Luis Grega waited quietly in his rental van on Lubec’s Main Street in the predawn darkness, smoking a cigarette and watching the utter stillness before him. He’d never seen a street so devoid of life before, especially given his exposure to Boston. The double row of weather-beaten, two-story shingled buildings; the lumpy, uneven paving; the two parked cars, grand total, facing him at the end of the block. All of it seemed like a documentary about the Yukon. He couldn’t believe he was on the threshold of making towns like this his new theater of operations.
But he wasn’t going to deny good fortune when it stared him in the face. Matt Mroz had been a decent boss for starters, but the money should have been better, security tighter, and the hours less crazy. Good enough for when Luis was young and stupid, but no longer. Through Alan, he’d caught a glimpse of better things, which at first had seemed like an acceptable step up. But after hearing from Jill Zachary that the cops were still chasing the fantasy that he’d killed one of their own, everything had changed. He didn’t have the time to stay in middle management, kissing ass, hoping for a
break, and now waiting to be shot by some cowboy for the one crime he hadn’t committed. He hadn’t liked Alan’s plan in any case—putting so much emphasis on prescription drugs. He hadn’t seen anything wrong with Roz’s operation. Plus, he was familiar with it; he had no idea what Alan was setting up, and the latter hadn’t been overly forthcoming, which had made Luis pissed off.
So, he’d begun working behind the scenes, using his familiarity to quietly subvert Alan’s plan, including forging alliances with key players like Tatien and DiBernardo.
He had two more crucial moves to enact. After that, he was hoping to earn a little peace and quiet. It had been a troublesome few weeks.
At the far end of the street, a pair of headlights turned the corner and began heading his way. He flashed his own lights once. The car ahead responded in kind. Luis waited.
The car pulled over, nose-to-nose with the van, its engine died, and the dome light came on as the driver’s door opened.
Alan Budney walked over to Grega’s passenger side and slid in beside him.
“Luis, how’re you doing?” he asked.
Luis stuck his hand out for a shake. “I’m doin’. You okay?”
“Yeah. What you got at this time of the day? Better be a slam dunk. I am not a morning person.”
“Me, neither,” said Grega, starting the van, putting it into gear, and pulling out into the street. “But what I got to show you can only be seen now.”
“What is it?”
Grega laughed. “That’s the problem. I’m kinda embarrassed. If I tell you, you’ll think I’m nuts, but it’s still a great idea—a real money maker—and I’m betting you will, too, but only after you see it. It ties into your smuggling-by-sea idea, but with something extra.”
Budney seemed content with that. He settled in and looked out the window at the flat countryside outside as they reached the outskirts of town in under a minute.
Upon leaving the neck of the small peninsula Lubec called home, Grega picked up speed and headed west down Route 189, the van’s headlights the only signs of movement for as far as could be seen.
They chatted a little, but conversation was hard to maintain. They didn’t have the skills, didn’t share a background, and hadn’t yet become familiar with each other.
Four miles down the road, Grega slowed slightly before turning left onto Dixie Road.
“Back toward the water?” Alan asked.
“Yeah—like I told you. What I got is at Hamilton Cove. You know that?”
Alan nodded. “Sure. I passed by there just a few nights ago, doing a test run. You got something anchored there?”
Grega pretended to be embarrassed again and waved it away with his hand. “Yeah—well, you’re right. Still, I want it as a surprise. You really won’t believe this.”
Alan smiled and shook his head. “I didn’t know you were into surprises.”
“Oh,” Grega told him, “you know us. We’re a real sentimental bunch.”
Two and a half miles down Dixie, he turned left again and bumped along for the final two on Boot Cove Road.
“This is really cool,” he said, drawing near, hoping he wasn’t overplaying his hand. “I’ll be bummed if you don’t like this.”
Finally, he stopped the van and got out, letting his enthusiastic body language set the mood. He walked in front of the bumper and aimed toward the shore of the cove, a granite and evergreen-lined semicircle of water, barely visible in the gloom. He didn’t look back, encouraging Budney to follow suit by example. He heard the van door open behind him.
“Hey Luis, hang on,” Alan called out.
