First Avenue (42 page)

“You got that right,”
Turner
said.

Markowitz looked at his watch. “It’s
ten o’clock
. If our snitch is right, we still have a couple of hours. Let’s get ready.”

Sam and Turner walked out of the cabin to the front deck.
Katherine
followed them.
Sam
climbed over the railing, which was moving up and down with the waves, and jumped to the dock. He landed on his butt.

“Is that how you handle this water?”
Turner
asked as he leaned over the boat railing.

“Hope not,”
Sam
said. He jumped up before anyone other than
Katherine
and
Turner
could see him. “Got the kayak right over here.”

Turner jumped down to the dock more gracefully than
Sam
.
Katherine
climbed over the rail and jumped when the surging boat was closest to the rising dock. She watched
Sam
and Turner untie the kayak and turn it over.
Sam
pulled the rubber cover off the rear storage compartment.

“This is your place,” he told
Turner
. “Get in and see if it works.”

Turner stepped into the compartment and got onto his knees as if he were in a canoe. The compartment rim was barely higher than his knees.

“You have to sit down,”
Sam
explained. “Keep your weight low. Use your legs to balance yourself.”

“There’s not enough room in here to sit down,”
Turner
said.

“Cross your legs.”

Turner looked at him. This was not what he had expected—sitting down with no room to move.

“Now lift yourself out,”
Sam
said.

The kayak tipped as Turner put more weight on his right side.

“Come up straight,”
Sam
said.

Turner tried again and stood up successfully. His face, however, was not the face of success.

“Don’t worry,”
Sam
said. “The water will give some. It worked a lot better than I thought it would.”

He put the rubber hatch cover back over the compartment and cut a large X into the rubber with his pocketknife.
Turner
knelt down beside him to watch what he was doing.

“It’ll keep the water out,”
Sam
explained.

“I’m going with you,”
Katherine
said. “I’ll ride there in the front.”

Sam and Turner looked up at the same instant.

“Three people will be better than two,” she said.

Turner rose from his knees and walked over to the forward hatch. “You got a point there, Officer, but let’s get real. This is no time for that women’s lib shit.”

“You’re right. Let’s get real,”
Katherine
said. “Do you think you or anyone else here except me will fit in there?” She pointed to the considerably smaller front hatch cover.

Turner’s eyebrows rose toward his forehead. “What do you think, Wright? This thing handle three people?”

“I’m not staying on that boat, Sam,” she said and pointed back to
Harbor 1
before he could answer.

“I imagine it can handle three as well as two. It might actually help balance it to have more weight in front.”

“All right then,”
Turner
said. “Let’s try it. See if your ass will fit in there, Murphy.”

It fit, barely, but she hoped they wouldn’t have far to go. Her legs would be asleep if it took very long.

Sam and Turner lifted the kayak and carried it to
Harbor 1
. Turner jumped up to the deck, and Sam threw him ropes from the front and rear of the kayak. He climbed up to the police boat while
Katherine
held the kayak on the dock.
Sam
and Turner lifted the kayak over the railing.

As
Sam
tied the kayak on the front deck, the boat crews silently gathered around him. “I learned these knots fishing with my uncle,” he said. The boat crews didn’t seem impressed.

The sergeant crouched beside the shallow kayak and tapped the side of it with his knuckles. “I hope you guys know what you’re doing. If you dump over, we’ll pay hell finding you in this weather.”

With that comforting message the sergeant stood up and looked at the others.

“Let’s go,” he said. “Nothing we can do here.”

There was a flurry of activity then. The crew on the other boat jumped down to the dock and hurried to their boat. Johnson released the lines of
Harbor 1
from the dock and jumped back on board like a cat. In a quick succession of movements he had the lines coiled and stowed. Hendricksen repeated the movements in an almost identical style on the other boat.

Free from their restraints, the two boats pulled away from the dock. The
Gloria Rose
headed southwest toward Harbor Island while the
Olivia Rose
went north to anchor close to the grain elevators and wait for their call.

Sam and
Katherine
remained beside the kayak.
Sam
checked the knots again and then every inch of the skinny boat.

“Have you ever paddled a boat before?” he asked her.

“No.”

“Not even a rowboat?”

“No.”

Before he could say more,
Turner
came out of the cabin carrying three shotguns wrapped in plastic. His sea legs steadied him on the moving deck.

“They each got five in the magazine,” he said, making sure both she and
Sam
understood. “None in the chamber. Safety is on. You want to double-check?”

“Haven’t you?”
Sam
asked.

“Triple.”

“You want to check,
Murphy
?”
Turner
asked.

“No.”

“Remember, you got to pump one into the chamber.”

“That’s what you said,”
Katherine
replied.

“I know. I just don’t want any screw-up out there.”

Sam fastened the shotguns on top of the kayak with rubber straps. One was in front of the port where
Turner
would sit, and the other two were between
Katherine
and himself.
Turner
climbed into the back compartment again and adjusted the
X’ed
rubber cover around his waist. He wiggled back and forth in an attempt to find a comfortable position.

