regretfully. “Sorry about that. You gotta believe me, these guys have been all over my ass. I can’t take a dump without some fed reaching out of the bowl to grab the paper from my hand.”
“Forget it,” I said. “If you don’t want me to look at the boat today, I can just come back another time.”
“No, the hell with it.” He waved me up like we were the best of friends. “Who knows if there’ll be a next time, the way this is playing out. Might as well come on board and have a look around.”
He gave me the full tour, even started up the engines and took us for a quick spin out to Key Vaca, and by the time we returned, he seemed to have forgotten all about his troubles. We sat on the aft deck and shot the breeze over a couple of cans of Coors; he told me how he had found the boat nine years ago in western Connecticut, falling apart in somebody’s barn, and had put it back together piece by piece, hoping someday to retire someplace warm and spend the rest of his life puttering around on it. His marriage was long over, his kids were grown and gone. Except for a crappy little townhouse in Providence and a ten-year-old Cadillac, the boat was what he had. He’d gotten as far as bringing her all the way down from Newport, piloting it himself right down the East River and under the Verrazano Narrows Bridge. But then he had come into his office one day to find the place crawling with police, not just local cops but IRS and FBI, his file cabinets and desk and computer all sealed with yellow tape and making their way on handcarts to a step van parked in the alley.
“I’ll tell you one thing,” Frank said, lighting up another of the long brown cigarettes he had smoked all afternoon. “You think those cocksucking Kennedys were ever put under investigation? They never did anything I ain’t done.”
“Can’t say I know much about it, Frank. I’ve heard that, though.”
“Well, they sure as hell weren’t.” He shook his head and smoked. “Irish trash from Southie. They’re no better than me, and look at the fix I’m in.” He fell silent for a minute, then flicked his cigarette over the transom. “So, you innerested?”
So much time had passed I had almost forgotten the boat was for sale. I felt a little stab of shame that I didn’t have the money, or anything close to it. All I was doing was window-shopping.
“Two-twenty’s a pretty big nut, Frank. For a guy like me, anyway. She’s a beautiful boat, though.”
“Beautiful doesn’t begin it,” he corrected. “Beautiful is something you say to a broad. You’re beautiful, sweetie, yes you are.” With a bearlike hand he patted the gunwale. “This, my fucking friend, is a work of fucking art.”
“It’s a shame you have to sell,” I said. “I’m not sure I’d even feel right taking her from you.”
“Yeah, well.” He looked dismally out over the water, squinting into the fading light. Nearly four hours had passed since I’d appeared on the dock. “Listen. Do me a favor, will ya?”
I nodded. “Sure thing.”
“Be a good guy and get the fuck out of here.” He waved his can of beer toward the parking lot, now all but empty, except for my truck. “Go on. Back to where you came from.” He frowned and looked at his hands. “Just leave me the fuck alone.”
I did as he asked, leaving him there with his melancholy thoughts, and when I called the yard a month later to order a new propeller for the Mako and asked Carl if Felicity was still for sale, he told me that Frank had flown the coop. There were no liens against the boat, IRS or otherwise, as far as he knew; the maintenance bills were being sent to a PO box in Coral Gables and paid by wire from an offshore account—fishy as hell, but probably legal or at least hard to touch. Since then she had sat through summer and another winter, soaking up maintenance fees and pelican poop and bobbing forlornly in the swells. The odd thing was, the one time Carl had talked to Frank, and told him that I still came around the yard from time to time to look at her, Frank had said it was all right with him if I wanted to take her out. According to Carl,