Harley hopes Drew’s thinking about him, but she’s contemplating that crate of shrink-wrapped assault weapons. Massachusetts has some of the toughest gun laws in the nation, but there are street corners in Boston where you can buy a gun more easily than you can buy a Charlie Card. Assault rifles ooze down from New Hampshire, inch up from the Carolinas, steal across borders from states with less-stringent statutes. Terrorist-wary transit cops check the trains and buses frequently. Could be the smugglers are using boats, but running guns into busy Boston Harbor where tourists stroll the waterfront and kids ride the merry-go-round on the Rose Kennedy Greenway doesn’t seem likely.
Harley clears his throat. “Gid, he ever try to jump in and go for a dip?”
“Scared of the water,” Drew says. Harley also parcels out overtime and writes employee evaluations.
Drew wants to be a cop. Vets like her get a leg up at the Boston Police Department, preferential treatment, but so far she hasn’t scored. There’s the not-so-small matter of the residency requirement. Cadets are supposed to reside in Boston, live in the city for at least a solid year. This poses a challenge for a woman currently living out of a rust-eaten Ford Escort.
The V.A. shrink she refuses to speak to, a doctor named Haggerty, sent her to a guy who knows a guy, which is, he assured Drew, the way they do it in Boston, but even the well-connected Sergeant Lorello, the man at the end of the who-do-you-know chain, didn’t see how he could bypass the residency thing.
Drew owes Gid for the job at Atlantic Tow. She’s applied for every PD and private-security job within fifty miles — Manchester, New Hampshire to Warwick, Rhode Island — but it was Gid, lapping up beer under a barstool, who did the trick, convinced a dude about to leave town to recommend Drew for his security gig. Man had a soft spot for ex-army dogs; his Humvee would have been junkyard salvage if a Malinois hadn’t sniffed out an IED.
The job is part-time with no benefits, but Drew considers working outdoors a benefit, along with the salty smell and the wind in her short, dark hair. Once winter sets in, the nights will get frigid, but she’s optimistic that by then someone will yank her application and note her stellar qualifications. Gid’s got the nose, but Drew’s got the eye. Guys used to think she was wearing night-vision goggles even when she wasn’t. She’s got an eye for motion; something moves in the dark, she knows it.
Drew has been on the job two weeks and three days when the dinghy sinks.
Three sides of the lot are bounded by electrified fence. The fourth is open to the ocean. The owner figures there’s little to no risk an angry motorist will venture a sea approach to reclaim a towed Chevy, but Drew’s not so sure. It’s ninety bucks a tow, plus a steep daily storage charge that adds outrage to aggravation. She’s glad her job is guarding the lot, not demanding payment from hostile car owners.
The night is clear after days of stormy weather, the sea calm, the air heavy with the elusive fall warmth the locals still call Indian Summer. Wisps of fog form at the shoreline where the cool ocean air meets the land. Drew doesn’t exactly see the boat come ashore, but she shifts to high alert about the same time Gid’s ears prick, and they move as one.
The wooden dinghy is small and the girl inside clings to the rotted pier. The boy is in the water, but as soon as Drew’s flashlight beam hits him, he hauls himself up over the side of the boat and drops winded into the bottom. The girl gulps a breath and yells, “Help,” the minute her eyes register Drew’s presence.
“I’ll call the—”
“No police,” the girl says immediately, her voice dropping to a harsh whisper. “No, he’ll kill me, please don’t.”
They work in pairs at Atlantic, but Drew’s coworker, Nate Parsons, is more handyman than security guard. Middle-aged, hard of hearing, he does an occasional walk-around, but mostly he sits in the shed nights, fiddling with his hearing aid and reading comic books. Drew suspects he’s related to the tow lot’s owners.
“Please don’t call the cops,” the girl says. “If you can’t help us, just give us a bucket and we’ll bail till we get somewhere we can come ashore.”
The girl’s teeth are chattering, Drew hasn’t got a convenient bailing bucket, and the leaky boat isn’t going anywhere but down. Drew steadies herself, wraps her left arm around a sturdy post, offers her right hand to the girl.
She hesitates. “What about the dog?”
“Don’t worry about him,” Drew says. Gid looks fierce, but he lost whatever fight he had back in Afghanistan. He paces restlessly, but keeps a good five feet between his forepaws and the end of the wharf.
The girl’s clothes are soaked and in disarray, jacket open, blouse half-unbuttoned, but her fingernails are long and painted, her hair shiny. She looks very young. Well kept.
“Help Joey up first,” she says. “We aren’t supposed to — If Daddy ever—”
“You first.” Drew doesn’t like the idea of grabbing the boy, not when she can’t see both of his hands. “Let Joey hang onto the pier and then we’ll bring him up together.” The girl is small, about the same size as Drew. If she turns out to be bad news, Drew can take her.
Turns out there’s nothing to take. The rescue is quick and easy; Nate doesn’t stir, both kids are okay, wet but resilient, ashamed of absconding in a leaky boat. Drew wonders whether the boat slipped its mooring while they were having sex. She doesn’t bother reporting the incident because she didn’t follow procedure, which says to call the cops on every intruder. Drew lost the desire to follow procedure back in Iraq.
Gid paces and growls, ears quivering, long after the couple departs. Man at the shelter said he’d never seen anything like it, the way the dog took to Drew, but tonight neither her voice nor the few low, bent notes she plays on her Hohner G harp quiet the dog. She carries a harp in her back pocket; a riff or two will usually settle Gid down when vocal soothing fails. Somebody or something did a number on him; he’s scared of more than water. Drew worries that the dog is too big a challenge right now, living in the car the way she is, new to the city, but if she hadn’t taken him in, he would have been destroyed. That’s what the guy at the shelter said.
It isn’t till Drew sees the girl again that she figures she’s been had.
She and Gid are covering a day shift, filling in for a sick worker. At first Drew thinks she’s mistaken. The girl’s jacket is navy with red trim and she looks much older with her blond hair swept up on top of her head. She sounds different too, but those knuckles, those fingernails, those earlobes, all the things Drew notices because those are the things you notice if you spend time in the military police, those are the same.
Drew’s lips tighten; she doesn’t like being played for a sucker, but she doesn’t say a word. Use your eyes, not your mouth; she’s learned that working with Gid.
The girl leaves the lot after picking up a big dark sedan that looks pretty much like any other big dark sedan. Drew takes note of the make, model, and plate number, and lo and behold, two of the three are the same four nights later when the car reappears on the lot, parked in the lane closest to the sea, even though the rest of yesterday’s towed vehicles are parked in the lane that fronts Commercial Street.
When the night-vision goggles Drew used to use on night patrol got replaced with better tech, she purchased the old ones for cents on the dollar. Bought a night-vision camera too. She’s glad she did; she didn’t steal them, and if she hadn’t splurged the stuff would have found its way into enemy hands via the black market.
“Let’s check it out, Gid.” She’s gotten into the habit of talking to the dog. He seems like a safer confidant than the V.A. shrink.
She uses the goggles at discrete intervals during her next three night shifts. Nate Parsons seems happy to work the front of the lot the few times he leaves the shed. Drew strolls the back till the boss calls her over for a chat. Harley says she’s doing a fine job and tells her a full-time position might open up soon. He asks a few questions about Gid, how long they’ve worked together, where she got him, then offers Gid another treat. Drew thinks it would creep people out if they knew how many vets came back to the States with night-vision equipment.