took me a minute to rearrange the mirrors and find the lights, but I was down at the harbor five minutes later. My heart was pounding fit to burst out of my chest. I was at a loss to explain what was going on, and Raylene’s strange orders truly scared me, but if there was any chance that Tony was there…
Erik was down there, as advertised, and he looked like grim death. Erik is medium height, and doesn’t look like anything special, but something about his eyes is hard and watchful and I get the impression that hitting him would be like punching a pallet of cement blocks. Close-cropped hair that made me think he’d never gotten over the habit from the navy, and a blurry tattoo on his arm that might also be a souvenir of those years. He has a hint of a mustache and chin whiskers that are never quite shaved, never fully grown in, and makes him look youthful. But there’s a hardness to his face that speaks of experience. He walks with a rolling gait, whether from some injury or too many years on deck, at sea, I don’t know.
Usually he’s in the background of things, quiet, happy to let Raylene run the show with the customers. Once, however, some drunk mouthed off when she told him she was calling a cab. Things escalated and he smashed a glass. Erik came out of nowhere. The guy was outside before anyone could move to help Erik, and people who were there swear that the next noise they heard was the guy’s head bouncing off the outside wall of the bar. When they came back in, Erik frog-marched the drunk up to the bar, where he stammered an apology to Raylene, and then asked her to call an ambulance. Erik made him wait outside so that Raylene didn’t have to clean up anything else besides the glass.
I learned from that incident that Erik’s nickname, “the Red,” came not from his hair color, his politics, or his bank account.
It was his temper. Quiet or no, no one screwed around with Erik twice.
He extended his hand to me; it was rough, knotted, and strong. “Emma. Thanks for coming so quick.”
“I just showed up at the restaurant, Raylene said she was going to call. What is all this?”
He shook his head. “Wait until we get out a ways.”
We went down to his dinghy. After I hopped in, he cast off, and we were off. Erik is one of the smoothest, strongest rowers I know, and we cut across the water swiftly, more quietly than I could have imagined. The lights from the docks diminished as we moved out toward his boat, Belle Jeanne-Marie, and we were nearly in darkness.
“Now?”
“Noise carries too easily. Let’s get under way.”
We tied up, and I hopped onto the deck of the cabin cruiser. Erik flicked on the running lights, and got us under power. We motored out a ways beyond the breakwater, and up the coast a little bit. Then he cut the power and we were nearly in silence. The coast above Lawton is sparsely populated and most folks would have been watching television about now, not looking at us, had they been there to see us. Pity; if I had that view, in one of those houses, I would be staring out the window, myself.
“I’ve got someone below,” Erik began. “I think he’s trouble.”
“What? He’s in trouble?”
“No, Em. Trouble for us. You see, he came to the bar tonight. Looking for us. Looking for trouble. He threatened Raylene.” That last statement that sounded like a jury’s sentence to me.
And yet…“You didn’t call the cops? Why is he out here?”
“He’s out here because I think he has some information you might be able to use. I think he’s part of the trouble we’ve been having around here recently.”
“What?”
“You said that someone’s been following you, stalking you? Making trouble for you and yours?”
“Yes.” I felt a bitter taste in my mouth, one that came from feeling like I was being mocked. “Tony Markham.”
“Well, I think he’s a part of it.”
My eyes suddenly filled and my throat closed up. Erik actually believed me about Tony. It was a moment before I could speak. “How do you know?”
“I turned his pockets out. He had pictures. He had your address.” Erik flicked another switch on the console—the faint lights reflected up on his face—and then looked directly at me. “And a few other things. Like I said, trouble.