by Matt Lincoln
Danny looked taken aback at this, so much so that he took a literal step away from us.
“You can’t… you can’t seriously think that we had anything to do with this?” he asked. His expression was one of bewilderment more than anything else.
“No, nothing like that,” I quickly assured him. “It’s just that we believe one of your boats has been stolen, is that correct?”
“S-stolen?” Danny stammered. “I don’t remember anything ever being stolen. Well, a kid took a candy bar from the cash register once, but his mama made him give it back and apologize to Uncle Dan.”
“Well, we talked to a customer of yours earlier, and he told us that you were missing a boat,” Nina explained. “That you were talking to your uncle about it while he was in the store?”
“Oh, that must’ve been Marty,” Danny said, relief washing over him as he realized what we were talking about. “He was the only one in this morning. All day, really. Everyone cleared out after that whole shooting thing at the mall. Were you all involved in that, too? I heard a bunch of people got shot.”
“Yes, that was his name,” Nina confirmed with a low laugh. “And yes, I was the agent on the scene for that incident, but no one was shot. It seems like there’s been some exaggeration through the grapevine. You’re not the first one to say something like that.”
“Oh, yeah, you’ll find that’s how it works ‘round here sometimes,” Danny said, to his credit also looking relieved to hear that things weren’t as bad as the gossip mill made them out to be at the mall. In my experience, a lot of people loved for there to be more crazy things to talk about, not less, though they’d be hard-pressed to admit as much.
“I imagine so,” I chuckled. “So what can you tell us about this missing boat Marty was talking about?”
“Now, I don’t know about stolen,” Danny said, looking skeptical about all this. “My uncle, he’s always loaning out boats to old friends, or acquaintances, or anyone who wants one, really, and can’t afford it. It’s been our one real argument over the years since I started keeping the books. And he’s getting up there in age. He probably just lent old Lucy out just like the others and forgot. That’s what Marty heard.”
“Well, we’re looking into it anyway,” I said, not wanting to ask any leading questions.
“Now, everyone in town would know that they could just ask Uncle Dan for a boat, and he’d give it to ‘em, as long as they could catch him when I wasn’t around,” Danny continued. “There wouldn’t be any point in stealing one. He even let a couple of those college kids take one once, a couple of summers back. We had a real fight about that one, I’ll tell you…”
“That’s alright, I think you’ve painted the picture,” I said, holding up a hand to stop him. “The thing is, we have it on good authority that one of the men who took Mikey—that’s the boy’s name—took him out on the water in a stolen boat from your shop yesterday and might be en route to one of the foreign coastal islands with him right now.”
Danny’s eyes widened again, and for a moment, I worried that he was going to stumble right over. Nina, for her part, reached out to steady him in case he did, but he waved her off and leaned against a nearby table that donned some t-shirts with the shop’s name and logo on them.
“S-s-seriously?” he stammered, clutching his free hand to his chest. “Lucy? You think they took Lucy?”
“We’re pretty sure,” I confirmed with a nod. “We have a witness willing to testify to that effect.”
Well, referring to Justin as willing seemed a bit of a stretch, but he’d do it anyway when push came to shove.
“Danny, could you maybe take us out to see where Lucy was before she went missing?” I asked him.
“And then it’d be a real help if we could talk to your uncle, too,” Nina added. “Just to make sure that he didn’t lend the boat out to someone after all. We don’t want to go off looking for the wrong boat.”
“I… uh, yeah, he’s just in the back,” Danny murmured, wiping his brow and looking vaguely overwhelmed by all this. “I’ll, uh… I’ll just go grab him if you don’t mind.”
“Of course,” Nina said, nodding to him deferentially, and we exchanged a look. It was good news if the elder Mr. Samuels was actually here, too. Kill two birds with one stone.
“We’d better find this kid tonight,” Nina muttered as Danny disappeared into the back of the shop once more to retrieve his uncle. “Or at least get a lead on what island they could be on.”
