Isle of Dogs (9 page)

“Explain this sanctuary stuff to me,” she said, sitting back down at her desk. “And everything else about why the Islanders don’t like Virginia.”

Andy informed her that Tangier Island had become increasingly hostile toward the rest of the Commonwealth when a recent General Assembly passed a number of bills that were entirely in favor of crabs and not the watermen who chased after them. It was true, however, that crab stocks were in serious trouble.

“A waterman brought in to testify before the legislators back in January admitted that the number of crab pots required to snag a hundred blue crabs had climbed from ten to fifty,” Andy explained. “And last year, hard-crab landings dipped below thirty million pounds and the downward trend is continuing.”

Harsh words such as “fully exploited,” “overcapitalization,” and “overfishing” were fired at Buren Stringle, the head of the Tangier Island Watermen’s Association and the island’s only
police officer. Legislators set a lower limit for the number of crab pots the watermen could toss into state waters. Subsequently, a Blue Crab Advisory Commission was appointed, and it further tightened the restrictions by declaring that all pots would be tagged, thus making it easier for the marine patrol to count them and see who was cheating. The sanctuary was expanded to cover four hundred and sixty-five square miles of water at least thirty-five feet deep from the Maryland line to the mouth of the Chesapeake Bay near Virginia Beach—a crafty political move that would allow a million more pregnant crabs to safely reach vital spawning grounds.

“In truth, the sanctuary does no good at all,” Andy summarized to Hammer. “The area of the bay deemed off limits happens to be a deep trough that would require extraordinary lengths of rope for every crab pot dropped in the water. The watermen have been keeping this bit of intelligence to themselves, and so far no one on the mainland, except possibly me, knows that Tangier Island has no interest in the new sanctuary or is the least bit opposed to it. Meanwhile, pregnant crabs continue to travel to their usual spawning grounds, indifferent to their new protection and not entirely aware of it.”

“Okay. So forget the sanctuary idea,” Hammer decided with disappointment. “But I can’t think what real leverage we have, Andy. The way you’ve described it, Virginia really doesn’t care much about the plight of the watermen, and the watermen aren’t really that interested in Virginia’s concerns, either.”

“The root of all problems,” Andy commented. “Nobody cares.”

“Let’s don’t become cynical.”

“What we need is some good ol’ fashioned community policing,” he said. “And I can do that through Trooper Truth.”

“Oh no,” she warned. “No more . . .”

“Yes!” Andy countered. “Let’s at least give it a chance. Trooper Truth can ask his readers to help with our cases.”

“Including Popeye!” Windy was suddenly in the doorway. “Oh, wouldn’t that be wonderful if we could get Trooper Truth to ask for help finding Popeye?”

“What?” Andy asked, shocked. “What do you mean,
find
Popeye?”

Pain passed through Hammer’s eyes.

“Don’t be mad at me,” Windy said to her. “I know you think I just let the cat out of the box, but maybe we can find Popeye. Maybe it’s not too late, even if she did disappear months ago when you let her out to potty.”

“That’s enough, Windy,” Hammer said again. “Please leave and shut the door.”

“Well, okay, but I’m sending Trooper Truth an e-mail right away and telling him about Popeye.”

She left and shut the door. Hammer sighed.

“How could you?” Andy whispered, outraged and deeply saddened by what had happened and that Hammer had never told him. “How could you not call me the minute Popeye disappeared?”

“You were off on one of your research trips, Andy,” Hammer said in a defeated way. “And I don’t know why else, but, well, I just haven’t wanted to talk about it. There’s nothing that can be done. Hold on.” She held up a hand. “Now what is it, Windy?” she said to her secretary, who had just opened the door.

“Richmond Detective Slipper is on the line,” Windy announced.

“Thank you.” She waited until Windy shut the door again and shot Andy an ominous look as she picked up the phone and said, “Hammer.”

She listened and scratched down notes for what seemed a very long time and Andy could tell by the expression on her face that she was being told something serious and unpleasant. In fact, she looked a bit unnerved.

“As I told you yesterday,” she finally said, “the word is, nobody knows who he is. But I wouldn’t be so quick to assume that just because the name Trooper Truth was . . . Yes, right. Of course, you have to follow every lead, and of course I’ll let you know, and please keep me posted.” She hung up and turned upset, anxious eyes on Andy. “The detective on the murder case—the woman found on Belle Island. She’s been identified.”

“Who?” Andy asked.

“Trish Thrash. A twenty-two-year-old white female who went by the nickname T.T. Apparently she worked for the
state and was a closet lesbian who was known to pick up other women in area bars . . .”

“What do you mean,
Trish Thrash?
” Andy asked, baffled and upset.

