Seawitch

Saltwater State Park on the south end of the bluffs. On Zenith—the tallest ridge overlooking the sea and right in the middle of Des Moines—stood a shining edifice called Landmark; it looked like a grand country estate from an English period film, but in fact it was a fancy Masonic retirement home. John Reeve had lived there for a while, but he had moved when the market crashed and now lived in a humble one-story duplex in a seniors’ complex of identical duplexes on looping private streets on the north side of town, within walking distance from the beach and the Des Moines marina.

The seaside town wasn’t pretentiously quaint yet, but it was working on it, keeping the buildings short and widening the sidewalks near the boardwalk and municipal marina to encourage foot traffic to the little commercial district along Marine View Drive. The east side, near the freeway, was nowhere near as picturesque as the west side. Reeve’s home was kind of the same: cute on the outside and much less charming inside.

It was just after three o’clock as we pulled up in front of the building. I thought it looked like the suburban equivalent of a hobbit’s house: low and rambling with arched window frames and doorframes and green stucco that blended into the landscaping. The plants in the yard were just a little wild and seemed to have been miniaturized in some fashion, not to bonsai tiny, but to Kincaid-cottage cute. Straight cement walkways to each door slightly ruined the effect, but I thought it was probably a concession to canes, walkers, and wheelchairs. There was no front stoop in front of Reeve’s door; the porch was just a slightly sloped cement rectangle. A cast-concrete figure of a semireclining mermaid sat on one corner of the pad, patchy remnants of sparkly blue paint making her supporting tail look leprous, while the red color that had adorned her hair had flaked and gone gray-brown. A scatter of shells and a wisp of sea grass circled the base. Just beyond the porch I saw tiny white and blue sparks in the Grey that darted through the foliage near the house and danced fleetingly across the mermaid with a sudden blush of emerald light that faded as quickly as it had come. Other than that the building was magically dull.

Because Reeve was now approaching eighty, according to the Department of Licensing, we did not attempt the tactic of simply showing up to ask questions. We called first, which netted us a civil greeting at the door, though it took some time for Reeve to open it to us. He didn’t move very fast; he wasn’t using a cane or a walker but it was obvious to me from the way his whole right side seemed slightly collapsed that he could have used some kind of assistance.

“Ah, the cops!” Reeve exclaimed in a mushy voice that issued only from the left side of his mouth. He had been a big man in his younger days but now he was stooped and withered. His shaggy white mustache—now gone a little yellow—and large ears seemed to be compensating for his hair, which was white and had thinned to expose a spotted scalp between the fluffy strands. “Come on in. Don’t mind the place—I hate it. We’ll go out back.”

Inside the house was faded and too full of once-fine furniture that didn’t really fit the small rooms. The whole thing had an air of benign neglect to it—it was clean enough but nothing was really kept up. We followed Reeve through a grim little kitchen that even yellow paint and matching wallpaper hadn’t perked up and out into a small yard made private by a vine-covered fence. A large tree cast pleasant shade over the green-painted iron table and matching chairs he directed us to with a jerky wave of his left hand.

“The sundeck—if you will,” he said with what might have been a chuckle or an incipient cough. A plate of misshapen homemade cookies and a sweating pitcher of iced tea large enough in which to sink a small flotilla of bathtub toys awaited us.

As we sat, something rustled in the bushes behind a tiny dried-up fountain with a flurry of Grey sparks that glittered green and gold for a moment, then vanished as the sound died away. Reeve grunted as he lowered himself clumsily into one of the chairs. “Neighbor’s cat’s always slinking around in the shrubs. Looking for rats, I say. She always squeals like a lubber when I say that. Don’t know why; killing rats is what cats are best for.” He seemed to fall the last inch or so into his chair and sighed heavily. Then he looked up at Solis and me. One of his eyes wandered a little, but the other was a piercing blue that seemed to cut right into us. “Now. What was it you want with me? Something about the ’Witch, I suppose.”

We both gave him our best bland expressions. I spoke first. “Why do you suppose that, Captain Reeve?”