I checked my watch almost instinctively at this. Soon it would be nearly two days since Mikey was taken. That was not a good timeframe. Not good at all.
Danny returned quickly with a slightly shorter, hunched, and very much older version of himself. In addition to sharing the same name, it looked like the uncle and nephew bore a striking physical resemblance to each other, as well, with the elder Mr. Samuels bearing a receding hairline so far back that his hair was really just a collection of white wisps atop his head. He had a long, thin face much like his nephew’s, too, with sharp angles to match.
“Hello, Mr. Samuels?” I asked, holding out my hand to the older man as they approached.
“Huh?” he asked, craning his neck to try to hear me better.
“Hello, Mr. Samuels, my name is Agent Ethan Marston, and I’m with the Military Border Liaison Investigative services, MBLIS for short,” I repeated, practically yelling now so that the old man would hear me and explaining the acronym preemptively as I was sure he would think he misheard a word if I just said the acronym alone. “I’m here to ask you some questions about your missing boat, Lucy.”
The old man shook my hand loosely, his veins sticking out in his wrinkled skin. I would have put him in his mid-eighties, at the very least.
“Hi, I’m Agent Nina Gosse with the FBI,” Nina added, shaking Mr. Samuels’s hand in turn. “I’m with Agent Marston.”
“Lucy!” Mr. Samuels exclaimed when he realized what we were asking about before swiveling to his nephew with a decidedly aggravated look on his face. “You went and reported me to the FBI over a missing motorboat, you ungrateful little brat!”
The old man swatted his nephew on the shoulder with his limp hand, though the interaction didn’t seem to me to be entirely mean-spirited. I had a feeling that these two just had this kind of teasing rapport, though I thought that Mr. Samuels was probably serious when he assumed we were here just because a boat was missing.
“Oh, no, sir, we’re not here about that directly,” I said quickly, suppressing a laugh, a feat made even more difficult by Nina’s failed attempt to hide a snicker next to me. “We think that someone stole your boat and used it to transport a missing child into international waters.”
“Hah!” Mr. Samuels cried, pointing wildly at his nephew. “I told you it wasn’t my fault! I told you!”
Danny chuckled and gave me a weak, apologetic smile.
“I’m sorry,” he said. “My uncle and I go round and round on this issue, so I suppose he has to take this as sort of a win for him.”
“Don’t talk about me like I’m not standing right here, boy!” Mr. Samuels cried, though he was smiling at the younger man. “Anyway, it’s me you should be apologizing to, not them.”
“Yes, uncle, I suppose you’re right,” Danny said, rolling his eyes. “I’m sorry for not believing you before.”
“Now was that so hard?” Mr. Samuels challenged.
“Yes, yes it was,” Danny told him.
I had to suppress another laugh, and Nina passed one of her own off as a cough.
“Do you need some water, my dear?” Mr. Samuels asked her.
“No. No, I’m fine,” she said, her voice coming out raspy as she waved him off and covered yet another laugh into her arm. “Thank you, though.”
I cleared my throat to wipe away my own laughter and turned back to Mr. Samuels.
“So, Mr. Samuels,” I started, but the old man cut me off.
“Please, son, I don’t know why everyone insis
ts on calling me that, you just call me Dan, alright?” he instructed, and Danny let out a guffaw.
“You don’t know why?” he repeated incredulously. “You can’t be serious, uncle. You’ve made everyone call you that for as long as I can remember.”
“Yes, well, they’re with the FBI and that embell-a-what’s-it, so they can call me whatever they like,” Mr. Samuels snapped back, and Nina and I both had to suppress yet another storm of laughter. We really did meet some characters in this line of work of ours.
“Alright, yes, well, Mr… I mean, Dan, are you absolutely certain that you didn’t loan the white motorboat you call Lucy out to anyone else yesterday?” I asked. Then, to the nephew, “It was yesterday you noticed that the boat was missing, is that correct?”
“Yes, it was yesterday around ten in the morning,” Danny confirmed with a nod. “She was there the previous evening when I closed up shop.”
