"That's not fair."
"No," the old man said. "It isn't. Neither was putting my boat out of my slip on B dock while I was in the hospital so she'd have to take it. Neither was writing her up for it. I read your board minutes, son. Tuan's not the only one who can read. You could've asked me for the boat. You could've asked her for the slot. You could've asked anybody anything. You never did learn to ask."
Lawson opened his mouth. Closed it. He turned around and walked back up C dock in the rain without his sunglasses, which had fallen off his head at some point and lay on the planks of the finger pier, and nobody picked them up.
Shuford bent and picked them up. He set them on the dock box beside Ozro, folded, as if someone might come back for them.
"Ms. Pettaway," he said. "I'm going to need to put in a use-of-force report on that arm. If you want to make a complaint about it, you've got the right to do that, and I'll give you the number for Internal Affairs. I'd understand it."
"I'd like your badge number," she said.
"Four four one seven."
"Four four one seven." She looked at him. He was standing in the rain under the edge of the flybridge, a big tired man with water running off the brim of the cap he had finally put on, and she could see in his face that he wanted something from her, some sign that he could stop feeling the way he was feeling, and she did not give it to him. "You put your hand on me before you asked me one question, Sergeant."
"Yes ma'am. I did."
"If I'd been Lawson Tillery standing on that aft deck with the engines running, would you have done it?"
He didn't answer right away. The rain answered for a while.