① Tiring of boat work, I rowed ashore seeking distraction. 'Funny,' thinking, 'Nobody anywhere; wonder where the party is,' while walking down the railroad tracks toward town. 'No one in sight. Some thing's got to be happening some-where.' Streets being dull too, I peeked in at the bar [Smitty's] door and spied Three-finger Stan and One Eye sitting in the gloom with Star. Ambling in, they wave and motion for another pitcher. “What's up? There's no one outside anywhere.”
Star responded, “Yeah. We noticed. So dead is why we're in here. Play some pool?” adding with a tease, “Loser pays next game.” Of course: She beat my butt ba-a-dder than bad. One Eye wouldn't even play her anymore. Stan gave it a pretty fair go but she just kept pocketing balls and you know who pushed the next quarter home for me to have another go. Not!
Filling up with quitting time crowd from the boatyard and night crawlers warming up, the place started getting noisy and smoke-filled. Dusk well underway now, second pitchers running low, in walks this businessman type: suit, shiny shoes, you kno'a'm sa'in'? I'm wondering to myself, 'Is this guy lost, or what?' He leans over the bar, whispering with the bartender, who points our way. I'm getting nervous and fidgety, but Star squeezed my thigh under the table, her eyes soothing a 'Relax.' The suit walks over to our table and says to Stan, under his breath, “Bartender says you're the waterfront's worst.”
“Well?” never one to shy away from anything or anyone, “and what's it to ya, old man?”
They go off in a corner, whispering a mile-a-minute. I see him sneak money into 'finger's shirt and I am really curious now to know what's going down. But then, Stan grabs his ol' lady and the three of them troop out the door, leaving One Eye and me to wonder. All the way back to Skiffy and on the row home through mists of a midnight fog, all I could think of was: what kind of monkey business went down back there?
I was rudely awakened near noon by Beauty violently rolling from some asshole's cabincruiser wake. All manner of stuff was falling off of shelves and out of cabinets and boy was I pissed. I grabbed the shotgun, but the damn boat wouldn't quit rolling out of control and I whammed my head on the cabin beams. Madder still as I see the culprit boat spinning around for another high-speed mad dash back by. “You son-of-a-bitch!” The box of shells has jumped off the shelf and right through a crack in the floorboards, 'Sploosh!' into the bilge water. I was unhooking the harpoon gun from its rack just as the cruiser came to a huge smother-of-foam stop alongside and who do you suppose is at the helm but none other than Badfinger; screaming outrageously drunk; revving up the twin engines.
“Git yer ugly ass over here you son-of-a-bitch, we're goin' fishing!”
About the last thing I feel like doing at this moment but, 'when in rome', etc., Hardway notwithstanding. “MAN, where the hell'd you get this?” eyes wide, but then, remembering the suit giving him money last night. Ears perked, I jumped to the fancy teak deck, dying with curiosity. Star has a-mushroom/ steak & eggs breakfast, with a side of salad all laid out in the 'dining salon' of this, I am guessing, hundred-thousand dollar plush motor-yacht. Stan's rolling some sweet-smelling ② weed to augment the coffee and little by little, the story is taking shape.
“Seems like this rich man has realized what a crummy built-to-fall-apart-quick boat this plastic pseudo yacht is, and is sick at heart to have been suckered into wasting a hundred grand on such a piece-of-shit as most of these so-called 'modern' cabin cruisers are—you know man, like once you understand what makes for a real boat—and has decided to pay someone to steal it and make it disappear. That's what that wad of money was about. He'll report the 'theft' to the insurance company soon as your buddy here makes good on his promise to 'take care' of it. Meantime, we got this beast to open throttles full bore and race around in for a few days and use up the fuel. Come on, Hardy, I know you want to go for a ride.”
After breakfast, we go 'fishing,' (Ha!) out the Golden Gate, past Land's End and Statue, across the bar, and eventually—via the Farallone Islands, 26 miles out—anchoring for the night in Drake's Bay, behind Point Reyes, thirty miles up the coast! Wildman has fifty cases of beer and a dozen gallons of hard liquor on board, and for the next two days, the shitfaced sailors drank and smoked and threw up all over that fine yacht. Nearing the third sunset, I'm beginning to wonder how all this is going to end when Stan surfaces from out of the funk and orders, “Up anchor!”
We head southwest until after midnight, when a sailboat materializes from out of the gloom; and Stan knows this guy! And what's more: this is a plan. They offload four dozen trashbags full of the blondest Columbian Gold I ever saw. The smuglers, along with the booze disappear onto the mist and our gang raced full bore for the shore.
Just before dawn, we landed at this quad of derelict barges and offloaded the garbage bags into a room-within-a-room, so artfully-contrived, it could never be found unless the secret were known. A dozen of the toughest looking badass crew are living there and are stoking up a fire with venison spit up. Mouths are watering for the helluva special party coming. Everyone's rolling and toking; booze passing around and around like there's going to be no tomorrow; and you know what? After venison, bossman orders windholes bunged and throws—I swear—a dozen kilos of that superfine Santa Marta Gold weed on the coals and we sat in there, like in a sweatlodge, soaking it up and getting unbelievably you know what.
I went home to sleep for two days while the delinquent yacht buzzed back and forth joyriding big time with friends. Then, Stan comes to me, saying he's got a buyer for the engines, trannys, shafts, and props for four grand, and offers me five-hundred to help him and One Eye pull the running gear. This, we accomplished over the next two nights; then loaded what felt like a dozen tons of rocks into her to make sure she'd go down. With seacocks opened and bungs knocked out, we cut her loose in deep water down near the Golden Gate bridge on a monster ebb tide current and watched her drifting out toward burial-at-sea; sinking, then sunk. Destructo racked up eight grand for barely a week's work—plus party. And there's more. When the former owner collected the eighty-thousand dollar insurance payoff on his 'loss,' he gave Sinkum-man another four grand. Can you beat that?
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