True Colors (23 page)

Back on the boat, he spent a few minutes
lowering the jib and wrapping it. He cleated the ropes, secured the
rudder, and shut down the onboard navigating equipment. Then he
ducked into the cabin, yanked off his shirt, and wedged his
six-foot-two-inch frame into the closet-size bathroom. Tepid water,
a bit of soap, more water and a few swipes with a towel invigorated
him. He squinted at his reflection in the small slab of mirror
above the sink. A raspy stubble of beard had sprouted since he’d
shaved yesterday morning, somewhere around New Jersey, but he
didn’t feel like shaving again. He felt like getting rich and
celebrating.

He donned a fresh shirt, stashed his duffel
and laptop inside a storage bin beneath one of the upholstered
benches, and secured the bin with a padlock. No saying who might be
hanging around this marina. No point taking chances.

His wallet and cell phone stuffed into the
pockets of his jeans, he emerged from the cabin and sprang back
onto the dock. He snapped a couple of photos with his phone. The
boat in its berth. The supply shack at the end of the dock, a
massive wooden crate overflowing with bright orange life vests
beside the open door. The much larger building on shore, situated
midway between this dock and the next one, with a phony-looking
anchor painted on its side, and above it the words “North Cove
Marina” in nautical blue and gold lettering. Ty texted the photos
to Wayne, along with a brief message: “Made it safe and sound.”
Then he waited.

In less than a minute, his phone vibrated.
“Check’s in the mail,” Wayne had texted back. Ty tapped the phone
to open his PayPal account. Twenty thousand dollars had just been
added to it.

He grinned, transferred the money to his bank
account with a few clicks, and strode up the deck to dry land. The
door to the large building was open, and he stepped inside.

The front room was ugly in a familiar way.
The pale green walls were decorated with a few nautical-themed
prints, framed maps, oversized ropes and doughnut-shaped
lifesavers. More boxes of bright orange life vests stood on the
floor. A counter extended the length of the room, manned by a
skinny kid who looked barely out of high school. He wore a polo
shirt with the cute-cartoon anchor insignia stitched above the
pocket, and salmon-red slacks.

“Hi,” Ty greeted him. “I just sailed Wayne
MacArthur’s boat in.”

The kid opened a loose-leaf notebook. The
fancier the yacht club, Ty had noticed over the years, the more
old-fashioned. He’d worked at some marinas that operated out of
shacks no bigger than an outhouse but managed their slips and
monitored conditions with up-to-date computer software. An upscale
place like this, where the staff wore shirts with anchors above the
pockets, used notebooks.

“What slip did you park in?”

Ty recited the number of the slip Wayne had
instructed him to use. The kid flipped through the pages of his
notebook, found what he was looking for, then glanced out a window
behind the counter and eyeballed the boat. “Nice ship,” he
said.

“She sailed beautifully.”

“Is Mr. MacArthur still on board?”

“No. I brought her up myself. He’s flying
up.”

“Okay.” The kid turned the notebook around so
it faced Ty, handed him a pen, and asked him to sign his name.

Ty considered asking where the nearest bar
was, but then realized the kid was probably too young to drink. Not
that that would have stopped Ty when he’d been that age. He’d been
filching the occasional beer by the time he was fifteen, not to get
drunk but to piss off his grandparents. Still, this was a ritzy
yacht club in a ritzy town. He smiled, gave the kid a nod and
headed back outside.

Strolling through the parking lot, he tapped
his phone, searching for bars in the area. Without wheels, he
needed to find a bar close by.

The Faulk Street
Tavern
. It sounded quaint and New
England-y. He called up a map of Brogan’s Point and located the
place, less than half a mile away. Since he’d have to return to the
boat after he’d drunk himself a toast or two, he didn’t want to
travel too far for his refreshment.

Brogan’s Point didn’t have much of a
downtown. It boasted a nice-looking beach, though, stretching along
the ocean below a stone and concrete sea wall. A few shops lined
the street bordering the sea wall, and more shops filled the
streets intersecting it, two- and three-story buildings constructed
of clapboard, brick, and stone. Eateries, hardware stores,
ice-cream parlors. A real estate office. A women’s clothing
boutique. A Starbucks, of course. Turning from the stores, he gazed
along the ocean’s edge. Not far south of where he stood, several
commercial docks lined with trawlers stretched eastward into the
ocean. Ty could just make out the silhouettes of some warehouses
near the trawlers. Fish markets, he figured.

