An Incident At Bloodtide

another load. He has an entire ocean voyage to wash out ail his tanks at his leisure.'

Garth said, 'Maybe he was taking a load of something out.'

Marley extended his hands out over his desk, palms up. 'What? The industries up the river are users of oil, not suppliers. You know how many millions of gallons those tankers can hold? They're not used for carrying seltzer. There aren't any chemical plants up there with either a capacity or product that requires tanker transport; barges, yes, but not tankers. That's what's wrong with your speculation. For the sake of argument, let's suppose a captain did flush his tanks in the river-maybe by accident, since I can't think of any reason for it. You think a captain is going to murder a man over what amounts to a relatively minor infraction? It would be like killing a traffic cop over a parking ticket. I find it highly unlikely.'

'My brother and I would just like to make sure, Captain,' Garth said in a flat tone.

'Look, I have no doubt that Tom Blaine was investigating something he considered important, and gathering evidence he hoped his employers could use in court. He was always investigating something; it was his job, and he loved it. But that doesn't mean there's a connection between what he was looking into and the fact that he was run over by a very big ship. You use the word 'murder,' but my guess is that the captain of whatever vessel killed him wasn't even aware of what had happened. He still isn't. And if he doesn't know what happened, then it's damned unlikely that you're ever going to be able to identify with any certainty the ship that was involved. That leaves you with whatever data you've got on these computer printouts you've brought me. I'm not unconcerned about whatever pollution violations may have occurred, gentlemen, but I can't set a precedent by doing for you what I wouldn't do for other people who came here with similar requests-as much as I personally might want to. I know who the two of you are, and your reputations truly precede you. It's why I agreed to meet with you personally. My recommendation is that you approach the appropriate New York State authorities with whatever you think the problem may be-pollution, or murder, or both.'

So much for our visit to the Coast Guard. 'Captain,' I said, 'I presume you keep a log of every commercial vessel that passes in and out of this harbor?'

He nodded curtly. 'Each and every one.'

I took a pad and pen out of my pocket, wrote down two weeks' worth of dates, put the paper down on the captain's desk, literally under his nose. 'Sir, there's a time frame around the Tuesday night the medical examiner thinks Tom died. Would you be willing to give us the names and registration numbers of the oil tankers that were on the Hudson River on those dates?'

'No,' he replied immediately, as he pushed the paper away from him.

'My brother and I are private investigators licensed by the state of New York, Captain. This is business, not a personal favor. Our licenses entitle us to certain privileges and courtesies from both state and federal agencies. You can check with any agency we've ever dealt with in the city, state, or federal government. You'll find that not everybody likes us, especially in this administration, but I think you'll also find that they all have respect for the way we deal with information, privileged or otherwise, that comes our way in the course of our business. We won't embarrass you.'

'You mentioned privileges and courtesies, Frederickson, not rights. Again, if it were up to me personally, I'd just give you the information you want with my blessing. But I can't do that. It sets a precedent. If I hand Coast Guard data over to you, I'd have to honor the same request from every private investigator in the country, if it was made. It wouldn't be good policy.'

'Nobody will know where we got the information.'

'I'd know. Bring me a court order, and I'll give you the list-and buy you both a drink besides. But otherwise, no.'

'You know we can't get a court order.'

Marley looked uncomfortable. He averted his gaze, drummed his fingers on the desktop for a few moments, then looked at us out of the corner of his eye. 'I really would like to help you gentlemen-maybe as a tip of my hat to Blaine, who pestered the hell out of me because he wanted a clean river. You want a list of oil tankers that were up the Hudson on certain dates, and I can't give it to you. There may be other organizations that compile such data. Have you considered other sources?'

Garth and I looked at each other. I didn't have the slightest idea what our coy Coast Guard captain was talking about, but Garth apparently did. 'Thanks, Cap,' he said, nodding to the man behind the desk. 'Come on, Mongo. Let's go back to the brownstone and pick up a car.'

I asked Garth, 'You notice anything peculiar about these pictures?'

We were back at Jessica Blaine's home, in the basement. We had returned to ask the woman if we could borrow one of her husband's old ledgers, which we intended to show to a representative of the Cairn Fishermen's Association in the hope that he might be able to link the codes on the plastic jugs to past violators. Jessica Blaine had told us we could take whatever we wanted. I had forgotten about the photographs of tankers on the corkboard over Tom Blaine's battered desk, but now, as I stood staring at the display, I understood why the riverkeeper had taken them. They were evidence.

Garth looked up from the ledger he was studying, shrugged. 'He liked to take pictures of tanker traffic going up and down the river. So what?'

'Up and down the river. That's the key. Look at the waterlines on those ships.'

Garth stared at the photos for a few more moments, then clucked his tongue. 'Aha. They're all just about the same.'

'Thank you, Dr. Watson. You'd expect them to be riding low in the water going upriver, because they're carrying shipments of oil. They should be riding a lot higher going back downriver, but they're not-at least not as much as you'd expect. It means they damn well do fill up with something after they deliver their oil and flush out their tanks, and whatever they're carrying back displaces about the same amount of water as the oil.'

Garth shook his head. 'Marley told us there isn't even one industry upriver that ships out liquids in quantity, and yet here we have a dozen tankers, presumably coming from different locations, and all fully loaded as they head back downriver. The only cargo I can think of from around here that would fill that many tankers is. . water.'

'Right. River water. It may not be exactly fresh, but it's not totally saline either. It would be a lot easier to purify than seawater, a real bonus if you depend on desalinization for fresh water, and most of the capacity of your desalinization plants was recently knocked out by an invading army. I'll bet they're taking the stuff to Kuwait, and maybe a few other Middle Eastern countries.'

'A goddamn slick trick, stealing millions of gallons of river water, and right under everyone's nose,' Garth said, starting to take down the photographs, slipping them into the back of the ledger he held. 'So now let's see if you and I can't find out who's gone into the sideline of selling the Hudson.'

The Cairn Fishermen's Association rented office space in the basement of an Episcopal church in the center of town. We walked there, found the volunteer on duty to be an attractive red-haired woman in her early thirties who told us her name was Lonnie Allen. She had green eyes that went nicely with her red hair, and the kind of deep, even tan that comes from spending a lot of time on the water. She was wearing sandals, stonewashed jeans, and a Clearwater T-shirt.

We told the woman why we were there, then handed over the plastic jugs, computer printouts, photographs, and ledger for her to examine.

'That's oil tanker discharge,' she said after only a cursory glance at the printouts.

'Right,' Garth said. 'We were hoping you might be able to provide us with a list of the tankers that were in this area around the time that Tom Blaine was killed.'

Lonnie Allen nodded curtly. 'We keep records of shipping traffic, but I don't have to look on the list to tell you where the samples in those jugs came from. The 'C' on the labels stands for Carver-Carver Shipping. In fact, all of the tankers in those photographs belong to Carver; they have red and yellow stripes running the length of the ship just above the waterline, although they're often too faded to see. What you have on the labels after the 'C' is the registration number of the tanker the sample was taken from. You can't see them in the photos, but the registration numbers are usually stenciled on both the bow and stern; from across the river, you can usually make them out with a decent pair of binoculars.'

'Carver as in Bennett Carver?' Garth asked.

The woman nodded. 'Our local Bennett Carver, yes. Carver, by the way, is by far the largest shipping line on