The Lobster Kings (29 page)

“Expect to be working late tonight,” I said. “We’ll be going long and slow.”

Neither Stephanie nor Kenny said a word as I rowed us out to the
Kings’ Ransom
through the thick air. Kenny tied the skiff’s painter off to the mooring buoy, and then the two of them started
getting set for the day as I cranked up the motor. As we left the harbour, I kept the engine low. The fog made it so that I was steering by feel.

“Fucking giant’s breath,” Kenny muttered.

“Giant’s breath?” I repeated.

“The fog,” he said, unscrewing the top of the thermos and pouring out three cups of coffee. That was one of his jobs, to stock up the cooler and the bin of snacks I liked to keep in the cabin—I turned grumpy when I was hungry, something that Kenny had learned the hard way a few times—and to make sure that we had a never-ending supply of coffee on board.

“Where’d you come up with the phrase, ‘giant’s breath’?”

“I’ve been reading,” he said. “Damn, it’s thick.”

“You made that up.”

He smiled. “A little.”

I glanced over my shoulder. I could barely see Stephanie. She was all the way aft, monkeying around with some ropes. She looked ghostlike in the fog. “We could call it off,” I said quietly. “Head back in and wait out the weather.”

“It’s up to you. It’s your boat,” Kenny said.

I peered ahead into the whiteness, leaning forward, as if that would somehow split the fog. The LCD screens showed a clean run in front of us, and I figured I had the first set of traps already dialed in. I knew Daddy’s traps were crawling with bugs: I could feel the lobsters waiting for us, like the ocean was calling to me. We’d have a good haul. I didn’t want to spend the day grounded. Or, more accurately, since Kenny was standing beside and behind me, close enough that I thought I could feel the heat of his body cutting through the chill of the water that hung in the air, I didn’t want to spend the day on land by myself. “We’ll keep it slow and clean and keep an ear out for anything.” I palmed the wheel, grabbed the cup of coffee without looking at it, took a swig, and then immediately spit it out.

“What the fuck is this?” I peered in the cup and took a sniff. Definitely not coffee.

“It’s chai, boss,” Kenny said. He took a sip from his own cup with no apparent ill effects. “Indian tea with milk in it.”

“And why on earth am I drinking chai?” I looked down at Trudy. She had curled up under the console—her usual place—and was taking an exploratory lick of the chai that I’d spit out onto the deck. She seemed to consider it, and then went back to sleep.

“You drink too much coffee. It’s not good for you. Woody said you’ve been having trouble sleeping. Said he gets up to take a leak in the night and you’re out there watching television or reading or whatnot.” He held up his cup like he was making a toast. “This is what Woody’s been drinking since you and your sisters made him give up coffee. Stephanie and I talked about it yesterday, while we were hauling traps, and we decided that what was good for the goose was good for the gander. Or, well, the gander is the male goose, I think, so I guess it would be the reverse. But whatever. Point is, I grabbed it from your dad’s last night after dinner.”

“I’ll tell you what, Kenny, you and Stephanie and Daddy can take your chai and you can—”

“How about I go get some bait bags ready, set myself up for pulling the first set of traps?” he said, cutting me off.

“How about when Daddy gets back you can go work on the
Queen Jane
?”

Kenny laughed and turned to the bait barrel. “You firing me?” He kept laughing as he disappeared behind me toward the stern of the boat, joining Stephanie.

There wasn’t much ahead of us. We were out of the harbour and the fog lay thick enough that I was mostly driving blind, letting the instruments tell me which heading to take. I glanced back over my shoulder to make sure that Kenny was occupied with the bait barrel, but he was half hidden in the fog. I couldn’t tell if I could see him or if I was just imagining his form in the fog behind me. I took another sip from my cup, grimacing reflexively, but it wasn’t so bad. Actually, it was kind of good. Not that I was going to tell Kenny or Stephanie that. Or Daddy.

I checked the console and then throttled down. With the motor slowed and the fog, it felt peaceful on the water. The waves were barely there. We moved forward soft and even, like we were pushing through snow. “Keep an eye out,” I called back. “Should be on top of a set.”

“You’re going to have to hit it on the nose today,” Kenny said. He’d stopped prepping bait and was standing near enough to me that he didn’t have to yell. He was turned to the rail, looking over the side. Stephanie was lined up closer to stern, but she was on the same side of the boat and I told her to switch sides.