Grega didn’t give him the chance to see the small open boat with the chain and concrete weights ready and waiting. He knew what Alan had done to Roz and Harold, and knew also that it would be seconds before Alan realized how stupid he’d been to come this far. That’s where inexperience got you in trouble.
Grega shot him twice in the chest as he came into comfortable range. Alan went down without a sound.
Joe walked back and sat on the stern rail of the forty-foot Maine Marine Patrol boat that had been carrying him around for the past two hours. He was feeling a variety of emotions, most of them conflicting, and none of them matching the general mood of his companions.
He stared up past the wheelhouse roof and took in the huge, featureless void of the night sky. High, thick, invisible clouds utterly blocked its usual array of stars
and made him feel as if he might suddenly be sucked up into some black hole. It was perfectly calm—not the hint of a breeze, with a mere swell under the hull. There were lights here and there, marking a thin line between the indistinguishable water and the absent sky—along with, of course, the eerie cluster of Navy radio towers, fifteen miles away. Some lights were clumped together as on the mainland, especially around now distant Jones-port, while others were isolated and forlorn, as on the island nearest to them, the current source of their interest.
There, they were close enough that he could make out several buildings—a home, a boathouse, a large dock with a cabin at its end. A substantial lobster boat was moored at the dock. It all belonged to Wellman Beale.
Joe didn’t need to be here. There was no known connection between Beale and Luis Grega, other than that they’d both worked for Matt Mroz at some point. Instead, Cathy Lawless’s enthusiasm the night they’d tailed Bernie to that meeting with Beale’s cousin had grown into a passion to give Beale a closer look—and resulted in both an ICE-sponsored warrant and a feeling inside Joe that he’d finally lost control of his case.
As he’d said to Sam on the phone, it was all good work against bad people. But how did it help solve Brian Sleuter’s murder? The emotional weight attached to a cop killing had struck them all at first and made of Joe and Lester favored guests. But the assumption from the start was that since they all knew who’d shot Sleuter, time and luck would probably play bigger roles in catching him than any huge outlay of effort. Matt Mroz’s enterprise coming under new management, on the other
hand, was happening here and now, and begging for immediate action.
Joe could only hope that since Grega was apparently also involved, he might simply surface as a result of all the stirring. Also, given that Willy and Sam weren’t faring any better in Addison County, Joe hadn’t much to lose by sticking around Maine a little longer. For one thing, although ICE was still on board because of the continuing reference to transborder drug smuggling, it wasn’t going to be long before Lenny Chapman pulled up stakes and returned to Boston, ending the task force entirely.
A shadow separated itself from the huddle inside the wheelhouse, and a tall, lanky form made its way toward Joe’s perch.
“Taking in the night air?” Lester Spinney asked, sitting down beside him.
“More or less,” Joe answered, before admitting, “probably less. I’m starting to think we may have outlived our usefulness here.”
Lester laughed gently. “You could say that—I feel like I should be offering to hold people’s hats and coats. Still, tonight should be interesting.”
“The notorious Wellman Beale?” Joe asked.
“You don’t think so?”
Joe shrugged. “Oh, sure. He’s dirty as hell and has been for a long time. He hated Mroz, and now his fortunes have suddenly improved.”
“But?” Lester asked leadingly.
Joe shifted his position. “Oh, hell. I don’t know. I guess I just can’t get worked up about it. I want Grega. Cynical as it sounds, Beale is Maine’s problem.”
Lester nodded quietly, and Joe felt suddenly embarrassed.
“That came out wrong,” he said softly.
His companion patted his shoulder. “No. It actually came out okay. Gotta be realistic, Joe. None of us can do it all, and we all have our own fires to put out.”
The door of the wheelhouse opened and Kevin Delaney stuck his head out. “Guys? We’re about to rock and roll.”
Beale’s island was remote and far off the Maine coast, but it wasn’t very large. Their flotilla of four boats proved big enough to hit it pretty much at the same time and from the only four available approaches. Joe’s boat, carrying the brass, got to land at the dock.
It also tied off just a little after the others, since it also wasn’t carrying the entry team types, armed to the teeth and fully protected with Kevlar. Joe’s team, of course, landed with weapons drawn, but from the small amount of noise preceding their arrival, none of them expected any great violence.
