“-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.”

“Perhaps the people left aboard didn’t know how to use it.”

“Think about that for a moment. Put yourself on that yacht.”

O’Connor tried to picture the scene. “Four people on a yacht. One or two go overboard, or one goes over and another tries to save him. The people still onboard are terrified.”

“Yes! You begin to see it.”

“They’ve already lost half of the people aboard, they’re in the middle of a storm, they can’t see the shore.”

“Yes. They are very, very alone. Nothing in this world can make a person feel as alone as the sea, even when she is calm. When she is raging? Ten, twenty times worse.”

“You’d do whatever you could to get someone to help you. Was the radio on an emergency channel?”

“No,” Lorenzo said, then waved a hand in dismissal. “It didn’t need to be. If someone has been to see any movie that has so much as a toy boat in a bathtub in it, they know what to do.”

“They flip switches until the radio lights up, and yell, ‘Mayday,’ into the mike.”

“Exactly. And if they don’t hear voices on the channel they are on, they search for a channel where they hear voices. They’re desperate. They try to get someone, anyone, to help them.” He was silent for a moment, then added, “Sometimes you hear these cries, and they cannot tell you where they are. Not in time.” He sighed.

“But sometimes you do find them.”

“Yes, yes. And the Coast Guard never gives up. Never.”

“No one heard a call from the Sea Dreamer.”

“No-and the Coast Guard was trying to call the Sea Dreamer, because of the child.”

O’Connor sat back and thought over all that Lorenzo had said. Had anyone been on that boat at all? Or was it merely set adrift?

“Strange, isn’t it?” he said aloud. “The parents and two grandparents of that child disappear on the same night the child is taken.”

“Very strange,” Lorenzo agreed.

“Something a human might arrange, even if there was no storm.”

“In fact, I don’t believe the ocean is to blame. The sea is not the one who did this, and neither is the sky.”

15

O ’CONNOR TALKED TO SEVERAL MEMBERS OF THE COAST GUARD TO GET an opinion of Lorenzo’s theories. All but one said, in one way or another, that Lorenzo was full of hooey. The one who hesitated was in charge of the investigation. He said, “If Mr. Albettini had seen as many of these situations as I have, he might not have come to those conclusions. But perhaps I’ve seen so many, things that aren’t alike begin to look alike-so I will certainly consider his points.”

The others explained Lorenzo’s questions away without much trouble: The group aboard the Sea Dreamer had been wearing expensive evening clothes, and therefore probably didn’t bother with life jackets. They could have all been washed overboard with one wave, before anyone had a chance to use a radio. The key could have been lost overboard as well, or, if two or three of the members of the party went overboard, someone who was inexperienced, panicking at the thought of leaving them behind, might have tried to stop the boat by turning the engine off and taking the key out of the ignition. If that individual was also lost overboard, the key would have gone with him.

O’Connor went back to the Nash, made some notes, then found himself cursing his tiredness, because he had missed asking a question. He went back to the investigating officer and asked, “When did the storm arrive here?”

“Not until about five on Sunday morning.”

“If they were only out on a pleasure cruise…”

“It was preceded by fog and heavy swells,” he added.

“When?”

“The fog? It started rolling in around one, and by two o’clock, visibility between here and Santa Catalina Island was less than one hundred feet.”

O’Connor thanked him and went back to the car.

O’Connor was not a man who simply did as he was told, but exhaustion was setting in, and so he obeyed Wrigley’s orders. He wrote the story, handed it to a copyboy, and walked next door to the deli that had replaced Big Sarah’s diner when she retired. He picked up a couple of ham sandwiches, then went home without going back into the building, not waiting for what he was sure were bound to be fireworks. He had a phone. They could call him.

Thinking about this, when he got home, he took it off the hook. He pulled the 45 RPM adapter off the spindle of his record player and switched the speed to 78. He set a small stack of records on the spindle, brought the changing arm over, and settled it gently over the 78s. He listened to them while he ate-until Nat King Cole’s “Send for Me” began to play. By the second verse he found the lyrics too close to home, and he turned the phonograph off. His appetite lost, he cleaned up, put the phone back on the hook and undressed, then fell asleep.