"Ms. Pettaway," he said. "I'm sorry."
"I heard you," she said.
He nodded. He got back in the patrol boat. Brannon pushed off, and the boat turned out into the river with its blue light going and went back up toward the bridge, toward whatever else was waiting for them, and she watched it until it was gone in the rain.
Hurricane Ophira came ashore at four-forty on Sunday afternoon at Dauphin Island, as a strong Category Two, with sustained winds of a hundred and five miles an hour and a storm surge in the upper reaches of Mobile Bay of nine feet four inches.
They rode it out in Claudine's house in Theodore, a brick ranch on a cul-de-sac off Bellingrath Road that she had bought after her divorce and paid down, a bit at a time, the way her grandfather had paid for everything. The power went out at one in the afternoon. She started the generator at one-ten and ran an extension cord to the oxygen concentrator in the spare bedroom and another to the refrigerator, and Ozro sat in her recliner in the living room with the cannula in his nose and listened to the battery radio and gave a running commentary on the meteorologists, all of whom he considered young. Tuan slept until noon and then sat on the kitchen floor with his back against the cabinets and his laptop on his knees, on battery, going through the scans of the ledgers he had saved in three places.
"Article Twelve, Section Two," he said, around three o'clock, while the wind screamed in the eaves and something, somebody's trampoline, went end over end down the cul-de-sac. "Prohibition on Commercial Dockage. And then the 1988 amendment. Twelve, Two, A." He read it aloud. "Notwithstanding the foregoing, a Slot Owner may permit a vessel owned by another person to occupy the Slot Owner's Boat Slot Unit without the approval of the Board, provided no consideration is paid therefor, and provided such vessel is insured in accordance with Article Eleven." He looked up. "Captain. Is Clementine insured?"
"Hull and liability with BoatUS since 1996," Ozro said, without opening his eyes. "Never missed a payment. I wrote that amendment, son. Your granddaddy and me, Claudine. Over at the Waffle House on Dauphin Island Parkway, on a placemat, because Ransom Sumrall's nephew was on the board and he was trying to say Zeb couldn't let me keep my old tug tender in his slot when I didn't have one of my own. Zeb paid for the waffles. He made me promise I'd never let them change it." He opened his eyes. "Thirty-eight years. I'd forgotten I made that promise until my boy put my boat out on the street."
"Have you paid her?" Tuan said. "For the slot?"
"She won't take it," Ozro said. "I tried. She said her granddaddy'd come back and haunt her."
"He would," Claudine said, from the window, where she was watching the pines bend.
"Then the notice of violation's no good," Tuan said. "Even if the board had passed it. No consideration, insured vessel, owner's consent. It's permitted. It's been permitted since 1988." He closed the laptop. He sat with it on his knees. "He had to know that. He's the president. He had to know."