Wreckers' Key (6 page)

She pointed me toward the restrooms up by the bar. Knowing full well that she’d bitch about it, I called Jeannie collect.

“Hey, it’s me,” I said when she answered.

“Calling collect? Don’t you know how expensive that is? I’ve given up trying to get you to buy a cell phone, but you could at least buy a calling card.”

“Nice to hear from you, Jeannie.”

Jeannie Black was both my lawyer and one of my dearest friends. I suppose she would be categorized as a “plus-size” woman since her weight hovered close to three hundred pounds. I would also categorize her as the smartest woman I had ever known, and I measured her worth more by the size of her brain than the size of her ass. “So what’s up?” I asked her.

“It’s about the lawsuit.”

“You mean the guy with the Grady-White?”
 

“Seychelle, just how many people are suing you? Of course, I meant him. The boat’s name was
Seas the Day
— you know, spelled
s-e-a-s
?”

“How original.”

“I’d call it prophetic. I think the guy is trying to scam you. Probably pulled the plug on his own boat.”
 

“Really?”

“Yeah. I’ve been checking up on him. Last year he tried to sue a McDonald’s restaurant, claiming he’d found a cockroach in his burger. Half a cockroach, that is.”
 

“Why try to sue me? I don’t have deep pockets like Mickey D.”

“Well, your name has been in the paper quite a bit these past few years on some pretty big salvage jobs. And besides what you’ve done, there’s been a lot of press for the salvage business in general. It makes all salvers look like they’re making out like modern-day pirates, getting awards of twenty, thirty percent of these big yachts. I’ll bet this guy thinks you’re worth millions.”
 

“Maybe you’d better educate him then, Jeannie. Get on the phone and talk to him. Explain it. Maybe he’ll drop the suit.”

“Fat chance.”

“Why?”

“Because even if you don’t have super deep pockets, your insurance company does. You’ve got a mighty high limit on your liability because you deal with these millionaires, and our friend Melvin Burke knows it.”
 

“You’d know. That’s the stuff I pay you to take care of. Okay, so our friend Melvin isn’t going to go away anytime soon. Man, I’m really starting to hate this guy. I can’t believe he did this on purpose. He had his daughter along, and if he put her at risk like that for some con, he’s an even bigger dirtbag than I thought.”

“It is looking that way.”

“Shit. But I don’t suppose that’s what you called me to ask me about.”

“In a way, it is. The news just keeps getting better. The bill for the insurance on your boat just arrived.” I had a post office box for my business, and Jeannie was handling my mail during my absence. “They’ve nearly doubled your premiums. I’m sure it’s a combination of all the recent hurricanes here in Florida and the increase in boating accidents. I thought I’d ask if you want me to check around, see if I could get you a better rate somewhere else. We don’t have much time. The policy renewal date is only a couple of weeks away.”

“Geez, Jeannie, almost double? Already it seems like I work a good week each month just to pay that bill. This business. Red must be rolling over in his grave.”

“You had your father cremated, Seychelle.”

“You know what I mean. It’s not like the old days when he built
Gorda
and started the towing business. Back then, he wasn’t getting ripped off every time he turned around—both by clients and by his insurance company. Hell, most of the time Red probably didn’t even have insurance.”

“Times have changed.”

I exhaled into the receiver and didn’t say anything for several seconds. I could hear Jeannie breathing on the other end of the line. “I know. There’s too much change for me sometimes.” I wanted to add,
and
too much death
. Then it started again. Whenever someone died, there were the many days of having to tell people over and over what had happened. Both my parents, Elysia, Neal—and now I had to add Nestor to the list of those I had loved and lost. And I had to tell Jeannie without turning on the tears again. I was tired of tears. “Make the calls, Jeannie. See what you can do. But before we hang up, I’ve got to tell you about what’s happening down here.”

Ted Berger’s room at the Hyatt was bigger than my whole house. Granted, I live in a little converted boathouse, and I don’t normally frequent the homes or hotel rooms of the rich and famous. But just the living room of his suite could have held my whole combined living room/kitchen and the tiny bedroom that I called home. Berger was sitting at an ornate desk in front of a laptop computer. Over his shoulder was a fantastic view looking out over the harbor, and I could just make out
Gorda
anchored in the lee of Christmas Tree Island. She stood out among the many cruising sailboats.

