Jan Burke - Bloodlines

He was going to try the engines, but there was no key. He could have started it without one if he had to, but he didn’t have to. Just as well. Probably get in trouble with the Coast Guard. He turned the radio on to see if it worked. It did.

He heard the sound of a helicopter in the distance and turned the radio off.

The Sea Dreamer and its emptiness were the Coast Guard’s problem now.

When O’Connor returned to the hospital, he was carrying Jack’s hat and coat, entrusted to him by Hastings. Jack was showing the first signs of fever, and it was clear to O’Connor that the nurses were keeping a closer watch on their patient. O’Connor napped in a chair, waking to hear Jack muttering in delirium about the burial of the car. He began to grow more certain that Jack had actually seen such a thing-no fleeting hallucination could become such a persistent idea.

Helen Swan walked in at six o’clock.

“I’ll stay with him this morning,” she said. “I’ve cleared it with Wrigley. Go home and shower and shave and sleep a little if you can. He doesn’t expect you before ten.”

“What would Jack do without you, Swanie?” he asked, giving her cheek a kiss as he put on his coat.

“He tries to find out on a regular basis, Conn, so please don’t ask that question when he’s back on his feet.”

He fell asleep but woke at eight-thirty when the neighbor in the apartment next to his began singing “O Sole Mio” at a volume that could have been heard down at the opera house. He lay in bed, remembering his interrupted dream: of Katy when she was a toddler. In the dream Maureen laughed and played with her, which had never happened in real life-his sister had never met Katy. Everyone in the dream was happy, but now, as he awakened from it, it made him feel sad. He got out of bed, but the feeling of the dream stayed with him even after he left the house.

In the newsroom, as O’Connor made his way to his desk, the other newsmen asked about Jack and said how sorry they were to hear that he had been hurt so badly. O’Connor figured three out of five meant it. In this business, those odds indicated great regard. Jack was the object of more than a little envy, but he knew how to live with that and still form friendships with most of his coworkers.

O’Connor was drinking his first cup of strong black coffee of the day, quietly listening to other newsmen make wild conjectures about the kidnapping of the Ducane baby-now apparently no longer a secret-when Winston Wrigley II called him into his office.

“Have a seat,” Wrigley said.

O’Connor obeyed.

Wrigley wasted no time on small talk. “They’ve found the Sea Dreamer. No one aboard. The Coast Guard is searching the waters between here and where the boat was found, but they don’t hold out much hope for finding survivors.”

Over the last few hours, he had more than once thought that Katy might be dead, but now, perhaps because of the dream, he said, “Did anyone actually see Katy and Todd get on that boat?”

“O’Connor,” Wrigley said in a gently chiding tone.

O’Connor looked away. There was no use talking to anyone about an idea like that, he thought. You went out and found out if there was any possible truth to it, or you gave it up on your own, but pitching it to an editor was a stupid idea. “Sorry.”

“An insincere apology if I’ve ever heard one.”

“Then here’s a sincere one-I meant no disrespect to you, Mr. Wrigley.”

“All right, fine. I want to send you to talk to the captain of the fishing boat that found the Sea Dreamer. I want you to get whatever you can from him, write it, and then go home. I’ve got other people covering other aspects of this-stories on those who are missing and so on.”

“But there’s so much more…”

“Undoubtedly. Once you have the fisherman’s story written, go home. Not to the hospital, but home. You look like hell. I can tell that you aren’t thinking straight. And I know why. But unless you’re going to leave newspaper work and become a male nurse, you’ve got to leave Jack’s care to the medical profession and help me prove to someone that I’m not crazy.”

“I don’t understand…”

“Jack’s laid up in the hospital. I’ve got to have someone take over covering the crime beat.”

“Sir, I…”

“You don’t know what to say, and you don’t want to cut Jack out of his job. Right. My father tells me this should go to one of the older men. That’s because he’s such an old man, people in their-how old are you now?”

“I’ll be thirty next-”

“-people in their late twenties seem like children to him. He forgets that you have more years on the job than many of those men. He also forgets that he’s retired.”

“But, sir, Jack will be back.”

“Yes, he will. And I can think of only one man who will sincerely welcome his return if that means handing the crime beat back to him-that’s you.”

“You couldn’t get me to keep it.”

“I know. So do as I say. I wouldn’t have you working at all today, but with all hell breaking loose and Jack gone, we’re stretched thin.”

O’Connor could see that Lorenzo Albettini was tired of answering questions. But one of O’Connor’s brothers was a commercial fisherman, so he was able to converse just enough on the topic dearest to Lorenzo’s heart to win him over.

“Why didn’t you go into business with your brother?” Lorenzo asked, using a can opener to punch two triangular openings in the top of a Coca-Cola.

“He has six sons.”

Lorenzo smiled and took a sip of Coke. “That explains it.”

“My brother tells me that the day after I work so hard to write a story, someone wraps one of his fish in it. Not true, though-he lives in San Francisco. Someone wraps one of his fish in the Examiner.”

“If he comes this way, you must introduce us.”

“I’m sure he’d like that. You work with your brother, right?”

And in this way O’Connor began to hear the story of the yacht that came out of the mist.

“I don’t believe it, though,” Lorenzo said, tossing the empty Coke can into a wire trash container.

“Don’t believe what?”

“That anyone went overboard.”

“Why?” O’Connor asked, surprised.

“First,” Lorenzo said, counting off on a finger, “the yacht is too neat and clean, too tidy. Everything stowed away. Let me ask you this. If you invited friends over to celebrate a young woman’s birthday, you would probably raise a toast, or something of that nature. Am I right?”

“Yes. So, you saw no glasses, no champagne…”

“Nothing-nothing. People are enjoying themselves, and someone gets swept overboard-if you are one of the others, you don’t wash up the glasses and put them away. You leave things where they are and rush to that person’s aid.”

“But if the storm comes up and you want to make the ship safer?”

Lorenzo counted off finger number two. “You put on your life vests. Problem number two-the life vests are stowed, none are missing.”

“Yes,” O’Connor said, seeing it. “If you didn’t put them on the moment you came aboard, you put them on when the seas turned rough. Especially if you haven’t been out on the water much. What else?”

Lorenzo touched the third finger. “No key.”

“In the ignition?”

“Exactly. Why would you take the key out of the ignition? Who turned it off and took the key with them? Wouldn’t you want to have the ability to move under power?”

“Number four?”

Lorenzo smiled. “You need more?”

“You obviously have a sharp eye, Mr. Albettini. Does the list stop at three?”

“Call me Lorenzo, please. All right. Four-the dog. You know what a frightened dog does? But perhaps all of that washed overboard. Better than the dog is number five. The radio. I can turn it on when I come aboard. It was not on before I arrived.”