The Boat

by Jim Markson

  John accepted the outreached offer of the bottle and took a mouthful as the rain hit his face. For a moment, it crossed his mind that the rainwater seemed to be washing away everything in the past and the future, leaving him to enjoy the current moment. He silently watched as his younger brother contentedly steered the small boat through the bouncing chop. Within an hour Mike had landed the boat on the eastern tip of the island, and they got out again to casually examine the shallower and less threatening passage over to Anna Maria Island. That was where the Intercoastal system began, and would provide them relative safe passage for the majority of their trip down to the bottom of the state.

  The daylight was no longer in their favor. The sun would be setting in half an hour, and the ride across the Southwest Channel would assuredly take longer than that. There was also an ominous squall line behind them in the west, and while they both felt certain they would be able to make it to the safety of Anna Maria Island and the Intercoastal before the squall overtook them, there would not be a large margin for error.

  Once again pulling the boat out into water deep enough that they could both jump in and immediately drop the centerboard, they began the crossing without the stress that had accompanied the shorter trip across Egmont Channel. The chop seemed to have subsided ever so slightly, and there was a sense of routine that may have actually been fatigue settling in as the long day faded away, with the final act having been the vanquishing of Egmont Channel. Mike pulled out the bottle again and, instead of tossing it back after a pull, stashed it in between his legs as he steered an easterly course toward the amber glow and dark shadows of Anna Maria Island.

  As the light slowly diminished, that part of the Earth turning its back to the sun, Mike got up and fastened a flashing beacon to the front of the mast. He was feeling the effects of the bourbon as he stood in the small boat, but was happy he had brought the strobe light—one of the few pieces of safety gear he had actually packed—in the expectation that it was one of those things the race inspectors might actually ask to see.

  The weariness of the day and the anticipation of reaching an anchoring point, something to eat, and some time to sleep, combined with the rhythmic banging of the waves and the rattle of the rigging, provided a comforting lullaby as both brothers focused their gaze east, the lights of their destination slowly drawing closer. They both heard the slow, distant hum from the south at about the same time, but neither attached enough significance to say anything, or even look for the source of the sound. After a few minutes, however, the volume had grown to a low growl of sufficient proportions to attract their attention. Without saying a word, they scanned the dark southerly horizon for the oncoming boat that contained the powerful engines.

  As the sound grew closer, it seemed to be almost honing in on them, and the anxiety level quickly began to amp up to the highest it had been during the entire day. Mike noticed there was absolutely no light from the moon, and the sun had completely set. It suddenly dawned on him that, damn, it was dark as hell out there.

  He thought about the warning whistle he had packed as part of his little nighttime navigation kit, but there was little hope of finding it in the time available as the approaching boat seemed to draw a bead on the brothers like a shark to the scent of blood. Mike thought about reversing course, but quickly assessed that it would be futile as, not being able to see the threat, they were just as likely to steer into its path as away from it. As the adrenaline started to flow, Mike tried to suppress the vision of a boat three times the size of his little pram barreling right over the middle of his boat, twin screws shredding the remains of whatever was left behind after being split into halves.

  As the roar of the fast-approaching engines grew louder, it became obvious the oncoming boat was operating without the required running lights. Mike asked John to take the beacon off the mast and point it directly in the direction of the oncoming sound in the off chance that the idiot behind the wheel might actually be looking where he was going. But just as John stood up to unfasten the strobe light, the large shadow accompanying the sound fell upon them.

  Neither of the brothers could tell exactly what was happening, but it felt as if the demon boat was passing just behind them. Never slowing down, it was impossible to know if they had actually made physical contact with the larger boat, or just suffered the consequences of extreme proximity to the huge wake cast. Regardless, the result was the lifting of the stern of their small boat to the point where it seemed to actually somersault into the night sky and land back down in a peculiar but perfectly upside-down position, with the mast now pointing directly at the bottom of channel seabed.

  As he clung to the capsized boat with one hand, Mike conducted a quick assessment of their situation. He had what was likely just a deep bruise on his left hip and, bringing his right hand to his head, felt a large knot with a small cut and maybe some minor bleeding from where his head had smacked something hard as they went head over heels. From what Mike could see in the darkness, John seemed not to have suffered any serious injuries and was similarly hanging onto the other side of the capsized boat. The former contents of the boat were floating all around them, and it was then that Mike had caught sight of the bag with his booze and other assorted party supplies slowly floating away.

  John had left no room for doubt when he declined Mike’s suggestion to swim out and rescue the booze. Mike allowed himself a moment of self-pity, wishing he had either drunk a lot more, or a lot less. Now, half drunk, and freshly run over in the dark water of the Southwest Channel of Tampa Bay, he had to figure out what to do next. He was unsure how bad the laceration on his head was, but if it was significant, there was the potential to lose consciousness, and the thought briefly crossed his mind that the blood might attract the bull sharks that were fairly common in the channel. They had only the bottom half of their dry suits on when they went overboard and the water and wind were cool, posing the longer term threat of hypothermia. And, of course, neither of them had been wearing their personal flotation device so, while both were good swimmers, there was the potential to simply drown.

