Crash Tack

by A. J. Stewart

  “A warrant. Who did you serve the warrant on?”

  “The owner of the boat is dead,” said Moss.

  “No, the owner of the boat is Mr. Colfax’s company, of which I am sure he is not the only corporate officer.” I recalled Celia Colfax telling us that the boat was registered to her husband’s business and that she was happy about that because she wanted no part of it. “So the question remains, on whom did you serve the warrant? Because if you didn’t serve a warrant, then I think what we have here is illegal search and seizure. And everything you found after it would be, what do they call it in court? Fruit of the poisonous tree?”

  The FBI man dropped the façade involuntarily. “What is it you want?”

  “Why is the FBI involved in a murder inquiry?” I asked.

  “We’re not. Our case is completely unrelated. ”

  “How so?”

  Special Agent Moss shuffled his feet like he didn’t want to tell, but I knew he would. He felt like he needed to placate me, then rush off and get that warrant he needed. Fact was Toxic Assets had been put in the impound by the PBSO, and they had every right to do so. But finally Moss arrived where I was already waiting.

  “Okay, this is confidential. You can’t tell anyone.”

  “What is this, high school?” I asked.

  He gave me a look but continued. “We’re investigating some financial irregularities within the Colfax businesses.”

  “Financial irregularities?”

  He nodded. “We suspect someone was embezzling money from the company.”

  “I assume from inside the company?” asked Lenny.

  “How else?”

  “So as our client, Ron Bennett, doesn’t work there, he is not of interest to your investigation?”

  “Not at all. But I am serious. This is an ongoing investigation. You tell anyone what I told you, you can be charged with obstruction.”

  “Keep your pants on, special agent,” said Lenny. “We’re not going to tell anyone. So you’re taking over custody of the boat.”

  “Yes. PBSO will be allowed to inspect further if they require it, but I think they already got all the samples they need.”

  “Samples?” I frowned.

  “Biomatter. They found blood and other biomatter under black light,” said the special agent, who had become way too chatty.

  “Where? ”

  “On the deck, I believe. Now, I’ve done you a favor, you do me one.”

  “If anyone asks, you had the warrant in place,” I said.

  Special Agent Moss nodded, and we nodded in return, and goodbyes were said silently. Lenny and I walked away, and Lenny smiled at me.

  “Nice move with the ownership of the boat thing—that really threw him off.”

  “Thanks, Lenny.”

  “You know, you might end up half decent at this caper.” He slapped me on the back, and we wandered into the large, high-roofed warehouse, searching for a man who looked like a walrus.

  Chapter Fifteen

  THERE WERE A lot of men who looked like walruses in the boatyard. Facial hair seemed to be a thing, as did sun-bleached polos and caps. Every boat in the space was being worked on, most around the hull. Some were being sanded, others painted. One seemed to be getting a coat of glue smeared all over it. We found our walrus polishing the chrome on a beautiful wood motorboat. It looked like the sort of thing you’d see on the canals of Venice in an old Sofia Loren movie. The materials could just have easily been used to build an expensive log cabin, lots of gleaming wood and leather trim.

  “Drew Keck,” called Lenny, above the noise of sanders and air compressors. Drew looked over the edge of the deck at us and grunted.

  “Who’s askin’?”

  “Lenny Cox. I’m here about Ron Bennett.”

  “Don’t know nothin’ ’bout that.”

  “You were on the boat, weren’t you?”

  “Yeah. Look, I already spoke to the cops.”

  “And they’ve put Ron in jail. We’re trying to get him out,” said Lenny. I could see where he was going with it. Pretty much everyone liked Ron, and wanted to help get him out of lockup.

  “Is there somewhere we can grab a beer?” asked Lenny .

  The mustache poked over the edge of the deck again. I could see Drew was having a hard time passing up a beer.

  “Gimme a couple minutes.”

  We waited while Drew put away his rags and cleaning polish, then packed up some other tools and put them inside the boat, and then he gingerly made his way down the ladder to the floor. It wasn’t anywhere near as long a ladder as the one reaching up to Toxic Assets , because the yacht had a large keel under its stand, and the motorboat Drew was working on had no keel and a shallow hull, so was only up about five feet. Still, Drew made it look like a hell of an effort. My impression may have been tainted by his look, but he had the labored movement of a walrus too.

