That Good Night (19 page)

The shower, located in the captain's cabin, was full sized. I couldn't understand where all the hot water was coming from, but come it did and within minutes, Boston harbor grime swirled down the drain. As I was toweling off, I heard Charlie call out, “Use the robe, we need to wash your clothes.” Wrapped in plush terry cloth, I left the captain's cabin, taking a few steps into the main salon. The table was neatly set with a pot of coffee, orange juice, china plates, solid flatware and colorful place mats. Charlie was at the stove, fussing. A destroyed egg was on the floor, another on the counter. “I keep breaking the yokes,” Charlie declared. I eased up to his side and gently took over
.

“Let me,” I said. “You get the flour, I'll do the eggs.” Charlie handed me the spatula
.

“I can do scrambled, but sunny side up doesn't work with broken yokes. Damn eggs,” Charlie said, grabbing a towel
.

“Cabin sole,” he said while bending to kneel and clean up the mess. “It's the cabin sole,” he grunted, “not the floor.”

We ate eggs, bacon, and toast. Drank cold orange juice and steaming coffee. Charlie answered my questions about sailing with
a nomenclature that included halyards, sheets, mast and boom, self-tailing jib, port and starboard, aft, and a whole lot of stuff dealing with navigation. I talked about my work in photography, my degree in women's studies, to which Charlie laughed and said he'd been studying that for years and should have earned his PhD by now. I asked Charlie if his crew was off somewhere
.

“No crew. I guess that surprises you, an old man alone on a boat?”

“Hemingway would've understood,” I said
.

“Maybe he would. But I don't plan to fish. Never did. I guess I just like to go places by boat. Everything looks different, more romantic than arriving by car.”

Charlie went on for some time talking about his sailing adventures. He told me that he was on his last sail, but never mentioned, as you have read, about being in a nursing home and how he escaped and all that. To me, Charlie was a sailor whose life was full of romance and challenges. He was the kind of man I dreamed of meeting. Adventurous, full of moxie. I guessed his age to be mid to late seventies—isn't that today's sixties? I'm forty-three and sometimes I feel like I'm ninety. I didn't dare ask Charlie his age, so, when I read in his journal that he was eighty-four, I was really surprised. But pleasantly so. I mean how many women my age can claim to have had a wonderful and quite memorable romance with a man nearly twice her age?

It may be a bit shocking to some. But here was a sensitive, intelligent, witty man, strong in stature, eyes of crystal blue, tough but gentle hands, caring and, well…How can I put it other than I fell in love with Charlie? I just did. It's not all that complicated and maybe if we would have been together more than three days, things would have fallen apart. As it was, we enjoyed Boston, we counted stars through the hatch while lying on his bed, and we ate
great meals—some on board, with me doing the cooking of course, and some on land. We drank wine and on our last night together, Charlie uncorked a great bottle of champagne. I must admit that I'm a little surprised that he didn't reveal his age or about his going through the ordeal of living in a nursing home. But I understand why he held back on that stuff. Knowing Charlie, he probably stuck that stuff back in his psyche; I mean, why carry that weight around when life can be so light and airy?

Could I imagine spending the rest of my life with Charlie, or should I say the rest of his? I'll give that a probability. I would have sailed off with him in a heartbeat, but he never extended the invitation
.

Adapted from the digital recorder of Private Investigator, Justin Roberts recorded July 24, 2138 hours
.

I'm catching up with my notes after having had to run home to see after the wife, who came down with some kind of nasty bug. I hate interrupting an investigation, especially when things get hot. And the insurance company wasn't happy either. To make matters worse, whatever infected the little woman got me, too. I arrived in Maine on the Wednesday night, July 20
^th
, staying overnight at the Day's Inn in Portland
.

This Bob Liscome guy lives on Bickles Island in Casco Bay. Finding the place was first on the list. Whenever I asked the locals for the location all I got was another question: “Why?” I tried looking at a chart, but there's no Bickles Island that I can see. There are so many damn islands in Casco Bay, it'd take a month of Sundays to check them all
.

