“Are you kidding me?”
“No joke. After Capone went to prison, Pop’s boss took control of the Outfit. That’s what the Chicago Mob was called back then. The Outfit. Paul Ricca was his name. Man scared me to death.” A long pull on the straw. A long gaze at the island, the seals floating in the kelp beds, then, “I started riding shotgun for my dad when I was eleven years old. Pop drank, see. Drank all the time. Never got violent, not around me anyway. The old man just went quiet. He wanted me in the seat next to him, make sure he didn’t drift off while we were crossing the ice.”
“Wait . . . What?”
“That was his job in the winter. Hauling contraband whiskey across the lake. Dead of night, when the ice was thickest. We’d leave Chicago, the truck full of clothes from the city sweatshops. The Outfit controlled them, see. Take the bridge, drive to Canada. Rest up awhile. There were bunks in the harbor warehouses for drivers and spotters. Eat some meal, always southern Italian, pasta with a sauce heavy on the garlic, ninety years later, one taste and I’m straight back there, watching my old man pull on the bottle, watching them load barrels of Canadian whiskey into the truck.”
They sat there, the yacht rocking in time to the incoming swell, the sound of waves crashing against the rocky shoreline, the gulls calling, the wind’s quiet whisper. Then Dino continued. “Starting back across the great lake, my old man was always scared. He took it real slow at first, listening to the ice crack under the wheels, breathing in soft gasps that stank of his whiskey. Then faster and faster. A hundred and eighteen miles, from the Canada warehouse to the Chicago harbor. Lights off most of the way. Pop hunched over the wheel, leaning back now and then to pull on that bottle. Me watching him and the ice both. Holding the compass, keeping us on course. The truck’s heater froze up a couple of times, him and me stopping there in the middle of nowhere to pile on extra layers of clothing we carried in a canvas sack just for those emergencies. The ice, it’s never silent. Cracking and groaning and popping. Pop claimed that’s why he drank, hearing the ice talk to him, saying how it wanted to open up and swallow us whole. Which was a lie. I knew it even then. He drank because that’s what he was. A drunk.
“I loved those trips. Loved everything about it. The rumbling engine, the dark outside our cabin, the flashlight shining on the compass. Loved the way the ice smelled. That’s what I remember clearest now. The sharp, clean smell of ice stretching out in every direction.”
When he went quiet, Jenna started to ask if he needed anything, his meds, a coffee, when he abruptly continued, “One night Pop died. Right there, middle of nowhere. Heart attack. Pow. Me twelve years old, fifty miles north of Chicago, nothing but ice and darkness, totally alone. Dragging the old man across the front seat, climbing up behind the wheel, setting out.”
“You drove?”
“It was either that or sit there and freeze. I was too short to see much of anything. Roped pads to my right shoe so I could reach the pedals. Sat on all the extra clothes I wasn’t wearing. Yeah, I drove. Took me four and a half hours. Stopping every ten miles or so, checking the compass, heading on. Pop’s corpse on the seat there next to me. When the city lights appeared up ahead, I bawled. Cried like a baby. Last time I ever shed a tear.”
Dino resumed his customary silence, and soon after Jenna motored them back to Santa Barbara. He dozed on and off on the return journey, woke as she and the harbor attendants maneuvered his chair back into the van, and again as she brought him home.
It was then, after she settled him into bed, that Dino announced he was giving her the boat. Consider it a tip for a job well done, was the way he put it, before drifting off to sleep.
CHAPTER8
When Jenna pulled up in front of the farmhouse, she parked alongside a sheriff’s car and a dark four-door Crown Victoria. A deep thrumming resonated from the barn. Jenna left the food in her car and walked past a small tanker truck loaded with a jet-wash’s diesel motor and bearing the logo of a Morro Bay boatyard. Two men in rubber rain gear and industrial-strength gloves operated the jet washer. Noah and another man worked with long-handled scrapers, finishing off what the jet wash failed to clear away. Behind them, a lean, dark-skinned man swept the hull with a wire-bristled push broom. He dipped the brush in a metal trough, then scrubbed with some soapy solution. The scrubbers wore shorts, gloves, rubber boots, goggles, and professional-grade face masks. All were hot, sweating, and drenched.
The stench was ferocious.
Then Noah spotted Jenna. He whistled loudly and waved a hand by his throat.
The big diesel powered down as the jet spray went to idle and then cut off entirely. The silence felt almost as loud as the noise.
“Finalmente!”The heavyset Latino dropped his scraper and stomped away. “Another five minutes, I’d be looking for somebody to shoot.”
The dark-skinned man stripped off his goggles and mask. “I would’ve never volunteered if I’d known how bad this smells.”
“Old barnacles and reclaimed water.” The jet-washer and his assistant stripped off their rain gear and shared a ratty towel. “It works into your pores.”
“Reclaimed from what?”
“Best you don’t ask.”
The Latino stepped to the barn’s far corner, pulled a cord, and water cascaded from a plate-size shower. He whooped and danced, causing the others to grin. He released the rope and shouted, “Noah, you need to fix the hot water faucet. It don’t work.”
The dark-skinned man was already on the move. “Cold sounds good to me.”
Once they had all showered, they proceeded to Jenna’s car and stood eating in the sun. Noah introduced the others in turn. The boatyard owner was Wallace Myers, the Latino a San Lu police officer named Zia, and the tall, lean man . . .
“Amos is your brother?”
“You thought those stories aboutbrujasandcambiantesyou heard as a kid were myth?” Zia was clearly enjoying himself. “Amos was left in the forest and raised by wolves. It’s the only excuse for his foul nature.”
“Don’t pay Zia any mind,” Amos said. “He’s got a cop’s twisted sense of humor.”
“Oh, and you’re so perfect with the logic and the humor,” Zia retorted. “A man who gets seasick hearing about a Pacific storm, spending his day off working on somebody else’s boat.”
“Amos and I share a mother,” Noah said. “Long story.”
“I’ve always enjoyed long stories,” Jenna replied.