  Drew washed his hands, which seemed to be the cleanest part of him, and took us in a truck that was in worse condition than Lenny’s around the corner to a small, no-name bar. We were close to the water but couldn’t see it. The place had a few outdoor tables, but Drew headed inside, nodded to the waitress who waltzed by with a tray full of empty beer glasses, and took a booth. The room had low false ceilings, the kind of removable squares one sees in older office spaces, and I would have put money on the fact they were filled with asbestos. There were pictures of boats on the walls, and a few buoys hanging from the ceiling, but these weren’t the Disney-fied artifacts that hipster bars liked to use to add character. These items were the real deal; they were scratched and scraped and dented, pockmarked and nibbled at. The beer mats were soaked through and dried a hundred times over, so they were warped and rock hard. It was a total dive, and it was my kind of place.

  We ordered beers and fish sandwiches, and Drew tapped his fingers on the table until his beer arrived. I wasn’t sure if he was nervous about something, or just one of those people who had to have something in their hands all the time.

  “That’s a nice boat you’re working on,” said Lenny.

  Drew nodded. “Yup, she’s one of a kind. Wasn’t too good when I found her, but I rebuilt her from the superstructure up.”

  “What sort of wood is it?” I asked.

  “Superstructure is oak, the hull is mahogany over black locust, the deck is African mahogany.”

  I didn’t know anything about wood, but it all sounded impressive, and it certainly looked fantastic.

  “Bet she goes well,” said Lenny. “What sort of horsepower you got in there?”

  “Twin 330s.”

  Lenny nodded. “Nice.”

  “Yup.” The beers arrived and Drew took a drink. I watched his mustache droop into it and get all wet. I couldn’t quite see the point.

  “So what do you think about Will Colfax?” asked Lenny. “Think they’ll find him?”

  “Nup. He’d be somewheres off the Grand Banks by now. But he’s fish food.”

  “Can’t survive that long in the water?” I asked.

  “Nup. Without a raft you’d get hypothermia.”

  “Really? Isn’t the water warm down here?” I asked.

  “It’s all right if you're from the northeast. And the Gulf Stream’s warmer than most ocean, but still. What’s it, eighty degrees on a good day? Plenty warm for a swim, but hypothermia sets in when you go below ninety-five. So it would take a while, but it’ll get ya.”

  Our fish sandwiches arrived, and were so fresh mine practically winked at me. Florida is hardly the culinary capital of the world, but I’ve never tasted a finer fish sandwich anywhere. We all bit into our lunch, and then I tapped my lips with a paper napkin and looked at Drew.

  “So do you think Will was an accident?”

  He seemed to shrug. “Maybe.”

  “You don’t seem positive.”

  “I wouldn’t know.”

  I wasn’t sure if Drew was being purposely uncooperative or if he was just uncommunicative in general.r />
  “Why was Will on deck alone?” I asked.

  “Who says he was alone?” Drew took a large chomp on his sandwich.

  “Who else was up there?”

  “I dunno,” he said with a full mouth. “But if someone done him, then someone was there, right?”

  “Do you think that person could have been Ron?”

  He shrugged again, although it was more like a spasm in his shoulders. “Maybe.”

  “You didn’t get along with Ron?”

  “He’s all right. But I heard his old lady was doing the number with Will, so who knows.”

  “They were divorced,” I said.

  “So?”

  We ate in silence for a moment. Some guys came in from a fishing boat and ordered the same thing we were having without bothering with a menu. Then Lenny put his sandwich down.

  “You were the tactician during the race, is that right?”

  “Yup.”

  “And Will deferred to you on sailing matters.”

  “I guess.”

  “Amy Artiz is also a sailor, isn’t she? ”

  “Yeah, you could say that.”

  “You didn’t like her?” asked Lenny.

  “Not saying that. But when push comes to shove, and you need a bit of muscle to get things done, girls don’t cut it, do they?”

