Billingsgate Shoal (32 page)

"See anything?" asked Jim as he helped me
back aboard. I told him, and he told me another boat had been snaking
around in the prohibited zone.

"Maybe they thought
Whimsea
was in trouble."

"They didn't say anything. Just cut around me in
a wide circle and left. Blue hull, white topsides. About our size.
Let's get on back while we can still see our hands in front of our
faces."

We slid and rolled a bit all the way back to Plymouth
in the following sea. We used the compass and RDF a lot because of
the poor visibility. We passed the outer light at the end of the
breakwater and turned to port when we approached Bug Light in the
harbor's middle, then made our way slowly back toward the marina.
During my visit to the target ship, Jim had caught a tautog, which we
cleaned and wrapped in foil. We got a slip at the yacht club's pier;
at this time of year there were plenty available. We had a nightcap
and turned in. It was one-thirty in the morning. After ten minutes
DeGroot was sawing logs. I lay in the upper bunk, my head inches from
the wooden cabin top. I heard the very faint patter of light drizzle
begin on the roof. I tossed and turned. I rolled on my side and
looked down at Jim. He was sleeping like a baby, that big Dutch head
immobile on the foam rubber pillow covered with a canvas print of
code flags and buoys.

Jim had a basic calmness and world view which allowed
him to march through life with minimal distraction and regret. He had
enough Nordic discipline and stubbornness to shrug aside doubt and
reluctance. I admired this, perhaps because I was a bit the opposite.
Though never lacking in self-confidence, I seemed to view the world
as a series of booby traps, a labyrinthine obstacle course of
surprises and gross injustices, complete with Minotaurs at strategic
locations.,
Whimsea
swayed
and rocked ever so slightly; the faint patter of light rain
increased. Hell, I should go to sleep in no time. Should. . .

I slid out of the rack, opened the rear doorway and
climbed the three steps up to the cockpit deck. I stood there just
outside the door under the overhang of the cabin roof. I felt, well,
wistful.

I had been conked on the head and thrown in the
drink, attacked twice, been gnawed on by a dog, had a pistol held to
the nape of my neck, my hand broken, my wife mad at me, my dog
killed, my kids perhaps in danger, two people killed, and all I had
to show for it was standing out in a twenty-eight-foot motorboat in
the rain. Somehow it lacked something.

"Somehow it lacks something," I murmured to
myself.

I wanted an answer.

I went back into the cabin and pulled on a pair of
blue jeans, a long-sleeved jersey, and a navy blue turtleneck sweater
over that. I put on thick wool socks of navy blue and my Topsiders. I
pulled a dark wool watch cap down over my head. My beard, now almost
luxuriant, was mostly black. I liked the way it broke up my face and
covered the light outline of my jaw.

I put my wallet in my hip pocket. If the police saw
the Midnight Skulker slinking around the docks, they'd want to know
who in hell he was, especially clad like a cat-burglar.

The note I wrote said:

2 A.M. Went over to cordage pier in N.
Plymouth.
Should be back by 4 A.M., if not,
raise hell.
Doc.

I left this smack in the middle of my pillow, set the
alarm for 4 A.M., and left. I was unarmed except for my folding
hunter knife, which I had slipped into my jeans rather than wearing
it on my belt in its leather pouch. My Bull-Barrel was at home.
Anyway, I had the feeling it had brought me bad luck before. The only
other thing I carried was a flashlight, a black steel one that was
waterproof, and pretty hefty. The pier was lighted with overhead
lamps in steel reflectors spaced about thirty feet apart. I strolled
along nonchalantly. If anyone asked, I was out for a midnight walk,
which of course was true. Off to my right at .the state pier I could
see the Mayflower II, and at the pier's base the Doric stone
mini-temple housing Plymouth Rock, a bathtub-sized boulder upon which
John Winthrop, Miles Standish, and Company set foot when they landed
in the New World—or so they say.

