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1

Picturing his grandfather’s face the last time he’d seen him alive—six years ago?—Bern Heller sat at a table where he’d spread the contents of a briefcase sent by the executor.

There were yellowed photos of a young man, tall, blond.

His grandfather?

No resemblance, but his name was there in faded ink.

A photo of him standing beside a man identified as Henry Ford. Another of him holding a drink tray, a towel over his arm, while Henry Ford and a younger guy—my God, Charles Lindbergh?—sat in patio chairs, palm trees in the background.

On the back: Fort Myers, Florida, 1940s.

That was the time to buy property in Florida.

His grandfather had.

Miscellaneous personal items—the attorney had mentioned the briefcase a month ago at the funeral. It arrived today, smelling of nesting rodents. His grandfather had been such a vicious son of a bitch that Heller would’ve trashed it if he hadn’t seen the photos. Henry Ford and Lindbergh—valuable.

Some other interesting stuff, too: Bills of sale for acreage the old man had purchased, handwritten. A passport, German, stamped with swastikas in a couple of places. A nautical map so old the paper flaked in his hands—two sets of numbers, also in ink, near Sanibel Island.

Another old photo, this of an unidentified woman. Glamorous, like a film star from the ’40s, a PR shot. The woman in sequins after lighting a cigarette, her eyes staring through smoke into the camera.

God, the face, those full lips. Her body…

The thought of it, a woman like this with the old man, was disgusting.

An hour later, Bern checked his watch—time to meet with the redneck Hoosier he’d hired to run the marina. He stood and looked through his condo window, seeing more palm trees, a bay and mangrove islands beyond.

M oe was telling his boss, Bern Heller, “The guy said he’d be back with a gun. I think he means it. No”—Moe ducked his head into the straw cowboy hat he was holding—“I know he means it. It’s one of the fishing guides. The spook.”

“Spook?”

Moe said, “You know, a colored guy. You don’t call them that in Wisconsin?”

Heller gave him a look.

Moe kept going. “You’ve seen him. Javier Castillo. The black guy with the Spanish accent. He’s around here most mornings, getting ice, waiting for his clients.”

“Okay…the skinny one who goes barefoot. He doesn’t look Mexican.”

“No, he’s Cuban. In Florida, that’s what most Mexicans are. Javier owns that boat sitting by the fuel docks. The Pursuit, with twin Yamaha outboards, and the radar. A beauty.”

“The greenish-looking one?”

“Yeah. The open fisherman. Blue-green.” Moe turned sideways and pointed so his boss could sight down his arm.

Heller ignored him.

Heller was CEO of a company that had built three marina communities on Florida’s Gulf coast, most of it on land acquired by his grandfather. This was the newest, Indian Harbor Marina and Resort. Two weeks ago, the eye of a hurricane had spun ashore near Sanibel Island, twenty miles south. Bern had been making rounds since, taking notes, directing cleanup, not saying much.

Their properties hadn’t done badly. A couple of condos had lost roofs. Pool screens, ornamental trees, that sort of thing. The worst was right here in front of him, a boat storage barn that had collapsed. Got hit by a tornado, maybe—which is what he was pushing the insurance people to believe.

Heller watched a crane lift a girder from the wreckage as he asked Moe, “What do you think it’s worth?”

“The Cuban guy’s boat?”

“That’s what we’re talking about. I’m trying to make a point here.”

Moe gave it a few seconds before he named a figure, then added, “It’s a well-known brand, less than a year old. We had it on a rack outside the barn. It didn’t get a scratch.”

Surprised by the value, Heller said, “That’s as much I paid for my BMW. How’d a Cuban get that kind of money?”

“The guy’s a worker. He came over on a raft and hustled his ass off. He’s not a bullshitter, either. That’s why we should call the cops now. Javier’s gonna pull a gun if we don’t let him take his boat. The cops should be here waiting.”

Heller had his grandfather’s smile. He was smiling now because Moe couldn’t keep his voice from catching. The man was scared, even though he acted hard-assed, with that cowboy hat, the redneck nose and chin, the face a triangle of stubble because that’s the way movie stars wore their beards. Moe: a hick from French Lick.

“You like that boat?”

“Sure, of course. But—”

“Do you want it?”

“Who wouldn’t, but—”

Bern cut him off. “Then we don’t want the cops here when the Cuban shows. They’d scare him away. Let him pull the gun and wave it around. That’s when we want the cops. Let them take him to jail…or shoot him.” Heller shrugged.

