Rick Boyer: Billingsgate Shoal

He spat a thin stream of dark brown juice over the engine block. He cocked his head slightly with an amused look. Then he shook his head just a tad.

"Mister, I don't know much about you, but I'll say this on a hunch: you overthink things. Right? Am I right? Now when you take a leak, do you think about your kidneys working? Yeah, I bet you do. I don't, mister. That's the difference. This is a hard business. Somebody comes to you, you take them on. You don't have time to think. You've gotta make the buck. Savey-voose?"

"I understand. I just want to know one more thing. Did they say what caused the damage?"

"Yeah. Said they hit something."

"Well what?".

"Now there you go 0verthinkin' again, mister. It wasn't my business. Why don't you ask him?"

"Good idea. How?"

"You got the boat's name and her home port. Go to the Coast Guard and look up the registry. But he never said his name. I didn't ask either. He paid cash and left. Nice new bills… could've been ironed they were so crisp."

"Thanks for the help. I'll go to the Coast Guard. But you can't remember any other detail that might help me? Anything?"

He picked up the gasket and placed it on the engine block, then hefted up the massive head and placed it over the gasket. Sonny's daddy· was amazingly strong. He had also apparently reached the end of his hawser as far as my presence was concerned. He flung a set of engine bolts into his left hand and held a big Snap-On ratchet wrench in the other and glared at me.

"Mister, I'm a busy man. I've told you all I know about that gawdamn boat. If you want to talk to Sonny, come back on Tuesday. We're closed Mondays. Otherwise, please git. Know what a rottweiler is?"

"Uh huh."

"Good. Know what they can do when they're angry?"

"I've heard," I answered, and began to scan the place.

"Well we keep one out back. Name's Roscoe. Turn him loose in here at night to keep an eye on things, ya know? Well he likes to meet people, but usually it tums out they're not so tickled to see him-"

I thanked the man and left. I didn't dawdle. I hadn't the slightest interest in meeting Roscoe, dog lover that I am. I got in the car and cast a final glance at Reliable Marine Service. I started up and did a circle on the pavement.

"Toodle-loo Roscoe," I whispered, and headed up toward the Coast Guard station at Nauset Beach. A gash and a torn seam weren't at all the same thing. I found that interesting.

When I got there the beach parking lot was jammed. I knew it was a tiny station; there was a chance they couldn't help me. I parked and fought my way through throngs of vacationers to the tiny office at the base of the lighthouse. There was a transmitter there and a young man in uniform behind a government-issue gray metal desk. The black plastic tag on his right shirtfront said McNab.

I identified myself as the person who had reported the stranded vessel. He retrieved the report instantly.

"Here it is. Shortly after you called we diverted one of our aircraft to the site. The pilot tried to raise the skipper on the distress frequency but there was no response. Nor was there any distress call, for that matter. We sent the plane back as the tide rose, but the vessel was gone. We're assuming the grounding was intentional."

"She limped into Wellfleet all right, Just barely, but she got there. I want to get in touch with the skipper. Can I look up the boat?"

"Sure. She'll either be registered with the Commonwealth of Massachusetts or another state or, if she's over five tons, she'll be in one of those big books there on the shelf. Do you know her name?" `

We. thumbed through Merchant Vessels of the United States, an enormous two-volume tome that listed every vessel in American waters engaged in commercial activity that was over five net tons. Penelope was a popular name for boats. I counted over sixty of them, arranged alphabetically by their owner's last name. There was no Penelope that listed Boston as her home port.

"Do you think she is over thirty-two feet? It's at that length usually, that a vessel approaches five-ton capacity."

"Over. Positive. I put her length at forty or maybe a bit more."

"Hmmmm. Then she could be new, just documented. Or she could be a noncommercial vessel. You can have a hundred-footer and not have to document it if it's not used for commercial purposes."

"Like a yacht?"

"Exactly. And quite a few trawlers, or trawler-type vessels, are converted into pleasure boats."

The first Penelope listed was owned by Jack Babcock of Newport, Rhode Island. The second was owned by Jesse Bullock of Galveston, Texas. Probably a shrimper. And so it went. There were Penelopes that caught salmon and crab out of Seattle, Penelopes that hunted sailfish and marlin out of Key West, Penelopes that seined for smelt from Sheboygan, that shoved coal barges down the Illinois River, etc., etc. There were seven Penelopes in New England, but none of them were from Bean Town. I copied down all the information listed after each name. This included the vessel's dimensions and tonnage, and her documentation number-which is not the one you sometimes see on the boat's bows. The documentation number is engraved or embossed into the vessel's main beam below decks.

"There's one other thing," said McNab, leafing through the book. "The boat could have listed her home port on the transom instead of her hailing port."

"What's the difference?"

The hailing port is the one that should be listed under the vessel's name. It's the place where she berths, where her skipper lives… her home. The home port may not in fact be the vessel's true home-"

This enigma was sounding more and more as if it had been created by government bureaucracy.

"-but is the port office where the vessel has filed her papers. This is technically not kosher, but some boats do it, particularly ones that tramp around the seaboard a lot."

"So you're suggesting that one of these other Penelope s could be the boat I saw?"

"It's possible. There are ten documentation offices in New England, and so ten possible home ports. But a boat can be documented in one port and show another on her transom."

"But wait a minute. Boston is a home port, right? So if a boat berthed in Boston and was also documented in Boston, then we'd see her listed in this book, right?"

"Uh, right."

"If a boat has been documented in Boston but berths in, say, Nahant, then she would still be listed here under Boston, right'?"

"Uh, yeah. Even though her transom would say Nahant."

"I'm sorry, Mr. McNab, but this is getting murkier instead of clearer."

"OK tell you what," he said. He tapped a pencil, eraser side down, on his blotter officiously, he scowled profoundly, and cleared his throat a few times. I was waiting in the wings. Pretty soon now, he was going to explain it all.

"It's uh, confusing-" he ventured.

"Do you have the slightest idea what's going on about this?"

"No."

At least it was a straight answer.

"Let's try this: supposing a vessel is documented in one of the nine New England ports other than Boston, but spends a considerable amount of time in Boston, OK? Suppose she's documented in New Bedford but hangs out around Boston. Would she then list Boston on her transom? Is that what you were thinking'?"

"Exactly, sir. Thank you."

"Fine. So my job now is to contact these New England skippers who own boats called Penelope and find out."

"What? Find out what?"

"Find out if they laid eyes on the kid, who drowned in the harbor day before last. He was a friend of mine."

"Why do you think they would have seen him?"

"Because I sent him out to look at the Penelope, and I don't like myself much for having done so. I think I might have been indirectly responsible for his death."