just seemed to forget about the time…
One case caught my eye immediately. It stuck out like Ayer's Rock. It was a boat named Windhover that disappeared-or rather failed to report back-June 25. She was out of Gloucester, and her dimensions matched those of Penelope to a T. Windhover disappears end of June in calm weather (so the report said). Penelope appears, having been allegedly built in same port, in Wellfleet two months later.
The Windhover was a noncommercial vessel engaged for a the purpose of 'archaeological salvage' (this phrase directly from the report). I remembered now Ruggles's comment as shown on the Penelope's documentation certificate, that she was also noncommercial. Most of all, her home port stuck out: Gloucester.
Penelope had allegedly just been built by Mr. Daniel Murdock of Gloucester. But Sonny Pappas, who'd repaired her, said she wasn't new. I felt little bells tinkling in the back of the gray matter.
The Windhover's owner was a man named Walter Kincaid, of Manchester-by-the-Sea, a posh town just south of Gloucester. I left the Coast Guard and started up toward Beacon Hill with the name ringing in my head. Walter Kincaid. Walter Kincaid. Where had I heard that? I was standing on the corner opposite the Saltonstall Building on Cambridge Street when it came to me: Wallace Kinchloe. Wallace Kinchloe was the owner of the Penelope. Walter Kincaid-Wallace Kinchloe.
I trudged up the hill. The chimes at the Park Street Church boomed ten o'clock. I had a fifteen minute walk to Copley Square and the Boston Public Library. I crossed over Beacon Hill, just skirting the State House and dodging piles of dog shit that littered the old cobblestone sidewalks. On the average day in Boston you will smell four things, this being one of them. The other three odors are Italian cooking, garbage, and the Bay if the wind is right. I crossed the Boston Common, and made my way through clots of winos, dopers, religious fanatics, street jugglers, street musicians, thugs, pushers, and street crazies, to Boylston Street, where I turned right and headed up to Copley Square.
Once inside the library I made my way to the periodical room and scanned a series of microfilms of the Boston Globe. I asked for the last week in June and the first week in July. It wasn't long before I found the account of the missing boat. This is what I read: Windhover Still Missing GL0UCESTER-The research vessel Windhover, owned and operated by Walter Kincaid of Manchester, is still reported as missing. by the Coast Guard. The Windhover set out from Gloucester June 25, and has not been heard from or seen since. Mr. Kincaid, a retired businessman who founded the Wheel-Lock Corporation of Melrose, used the vessel for exploring various archaeological expeditions along the New England coast. According to his wife, Laura, Kincaid was headed to Provincetown as a first stop in an expedition that would take the Windhover down the outer Cape coast to the islands. The disappearance of the boat is all the more baffling to the Coast Guard because of the mild weather recently, and accompanying calm seas.
But what was really interesting was the photograph that went along with the aiticle. This was what I had been seeking. The Windhover looked familiar. Of course this wasn't surprising considering that she was a converted commercial fishing boat. Draggers, trawlers, and lobster boats look a lot alike. So in fact, do pleasure boats. Yet there was a certain lilt of the gunwale line, a rise and sheer of her stem particularly, that struck a familiar chord. I shunted the photograph around in the microfilm viewer machine with the knots on its sides. I read the credit on the photo's bottom: Globe Photo by Peter Scimone.
OK, I'd call him and get a print. I returned the microfilm and on the way back down Boylston Street stopped at the Boylston Street Union for a run and a sauna bath. I ran five miles around the gym floor; there is no track at the Boston YMCU. There is no pool there either. In fact there isn't anything except an old four-story stone building that's loaded with old musty locker rooms, an ancient gymnasium, and a healthy population of cockroaches. The lobby, if such I may call it, looks like the Greyhound bus station in Indianapolis in 1936. And that's doing it a favor.
Well then-you might well ask-what does the YMCU have? What it has or rather what it is, is a microcosmic slice of that place called Boston, thinly shaved, stained, and mounted in a slide. If you want to see Boston, don't go to Newbury Street. Newbury Street could be anywhere. The North End is good; it could only be in Boston, or New York, but it's all Italian. Likewise the city of South Boston (or Southie, not to be confused with the South End of Boston) is all Irish. Moreover these ethnic enclaves leave out groups like the blacks, Chinese, and Spanish-speaking Bostonians. But everybody's at the Union. Everybody. Guys named McNally and Ferreggio. Washington and Pekkalla, Chang, Papadopoulos, Garcia, Frentz, Jainaitis, Hudachko, and… and Adams. Just about every third guy who goes to the Union checks a piece at the front desk:. 38 police specials,. 22 autos, I've even seen a few. 357 magnums and. 45s too. They're cops, detectives, and prosecutors. We don't got no violence or trouble at the YMCU. Nope. Because the place is crawling with fuzz. And to help them out are the body builders, muscle freaks, and karate/Aikido addicts who can eat Buicks for lunch and break cement with their pinky fingers.
