"You think he was involved in Tom's death?"
"I don't know. What we do know is that he works for Carver Shipping, as an assistant to the head of security. He sure as hell knows about the water-stealing scam; probably everyone in the company down to the shipping clerks knows. Whether he knows anything about Tom's death is something we may find out if we pull at him a bit."
"How?"
"Maybe he'll give us the answer to that question. He certainly is a persistent son-of-a-bitch, so I think it's safe to assume he'll make another pass at one or both of us. When he does, he may leave himself vulnerable in some way we can't know until he does it."
"It sounds to me like you want to keep playing with him, Mongo. The idea doesn't much appeal to me."
"I prefer my original metaphor of pulling on a loose thread," I replied a bit testily. "If you've got a better idea for forcing an investigation into your friend's death, please share it with me."
"I still say he's a fucking loose cannon."
"Then maybe he'll backfire."
"I want to be perfectly clear about something, Mongo," Garth said in a calm, casual tone of voice that, when combined with my brother's air of steely resolve, was always a powerful sign of danger. "I understand what you're saying. If it were only you and me Sacra Silver was playing with, your approach wouldn't bother me; I might even enjoy the game. But Silver sees Mary as the prize in this contest; he's playing with, and for, her. And that's where I have to draw the line. So you play with him; pull his chain all you want. But if I meet up with him face-to-face, I won't be playing any game."
I raised my coffee mug to him, nodded. "I think I get your drift, brother. Perchance you thought I'd forgotten the danger Carver poses to Mary?"
"I didn't say that, Mongo," Garth replied, uncharacteristically looking away. He picked up his binoculars from the coffee table and began scanning the river. "I just don't want you getting pissed off at me if your loose thread ends up with a broken back."
"We are in excellent communication, as usual."
"So we wait?"
"Wait, keep taking pictures, and see what happens with Mr. Chick Carver."
"Fine. Just so long as you remember what-" Garth suddenly stopped speaking, stiffened in his chair, then abruptly stood up and stepped to the railing of the deck. He was looking to the south through the binoculars.
"What is it, Garth?"
He motioned with his right hand for me to join him at the railing. I did, and he handed me the binoculars. Then he pointed downriver, toward an approaching tanker in the distance. "Check it out."
I peered through the binoculars, adjusting the focus. It was a big tanker, maybe seven hundred feet long, with a gray hull highlighted by red and yellow stripes along the waterline. As big as two football fields, the deck of the tanker was dotted with vent stacks, pallets of supplies, and large orange cranes on both its port and starboard sides. An enormous superstructure containing an elevated wheelhouse rose up into the sky at the stern end; painted white, the superstructure looked a bit like a three-tiered wedding cake. The tanker was negotiating its way between red and green buoys in an area where the deep channel crossed from one side of the river to the other, giving me a clear view of its length. The tanker's registration number was clearly visible on its stern end: 82Q510. Julian Jefferson was back in the neighborhood.
I said, "Son-of-a-bitch."
"Yeah," Garth replied softly. "That's what I was thinking."
I watched as the tanker made its turn, then continued to proceed north, toward us. Suddenly two medium-size tugs appeared in my field of vision, coming from the north. The water at the stern of the tanker began to churn even more as the captain reversed his engines. A half hour later, with the help of the two tugs, the tanker was securely anchored to a permanent mooring offshore from the tool and die manufacturing complex across the river, perhaps fifty yards from the end of the complex's steel and concrete dock. A half dozen crewmen appeared on deck, and we watched as the men went about their business opening valves and attaching enormous black hoses that would be connected to fittings on the dock.
"So near and yet so far," Garth continued quietly.
"Yeah."
"You want to go rent some diving equipment?"
"I didn't think our mother raised any stupid children. When was the last time you were scuba diving, brother?"
Garth shrugged. "Seven, maybe eight years ago-in the Virgin Islands."
"You think you can find the underwater venting ports on that hull in total darkness, with a four-or-five-knot current nudging you in the ass?"
"You're saying we're not qualified?"
"I'm saying Mom wouldn't approve, and you remember, I'm sure, Dad's lectures on the difference between courage and stupidity."
"I seem to recall him lecturing you on the difference between courage and stupidity. The fact remains that we have the ship that probably killed Tom sitting over there right under our noses. We don't know how long it's going to stay there, and we don't know when it will be back. We've got to go for it now."
"Go for what?"
"I don't know. Maybe call the Coast Guard again. Something."
"It would be a waste of time to call the Coast Guard. All they're doing right now is unloading a cargo of fuel oil."
"Mongo-"
"Okay, let's go," I said, hanging the binoculars on a peg on the railing.
"Where?"
"To see if we can't rattle the captain's cage, and see what transpires."
Garth obviously liked the idea. He grunted his approval, then quickly fell into step beside me as I walked out of the house and headed down toward the beach. "I thought the master investigator didn't think we should tip our hand."
"The master investigator has changed his mind; master investigators do that all the time, which is one reason why we're master investigators. I said we didn't want to tip our hand to the company.''''
"That's not what you said."
"This is-maybe-the captain who murdered Tom Blaine. If so, he may still be more than a bit edgy, and he might make a mistake. On the other hand, maybe what happened to Tom really was an accident, in which case Jefferson may not have any idea what happened. I just think it would be interesting to see how he reacts to us."
"You think he'll talk to us?"
"I guess we're about to find out, aren't we? It's risky, but we don't really know what we're going to do about Tom's death anyway, and we may never get another chance to get this close to the captain and ship that probably killed him."
"Agreed," Garth said, then slowed his pace. "I should probably leave a note for Mary."
"You do what you feel you need to do, but if the church meeting she's at lasts as long as usual, we'll probably be back before she is."
"You're right."
We went into the boathouse to retrieve a length of rope, as well as one of the green plastic jugs we had taken from Tom Blaine's basement office. We tied the jug to the lacing between the two halves of the catamaran's canvas trampoline, then dragged the cat down to the river's edge. Garth raised the sail, locked it into place. We pushed the cat into the water and hopped on, with Garth in the middle and me at the tiller, and we were off.
We were in no danger of being becalmed. It was, in fact, an ideal day for sailing, with white cream puffs of cloud high in an azure sky, a warm sun, and a steady twelve-to-fifteen knot wind from the southwest. The tide was going out, so I pointed a few degrees north of the tanker, on a starboard tack, and sheeted in the mainsail. The cat shot forward, its pontoons hissing, leaving nice rooster tails of surf in our wake. When I felt the pontoon beneath me begin to rise, I slipped both my feet beneath the hiking strap, let out the traveler to just past the three-quarters mark, and loosened the sheet a bit. It would have been great fun to fly a hull, but we were out on business, and I didn't want to take a chance on dumping. There was some swell, but Garth was expert at shifting his weight at the right moment to keep our center of gravity toward the rear to prevent us from accidentally pitchpoling.