  Lenny nodded. “Used to be they’d say having a woman on board a boat was bad luck.”

  “Women and bananas, yup. No business on boats, either of ’em.”

  “So what about the rest of the crew?” I asked.

  “What about ’em?”

  “What did you think of them?”

  “I didn’t. The girls were good to look at, for something different.”

  “Different than what?”

  “Than staring at the sea all day.”

  “Felicity’s quite the cutie,” I said.

  “Yup. But everyone knew that was off-limits.”

  “Why?”

  “Will,” he said, stuffing some fish in his mouth.

  “They were having an affair?” I asked.

  Drew stopped chewing and looked at me. “You do know where she was sleeping on the boat?”

  “In Will’s cabin,” I said to myself.

  Drew gave a nod.

  “But she said Will offered it to her since he was on watch anyway.”

  “Yeah, that’s why.”

  “What about Amy?” asked Lenny.

  Drew shook his head. “She likes the girls, that one.”

  “Really? ”

  Drew nodded again, then took a long pull on his beer, finishing it off, and held it up to signal the waitress for another.

  “I heard that you were working on a project with Will,” said Lenny. I was still thinking about Felicity and Will.

  “Where’d you hear that?”

  “At the yacht club?”

  “Well, they don’t know what they’re talkin’ about.”

  “So you weren’t doing something together? Like that beautiful boat you’re working on back there?” Lenny nodded in the general direction of the boatyards.

  “That’s my boat. Anyone tells you different, they’re lying. All I did for Will was the maintenance on Toxic Assets , that’s all.”

  Lenny nodded and sipped his beer and looked at me. So Drew and Amy had different information on the boat he was restoring. I wasn’t sure if we were double-teaming Drew, but I picked up the ball anyway.

  “Did you know the other two guys? Alec and Michael?” I asked.

  “Alec, yeah. He’s around the club. He’s young and stupid, you know.”

  “And Michael?”

  “Didn’t trust that guy.”

  “Why?”

  “Something about him, just something off.”

  “Off?”

  “He didn’t sail. Knew nothin’. Had no business being there.”

  “So why was he?”

  “No idea. Asked Will about him. I said he didn’t know a sheet from a halyard. Will says we all start somewhere , whatever the hell that means. ”

  “How did he know Will?” I asked.

  “No idea. Never seen him before.”

  I finished my sandwich but didn’t order another beer. “What will happen now, with Toxic Assets ?”

  “Did you see it, in the cage?” asked Drew.

  I nodded.

  “Depends. The cops often hold stuff there, until they move it to wherever. If there’s no crime I guess the owner gets it back, but I don’t figure Will will be needing it anytime soon.”

  “His company owns the yacht,” I said.

  Drew nodded and finished his second beer. “Figures.”

  “And if there’s a crime?”

  “If there’s a crime, and the court decides the boat is ill-gotten gains, they’ll take it to an impound auction and sell it off.”

  “Would you buy it?”

  Drew laughed from deep within his throat. “Not my kind of boat. And even at ten cents on the dollar, I couldn’t afford the upkeep.”

  I knew the feeling. I had a motorbike that lived in the shop, and the upkeep on it was making me think very seriously about ending our relationship. I paid the check and we all clambered back into Drew’s truck, and he dropped us at the gate to the boatyard. I was going to ask him one final question, the old Columbo technique. People often let their guard down as they were pushing me out the door. Not Drew Keck. Lenny got out and I followed, and then I turned to close the door and hit him with my zinger, but in one movement he nodded, hit the gas and was gone like the wind.

  Chapter Sixteen

  THEY SAY HOME is where the heart is. Or it’s wherever you lay your hat. By those definitions I didn’t have a home. My childhood home in Connecticut had fit the bill, but some people I had never met lived in that house now, and my parents rested in a cemetery in New Haven that I might never visit again. I had felt at home during my years at University of Miami, but no one ever considered the transient halls of college dorms home. Adventures, good times, great memories, yes. Home, no. Then I played baseball for six years, living in short-term rentals and rooming houses that weren’t home because I was never there long enough. The team bus was more of a home. And after six years, three minor league teams and twenty-nine days in the majors, where I didn’t throw a pitch in anything but batting practice, I hung up my cleats and moved from St. Lucie West to the Palm Beaches, and took up residence in another dwelling that didn’t feel like home either.

