J is for Judgement

contact."
    The waiter returned with our drinks and Carl looked up. "Thanks, Jimmy. Put this on my tab, if you would." He took the bill, tacked on a tip, and scrawled his name across the bottom before he handed it back.
    The waiter murmured, "Thank you, Mr. Eckert. Will there be anything else?"
    "We're fine."
    "You have a good night."
    Carl nodded absentmindedly, regarding me with speculation.
    I reached in my handbag and pulled a copy from the sheaf of composites Valbusa had done. "I have a picture if you want to see it." I laid it on the table in front of him.
    Carl stuck his cigarette in the corner of his mouth, squinting slightly from the smoke as he studied Wendell's face. He shook his head, his smile bitter. "What a fuck."
    "I thought you might be glad to hear he was alive," I said.
    "Hey, I went to jail because of him. Lot of people wanted a piece of my hide. When money goes down the toilet, someone has to take the blame. I didn't mind paying my debt, but I sure as hell hated paying his."
    "Must have been hard."
    "You have no idea. Once I filed bankruptcy, all the loans went into default. It was a mess. I don't want to get into that."
    "If Wendell gets in touch, will you let me know?"
    "Probably," he said. "I don't want to talk to him, that's for sure. He was a good friend. At least I thought he was."
    There was another burst of laughter. He shifted restlessly and pushed his drink aside. "Let's go down to the boat. It's too fuckin' loud in here."
    Without waiting for an answer, he got up and left the table. Startled, I grabbed my handbag and scurried after him.
    The noise level dropped dramatically the minute we stepped outside. The air was cold and fresh. The wind had picked up, and the waves crashed against the sea-wall in a series of blasting sprays. Boom! A feathery plume, like a stalk of pampas grass, would dance along the breakwater and go down again, throwing off a splat of water that landed on the walk as if it were being thrown by the bucket.
    When we reached the locked gate leading into Marina he took out his card key and let us through. In a curiously gallant gesture, Carl put his hand on my elbow and guided me down the slippery wooden ramp. I could hear creaking sounds as the boats shifted in the harbor waters, bobbing and swaying with an occasional tinkling of metal on metal. Our footsteps formed an irregular rhythm as we clunked along the walkway.
    The four marinas provide slips for about eleven hundred boats, protected from the open waters in an eighty-four-acre area. The wharf on one side is like the crook of a thumb with the breakwater -curling toward it in a nearly completed circle in which the boats are nestled. In addition to visitors occupying temporary slips, there are usually a small number of permanent "live- aboards," using their boats as their primary residence. Key-secured restrooms provide toilets and showers, with a holding tank pump-out station located on the south side of the fuel dock. At the "T' dock we took a left, proceeding another thirty yards to the boat.
    The Captain Stanley Lord was a thirty-five-foot Fuji ketch, derived from a John Alden-designed sailing vessel with the mainmast toward the bow. The exterior was painted an intense dark green with the trim in navy blue. Carl pulled himself up on the narrow deck and then extended a hand, pulling me up after him. In the dark I could make out the mainsheet and the mizzen-mast, but not much else. He unlocked the door and slid the hatch forward. "Watch your head," he said as he moved down into the galley. "You know anything about boats?"
    "Not much," I said. I eased carefully down four steep carpeted stairs into the galley behind him.
    "This one has three headsails: a one fifty Genoa, a one ten working jib, and a storm jib, then the mainsail, of course, and the mizzen."
    "Why is it called the Captain Stanley Lord? Who's he?"
    "It's nautical lore. Wendell's sense of humor, such as it was. Stanley Lord was captain of the Californian, allegedly the only boat close enough to the Titanic to have helped with the rescue. Lord claimed he never picked up the distress signal, but a later investigation suggested he ignored the SOS. He was blamed for the extent of the disaster, and the scandal ruined his career. Wendell used the same name for the company: CSL Investments. I never did get it, but he thought it was amusing."
    The interior had the cozy, unreal feeling of a doll's house, the kind of space I love best, compact and efficient,