conviction because he knew the rules. She waited where she was and her “husband” went aboard without her, looking back once. She picked up his watch cap where he had dropped it.

More cars were pulling into the parking lot. Some were big, expensive. The custom was to leave the keys in the ignitions, the doors unlocked. Whoever was left when it was over could take what they wanted.

A security car arrived. An excited guard jumped out almost before the car stopped rolling. He pushed his way into the middle of the Sailors, wide-eyed at the improbability of it all.

“Who are you? What is this?”

What did he expect to hear? A prom?

A hand touched the excited guard’s shoulder.

It was Connor. In uniform.

“It’s a private party,” the cop said.

The security guard started to protest.

“It’s all right,” Connor said calmly. “We’re here.”

The guard went away.

Jimmy and Angel were about to board when Jimmy saw Jean.

She was at the mouth of the gangway. Waiting, watching.

Jimmy went down the ramp to her, against the stream of Sailors boarding.

“You have to go,” he said.

“What is this?”

The clouds passed off the moon. The light brightened.

“I can’t explain it,” Jimmy said. “And you can’t see it.”

He started away.

“Is my father here?” Jean said.

He stopped. He was ten steps past her. He looked at her.

“I talked to him,” she said. “Tonight.”

“What did he tell you?”

Jimmy didn’t want to know, but it was the next thing to say.

“That he didn’t kill my mother.” She waited a moment. “And what this is.”

He felt as if she was suddenly across the widest ocean.

“Go back to the beach house,” he said.

“I’m coming aboard.”

“No.”

Angel stepped up. “It’s time,” he said.

“You can’t be here,” Jimmy said to Jean.

“Tell her,” he said to Angel and walked away from her.

“Go home,” Angel said. “He doesn’t want you hurt.”

Angel went after Jimmy.

She followed after them.

“I’m coming aboard,” she said. She caught up. “I’m coming aboard,” she said again.

The officer on deck put out a hand to stop Jean.

“You know she can’t come aboard,” he said.

Jimmy shoved him back out of the way. Let her see it.

The three of them entered the grand ballroom, a tall Deco space with funereal elegance. There were multiple levels where once there had been cocktail tables or roulette wheels. An enormous crystal chandelier hung over their heads.

The room was filled with Sailors. They stood in clusters, among friends, waiting. Scott the bartender was there, Krisha, the woman doctor who treated Drew, one of Angel’s bodybuilder friends, Connor.

And Perversito.

And Boney M.

And Lon and Vince.

The old man in the tuxedo played an out-of-tune grand piano, the bad notes giving the scene the feel of a cheap dance hall somewhere or a wake.

The room was ablaze in blue light.

Jimmy held Jean’s arm. She pulled away from him and set off on her own to find her father.

Jimmy just watched her go.

“Three minutes,” Angel said.

There was an ornate clock. Very English. It ticked loudly enough to be heard over the voices and the music.

“Just stay with us,” Jimmy said to Drew as they moved back through the crowd. “Just do what we do and watch.” He remembered the first blue moon, when he was a kid and went from knowing everything to knowing nothing.

Drew did as he was told, fell in behind Jimmy and Angel as they moved through the clusters of Sailors. The room was almost howling now in anticipation, pulsing like a blue cloud somehow captured in a room, like a storm in a box. The tuxedo man played louder and louder to be heard over the growing din, lifting his curled fingers in great dramatic gestures with each chord.

“Does this just keep getting weirder and weirder?” Drew said as they moved through it.

Jimmy looked at him. “It’s beautiful.”

Jimmy kept going.

Angel put an arm around the boy. “It’s a little weird,” he said.

Jimmy saw Jean with her father, talking, close. So there he was, just like the picture from the Press Telegram, the narrow black tie, the white shirt, the gray suit. The half smile.

Before he thought about what he was doing, Jimmy charged up to them and threw Jack Kantke against the wall. Jimmy’s anger wasn’t at Kantke and Kantke’s anger wasn’t at him but neither man cared in the moment, they both just wanted to tear something apart.

Kantke threw a punch. Jimmy avoided it and shoved him back into a glass cabinet, shattering it. Kantke recovered and came after him and Jimmy knocked him down onto the bed of broken glass.

Jimmy ripped the