When he looked through the glass and saw a small red Honda Accord at his arm, with a woman behind the wheel whose head was wrapped in a navy blue scarf that came down tight around her face and under her chin, the first thing he felt, before any thought at all, was a kind of tired irritation, the irritation of a man who has to get up off a stool. The second thing, which came right behind it, was suspicion. Nobody came to Gate Two in a red Honda at a quarter to seven at night with a storm coming. Vendors came in vans. Crew came in the Seafarers' Center shuttle. Pilots came in trucks.
He slid the window open. The air outside was thick and warm and smelled like rain that hadn't fallen yet.
"Help you?"
"Good evening." The woman's voice was calm and clear, with no accent he could place, just Texas, maybe Houston. She was holding a card up toward him. "I'm the pilot for the Corvina Star at Berth Four. The reader's out, so I'll need you to check me in manually. Rania Mansour, Bayard Pilots. Dispatch should have called it in to your ops."
Wade looked at her. He looked at the card in her hand. He looked at the car. He looked at her again.
"You're the what?"
"The pilot," she said. "The harbor pilot. I'm taking the Corvina Star off Berth Four. She's scheduled to sail at nineteen hundred, but we're moving it up because of the weather." She pointed, not at him but past him, toward the southwest, where the wall of cloud had swallowed the last of the light. "That's why I'm in a hurry."
Wade did not take the card. He folded his arms across his chest and leaned one shoulder against the window frame.
"Ma'am, I've been on this terminal twenty-six years. I know the pilots. Clint Daigle. Ross Hebert. The Picard brothers. Big guy with the mustache, Abshire. I've never seen you in my life."
"I've been through Gate One a hundred times," she said. "And through this gate maybe a dozen, on day shift. Most of the night jobs come in through One. I don't think we've met. I'm Captain Mansour." She held the card out farther, toward the window. "That's my TWIC. My state pilot license is in my bag. You can call our dispatch at the pilot station. Hap Landry is on tonight. Or call your ops."