Keller went completely motionless, the pain in his pinned leg suddenly secondary to the calculation running behind his wet, gray eyes.
For six months, local boats had been told that shore power was rationed due to grid maintenance along the southern seawall. Every independent boat had been burning forty gallons of marine diesel an hour just to keep their refrigeration running at the berth, driving operating costs through the ceiling until selling out to the corporate fleet seemed like the only way to avoid bankruptcy. Meanwhile, the power wasn't shut off at all. Keller had diverted the industrial feed to run four commercial walk-ins in an abandoned port authority leasehold, charging private seafood distributors under-the-table rates to store black-market Dungeness crab outside state inspection.
The cash envelope in his jacket wasn't just diesel grease money. It was the weekly cash settlement he used to balance the sub-meter discrepancy before the city utility inspectors ran their automated Sunday audits.
"You don't have access to the shed meters," Keller said, though the certainty had vanished from his voice, replaced by the hollow panic of a man realizing his exits had been quietly boarded up hours before he arrived.
"We didn't need the meters," Frank said, his thumb flicking the edge of the legal pad. "The bypass camera on our mast has an optical zoom with an infrared overlay. It’s been pointed right through your shed’s ventilation louvers since Tuesday night. Every compressor cycle, every pallet your brother-in-law loaded onto that refrigerated box truck, is locked on a solid-state drive twenty miles across the water."
A heavy siren sounded from the north slip, low and mournful through the curtain of rain. It wasn't the port authority patrol boat. It was the twin-tone horn of the United States Coast Guard cutter Terrapin, easing away from its mooring at Pier 36 with its blue law-enforcement strobe pulsing against the low belly of the clouds.
Keller jerked backward against the piling, his breath coming in dry, frantic sobs as the blue light swept across the wet timbers of the dock. "Miller, trip the release! Let me up! We can clear this right now—we'll zero the fuel slip, I'll sign the unlimited annual berth permit, you take the power drop for the winter!"
I looked down at the winch control box mounted by the starboard rail. The dog lever was three inches from my right hand. A single hard pull on the mechanical release would vent the hydraulic pressure, open the aluminum bracket, and drop Keller flat onto the timber decking before the cutter’s boarding skiff could round the breakwater.
I let my hand fall to my side.
"The line holds until the boarding officer checks the gangway, Keller," I said.
The engine of the Coast Guard response boat throttled down fifty yards off our quarter, its searchlight cutting through the rain and pinning us both against the cold, glistening steel of the wheelhouse.
CHAPTER 2 CONTINUED
"Miller," Keller said, his voice flat and thin beneath the roar of the water. "Pull the hydraulic pin. You drop the dog latch now, and this is a dockside equipment failure. The line parted during surge. I won't contest your clearance slip."
"The latch stays engaged," I said.
Frank stepped forward along the diamond-plate deck, the yellow carbon slip from the federal admiralty filing held flat against his chest under his yellow slicker. He didn't look at Keller's hip. He pointed with his free thumb toward the boarding ladder on our port quarter, where two Coast Guard petty officers in high-visibility drysuits were already securing their painter line to our midship cleat.
"Lieutenant Vance is on the deck of that cutter," Frank told Keller. "He didn't answer your harbor dispatch frequency because we didn't call the harbor division. We called the Marine Safety Unit on Alaskan Way four hours ago when your sub-breaker dumped the refrigerated line to Pier 48."
Keller’s jaw tightened. "MSU doesn't handle berth allocation. It’s an administrative contract."
"It’s an evidentiary preservation order," Frank said.
The lead petty officer came over the port rail with practiced, heavy steps, his deck boots squeaking against the wet non-skid. He carried an Pelican inspection case in one hand and a secondary communications tablet clipped to his chest harness. A second boarding officer followed him immediately, taking station by our forward mooring bitt, his eyes scanning the narrow gap between our starboard bulwark and the timber dock.