Slack tide

SLACK TIDE

THE MacLAREN BOATYARD stood on one side of a narrow tide-swept inlet reaching in from the Connecticut River not far from its mouth. Opposite was a small island, but here along the buMieaded and stringered shore were the two cavernous boat sheds with their roller boxes and marine railways, the towering gin pole, the rigging-docks, the workshops. On the right, toward the river, were the boat sHps and catwalks, aU but four of which were presently occupied.

Spring had been a busy time, and with June but a few weeks away, one of the boat sheds was empty and the other held only three cabin cruisers, two of which were scheduled for launching the following week. Now, in the late afternoon, Donald MacLaren stopped to get a soft drink from the coin machine which stood on the dock against the ancient frame building which served as a combination oflBce-showroom and his summer apartment.

Upstream a cutter and a yawl were moored at the rigging-dock, and MacLaren watched idly as the gin pole swung out with the yawl's main spar dangling vertically

before it was lowered gently into its step. As the workmen began to secure the stays, the sound of a motor caught his attention, and he turned to see a cabin cruiser ease up from the river and start to make its turn. There was about a hundred and fifty feet of water between the main dock and the island, and the man at the wheel was no expert. He started his turn much too close to shore, saw he could not make it, and reversed in time to prevent a bow-on approach. His cursing could be heard clearly as the tide began its work, and now a second man appeared from the deckhouse and scurried forward to coil a hue that should have been coiled before.

Larry Keats, the high-school boy who was fiUing in as an odd-job handyman until vacation started, appeared in the doorway behind MacLaren.

"Boy," he said, "is that an old one."

"Real old," MacLaren said. "Better give them a hand."

Black-hulled, with a deckhouse that had the symmetry and angles of a cigar box, the craft was about a thirty-five-footer, with a topheavy look and a narrow beam. She flew no yacht-club burgee and, to complete the illusion of antiquity, the varnish was peeling, the brightwork was no longer bright, and the paint on the hull showed recent scars.

"Hey, youl"

The man on deck tossed the fine as Larry trotted forward. He looped it over a bollard and the man began to heave. The motor churned briefly to swing the stern, and then the helmsman appeared with a boat hook and yelled instructions to his mate. MacLaren put his empty bottle

down, aware as he moved up that the man in the bow had the dress as well as the technique of a landlubber.

A big man with black curly hair and a coarse-featured face, he wore blue serge trousers that looked as if they were part of a suit, and black shoes with leather soles that were appropriate for city streets but not for a boat deck. His companion, who had put aside the boat hook and was now working with Larry on the stem line, was a small, wiry man of indeterminate age. More suitably dressed in khaki trousers, a sweater, and sneakers, he was nearly bald and his eyes were quick, but his most distinctive characteristic was a hoarse, rasping voice that could only have come from a larnyx that had suffered some permanent damage.

"Take about twenty gallons," he said to Larry as he unscrewed the metal plate of the fuel tank. "You got any ice?" he added with a glance at the small icehouse that stood at one comer of the dock and was in the process of enlargement.

"We can take care of you," MacLaren said.

"Nickl Get us a hunk, hunh? You know about how much we need. . . . You got a berth for us?" he added to MacLaren.

"I'm afraid not."

The httle man did not answer immediately but handed the nozzle back to Larry and screwed down the plate. He stepped up on the dock, gave a hitch to his trousers, and glanced along the line of shps that extended toward the mouth of the inlet. His httle eyes came back to MacLaren and his head tipped slightly.

"You got empty ones."

"I need three of them for boats I'm getting ready. The fourth is for a customer who's coming in Monday."

"Today's Wednesday. We'll be out Saturday, maybe before." As though that settled the matter he said: "How much a day?"

MacLaren smothered a grin. The whole operation intrigued him and this, he knew, was a very cocky character who seemed out of his element but had no intention of admitting it. Then, because there was no good reason why he shouldn't rent the shp, he nodded.

"One fifty. Including water and electricity if you want to plug in."

The httle man puUed out some crumpled biUs and selected a five. "For three days," he said. "Nick'll take care of the gas and ice."

Nick was already doing this when the skipper jumped aboard. "Okay," he said. "Cast off."

