As Sloan stood looking over the minuscule hamlet, his smile broadened. This is it? he thought. This is what he calls home.
He would be casual and cautious in asking questions. He walked down to the city pier, where the locals were crabbing and fishing or taking in the sun, watching the shrimp boats come and go and the big brown pelicans dive-bombing for lunch.
Roland Smith, who regarded himself as the unofficial mayor of the island, appeared at the pier each morning dressed in sports jacket and tie with a fresh flower in his lapel to do his rounds. He petted dogs, babbled over babies, flirted with all females over sixteen, and slowly worked his way up to a niche of a restaurant called the Bowrider to have breakfast and trade gossip with the locals. He was never without a smile and spent his days simply being pleasant. He had come to the island ten years ago on vacation with his wife, who had dropped dead on the beach of a heart attack. Smith, a window dresser for a New York department store, had sent a letter to his boss announcing his retirement and never left.
Sloan watched Roland stroll the pier and its nearby park, smiling and chatting. Sloan. knew a talker when he saw one. He wandered to the edge of the park and sat on a bench until Smith ambled by.
‘Morning,’ Smith said with a smile. ‘Lovely day, isn’t it?’
‘Perfect,’ said Sloan, matching the smile.
‘I do love this island,’ Smith said, which was his standard greeting to tourists.
‘It’s beautiful,’ Sloan agreed.
‘You vacationing here?’ Smith asked innocently.
‘Well, kind of. Actually I’m looking for an old friend of mine. We were army buddies. But I lost his address and I can’t find him in the phone book.’
‘Maybe he moved,’ offered the putative mayor.
‘Perhaps you know him. Chris Hatcher? I just thought I’d surprise him.’
‘Maybe he doesn’t like surprises,’ Smith said pleasantly, his grin fading only slightly. he nodded, and strolled away.
Sloan wandered in and out of the shops, striking up conversations in his easy, smiling way, finally getting around to the big question. Nobody said, ‘I don’t know him’ or ‘I never heard of him’; they simply generalized the question into oblivion with answers like ‘Lots of folks on this old island’ or ‘Where did you say you were from?’
Typical small town, thought Sloan, everybody on the island was as closemouthed as they were pleasant. But Sloan was gifted with infinite patience. Hatcher was on this island somewhere. Somebody on. this island had to know Hatcher, it was just a matter of time before somebody owned up.
Sloan went into Birdie’s. It was a pleasant, unintrusive restaurant, which smelled of fresh vegetables and seafood, its fare listed on a large blackboard on the wall. He found a table next to a group of men who looked as if they belonged.
When he had first come to the island, Hatcher had chosen to become a recluse, avoiding people and living a solitary life on his boat. His only friend was Cirillo. But gradually he became close to these people. They were nonjudgmental, warm, and simply supportive of one another. Like Hatcher, they had escaped to the island, leaving behind bad memories or shattered careers or the abuses of Establishment phonies.
All the men at the adjoining table were Hatcher’s friends. One was an enormous Santa Claus of a man with white hair and a thick white beard wham the others called Bear. Then there was a slender, quiet man, his gray-white beard tickling his chest, who was reading a paperback novel as he ate, and another gentle-faced man who was jotting lines of poetry in a tattered notebook. Sloan listened to their choppy conversation, hoping for clues. He got none, although it was obvious they were islanders. The reader’s name was Bob Hill. He had been a thoroughbred horse trainer, a circus clown, a schoolteacher, and he now owned his own shrimp boat. The poet, whose name was Frank, worked as a night clerk in one of the mainland motels and spent his days on the beach, writing poetry. Bear was an architect. The fourth man at the table, trim and weathered, whom they called Judge, had fallen from the bench in disfavor, a victim of the bottle. He was now the maître d at the island’s premier hotel and had not had a drink in fourteen years.
‘Haven’t had food this good since I left home,’ Sloan said pleasantly.
‘That’s the truth,’ Bear answered. ‘And almost as cheap.’
They chatted amiably back and forth during the meal. Finally Sloan popped the question and was greeted with the same vague response.
‘Probably end up here eating sooner or later,’ said Bear. ‘Everybody does.’
Sloan was undaunted. Hatcher had no listing in the city directory or phone book. No auto registration. But since he lived on this island and he was ex-Navy and he loved the sea, it seemed reasonable that Hatcher had a boat. The process of elimination ultimately led Sloan to the marina.
By this time everybody in the village knew he was looking for Hatcher.
He tried to strike up a conversation with Cap Fendig, who operated the marina itself. Fendig’s roots were dug deep in the black soil of the island. His father and grandfather and great-grandfather were the harbor pilots who captained the big cargo vessels from the ocean through the sound to the state docks on the mainland.
‘Actually I’m looking for an old friend of mine, Chris Hatcher. We were in the Army together.’
‘That a fact.’
‘He’s big on sailing. Thought perhaps he might have a boat down here.’
‘Well, this would be the place t, keep a boat.’
Fendig moved up the pier.
‘Name’s Chris Hatcher,’ Sloan called after him.
‘Wasn’t born here. Lived here all my life, nobody by that name was born on this island.’
‘No, he would have moved here about a year and a half ago.’
‘Oh.’
End of discussion.
Sloan changed his tack. He approached a kid working the gas pumps.
‘What time’s Chris Hatcher due back?’ he asked pleasantly.
‘Never know,’ the kid answered.
Bingo.
‘Does he live on the boat?’
‘I wouldn’t know,’ the kid answered and vanished into the small pumping station.
Sloan went back up to the marina, got a beer, and went back down to the pier and waited.
The sharp bleat of a boat’s horn snapped Hatcher back to reality.
‘Oh God,’ he groaned. He got up, arranging the bulge in his skimpy bathing suit as best he could and went topside; he peered cautiously over the bulkhead.
A shrimp boat called the Breeze-E was idling nearby, its engines muttering as it rocked gently in the calm sea. Its captain, a tall, leathery string-bean of a man with a neatly trimmed gray-white beard, was standing in the stern. He cupped his mouth with his hands and yelled, ‘This fella’s wandering all over the island asking after you. Been to Birdie’s, Po Stephens. Murphy’s. The marina. Even tried to pry information out of old Roland.’
‘What’d he want?’ Hatcher yelled back in the harsh voice that was part growl, part whisper.
‘Said he was an old friend of yours from the Army.’
Hatcher shook his head. ‘What’s he look like?’
‘Big guy, built like a lobster pot, real broad in the shoulder. Looks to be in his late forties. Real friendly sort.’
‘Talks real soft and smiles all the tune. Little scar on his cheek?’ He drew an imaginary line from his eye to the corner of his mouth.
‘That’s him. Friend of yours?’
‘I wouldn’t say that. What’d you tell him?’
‘Not a damn thing.’
‘Thanks, Bob.’
‘Anytime. Fishing?’