Chapter 1: Cruising

Friday, May 25, 2018

I hung up on Chief Hollister and looked at my wife.

Kelly looked at me from where she was sitting. “What was that all about?”

I gave her a smile. “I think I have a new job.”

“Oh? I thought you just retired.”

“So, you really want me lying around the living room for the rest of my life?”

“God forbid!” she replied. “Knowing you, you’d just end up dusty and moldy. Who were you talking to?”

“A fellow up in Bethel Hollow in Tennessee. Mike Crowley gave him my name. He’s a police chief and is looking for a consultant.”

“Huh. What’s he need a consultant for?”

That made me give her a perplexed look. “I don’t really know. I told him I wasn’t available for a couple of weeks.”

“You also gave him the wrong date for when we’d be back. You said the week of June 4^th. We won’t be back until the end of the week. You should have said June 11^th.”

I nodded. “I’ll call him back, but first, I’m going to call Mike Crowley, see what he told this guy.”

“Good idea.”

I called Mike Crowley and asked him about Terry Hollister. Mike and his wife Linda had sold their home and moved to Phoenix after his forced retirement. They had bought a home in a retirement community, but he had told me he was too young to actually retire. He was going to find something local and double dip, collecting his pension and a paycheck at the same time. He told me that he had indeed talked to Hollister earlier in the week and recommended me. Bethel Hollow was a small police department, only about sixty officers total, but was about to grow dramatically. Bethel Hollow was the largest of a string of small towns in southeastern Tennessee that were consolidating, much like Matucket and East Matucket had done forty years before. The local politicians had bought into the promise of some consultants about how much money was going to be saved by combining the four towns involved into a single municipality based on Bethel Hollow. Hollister had to combine their police departments into a single department.

“How’d you get involved in this, Mike?” I asked.

“I’ve known Terry for a while now. Good guy, real meat-and-potatoes kind of cop. He likes the basics without a lot of frills, know what I mean? You’d get along with him. Anyway, he’s a bit skeptical of some of the politicians and consultants who want to tell him how to run the combination. It’s going to basically double the size of the department he’s already running. I told him he needs a cop, a real cop, to tell him what to do.”

“Well, I need to call him back anyway. I gave him the wrong date on when I’d be available. Sounds interesting.”

“Talk soon, Grim.”

“Take care, Mike.”

I called Terry Hollister back and apologized for the mix-up in the date. I also told him that Mike Crowley had given me an idea about what he was interested in, and I asked him to email me as much information as he could. That way I would have a chance to think about the problem and have some background when we met. He promised to send me what he could. If nothing else, this would give him the chance to think about the details of the project.

After I hung up, I went to the bedroom to find Kelly packing and told her what Mike had said. “Sounds interesting. I think you’d be good at that sort of thing. Now, pack your bags. We need to be out of here at what you call oh-dark-hundred.”

“True enough.” In the morning we had to fly to Miami for a ten-day cruise through the Caribbean. Packing was both simple and a royal pain in the tail. It was simple in that the weather was going to be warm, so we could leave the boots and parkas behind; most of the time we would be wearing shorts, tops, and running shoes. Still, several nights were listed as formal dining so I needed to pack a suit, sport coat, slacks, and dress shirts, along with some dress shoes. On the other hand, it was just Kelly and me, so underwear wasn’t going to be necessary. The plan was to take our two largest suitcases and our hanging bag. We both had carry-on bags with our computers and paperwork.

We were taking a Royal Caribbean ship on our cruise, Wanderer of the Seas, and it was sailing at 1600. You had to be at the port at least an hour ahead of time. Figure an hour from the airport to the port, no matter what they say otherwise. We were flying in from Atlanta, which was a two-hour flight. Add another two hours to get through security and board the plane in Atlanta, and another hour travel from Matucket to Hartsfield. Theoretically if we left the house at 0900, we should get there right on time, but life doesn’t work out that way. Our flight was leaving ATL at 0929, so we had to leave Matucket at 0630 or so. It would be a long day.

According to the itinerary, we were supposed to sail Saturday afternoon and cruise at sea all day Sunday. Monday morning, we would be at Grand Cayman in the Cayman Islands. Tuesday we were back at sea all day. Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday were at a trio of tiny islands down near Venezuela, Aruba, Curacao, and Bonaire. Then it was two full days of cruising, followed by docking in Miami on the following Monday. Supposedly the ship got to the dock very early and they shoveled you off as fast as possible. Hopefully you made it to the airport in time for your return flight. The plan was to go home and leave the kids with our parents until sometime Wednesday; that would give us a chance to unwind and unpack.

Travelling proved as much of a pain in the ass as we had expected. Hartsfield is never enjoyable and always crammed. Fortunately, we purchased our flight tickets through the cruise company, so we only had to mess with our luggage once. Most of the cruise paperwork was done online and through email. We even got our luggage tags that way. Once we checked our luggage at the airport it would automatically be forwarded to the ship. So, would we; there was a shuttle service going directly from the airport to the terminal. Once at the terminal, however, everything became a major pain in the tail.

I’ve seen on old movies and television shows how you used to be able to just drive up to the ship and get out, while smiling porters took your luggage and you just breezed up the gangplank. I don’t know when that was possible. Certainly not in this century! Nobody drives up to the ship. It’s more like an entire second check-in at the airport. Long lines, security checks, and a huge warehouse-like terminal. Armed guards were everywhere, along with very high chain-link fences and barbed wire. Nobody was getting close to a ship without being checked out. We got in line and snaked our way to the front. Eventually we handed over our preprinted documents and our passports and were allowed through. A photo was taken, a key card was printed, and we were pointed towards the boat.