"Where we goin'?" Nick said.

"I'm going to back into one of those shps."

Nick studied the other a moment. "You and who else?"

For just an instant a flicker of humor touched the httle man's eyes. He gave MacLaren a crooked grin but spoke to his companion.

"They'll give us a hand. Come on, look aHve."

MacLaren winked at Larry and together they crossed in front of the showroom, skirted the floating dock at the end which rose and feU with the tide, and walked along the bulkhead to the first empty slip. By the time they had moved out on the catwalk the cruiser's engines were in

reverse and the lettering on the transom became visible. Annabelle III is what MacLaren read before he reahzed that the forgotten dinghy was in danger of being crushed against the fender piHngs.

He cupped his hands and yelled a warning. The skipper also yelled, and now Nick started aft, chnging to the deckhouse grab rail as he worked his way toward the cockpit. He leaned out to free the dinghy, got the painter in hand, and started forward. Somehow he made it fast to a bow cleat and then he scurried aft again to heave a line. Clumsily, but with only minor bumps, the craft was eased into its berth, and MacLaren, leaving Larry to help secure things, went back to the main dock. As he did so a black Mercedes rolled round the comer of the building and stopped in front of it.

The car belonged to Oliver Kingsley, who owned the house on the island across the way. Next to him sat a blonde MacLaren had never seen before. On the far side, Neil Ackerman, Kingsley's personal attorney, stepped from the car and put his thumb on a pushbutton attached to the oflBce wall.

When Kingsley had bought and remodeled the house a year ago, he had excavated part of the shorehne and installed pihngs and a catwalk to make a berth for his fifty-two-foot cruiser. He also got permission from MacLaren to mount the pushbutton and install an underwater cable which activated two bells, one at the catwalk in case Harry Danaher, the paid captain, was working on the boat, and the other in the hving-room. Now, as Kingsley and the

blonde got out, Danaher could be seen moving along the low-lying island from the front porch.

Kingsley and Ackerman said hello. When MacLaren re-phed, the blonde looked at him, and he looked back, finding her tall and willowy and immaculate in her tailored suit and mink stole. Her glance was frankly appraising but not bold, and though she was too thin for MacLaren's taste, he could see that there was a sort of perfection in the use of hpstick, eye shadow, and the styling of the short-bobbed hair. She also looked expensive, but this was as it should be considering the character and affluence of her host.

Ackerman, a slender, elegant man in his late thirties, noticed this exchange of glances and introduced the girl as Lucille Baron before he unloaded a hatbox and a small overnight case in matching leather. Kingsley stood with the blonde as Danaher pushed off from the other shore in the dinghy and cranked a small outboard. He came neatly alongside the floating dock and stowed the bags that Ackerman handed him. The blonde got in the bow seat and now MacLaren spoke to Kingsley.

"What about the car?"

Kingsley turned slowly, a small smile on his hps and none at all in his eyes. A year or two younger than Ackerman, he stood perhaps six foot one and carried considerable bulk that was no longer hard but not yet fat. His face was a httle puffy from too much Hquor and easy hving, but his features were regular and still handsome; he also had a monumental insolence that could not be entirely

blamed on his wealth but must have been cultivated over a great many years.

"What about it?"

MacLaren took his time and kept his temper in hand. He glanced back at the Mercedes which stood in the middle of the dock, both doors open. In the beginning he had rented two spaces in the black-top parking-place behind the oJBBce to Kingsley, one for the Mercedes, the other for the station wagon. He had marked them Reserved, and it was understood that Kingsley could unload on the dock but not leave his cars there. He spoke of this to Kingsley now, and then Kingsley said:

"The keys are in it, Mac. You park it."

MacLaren waited again, a rangy, craggy-faced man of twenty-nine with a loose-muscled body and an easy moving manner. He stood an inch or so less than Kingsley and was thirty pounds hghter. He had thick dark hair worn moderately long, a wide good-natured mouth, and a disposition that did not dissolve easily into anger. He wore faded khaki slacks, a T-shirt, and a tan that never entirely left his face and forearms. Now his dark-blue eyes were steady.

"All right," he said. "But I told you last time that if I parked it I'd leave it locked with the keys inside."

