Fear Nothing

Whalers, and even two houseboats. The largest sailing yacht — in fact, the largest boat — docked here is currently Sunset Dancer, a sixty-foot Windship cutter. Of the motor yachts, the largest is Nostromo, a fifty-six-foot Bluewater coastal cruiser; and it was to this boat that I was headed.

At the west end of the pier, I took a ninety-degree turn onto a subsidiary pier that featured docking slips on both sides. The Nostromo was in the last berth on the right.

I have been one acquainted with the night.

That was the code Sasha had used to identify the man who had come to the radio station seeking me, who hadn’t wanted his name used on the phone, and who had been reluctant to come to Bobby’s house to talk with me. It was a line from a poem by Robert Frost, one that most eavesdroppers would be unlikely to recognize, and I had assumed that it referred to Roosevelt Frost, who owned the Nostromo.

As I leaned my bicycle against the dock railing near the gangway to Roosevelt’s slip, tidal action caused the boats to wallow in their berths. They creaked and groaned like arthritic old men murmuring feeble complaints in their sleep.

I had never bothered to chain my bike when I left it unattended, because until this night Moonlight Bay had been a refuge from the crime that infected the modern world. By the time this weekend passed, our picturesque town might lead the country in murders, mutilations, and priest beatings, per capita, but we probably didn’t have to worry about a dramatic increase in bicycle theft.

The gangway was steep because the tide was not high, and it was slippery with condensation. Orson descended as carefully as I did.

We were two-thirds of the way down to the port-side finger of the slip when a low voice, hardly more than a gruff whisper, seeming to originate magically from the fog directly over my head, demanded, “Who goes there?”

Startled, I almost fell, but I clutched the dripping gangway handrail and kept my feet under me.

The Bluewater 563 is a sleek, white, low-profile, double-deck cruiser with an upper helm station that is enclosed by a hard top and canvas walls. The only light aboard came from behind the curtained windows of the aft stateroom and the main cabin amidships, on the lower deck. The open upper deck and the helm station were dark and fog-wrapped, and I couldn’t see who had spoken.

“Who goes there?” the man whispered again, no louder but with a harder edge to his voice.

I recognized the voice now as that of Roosevelt Frost.

Taking my cue from him, I whispered: “It’s me, Chris Snow.”

“Shield your eyes, son.”

I made a visor of my hand and squinted as a flashlight blazed, pinning me where I stood on the gangway. It switched off almost at once, and Roosevelt said, still in a whisper, “Is that your dog with you?”

“Yes, sir.”

“And nothing else?”

“I’m sorry?”

“Nothing else with you, no one else?”

“No, sir.”

“Come aboard, then.”

I could see him now, because he had moved closer to the railing on the open upper deck, aft of the helm station. I couldn’t identify him even from this relatively short distance, however, because he was screened by the pea-soup fog, the night, and his own darkness.

Urging Orson to precede me, I boarded the boat through the gap in the port railing, and we quickly climbed the open steps to the upper deck.

When we got to the top, I saw that Roosevelt Frost was holding a shotgun. Pretty soon the National Rifle Association would move its headquarters to Moonlight Bay. He wasn’t aiming the gun at me, but I was sure he’d been covering me with it until he had been able to identify me in the beam of the flashlight.

Even without the shotgun, he was a formidable figure. Six feet four. Neck like a dock piling. Shoulders as wide as a staysail boom. Deep chest. With a two-hand spread way bigger than the diameter of the average helm wheel. This was the guy who Ahab should have called to coldcock Moby Dick. He had been a football star in the sixties and early seventies, when sportswriters routinely referred to him as the Sledgehammer. Though he was now sixty-three, a successful businessman who owned a men’s clothing store, a minimall, and half-interest in the Moonlight Bay Inn and Country Club, he appeared capable of pulverizing any of the genetic-mutant, steroid-pumped behemoths who played some of the power positions on contemporary teams.

“Hello, dog,” he murmured.

Orson chuffed.

“Hold this, son,” Frost whispered, handing the shotgun to me.

A pair of curious-looking, high-tech binoculars hung on a strap around his neck. He brought them to his eyes and, from this top-deck vantage point overlooking surrounding craft, surveyed the pier along which I had recently approached the Nostromo.

“How can you see anything?” I wondered.

“Night-vision binoculars. They magnify available light eighteen thousand times.”

“But the fog…”

He pressed a button on the glasses, and as a mechanism purred inside them, he said, “They also have an infrared mode, shows you only heat sources.”

“Must be lots of heat sources around the marina.”

“Not with boat engines off. Besides, I’m interested only in heat sources on the move.”

“People.”

“Maybe.”

“Who?”

“Whoever might’ve been following you. Now hush, son.”

I hushed. As Roosevelt patiently scanned the marina, I passed the next minute wondering about this former football star and local businessman who was not, after all, quite what he seemed.

I wasn’t surprised, exactly. Since sundown, the people I’d encountered had revealed dimensions to their lives of which I had previously been unaware. Even Bobby had been keeping secrets: the shotgun in the broom closet, the troop of monkeys. When I considered Pia Klick’s conviction that she was the reincarnation of Kaha Huna, which Bobby had been keeping to himself, I better understood his bitter, disputatious response to any view that he felt smacked of New Age thinking, including my occasional innocent comments about my strange dog. At least Orson, if no one else, had remained in character throughout the night — although, considering the way things were going, I wouldn’t have been bowled over if suddenly he revealed an ability to stand on his hind paws and tap dance with mesmerizing showmanship.

“No one’s trailing after you,” said Roosevelt as he lowered the night glasses and took back his shotgun. “This way, son.”

I followed him aft across the sun deck to an open hatch on the starboard side.

Roosevelt paused and looked back, over the top of my head, to the port railing where Orson still lingered. “Here now. Come along, dog.”

The mutt hung behind, but not because he sensed anything lurking on the dock. As usual, he was curiously and uncharacteristically shy around Roosevelt.

Our host’s hobby was “animal communication”—a quintessential New Age concept that had been fodder for most daytime television talk shows, although Roosevelt was discreet about his talent and employed it only at the request of neighbors and friends. The mere mention of animal communication had been able to start Bobby foaming at the mouth even long before Pia Klick had decided that she was the goddess of surfing in search of her Kahuna. Roosevelt claimed to be able to discern the anxieties and desires of troubled pets that were brought to him. He didn’t charge for this service, but his lack of interest in money didn’t convince Bobby: Hell, Snow, I never said he was a charlatan trying to make a buck. He’s well-meaning. But he just ran headfirst into a goalpost once too often.