Jim tried not to laugh out loud. He could suddenly visualize a tiny commandant devil sitting on his other shoulder, whispering urgently into his ear, Say yes, yes! Immediately!
“Help doing what?” he asked as casually as he could.
“What you just did, there, earlier. Suggesting a line of questions for the roommate.”
“So you want, like, a consultant.”
“Basically. For the most part, our office works what I’d call ‘admin crime.’ Fraud, theft, drugs, contractors cheating the Supply Department, mids cheating on exams. But this case is different, and I think you’re right-solving it is going to turn on penetrating that blue-and-gold wall, as you called it. I can’t ask the officers in the Executive Department because their boss initiated the investigation.”
“Go on.”
“Thing is, we both know what the administration wants in a case like this.”
He thought for a moment. “To solve it, of course,” he said. “To right all wrongs, root out evil, so that justice and the American way prevail.”
She laughed out loud, the sound echoing over the water between the docks. “Yeah, right,” she said. “Think about it? I’ll even stop trying to break your balls.”
“That would be nice,” he said. “You feel obligated to put men down?”
“Only men who go through life at half power,” she said, not giving him an inch. “But give me a hand with this Dell thing, who knows? You might like a real investigation.”
“Will I get paid extra?” he asked with a straight face.
She laughed again. “How’s an NCIS ball cap sound? Or, hell, maybe we’ll figure something else out.” She gave him a mock leer, but then her face grew serious. “I’m going up to Bethesda today. Hopefully, talk to Bagger. Call me tomorrow morning? I do need some help with this. For the Academy’s sake, and maybe for Dell’s.”
“Sure, what the hell,” he said, trying to hide his elation. “The chief runs the day-to-day bits of my nothing job anyway. The only thing I have going is the vampire runner gig. And protecting my gonads from transient redheads.”
“Oh, lighten up, Hall,” she snorted. She got up, shot an imaginary finger gun at Jupiter, said, “Bye-bye, birdie,” and set off. “And thanks for the coffee,” she called to Jim as she went down the brow.
He watched her go up the dock, slim legs pumping. Jupiter muttered something unkind. No halfway measures with that one, he thought. Casually busting my hump, and I still don’t know her first name. He almost called her back to tell her the rest of it. But she steamed right out of sight. Life was still unfair.
A pleasant young man dressed in the Annapolis Yacht Club work uniform asked if he could be of any assistance as Ev walked down toward the restricted dock area. He gave the young man Liz’s slip number and was then politely escorted to the proper dock, where the man waited to see if Ev was indeed a legitimate and expected guest. Occupying slip 47 was Liz’s so-called stinkpot, a gleaming white Eastbay 43 power cruiser with the name Not Guilty spelled out in bronze letters on her transom. Liz, dressed in white short shorts, a red halter top, wraparound sunglasses, and long-billed white ball cap, waved him on board as the young man dutifully disappeared back toward the parking lot.
“I have a boat,” he announced as he handed over two six-packs of beer. “It’s about eight feet long and powered by Norwegian steam. This, on the other hand, is a boat. ”
“Yeah, it is,” she said, indicating he should come below. The main salon was fully enclosed, decorated with rubbed teak, stainless steel, and lush carpeting. There was a U -shaped galley, a center island-style master stateroom, a guest stateroom with upper and lower berths, a head with shower, and storage compartments everywhere. Liz stashed the beer in the reefer and gave him the full tour. Ev realized this must be a half-million-dollar yacht at least.
“She can range four hundred miles, has a top speed of twenty-four knots on a good day and with a following sea. Twin Cat diesels. Forty-three-foot overall and a great sea-keeper. I mostly cruise the bay, but she can go offshore with the best of them.”
“It’s magnificent. Do you just buy something like this, or do you take out a mortgage?”
She smiled at his question. “As the broker would say, if you have to ask…”
He put up his hands in a gesture of mock surrender. “Okay, okay. And I would have to ask.” Although, he thought, you wouldn’t, would you? On the other hand, he knew he would never spend a huge amount on a boat, remembering the old adage about the three things in life a man should always try to rent, not own.
“Come topside while I get her lit off,” she said, and went up the polished companionway to the bridge area. Ev followed, enjoying the sight of her slender legs and full figure climbing ahead of him. Follow you anywhere, he told himself. The day had bloomed into one of glorious sunshine and a twenty-knot sea breeze that was already rippling the Annapolis harbor with tiny whitecaps. Julie and her problems were suddenly forgotten.
“Stinkpot-that means powerboat?” he asked.
“In sailboat language. As opposed to the much more politically correct and environmentally considerate sailing vessels. Annapolis is the premier sailing harbor on the East Coast. Just ask any sailor. We heedless Philistines who dare to sully the sea breeze with diesel fumes, engine noises, and big wakes are held in some long-nosed contempt by our bay-hugging betters.”
“Hoo-boy,” he said.
“On the other hand, our popularity rises somewhat when there’s a dead calm out on the bay and our purist friends have zero chance of getting back in before sundown on a Sunday afternoon, unless of course one of us Philistines offers them a tow.”
“You do that often?”
“Often enough to get enormous satisfaction when it happens. Have a seat while I do the checklist.”
He watched as she sat up on the captain’s chair, her legs not quite long enough to reach the deck, and flipped switches. A few minutes later, she brought the two big Cats to life. Ev was directed to bring in the mooring lines, and then she backed the big boat expertly out of the slip, brought her about, and headed for the channel at the prescribed idle speed. She motioned for him to bring up the fenders, then beckoned him back up to the bridge.
“You don’t take your scull out of the river, do you?”
“Did it once,” he said, rubbing on some sunblock. “On one of those dead-calm days you talked about. Then came fog.”
“Yow,” she said. “I’ll take some of that.”
He obliged by standing behind her while she sat at the wheel and rubbing the sunblock cream on her shoulders, upper arms, and back. “And you under way with oars? What’d you do?”
“One of these enormous ‘stinkpots’ came by, idling in on radar,” he said. She had wide shoulders and surprisingly taut muscles for such a petite woman. Then he remembered that she swam regularly for exercise. He stopped when he got to her waist. “He was going really slow, so I fell in behind him, following his wake. Ended up in a marina, hoisted out, and took a cab home to get my car and trailer. Felt like a proper idiot.”
“I’ll bet they never knew you were back there.”
They were passing the Naval Academy on the port hand as they headed for the entrance of Spa Creek, another river estuary. Bancroft Hall rose in gleaming splendor beyond the landfill hump of Farragut Field. They could see tourists swarming around the visitors’ center, and there were several knockabout-class sailboats trying not to collide with one another around the Santee Basin on the Severn side. When they pulled abreast of the Triton Light monument, which memorialized all the lost American submarines now on eternal patrol, she brought the speed up and pointed fair for the bay itself.
Ev wedged himself into a corner of the pilothouse and watched as she concentrated on maneuvering the big cruiser through all the smaller powerboats, dinghies, fishermen, yachts, channel buoys, and even two YPs out into the more open waters of the bay. He could see a large tanker plowing its way up toward Baltimore about five miles out, seemingly motionless until he lined it up visually with a distant buoy and saw the buoy appear to move.