He gave a sigh, a kind of grunt actually, and looked at the ground. “Yes, I suppose that’s the next step. Listen, Herbie, I know you’re a sharp kid; damn, don’t I know it, but this has nothing to do with you. It’s just a coincidence you were with Neddie this morning.” He paused, looked puzzled, then asked, “You were doing Neddie Hacker a favor?”
“He needed help with his pots,” I answered, “so Mr. Hornton asked if I would lend a hand. He said I could make a few dollars.” I looked up unblinkingly into Jake’s beady brown eyes. He was a giant of a man, which I think appealed greatly to my mother. Jake Valari also had the uncanny knack of making you feel real safe. Size alone can sometimes do that. My father, who’s been dead for ten years, had been over six feet tall. My mother always said he had made her feel real safe.
Jake made a low noise, like the start of a curse with a lot of sh’s in it, looked out at the dock, then at the water, then at me. There were people coming out of houses all around us now, the last of the summer crowd, here on one final, unseasonably warm, fall weekend. They were going off to church, or out jogging, some with dogs on leashes. I guessed the word would get around pretty quick that Neddie Hacker had come back to port with more than just lobsters in the hold.
“All right, Herbie,” he said in a low tone. Someone was calling out to him, “Hey, Jake, what’s up?” but he ignored him. “Tell me this: tell me why I shouldn’t kick your butt all the way home?”
“Because I am involved,” I said quite honestly. “I was there, Jake.” I didn’t plead. If I really had to leave, well, I would, and if I was told to be quiet, I’d do that, too. Not a word to my mother (who wasn’t home anyhow and had been chambermaiding over at the Eagle ’n’ Arms since six this morning) and not to my good old friend, Mr. Hornton, not if Jake said so.
“That’s not enough, Herbie,” he said. “You and Neddie, you found something real bad, boy.” A brief glance up at the crowd gathering on the street; somebody’s dog began to bark frantically and tug on its leash; doors were slamming as more people emptied into the streets. Jake scowled at one or two who were getting too close and said, “You’ve just got to put it out of your mind, Herbie.”
But how could anyone put something like this out of their mind? Me, as I watched Neddie Hacker pull the thing out of that pot? At first we didn’t recognize what it was. It had been all white and hairy, with bits of bone, tendon and flesh sticking out from where it had been cut — and none too neatly — at the elbow joint. It looked like a mangled, bleached piece of lobster bait. Then suddenly Neddie swore, “What the hell!” and dropped it on the deck between us. Was I supposed to put that out of my mind? As I looked down at it and realized what it had to be? A wave passed under us just then, and the boat lurched a little, making the thing roll slightly to one side, revealing as it did five mottled red and white fingers clenched in a half fist — with a green and blue tattoo etched across the back of the hand.
“Then how about this, Sergeant Valari?” I said, reverting to a more formal tone. “I know whose arm it is, and I also know who was supposed to find it in that pot.”
I looked over the roof of his car before I climbed in, trying to read him, maybe trying to get a reaction. We’d said nothing on our way to the doughnut shop, but after he’d sent me in with a few dollars for doughnuts, juice, and coffee, I’d stood in the store window, watching as he took something from his pocket, something like a little card. Then he stared at it and went to a pay phone and called a number. His conversation was brief, and when he hung up the phone, he slammed it down. In anger, maybe. I wondered about that; I also wondered why Jake hadn’t used the phone in his car. He had a new car, a fire engine red Firebird, a real nice car with a phone, CD player, air conditioning. Anyhow, when I came out of the shop he was standing by the car, rubbing his face, and looking off over the bay.
“So who was it?” he asked without looking at me. “Whose arm, Mr. Smart-guy?”
I didn’t expect that, but as coolly as I could, I said, “I don’t know his name, Jake, but he was the bartender over at Murphy’s Lobster Trap. He...” Jake was turning to look at me, his eyes as cold as stone. “He worked the take-out window sometimes. Mom and me, we get clams almost every Friday night. Mom likes clams and—”
“You recognized the tattoo.”
“Yes, sir, it’s what they call a claddagh symbol. It’s usually on a ring. I think it’s some kind of Irish wedding symbol or something like that.”
“You got a real good look, didn’t you?”
“Jake, are you mad at me?” Because I felt he was, or maybe mad at whoever he’d just spoken to on the phone.
He reached for the car door. “Get in the car, Herbie.”
“It was real foggy this morning, foggier than I’d seen in a long time, but you know, it happens, especially in the fall.” I gave Jake a quick look across the front seat. He was quiet, actually kind of moody. Something was really bugging him, something big, so I figured I’d just talk, not that I thought I could really help him. Jake usually drove his old car or an unmarked police car, so my being in his Firebird was also a little strange. Something was wrong, but even for me I would be slow in figuring out what it was.
Jake Valari was the only detective on our town’s small police force, and he hadn’t been assigned to this case. Someone had called him this morning, true, and pulled him out of bed to come down to the river, but none of it had been official. I saw resignation in Jake’s face and heard it in his sigh, and I knew he wouldn’t have been wasting time on me if he had more important things to do, like working on a new case.
Still, just because a case wasn’t yours didn’t mean you just put it aside. You still turned it around and around in your head. I know this because it had happened to me before and I was pretty sure it was happening to Jake right now.
“Anyhow,” I chattered on, “if Mom saw how foggy it was out, I thought she might tell me I couldn’t go with Mr. Hacker. According to Mr. Hornton, he’s been having a real hard time since his son got into trouble.”
Jake knew what I was alluding to, just grunted and continued driving. He wasn’t taking me home. I’d told him I had to meet my math tutor this morning over at the technical institute in neighboring Forrester. I’d fallen under a state program for “academically talented” but “financially disadvantaged” kids, which meant I could have my own tutor if I wanted. So I had applied to the program, been accepted, and now met with Oscar on the second and fourth Sundays of the month. Oscar was a college sophomore; he got a small fee for working with me, plus credit for an educational psychology course he was taking. Me, I qualified for advanced courses in high school even though I was still in junior high. Oscar had termed the whole arrangement a “symbiosis, of sorts,” since we both benefited from it.
Too bad Jake and I couldn’t have struck our own symbiosis. I knew he was feeling real sour about this thing with Mr. Hacker and me and the arm in the lobster pot. That phone call must have been to the state police barracks, checking on the dead guy’s I.D. He had friends over there who’d fill him in on what he was missing. I didn’t know whether Jake knew the bartender over at the Trap, but I did know I was right. That green and blue claddagh tattoo was as unmistakable as it was unusual; I’d seen it a dozen times as it handed me my bucket of clams and tartar sauce at the take-out window.
So I guess there were a lot of things eating Jake just then. I was probably just the smallest part of them.