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?”