I ambled on and passed the shopping center with its
clam joints, bait and tackle shops, the souvenir stands complete with
carved wooden sea captains (hand-carved in the Philippines), ships in
bottles (made in Macao), Yankee scrimshaw (plastic, made in Taiwan),
miniature whaling harpoons (Hecho en Mexico), and little brass ship's
lamps (from India). It was very American.

I broke into a slow, determined jog when I hit Water
Street. While a lone walker might be arrested at two in the morning,
a solitary jogger is admired. In about fifteen minutes I was in North
Plymouth, at the gateway to Cordage Park. I was stumped right away;
the big outer gate was closed and chained. Four strands of barbed
wire guarded its top; and ran along the top of the entire tall
Cyclone fence that enclosed the park. But I noticed a small stream
that cut beneath the road and made its way, encased in concrete
banks, into the park. It obviously emptied into the harbor. Where the
creek, road, and tall fence met was a bridge railing of metal pipe.
But the fence ran along both sides of the concrete bank.

Nevertheless I had a vague hunch that if I could work
my way fifty yards or so down the creek the fence would be less
formidable. I ducked under the bridge railing and saw the dark water
sliding by. It gurgled around light-colored rocks, old logs, pieces
of old wire fencing, and junk. No headlights approached on the road.
I lowered myself gingerly down onto one of the rocks, and step-stoned
my way the first twenty feet. Then a low, mucky ledge of slime formed
at a slow bend, and I tested it, walked on it. It didn't smell so
great but it held me up. I kept my eyes on the Cyclone fencing just
above my head. I waded in shallow water that was cold and stinky the
last forty feet until I saw the fence bow out. There was a four-foot
gap in it at the top of the concrete river channel. I grabbed the top
of this wall and drew myself up under the fence. The outer fence had
been breached. But there remained the inner one, which had appeared
to be pretty tight indeed when I saw it previously.

There were lights on here and there in the complex of
buildings. The nearby buildings were newer than the others, small
wooden things with sloping shingled roofs. They resembled houses.
Behind them were several huge warehouse-type sheds, then the really
big buildings on and near the wharf that comprised the old factory.
The entire place was absolutely still and deserted. For all its size
I would have been surprised if there were no night watchmen. I left
the side of the fence and waited between two small spruce trees for a
few minutes. My feet were turning to ice. Nothing happening. As Jim
and I had seen, the wharf was hardly Grand Central Station during
working hours. At night it was like the innermost chamber of
Tutankhanien's tomb. I kept in the shadows and skirted the edge of
the park where no lights shone. If someone had been watching me I
would certainly be visible, but they'd have to be looking. I didn't
think anyone was.

I crept up alongside a building and. looked at the
inner fence, the one that sealed off most of the big cordage factory
and wharf from all the other parts of the park. The gate, open wide
in the day, was slid shut on its roller track, wound with heavy chain
and padlocked. This fence, too, was topped with barbed wire. The
place resembled Concord Prison, except the wire was strung straight
on slanted brackets instead of being wound in giant spirals,
concertina fashion. I stood in the dark and shivered and looked at
the big fence. It looked tight as a bloated tick. It ended against
the wall of a smaller brick building at the far end of the factory,
toward the south. I walked along this deserted stretch of fencing,
around the small building, and saw that it was perched on a sea wall
about twelve feet high. It was low tide and the flats extended along
this wall and—believe it or not—led all the way back to the park
on the sea side. So the way to penetrate these fences was to do so
where they met the water. I climbed over the parapet, hung by the top
of the wall with my good arm,. and dropped a few feet to the soft
sandy muck. I then walked around the sea wall, under the low
building, and up on the beach. I had simply walked around the fence.
Of course it meant that at high tide I was trapped in the complex.
But I still had a few hours to look around before the water came in.
From the narrow beach, littered with flotsam, it was a short walk up
to the roadway that ran around the factory on the harbor side and
connected with all the courtyards and delivery routes on the other
side. There were no lights on this side, but the whole place was
sparsely illuminated by the water and overcast sky, which cast a
faint metallic glow onto the buildings. An enormous vertical black
cylinder was fastened to this side of the factory wall, with many big
pipes issuing from it. It looked like a boiler tank, and probably
was. Some of the pipes ran along the wall at waist level. I thumped
one with my knuckle. Heavy cast iron. They were for steam all right,
or had been once upon a time. They snaked all over the complex from
building to building. They climbed walls, traversed rooftops, over
courtyards, went into, under, over, through buildings, sheds, and
abutments.