“Either way,” Heller said, “the boat’s ours.”

I n fact, all the boats were theirs. They belonged to the salvage company contracted to clear the wreckage. And the salvage company belonged to Heller. But he wasn’t going to trust this idiot with that little detail.

For more than two weeks, Moe had had to deal with several hundred pissed-off boat owners who paid storage at the marina but hadn’t been allowed on the property since the hurricane. Every morning, they gathered at the gate, getting madder and madder—Javier Castillo among them.

As soon as the storm had blown through, Heller had asked the state to declare the marina a hazardous area because of storm damage, so the boat owners hadn’t been allowed to step foot on the place. They couldn’t move their boats, inspect them, or recover personal items, nothing.

Then, days later, Heller’s attorney had sent a letter, registered mail, to the state attorney. It declared that, because the owners had failed to secure their vessels against future storms, the marina considered the boats to be derelict. As derelict vessels, they could be claimed as salvage by a licensed company. Legally, it was edgy—but no one had challenged it so far.

For the Hoosier, Heller summarized, instead. “If these boats go floating off in another storm, we’re responsible for damages. A tornado grabs one and drops it in a crowded building? It’s our nuts in the wringer. That’s why the salvage company has to assume ownership.”

When Moe asked, “Yeah, but how can we expect owners to secure their boats when we won’t let them on the property?” Heller stared at him until Moe got so nervous he started laughing. “I was joking, Bern.”

Yeah, Heller was right not to trust this goof with the details.

“It doesn’t matter whether a boat is damaged or not,” Heller told him. “The salvage company deserves a fair profit for cleaning up the mess. Take me around and tell me what all this crap’s worth.”

N ow the two men were in a golf cart, Moe at the wheel. He would drive a few yards, stop, and tell his boss the resale value of this or that. He’d drive a little ways more, then stop again.

It was weird the way the cart tilted with Heller beside him, the man was so big.

“According to the log, we had three hundred and nine boats in the storage barn. But I think we racked a dozen more the day before the storm hit. Last-minute dumbasses who wanted them out of the water. We were so busy, they didn’t get wrote down.”

Heller said, “That figures,” not mad, but keeping Moe on his toes.

They were on the canal side of the storage barn where wreckage hadn’t been cleared. The barn had been the size of a retail warehouse, Sam’s Club or Costco, fitted with steel racks six berths’ high. The racks had collapsed when the barn imploded, one boat falling on top of another, among the twisted steel; outboard motors, canvas, fiberglass hulls; white, yellow, blue, poking out of the mess; everything jumbled, as if deposited by a glacier.

At least a hundred boats had already been plucked free by the crane. They sat in rows on the shell parking lot, all tilted on their bottoms. Just like the golf cart when Heller sat his weight on the seat, which is why Moe now locked the brake, and stood.

He stretched and popped his back, saying, “Even after all the work we’ve done, it still looks bad, I know. Like everything in there’s completely fucked. But it’s not.”

His boss replied, “It’s okay the way it looks.”

“Thanks, Bern. We’ve been humping it ten, twelve hours a day trying to get it cleaned up.”

“That’s not what I meant, you schmuck. Another insurance adjustor’s coming tomorrow, and I asked some guy from the E-P-A to meet me here tomorrow afternoon. We got hit by a natural disaster, so it’s good for them to see it.”

Moe thought: Environmental Protection Agency? Invite those assholes on the property after what you did with the bulldozer?

He didn’t ask. Instead, he stuck to business and talked about the two hundred boats still mixed with the barn’s wreckage.

Y ou’ve got to figure the engines, most of them are fine. Electronics? They’ve all got fish-finders, radar. Fishing gear, stereo systems, G-P-Ss—it all adds up. Plus, a lot of them, you could stick in the water right now, crank the engines, and they’d run like nothing happened.”

“Global Positioning Systems, huh?” Heller said. “I’ve got one in my car. But a boat’s, it’s gotta be different, right?”

Moe said, “Yeah, but it’s not hard. I can show you now if you’re interested.”

Heller was interested because he’d copied the numbers from the nautical map he’d found in his grandfather’s briefcase. He knew they referred to a latitude and longitude but decided he could wait to find out. “Maybe over the weekend,” he said. “We’ll have plenty of boats to choose from.”

