Monday, July 12, 2010

Chapter 2 of the novel, 'The Talking Mime'

Chapter 2
The Harbormaster

The Capitola Harbormaster's office has all the normal tide tables, pamphlets on the ABCs of boating safety and local restaurant guides you find in most of the small harbors up and down the California coast.

This morning, however, the 15-by 25-foot wood-frame office overlooking the anchorage was dominated by a small, red Igloo cooler sitting on the desk of Harbormaster Harry Brookmun, which Brookmun, Nym and I took turns staring at.

Inside, neatly packed by Nym in ice and locked in a ziploc bag (16 ounce), was a severed hand, sporting the big diamond ring that we had found on our deck after a seagull gave up and flew off - but only after making one more run at trying to lift it off the deck of Rocinante.

It took us nearly a half-hour to get the Monterey Bay Coast Guard on the VHF radio, which after some discussion, decided body parts being carried by seagulls weren't under their jurisdiction, particularly because we were sitting hooked on a buoy belonging to the Capitola Harbor District. The Capitola Harbormaster wasn't monitoring the VHF radio at all, so I broke my rule and used our emergency-only cellular telephone, dialing 911 and creating a panic in the Santa Cruz County Sheriff's Office before they finally realized there was no real emergency, just an understandably gross situation.

"The Undersheriff's on her way," the harbormaster said, listening to the police scanner on his desk. "Tolliver, the real sheriff, he's on vacation up north someplace chasing after abalone."

Gerald Tolliver, elected for six consecutive four-year terms, was a legend even in San Francisco for his low tolerance for outlaws and his high tolerance for Grey Goose vodka. I was a little sorry I wouldn't get the chance to meet him, given all that I had read about him in the San Francisco Chronicle.

The three of us sat transfixed by the cooler, as it sat like some kind of shrine on the corner of the gun-metal gray steel desk. I made a mental note to donate the cooler to the Santa Cruz County Sheriff's Department — or the harbormaster's office — because there was no way it would ever hold a cold beer for me again, provide cold storage for shoreside picnic lunches, or even be a basin for fish we had caught.

"Maybe just once more, before the undersheriff gets here, you could tell me again about the bird and this hand?"

Brookmun was well-dressed for the part of the harbormaster, even though the pictures on the wall behind him gave away the fact that for nine months of the year he taught geometry and wood shop to high school students in Seaside. He had the look of someone who breezed through the ranks of Boy Scouts, Sea Scouts, and Explorers, but came up short on the examinations to go the Naval Academy and now was stuck dealing with exploding hormones in high school classrooms while he tried to explain the dramatic importance of the Pythagorean Theorem.
 
He stared at us, after asking his question, with a brooding look I would be willing to wager he practiced daily in the mirror before facing his classes.

"One of our sons saw, well, recognized, that it was a human hand," Nym offered for the third time.

"Our other son saw it and went into the head and vomited."

I closed my eyes briefly, waiting for Nym to recount my episode of decorating the foredeck, but she as she was warming up to it, she was cut off by Brookmun, who adopted an exasperated tone.

"The bird, tell me about the bird again, please." His facial expression was flat, but I began to wonder if he was trying to play cop before the police actually arrived. His uniform was a little too clean, his shoes looked like they had been spit-polished by a Marine, and his haircut was dorky, for even a high school teacher.

"Are you asking if it had any scars or distinguishing marks," I quipped, regretting it immediately when I saw the look on Nym's face and the redness growing around Brookmun's ears. My sharp tongue has gotten me in lots of trouble over the years but I always see clearly when I should've kept my mouth shut well after I've let go with a few bon mots.

Brookmun's face did tell me that he had already been having visions of "Hard Copy" or "A Current Affair," as this might be his moment in the limelight, certainly the biggest event in Capitola in some time. Already he had told us not to even leave the Harbormaster's office, until the police arrived. I wasn't sure a harbormaster had that kind of authority, but his coffee was passable and it seemed only reasonable to wait for the police.

I was getting cranky and more than a little uncomfortable, with both boys waiting out on Rocinante, where I knew they were contemplating the short swim in to the pier because they were missing all the excitement. As we rowed away in the dinghy for shore — the cooler between Nym and I on the floor of the boat — I had warned them there might be sharks lurking. And between that warning and the cold water, I though we were probably safe for another hour or so before they showed up — dripping wet.

"Professor Cameron, there's no need for sarcasm," Brookmun said. "If we knew what kind of gull it was, it might help tell us where the gull picked up the hand and lead us to the killer."