If a Hollywood director
wanted to film a movie in a stereotypical New England seaside town,
he could do worse than Brogan’s Point. It had everything Ty
expected such a place to have, short of a guy in a yellow rain
slicker, dropping his R’s and eating a bowl of chowder. Or
chow-dah
, he
supposed.

He strolled up the street, enjoying the
solidity of the asphalt beneath the soles of his sneakers, enjoying
the blunt breezes that rose up off the ocean to slap against the
side of his head. Yeah, he could see spending a few days here
before buying a plane ticket back to Florida. He could sleep on the
boat, use up his food supply, and spend some time on the beach,
even if the water here wouldn’t be warm like what he was used to
down in Florida or what he’d grown up with in California. Ocean was
ocean. Sand was sand. Ty’s parents used to joke that he was
actually the son of a mermaid, given his affinity for the sea.

Up ahead he spotted the corner where Faulk
Street intersected with Atlantic Avenue. He turned onto the side
street and entered the bar.

To his great relief, it wasn’t quaint. It
appeared to be a working-class establishment, a little dim, a
little scruffy, not too crowded but already redolent with the
stinging scent of hard booze, beer, and oily, salty edibles. He
stood just inside the doorway, surveying the place and considering
where he ought to plant himself. The tables all looked too big for
one person. A few of the bar stools were occupied, but more were
empty. That seemed like the better bet.

He strode across the room, the center of
which was clear of furniture. A dance floor? If it were his choice,
he would have filled that space with a pool table. But he wasn’t
really up for a game right now. He’d done a week of hard sailing.
He needed to decompress.

The woman behind the bar stood nearly as tall
as Ty, with square shoulders, short hair fading from ginger to
gray, and a pleasantly weathered face. She had the sort of
no-bullshit look of a sports coach, or maybe a shrink. He supposed
either of those character types would make good bartenders. “What
can I get you?” she asked.

“A shot of bourbon and a glass of whatever
you’ve got on tap,” Ty said.

She named a few beers. No connoisseur, he
asked for the first one she’d listed, then settled onto a stool and
gazed around the room. A group of frat boys sat at one table,
cheerfully arguing about the relative merits of Porsches and
Ferraris. Three portly older men in faded Red Sox caps nursed their
drinks at a table near the door. Two attractive women sat facing
each other in a booth to his left, one with long, curly red hair
and the other with black hair that ended in a ruler-straight line
at her shoulders. They each had a glass of wine, and they bowed
their heads together across the table that separated them, engaged
in intense conversation. A couple of stools down from Ty, a guy
three sheets to the wind slumped over an untouched mug of
coffee.

Against the wall opposite the bar stood a
jukebox. It looked like something you might find in a catalog, or
in one of those stores that specialized in selling new stuff
designed to look old. A dome-shaped arch, buttons, fabric-covered
speakers flanking a colorful façade of what appeared to be stained
glass peacocks, of all things.

He heard the thump of glasses on the bar
behind and swiveled around on his stool to discover that the
bartender had served his drinks. He tossed back the bourbon in one
gulp, savoring its burn down his throat, then followed it with a
sip of cold beer.

He had money. He had time. He had liquid
refreshment. Life was good.

The din of voices rose slightly as more
people trickled into the bar. Ty glanced at his watch: five
fifteen. Rotating back around to view the room, he nursed his beer
and watched the bar’s clientele drift in, most of them just off
work from the look of it. Some wore the uniforms of their jobs:
garage coveralls, medical scrubs, tailored outfits that included
button-down shirts adorned with loosened neckties or colorful
scarves, depending on gender.

An energetic woman in tight black pants, her
hair pulled into a pony tail, bounced over to the bar. “Sorry I’m
late, Gus,” she shouted to the bartender as she laced an apron
around her waist. “The traffic on Route 1 was a bitch.”

