Authors: Randall Peffer
MICHAEL Decastro is crashing. He’s splayed out in his orange foul-weather overalls, facedown on his berth in the forecastle of the fishing trawler
Rosa Lee.
His head is buried beneath his pillow, when he feels something shaking his shoulder.
“Get up, Mo. You got company!” His father Caesar’s voice impatient, annoyed maybe.
“Christ, Dad. What? Huh …? Tell them to come back later. I’m wrecked.”
He has just spent the last thirty-six hours of their trip home from Georges Banks nursing a sick fuel system on the fishing boat’s diesel. At one point they had drifted for hours, rolling viciously in twelve-foot seas south of Nantucket while he changed out all of the fuel filters, drained sumps, bled the lines. But now he is finally off watch. The
Rosa Lee
at the dock in New Bedford, lumpers unloading the gray totes of iced haddock.
“She don’t look like she’s going to leave. She has that kind of come-hell-or-high water look on her face.”
“Who?”
“Some pretty little thing. You been keeping secrets from me?”
“Huh?”
“You been romancing
uma menina?”
“Where?”
“I don’t know where you do your tom-catting. Your time ashore is your own business.”
“No. Where is she?” He takes the pillow off his face, sits up.
“Wheelhouse. She was looking kind of wild-eyed, nervous, so I had her sit down in the steering chair. You gone and got some poor girl in—”
“Jesus. Hell, Dad! I have no idea what in the … who … I was so asleep. A woman? Are you setting me up? Tell me it’s not Filipa, tell me this is not another lame attempt by you and Tio Tommy to patch things up between Filipa and me.”
Caesar Decastro gives his only son a fake wounded look. Boyish, innocent. He looks much younger than his fifty-five years. A Portagee fish boat captain with piercing eyes. The green fisherman’s sweater and yellow slicker mask none of his wiry frame. Longish salt-and-pepper hair looks like it has not been combed since he left port for the fishing banks six days ago.
“Dad?”
“Go see for yourself, buddy boy. Destiny waits.”
When he comes up the stairs into the wheelhouse, he sees her sitting in the captain’s chair before she spots him. And for a second he just stops, stares. Tries to make sense of what he is seeing, read his visitor.
Her skin is darker. But not African. Her facial features very fine. Her cheekbones high with a slight reddish tint that is not make-up because it spreads across the bridge of her nose. In her long, camel hair overcoat and maroon scarf she seems high-born. Regal is the word that comes to mind … until he sees the way she is wringing her hands in her lap, the bitten-off fingernails.
She seems to sense his presence, turns her gaze away from the brilliant blue of New Bedford Harbor, the snowy docks, roofs, steeples of Fairhaven on the far shore. Sees him staring. Twitches with surprise. “Oh!”
“My father said you …”
She drops out of the chair, looks petite now that she is standing in front of him. Shorter than Filipa, than his long-gone fiancée.
“You must think I’m pretty strange, coming here like—”
“We don’t get too many visitors. Not women.” He almost says except for his mom, before she died. Thinks better of it. Too complicated. “But … anyway … well … Welcome to the
Rosa Lee.
I’m Michael Decastro. I don’t think we’ve—”
“No. But I’ve heard all about you. My mother was your landlady on the Cape, when you lived over her liquor store in Chatham. She showed me your pictures. In the papers, the magazines.”
He feels something growl in his belly. “That was somebody else.”
She smiles a little,
like maybe not.
Her cheeks and nose really start to color.
“You’re going to think I’m really crazy now … but you’re my only hope.”
“For what?”
“… I need a lawyer. A really smart lawyer. With a heart.”
“I’m not in that business anymore.”
“But you don’t understand. A really wonderful girl is dead. There’s reason to believe somebody killed her.”
“I think you need to talk to the police.”
“They don’t care. They say it was a suicide.”
“Maybe it was. The police are pretty good at their jobs.”
“Her best friends say this was murder. They say this may not be the last. They’re afraid. And so am I.”
“I think you need to talk to a P.I.”
She heaves a heavy breath. “My mother thought someone should give you a medal. She showed me the articles. She called you Robin Hood.”
He scowls, remembering all the hype that came in the wake of the Provincetown Follies murder case. His client Tuki Aparecio. The biracial drag queen from Bangkok he helped escape a frame-up. The one who vanished into thin air … and left him feeling half-dead.
He rubs his eyes, steps into the center of the wheelhouse, stares out at the harbor, spins the ship’s wheel for something to do with his hand. “I’ll tell you something. Your mother is a sweet, kind lady—”
“Was. She died last fall.”
His heart stops for a second, thinks of losing his own mother, Maria. “I … I’m sorry. Alice was one of my favorites … But that time out on the Cape. That time I lived over your mother’s store in Chatham was the worst time of my life. I had this case in Provincetown …”
“Alice said it was hard on you.”
He nods, spins the wheel with more energy.
He doesn’t say it destroyed his relationship with his fiancée. That after those stories in the papers, every nutcase east of Hartford started calling him for representation. Doesn’t say it has been a lot of months since he quit his job as a public defender, turned off his phone, left Chatham. Since he started fishing again. On the
Rosa Lee.