We couldn’t see much, and I had half a mind to say fuck it and to head back in, but then I saw something in the whiteness ahead. I was about to say something, and then I realized that it wasn’t a buoy, that whatever it was that I saw was moving. I couldn’t make it out through the fog, but it matched the pace of the
Kings’ Ransom
. We were throttled almost all the way back. It would have been a good walking speed on shore. The thing ahead of us stood dark in the water, and it cut a small wake. A seal, I thought, playing some sort of game with me, and I pushed the throttle up a touch. The seal sped up as well, and I had the sudden feeling that maybe it wasn’t a seal at all, that it was a selkie, that maybe it was Brumfitt’s wife in the water ahead of us, and that if I could only catch her she’d tell me something important. I put my hand on the throttle again, thinking I’d pick it up just a little more, when I heard Kenny call out.

I stopped us in the water and walked over to Kenny. He’d already gaffed the buoy and was holding it up for me to look at. Stephanie stood beside him looking concerned. It wasn’t Daddy’s buoy.

“James Harbor?” Stephanie asked. Yellow with a triple ring of sky-blue and a band of green.

I nodded. “Those are the ones, yeah? What George said he saw the day he got shot. Let’s keep an eye out,” I said. “Or as much of an eye as you can in this fog. You know the drill. Cut it.”

Kenny pulled out his belt knife and cut the rope. He threw
the buoy back on the platform, and I watched the orphaned line wave in the water. “You see any of Daddy’s?”

Kenny shook his head. “Figure they probably cut his when they dropped theirs. Must have done it last night after everybody was nicely tucked away. I went for a beer after dinner, and nobody said anything about seeing any James Harbor pots yesterday. It’s been quiet.”

“All right,” I said. I nodded, but I felt my stomach tightening. If I would have pulled Daddy’s traps yesterday I might have seen something, might have been there whenever the boat from James Harbor showed up. Might have been able to find out who it was that had dropped a load of bird shot in George’s face. Now I’d have to tell Daddy that not only did I let his traps sit so that I could go get a beer and a burger, I’d have to tell him that some of them were gone. “We’ll see what we can find.”

If it had been clear, it would have been easy. Daddy’s buoys would have shone like the sun to me, but in the heavy fog, it was hunting and pecking, and we found and cut two more James Harbor buoys in short order. I had to run slow, because of the weather, but I didn’t like it. The fog was weird. There was no thunder or foulness, no sense of anything ominous. If anything, it was the opposite. There was a sort of cleanliness to the fog, and maybe that was what was so odd about it. I couldn’t see much more than a half boat length in front of me, but it was light out. The sun was out there, trying to break through the dampness clouding around us. I actually had sunglasses on—it seemed like the sun was bouncing off every drop of water in the air, magnifying the light.

I was only half paying attention to the water. Mostly I was eyeing the instruments, looking for buoys. With the fog I was running blind, trusting the electronics to keep me safe, to guide my way, and when I first saw the boat in front of us, I tried blinking it away, thinking it wasn’t there. And then I realized that it
was
there. The boat was solid, and I was about to run the
Kings’ Ransom
right smack through its middle. I dropped the cup and spun the wheel with one hand, slamming the throttle full in reverse with the
other. I heard a thump and a yell from Kenny behind me. Trudy exhaled with a coughing bark and skittered to her feet clumsily.

We had been moving slowly enough that, with the wheel cranked all the way and the engine fighting, we swung neatly sideways and pushed against the edge of the boat, the
Kings’ Ransom
’s starboard gunwale touching gently against their port. It was actually kind of impressive, the sort of thing I liked to think I could do on purpose. I pushed the throttle into neutral, leaving my boat kissing the other boat.

“Holy shit, Cordelia. What are you doing?” Kenny was back on his feet, rubbing at his hip, and then he looked up and saw the other boat bobbing next to us. Trudy took a few steps over to Kenny and sniffed at where he was rubbing his hip.

“Didn’t show up on the gear,” I said. He stared at me and I shrugged. This wasn’t a stripped-down speedboat from a television show, but an honest-to-god lobster boat, and it should have popped up on my screen.

“Whose boat is it?” Stephanie asked.