Berger looked up over the top of a pair of half-glasses. “What the hell is wrong with you? How can anybody live today without a cell phone?”

I held my hands out in a gesture of surrender. “You want me to work for you, you take what you get.”

“Goddammit,” he said, whipping off his reading glasses and throwing them on the desk. Then he stopped, and his face broke into a smile. “Shit,” he said. “It’s been a while since anybody’s talked to me like that. Sit down.” He gestured to the small armchair on the opposite side of the window.

Berger was dressed in khaki pants and another nearly neon Hawaiian shirt. This one was electric blue and yellow. Brand-new leather boat shoes completed the outfit. He ran a hand down the side of his head, smoothing his trim white hair.

“Seychelle, what happened yesterday was a tragedy. No doubt about it. Nestor was a good kid. But we’ve got to press on. I called an agency up in Lauderdale and I’ve already hired a new captain. He’s flying down tonight. I want you to meet him in the yard tomorrow.”

“No problem,” I said, but I thought that Ted Berger was a mighty cold son of a bitch. It hadn’t even been twenty-four hours. “I assume you’ll let Catalina Frias stay aboard until we get back to Lauderdale?”

He tapped his pen on the desk and didn’t answer right away. His eyes were unfocused, staring at something only he could see, and a shadow of a smile played on his lips. I was preparing to walk out of his office if he said no. “I might be an asshole, but I’m not sending a pregnant widow home on the bus. Look, it’ll take a day or so for the new captain to familiarize himself with the boat, and today’s Monday. Do you think you could be ready to leave by Wednesday, Thursday at the latest?”

“I can leave whenever the weather permits. Right now the forecast is looking good for a midweek departure. A little front came through yesterday, and they’re predicting a period of calm weather through the end of the week. But if something changes between now and then, weather-wise, I reserve the right to say whether or not we leave.”

He laughed. “Damn. Do you always boss your clients around like this?”

“When it comes to moving boats around? Yes, I tell them what I expect them to do.”

He shook his head. “Here I am stuck between you and Pinder.”

When he saw the puzzled look on my face, he continued. “Neville Pinder is the asshole who owns Ocean Towing. I take it you’ve never met him?”

“No,” I said, shaking my head. “Seen his boats around, but haven’t had the pleasure.”

“Pleasure!” he said. “Ha!”

“Ocean Towing’s only been in business in Broward a little over a year, but when he came on the scene, he came on big. He’s got lots of boats and lots of gear. Can’t miss those bright green boats of his. They’re everywhere. He’s not much into the New River business, though—he mostly works the emergency calls.”

“I hate to think of what’s going to happen to my insurance when I get out of this thing. He’s trying to stick me for twenty percent of five million—in other words, a million bucks for just pulling her off the reef and towing her in.”

“And he’ll probably get close to it, too. That’s not totally unreasonable.”

“Not unreasonable? For towing the boat a couple of miles? It’s fucking piracy!”

I sighed. People never understood the salvage business. “Mr. Berger, there is a huge cost difference between towing and salvage. Sometimes the line between the two isn’t very clear, but in your case there was no question. That was a salvage job. Towing is paid for by the hour, but salvage is a different story. Maritime law states that in order for a case to be considered salvage, it must meet three criteria. First, the vessel has to be in peril. Your boat was sitting on an endangered reef, unable to move due to the damaged props, and the weather was worsening. Nestor agreed to it, so it was voluntary on all parts, and that’s the second criteria. Finally, it must be successful. Salvage is a ‘no cure-no pay’ business, so if Ocean Towing worked for three days to get your boat off, then your boat sank when they pulled her into deep water, they would have been entitled to nothing.”

“A million bucks for twelve hours’ work is a far cry from nothing.”

