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in Santiago. It was impossible to imagine much else that got started there. A start implied some activity, movement, or even work, and there wasn’t much sign of any of these tiring nouns on the sleepy streets of Santiago. Ladders stood around idle and alone, wheelbarrows sat unattended, horses kicked their heels, boats bobbed in the harbor, and fishing nets lay drying in the sun. About the only people who appeared to be working were the cops, if you could call it work. Parked up in the shade of the city’s pastel-colored buildings, they sat smoking cigarettes and waiting for things to cool down or warm up, depending on how you looked at it. Probably it was too hot and sunny for trouble. The sky was too blue and the cars were too shiny; the sea was too much like glass and the banana leaves were too glossy; the statues were too white and the shadows too short. Even the coconuts were wearing sunglasses.
    After a couple of wrong turns I spotted the coaling station of Cincoreales that was a landmark for finding my way around the shantytown of boatyards, booms, quays, pontoons, dry docks, and slipways that serviced the flotilla of boats in Santiago Bay. I pointed the car down a steep, cobbled hill and along a narrow street. Heavy brackets for trams that were no longer running hung over our heads like the rigging of a schooner that had long ago sailed without it. I steered onto the sidewalk in front of an open set of double doors and peered down into a boatyard.
    A bearded, weather-beaten man wearing shorts and sandals was maneuvering a boat that hung from an ancient-looking crane. I didn’t mind when the boat clunked against the harbor wall and then hit the water like a bar of soap. But then, it wasn’t my boat.
    We got out of the Chevy. I fetched Melba’s suitcase from the trunk and carried it into the yard, stepping carefully around or over tins of paint, buckets, lengths of rope and hose line, pieces of wood, old tires, and oil cans. The office in a little wooden hut at the back was no less of a shambles than the yard. Mendy wasn’t about to win the Good Housekeeping Seal of Approval anytime soon, but he knew boats, and since I knew them hardly at all, this was just as well.
    Once, a long time ago, Mendy had been white. But a lifetime on and by the sea had turned the part of his face that wasn’t covered by a salt-and-pepper beard to the color and texture of an old baseball mitt. He belonged in a hammock on some pirate ship bound for Hispaniola, with a hornpipe in one hand and a bottle of rum in the other. He finished what he was doing and didn’t seem to notice me until the crane was out of the way, and even then all he said was “Señor Hausner.”
    I nodded back at him. “Mendy.”
    He fetched a half-smoked cigar from the breast pocket of his grubby shirt and plugged it into a space between his beard and his mustache and spent the next few minutes while we talked patting himself down for a light.
    “Mendy, this is Señorita Otero. She’s coming on the boat with me. I told her it was just a crummy fishing boat—only she and her suitcase appear to be under the illusion that we’re going sailing on the Queen Mary .”
    Mendy’s eyes flicked between Melba and me as if he had been watching a game of table tennis. Then he smiled at her and said, “But the senõrita is absolutely right, Señor Hausner. The first rule of going to sea is to be prepared for absolutely anything.”
    “Thank you,” said Melba. “That’s what I said.”
    Mendy looked at me and shook his head. “Clearly, you know nothing about women, senõr,” he said.
    “About as much as I know about boats,” I said.
    Mendy chuckled. “For your sake, I hope it’s a little more than that.”
    He led the way out of the boatyard and down to the L-shaped pontoon, where a wooden launch was moored. We stepped aboard and sat down. Mendy tugged a motor into life and then steered us out into the bay. Five minutes later, we were tying up alongside a