W. Griffin: Final Justice

“I’m all right, Dad.”

“What are you going to do for thirty days? Given it any thought?”

“Aside from getting the Porsche fixed… It’s in the impound lot, Peter told me-”

“You’re going to have it repaired?”

“I don’t know. There was a lot of damage.”

“You have time to decide.”

“I may get another car, something less ostentatious, suitable for a starving law student.”

Brewster Payne looked at him for a long moment without saying anything.

“When did you decide that?” he asked finally.

“In the hospital,” Matt said.

“May I comment?”

“I sort of expected ‘Finally, thank God, he’s come to his senses!’ ”

Brewster C. Payne chuckled, then said, “I would be delighted if that’s what you finally decide to do, Matt, but I suggest to you that that’s a very important decision to make, and important decisions should not he made impulsively.”

“Okay.”

“Why don’t you go to the Cape May house and take Final Tort out of sight of shore and watch the waves go up and down for a couple of days? That always helps me to think when I really need to.”

Matt thought that over for a moment, then nodded.

“You’re probably right. You usually are. But I really think my days as the Wyatt Earp of the Main Line are over.”

The theory that using Final Tort V, the Payne fifty-eight-foot Hatteras, as a platform from which, as he watched the waves go up and down, Matt could do some really serious thinking-and, his father hoped, incidentally get some rest- would be an excellent idea did not work out well in practice largely because of her captain.

Her captain, retired Coast Guard chief petty officer Al Bowman, who had been with the Paynes since Matt was ten, when the family boat was Final Tort II, a much smaller Hatteras, was on vacation.

Matt had learned small-boat handling from Chief Bowman, and took not a little pride in knowing he had met Chief Bowman’s criteria in that area. Usually, when they went out on Final Tort V together, the chief would come to the bridge only to hand Matt another beer.

Standing in for him in his absence was another, much younger retired Coast Guard chief petty officer, who was visibly nervous when Matt went to the control console, fired up the engines, and asked him to let loose the lines, with the obvious intent of taking the vessel to sea with himself at the helm.

Even when Matt managed to get the Final Tort V away from the wharf and into the wide Atlantic without running her aground, the stand-in captain never got far from Matt or the controls.

What was worse, however, was that the replacement captain had seen in the Bulletin both the photograph of Matt getting off the Citation with Homer C. Daniels and the photograph of Matt, pistol in hand, in the parking lot near La Famiglia, and naturally presumed Matt would be delighted to tell him all about the murdering rapist, exchanging gunfire with a couple of armed robbers, and what it was really like to be a real-life Stan Colt. And incidentally, what’s Stan Colt really like?

Compounding the problem was that the replacement captain was a really nice guy, the sort of man to whom one could not say, “I wish you’d shut the fuck up!” although that thought did run more than once through Matt’s mind.

And finally, if there were fish in the Atlantic, none of them showed any interest whatever in the bait supposed to tempt them to any of the four lines Matt put in the water.

At 2 P.M., Matt said, “I think we’d might as well call it a day. You want to take her in?”

The replacement captain had been obviously pleased with the request for his professional services.

Matt, sitting in a fishing chair with his feet on the stern rail, watching the churning water, had time for two beers and some private thoughts before he saw that they were nearly at the dock and he would have to go forward and handle the lines.

He had reached no profound conclusions, except that he didn’t want to do this again tomorrow.

When he went forward, he saw a familiar vehicle, a Buick Rendezvous with an antennae farm on its roof, sitting beside the house.

Michael J. O’Hara himself was sprawled in a lawn chaise on the wharf, drinking from the neck of a beer bottle. The chair was from the deck of the house. There was a portable cooler beside Mickey that he’d obviously brought with him.

He waved, but rose from the chair only when Matt called, “Hey, Mickey, want to grab the line?”

On the third try, he managed to do so, whereupon he inquired, “What am I supposed to do with it?”

Matt resisted the temptation to tell him the first thing that came to his mind, and instead said, “Wrap it, twice, around that pole, and then hang on to it.”

When he saw that Mickey had done so, he went aft to handle the stern lines.

I wonder what he’s doing here. Who cares? I really am glad to see him.

“You didn’t answer your phone,” Mickey said, by way of greeting. “I was about to call the cops.”

“On the water, you call the Coast Guard, not the cops,” Matt said. “Write that down.”

“So why didn’t you answer the phone?”

“I didn’t have it turned on, for one thing,” Matt said, helping himself to a beer from the cooler, “and for another, I was probably out of range.”

“You’re not supposed to be,” O’Hara said.

“Well, sorry. My profound apologies.”

“I meant of this,” Mickey said, and patted his shirt pocket, which held what looked to Matt like a bulky cellular telephone. “They advertise worldwide service. They use satellites.”

“Then I guess I didn’t have my phone turned on.”

“I guess not,” Mickey said.

It occurred to Matt that unless they got off the wharf before the reserve captain got off Final Tort V, he would probably be joining them for whatever happened next, which included a couple of beers, for sure, and then probably dinner.

Worse, that he would probably recognize Mickey’s name, and start asking questions about what it was like being a famous journalist, and even worse than that, Mickey would delight in telling him.

“All I had for lunch was a ham and cheese sandwich,” Matt said. “Let’s go get something to eat.”

“Steamed clams,” Mickey announced. “I didn’t have any lunch at all, and steamed clams seems like a splendid idea.”

He picked up the portable cooler and started down the wharf.

“Are we going out tomorrow?” the reserve captain called down from the Final Tort V.

“I’ll call you,” Matt said.

In the Rendezvous, Mickey asked,

“You okay, Matty?”

“I’m fine.”

“I heard you came apart for a while.”

“I came apart for a while, but I’m fine now.”

Mickey handed him his cellular telephone.

“Call Denny Coughlin and tell him. He’s worried about you.”

“He sent you down here to keep me company?”

“He told me how to get here,” O’Hara said. “You have to dial Zero Zero One first.”

“Zero Zero One first?”

“That’s the United States,” O’Hara explained.

“I thought that’s where we were.”

“That’s a worldwide telephone. You have to dial the country code first. Call Denny, for Christ’s sake.”

Matt punched in the numbers, including the Zero Zero One country code, then the Philadelphia area code, and then Commissioner Coughlin’s number, and was finally connected with him.

He told him that he was fine, thank you; that Mickey had found him; that they were in his car en route to get some steamed clams; and that he felt fine, thank you, nothing has changed in the thirty seconds since you asked me that the first time.