I looked closer, the fog making it hard to see even to my own rail. “Don’t know. Is it one of ours?” We were quiet for a few seconds, and there was nothing but the sound of a few gulls, my engine in neutral, and the rub of our rail on theirs. We’d look an odd sight to any passersby, the two boats side by side, though with the fog, any passersby would just pass on by, not even noticing the two boats wedged together.

“What do you want to do, boss?” Kenny asked. There wasn’t much to the ocean, just enough swell to remind us that it was still there, a soft bump of the boats against each other. I knew what I wanted to do, which was get the hell out of there, but then Kenny spoke again. “You know what Woody said.”

“Daddy’s not here,” I said. “Tie us up.”

Kenny looked sideways at me and then started putting out bumpers, laying line, connecting the
Kings’ Ransom
to the other boat. Stephanie jumped alongside him, and I let them go about their business, turning instead to dig through the lockers in the
cabin. Daddy and Kenny and news of ghost ships this spring, and James Harbor pissing in our waters, had put me enough on edge that by the time Kenny and Stephanie had us tied off, I was ready to hand Kenny a pistol.

I kept the shotgun for myself.

“I’ve got to be honest here,” Stephanie said, looking more at the guns than at either Kenny or me. “I’m thinking that if the instinct here is to get out a rifle and a handgun, maybe we should just call in the Coast Guard or something.”

“It’s a shotgun,” I said. Stephanie looked at me blankly. “You said ‘rifle.’ It’s a shotgun.”

Kenny popped the clip out of the pistol, took a look, and then snapped it back in. “The nuances of firearms aside, Cordelia, I think Stephanie’s greater point was that she would prefer to stay on the
Kings’ Ransom
and call in the cavalry. That’s what Woody said to do if we came across anybody from James Harbor.”

I realized that I was pushing myself into a situation I didn’t want to be in so that I could show that I was the one calling the shots. I hadn’t wanted to sail in this fog, and I sure as shit didn’t want to be boarding a James Harbor vessel, but I’d managed to back myself into a corner. I couldn’t figure out a way to change my mind without letting Stephanie get into the habit of second-guessing every decision I made, so I stepped up on the rail, balancing myself with one hand on the roof of the cabin. “There’s a reason I gave Kenny the pistol, not you, Stephie. Stay here with Trudy and keep a hand on the radio. We’re just going to take a look.”

I didn’t check back to see what Kenny was doing. I just took the short hop onto the deck of the other boat. It wasn’t much of a jump, but I still managed to land awkwardly, banging myself in the shin with the shotgun. I was still rubbing at my shin when Kenny jumped down beside me.

The first thing we saw was a pair of lobster buoys. Yellow with a triple ring of sky-blue and a band of green. There were also a few lobster traps on the deck with buoys loose on top, but the
traps were an odd assortment, like the crew had cobbled together their kit from cast-offs and mismatches. Kenny grabbed one and tipped it up on its edge.

“This one’s shot,” he said. “Head’s gone, the mesh is barely connected.” He fingered the bridle on another, the rope frayed and ready to be replaced. “Maybe just cleaning up some old traps? Hobby fishing?”

I shook my head. “No. Same colours as the James Harbor buoys we just cut. Nobody would poach our waters as a hobby. Camouflage?”

“What do you mean, camouflage?”

“Doesn’t seem right, does it?” I said. Kenny kicked at one of the traps and then looked at me. “Maybe they aren’t the old guard in James Harbor, maybe they’re looking for a way to supplement their income, and they ended up here because they thought we wouldn’t make a fuss.”

“And the old traps?”

“Something to give cover to a casual glance? A wave and a pass to the Coasties, to other boats.”

“So, are they here for drugs or lobsters?”

“Does it matter?” I poked the shotgun at one of the yellow buoys. They were actually kind of smart-looking with the triple ring of sky-blue and the band of green. It wouldn’t be that hard to figure out who was fishing these colours. “Drugs or just piss-bags from James Harbor, we know whomever it is working these colours isn’t shy about trying to shoot somebody who is cutting their lines.” The shotgun felt cool and comfortable, and I remembered what Daddy had said to me: if I ever had a gun in my hands I better be ready to pull the trigger. Even though it was silent other than the hum of the
Kings’ Ransom
in neutral, Kenny and me breathing, and the water, I thumbed the safety off. Kenny looked up at the click.

“Well, that sure sounds ominous,” Kenny said.

“No point having them if we aren’t ready to use them,” I said.