In fact, once the entire island had been secured, their total human haul came to four: Wellman Beale, two women—one of whom was found sharing his bed—and an old man claiming to be the resident mechanic, and looking it.
Joe and Lester hung back for most of this, fulfilling their roles as guests, knowing how awkward out-of-towners could be during a coordinated action by people used to working together.
As a result, once the all-clear was given, but before they were invited into the main house, the two of them
wandered around the complex for a while, admiring the self-sufficiency of Beale’s tiny empire.
This brought them to the boathouse, already posted with a guard who let them enter with a proprietary smile—the temporary invader enjoying the rule of the roost.
It was a modest building in itself—one-story with two slips—but stoutly built to resist what had to be some occasionally horrific weather. Joe hit the lights—powered by a generator heard chugging in the distance—and was surprised to find that while one of the slips had an appropriately sized powerboat, the other berthed a full-fledged lobster boat, if smaller, older, and more battered than the fancy one docked outside.
“Jeez,” Lester commented. “He’s doing better than I thought.”
“No kidding,” Joe agreed distractedly, studying the contours of their discovery.
“What’s up?” Lester asked him, noticing what appeared to be a growing level of concern.
Joe approached the vessel slowly, picking his way among a scattering of ropes and tools. “I don’t know,” he said cautiously. “There’s something …”
Lester joined him. The lobster boat looked utterly mundane, indistinguishable to him from any of a hundred similar ones that he’d been seeing for days on end. The only two stand-out details were that its algae-green waterline showed it had been docked for a very long time, and that it had been heavily painted, if only in spots, making it look unattractively blotchy.
“It’s like something my kids would do,” Lester commented.
“Take a squint at this,” Joe said, pointing to a white lump mounted just under the outside of the wheelhouse roof. “What’s that look like to you?”
Both men left the berth and stepped into the boat so they could study the object just a foot above their heads.
“A rooster?” Lester suggested. “Looks weird, painted white.”
Joe pulled out a pocketknife, exposed one of its blades, and reached up to the extravagant comb arching over the bird’s head. He scratched away a small spot, revealing a patch of bright red.
“Jesus,” he murmured.
Lester stared at him, concerned by his sudden pallor. “What?”
Instead of answering, Joe entered the open-backed wheelhouse and walked to a much-abused wooden cabinet in the opposite corner from the wheel. Once there, he lifted its lid, revealing a scattering of maps and navigational books.
But he wasn’t interested in the contents. Lester saw him staring at the painted surface of the lid’s underside.
“Come here,” Joe requested and pointed across the cabin. “And bring that light.”
Lester stepped up next to him with the flashlight.
Joe tapped on the lid’s wooden surface. “Right here.”
Both men bent at the waist, putting their faces inches from the fresh paint job.
“What do you see?”
Lester saw two distinct sections of writing, only visible under the thick slather of white because they’d originally been put there with a ballpoint pen, which had left a faint furrow.
“I don’t understand the first line,” he said, reading it clumsily. “But it looks like,
‘Heróis do mar, nobre povo,’
whatever that means.”
“‘Heroes of the sea, noble people,’” Joe translated, his voice heavy with dread, explaining, “It’s the opening line of the Portuguese national anthem, just like that rooster is a symbol of Portugal—the so-called Galo de Barcelos.”
He then tapped his finger on the lower section.
Lester shifted his light to a sharper angle from the wooden surface and said, “Looks like names. I can figure out José, Evie or maybe Evelyn, Steve, something like Abe at the beginning, and a couple of others I can’t read.”
“Abílo,” Joe said.
“What?”
“It’s not Abe,” Joe said dully. “It’s Abílo. This boat belonged to Lyn’s father. I recognized it from the pictures in her apartment. She told me about the rooster, the anthem, and how they all signed this lid, including her daughter and husband—so her dad would always feel them nearby when he fished.”
Lester straightened and studied his boss’s haggard expression. “I’m not sure I get it,” he said carefully.
Joe explained: “Everyone thought this boat was lost at sea years ago, with both men on board.”