I walked along this narrow roadway that fronted the
harborside. The big building was to my left. It was about four
hundred feet long. At its end I found myself on the main roadway that
led from the wharf and its warehouse all the way through the old
factory complex, through the rest of what was called Cordage Park,
and out to the highway. I saw the fence I had just circumvented. I
walked up to it and peered through at the rest of the huge buildings
on the other side of it. The roadway went straight ahead, and I saw
the familiar series of courtyards created by U-shaped wings of the
big factory buildings that opened off to one side of the road. Each
courtyard was surrounded on three sides by walls six stories high.
Big black pipes and high voltage wires crisscrossed these courtyards
overhead.

I planted my fanny on an old truck tire and thought
for a minute. It sure didn't seem as if there was much going on. A
sound reached me from several courtyards down the narrow service
road. It was an engine grinding away. I supposed it to be some kind
of generator or cooling, compressor. It sounded just like a
semi-trailer truck idling at a truck stop. I rose up and walked
toward the wharf. The end of the fence came back again and snaked
around its far side. I noticed a foul stench as I walked, and saw the
dark object stuck on the Cyclone wire. I remembered the severed
codfish head, and went up to it. It was the biggest fish head I'd
ever seen. The big eyes were gone, eaten out by maggots. All that
remained were two holes as big as tennis balls in the leathery
carapace of the skull. The mouth was bucket-shaped, like a bass's.
The big hook came up through the lower jaw. The fish, when alive,
could have swallowed a bowling ball without knowing it.

I walked out to the wharf on the service road, the
one Jim and I had seen the lift truck on, the same one that I'd spied
the blue van on. Behind me the road went into the factory complex and
the courtyards of the big buildings. I saw big dark shapes on the
water. Four of them. The draggers sat stone still in the shallow
water. There were no lights aboard them, not even little sparks on
the spars, or cabin lights. Nothing. The wharf too was dark. I crept
along the building, passing the big corrugated steel doors. There
were small swing doors in between each one. There was a fifth boat
behind the four big ones, a small cruiser. And I'd be damned if she
didn't have a blue hull, white topsides. I moved slower now, keeping
snugly against the warehouse wall on my right. The light was faint on
this side of the buildings, the north side, and I knew I was
invisible in the shadows in my dark clothes. When I was abreast the
little boat I looked down at her for a long time. She was quiet and
dark. It was too dark to read her bow numbers and I didn't dare show
a light, so I sat and tried to remember things about her. I had been
gazing and thinking for a few minutes when I saw a flickering motion
out of the side of my left eye. I looked down toward the foot of the
long dock and could see nothing; it was all dark. Then, looking back
at the boat, the flickering came back. In dim light you can see much
better out of the sides of your eyes than dead ahead. This is because
the area of your retina where the image is focused is also the point
on the retina where the optic nerve enters. Consequently it is almost
devoid of the light-sensitive rod and cone cells.

I shrank back against the wall and sidestepped slowly
about eight feet to my right, toward the end of the dock. There were
two stacks of fish bins there, stuck into one another like cardboard
hamburger baskets. They smelled mighty ripe but I was glad; nobody in
his right mind would get within six feet of them. l snuggled right in
between them, and then slid down to my knees. I peered out down the
dock again. Now the flickering movement was close enough to be
visible when I looked straight at it. Two of them, and they weren't
midgets either.

They came up the wharf slowly, as quiet as alley
cats. They, too, wore dark clothes. I drew out the folding hunter and
opened the blade, locking it. It was mighty pathetic, but if they saw
me and came at me, I was going to lash out at them with a couple of
wide swipes, then run for the end of the dock and dive in. I was
getting good at midnight harbor swims.