Chapter 12: Raise the Patience

Jasper was already on the dock in his boxers when I got there.

He stood at the edge and stared at the crane sticking out of the creek.

He didn't say anything.

Every dollar the yard had was sitting on the bottom.

Ida came out in her robe with Biscuit and her cigarette.

She looked at the water for a long time.

"Well," she said. "The Lord giveth."

"Ida, don't."

"I wasn't going to finish it."

The crew came at seven.

The big one walked to the edge of the dock and swore so long and so creatively that Ida didn't stop him.

"Pumps," Jasper said. "Lift bags. Every hose we've got. We'll float her on the high tide."

"We've got two pumps, boss."

"Then we start with two."

I went in first.

The creek was brown and cool, and my legs went into my tail before I was all the way under.

The Patience lay on her side in the mud, eight feet down, with her deckhouse door hanging open.

I swam the length of her hull with my hand on the steel.

Barges don't sink at a mooring on a calm night.

Somebody sinks them.

Near the stern, under the waterline, I found it.

The seacock, the valve that lets creek water in to cool the engine, had been opened all the way.

Then the hose to it had been cut clean through with something sharp.

The water had come in all night, quiet as breathing.

I put my hand over the hole and felt the cut edge of the rubber.

Something was jammed into the gap between the valve and the hull, flapping in the current.

A plastic card on a broken lanyard.

I pulled it free and came up.

Jasper was waiting at the ladder in his dive gear.

I held it up to him.

A Stoddard Maritime ID badge, with the gold anchor and a photograph.

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