myself.'
'Forget it, honey. They'll be caught; there's enough people looking for them, now, including the United States Army. When I get back let's go buy a puppy.'
We returned in late afternoon with a cardboard carton filled with strips of newspaper and a four pound composition of sinew, wiry fur, big brown eyes, and needle teeth. Mary picked her up out of the box at least a dozen times on our way home.
'We've got troubles now, Charlie,' she said, kissing the mutt on the side of her muzzle. She was smiling.
'Then let's name her that.'
'What?'
'Troubles. You said, 'We've got troubles now.' So let's name her Troubles.'
'Where have you guys been?' asked Joe. He was standing at the sideboard, having just made himself a generous gin and tonic.
'Gee why don't you just come right in and make yourself at home?' I asked.
'Thanks, I did already. That's why I was given a key. What the hell's thar?'
So we spent the next half-hour with drinks and the doggie. She pranced around the kitchen, sliding on the Spanish tile. She looked into strange places and whined and yelped-scampered back. We let the other two in, and Danny and Flack took to her immediately. Joe and I sat watching the animals frolic. I looked up and saw Mary pause at the window. She was looking at the newly spaded patch of ground in the Japanese garden. It was right next to the bronze lotus flower, the Asian symbol of immortality.
'C'mon hon. Time to forget. It's all part of the Great Going On.'
'Well what you call the Great Going On is sad… and scary.'
'Yep. And unfair too. But we're stuck with it. Come on, let's go destroy our intestinal tracts.'
On the way to the Yangtze River, Joe said he had some promising news.
'We've located the Rose, Charlie. And you'll never guess where she is.'
'Probably not.'
'C'mon, guess.'
'Gloucester.'
'Shit. How the hell did you know?'
'Lucky guess I guess.'
'How did you know, Charlie?' asked Mary.
'Because it's the most unlikely place for a man of Schilling's cunning to leave her.'
'Is there something you're not telling me?' asked Joe.
' 'Course not. Now look, here's a parking place.'
Two hours later, after ingesting gobs and gobs of hot sour soup, fried dumplings with hot sesame oil and white vinegar, moo-shi pork, Szechwan spicy beef, garlic shrimp, peppered broccoli, and so on, and having wreaked perhaps terminal damage on our alimentary canals (the top half of which we were now conscious of, and the bottom half of which would manifest itself during the next several days), we returned home.
And speaking of digestive systems, when we opened the kitchen door and saw our new friend, I again pondered that most ancient of nature's mysteries: how is it possible that a four-pound dog can produce-in an incredibly short time-eight pounds of excreta?
CHAPTER TWENTY
The Rose was sitting out there in Gloucester Harbor swinging lazily around her hawser like a pregnant duck. Joe had two men staked out watching her, They'd spoken to other crews as well. Nobody had seen hide nor hair of the men of the Rose. Nor had the harbormaster. This didn't surprise me. I considered that the Rose had been just a bit too easy to find, just a wee bit too conspicuous. I departed the harbor with Mary and we drove down through Manchester. We headed along Rudderman's Lane.
'No answer at all? How many times did you try?'
'Once. The operator said the phone had been disconnected. Either Laura Kincaid has changed numbers- getting another unlisted one-or else-hah! I was right. Look.'
The Kincaid abode was for sale. The sign was in front, and the downstairs curtains were all drawn,. We stopped and got out to look. Mary drooled over it.
'Gee Charlie, I wonder what they're asking for it.'
'I figure half a million minimum. If you think it's nice outside, you should see the interior.'
We walked around. If anyone asked what we were doing, we had a perfect excuse. The lawn was as trimmed as ever. New grass was beginning to sprout thickly over the ugly scar in the lawn where the oil tank had been put in. Mary said she wondered where Laura had gone. I was wondering the same thing. Out of curiosity I rang the bell. Waited. Rang again. We heard the same distant pealing of Westminster chimes, but nothing else. Nobody home.
'Level with me, Charlie. What the hell's going on? I want to know. Now. I'm sick of all this screwing around. What the hell's going on in your mind?'
'A number of things. One: I don't think Laura Kincaid is as rich as she led me to believe. I don't know why I think that, I just do. Two: wherever Jim Schilling is, he's not going to come back to the Rose for a long time. The Coast Guard search, and the watch on the Buzarski place when the pinch takes place-will all tell him that the Rose is poison. If he's going to run any more batches, it'll be by some other means.'
'Oh wait. I forgot to tell you, but while you were on your little cruise, Joe and I looked over your notes and your spare chart of Billingsgate Sound. We came up with a pretty neat theory to explain how the boat happened to get grounded on the shoal in the first place.'
When we were home she showed me. She took a pair of dividers and placed one point on Billingsgate where we'd first seen the stranded boat. She then extended the other leg toward Wellfleet Harbor.
'Now, Charlie, I remember you said that Penelope was lucky to make it into Wellfleet without sinking.'
'Right. She barely scooted in.'
'Now you also said, from looking at the pictures you took of her, that she'd been near sinking before.'
'That line of oil slick could've happened either after her collision or after leaving Billingsgate Shoal. It probably happened after she struck.'
'So she came close to sinking twice, in all probability. Assuming she got this far almost sinking, it's then reasonable to assume that she could have traveled about the same distance the first time, right?'
'Ah hah! Yes, yes. You're saying that the point where she struck is the same distance from Billingsgate as Wellfleet.'
'Look.'
She drew the far point of the dividers in a big circle on the chart. The point swept past the neck of Great Island, went out into the bay, swung back, and came to rest within the circular dotted line on the chart encircling the zone marked Prohibited Area. And right smack in the middle of it was the symbol of a wreck and the words target vessel, do not approach within 1000 yards. It was a clever bit of reasoning. If correct, it meant that the Penelope (now the Rose) had struck on the wreck.
'Wouldn't it make sense, Charlie, to go to a place that's prohibited?'
'It sure would. Especially at night. If you had a rendezvous to keep, it'd be perfect, knowing no other vessel's going to come within a thousand yards of where you are.'
A lot of small craft violate the warning during the day, especially fishermen because the wreck attracts fish and lobster. But at night it would be just about foolproof. And they could use the old wreck as a drop too; hide the stuff inside it and scoot, then the pickup could take place hours later.
'Sure. But supposing they had an accident during the rendezvous and struck part of the wreck, or the rocks around it. Then they would probably head for the nearest harbor.'
'Uh huh. But if they were taking on Water too fast they would know they could never make it, so they'd head for the nearest safe place, which happened to be Billingsgate.'