“And around what time was that?” Nina asked. “When you last saw this boat, I mean?”
“Around six in the evening, that’s when we tend to lock things up for the day,” Danny said. “And she was there, I know it for sure.”
“Alright, Mr… I mean, Dan, so are you sure that you didn’t give it to someone?” I asked, narrowing my eyes at the old man to indicate that this was serious. “Your nephew and one of your customers—Marty—said that you do this fairly often. So I’m wondering if there’s any chance at all that you loaned Lucy out without remembering, or maybe someone thought you were giving permission, but they misunderstood you? Is anything like that possible at all?”
“No,” Mr. Samuels said definitively, shaking his head with some emphasis. “I don’t forget these types of things. You ask anyone, now I know I’m old, and I forget what I had for breakfast sometimes, but I never forget anything about my boats. Never.”
Nina and I both turned to look at Danny to confirm this, and he nodded begrudgingly, giving a shrug.
“It’s true enough,” he said. “Drives me bonkers, I’ll tell you that. He won’t remember the most basic bookkeeping practices or to tell me when he loans out one of the boats, but he never forgets that he actually did it.”
“You seemed quick to assume that he’d forgotten before,” Nina pointed out, arching an eyebrow at him.
“That’s because he wants me to be losing my mind, the ungrateful bonehead,” Mr. Samuels spat, swatting at his nephew’s shoulder again almost good-naturedly despite his words. “That would mean he could stop me from helping people so much.”
“Helping people!” Danny cried, throwing his arms up in the air in exasperation. “Uncle Dan, you’re going to drive us out of business if you keep just handing boats out to people. And I bet at least two-thirds of them could pay full price if they really wanted to. Maybe not Marty, and he’s a good guy, and I don’t mind that much, but the rest of them? Come on.”
“There’s no shame in being neighborly,” Mr. Samuels said, gesturing wildly in Danny’s direction again. “I thought your parents raised you better than that. I sure taught you better than that!”
“Okay, okay, I think this is kind of getting into the family dispute territory and no offense, but that’s not exactly what we’re here for,” Nina said, holding out a hand each to stop Mr. Samuels and his nephew from continuing with this.
Neither man seemed to be angry with the other, exactly. I got the sense that this was just the family dynamic they had going, and they seemed to kind of enjoy it to a degree. Like some families played board games together, this family argued about small stuff like this. Well, it sounded like it might not be too small if the store was actually going to go out of business, but Nina was right that that was none of our concern, really.
“Look, Mr. Samuels… er, Dan, and Danny, if you’re both absolutely certain that this boat wasn’t lent out to someone you know, then that means that it’s likely the boat we’re looking for,” I continued. “So could we see where it was taken from?”
“Sure, sure, follow me,” Danny said, beckoning for us to follow him back out the shop doors.
“I did not lend it out!” Mr. Samuels cried from behind us, and it became clear quickly that he was tagging along. “I would remember something like that. I remember everything about my boats. Everything!”
“I’m sure you’re right, sir,” Nina said, a little wearily, as she helped him follow us out toward the bay and all the collected boats where we had talked to Marty earlier that day.
Danny led us to an empty slot amidst all the boats, close to where Marty’s boat was.
“Here she is,” he said, gesturing at the space right next to the shore. “Or was, I guess.”
“I don’t see a lot of blank spaces,” I said, glancing out across the area. “No other ones, actually. Do you not have a lot of boats out right now?”
“Nope, not a one,” Danny confirmed, shaking his head. “All of ‘em got returned in the last day or so when people started clearing out of town. Marty’s was the last one back today. I hope things pick up again soon. Erm, I mean, I mostly hope you find that poor boy, of course.”
“I get what you mean,” I chuckled, placing a reassuring hand on his shoulder. “I hope business picks back up for you again soon. And in the meantime, we’ll see what we can do about finding Mikey.”
“You’re sure it was the boat named Lucy?” Nina asked the men. “A lot of these look the same to me. It couldn’t have been one of the other ones?”