Hammer went on to explain that Trish Thrash was the victim’s name and that the city police believed the homicide was hate-related and committed by a male, possibly by whoever Trooper Truth was.

“That’s insane!” Andy blurted out at the top of his voice. “I was . . . Well, I couldn’t possibly have . . .”

“Of course you didn’t do it!” Hammer replied as she got up and began pacing at top speed. “Jesus Christ! I knew this was a bad idea! And no more writing those goddamn . . . !”

“
No!
You can’t punish me for what some other asshole did.” He jumped up from his chair and grabbed her arm, not roughly but firmly enough to make her stop pacing and look at him. “Listen.” He lowered his voice. “Please. I’ll . . . I’ll get this straight and see what I can do to help. I’ve never heard of Trish Thrash and don’t see how this can possibly be related to me or Trooper Truth or anything that has to do with . . . Well, let’s just hope the Richmond police don’t do anything as stupid as releasing that detail about Trooper Truth to the media.”

He was beside himself. If he was forced to reveal Trooper Truth’s true identity, then not only would a year’s work end up in the trash, but Hammer would be in hot water with the governor for allowing one of her troopers to publish uncensored by her and especially by the governor.

“Maybe I can somehow reassure the governor that Trooper Truth isn’t some deranged killer,” Andy thought out loud. “And I’ll get my readers involved in helping solve problems and bringing about justice in the Thrash case and others.”

“What we need is to get word to the governor that we have an urgent situation on Tangier Island,” Hammer replied in frustration. “Not talk to him about a murder that’s not even our jurisdiction!”

“Maybe I can track him down for you,” Andy suggested as Trooper Macovich walked into the office and overheard the tail end of their conversation.

“He always eats at Ruth’s Chris Steak House on Wednesday nights,” Macovich said.

“You two find him,” Hammer ordered, adding to Macovich, “and maybe he won’t remember you and the pool incident. For God’s sake, whatever you do, don’t play pool again.”

“Wooo,” Macovich agreed, shaking his big head. “Don’t you worry. No way I’m ever playing with that girl, not for no reason.”

“Don’t play with anyone in the mansion.” Hammer wanted to make sure Macovich was clear on this.

He frowned a little behind his dark glasses. “But what if the governor orders me to?”

“Let him win.”

“Woooo. That ain’t gonna be easy. He can’t see nothing, Sup’intendent Hammer. Half the time, he don’t even hit the cue ball. You know, he catch a little flash of white and go after it with his stick. And last time I was there, I set down a foam cup on the side of the table and he smack my coffee all the way across the billiard room.”

“You shouldn’t be putting your coffee down on furniture in the mansion in the first place,” Hammer told him.

“I didn’t think he saw me do it,” Macovich said.

 Dr. Faux was tied up in a chair and blindfolded by a bandanna that smelled like brackish water. Not especially frightened, he was mostly irritated and terribly inconvenienced. As time passed, his hopes for a speedy release and fifty thousand dollars cash were beginning to fade. He was no longer sure what the Islanders’ intentions were, but they were not known for being violent.

In fact, as far as he knew, the biggest crime in the history of the island was the theft of a safe from Sallie Landon’s house several years back. She had had her life’s savings in it, and everybody on the island had chipped in so she wouldn’t have to depend solely on the original recipes she sold in the little box she had nailed to a telephone pole near the post office. The crime was never solved.

Dr. Faux’s captors had moved him out of the examination room and into an unknown location inside the clinic where he could hear bicycles rattle past an open window that allowed a constant flow of humid air to circulate flies and mosquitoes. It would do no good for him to call out for help because the entire population was in on the conspiracy and seemed to have turned on him. For the first time in the better part of half a century, Dr. Faux had time to reflect upon his life. He sighed as he pondered lost opportunities and his unwillingness to
become a missionary to what was then the Congo. God had called Sherman Faux, and little Shermie had basically hung up on the Great Creator and then refused to answer at all anymore. At last, God was punishing Dr. Faux, more than likely. Here the dentist was imprisoned on a tiny, remote island out in the middle of nowhere, and unless he came up with a clever plan, his Medicaid scamming days might very well be over.

“I’m sorry,” Dr. Faux told God. “I had it coming. Kind of like Jonah saying he wasn’t going to Nineveh, so you said ‘Guess again’ and had that big whale swallow him up and spit him out on Nineveh, after all. I ask you not to make me wake up and find myself in the Congo, God. Or Zaire, as it was called last I heard. It’s bad enough to be where I am right this minute.”