Moe laughed, then became pensive. “I still don’t get it. How can a salvage company take a guy’s boat even if it’s not damaged? Are we sure this is legal?”

Heller began to nod, but his expression said, Who cares? “My grandfather figured it out a couple of years ago, before I moved down. A hurricane hit north of Lauderdale, and the smart marinas worked it the same way. The key is the contract we make people sign before we store their boats. There’s a clause that covers what’s called a ‘nonjudicial sale.’ If they sign, we can sell their boat for just about any reason we want. There’s also a clause that says we’re not liable for loss if a hurricane hits.”

The lawyers had told Bern neither clause would hold up in court. So far, though, the insurance companies had played along—they were the slimiest con artists on the scene. And the state cops hadn’t lifted a finger.

“This was all your grandfather’s idea?”

“Basically. I arranged all the details, of course.”

“He musta been quite a guy. I think I told you how sorry I was—”

“Yes,” Heller said, “he was a wonderful gentleman. The point is, the state cops, and the insurance people, don’t care what we do.”

Moe began to smile. It was like finding barrels of money in all this wreckage. “I counted forty-five or fifty boats in perfect shape. The biggest—thirty-footers and over—most of those, we stored on cradles outside. Like the Viking diesel, your favorite. Augie’s, too.”

Augie Heller was Bern’s nephew. One of several relatives on the payroll. The little creep had used the boat so much lately that he’d been acting like the Viking was his.

Not a chance.

The Viking was Bern’s. Or soon would be.

Who wouldn’t like a forty-three-foot yacht with plush staterooms, a Bose entertainment system, and a pilothouse that made him feel like an expert seaman, just sitting at the wheel, even though Bern had never spent a day offshore.

He’d driven the boat several times, but always stuck to the inland waterways. Sometimes he took it down the Intracoastal for dinner at South Seas Plantation, or Grandma Dot’s. Man, the boat was beautiful, but he was just learning. Getting his confidence up. The pilothouse was loaded with electronics, including a couple of GPSs, so that’s what he’d do next—learn how to use the boat’s navigation system. Find out what the numbers meant on the old map.

What was today? Tuesday, September 14th. Augie had asked to use the Viking tomorrow—the kid had been taking the boat offshore to fish for grouper. So maybe he’d take a couple of beers, the old map, and figure out the GPS tonight.

Bern was thinking about that as Moe continued, “And the Cuban’s boat. There’s another one that didn’t get a scratch. That’s why he’s so pissed off.”

“Screw ’im. Far as he knows, it got smashed.”

“Well…I don’t know.”

“You don’t know what?”

Moe said, “Well, the thing is, Javier was a fishing guide on Sanibel before he came here. He knows the business. I tell most of these hicks their boat’s totaled, call your insurance agent, they’ll say, ‘Duh-h-h-h, okay.’ Not the fishing guides, though.”

Heller began to get suspicious. “There’s something you’re not telling me.”

“Well, Bern, there’s kind of a problem…Javier knows his boat’s okay. He waded in that night, after the storm, when no one was here to stop them.”

“What do you mean no one was here? What about that old fart you hired as a watchman, what’s his name?”

“Arlis Futch. He’s lived around here forever. He’s a pal of Javier’s, so…well, I guess Arlis let him have a look.”

Heller’s face was wide as a box, and his jaw muscles flexed when he was irritated. “I suppose the Cuban came other nights, too. Did he?”

The boss was asking if Javier Castillo had seen the bulldozer working in the dark, in the rain, flattening the Indian mounds to fill what had been mangrove swamp.

“It’s possible.”

Heller’s jaw was flexing now. A pit bull on a leash. “Jesus, I tell you to do something, it still doesn’t get done.”

“I had to evacuate the island. It was mandatory.” Moe’s tone asking: What was I supposed to do?

“The colored guy, though, he stayed here. He didn’t run. And the old fart.”

Moe said, “I guess. Them and a few others.” His tone flat now. “Javier lives south, where the eye came ashore. His house was totaled; now his wife’s run off. Javier told me he was coming back with a gun because he had nothing to lose.”

“Bullcrap,” Heller said. He was picturing the skinny Cuban with a gun, cops yelling Freeze, before shooting him.

Good. He hoped it happened.

“Everybody’s got something to lose,” he told Moe, stealing one of his grandfather’s lines. “Find out what it is—and that’s how much you can take.”