She must know all this. Someone in the P.D.’s office told her, and told her where to find him.
She approaches him from behind.
“You gave people hope. You made people think that sometimes the little guy, the stranger, the outcast, the poor person could maybe get a fair shake.”
He feels her nearness, stops fiddling with the wheel. Keeps his back to her. “There was a time when I thought maybe I could do something to save the world. When I wanted to do my share. But the cost was too high. I found out I couldn’t take a case without getting emotionally involved.”
“But that’s what makes you different. That’s what makes you great.”
He turns. Looks down into her black eyes. “No. That’s what makes a bad lawyer. I can’t help you. Really.”
The wheelhouse is suddenly boiling hot, reeking of stale coffee, Doritos, diesel fumes. This is uncomfortable. He just wants her to leave.
“I’m sorry. I bothered you. It was a terrible mistake, a vain.” He sees her upper lip beginning to quiver. She turns away, looks around for an escape, a door. Can’t find it. “Damn me! I must have been out of my every loving …”
“Don’t cry.”
“I’m not crying. I just can’t find my way out of—” Suddenly she doubles over, hugging herself across her chest.
A sob bursts from her core, dark and heavy.
“Look, I’ve got a bunch of gear I got to weld and—”
“I’m going.”
“Sorry … I don’t know what to say. The law just ripped my heart into little pieces. You know what that feels like?”
She wipes back some tears on her face. “It’s how I felt when my mother passed. How I feel right now … OK? Don’t you have a mother?”
He could just scream.
“Give me a big hug, Mo,” she says.
“
We may not have all the time in the world,
meu menino.”
He’s not sure what she’s telling him, can’t quite figure out why she has driven all the way down here to Chatham on the Cape from Nu Bej.
But now here she is. Maria. His mom. Taking his hand, hugging him to her chest as they stand in the shadow of the band concert gazebo. This bright, late-October day. The leaves on the maple trees in Kate Gould Park a faded yellow, red, brown. Falling in slow-motion spirals.
“I’m leaving town,” he says, staring off at a fisherman in a pick-up coasting along Main St.
He thinks maybe she has come because she knows, a mother’s intuition, that he has quit his job with the law firm, resigned as a public defender. That he already has his clothes and books stuffed into garbage bags in the little studio over the liquor store down the street.
“I know this is a bad time for you. That case with the drag queen. You put your heart and soul into—”
“It’s OK, Mom. I’m coming home. I’m going to start fishing again with Dad and Tio Tommy.”
She pulls back to arm’s length, leads him to a seat on a bench.
“That’s why I’m here. I wish you would reconsider.”
She’s looking oddly pale, thin. Almost as thin as the drag queen Tuki. When did she lose the weight? All his life she has been a fleshy earth mother with soft caramel skin. Wild, black curls, sparkling brown eyes, a laugh that rolls through a crowd and makes everyone smile. Not a Portagee Princess like his ex, Filipa. But a woman whose royalty roots in her capacity to make everyone around her feel safe, admired, with the touch of her hand, her boisterous smile.
“What’s the matter, Mom?”
“You’re so good at the law, Mo. Don’t give up all that you’ve worked for just because your client has disappeared. Think about what you did. You actually found the real killer in that Provincetown Follies case.”
“Is this why you came? You’re trying to give me a build-up?”
“Hey, you’re my talented son. Can’t a mother be proud?”
He smiles.
“
Yeah, but something’s up. I can tell. Why don’t you want me to come home? Why don’t we have all the time in the world?”
She takes a deep breath, seems to wheeze as she inhales.
“Things are not so good at home.”
“Between you and Dad?”
“Not exactly.”
“Well what then?”
She inhales deeply again, holds his eyes firmly in her gaze.
“
The doctor says I have a cancer growing in my ovaries.”
“Shit!” The word explodes from his mouth.
“
Yeah, really. Shit!”
She puts her head on his chest and lets him hold her.
“I’m definitely coming home. You’re going to need surgery and—”
“The cancer has already spread.”
“Cristo!
Does Dad know?”
“He was with me at the doctor’s.”
“Why …? I mean, I don’t understand how this kind of …?” His voice breaks. He can’t find any more words.
“Remember when you were a teenager. How I used to tell you to go gently, go slowly with your girlfriends? To stand in awe?”
“You said be patient, a woman’s body holds a thousand mysteries.”
“Well, this is one of them,
meu menino.”
HE can’t believe he’s back in Cambridge, in Harvard Square, ordering a second double-espresso in the little Spanish café where he used to court Filipa. But, OK, he’s here. The dutiful son. For his mother. And for Alice Patterson.
Alice of Chatham. Alice the sweet. Dead Alice. Indian Alice. Mother Alice. Alice who used to leave hot three-bean casseroles covered in tin foil outside his apartment door. Alice who said a busy public defender could not live on pizza and beer alone. Alice who cried when he told her about the end of his engagement to Filipa. Alice who offered him free rent after he quit the law. Alice whose son is a mess with booze, whose daughter a wreck with loss.