“I’m a little slow these days, but I ain’t stupid and I watch TV. Saw her on the news the other night. Though why the police are interested after so long, I can’t guess. So tell me and I’ll think on how I might help you.”

“I have to be honest with you: I’m not actually with the police,” I explained. “I was hired by the insurance company.”

Reeve snorted. “Money grubbers. Probably think the boat’s a scam, don’t they?”

I made a noncommittal noise.

Reeve turned his sharp gaze on Solis. “And you?”

Solis returned a small nod. “I am with the police. We wish to know more about your apprentice who captained the Seawitch on her last voyage.”

“Gary? That scamp. Never could decide if I was glad or sad over him.”

Solis lifted an interrogative eyebrow but said nothing.

Reeve made another of his scoffing snorts. “He was an able seaman and captain—had the paperwork to prove it and the skill—but like a lot of young fellas then, he had a bit of an eye for skirts. Thought being a sea captain was sexier than being a bar pilot—it was all about getting the girls.”

“Excuse me,” I said. “What’s a bar pilot? Mrs. Starrett mentioned something about crossing the bar . . . is that related?”

“Columbia Bar,” Reeve replied. “River comes down to the sea mighty strong and dirty—you can see the silt spill from space—and deposits the mud and debris for a couple miles at the mouth of the Columbia River, making a shoal. That’s a sort of moving underwater sandbar, missy. What with the current going out and the tides moving, it’s a damned dangerous place to cross. But you want to navigate the coast here, you’ve got no other choice ’cept to sail out a hundred miles or so to avoid the current push. Takes a skilled and experienced pilot to cross the bar more than once—’cause once could be luck, but more than that is skill. Gary had that skill—had a feel for the bar you don’t see in every ship’s pilot. Could take damn near any craft across and never so much as scrape the barnacles off a hull.” He gave me a wink and added, “Gary once told me he’d been kissed by a Columbia River mermaid when he was a kid and I half believed him.”

“He sounds remarkable.”

Reeve nodded. “He was. I worked with him first time on a yacht delivery coming up from Alameda. He fair impressed me. And he hadn’t his captain’s papers yet, so I offered to take him aboard so he could get his hours. Didn’t hurt me any to have another able man around and I thought I might start me a service, but I dropped that plan when Starrett come along with his offer. Hard to refuse.”

“What was the offer?”

“Prep, maintenance, and permanent on-call at thirty thousand a year. Doesn’t sound like much, but I could do whatever else I liked so long as I always had the Seawitch ready to go and took her out for him whenever he said. I also brought on a cook and extra hands if wanted and I could take the ’Witch out on my own for shake-down cruises and the like whenever he wasn’t using her. I made some right good money taking youngsters like Gary out for their training hours and doing the odd private party when Starrett was out of town.”

“Did he know about your sideline?”

“He did. Only kink in the line we ever had was Starrett blowing up rough at me over fuel costs. After that I paid the fuel myself, but I was charging the trainees and party folk for it already, so that was fair, yeah?”

“Captain Reeve,” Solis cut in, “why were you not on board the Seawitch for her last voyage?”

Reeve peered at Solis, his energy corona pulling in and fading to a watery apple green color. Then he looked away. “Truth to tell, I wasn’t fit for duty. First time since I’d taken the job.”

Solis didn’t say anything for a moment or two and the silence in the yard stretched, broken only by a new rustling from the cat in the bushes. Finally he asked, “In what way were you unfit?”

Reeve flushed a mottled red that continued into his aura, but he didn’t yell or demonstrate his anger. He just said quietly, “I was drunk. Three sheets to the wind and didn’t give a whore’s damn. Thought I could hold my liquor better than that. Guess I was wrong. Starrett wasn’t pleased at first, but then he didn’t seem to mind so much when I said I’d send Gary along. He liked Gary—they had that skirt-chasing hobby in common. And I won’t say I was entirely disappointed to miss the cruise. Kept thinking I saw the dobhar-chú hanging around the boat.”

I frowned at the foreign phrase that sounded like “dovr koo” and saw Solis do the same. Reeve noticed our confusion.