Fear Nothing

sorry?”
        “Nothing else with you, no one else?”
        “No, sir.”
        “Come aboard, then.”
        I could see him now, because he had moved closer to the railing on the open upper deck, aft of the helm station. I couldn't identify him even from this relatively short distance, however, because he was screened by the pea-soup fog, the night, and his own darkness.
        Urging Orson to precede me, I boarded the boat through the gap in the port railing, and we quickly climbed the open steps to the upper deck.
        When we got to the top, I saw that Roosevelt Frost was holding a shotgun. Pretty soon the National Rifle Association would move its headquarters to Moonlight Bay. He wasn't aiming the gun at me, but I was sure he'd been covering me with it until he had been able to identify me in the beam of the flashlight.
        Even without the shotgun, he was a formidable figure. Six feet four. Neck like a dock piling. Shoulders as wide as a staysail boom. Deep chest. With a two-hand spread way bigger than the diameter of the average helm wheel. This was the guy who Ahab should have called to cold-cock Moby Dick. He had been a football star in the sixties and early seventies, when sportswriters referred to him as the Sledgehammer. Though he was now sixty-three, a successful businessman who owned a men's clothing store, a mini-mall, and half-interest in the Moonlight Bay Inn and Country Club, he appeared capable of pulverizing any of the genetic-mutant, steroid-pumped behemoths who played some of the power positions on contemporary teams.
        “Hello, dog,” he murmured.
        Orson chuffed.
        “Hold this, son,” Frost whispered, handing the shotgun to me.
        A pair of curious-looking, high-tech binoculars hung on a strap around his neck. He brought them to his eyes and, from this top-deck vantage point overlooking surrounding craft, surveyed the pier along which I had recently approached the Nostromo .
        “How can you see anything?” I wondered.
        “Night-vision binoculars. They magnify available light eighteen thousand times.”
        “But the fog…”
        He pressed a button on the glasses, and as a mechanism purred inside them, he said, “They also have an infrared mode, shows you only heat sources.”
        “Must be lots of heat sources around the marina.”
        “Not with boat engines off. Besides, I'm interested only in heat sources on the move .”
        “People.”
        “Maybe.”
        “Who?”
        “Whoever might've been following you. Now hush, son.”
        I hushed. As Roosevelt patiently scanned the marina, I passed the next minute wondering about this former football star and local businessman who was not, after all, quite what he seemed.
        I wasn't surprised, exactly. Since sundown, the people I'd encountered had revealed dimensions to their lives of which I had previously been unaware. Even Bobby had been keeping secrets: the shotgun in the broom closet, the troop of monkeys. When I considered Pia Mick's conviction that she was the reincarnation of Kaha Huna, which Bobby had been keeping to himself, I better understood his bitter, disputatious response to any view that he felt smacked of New Age thinking, including my occasional innocent comments about my strange dog. At least Orson, if no one else, had remained in character throughout the night - although, considering the way things were going, I wouldn't have been bowled over if suddenly he revealed an ability to stand on his hind paws and tap dance with mesmerizing showmanship.
        “No one's trailing after you,” said Roosevelt as he lowered the night glasses and took back his shotgun. “This way, son.”
        I followed him aft across the sun deck to an open hatch on the starboard side.
        Roosevelt paused and looked back, over the top of my head, to the port railing where Orson still lingered. “Here now. Come along, dog.”
        The mutt hung behind, but not because he sensed anything lurking on the dock. As usual, he was curiously and uncharacteristically shy around Roosevelt.
        Our host's hobby was “animal communications quintessential New Age concept that had been fodder for most daytime television talk shows, although Roosevelt was discreet about his talent and employed it only at the request of neighbors and friends. The mere mention of animal communication had been able to start Bobby foaming at the mouth even long