Free The Last Run by Todd Lewan Page A

there wasn’t a single dry bunk on board. The two men settled money matters, shook hands and wished each other luck.
    Nothing was said about the water problem Carrs had eight days earlier.
    In mid-November, Scott Echols got a call from Mark Morley. Rob Carrs had introduced them eleven months earlier in Juneau, before taking Morley along as a deckhand on a black cod trip. Morley told him straight off that he wanted to take the
La Conte
out rockfishing.
    “Rockfish?”
    “It’s the only fishing this time of year,” Morley told him.
    Echols hesitated.
    “Listen,” Morley said. “There’s a bunch of two-day openings in December all around Baranof Island and a big opening on New Year’s Day.”
    Echols was listening now.
    “Yellow eye is getting a good price,” Morley continued. “It’s close to two bucks a pound now. That’s better than black cod.”
    “Is that right?”
    “Check around.”
    Echols told him he’d think it over, and he did. He remembered that Mark Morley had tidied up the pilothouse, rewiring the electronics, installing a new dashboard, stripping layers of ancient paint off the cedar woodwork. And he hadn’t demanded a penny.
    That night Echols called Rob Carrs at his Seattle apartment.
    “What do you think about Mark?” Echols asked. “He wants to take the boat out rockfishing. Give it to me straight. You think he’s up to it?”
    “No,” Carrs said.
    “No?”
    “No,” Carrs said. “I wouldn’t hire him. Not for this boat.”
    “But he’s your buddy.”
    “You wanted it straight,” Carrs said. He paused. “I like Mark. He’s not a mandy-pandy guy. He’s gung ho. He wants to be a skipper. But I don’t think he could park the thing, let alone drive it.”
    The following night Echols and Morley sailed out to the Icy Strait. The chop kicked up. Echols told Morley to cut the motors and to pull in the skiff, which they were towing.
    “Relax,” Morley told him. “It’ll be all right.”
    Not five minutes later the retainer broke. The boat skipped away in the darkness. A day later, Echols saw the skiff sitting in his neighbor’s driveway in Juneau. He phoned Carrs again. Raving.
    “Whoa, whoa, whoa,” Carrs interrupted, “I don’t need to hear this.”
    Echols sighed. “Look. I need to do something with this boat. I need it to start making some money, only I don’t have many options.”
    “Well,” Carrs said, “if you don’t have many options, I guess you gotta hire him, right?”
    “I guess so,” said Echols.
     

TEN
    T hey were standing on the dock, looking at the hull of the boat shadowed against the dark. Gig Mork had already gone back to stowing ice in the holds.
    “So,” Mike DeCapua said, “when are you planning on heading out?”
    “Midnight tomorrow,” Mark Morley said. “But I’ll need help getting her ready before then.”
    “What’s there to do?”
    “Got lines to check, hooks, fuel, maybe thaw some bait. And then there’s the motor, too.”
    “That’s a full day.”
    “Yeah.”
    “And where were you thinking of fishing?”
    Morley told him he planned to drive north and east up Peril Strait to Chatham, then south along the back side of Baranof Island and straight on down to Coronation Island. He wanted to fish the shoals west of Coronation.
    “Then what?” DeCapua asked him.
    “That’s a lot you want to know,” Morley said.
    “Well,” DeCapua said, “I like to know who my dance partners are.”
    “I bet you do,” Morley said. He dug a finger in his ear. “All right. If Coronation doesn’t pan out I figure to try the shelf along the Hazy Islands.”
    “The outer shelf?”
    “Uh-huh.”
    “Say, Mark,” Bob Doyle said. “You don’t mind me asking you something?”
    “Go ahead.”
    “You been skippering on this boat since November, isn’t that right?”
    “That’s right.”
    “What happened to the rest of the crew?”
    There was a hung instant of silence, heavy as thunder.
    Morley said tightly: “We had one other hand.