A Matter of Mercy Page 13

  Lorenz held up a hand. “I’m getting to that. Let me explain. Here’s the story.” He pushed his glasses up on his nose and sighed. “Careless real estate work, careless legal work. When the Indian Neck property up on the bluffs was originally subdivided forty years ago, the real estate developer—some outfit named Cape Shore Properties, it’s defunct now—didn’t register the tidal flats with the County Registry of Deeds.” He dipped his head toward his chest and shook it back and forth. “Stupid, stupid, stupid. His bad, works to our good.” With the attorney’s head bent, Rid saw the squished crescent of his receding hairline, how it was working back toward the bald spot in the back. Reflexively, Lorenz ran his hand over the top of his head, his fingers raking his hair like a shag carpet. Still there.

  “So it’s over?” Mario interrupted eagerly. Sometimes, like now, his real age and boyish demeanor were at odds with the wrinkles that spread out like a delicate fan from the outside corners of his eyes. Theirs was a life that showed on them, at least their faces and hands and backs.

  Lorenz sobered. “Not exactly. Well, not at all. I wish I could tell you it was. But, now there’s the possibility of a whole new strategy, especially if you can keep absolutely quiet while we work the angle.” He uncrossed his legs, reached to the table, and took his first sip of coffee. He looked meaningfully at their untouched cups. “Hey, guys, you’d better drink up or my ass is grass with my partner.” He was obviously trying to keep the tone light and celebratory. “C’mon, have a donut. I’ll explain.”

  Tomas reached for his cup, and Rid followed suit after putting in two packets of sugar. He’d have put creamer in, but Lorenz was waiting for them to be settled and drinking coffee before he went on.

  “No donut?”

  Rid obediently reached for a donut. At this point, he’d have eaten cow dung to get Lorenz to spill his guts. Tomas took one, too.

  “Go ahead, Mario, have another one. They’re pretty good, those Krispy Kremes, you know.”

  Mario didn’t need any more encouragement.

  Satisfied, Lorenz opened the folder he’d retrieved from his desktop. “Okay, they’ve been claiming that they own the tidal flats out to 1,650 feet under the Colonial ordinance, as you know. They’re backed up by wording in their deed which gives them title to land ‘in Wellfleet harbor.’ You can see how this can be interpreted to support their claim. We, on the other hand, have been basing our objection on the fact that another part of the deed specifies that they own ’to the high water mark,’ which would include the beach, but not the tidal flats. See what I mean? The deed itself is ambiguous. They are wanting a strict interpretation of the words ’in Wellfleet harbor’ and citing the Colonial ordinance to get the court to specify that they own all the way out. Which would put you out of business.”

  “We always thought they owned the beach anyway,” Rid said. “We keep off it, you know, drive below the high tide line and the like. Of course, there’s not much beach at full tide. The line’s pretty close to the bluffs. But we don’t even come until the tide’s three quarters out.”

  “Well, of course,” Lorenz said. “If the court were to say they own the beach, it’s no skin off your nose. But if the court interprets the deed the way Pissario wants it to….”

  “So back to the part where he thinks he owns it but he doesn’t. The new strategy.” Tomas said. Rid could tell he was getting impatient.

  “Exactly. As I said, the tidal flats were never registered by the developer. They should by all rights be part of Pissario’s land—and the property of the other upland owners above other grants too—but somebody forgot to register them. Whoever owned that land before Cape Shore Properties bought it for development technically still owns the rights to the tidal flats!” Rid, watching his face, thought this is a lawyer’s version of being a kid in a candy shop.

  Rid and Mario both looked at Tomas to see if he’d already calculated how to use this information. The big man had his eyes closed.

  “So, I think I might see where you’re going,” Tomas said when he opened his eyes. He rubbed his forehead and unruly graying hair, combed and gelled into submission for this official business. “But it’s already in the court.”

  “And the court may still rule in your favor. I see it as a fail-safe backup.”

  “Huh? What are you talking about?” It was Mario interrupting, but Rid was glad, because he had no idea either.

  “Correct me if I’m wrong,” Tomas said to Lorenz, then swung toward Mario. “Conceivably, we could find out who does own the tidal flats that Pissario thinks he owns and buy them.”