Next on the agenda was finding a charter to get me to Liscome's island. Tour boats are all over the place, each loaded with slack-jawed tourists dangling digital devices like they were jewelry. The answer was the same everywhere: “It's against regulations to disembark passengers on any of the islands.”

I was directed more than once to visit Sebasco Lodge. “They might be able to help.”

Now, it's not like there's a straight line along this coast; it
zigzags around like a cornfield maze. Half my day was spent finding a bridge to cross the Meadow River to get to the damn lodge. When I got there, I was directed me to Sheila's Lobster Pound, which required me to backtrack about twenty miles on snaky roads. As it turned out it was worth it. Bill Ducksworth, a local lobsterman was willing to take me out to Liscome's place. “Two hundred fifty dollars should do it,” he said, poker faced as a guy holding a royal flush
.

“A bit much, isn't it?”

“You could always swim; tide turns in about three hours. Float you right out there. I'll even lend you a float if you want.”

I peeled off two-fifty in bills
.

“Welcome aboard. This here's Sonny,” he said, directing attention to a scruffy looking lad dressed in yellow slickers. “Sonny's my first mate.”

I had never been on a lobster boat before. Truth is the smallest boat I was ever on was a cruise ship for an overnight from Fort Lauderdale to Nassau. I puked most of the way and the seas were calm. “I get a little seasick,” I warned Ducksworth
.

“Pick whatever is leeward and let her go is the best I can do about that.”

“What the hell is leeward?”

Ducksworth looked at me like I had the mind of a two year old. “Away from the wind. Got it?”

My visit to leeward began about a mile from the dock. Ducksworth had the boat's engine roaring like a jet fighter. Spray came at me like bullets. Yeah, I've heard all the tales about the striking beauty of Maine's coast, but all I got to see was my puke hitting the white foam spraying off the hull. Mate Sonny took pity on me. He came out on deck and handed me a weathered rain slicker. “Might want to put this on,” he suggested, and then helped
me into the thing. It felt like I was being wrapped in oil cloth
.

It took a lot longer than I thought it should for us to get to Bickles Island which I understand to be no more than two miles from the mainland. But hell, I was in no shape to judge—heaving your guts out has a way of altering time. Ducksworth landed at a pier that was one good stiff fart away from collapsing. “Hop out,” he commanded. “Don't have all day.”

“How about getting back?” I asked, stepping cautiously onto the weathered dock
.

“Bob's got a boat, ask him. Shouldn't take much.” With that, Ducksworth backed away from the dock. “Keep the rain gear,” he yelled over the growling engine. “Might need it.”

I stood on the rickety dock waiting for my knees to stop banging into each other. The dock was more like some sinister catwalk designed for a carnival funhouse. A number of planks were missing and those that were still in place looked like rot had got the best of them. I figured that I was about twenty feet from land. The spot where I was standing was about three feet above the water which, at this point, looked about a foot deep. I took a few steps before the whole damned thing slowly tilted to left, dumping me into clear, cold Maine water. The depth of clear water is deceiving. Cold water was now hugging my waist. I waded ashore or maybe I should say dog-paddled to shore after losing an argument with slippery round rocks that covered the bottom. I was soaked, cold, and mad as a son-of-a-bitch. Adding insult to injury, my favorite Allan Edmond wingtips were ruined. I was beginning to think that this Bob character was some kind of nut case living out here. And I was even crazier looking for him. But as I discovered in due time, Bob didn't live out here. Nobody did. I'd been had
.

In my heyday, none of this would have happened. First of all,
I'd be on the trail of some saboteur or organized crime boss or drug lord, not some old wacko who escaped from a nursing home. I must be getting old myself to be snookered by all this crap. It's downright disheartening. I took this job from the insurance company not because I needed the money; the government sees to that. What I need is to continue using my skills. Once FBI, always FBI
.