“Sure sits low.”

“Your butt is pretty much in the water,”
Sam
said.

“Maneuverable though, isn’t it?”

“Turns on a dime.”

“All right, then. This thing keep you in pretty good shape?”

“Yes.”

“I thought so. Any good with your hands?”

“In what way?”

“Well, I ain’t talking about jacking off.”
Turner
looked at
Katherine
, and she thought he was going to apologize for his coarse language. She was tired of apologies. Perhaps he saw that, because he looked back to
Sam
without offering one. “It doesn’t matter anyway. I got a feeling we won’t have time for much fancy stuff. I got a roll of duct tape from the cabin. It works better than cuffs.” He pulled it out of his jumpsuit and showed it to them. “Sure wish we knew what kind of boats they have.”

“Me, too,”
Sam
said.

“Can’t be too small if they’re out in this weather. Find out soon enough, I guess. Who are these people, anyway?”

“
Markowitz
told you about
Pierre
,”
Sam
said. “He doesn’t want to say anything about the others—in case we’re wrong.”

“Sure, but he’s not the one going to climb on that deck. I want to know what I’m facing. Goes no farther than this.”

Turner looked first at
Sam
, then turned to
Katherine
.

“It’s
Captain
Russell
,”
Katherine
told him. “And two beat cops. McDonald and Fisher. All Second Watch.”

“We might be wrong,”
Sam
said. “Or there could be others. I went to the academy with Fisher.”

“Son of a bitch,”
Turner
said. “
McDonald
, Fisher,
Russell
.” He said each name slowly and looked up toward the black sky and imagined each of these men in the void. “What about this Pierre guy? What’s he look like? Anybody’d let a baby starve might do anything.”

“Short, fat, greasy-looking. Pig eyes,”
Sam
said.

Turner snorted. “In case he isn’t wearing a sign or something, maybe you can tell me how old he is, how big. Cop stuff, you know.”

“White male, forty, five foot seven, two hundred pounds, dark brown hair—medium length—greasy, usually unshaven, one-inch scar on his right cheek, pig eyes.”

“Got it,”
Turner
said, chuckling out of the side of his unmoving mouth. “I’ll damn sure be looking for those pig eyes.”

“We have to get there first,”
Sam
said as he pulled an extra paddle loose from the straps that held it to the top of the kayak. “When we’re in the water, you have to dig like this.”

He demonstrated to them the proper motion.

“Just dig on one side. Kat, you paddle on the right side. Turner, you paddle on the left. Don’t worry about steering,” he continued. “I’ll do that. We won’t have much time to get there. You have to dig hard,” he said and looked separately at both Turner and
Katherine
.

“Okay, partner. I’ll dig like a son of a bitch,”
Turner
said.

“Can you get a paddle for Murphy from the dinghy?”

“It’s not like this one,”
Turner
said.

“Doesn’t matter. Something that will dig in the water.”

“It’ll dig all right,”
Turner
said. “I take it this thing ain’t bulletproof.”

“Not likely.”

“I sure wish I had learned to swim. Can you believe they would put me in this outfit without teaching me how to swim?”

The windshield wipers fought a losing battle against the rejuvenated rain as the Harbor boat rose and fell with the swells.
Markowitz
took off his glasses and wiped them on the blue sweatshirt one of the officers had given him. All of the Harbor crew wore blue jumpsuits with gun belts cinched around their waists.
Katherine
and
Sam
wore borrowed jumpsuits over orange life vests.

Sam’s kayak, tied down across the bow, was like a finger pointing into the rough water. Over this finger, they spotted the
De la Cruz
anchored a hundred yards off Pier 43. All of them leaned toward the window, toward the ship, as though they would see it better. Their boat circled its prey in a wide arc.

The
De la Cruz
’s deck was well illuminated. The bow and stern were distinct, but its sides rose like a giant shadow out of the water. Inside the crowded cabin, everyone watched the ship.

“Looks awfully big,”
Markowitz
said.

“Let’s head over to Todd Shipyards,” the sergeant told
Johnson
. “Slip in behind that processor there.” He pointed to a large ship anchored in front of one of the dry docks. “We don’t want to get too close to the
De la Cruz
.”

Johnson maneuvered
Harbor 1
past the ship the sergeant had selected and turned off all the running lights. He circled behind the ship and slowly edged along its hull until the
De la Cruz
was again visible. Then he put the boat in reverse, slid back behind the ship that served as their screen, and told Turner to drop the rear anchor. When the anchor was set, he edged the boat slowly forward until they could see the
De la Cruz
again. Then he shut the engine down to its slowest idle so that there was minimum pressure on the anchor chain. The sergeant and Turner both had binoculars. To
Katherine
, the
De la Cruz
was like a distant moving picture framed in the windows. The picture didn’t change.