  “Bingo,” said Lorenz. “Of course, you’ve got to keep this absolutely quiet. Pissario has got to keep thinking he and the other upland owners own the beach and—according to him—own the flats, too. He can’t find out that the flats weren’t registered or they might do the same thing. Either tie it up in court forever, trying to prove it was somehow a mistake and they do own them, or, you know, go buy them.”

  “Do we tell the court what we’re doing, though?” Rid hoped he wouldn’t sound dumb. He hated to think how long they’d been in here. The light in the room had changed. You got sensitive to things like that when you worked outside. It had been over an hour. He’d have checked his watch to know exactly but it seemed rude. On the other hand, Lorenz—Dave—had said celebration time was on him. Did that mean no bill at all for today?

  “No, we just go ahead. They may rule in your favor anyway, and by the time they rule, you may have a purchase worked out. You know how slow the system is. This is a sort of insurance policy.”

  “So our next step would be…” Tomas, ever practical. Thank God for Tomas.

  “If you’re willing to incur the additional expense, then we can research exactly who owns the tidal flats. It’ll likely be someone who has no idea he or she does, because this whole thing was a mistake to begin with. Sloppy work, as I said. You all consider forming a realty corporation of some sort, a legal partnership to purchase the flats outright, if the owner is willing to sell.” Lorenz paused for dramatic effect, sat back and grinned. “Then you can tell Pissario to go piss in the wind. As long as that wind isn’t blowing onto your beach and flats. What do you think?”

  “There’s a risk,” Tomas pointed out. “The legal owner could decide to shut us down. Are we opening another can of worms?”

  “Possible. But the land really isn’t good for anything but aquaculture. Shit, guys. It’s under water, for God’s sake. There’s no beach at high tide. If he or she can turn it into some cold cash, I think it’s a decent bet they’ll want to. But you’re right. It’s your decision. If it pays off, you’re your own masters forever.”

  “Of course, if we win the suit, we win the suit.” Tomas, in his overalls, seemed to be matching the attorney point for point.

  “He’ll appeal if you win. And appeal and appeal all the way to the State Supreme Court.” Lorenz reasoned. “This can, and probably will turn into a war of attrition. An expensive war of attrition.”

  “I say we go for it,” Rid said suddenly. He was not entirely sure what the word attrition meant, but he liked the idea of owning the flats outright.

  “I’m in,” Mario said.

  Tomas sighed and leaned back in his chair. “Give me a minute to think this through.” The other men fell silent. The lawyer took a swallow of coffee. Rid squeezed the bridge of his nose between his thumb and third finger and then pressed along the ridge of his eyebrows where a headache was budding.

  Tomas opened his eyes. “So what should we name our realty company? Presuming there’s a seller who wants to deal with one genius, one very fine ex-con and one juvenile delinquent AWOL Marine?”

  * * * *

  Even Tomas might have trouble masking his elation if they went to the bar at The Oyster to celebrate that night, although of the three of them, he was the most inclined to say, “It’s looking a lot better,” as opposed to shrieking war whoops of victory. That was Mario’s style. Instead, they went to the beac
h over on Jeremy Point on Great Island, the most deserted spot they could come up with. Not technically an island but a peninsula, Great Island was the westernmost part of harbor land. Billingsgate Island—which the sea finally swallowed completely in 1942, now just a shoal marked by a buoy—was off its tip. Back in 1850 there were thirty homes there, a school, a plant to render the oil of the pilot whales that the Wampanoag Indians had taught the first whites how to hunt. Blackfish, they called them. There was a succession of three lighthouses on Billingsgate, each one in turn eaten by the encroaching water, each built on higher ground, until 1910 when the bay ate the sand out from underneath and the beacon was removed from the last one. In 1922, it crumbled and the bricks were floated across to the village of Wellfleet, like a number of the houses had been.

  At Jeremy Point, there was no need to mask anything. They were alone with the reveling ghosts of Smith’s Tavern, where their ancestors had celebrated. A woman’s fan, made of ivory, whale bones, a harpoon shaft, a piece of a man’s skull: they’d all been found at the abandoned site, but no place was more desolate now than the forest and beaches of Great Island, utterly uninhabited except by spirits.

