offthe fuel and water at Flamingo. We swam as the sun went down, and then clouds of mosquitoes, shrill with hunger, drove us below decks to break out the bombs and drop the ones that had come in with us. It was such a hot and airless night, I started the generator and put the air-conditioning on. After dinner, over coffee, I took Arthur through the best physical descriptions of the four men that he could manage, particularly Stebber and Gisik. I wanted to be certain to know them if the names were changed.
Saturday morning early I saddled up the dinghy and, taking Chook with me, droned south inside the islands to Marco Village. We achieved invisibility. There is an easy way to do it along the coast. I wore khaki pants, a white T-shirt, a baseball hat with a long bill, dark glasses. She wore white denim stretch pants, blue halter, dark glasses, and a little pot-shaped straw hat some female had left aboard, embroidered in red yarn across the front—Drink Up. We brought along a tackle box, two rods and a red beer cooler.
Marco Village saddened me. The bulldozers and draglines had gotten to it since my last visit. The ratty picturesque old dock was gone, as was the ancient general store and a lot of the old weatherbeaten two-story houses which had looked as though they had been moved down from Indiana farmland. They had endured a half century of hurricanes, but little marks on a developer’s plat had erased them so completely there was not even a trace of the old foundations.
But even the scurry of multimillion-dollar development slows to a sleepy pace in the island heat of late May. Loafers identified us instantly by type as we tied up and clamberedout of the dinghy, and from then on their total bemused attention was on the fruitful flexible weight encased in the white stretch denim, with Chook quite comfortably aware of admiration and speculation. I asked my question, and we got one bad lead and then a better one, and finally found a sallow, thoughtful young man who took us to where his boat sat lashed to a trailer. Sixteen-foot, heavy-duty fiberglass hull, with a forty horse Evinrude bolted to the reinforced transom. Twin tanks. All required gear.
“I don’t know about a week,” he said. “Figured on using it some myself. I’d have to get”—he wiped his mouth, stared into the distance—“a hundred dollars, mister?”
“Seventy-five. I buy gas.”
“I got fourteen hundred dollars in it, mister.”
“Seventy-five right now, and if I only keep it three days, it’s still seventy-five.”
He made a responsible show of studying my driver’s license, giving sidelong glances at Chook’s scanty halter, and got very helpful and cheery when he had the seventy-five in hand, describing places where we could hook into big snook and baby tarpon. He put it in the water for us. Boldly lettered on the white fiberglass, in pink, and for some obscure reason in Old English calligraphy, was the name
Ratfink
. We took off sedately, towing the dinghy astern, dock loafers watching us out of sight. Arthur was waiting on the beach when we returned. Without the burdens of Chook and the dinghy, I took
Ratfink
out into open water and found I had made a good guess on the hull design. It was very fast and stable, and when I came smashing back through my own wake, I found it was a dry boat.
Another can of gas aboard would give it all the high speed range I’d need. It had one of the new control rigs, shift andthrottle on the same handy lever. The cable control gave it a quick steering ratio. I taped a piece of white cloth over the too-memorable name, and with some black electrician’s tape I made an alteration in the registration number, turning a six into an eight and a one into a seven. It would stand inspection from ten feet away.
I changed to slacks and a sports shirt, stowed a light jacket and tie in the locker under the forward deck, told them to be good kids, and took off up the inside route to Naples, an estimated twelve
Saturday morning early I saddled up the dinghy and, taking Chook with me, droned south inside the islands to Marco Village. We achieved invisibility. There is an easy way to do it along the coast. I wore khaki pants, a white T-shirt, a baseball hat with a long bill, dark glasses. She wore white denim stretch pants, blue halter, dark glasses, and a little pot-shaped straw hat some female had left aboard, embroidered in red yarn across the front—Drink Up. We brought along a tackle box, two rods and a red beer cooler.
Marco Village saddened me. The bulldozers and draglines had gotten to it since my last visit. The ratty picturesque old dock was gone, as was the ancient general store and a lot of the old weatherbeaten two-story houses which had looked as though they had been moved down from Indiana farmland. They had endured a half century of hurricanes, but little marks on a developer’s plat had erased them so completely there was not even a trace of the old foundations.
But even the scurry of multimillion-dollar development slows to a sleepy pace in the island heat of late May. Loafers identified us instantly by type as we tied up and clamberedout of the dinghy, and from then on their total bemused attention was on the fruitful flexible weight encased in the white stretch denim, with Chook quite comfortably aware of admiration and speculation. I asked my question, and we got one bad lead and then a better one, and finally found a sallow, thoughtful young man who took us to where his boat sat lashed to a trailer. Sixteen-foot, heavy-duty fiberglass hull, with a forty horse Evinrude bolted to the reinforced transom. Twin tanks. All required gear.
“I don’t know about a week,” he said. “Figured on using it some myself. I’d have to get”—he wiped his mouth, stared into the distance—“a hundred dollars, mister?”
“Seventy-five. I buy gas.”
“I got fourteen hundred dollars in it, mister.”
“Seventy-five right now, and if I only keep it three days, it’s still seventy-five.”
He made a responsible show of studying my driver’s license, giving sidelong glances at Chook’s scanty halter, and got very helpful and cheery when he had the seventy-five in hand, describing places where we could hook into big snook and baby tarpon. He put it in the water for us. Boldly lettered on the white fiberglass, in pink, and for some obscure reason in Old English calligraphy, was the name
Ratfink
. We took off sedately, towing the dinghy astern, dock loafers watching us out of sight. Arthur was waiting on the beach when we returned. Without the burdens of Chook and the dinghy, I took
Ratfink
out into open water and found I had made a good guess on the hull design. It was very fast and stable, and when I came smashing back through my own wake, I found it was a dry boat.
Another can of gas aboard would give it all the high speed range I’d need. It had one of the new control rigs, shift andthrottle on the same handy lever. The cable control gave it a quick steering ratio. I taped a piece of white cloth over the too-memorable name, and with some black electrician’s tape I made an alteration in the registration number, turning a six into an eight and a one into a seven. It would stand inspection from ten feet away.
I changed to slacks and a sports shirt, stowed a light jacket and tie in the locker under the forward deck, told them to be good kids, and took off up the inside route to Naples, an estimated twelve
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