Bayou Clement 911, what's your emergency?
Yeah, it's not an emergency. I'm calling about that stolen boat. From Vance's.
The voice was male, young or youngish, pitched low and muffled, as if the caller had something over the phone or over his mouth. A shirt sleeve. A hand. There was a sound of wind behind it and, faintly, something rhythmic and metallic, clink and clink and clink.
Okay, sir, can I get your name?
No ma'am. I just—the old Chinese guy that puts in at the public ramp. Early. He's got it. White skiff. You check it this morning, you'll see.
Sir, how do you know—
Five o'clock. He's always there at five.
Click.
Wade played it nine times. He wrote down every word. He wrote down the clink, and then he listened again and wrote down that it sounded like a halyard slapping against an aluminum mast, the sound every sailboat in every marina on the Gulf makes on a windy night, the sound that was, for that reason, about as useful as writing down that the caller had been breathing air. He wrote down the word Chinese. He wrote down the word always. He sat back and looked at what he had written.
He's always there at five. Whoever had made the call didn't just know about the boat. He knew about the man. He knew his hours, his ramp, the trailer, the Yamaha, the white hull. He knew it all well enough to say it without hesitation, and he had wanted Wade there at five o'clock, specifically, on the dot.
You should think about why that is interesting.
There was something else in the recording too, something just past the edge of hearing, and the more he listened the further it slid. A rhythm in the speech. The way the caller said No ma'am, quick, two syllables crushed into one. Every boy raised on this stretch of coast said No ma'am that way. It meant nothing. He told himself it meant nothing and took the headphones off.
On the way home he drove past the public ramp. The sodium lamp was on, buzzing faintly, laying its tea-colored light over the empty concrete. He parked and got out and stood under it and looked at the cruiser. The cruiser was white with a blue stripe and gold lettering. Under the lamp, the blue stripe looked black and the gold looked like dirty brass and the white looked like the yellowed page of a library book. He took Mr. Tran's old chrome flashlight out of his jacket and clicked it on and swept it along the fender, and the colors came back, blue and gold and white, the way they really were, the way they had always been.