I bit my tongue while I envisioned a seagull picking up the hand and flying from anywhere. It had barely been able to pick it up on our deck, a thought that disturbed me even more now. Perhaps the rest of the body was bobbing near my anchor chain right now. I shuddered at the thought of the boys spotting a floater after their reaction to the hand.

"Sorry," I said, "But maybe we should just wait for the sheriff. Excuse me, undersheriff. I'm beginning to believe this is all a bad dream."

Blackmun slid back in his chair and sighed the same sigh the boys perfected the week I had the flu and canceled our Disneyland trip the year before. They noted, quite accurately, that I have never been too sick to go sailing, but the mention of a theme park, a shopping mall, or visit from my mother-in-law has been known to bring on violent fits of sneezing and the approximate symptoms of recurring malaria.

We stared at the cooler for a few minutes of reverent silence, only to be startled by the slam of a car door, followed closely by the harbormaster's door opening and the arrival of the undersheriff, who brought in a gust of wind and highway dust with her.

If the severed hand with the diamond ring on the deck of Rocinante was a shock, Undersheriff Wilma Krebs came as a first-class surprise.

Barely five feet tall, and at least 160 pounds, she sported a knot of blonde, tightly-curled permed hair, and looked more like she belonged in a toll booth on the Golden Gate Bridge than in the uniform of the Santa Cruz County Sheriff's Department. She was wearing a .45 caliber automatic pistol that, on her, looked like cannon. Her shoulders were square and squared off with her hips, though she didn't appear fat as much as brick solid. And right here in trendy, nearly completely caucausian Capitola, Wilma Krebs was also clearly African-American, reflecting an almost blue-black skin tone that was as beautiful as it was hard to miss.

She spoke in a short, barking voice that made Harry Brookmun pop up out of his chair, as if his principal had arrived and found him sleeping in class.

"Harry, I forgot my rubber gloves. If I'm going to shake hands with whatever you people have in that bucket there, I want some protection."

Wilma turned to look at us, giving us a perfunctory grin while Blackmun scrambled through a cupboard behind his desk. She did a thorough visual examination of the room, slowly turning, taking in every detail as if she had a camera implanted in her eye, finally coming all way the way back to us where she stopped.

'You're the folks on that pretty sailboat that came in last night?" she asked, drawing the expected smiles from Nym and I.

"Is it named after Don Quixote's horse."

Wilma didn't wait for our response, but instead reached for a set of gloves offered by Blackmun.

Competent, quick-witted and even literate, I thought. Maybe it was going to be a good day after all.

She popped the lid on the cooler slowly, as if it might hold something that could jump out at her, then she gently reached in, poking the ice aside to get to the bagged hand. She lifted it out, the plastic bag dripping and the hand looking more like a piece frozen salmon than anything else. For just a moment I had a sharp jab of fear that it was a piece of salmon that the boys had somehow made look like a hand — complete with the dimestore jewelery just to fool me.

But when Nym stood up with me, to peer from a few feet away while the undersheriff laid the hand on the desk top, I knew what I had seen was real and that joking aside, we had found a damned body part on our deck.

Wilma held the hand, still in the bag while Blackmun grabbed some paper towels and put them next to the bag, anticipating Wilma's next move to get a closer look.

"Well, I'm glad you got this thing a little cold," Wilma said, unzipping the top of the bag and peering in as if there was a ham sandwich encased. "Human flesh gets pretty rank even in a seawater bath. And this is pretty decomposed. Another day and that nice ring would be on the bottom of the ocean. Hmm..."

Wilma slid the hand out of the bag onto the towel, poking it again with fingers and then putting a flat piece of paper at the wrist. "I was hoping you were maybe a shark attack victim, or part of somebody who drowned," she said, speaking to the hand.

"Afraid not."

She slid the hand back in the plastic bag and put it back in the cooler as carefully as if it was radioactive or plastic explosive, snapping the gloves off, and tossing them into the trash. "I don't know where the rest of her is, but somebody cut this hand off with something very sharp. It's as clean as a cleaver cut, or a meat saw, maybe. Maybe even an electric carving knife."

She turned to the harbormaster, who had backed up away from his desk, and looked a little ill. He hadn't moved the whole time she was examining the hand.

"Put some fresh ice in that cooler, will you Harry? No telling how long it will take me to find the coroner in Santa Cruz — whatever bar he's having his breakfast in."

Next - Chapter 3: Research

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