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“My motors is probably fucked.”
“La madamehas come from the Bureau du coroner.” I let the error go. Plante’s intro was close enough to the truth. And more understandable to the layman.
Legalt said nothing.
“TheGrésillentis yours, sir?” Up close, I could see the name in scrolly letters on the algae-crusted hull.Sizzling.
Legalt nodded again.
“May I ask why you chose to tie up in Bickerdike Basin?”
“I told all this to the cop.” Head tip toward Plante, who’d distanced himself to speak into his mobile. “He wrote it down.”
“I’d like to fully understand the situation,” I said.
Legalt raised the mangled hand to harvest a fleck of tobacco from one lip. Flicked the fleck. Compressed the lips.
Above us, a motorcycle roared by on Pierre-Dupuy. A car door slammed, and an engine started up.
“Sir?” I prodded.
The cerulean lenses focused on me. Reluctant. “I was meeting a fishing buddy. Last minute, the bastard canceled.”
Legalt’s French was heavily accented, his word endings swallowed in the manner of the upriver Québécois. I had to listen carefully.
“Can you describe what you saw?” I asked.
Legalt rolled his head, probably his eyes. Hard to tell with the aviators.
“Sir?”
To my relief, Legalt switched to English. Mostly English.
“I’m moored twenty, maybe thirty minutes when a shit ton of gulls starts mobbing my outboards. Forty, fifty, maybe more. For a while, I ignored them. What the hell? Gulls is gulls. But these bastards was screaming and flapping and fighting like someone set fire to their balls. I’m bored waiting for Guillaume,le connard, so I go to the stern to seepourquoi le fou.”
Overhead, a gull cawed, perhaps disagreeing with Legalt’s portrayal of Laridae behavior. Perhaps offended by his reference to the “asshole” friend. Or their genitals.
“And?” I prompted.
“A mother lode of crap was caught in my blades. Figuring it was the usual river shit, I start poking around trying to cut it loose. Then I whack somethinglourd.”
Lourd. Heavy. That didn’t sound good.
Legalt pulled a pack of Player’s from the pocket of his cut-offs, shook it, grasped one of the remaining cigarettes with his lips. Slipping matches from below the cellophane, he lit up, inhaled, and, with a twist of his mouth, blew the smoke side-ways.
In my peripheral vision, I noted Plante checking his watch.
“Go on,” I urged.
“What the hell? I go to poking some more.”
Legalt paused for another round with his Player’s. A long one.
“Yes?”
Legalt shrugged. “I figure maybe it could be my lucky day. Salvage from the sea, ya know?”
I didn’t. “And then?”