“Nope, I always make sure the boats go back in the right spaces,” Danny said, gazing out across the docked boats almost proudly. “Never switch ‘em up, not a single time since I started here.”
“He was always anal-retentive, ever since he was a boy,” Mr. Samuels added, and Nina and I both had to suppress another round of laughter.
“Well, without my anal retentiveness, this place wouldn’t run,” Danny snapped back. “You remember how bad it was before I moved back here. The place was practically in shambles.”
“Ah, the good old days,” Mr. Samuels lamented, gazing wistfully out across the sea. Nina let out a real chuckle then, but neither of the men seemed to notice or care.
“Alright, so can you describe Lucy for us?” I asked the man.
Both men went on to describe the motorboat in almost excruciating detail, all the way down to little dents, scratches, and general wear and tear from the years it had been in use. It seemed like Danny wasn’t the only one who was anal retentive, in a way. I decided it must run in the family.
As they spoke, I pulled out my notebook and began scribbling down all these details to pass on to the Coast Guard later on. Nina just looked mystified by the whole thing, like she wondered how anyone could pay that much attention to the little details on an old motorboat, especially in an area absolutely full of them, almost identical to one another.
“Thank you. This is all really helpful, guys,” I said quietly when they were finished, scribbling down the last detail that Mr. Samuels mentioned, a large dent on the back left bumper of the boat from a run-in with a cruise ship during a storm many years ago.
“You really think this could all help find that little boy?” Danny asked hopefully.
“It definitely could,” I said, nodding to them as I returned my notebook and pencil to my jacket pocket. “You never know what details will end up being important in these kinds of cases, and we’re as certain as we can be that Mikey is out there somewhere on this boat.”
“What little boy?” Mr. Samuels croaked, looking between us in confusion. “Who the hell’s Mikey, and why’s he on my boat?”
“Uncle Dan, don’t you remember what we saw on the news at dinner last night?” Danny asked gently. “That little tourist boy who was taken at the mall? That’s why we haven’t had any customers all day and why those people were cleaning up that blood earlier. One of the kidnappers was shot.”
“Oh, right,” Mr. Samuels said, though he didn’t really seem to remember. “Wait, you’re tellin’ me that some creepy kidnapper’s on my
boat?”
“Way to miss the point, Uncle Dan,” Danny sighed, looking at Nina and me apologetically again, but we both just laughed.
“It’s alright,” I chuckled. “We’ll do our best to get Lucy back to you, Dan. I know how important the relationship is between a man and his boat.”
“I like this one,” Mr. Samuels said, pointing at me. “Don’t you like this one, Danny?”
“You have a million boats, Uncle Dan. Why is this one so special?” the nephew sighed.
“All of my boats are special!” Mr. Samuels cried. “Why do you think I named ‘em after my exes!”
“You barely remember your exes,” Danny pointed out.
“Well, I remember my boats,” Mr. Samuels shot back stubbornly, and I didn’t even try to stop myself from laughing this time.
“Well, thank you again for your time, guys,” Nina said, nodding to both men in thanks.
“Hold on. You’re saying that some guy is taking this kid to another country or something?” Mr. Samuels asked.
“You remember what you heard pressing your ear against the wall when I was talking to them before I went back to get you, but you don’t remember seeing all that blood when we came back from lunch?” Danny asked his uncle with characteristic exasperation.
“I remember anything that has to do with my boats!” Mr. Samuels reiterated before turning his attention back to me. “I’m telling you, Lucy’s a good old boat, but she’s still old. There’s no way that guy’s gonna get to the next island over in her in one piece. He’d have to stop in a cave somewhere or travel along the shore if he doesn’t want to drown.”
“Really?” I asked, raising my eyebrows at this and exchanging an excited look with Nina. “Would he know this just by riding in it for a while?”
“If he knows anything about boats, yeah, which he should,” Mr. Samuels said. “Everybody should know about boats if you ask me. And you should ask me.”
“I don’t disagree,” I chuckled.