  The tides should have been pushing them out deeper into the Gulf of Mexico, but Mike could feel the water moving past them and the boat, as if the boat were anchored somehow. He also realized that, even if the main sail sheet was still locked in place, the boat should have come up on its side, rather than remain upside down.

  Shouting to get John’s attention, Mike signaled that he was going to dive under the boat. John, who was on the downwind side, acknowledged the plan, and would keep an eye out for Mike surfacing on his side. Taking a big breath, Mike dove under the waves, found the wooden mast, and traced it down to the shallow seabed, where it had been buried in the mud. Planting his feet on both sides, he jerked it out of the mud and then let go, both floating back to the surface.

  When he hit the surface, the tide had taken Mike ten feet south of the boat. Swimming back was made harder by the fact that the lower half of his “dry” suit was now full of water, and he was half-full of Wild Turkey. The mast of the boat had floated to the surface, and the boat was now on its side, as it and the two brothers started to move with the tide waters down the channel and into the Gulf. Mike now hung onto the same side of the boat as his brother and, although exhausted, smiled and yelled, “Are we having fun now, or what?”

  Having caught his breath, Mike jokingly mocked his older brother. “Don’t worry, old man. I’ve got all this, you just sit back and enjoy the ride!” John did smile and asked if Mike was going to right the boat any time soon and, if not, he would like to order some coffee and dessert. Having agreed that Mike would stand on the part of the hull where the centerboard dropped out of the bottom of the boat, and simultaneously pull back on the starboard-side rail, John agreed to swim back under the boat and hopefully catch the boat as it righted and control the righting process. Part of this would include making sure that the sheet for the mainsail was not locked because, if it were, the wind could catch in the sail a
nd flip the boat right back over on top of Mike or, even worse, simply take off by itself, leaving the brothers in its wake.

  Mike started rocking the small boat and the waves finally allowed enough wind to get under the sail that the boat quickly righted herself. Looking at each other on opposite sides of the boat again, John held up his hand and did a finger countdown of 3 - 2 -1, at which point both of them scrambled over their respective sides and lay on their backs in the small boat.

  Sitting up, Mike could still see the lights of Anna Maria Island, but they had lost significant ground as the boat moved south with the tides. There was little moonlight, but, feeling his way around, Mike could tell the back part of the mast mount had been cracked, and the small boom of the main sail had been busted in half. Amazingly, both of the stowed oars were still in place, and Mike pulled them out and locked them into rowing position. Turning the boat eastward, he began rowing and, for the first time since they started the race, felt the accumulated fatigue of the day. The chop of the water made it hard to get a natural rhythm but Mike persisted, rejecting John’s insistence to take a turn at the oars.

  While they had no clue what time it was, at about 2300 hours they finally reached land somewhere near Anna Maria Island and pulled the boat up onto the beach. It appeared to be a public park area, and, pulling their dry suits off, they walked up to a deserted cement pad, found a water fountain where they both took on a belly full of water, and then passed out on a picnic table.

  III

  Mike Kelly had started his professional law enforcement career every bit as auspiciously as his older brother, John, had started his military career. Mike had graduated from the Criminal Justice program at Florida State University and quickly started working as a Deputy with Hillsborough County Sheriff’s department, the largest such department in western Florida. After completing his probation period, he turned his sights back to school and completed his Master’s Degree in Criminal Justice Administration at the University of South Florida in Tampa.

  He enjoyed police work, and despite the bureaucracy and politics associated with every sheriff’s department in Florida, he clung to the daily proof that his efforts genuinely helped to protect the public and serve justice to those who had done wrong. He developed a reputation as a hard worker, willing to put in uncompensated hours, willing to take risks when needed, and compiling an above-average arrest record.

  In Florida, there is one premier law enforcement organization, and, after three years of service with Hillsborough County, Mike was selected for employment as a Special Agent with the Florida Department of Law Enforcement, also known as FDLE. He moved to Miami and quickly became immersed in more complicated investigations. While the targets of his investigations were bigger and more significant, the results were frequently less tangible. He was partnered with a more experienced Special Agent, or SA as they were known in law enforcement jargon, and lost the ability to control the pace of the investigation. Cases frequently dragged on for years, and the influence of the State Attorney became much more important, regularly resulting in the termination of an investigation simply because the Assistant State Attorney had projected that it was not a foregone conclusion they would be able to win a prosecution, and losing cases was not good for a State Attorney’s political career.

