The sea held my head in a vise and drove icy spikes into my brain.

  Screaming, I clawed up to the surface, broke through, and gasped for air. Desperately treading water, I tore off clothes weighing me down—pants, shoes, fleece pullover. Twirling in a circle, I searched for the rowboat. But it had already vanished.

  I was on my own in deadly forty-degree seawater with absolutely no hope of making it to shore before passing out.

  The cold, cold waters I studied and loved were going to swallow me whole. Alone, beyond reach of any human, I sank below the surface. My last thought was of Ted. I would never see him again. We would never have the chance to live together.

  Like in a slow-motion film, the words were drawn out and warped: “Maaa-raaw. Maaa-raaw.”

  Blinking, I opened my eyes for a moment, then instantly squeezed them shut. “Ahhh, my head. It hurts so bad.”

  Connor. He spoke slowly. “You are safe.”

  “Gonna be sick.” Turning my head, I vomited, said, “Sorry,” and passed out again.

  I woke in the glorious comfort of warm water. Slowly turning my head, I looked from side to side. This was a bathtub. In a bathroom.

  A woman I didn’t recognize sat on the toilet. Smiling, she said, “Hi. I’m Martha from down the road. You’re in Leonard’s bathtub.”

  “Oh,” I said. “That’s good.”

  “Stay as long as you like, dear. I can add a little more hot water.”

  Later, dry and wearing Ann’s clothes, I sat at Leonard’s table and relished a mug of hot tea with extra honey as Connor explained why I hadn’t drowned.

  “One of the lobstermen was on his way back to the harbor when he spotted a skiff off the rocks. He grabbed his binoculars and saw you go overboard as the skiff took off. He sped toward you while his sternman called an emergency on the VHF. The lobsterman said you were floating near the surface, so he reached down, grabbed your shirt, and got you aboard his boat. I helped him get you onshore when he reached the harbor.”

  “How long was I in the water?”

  “A couple of minutes.”

  “Good lord,” I said. “Five minutes in that arctic water could’ve killed me. What’s the lobsterman’s name and how can I ever thank him?”

  In the kitchen, Leonard switched on the coffee pot. “Name’s Howie. The lady in the bathroom with you was Martha, his wife.”

  “What about the thugs who nearly killed me? They didn’t get away, did they?”

  “Island cops. Those guys are going nowhere, and Marine Patrol’s on their way out to pick them up. They’ll want to talk with you when you’re back on the mainland.”

  I wasn’t surprised. Maine islands of any size had unofficial “island cops” who took care of local problems on their own and brought in actual police when necessary. Once in a while things got out of hand—including when fishermen from different islands fought over territory—but usually the arrangement worked pretty well.

  “There are some guardian angels on this island I want to thank,” I said. “Anything in particular Howie, Martha, and Ann would like?”

  “Ayuh,” Leonard said. “Howie, he’d go for some ale. Martha, she likes hard cider. As for Ann, she drinks that herb tea.”

  I nodded. “Excellent. I can order all that from the grocery store and have it sent on the next delivery to the island. And I’ll wash Ann’s clothes and get them in the mail.”

  “You know,” Leonard said, “Howie’s boat has the perfect name for what happened.”

  “Which is?” I asked.

  Leonard grinned. “Believe it or not, she’s called Wet Lady.”

  35

  On our way to the harbor, Connor, Leonard, and I stopped briefly at Martha and Howie’s house. To my, “I can’t thank you enough,” Howie said, “Go on with ya,” while Martha grinned and handed me my raincoat.

  “Found it on the rocks, deah,” she said. “Good thing it was so bright and easy to see.”

  Typical Maine islanders, who did what needed doing and moved on.

  Taking the oars in his dinghy, Leonard rowed us out to Connor’s boat. He too waved off my thanks with, “’Twas nothin’,” I made a mental note to ask Connor about a special treat for him that I could add to my ferry delivery order.

  Although it was late afternoon, the trip back to Spruce Harbor was less bumpy than Connor had anticipated, and Lucky Lady took the swells with ease. Out on deck, I hardly got wet when I picked the right spot.

  We were both in the wheelhouse when Connor said, “I feel awful about what happened to you, Mara.”

  “Me ending up in the water? Why?”

  He looked over at me for a moment, then glanced down at his instruments. “You know. I wasn’t there to help.”

  “Connor, even though you were a cop and all that, how could you possibly anticipate what happened to me?”

  He shook his head. “Soon as we spotted that awful statue, I had a bad feeling about that island. I should’ve paid more attention.”

  Knowing that nothing I could say would help Connor feel better, I reached over and patted his arm. “Connor, you’re such a good guy.”

  As soon as cell reception was reliable, I called Lieutenant Dunn at Operation Broken Glass. I described my ordeal and explained where Jack was hiding out.

  “I’m really sorry you had to go through that, Mara. You say Marine Patrol took over when they got out to the island?”

  “That’s right. Do you have any idea how those thugs knew I was on Little Moose?”

  “Well, as I said earlier, the traffickers are experienced criminals with lots of money at stake. But to be clear, Mara, we don’t know those guys were out there looking for you. It could be they traced Jack, and you just happened to get in the way.”

  “Let’s hope you’re right. As for Jack, he’s obviously not safe on Little Moose but won’t leave. Nelson’s last words were about the island. Maybe that’s why Jack is being so stubborn.”

  “Jack is an adult, Mara. He knows very well who he’s dealing with. We can’t force him to leave.”

  “Do you know why the traffickers want to find him?”

  “Jack knows something,” Dunn said. “That’s got to be it. But it’s als
o possible that they think Jack, or maybe Nelson, shared that information with you. In that case, you both were targets.”

  I nearly gagged, and my nausea had nothing to do with the sea state. Connor shot me a quick look.

  I cleared my throat. “Um, obviously I hope you are wrong, Lieutenant. So how careful should I be now? I mean, given that I might be in danger.”

  “Well, like I said, Mara, we don’t know they were looking for you on that island. But it’d be a good idea to lock the doors at your house just in case.”

  Promising to contact Dunn if the situation with Jack changed, I ended the call.

  “Anything interesting?” Connor asked.

  I shrugged. “I need to keep my door locked.”

  As we neared the coast, Connor said, “I’m going fishing with Angelo tomorrow but won’t say anything much about what happened on Little Moose. That’s up to you.”

  “Good. I’ll tell him just enough.” On tiptoe, I pecked Connor on the cheek. “Thanks for taking me out to the island and introducing me to Leonard. I owe you big time.”

  “Ah, go on with you,” he said. If it hadn’t been so dark, for the first time I do believe I would have seen Connor blush.

  My car was in the MOI parking lot, so Connor dropped me off at the institution’s pier. Intrepid wasn’t due back for another day or two, and there was plenty of room for Connor’s fancy boat.

  Figuring he would be in the kitchen cleaning fish, I decided to visit Angelo on my way home. Knocking on the kitchen door, I could hear his, “It’s open!” above the sound of running water and walked in. At the kitchen sink, my godfather held a good-sized skinned and filleted fish under the faucet.

  I stood next to him. “Looks like you and Gordy did pretty well last time out.”

  He beamed. “We sure did. Cast off the rocks right here on the peninsula. Herring for bait and spoons for lures. We got hit after hit by stripers. It was some of the best fishing we’ve had from shore for a while.” He turned off the water and reached for a dishtowel. “So how was your trip? Connor called about fishing tomorrow and said something about an eventful time out on Little Moose Island. But he was pretty vague with the details.”