“But they risked getting nothing if they weren’t successful. A salver can work for a week to free a grounded vessel, and if she sinks when he pulls her free, he gets zilch. It doesn’t matter how many hours or days the salver put in. But if he is successful, he’s entitled to a percentage of the value of the boat that he saved. See, you don’t just pay for the hours that a salver puts in on your job. You pay to keep him in business, to have his boats there waiting and ready twenty-four hours a day so when you do need him, he’s there. You pay for the radio gear that takes the call. You pay to have him go out and risk his boat and his life through the afternoon and into the dark hours, even when the weather is forecast to worsen. As I understand it, Ocean Towing deserves a fair claim. I don’t know about twenty percent, but I’d say he might be looking to get several hundred thousand in this case.”

“I’d say I’m in the wrong business, then.”

“It doesn’t look to me like you’ve done too bad for yourself,” I said. “Besides, salvage awards like this are few and far between, but every time there’s a big one, another half a dozen guys decide to jump into the business. It’s growing very crowded out there. There are too many boats trying to make a living in this line of work and not enough big wrecks.”

“Glad I could make a contribution,” he said, rolling his eyes.

I laughed. “Look, I’ll go have a talk with Pinder for you. See if I can convince him that this whole thing will stay out of arbitration if he’s just willing to be a little more realistic. Then we’ll get your boat safely back to Lauderdale, the insurance company will pay Ocean Towing, me, and the yard bill. And soon, you’ll have your boat back good as new.”

“Oh goody,” he said.

VII

The streets of downtown were jammed with tourists and it wasn’t even eleven o’clock yet. Hordes of pale people in shorts and tank tops jostled their way past the shop windows on Duval Street. The weather had warmed up considerably from the day before, and though the temperatures were only bound for the low seventies, unlike the places most of them called home, here there was no snow in the forecast, so they were thrilled.

I kept thinking about what Berger had said—that Pinder was some kind of pirate or rip-off artist. That was what this business had come to. I’d made a career change several years ago from being a beach lifeguard to taking over my dad’s salvage business. Back then I saw the two jobs as essentially the same thing—saving people’s lives and property. It was getting paid to be a Good Samaritan. I was doing something clear and honorable that I could feel proud of. Today it had become a question of gear and equipment and electronics. I understood that cell phones and chart plotters and GPS could be wonderful tools, but I didn’t trust them. First Nestor and now Berger—both had chastised me for not jumping into this electronic mess. The truth was, it had done neither of them any good in the end. The End. In fact, his wife believed that it was Nestor’s reliance on these bits of metal and wire that had caused his end. Granted, I did own a small GPS handheld, but I’d prefer a hand bearing compass, parallel rulers, dividers, and my paper charts any day.

Still, there was a huge difference between what I believed and what would help me make a living. Could I compete with my little tug? Probably not. How long would it be before the VHF radio went the way of adding machines, eight-track tapes, manual typewriters, records, videotapes, loran, wringer washing machines, hell, even steam engines? How long before a radio call was no longer the way of the salvage business? But I hated being lumped in with guys like Pinder who saw this industry as a way to build an empire and go for exorbitant claims. Maybe this was just another sign that it was time to think about a career change—again.

After nearly getting stepped on as I tried to look in a shop window, I ducked into Sloppy Joe’s Bar, slid onto a stool, and ordered a draft beer. I was alone at the bar, but there were a couple of tables full of rowdy college-age guys. When the bartender, an older guy with a long gray ponytail, brought the plastic cup and set it in front of me, I asked if he had a phone book.

“No,” he said, spreading his hands on the bar. “But what’re you looking for?”

“How about the offices of Ocean Towing?”

He squinted at me. “What would a pretty girl like you want with that rat bag?”

“I take it you know Neville Pinder?”

The man reached deep into his pant pocket and produced a small container of Skoal tobacco. He opened the tin with one hand and took a pinch with the other. Once he had packed it firmly under his lower lip with his tongue, he started to speak. The bulge was apparent right there on his chin, but it didn’t impact his speech in the least.

“Yeah, I known him.” He reached his hand across the bar and I shook it. “Call me Sam,” he said. “I’ve known him and his family awhile. First sailed over to the Abacos in ’69. Neville—he’s from there—was just a kid at the time. There’s lots of Alburys and Pinders and certain family names over there. Those families go way back. White Bahamians, Loyalists. First settled in the Bahamas around the time of the Revolutionary War. They wanted to stay loyal to the queen.”