“Surprise, surprise,” the bartender muttered
sarcastically. Ty wondered whether Route 1 here in Massachusetts
was the same road as Route 1 in Florida. He was pretty sure it was.
Like I-95, Route 1 spanned the length of the country from Maine’s
Canadian border to Key West. Pretty cool to think you could drive
from the nation’s northern border to its southern tip on one single
road. Maybe someday he’d hop on his bike and ride the distance,
just for the adventure.

The waitress grabbed a tray, shot him a quick
smile and headed back into the room, circulating from table to
table, checking on the patrons. Ty watched her for a while, then
shifted his attention to the two young women conferring in the
booth. The one with the black hair was dabbing her eyes with a
cocktail napkin. The redhead leaned toward her, giving the
dark-haired one’s free hand a squeeze. Dykes? Ty wondered. He’d
hate to think that two good-looking women like them were
unavailable to the male half of the population, but a hot little
fantasy flared in his mind at the thought of them going at it. An
even hotter fantasy placed him between the two of them, the meat in
the center of the sandwich. He laughed at his crassness, told his
balls to stop thinking for him, and took another sip of beer.

“Share the joke?” The woman who’d addressed
him had stepped up to the bar, blocking his view of the drunk guy
with the coffee. She was probably within shouting distance of
forty, nice looking and dressed for cruising in a short skirt and a
low-cut blouse which displayed cleavage deep enough to swallow
small items.

“Just thinking about what an ass I am,” he
said pleasantly.

“I don’t believe that,” the woman said.
Catching the bartender’s eye, she said, “Can I have a Cosmo, Gus?”
Then she turned back to Ty. “You’re not from around here, are
you.”

“Is this one of those places where everybody
knows everybody?”

“Kind of. I guess you and I should get to
know each other, so you don’t feel left out.”

She deserved an A for effort, but Ty wasn’t
interested. He smiled politely, drank a little more beer, and said,
“I’m just passing through. Running an errand.”

“If only all errands ended with a drink,” she
said, accepting the cocktail glass the bartender handed her.

He rotated in his seat to gaze out at the
room again. Business was definitely picking up, more and more
tables filling. Another waitress pranced into the pub, her apron
already tied around her waist. Two of the frat boys wandered over
to the jukebox.

“Brace yourself,” the Cosmo drinker said.

“Why?”

“That jukebox is crazy.”

How could a jukebox be crazy? He braced
himself, anyway, then let out a long breath when the jukebox began
pumping music into the room. An old Beach Boys tune—“Fun, Fun,
Fun.” Ty recognized it because his grandfather on his dad’s side
was a huge Beach Boys fan. The old man owned the band’s albums,
cassettes, even sheet music of their songs. He was a crappy guitar
player, but he fantasized about becoming the next Brian Wilson. “If
you live in California, this is your music,” he’d lecture Ty, who
would nod solemnly. As a kid, he’d worshipped his father’s
father.

Throughout the room, people laughed. Some
sang along, their voices screeching as they reached for the
falsetto notes. A small cluster of revelers moved to the center of
the room and started dancing, although it looked more like they
were just jumping up and down. Pretty rowdy for a weeknight.

The song ended. “Like I said,” the Cosmo
drinker repeated, “that jukebox is crazy.”

“What’s crazy about it?”

“It only plays old songs. Really old
songs.”

“I guess that makes sense. It looks like an
antique.”

The woman shrugged. “I don’t know why Gus
keeps the thing there. I mean, if you’re going to have music, it
should be music people listen to.”

Ty could have argued that people still
listened to the Beach Boys. But he didn’t want to get into an
argument with his chatty new friend.

Another song came on, another oldie. Ty
didn’t recognize this one, but he thought his musically untalented
grandfather could have mastered it. It had had only a few smashing
cords, and the singer sounded as if he’d gargled with battery acid
before laying down the track. The simple lyrics emerged in a harsh
growl: “Wild thing…you make my heart sing…” The singer went on to
growl that some woman made everything groovy.

Groovy? Ty started to laugh—and then he
stopped. The woman in the booth, the one with the black hair and
the teary eyes and the solicitous friend, was staring at him.
Staring hard.