and handle the lines.
He had reached no profound conclusions, except that he didn’t want to do this again tomorrow.
When he went forward, he saw a familiar vehicle, a Buick Rendezvous with an antennae farm on its roof, sitting beside the house.
Michael J. O’Hara himself was sprawled in a lawn chaise on the wharf, drinking from the neck of a beer bottle. The chair was from the deck of the house. There was a portable cooler beside Mickey that he’d obviously brought with him.
He waved, but rose from the chair only when Matt called, “Hey, Mickey, want to grab the line?”
On the third try, he managed to do so, whereupon he inquired, “What am I supposed to do with it?”
Matt resisted the temptation to tell him the first thing that came to his mind, and instead said, “Wrap it, twice, around that pole, and then hang on to it.”
When he saw that Mickey had done so, he went aft to handle the stern lines.
I wonder what he’s doing here. Who cares? I really am glad to see him.
“You didn’t answer your phone,” Mickey said, by way of greeting. “I was about to call the cops.”
“On the water, you call the Coast Guard, not the cops,” Matt said. “Write that down.”
“So why didn’t you answer the phone?”
“I didn’t have it turned on, for one thing,” Matt said, helping himself to a beer from the cooler, “and for another, I was probably out of range.”
“You’re not supposed to be,” O’Hara said.
“Well, sorry. My profound apologies.”
“I meant of this,” Mickey said, and patted his shirt pocket, which held what looked to Matt like a bulky cellular telephone. “They advertise worldwide service. They use satellites.”
“Then I guess I didn’t have my phone turned on.”
“I guess not,” Mickey said.
It occurred to Matt that unless they got off the wharf before the reserve captain got off Final Tort V, he would probably be joining them for whatever happened next, which included a couple of beers, for sure, and then probably dinner.
Worse, that he would probably recognize Mickey’s name, and start asking questions about what it was like being a famous journalist, and even worse than that, Mickey would delight in telling him.
“All I had for lunch was a ham and cheese sandwich,” Matt said. “Let’s go get something to eat.”
“Steamed clams,” Mickey announced. “I didn’t have any lunch at all, and steamed clams seems like a splendid idea.”
He picked up the portable cooler and started down the wharf.
“Are we going out tomorrow?” the reserve captain called down from the Final Tort V.
“I’ll call you,” Matt said.
In the Rendezvous, Mickey asked,
“You okay, Matty?”
“I’m fine.”
“I heard you came apart for a while.”
“I came apart for a while, but I’m fine now.”
Mickey handed him his cellular telephone.
“Call Denny Coughlin and tell him. He’s worried about you.”
“He sent you down here to keep me company?”
“He told me how to get here,” O’Hara said. “You have to dial Zero Zero One first.”
“Zero Zero One first?”
“That’s the United States,” O’Hara explained.
“I thought that’s where we were.”
“That’s a worldwide telephone. You have to dial the country code first. Call Denny, for Christ’s sake.”
Matt punched in the numbers, including the Zero Zero One country code, then the Philadelphia area code, and then Commissioner Coughlin’s number, and was finally connected with him.
He told him that he was fine, thank you; that Mickey had found him; that they were in his car en route to get some steamed clams; and that he felt fine, thank you, nothing has changed in the thirty seconds since you asked me that the first time.
“Is Mickey going to be in the way, Matty? He really wanted to see you. I thought maybe you’d like some company, so I told him where to find you.”
“I’m glad you did. Thank you.”
“Well, have a couple of beers, but get some rest. And give me a call every once in a while, okay?”
“I’ll do it,” Matt said, and pushed the Off button.
They sat at the bar of the Ocean Vue Bar amp; Grill and viewed the ocean while eating two dozen steamers and drinking two Heinekens each. Aside from “Hand me the Tabasco, please,” there was not much conversation.
Matt pushed the second tin tray of empty mollusk shells away from him, finished his beer, signaled for another round, and then asked,
“Can I ask you a personal question, Mick?”
“Shoot.”
“Have you ever been out of the country?”
“No. Why should I have been?”
“Then what’s with the worldwide dial Zero Zero One as the country code telephone all about?”
“I’m thinking of going to Europe,” Mickey said.
“Really? What for?”
“Actually, Matty, that’s one of the reasons I came all the way over here. The other was to apologize for not coming to see you after Doc Michaels told me that he let you out of the loony bin. I was busy.”
“You have been discussing my mental condition with Dr. Michaels, I gather?”
“He said medical ethics prohibited his discussing your case with me, but apropos of nothing whatever, there was nothing wrong with you that a little rest wouldn’t fix. He’s a good guy.”
“And he suggested you come to see me?”
“No,” Mickey said, his tone suggesting that even the question surprised him. “What happened was after I heard that you’d been in and out of the loony bin, I called your mother, and she gave me the runaround about where you were, so I called your father, ditto, and I began to have visions of you in a rubber room somewhere, so I went and saw Doc Michaels, and he told me… what I told you he told me.. so I called Denny and asked him where you were, and he told me. So I came.”
“Tell me about Europe.”
“I told you I was busy. What it was was that I was involved in a contractual dispute with my employers.”
“About what?”
“I knocked my city editor on his ass,” Mickey said. “With a bloody nose.”
“Why?”
“It was a matter of journalistic principle,” Mickey said. “The lawyers for the Bulletin said it was justification for my termination, unless I apologized to the sonofabitch, which I will do the morning after the Pope gives birth to triplets.”
“So where does the matter stand now?” Matt said, smiling.
“Casimir responded that in this era of political correctness, it is not professionally acceptable behavior for a supervisor, before a room full of his fellow employees, to call an underling ‘you insane Shanty Irish sonofabitch’…”
“He actually called you that?” Matt asked, on the edge of laughter.
Mickey nodded, smiling, and went on, obviously quoting Bolinski verbatim,
“…‘and to threaten a distinguished Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist such as Mr. O’Hara, before the same gathering of his peers, with using his influence to ensure that Mr. O’Hara would never find employment again, even with the National Enquirer, a periodical generally held in contempt by responsible journalists.’ ”
