"You told me on the phone."
"There's a line in it the instructors at New London read out loud to the young officers. The company's attorney asks your father why on earth he's volunteering his own failure to act, when nobody's accused him of anything. And your father says—" Speck took a sheaf of photocopied pages from a drawer and turned to a place marked with a strip of paper, and read it in his flat careful voice. "Because if I only tell you the part that's about him, then I'm not telling you what happened. I'm just picking out who to blame. And a man is dead, and he deserves better than that."
He handed the pages across the desk.
Duncan took them. He did not read them. He sat holding them in both hands, the paper soft with handling, and looked at the line Speck had marked, and found that he could not see it clearly.
"You can keep that copy," Speck said. "I've got another."
The southeaster came in on Sunday night.
It had been building all day, the barometer by the Anchor Light's register falling a tenth of an inch between breakfast and supper, and by eight the rain was coming sideways up Sixth Street and every boat in the harbor was doubling her lines. The forecast had gone to gale warnings, southeast thirty-five to forty-five knots, and the horn at Angels Gate had been going since noon though there was no fog, as if it had nothing else it knew how to say.
Ilda had closed early. Sig was in the back, finishing the last of the pots in a cloud of steam, in a white apron that came barely to his knees, and Duncan was mopping the floor and listening to the wind try the front windows when the telephone rang.
It was Katica Perovich. He could barely hear her for the storm and the crying.
"My dad took the skiff," she said. "He's been drinking all day, and my mom was asleep, and he took the keys, and he said he was going to Davor. He said that. I called the Coast Guard and they said they're sending a boat but they've got two out already off Huntington, and I didn't know who else to call."
"When? From where?"