A Darkness More Than Night

were only two pages on it. The current day’s charter and a reservation for the following Saturday. The winter months were slow. He looked at the information on the top sheet. He was unfamiliar with it because Buddy had taken the reservation. The charter was for four men from Long Beach. They were supposed to come over Friday night and stay at the Zane Grey. A four-hour charter – 10 to 2 on Saturday – and then they’d take a late ferry back to overtown. Buddy had taken the organizer’s home number and the name of the hotel as well as a deposit of half the charter fee.
    He looked at the list of hotels and phone numbers taped to the chart table and called the Zane Grey first. He quickly learned that no one with the charter organizer’s name – the only one of the four names McCaleb had – was staying at the hotel. He then called the man’s home number and got his wife. She said her husband wasn’t home.
    “Well, we’re kind of waiting for him on a boat over here on Catalina. Do you know if he and his friends are on their way?”
    There was a long silence.
    “Ma’am, you there?”
    “Uh, yes, yes. It’s just that, they’re not going fishing today. They told me they canceled that trip. They’re out golfing right now. I can give you my husband’s cell phone if you would like. You could talk -”
    “That’s not necessary, ma’am. Have a nice day.”
    McCaleb closed his phone. He knew exactly what had happened. Neither he nor Buddy had checked the answering service that handled calls to the phone number they had placed on their charter ads in various phone books and fishing publications. He called the number now, punched in the code and, sure enough, there had been a message waiting since Wednesday. The party canceled the charter. They’d reschedule later.
    “Yeah, sure,” McCaleb said.
    He erased the message and closed the phone. He felt like throwing it through the glass slider at Buddy’s head but he tried to calm himself. He walked into the little galley and got a quart carton of orange juice out of the cooler. He took it out with him to the stern.
    “No charter today,” he said before taking a long drink from the carton.
    “Why not?” Raymond asked, his disappointment obvious.
    McCaleb wiped his mouth on the sleeve of his long-sleeve T-shirt.
    “They canceled.”
    Lockridge looked up from the newspaper and McCaleb hit him with a laser stare.
    “Well, we keep the deposit, right?” Buddy asked. “I took a two-hundred-dollar deposit on Visa.”
    “No, we don’t keep the deposit because they canceled on Wednesday. We’ve both been too busy I guess to check the charter line like we’re supposed to.”
    “Ah, fuck! That’s my fault.”
    “Buddy, not in front of the boy. How many times do I have to tell you that?”
    “Sorry. Sorry.”
    McCaleb continued to stare at him. He had not wanted to talk about the leak to McEvoy until after the charter because he needed Buddy’s help running a four-man fishing party. Now it didn’t matter. Now was the time.
    “Raymond,” he said while still staring at Lockridge. “Do you still want to earn your money?”
    “Yeah.”
    “You mean ‘yes,’ don’t you?”
    “Yeah. I mean, yes. Yes.”
    “Okay, then reel in, hook your line and start taking these rods in and put them in the rack. Can you do that?”
    “Sure.”
    The boy quickly reeled in his line, took off his bait and threw it into the water. He attached the hook to one of the rod’s eyelets and then leaned it in the corner of the stern so he could take it home with him. He liked to practice his casting technique on the rear deck of the house, dropping a rubber practice weight onto the roofs and backyards below.
    Raymond started taking the deep-sea rods out of the holders where Buddy had placed them in preparation for the charter. Two by two he took them into the salon and put them in the overhead racks. He had to stand on the couch to do it but it was an old couch in dire need of a new slipcover and McCaleb didn’t care about it.
    “Something wrong, Terror?” Buddy tried. “It’s just a charter, man. We knew it was going to be slow this month.”
    “It’s not the charter, Bud.”
    “Then what? The case?”
    McCaleb took a smaller gulp of juice and put the carton down on the gunwale.
    “You mean the case I’m not on anymore?”
    “I guess. I don’t know. You’re not on it anymore? When did that -”
    “No, Buddy, I’m not on it. And there’s something I want to talk