The Water Keeper(34)
“It’s just Murph. When was the last time you ate something?”
“I’m not hungry.”
“When?”
“Ate a stack of pancakes maybe two hours ago. It’s why I was sleeping so deep. All those carbs. Knocked me out.” He smiled, exposing beautiful white teeth. “But I don’t eat much.”
“Got any family?”
“None that I know of. If I did, I doubt they’d claim me.”
“Can you manage a boat ride?”
“How many feet is your boat?”
“Twenty-four.”
He nodded and smiled. “Mr. Murphy, I can manage.”
“It’s just Murph.”
He sucked through his teeth. “It may be to you, but when you’ve been locked up and beat down for six decades, everybody becomes ‘Mister’ whether they like it or not. My mouth doesn’t know how to say anything different. The word is just there. And if your name is in my mouth, then ‘Mister’ is coming before it.”
I liked this man. His honesty was disarming. “Mr. Pettybone, you call me whatever you like.”
Chapter 13
With no real cause to send him to the hospital other than the inevitable end no hospital could stop, the firemen sent us on our way. We returned to the marina bearing clothes, a book, a tail-wagging dog, and one dying old man. Fingers’ box stared up at me like a strobe light. He would have loved this. And he would have been laughing. While Clay was a big-boned man, he was also skinny. His clothes were baggy, and I wondered if he wasn’t more fragile than he let on. I turned to Summer and Clay. “Make yourselves comfortable. I’ll be right back.”
They talked while I returned to the marina store and bought a waterproof beanbag made for boats and a large straw hat with a drawstring. I returned to the boat and wedged the beanbag in between the console seat and the front casting platform. “Clay, you might be most comfortable here.” He climbed down into the boat, sat in the middle of the beanbag, and accepted the hat from my hands. “I thought that might help with the sun.”
“I’ll be just fine.”
Summer was smiling at me as I cranked the engine. Letting it idle, I had a thought. Pulling out my phone, I sat in front of Clay and held up the picture of Angel. “You ever seen this girl?”
Summer began walking toward us. Listening intently. Clay held the phone, studied her face, and nodded knowingly. He pointed toward the Intracoastal. “She’s on the boat. Name’s Angel.”
Summer sat, and Clay noticed the resemblance. He studied her a minute. When he spoke, there was pain in his voice. “She yours?”
Summer nodded.
He sucked through his teeth again, afraid to say more. “I see.”
She put a gentle hand on his arm. “What are you not telling me?”
“They like her . . . a lot.”
“What’s that mean?”
“It means—” He chose his words carefully. “They do a lot for her and she likes it on that boat.” He shook his head. “They’re not giving her any reason to leave.”
I asked him to tell me everything he could about the captains, their patterns, the phone calls they made, who else was on the boat, if they’d made plans to stop at any other ports, and if he knew what boat they were on now.
Barclay took his time and explained, in detail, everything he knew. People. Boats. Names. Places. Even what drinks people preferred. Drugs too. The two captains were of great importance to me, but he didn’t know much about them. They were European, or maybe Russian, and he described identifying tattoos. They kept him busy or buried in the ship and didn’t interact much. He said they weren’t unkind, but not sociable either. There was a total of seven girls on the ship when he stepped off in Jacksonville, but Clay figured they’d picked up more now. More girls was all the two men talked about.
“What can you tell me about Angel?”
He looked at Summer, then back at me, and shook his head. “She’s in a bad way.”
“You talk to her much?”
“She talked to me mostly. Always asking me to dance with her. That girl likes to dance.”
Summer both smiled and cried.
“If I was sixty years younger, I’d fight for that girl . . . but that’s what got me into all this trouble, so . . .”
“Any idea what type of boat they’re on now?”
He pointed at the Sea Tenderly across the marina. “Last I saw them, they were on that. Don’t know what kind they’re on now.”
“If you went aboard, is there anything you could look at that would tell us what they’re on now? Or maybe where they’re going?”
He thought for a moment. “No, but I can tell you the name.”
“You can?”
“Fire and Rain.”
“You sure?”
“Like the James Taylor song.”
I climbed back out of the boat and returned to the harbormaster. I walked in and asked the kid behind the counter, “You guys had a boat here, Fire and Rain. Any idea when it left or where to?”
The kid sat up and exercised his single ounce of authority. “You got dealings with the vessel or its captain?”
The kid might have been twenty-two, and I doubted he shaved twice a week. I leaned on the counter. “Look, Scooter, I’m sure you’re good at your job, but I’m not in the mood. I need to know what you know and I need it right now.”