  Mario’s truck was parked on the beach below the tide line. He’d come ahead of the other two to dig on public land while they went to get wood and supplies. When Rid pulled in and parked next to Tomas above the wrack line, he saw Mario had a bushel and a half of quahogs in his truck bed and thought, I should be the one digging. I’m the one who needs ’em. They’d all agreed to stay away from their own grants that afternoon; for Tomas and Rid, it had been about keeping Mario quiet, away from the other oystermen until they all calmed down. Now it was just the back side of the tide, and while he could have still done some raking, he let it pass. Tomorrow he’d go at it hard, both tides. He’d do what he could in darkness, wearing a light. December was always hard; so little daylight, no usable double tides because of it.

  “Hey, man, get your butt up here—we need more wood,” Rid called, thumbing behind himself to the forest. No reason Mario should be making money while he and Tomas were dragging deadfall out of the woods. He wanted to stay in a good mood. For God’s sake, he couldn’t remember the last time he’d had anything to celebrate.

  “Yep, on my way,” Mario called back. He slung his rake and a quarter-full basket into his truck bed, and trotted up the beach toward Rid.

  “Gonna pull your truck up?”

  “I’ll get it in a bit,” Mario said.

  Jeremy Point was a rich source of driftwood, and the forested areas replete with downed and rotting trees. The three gathered a huge brush pile with which to feed the flames, and wood to sustain it. The warm spell had held and the fire they built was high and hot. As dusk rose off the beach skyward, the men unrolled old sleeping bags to sit on and shield their backs from the evening chill.

  Tomas and Rid had brought two cases of cold beer, two packages of hotdogs, and buns, and six bags of chips. Mario rummaged in his glove compartment to contribute packets of mustard and ketchup he’d stolen during the summer from a mid-Cape burger stand.

  None of them held back. They’d been popping caps before the fire sparked and once it flared up, further flushing their faces, they let loose. It might be premature, but there was more than hope now. There was a plan. They needed to keep quiet, they’d probably need to raise a bunch more money, but their minds were running marathons with possibilities. “Hey, man, maybe we end up giving grants to the town!” Mario shouted and then laughed hysterically. “Burn me a dog, buddy.” Tomas had several sticks of them going at once.

  “Damn. Why didn’t we get some marshmallows? Those are what’s good to burn.” Rid said.

  “I still want to burn Pissario’s stinking house.” Mario, of course. His face illuminated red in the firelight, full darkness behind him now.

  The notion was immediately quashed by the voice of reason, even after however many beers they’d put away. Tomas sounded stone sober, although five minutes earlier he’d seemed as lit as Rid and Mario. “No way. We got the bastard now. This’ll do him worse. If we pull it off, we’ll be calling the shots. First time you step over the line, do something illegal, you give him ammunition. You gotta stay cool.”

  “I’m cool,” Mario said. “I’m absolutely cool.”

  Rid suddenly startled, scanned the beach, stared into the darkness and started laughing. He untangled his legs and feet to stand, but doubled over laughing and staggered, holding a hand out to Mario as he did. “Yeah man, you are absolutely the King of Cool. You better get up fast, dude, oh King of Cool, because I do believe you have done sank your truck.”

  “Shit,” Mario shouted, on his feet, Tomas lumbering upright behind him. The men ran down the beach toward the water, the truck taking shape in the darkness as they approached the advancing surf. “Goddammit, goddammit.” There was enough moonlight to calculate that waves had reached the floorboards.

  “I got a tow rope in the truck,” Tomas yelled in Rid’s direction. “Go, go, go.”

  Rid shouted to Mario, “Get your waders.”

  “They’re in the truck! Tomas is strongest anyway. I’ll drive.”

  “Like hell. It’s your goddamn truck. Put mine on.” They were running up the beach toward Rid’s and Tomas’ trucks. Rid grabbed his waders out of the bed and threw them in Mario’s direction. Tomas had climbed in his own truck bed, pulled on his waders and was rummaging for the tow rope he kept in the toolbox. At the same time he found it, Rid was in his own driver’s seat, starting his engine and throwing it into gear to drive across the beach. Once he was lined up with Mario’s truck, he turned and put it in reverse, backing it down toward the shallows into towing position.