  Mike had worked particularly hard on an investigation of several “boiler rooms” in northern Miami that were selling bogus investments over the phone to unsuspecting victims all across the country. While not a violent crime, Mike had been moved by some the victims’ complaints; honest, hardworking folks who had put their entire retirement savings into the hands of a scumbag with a good telephone voice and a convincing script. While the investigation was never popular with his supervisors, Mike had won permission to work undercover at what he considered to be the slimiest of the boiler rooms. Using the leverage of a righteous drug arrest, Mike got one of the employees to vouch for him, and was able to work undercover for three weeks.

  While he thought he was well prepared for the undercover assignment, he was in fact overwhelmed by the level of greed that permeated every facet of the operation. Operators sat in small cubicles reading from a script, each phone equipped with a “confidencer” so the intended target could not hear the identical sales pitch being spoken by the other dozen employees working in the room. This particular boiler room was selling worthless “limited partnerships,” ostensibly pursuing oil production on land leases from the Federal Bureau of Land Management. It was a classic confidence game, and the slimeballs used every tool at their disposal to dupe the target into thinking it was a genuine business opportunity. There were slick partnership agreements, and prospectuses printed on high-quality paper, subtly implying that the activity had been sanctioned by the BLM.

  There were scripts to be read directly by the operators at each phase of the targeting process, including answers for virtually every question a potential target might raise anywhere along the line. Looking through the script, Mike thought to himself that, if you did anything long enough, eventually you were going to hear all the questions there were to ask. These guys had taken the effort of writing the questions down, along with answers. But you weren’t required to memorize the questions nor the answers; the pit boss, who was in charge of the room for a given shift, would listen to the phone calls of new employees via an external speaker sitting on every desk and provide the answer. When the victim posed a question, the pit boss would speak the answer right out loud, as though he were talking directly to the target, and the new operators quickly learned to repeat whatever he had said, word-for-word, eventually coming to believe that the confidencers actually worked; the victim could not detect what was going on, and the process actually worked.

  In his first evening on the job, Mike made hundreds of phone calls based on information from lead cards, small cards bearing the target’s name, address, and phone number. He read from the prepared script while the pit boss, a large and sweaty man with a short temper and a strong liking for gold jewelry and cocaine, hovered next to him with the remote speaker held close to his ear. Mike was taught to push aggressively onward with the initial script, generally talking over any initial objections that might be raised by the target. The goal of this first call was simply to get the target to generally agree to allow the operator to send out one of the new and fancy prospectuses. It was monkey work, but, as he ground through the hours of his shift, which went from 1:00-11:00 pm, he regularly heard other operators ringing bells, indicating they had closed another sale and business was good.

  It was during the subsequent follow-up phone calls, approximately a week after the prospectus package had been sent, that operators defined themselves as winners or losers. And it was in these calls that the pit boss became much more interested, as he got a percentage of every sale. During these calls, another script was read, but the victim, or client/investor as they were referred to on the phone, was allowed to ask more questions. This was the crux of the operation, the good operators were able to immediately provide answers that inspired confidence and cultivated both a sense of greed and urgency within the target. Echoing the word-for-word response of the hovering pit boss was awkward at first, but the operators soon learned that the process worked, and, once the money started to roll in, the good operators were able to answer the questions without any help.

  Mike still recalled his first sale, a small-town judge in Indiana. He remembered expressing his logical fear of defrauding a government official such as a judge, and Steve, the fat pit boss, explaining that such government officials were the best targets of all. They often had an arrogance and over-confidence, he explained, that was easily exploited when they were offered an opportunity for quick returns. And when they realized they had been burned, they were the least likely to publicly admit they had been fooled in a swindle.

  Mike vividly recalled the judge asking if Mike could guarantee the nineteen percent annual return suggested in the prospectus, and echoing Steve’s words in response to the
question. “Judge, I can’t guarantee the sun is going to come up tomorrow. But I’ve seen it happen every day of my life, just like I’ve seen these partnerships double every investor’s money for the past five years. So the question isn’t whether you’re going to get the rate we’ve been getting; it’s whether you want to be in this partnership … or do I give the opportunity to someone else?”

  It was a huge money-making machine, with bells ringing every time a sale had been concluded over the phone. The optimal goal was an investment of $100,000, but terms could be negotiated for lower partnership shares, all the way down to $5,000, if that was all the victim could lay his hands on.

  When the checks rolled in, they were immediately cashed, and the operators received their twenty-five percent commission at the end of the week. Anyone who obtained an “investor’s” agreement to send in a check of more than $30,000 received a gold krugerrand coin on the spot, regardless of what money finally came in. The operation included a break room with endless coffee, and the big earners only had to shout when they wanted something to eat. The pit boss would send one of the new guys out with some cash to fetch the food. It didn’t take Mike long to learn that cocaine was regularly used in the break room, although he never did figure out if this was supplied like the coffee, or the operators had to bring their own.