Free Billingsgate Shoal by Rick Boyer Page B

I'll call again in a couple of days, OK?"
    Window slam. No answer. I
left for The Breakers. It had been a tiring day. As I drove back down
to Eastham the vision of poor Sarah Hart stayed in my mind. I saw her
in tears, pushing her fragile wrists through the broken glass of her
window.
    * * *
    As soon as I arrived I sat at the leather-topped desk
in the study corner of the living room and switched on the brass
student lamp. I laid out the photos that Scimone had given me, and
next to them the eight by tens of the pictures I had taken of the
Penelope during her brief sojourn in Wellfleet. I studied the
photographs for twenty minutes. At first it was obvious they were the
same boat. Then for a while I saw how it was clearly impossible that
they could be. Then I saw it was possible. The common dimensions were
one factor, but I knew that the forty-foot—or thereabouts—length
is one of the most common for bay trawlers. But the bows did flare
out in exactly the same way. The sweep of the gunwale lines were
congruent. These things, I knew, could not be altered. But what of
the things that could be altered?
    The superstructures of the two vessels were very
different: the Windhover had a lot of cabin space, the cabin extending far forward and leaving
only enough foredeck for a crewman to stand and heave a line; the Penelope , typical of
commercial fishing boats, had a small wheelhouse with a lot of
foredeck. The Windhover however, preserved her work-boat appearance by retaining the tiny
round portholes (invariably the mark of an older vessel) on her
topsides just under the foredeck, whereas Penelope had instead the
more modern rectangular single ports located roughly in the same
place. In fact, I mused as I studied the pictures, exactly in the
same place. Squinting my eyes slightly and glancing quickly from
Scimone's photo of Windhover to my own pix of Penelope ,
I saw that the ports, which are very uncommon on small fishing craft,
were located congruently on the two boats, except Penelope had one longish porthole instead of two round ones close together.
And how difficult would it have been to cut out the intervening metal
between the two ports with a power hacksaw to make one big one on
each side?
    "Do you want beer?"
    "No."
    "Do you want coffee?"
    "No."
    "Tea?"
    "No."
    "Me?"
    "No."
    "Hey what the hell is this—"
    I felt a sharp kick in my calf.
    "Come 'ere, Mary. Look at this."
 

    CHAPTER FIVE
    I OVERSLEPT THE next morning; was up late playing
chess with Jack, who told me Tony suspected he'd caught the clap. I
told Mary and Jack shot me a look as if we had betrayed his 
brother. Mary took it in passively. After confronting kidney failure,
cardiac arrest, and terminal cancer every working day, gonorrhea was
a minor affliction. Her face remained impassive, and beautiful. Dark
olive skin, wide-set eyes, arched cheekbones, and mountains of black
hair, still no gray at forty-three. Her nose and profile look as if
they've been taken off a Roman statue. She cleared her throat.
    "Have him call us and describe his symptoms to
me or Dad, and then he should have a culture taken at the nearest
clinic. Tell your brother he should be more choosy about whom he
sleeps with—God knows he's handsome enough to be picky. And tell
him to wear a condom too, that way we won't have to worry about
pregnancy as well. Clear?"
    There was a husky grunt in response from Jack, who
said he had no idea she knew so much about it.
    "About 'it'? Look, buster, I'm a nurse; I've
been married twenty-five years with two sons. Don't tell me about
'it.' "
    I suggested we call Tony and extend our sympathy and
understanding. We did, and he seemed relieved.
    "Thanks, Mom and Dad, And don't worry; it'll
never happen again."
    "Of course not," said Mary, "and if
they give you medication, don't skip any pills; take them all."
    Mary decided she'd go over to say good-bye to Sarah
Hart, who was leaving for Pasadena. Just after she left I dialed the
police station and spoke