Hector Rusk Bought The Room And Ordered Me Back Aboard

Hector slid a check across the galley table, then kept two fingers on it.

"That's eighteen thousand dollars," he said. "Almost what I owe you."

He owed me $18,640. I knew because I had printed the past-due total that morning, before the rain found the hole above my shop door.

"Fix the Gray Lantern tonight. No charge. Then we'll talk about this."

I was a brown-skinned Indian American man of thirty-seven, with a narrow face, thick black hair, and a pale scar across my left eyebrow.

My name was Arjun Menon. I repaired marine refrigeration systems around Kodiak, Alaska. Usually, my job meant bad door seals, iced coils, and captains who thought shouting could lower a box temperature.

Hector was different. He could stop three other captains from calling me before breakfast.

Hector Rusk was a broad, red-faced white American man of fifty-four, with pale blue eyes and a silver beard cut square beneath his chin.

He owned two fishing vessels and a tender through separate companies. He also bought lunch for whole crews. That afternoon, he had paid $312 for chowder and bread, and everyone had thanked him.

Now the galley was empty except for us.

"I have rent due," I said.

"Then don't make yourself hard to help."

I had washed my mug with hot water. I poured the water out and held the empty cup between my palms. I often did that before answering a hard question. There was no coffee to spill, and the warmth gave my hands something to do.

"Will you pay the old invoices if I take this call?"

"I said we'll talk."

He folded the check and put it away.

Outside, rain ticked against the galley glass. Across the harbor, gulls stood on a roof with their heads pulled down. I could see my van, which still needed a $460 brake repair.

"All right," I said. "I'll inspect the freezer. Parts cost extra."

He laughed and clapped my shoulder.

"There he is. My useful man."

In the machinery space, I found a contactor with burned points. The compressor was starting hard and dropping out. A loose terminal had heated the cable lug until its cover went brown.

I shut off the circuit, locked it, and checked for power before touching it.

Hector watched from the ladder.

"Don't put anything about cargo on your sheet. Just refrigeration."

"My sheet has two rows. Claimed and checked. Same as always."

I had started that habit as an apprentice. A captain could claim a freezer held at zero. My probe might read eighteen. Both numbers belonged on the page.

Hector looked at the small gray recorder bolted beside the control cabinet.

"That still yours?"

"Yes. You're renting it for $45 a day."

I had installed that unit and another on his vessel, the Bell Ledger, twelve days earlier. Both boats had a fault that showed up only while running. Each recorder took temperature, current, and alarm readings. With his written approval, I had connected an isolated input to the navigation feed, too.

Speed and position helped me tell a dockside fault from one caused by a heavy run at sea. The recorder listened. It could not steer anything or send a message back.

The service agreement said all that in plain words. Hector had signed it without taking his phone from his ear.

"Why do you need the boat's name in there?" he asked.

"So I don't mix up the files."

"You could mix up the whole ocean." He laughed again. "A repairman can't tell one cargo run from another."

I put CLAIMED beside his note: docked since September 13.

I left CHECKED blank.

When I finished, he refused to sign my $780 service sheet.

"That was the free one. Remember?"

I wrote declined signature and the time. Then I removed my recorder for its scheduled download and fitted my spare. He watched me carry the old one off without a word.

At my shop, I copied its files into the job archive. The freezer fault appeared as a row of sharp current spikes. Below that were the time and position messages the boat had kept sending.

On September 14, the Gray Lantern had left Kodiak.

So had the Bell Ledger. I had downloaded its recorder two days before and had not yet studied its route.

Both tracks stopped for nearly an hour beside a remote stretch of coast marked on my old service chart as Slate Pocket.

That name made me pull a damp notice from under my mail.

MISSING: MIRA VALE, FISHERIES OBSERVER.

She had last been assigned to the Gray Lantern. September 14 was the night she vanished.

The notice asked anyone with information to call harbor investigator Naomi Akiyama.

I was still holding it when someone knocked on my shop door.

Through the glass, I saw Hector's silver beard and a white envelope pressed against the rain.