  Tomas and Mario ran ahead down the beach to attach the rope to Mario’s bumper. Rid saw them slosh into the water, dark figures like hyphens breaking the white line of the incoming surf. One of them emerged back onto the sand with the end of the rope to attach to his rear bumper. Mario. He held up a finger in the wait sign. Rid put his truck in forward and advanced just until the rope was nearly straight. His headlights went into the forest where they were aimless.

  Looking over his shoulder, Rid saw the driver’s side door open and shut as Mario climbed in. Tomas appeared, knee-deep in the water, his raised left palm telling Rid to stop while he gestured a slow forward to Mario with his right hand. Then, he slowly started spiraling his left to Rid indicating a slow advance. “Easy, easy,” he shouted, and again, “Go easy.”

  But Rid’s tires only spun in the sand. They tried again with the same effect.

  Tomas beckoned Rid out of the truck. “Let’s try to rock it.”

  Rid shook his head. “No waders,” he yelled.

  Tomas ran to the back of Rid’s truck, then to the driver’s side where he thrust Rid’s rubber boots into the door Rid opened. Rid pulled them on, realizing even as he did that it was pointless: the water would overrun the top. And it did, almost right away as he followed Tomas into the icy breaking surf.

  He and Tomas slogged to the back of Mario’s truck. Tomas pumped a rhythm by keeping his left arm within sight of Mario’s side view mirror, his right shoulder on the truck. “Rock it, rock it, rock it, rock it.” Mario gunned the motor, on and off the accelerator as Rid and Tomas pushed.

  Adrenalin is a wonderful thing, Rid thought on Tomas’s right, both hands and a shoulder to the truck. Otherwise, I’d already be paralyzed. His hands ached against the tailgate as he pushed, the cold of the metal as penetrating as fire.

  “We need more help. Someone to back my truck up, couple guys to push,” Rid finally yelled to Tomas. The truck was rocking but not moving forward. If anything, he thought, it might be digging itself deeper. Tomas signaled Mario to stop.

  “By the time they get here, it’ll be too late,” Tomas said.

  “Depends on how far in the truck is from high water line. Do you know?”

  “Not really.” Tomas banged his fist on the tailgate. It was completely unlike him. “We better take
a look.”

  As the two passed the driver’s side, Tomas rapped on Mario’s window. “Stay put. We’re checking how far gone you are.”

  “We need more help?” Mario called. “Hey, let’s call Pissario! I bet that sumbitch’ll come help us out!”

  Tomas either didn’t hear or ignored him. Rid pretended not to, yielding to Tomas.

  On the beach, they found the wrack line. “We can still get him out. Tweed and Clint, maybe Bogsie, too.”

  “We’re not dragging them into this,” Tomas said quietly.

  “We can’t get that truck out by ourselves. He’ll lose it.”

  “Who parked it there? He’s got insurance. We get those guys out here, it attracts a whole pile of attention to us. What are we doing here having a party anyway? No. Mario’s way too drunk now not to say anything tonight. That’s why we came out here in the first place. I’ve got Marie and my kids to think about.”

  “Those guys are already involved. They gave us money to fight Pissario”

  “If Pissario gets wind that he doesn’t own those flats, do you seriously think he can’t outbid us for them? No way. This stays between the three of us. We don’t get anyone else out here. Mario sank his truck. Any oysterman who doesn’t know the tide comes in deserves to sink his truck. We’ll help him pull it out tomorrow. He can flush it out and make whatever insurance claim he wants.” Tomas’ hearty face was clarified to only planes and hollows in the pale light, steely and resolute as his voice.

  “But he’ll know. I mean, we could get him out with help. We’ve gotten out worse.”

  “He doesn’t have a cell phone. You don’t have yours with you.” It was a directive.

  Rid’s cell phone was in the center compartment of his truck. “Yours?” he asked, as much stalling for time as by way of agreement.

  “I’ll try it.”

  “Huh?”

  “I said, I’ll try it. Just drop it now.”

  What was that supposed to mean? But Tomas didn’t give him the chance to push. He turned his back and walked fast into the deepening water, back to where Mario waited in his truck. Rid could see him pounding the steering wheel with his fists.