Harry Danaher coughed. "I'll park it."

Kingsley turned, hesitated, finally shrugged. "All right, Harry," he said, "if you want to come back. You don't have to, you know. But first you ferry us over."

With its present load, the dinghy showed no more than three inches of freeboard, and as MacLaren watched its

progress to the other shore he became aware of a new sound on the far side of the island. This had a staccato, crack-crack quahty which he identified as a small cahber gun. He had heard it before and knew that Carla Lewis was popping at tin cans with a .22 Woodsman that he had seen her use from time to time. As he hstened his glance moved to the comer room at the rear of the house and focused on its shuttered windows.

He had wondered about this room before, and, without meaning to, his imagination began to work again. It did not stop until Danaher came back and climbed into the Mercedes. As the car disappeared round the corner to the parking-lot, he recalled the question he had asked the man a few days earher when his curiosity was working on him.

He had always gotten along with Danaher because they talked the language of boats, but in this instance the reply he got was sufficiently cryptic to tell him it would be useless to pursue the subject.

"What are the shutters for, Harry?" he asked.

And Danaher, who was a sandy-haired, square-faced man with a heavy jaw and a weathered look, had glanced up at the comer room and gestured emptily vdth one hand.

"Damned if I know, Mac," he said, his gaze still averted. "Maybe that's where he hides the bodies he knocks over in those night-club bars."

MacLaren imderstood the reference because Kingsley had a reputation for brawhng that occasionally made the newspapers. Now, as Danaher came round the corner and headed for the dinghy, MacLaren thanked him for putting the car away.

"Any time," Danaher said. "I don't blame you for getting sore. He's a tough guy to get along with, but the pay is good and so long as he keeps oflF my back I can stick it out."

MacLaren watched him push off and yank the starter rope. The httle motor caught. The dinghy swung smoothly toward the island and again MacLaren's glance moved involuntarily to the shuttered room. As he stood there a thought came to him and he turned to look past the upstream docks and the gin pole to the MacLaren house which stood on a shght rise that overlooked the yards, the inlet, and the river. Fifty yards beyond and topping the rise was a smaller cottage, and in one of the two upstairs bedrooms a temporarily invahded man spent much of his convalescence watching the activity in the yard and river. It had occurred to him before that perhaps Sam WiUis might have some information about that room, but on those occasions he had been too busy to do anything about it.

He realized suddenly that the yard was quiet and that his men had left for the day. He did not know where Larry Keats was and he was crossing to the office to tell him to keep an eye on things when he noticed the amateur boatman called Nick coming along the bulkhead from the direction of the black-hulled cruiser. Nick had a finger in his mouth and every two or three steps he would spit. When he approached MacLaren he said:

"Hey, Captain. You got a bandaid I could borrow?"

"I think so, Nick," he said. "Come on in."

He led the way into the red-painted frame building that

had originally been a house. Remodeling had made most of the first floor into a showroom that presently held four or five outboard motors of various sizes, two dinghies, a sixteen-foot stock runabout for which MacLaren was the agent, and a series of racks and bins holding an assortment of marine suppHes. Stairs at the rear of this room led to a three-room apartment which MacLaren used only in the summertime so that he could be quickly available at almost any hour if needed. To the left was an office with an ancient roU-top desk that had belonged to his father, two battered filing-cabinets, two chairs, and a worn couch.

"Cut yourself?" he asked as Nick followed him inside.

The big man nodded and thrust out his right hand to disclose a half-inch-long slice on the inside of the middle finger.

"With a can opener."

MacLaren told him to sit down, pulled out the lower drawer of a fihng-cabinet, and removed a metal box containing a first-aid kit. From this he produced a pad of gauze, an inch-wide bandaid, and a bottle of mercuro-chrome. The cut was bleeding freely and he told Nick to put the gauze on the wound and apply pressure; then he stepped into the adjacent lavatory to wash his hands.

While Nick held his hand out, pahn up, MacLaren removed the gauze and quickly apphed some mercuro-chrome. Then, pinching the edges of the cut together with thumb and forefinger, he put the bandaid in place and deftly slipped the adhesive ends around the finger. Nick, who had been watching with approval inspected the band-aid.