The island has a few bare trees, some scrub brush and raucous rookery of skinny-necked black birds complete with a carpet of their stinking droppings. It took me less than a half hour to slosh around the place. The sun helped keep the shivers in check
.

The place appeared to be solid rock with a dusting of top soil. I made my way up to the highest point to get a view and that's when I discovered a ramshackle hut that looked even less stable than the dock. Inside, there was a cardboard box with a note attached. It read:

Investigator From Away, welcome to the rock. Here's some provisions, water and a nice blanket to keep you warm and some matches for a fire. Some good eats. We won't let you die out here.

The note was signed
: Maine Welcome Committee.

I spent three god-awful days and nights on that island before I was able to hail a passing motorboat, folks on vacation from Massachusetts. Nice folks with a furry white dog that barked incessantly. They thought it was cool that I had roughed it on such a demanding campsite. Seasickness came on almost immediately with no warning. Back to hanging over the side
.

I thought about bringing the police into the matter of finding Lambert, but where would that get me? I decided to rent a boat and do it myself. It may seem odd for a seasoned FBI agent that frequently went up against almost impossible odds nailing murderers, bank robbers, and other slime of the world—but the idea of getting on another
boat and driving it myself had me as nervous as I've ever been
.

I found my car sitting just where I left it. I called AAA to come out and tow me to a nearby garage to replace the two slashed tires, after which I grabbed a motel room, showered and shaved, slept for eight hours, woke with a headache and an empty stomach, had a meal and went shopping. First on the list was buying two cell phones, one of which I secreted in a pouch in the small of my back—a little more comfortable than the Glock I used to carry. My second stop was a Rite Aid for a chat with the pharmacist. When I mentioned seasickness, she smiled and went on to tell me not to be ashamed, that it is quite normal, that it had to do with the inner ear, that I should look at the horizon—yeah, try that when you're puking overboard—and that she was going to get me all fixed up. I left the store with Dramamine, a wrist thing that's supposed to stop the madness, some ginger candy, and a quart of Gatorade just in case, as the pharmacist said, I lose too much fluid
.

My next stop was an EMS store where I bought a pair of sturdy boat shoes, two pair of shorts, a sun hat, a compass, a quart water bottle, sunscreen, Deep Woods Off, and after trying on a few backpacks, one that was comfortable and big enough to carry all my stuff. I spent the night back at the Day's Inn
.

Portsmouth is a laid-back city with good restaurants and lots of goings-on. I was berthed at the city dock which was directly across from the Navy Yard, a busy place with bustling cranes and enough Homeland Security personnel to ward off even a hint of disturbance. The Piscataqua River rushes through the place with enough current to bury the buoys. To protect
That Good Night's
hull, I had laid out every fender I had on board. The experience of Boston and Abigail had me renewed, but for the moment, twice as lonely. I talked earlier about building new memories, that old folks rely too much on the past because there isn't a lot of future. At Sunset, there was really nothing to build memories on; the patchwork quilt was already sewn. Too much
used to
. Meeting Abigail added another patch to my growing quilt. I had left room for a lot more.

With just a day away from Bob's place, Portsmouth put me in position to get to his place with relaxed sailing or motoring if needed. I haven't heard another word about the insurance investigator. Maybe he gave up. I spent the day onboard reading and listening to music. Just after a great seafood dinner at Jumpin' Jay's Fish Café, Bob called.

“Coast is clear. Where are you?”

“What do you mean by
clear
?”

“Just come. I'll tell you about it all later. So, where are you?”

“Portsmouth,” I answered. “I have your place on the plotter.”

“What's your ETA?”

“Can't say but it looks like maybe five hours or so. I haven't plotted a course yet. I can't leave Portsmouth until an hour or so before ebb and I haven't checked the tables yet.”

“Well, call me when you get closer. I won't be leaving the island any time soon.” Bob hung up.

I called Bob at 1512 hours. “Where are you?” he asked.