part0011

Rodriguez turned around slowly. His expression suggested he didn’t know if Evan was having fun at his expense, implying that he had nothing better to do than cause trouble.

‘I want to ask you about George.’

Rodriguez relented, the scowl on his face softening. Even so, he didn’t get back on board, stood on the jetty with his arms crossed, hands tucked into his armpits.

‘You said George always tells you if he’s going to be away.’

‘Yeah. But it’s nothing official, not like I said. If business is quiet, he takes me out for free sometimes. So I look out for him. I’ve got a bunch of his cards. If somebody comes around looking to go fishing, I give them one of George’s cards, point them in this direction. There’s a lot of competition. He tells me if he’s not going to be here so I don’t send them down here for nothing, send them to someone else.’

He shrugged, that’s the way it works.

‘And he didn’t tell you he was going away.’

Rodriguez rolled his neck, stretched the muscles in his shoulders. Maybe he got stiff sitting in his little hut all day long. Evan didn’t think so, reckoned he was doing it while he made up his mind whether to say more.

‘Are you really a friend of his?’

‘A friend of a friend. But he couldn’t make it. Why?’

Rodriguez looked up at the dock behind him, his mouth turning down again. Evan felt like saying to him, don’t worry, you’ll know about it if they come back. We’ll have another dust shower landing on our heads. He sat down in the fighting chair, put his feet up on the footrest, swiveled from side to side. Then Rodriguez climbed back into the boat, rested his butt against the padded cushions that ran all the way around the stern of the boat.

‘It’s not like that pendejo Ricky thinks. That I make a fuss over nothing, call them every time the slightest little thing happens. But the guy who works the night shift said he heard something going on down here a couple of nights ago. When he got here, there was nobody around. George’s boat looked like it was shut up tight. Except the lights were on. And it was rocking like people were moving around inside. But you can’t go knocking on the door every time you see a boat rocking in the middle of the night. That’s what half the owners buy them for.’

He pushed himself off the side of the boat, made an obscene thrusting gesture with his hips, a smile creasing his face for the first time. Evan smiled with him.

‘But not George?’

Rodriguez shook his head.

‘No. He told me he’s too old for all that. He’d rather be on the water fishing. Fish don’t answer back.’

Evan glanced at Rodriguez’s hand where it was tucked under his armpit, couldn’t see if he was wearing a wedding ring or not. The heartfelt emotion behind his words made him wonder if it was George who preferred being out on the water where the fish didn’t answer back or Rodriguez.

‘I haven’t seen George since then. So when Mr Segal called me about you snoop . . . sorry, looking around, I called the cops.’

Evan nodded like it was understandable, he’d do the same.

‘Is Segal here all the time?’

‘Was he here the other night?’

‘You’d have to ask the night guy. But I don’t think so.’ He glanced over his shoulder at the boat behind, dropped his voice even though Segal was nowhere in sight. ‘The amount he drinks, the gas tank could’ve blown and he’d have slept through it.’

Evan sat up suddenly in the fighting chair as if a big fish had just taken the bait. The mention of drinking had kicked loose something in his mind. Something that had registered as he walked through the salon earlier.

‘Don’t take this the wrong way, but did George drink a lot?’

‘He liked a cold beer when he was out on the water as much as the next guy.’

‘But not hard liquor?’

Rodriguez shook his head.

‘I never saw him drink anything stronger than a light beer. Why?’

Evan nodded backwards towards the open doors to the salon.

‘There’s an empty whisky bottle sitting on the counter in the kitchen—’

Rodriguez stifled a laugh.

‘Right. Galley. Maybe he kept it for the guys who chartered the boat.’

Rodriguez wasn’t buying it.

‘No. Nobody wants a bunch of drunks on board. A couple of cold beers, sure. But not hitting the hard stuff with the sun beating down on your head.’

Neither of them said anything for a while, the potential implications of the unexplained empty bottle on their minds.

‘I gotta get back,’ Rodriguez said. ‘Who knows, maybe somebody’s cat has fallen in the water. That’s what that pendejo Ricky thinks I do all day.’

He handed Evan a business card with the contact details for a number of the marina’s administrative officers, including a couple of cell phone numbers for security. He’d circled the top one in red.

‘Give me a call if you find anything.’

There was one more thing Evan wanted to do before he knuckled down to the massive task ahead of him. He climbed up to the flybridge for the best view, pulled out his phone. Then he framed a shot of the view across all the other boats gleaming in the sun, their masts swaying against the pure blue of the sky, the perfect turquoise of the water stretching to the horizon beyond. He considered taking a video to catch the sound of the rigging clanking in the breeze and the noisy squabbling of the gulls wheeling overhead, decided a photo would do. He sent it to Guillory with a brief message signed by Mr Dry-As-A-Bone.