Fonny Boy was sitting on the floor, leaning against a wall inside the medical supply room. He was hot and itchy from insect bites and already weary of guard duty, but when the dentist had started praying out loud, clearly oblivious to Fonny Boy’s presence, he had slowly lifted anchor and puttered away from his favorite fantasy of pulling in a crab pot and finding a treasure chest in it that was filled with gold and jewels. His obsession with sunken ships was probably the only reason he could force himself out of bed every summer, holiday, and weekend morning at two o’clock when his father woke him up and they headed off to the docks in the golf cart. As Fonny Boy ate a fried oyster or crab breakfast sandwich, he would imagine himself hauling up a crab pot and finding it was snagged on a sunken picaroon ship, or maybe one of the crabs would be holding on to a gold coin or a diamond.

There were several self-published legends of the island that most of the gift shops sold, and Fonny Boy had read them all because of his interest in maritime history and salvage. His favorite story was of an incident that occurred in February of 1926 when strange winds and tides lowered the shallow waters of the bay just offshore and revealed the hulk of an old rotting ship, a picaroon ship, Fonny Boy was sure, because a battle-ax was found along with fine china and other artifacts that the watermen quickly sold to a visiting antique dealer from New York.

Unfortunately, the waters rose rapidly and the ship was
never seen again. Fonny Boy had done the math. If the picaroon ship had survived several centuries in the bay, then certainly another quarter of a century or so wouldn’t have made that much difference. It was still out there somewhere, but unfortunately, no one remembered exactly where it was sighted during that long-ago cold winter.

The other possibility Fonny Boy entertained was that the sunken ship might be a Spanish one that in 1611 stopped at Old Point Comfort in what is today Hampton, Virginia. The ship might have been sent by King Phillip III of Spain to spy on the people of Jamestown and see what they were up to. Other historians believe the Spaniards were, in fact, searching for another vessel that had sunk in the area. Why go to all that trouble unless there was treasure on the ship that sank? Fonny Boy reasoned. There wasn’t much going on in the new English settlement except the people were hiding inside the fort to avoid the Naturals, who were very fickle, from what Fonny Boy had read—one minute bringing the settlers maize, the next minute greeting them with a storm of arrows.

Fonny Boy had always taken sides with the Naturals. He supposed that to the Naturals, the settlers were rather much like the strangers the Islanders tolerated most of the time but didn’t particularly trust or like. Why was it that strangers were always looking down on people who were Naturals or local? Strangers ought to be called Unnaturals and should be pitied because they are the ones who need taxi rides and don’t know the best place to eat or how to grow corn and have to pay a quarter to peek at peelers, as if molting blue crabs were some exotic creature like a panda bear or an anaconda.

Dr. Faux had fallen silent as the sun slipped into the Chesapeake Bay and restaurants and gift shops closed sharply at six. Although the dentist couldn’t see because of the brackish-smelling bandanna, he could feel the temperature dramatically shift as night began to cloak the island and a cold front blew in. It was clear he would not be going anywhere anytime soon. No one, including the Coast Guard, visited Tangier after dark, when fog rolled in and obscured the eroding shore and what was left of the airstrip. Only the watermen’s work boats could move about freely when conditions were poor, but that did Dr. Faux not a bit of good, since
he knew from experience that the Islanders were stubborn and not inclined to change their minds. No one was going to let him go home, perhaps ever.

“You keep me here tied up like this,” Dr. Faux said out loud, because he thought he had heard a stirring inside the room a few minutes ago, “then who’s going to take care of your teeth? That you in here, Fonny Boy?”

“Yea.” Fonny Boy’s answer was followed by several blows on the harmonica.

“I would like to know what the plan is, if you don’t mind telling me,” the dentist said.

“Depends on the gov’ner,” Fonny Boy repeated what the watermen had discussed among themselves after taking the dentist hostage. “If the stripes stay on the road, then there is no hope for you. We had wer fill of Virginia and are sick and tard of the way we is treated and don’t want to go to the jail for speeding in the golf carts and don’t want NASCAR building a racetrack so they can make a barrel. And we plan to really fix you for what you done to wer teeth, making out that you care when it ain’t so!”

“NASCAR?” Dr. Faux was stumped. “Have you ever been to a NASCAR race, Fonny Boy?”

“Yea!” he exclaimed, lifting his eyebrows and tightening his jaw, meaning he was talking backward and saying
no.

“Well, I can’t tell if you mean yes or no, but I assure you, NASCAR has no intention of coming here and there is no barrel of money to be made from stock-car racing or anything else on this island.”

“The police say so. And if the gov’ner don’t do what he orte do and stop steering us up, we going to set out all the bateaus and form a blockate around the island and raise a flag with a jimmy on it and burn up the Virginia flag! And you made a barrel here on Tanger, now ain’t that right, Dr. Faux?”