I have two friends at the YMCU. One is Liatis Roantis, the Lithuanian ex-mercenary who teaches martial arts. He spent some years with the French Foreign Legion and some with the U.S. Special Forces, where he taught guys how to kill people with their earlobes. Somebody once asked me to describe him. I said that if you took every Charles Bronson movie ever made and took all the characters that Bronson ever played and melted them down in a test tube, the result would be Liatis Roantis. I had taken four courses from him: beginning and intermediate judo and karate. Boy is he good. To mess with him in any way-especially after he's had about seven beers-invites death or severe permanent injury. He is a pit bulldog in human shape. '
The other guy is Tommy Desmond, the immensely handsome Irishman from the D Street section of Southie. He can hit the speed bag and the heavy bag like a pro. The only thing he can't fight off is women. I yelled out a greeting to him as I ran around the gym. He was busy with the heavy bag.
'Oh my Jesus! Doc, how ya been?'
Whap! The big bag jumped up and swung near the ceiling. Tommy circled it with a look of detachment in his icy blue eyes, a sheen of sweat beginning to glow on his big shoulders. Nobody can hit the bag like Tommy. He stands there gazing at it, his blue eyes darting back and forth as the heavy bag swings on its big chains. Then, almost lazily, languidly, he begins the crouch, the sideways lean… the bag is swaying and spinning slowly. Tommy's crouch deepens, the lean lengthens, the arm begins to snake around slowly. WHAP! The bag is gone.
I had given him money once for a 'charity' called NORAID. Supposedly it was to help the poor widows and orphans of Ulster. In reality it was to supply money to buy arms for the Provisional Wing of the IRA. After I found this out I gave no more money to Tommy. It was less because of my political stance on the issue than my hatred for violence. I think he understood; we were still friends.
I finished the run, took a sauna and a shower, and walked out by the wrestling mat. I saw two big bearded black men with shaved heads in white karate suits sternly circling each other. They rocked and parried on their toes, trying for a chance to take each other's heads off with their feet.
When I left the Boylston Street Union, I hoofed it over to the Cafe Marliave. I ordered an antipasto deluxe, a small spaghetti Bolognese, and a split of Bardolino. I hardly ever eat lunch, so when I do, I do it right. I pumped coins into the phone and called the Globe. After a lot of hee-hawing on the other end, and spending half my life's savings in small coins, I was informed that Peter Scimone was really a stringer who lived up in Gloucester. I got his number and called him. I said I'd lay three crisp tens in his hands for a series of eight by ten glossies of the Windhover he photographed a month ago. He said for three crisp tens he'd begin running the prints instantly, and they'd be ready for me when I arrived.
Scimone lived down near the water in East Gloucester, just on the borderline of the artists' colony called Rocky Neck. It was a shack, but nicely kept up and decorated with many potted plants hung from macrame holders. Peter emerged from his darkroom with four prints of the Windhover. I glanced at them and was instantly on edge, and excited. Even at first blush the missing Windhover and the phantom Penelope were very similar.
Scimone had done the job quickly on a moment's notice for the local Gloucester paper, and the print was a year old when the Globe bought it. He didn't remember much about any of it. A gray-haired man sat on the deck of the boat with two other men. On the dock behind the boat was an attractive young lady with long blond hair. Scimone knew nothing about her, had not seen her before or since. I paid him and left with the prints.
On the way back through town a name, crudely painted with a big brush on a mailbox caught my eye. The name was Murdock, and the house was near the water. I pulled over and walked to the mailbox. If it was Daniel Murdock, and he couldn't construct a boat any better than he could write his name on his mailbox, I wouldn't want to be out in a millpond on one of his vessels.
I knocked at the door which, like the house, wasn't in very good repair. I waited. The gulls cried and cars whispered by behind me on the road. A curtain fluttered in a window above me. A voice called out asking me what I