If the terminal was as big as a warehouse, the boat made it seem miniscule! Wanderer of the Seas carried over 3,000 passengers and 1,000 crew and was as big as the largest battleship or aircraft carrier. Still, there were larger ships. When Kelly and I had been googling while arranging our vacation, we found ships twice that size. The largest had passenger berths for 5,500, or 6,500 at maximum capacity, and almost 2,500 crew. That was like floating around in a small city!

Unsurprisingly, the security screening checked my cane to make sure it wasn’t a deadly terrorist device. It wasn’t all that fancy, just your basic hickory cane in a dark stain. It wasn’t clear yet whether my leg would improve to the point I wouldn’t need it. So far it was something I only used at the end of the day when my leg began to tire and stiffen up. Earlier in the day I just had a slight limp but as the day went on the limp would get worse. Even though it was only about three in the afternoon (or 1500 as I would tell Kelly, which would just get her to laughing at me) we had been up quite a while. I needed it as we got out of the warehouse. From there we had to traverse this huge back-and-forth walkway up to the entry port. I grimaced. The ship was at least a hundred feet tall from the dock to the top decks, maybe more, and we had to climb at least sixty feet up the walkway.

Nothing to do but slap a smile on my face and start hiking. I had my carry-on computer bag on my right shoulder and was using my cane with my left hand. I led the way with Kelly following. The way the walkway worked it seemed like every length of the walkway we would rise maybe ten feet, but it seemed to take forever. About a third of the way up we passed an older couple, older than my folks and younger than my grandparents. As we passed him, I noticed he seemed to be wheezing a touch and having some problems, and his wife was looking worried. “Maybe we should go back down, honey. Maybe they can put us aboard another way,” she said.

I glanced at Kelly and then looked at the man. He was wearing pants, not shorts, and had a VFW ball cap on. “Sir, are you feeling alright? Can I help you?” I asked.

“I’ll be fine. I just need to catch my breath,” he answered.

I smiled and stood there with him. “Me, too.”

“I had a heart attack a couple of months ago. They put in a stent, but I still get tired.”

“My dad got two last year. He said the same thing.”

He looked down at my left leg and noticed the ACE bandages wrapping my knee and ankle. He grunted and nodded. “What’d you do?”

“Used to be a cop until a tree fell on me.” I looked down and noticed something odd about his right leg. “You?”

He smiled. “Sharp eyes. I was in the 101^st. Vietnam, a place called Firebase Ripcord. I caught part of a mortar shell and lost it below the knee.”

I grinned at him. “I did two tours in Iraq. The One-Oh-Worst saved my bacon a couple of times.” He eyed me and I added, “Tenth Mountain Division.”

“HOO-AH!”

“HOO-AH! Ready to continue?”

“Ready. I’m Cal Walton, by the way. I was a corporal once.”

“The name’s Grim. Sergeant. Come on, Cal.” I moved around to his right side. “Take my arm. You lean on me, and I’ll lean on you. We do this the Army way. We just keep putting one foot in front of the other.” I handed Kelly my cane and tucked Cal’s right arm through my left.

We walked up the walkway as other passengers squeezed around us. We talked about our time in the Army as we climbed and though we moved slowly, we kept moving. Once we got to the top, we were able to go inside the ship. One final security check was made and then we were let onto the elevators.

“Thanks, Grim. What kind of name is that, anyway?”

“Short for Graham. My baby brother couldn’t figure it out when he was little, and the name stuck. It was nice meeting you, Cal.”

“Well, it was real nice meeting you. We run across each other on this barge, I owe you a drink or two.”

“Probably going to see each other at some point. I like bourbon.”

“Same here!”

“Us old soldiers need to stick together, Cal.” We shook hands and his wife kissed my cheek, and then Kelly and I headed to our room on Deck Eight.

Kelly handed me back my cane and kissed my cheek, too. “You’re a good man, Grim.”

“But girls seem to prefer the bad boys, not the good ones.”

“Depends on what you’re good at.”

“We’ll have to try to figure out what that is,” I remarked, giving her a lewd grin. Kelly gave me a hip bump and we started looking for signs to where our cabin was.

According to our map of the ship, cabin 8544 was on the left side of the boat halfway between the front and the back. The nautical types would say we were midship on the port side. Sailors are silly. We used our keycard to enter the cabin and tossed our carry-ons on the bed. In some ways it looked a bit spartan but that was only because they sell space on cruise ships by the square inch. We had a king-size bed, a couch, an armchair, and a built-in closet and dresser unit. What you were really paying for was the view. We had a patio door going out to a balcony, and that was something you only got on a few decks and on exterior rooms. The cheap rooms, the ones they advertised the prices, they were down at the bottom of the boat, had no windows, and had bunk beds.

Kelly came up to me and wrapped her arms around me. “I think you deserve a nice reward for what you just did.”

“Oh, really?”

“A really nice reward.”

I smiled down at my wife. Kelly was wearing a crisp white blouse, a long and thin cotton print skirt, and low sandals. That was all, too, since I had watched her put it on. Kelly rubbed herself against me like a bitch in heat. “Babe, as much as I would like to accommodate you, the odds are excellent that as soon as we start getting busy some bellboy is going to barge in here with our luggage!”