He said he would meet her here. Neutral territory. Not New Bej. Not the fancy prep school where she works. But now she is a half hour late. He is having queasy thoughts that maybe any minute Filipa will pop in here—she still lives in Cambridge—and he will have to deal with a boatload of guilt and sadness and …
This whole thing is a freaking mistake.
“Michael?”
He looks over his shoulder, sees a woman’s form, stiffens, turns.
He sees the cinnamon tint on the cheeks, the nose. Exhales. Not Filipa, thank god. This new person. Meeting here in this café was her idea. Not his. For four years of undergraduate school, Pamplona was her oasis at Harvard. A Spanish
querencia
for an Indian princess.
Awasha.
Her name short for Awashonks. She has told him proudly that she is the direct descendant of her namesake. When local Wampanoags clashed with colonists in 1675, King Philip’s War, Awashonks was the
squaw sachem
of the Sakonnet clan. Her support for the English colonists turned the tide of the war against Metacomet, King Philip.
Awashonks, woman warrior.
“I want you to meet someone.”
He sees a Chinese girl standing next to her, a teenager wearing a full set of vintage Red Army gear, including the weird, double-flap hat with the ear lugs. She is taller than Awasha by several inches. Wisps of dyed purple hair push from beneath the hat. A petite diamond nose stud flashes in the light. She eyes him, head-to-toe. Back again.
“She didn’t tell me you were so cute!”
“Gracie!” Awasha elbows the girl.
“Well, Dr. P, you didn’t.” She pulls off the woolen mitten on her right hand, thrusts her large, soft hand into his.
When he tries to free his hand, she squeezes.
“I’m Gracie Liu. Pleased to meet you … And I am not going to let go of your hand until you agree to help us find out who killed my friend, how we stop them from killing again.”
It’s just the two of them now, walking in fits and starts across Harvard Yard. Gracie has taken the subway, the T, back to school for her English class and swimming practice. Awasha stares at a clutch of coeds laughing loudly as they climb the steps to the Widner Library. Has a little memory of college days, girl pals. The bright afternoon sun has turned the snow to slush under their feet.
“I want to apologize for Gracie. She’s a great kid—but she can be a little outspoken. And now she’s wound up tighter than deer gut … with her grief. Fear.”
He nods. An acknowledgement. “She—well both of you, actually—sure know how to get a guy’s attention.”
“I told you. We’re desperate, we’re hurting.”
He nods again, suddenly feels too warm. Maybe from all the caffeine … and now the sunshine. He unzips his black Northface.
“This death has to be scary as hell for both of you. And that other girl, the one I haven’t met. Tory? But … I just don’t see how I fit into this mix. I’m a fisherman.”
“You know you’re more than that.”
“I don’t want the life of a litigator any more. That stress. That feeling of scattering like bits of seaweed in the wind. I know I said I would do what I can for you and Gracie. But I just don’t see—”
“I will pay you … somehow.”
“For what?”
“Counsel.”
“What?”
“You know the legal system, how the police work, how to get their attention. You know what questions to ask to help us find Liberty’s killer. It could be someone right at Tolchester-Coates.”
“I told you before. I think you should be talking to an experienced P.I. You want me to help you find an investigator?”
“We want you. We want someone with courage and conviction. Someone who cares about Liberty. For the underdog. For us.”
He squeezes his cheeks with his hand, a nervous tick. “Look. You don’t really know me. I am not a superhero, maybe not even a good guy. I can give you a whole list of people, starting with my former fiancée and the state police on the Cape, who can testify to that.”
“Please! My mother could not have been wrong about you. And … and don’t you see … we’re drowning here.”
He hears a hitch in her voice, feels the storm rising in her again, just as it did back on the
Rosa Lee
before he agreed to meet her here in the city.
“Christ!”
“What?”
He spots a park bench in the sun just steps ahead. “Why don’t we sit down?”
She stops walking, purses her lips, scowls. Seems to be considering whether or not to give up on this guy, just turn her back and stride away.
“I’m sorry. I must sound like an arrogant, callous bastard.”
“Pretty much, yeah! If you want to know the truth. What happened to the amazing legal navigator who saved Tuki Aparecio?”
He sits down on the bench. The air suddenly gone right out of him. Eyes on his slush-soaked sneakers.
“Your mother used to talk about you some.”
“Did she tell you that I’m stubborn? That I’m used to getting my way?”
“She was really proud of you. She said you had a doctorate in Literature and Native Studies. A really good job, too.”
“And …?”
He opens his mouth, almost says her mother worried about her. Wondered if she would ever find the right man. Wondered when she would stop picking up and putting down lovers like she was shopping for apples.
“What?”
“You’re mother had a big heart.”
She settles beside him. “Don’t fold on me.”
He feels her gaze on his face.
“What makes you so sure Liberty Baker was murdered? What kind of kid was she?”
“Come over to T-C with me. I want to show you some things. You ever go on MySpace?”