“You’re going to raise a flag with a male crab on it and commit treason?” Dr. Faux was shocked and persisted in side-stepping the boy’s accusations about the dentist’s honesty. “That would cause another civil war, Fonny Boy. Do you realize the serious consequences of such a hostile act?”

“All I know is we had wer fill,” Fonny Boy said with defiance and a bit of a swagger in his voice.

“Well, I tell you, son, I’ve visited your island for many years,” Dr. Faux confessed. “And it’s no coincidence that I don’t choose to live here. My point is, if you want a chance in life, Fonny Boy, you’ve got to do the smart thing, which in this case is listening to me.”

“Listening to you is not much count,” Fonny Boy replied with a few toots on the harmonica, not letting on that his interest was snagged by what might just prove to be a transaction of some sort.

“Listening to me has plenty of value. Because doing the smart thing might just give you an opportunity. Maybe there’s something special out there for you, Fonny Boy. But if you go along with these people that have me locked up in here, there’s a good possibility you’ll end up in trouble and spend the rest of your life on this tiny, eroding island, selling crabs and souvenirs and playing the harmonica. You got to help me get out of here, and if you do, maybe I’ll take you with me back to Reedville and you can work in my office and learn to drive a real car.”

“If I carry you to shore, what you gonna do? Throw silver dollars at me?” Fonny Boy asked sarcastically as he blew out an unrecognizable rendition of “Yankee Doodle.”

“You know what a recruiter is?” Dr. Faux said smoothly. “Well, I’ll tell ya. I could put you to work going around and finding needy children whose teeth require a lot of work their families can’t afford. You bring them in to my Reedville clinic and I’ll give you ten dollars for every kid. When you learn to drive, I’ll find you a car. We don’t have to come back here to this impoverished little island ever again.”

Fonny Boy had a lot to think about and it was time to head home for supper. He walked out of the storage room, shutting the door hard to make sure the dentist heard him leave, and failing to inform him that water and a tray of food would be delivered momentarily. Fonny Boy felt a pinch of guilt as he got on his bicycle and pedaled away from the clinic, still working on “Yankee Doodle.” Maybe he should have been a little kinder to Dr. Faux and told him food and drink were on the way. Maybe he should work harder to do what he had been taught in church, but getting involved in military and mutinous activities sharpened Fonny Boy’s edge.

He felt a bit feisty and in a mood to commit mischief and mayhem. He played his harmonica loudly and rode his bicycle faster than usual, speeding up full tilt when he crossed the two painted lines on Janders Road. Fonny Boy pumped furiously through chilly air and moonlight, scarcely acknowledging his aunt Ginny, who was headed to the clinic in a golf cart.

“Heee!” she called out to him as they passed each other in the road. “Doncha play the juice harp in the evening! You gonna drive the neighbors star-crazy!”

Fonny Boy tooted out a loud, rebellious reply and wished he hadn’t swallowed the cotton again. Last time, it had clogged him up for a week, moving through his guts and criks with the slow purpose of a glacier until finally working its way out when he was in the bateau with his father, not a toilet or land in sight.

When Ginny walked into the storeroom moments later carrying a tray of crab cakes, hot rolls, and margarine, Dr. Faux was praying again.

“. . . Amen, dear Lord. I’ll get back to you later. That you, Fonny Boy?” the dentist asked hopefully. “Lord have mercy, it’s freezing in here. Where’d this winter weather come from all of a sudden?”

“Blowed in from they bay. I got supper and water.”

“I need to use the bathroom.” Dr. Faux was embarrassed to talk this way in front of a woman whose mouth he had excavated and exploited for years.

Ginny said “yea,” as long as he promised to return to the folding chair and didn’t mind her tying him up and covering his eyes with the bandanna again.

“If you tie me up and put on the bandanna, I won’t be able to eat,” Dr. Faux complained as Ginny freed him and he squinted in the dim light of the storeroom.

“I’ll sit right here without you don’t come back from doing your business, and on the back of that, I didn’t come over for to tell you nothing.” It was Ginny’s way of saying she’d leave him alone while he used the toilet, unless he tried something sneaky, like escaping, and in addition, she had no intention of giving him any sort of information.

While the dentist headed to the bathroom, she settled herself on a box of free antibacterial soap samples and ruminated
about the speed traps, NASCAR taking over the island, and what the trooper had suggested about the Islanders’ criminal dental care. She and several other women had convened at Spanky’s and set out to spread the word to the entire Tangier population by posting signs on chain-link fences and all the shops and restaurants. They had even told the ferryboat captains, who promised to incorporate the NASCAR news and dental fraud alerts into their guided tours as they carried visitors back and forth between Crisfield and Reedville.