  My apartment was a two-bedroom, split floor plan, a one-bedroom place with a kitchen that joined onto a smaller second-bedroom unit with a kitchenette that could be closed off and rented separately. The idea was that a bigger group could rent the whole place, or smaller groups or individuals could rent each separately. The place was marketed at the budget golfing crowd, who flocked to South Florida in the season to play the many nice courses and drink beers during working hours, but who didn’t have the cash to spend on the flashy resorts, and didn’t plan on spending a lot of time in their rooms anyway. It was sound logic, except the place wasn’t built on a golf course, or even that close to one, so it was the last to fill up in season, and even then rarely did. So I got a two-bedder for the price of a one, and I kept the door closed to the second bedroom and never went in there. Like the golfers, I didn’t spend a lot of time in my room.

  Lenny dropped me at the bike shop and I collected my increasingly expensive old bike. It wasn’t a classic and it didn’t run well, but I had figured at the time I bought it that I didn’t need a car in Florida weather. One tropical downpour on I-95 showed me the flaw in my logic. But I just hadn’t gotten up the motivation to replace it. I rode the thing home and wheeled it in under the stairs that wound up to the apartments above me, and then I went inside and grabbed a beer from the fridge. I looked around the room, the white-tiled floors that had been mopped in my absence, the eighties-style overhead fan, and the small television that offered basic cable plus the golf channel, if I were so inclined. I stepped
out onto the back patio and sat down in a stackable plastic chair. The space was big enough for two chairs and one round table, and was screened in from the bugs that descended every night.

  I couldn’t stop thinking about Ron. About how he looked in jail, and how nothing more than circumstance had caused him to be there. It was all so tenuous, the invisible lines that pulled us in one direction or another. I sat for a long while thinking about Ron and his wives, and the love of his life who never married him. And I thought about Felicity and Amy and Drew Keck, and about Will. I closed my eyes for a moment against my better judgment, and I saw the transom of the boat slipping away from me, the words Toxic Assets the last I would ever see as the darkness stole my boat and the ocean closed around me.

  I snapped my eyes open and realized I had nodded off. My beer was warm and covered in condensation, and the sun had fallen low in the sky. I rubbed my eyes and stood, and then I went in and poured the warm beer down the sink. It was a waste, but life is too short to drink warm beer. I resolved to learn how to make bread using leftover beer. I was watching the last of the amber liquid froth in the sink when the doorbell rang.

  The community I lived in was gated, which kept out most door-to-door types, the salesmen and the evangelists, and the neighbors didn’t drop by for a cup of sugar. I opened the door and found Beccy Williams standing in the evening light. She looked fantastic, and that didn’t suit my mood at all. Her blond hair had been coiffed to perfection, and the dress she wore was simple and satin and sheer.

  She smiled her orthodontist’s dream. “You look terrible, sugar.” She ran her hand across my cheek, a couple days' stubble.

  “Mmm,” she said. “Rough.”

  Beccy kissed the cheek she had just rubbed and slid past me into the apartment. I stood looking at the street, SUVs and full-size sedans returning from one golf course or another, and then I closed the door.

  “Place looks clean,” she said, spinning around on the living room tile.

  “Maid’s been.”

  “And you haven’t, or it would be messed up.”

  “What can I do for you, Bec? ”

  “You could offer a girl a drink.” She flopped down on the floral print sofa and crossed her long, thin legs. Beccy was beautiful in person, but even more so on television. The camera loved her, and it added the extra few pounds she needed. Her facial bones were striking, and her breasts pert, but her chest reminded me of a bird carcass. I always felt she was one decent meal short of good health. I took a shaker out of the cupboard and made her a martini, dirty with three olives. To Beccy an olive was the staff of life. I handed her the drink, but didn’t take one myself.