Chapter 1

"One thousand two hundred forty," the stockroom boy read off the crate stencil.

Then he said the real number was forty cases higher.

The centennial crew turned from the crate to look at him.

He was fifteen, small in a salt-stiff canvas apron, a flat wool cap pulled down to his ears.

Vernon Cauldwell laughed first, easy and wide, his gold watch chain catching the fog-bright light.

"The boy can't read a ledger," he said. "Never could."

Half the dock crew laughed with him, because Vernon was always worth laughing with.

Marta Ives didn't laugh.

She stood at the far corner of the crate in her red union jacket, clip board flat against her chest.

"You're the owner's blood," she said. "I know what that means."

"Say the number right," Vernon told him, turning back toward the camera.

"One thousand two hundred eighty," Perry said.

The laughing stopped.

Nobody moved.

Nobody even breathed.

"Eight hundred cases stacked in the stockroom on the fourteenth," Perry said.

"Four hundred eighty went out on berth nine."

"The crate says one thousand two hundred forty."

"That's forty short."

Behind them, Emmett Fisk leaned out of the scale house window.

His face had gone the color of the fog.

"Get him out of the picture," Vernon said, and something had changed in his voice.

Then Marta's hand landed flat on Perry's shoulder and pushed him toward the door.

Perry didn't go.

He reached under the band of his cap and pulled out a folded weigh ticket, soft as cloth from three weeks in the band.

Then he said the crate's serial.

Slow.

Exact.

All of it.

Emmett Fisk's hands tightened on the scale house sill.

Perry held the stub up beside the stencil so the whole crew could see the two numbers.

Vernon's free hand came off his ledger and reached for it.

"Ask your clerk what really went out on berth nine."