Now who the hell would tie a live target to an easy chair, somehow get the load on top of a floating giant channel marker, and then shoot that body dead, and subsequently cut it loose, leaving chair, blood — and waste-stains — for visiting Elizabeth to discover?
Sadistic pirates?
Sure, we have pirates here (crime story # 2). Not flying the skull-and-bones flag no more, not using swords or muskets. Those wonderful days are gone, except on screen with Johnny Depp leading. Today’s pirates are sly. They became sly because of technology. Nowadays most vessels communicate via cell phones and radio. Any suspicious event will be promptly reported to law enforcement that, since 9/11, has become fast and nosy. Our part of the coast is patrolled by Coast Guard cutters; Sheriff, and his deputies Dog and Sycophant, are out too sometimes, using a confiscated speedboat. There are also military choppers and airplanes peering down. It won’t take long to catch pirates entering a vessel by force.
Give up adventuring on the high seas?
Hey, this is America. Now we have friendly young boating types who offer their services to the mega rich about to sail their multimillion-dollar — it’s only shareholders’ money — yachts out for a spell. Our betters know about embezzling, helping themselves to other people’s money, but they don’t know about sailing. If they go out on their own they’re accident-prone, which could make them look foolish.
The charming young boating types tell the make-believe commodore they’d like to come along, just for the ride, they don’t care about wages, all that’s wanted are board, a hammock below deck, a gratuity at the end of the trip, maybe. They’re young and carefree. A bottle of rum and Hi Diddle Doodle “and here we are, Admiral. At your service. Check that global positioning system, adjust that automatic pilot, swab your decks, untangle your lines.”
So owner and girlfriends cavort in mahogany- and teak-lined cabins and the charming young boating types run the equipment, swab the decks, polish the plastic, slave away, grinning and singing.
Yes?
No. Not for long, anyway.
Ah, can you hear the double-bass groan as this scenario unfolds? As soon as the yacht is out of sight of land the newfound friendly crew, eager to please, point out an imaginary albatross or a killer whale or some other oddity. “Look over there, sir,” Sir, and the girlfriends, get shot through their heads. The live-in pirates check the yacht’s depth meter, sail to where they have a good distance under the keel, take their victims’ jewelry (did you see the ads for $30,000 watches in Architectural Digest and Vanity Fair?), cash, credit cards, electronic devices (especially laptops that store double bookkeeping, hidden wealth, numbered bank accounts complete with passwords), driving licenses, and other identification for future use and reference, and heave-ho-overboard the suckers go. The pirates usually take the trouble to attach weights to their victims’ bodies. That way the corpses, once they balloon with intestinal gas, can’t pop up to cause trouble to the living. Once safely on the bottom something will eat them pretty quick. The pirates don’t like to worry, they’re busy right now. Hoist all sails and look sharp, dead south as she goes.
Deep waters are the habitat of dogfish.
Dogfish, that’s a kind of shark. We have lots of them in Downeast coastal waters. Nasty-looking creatures. They won’t go for the living so much but they sure cherish the dead. Lobsters like corpses, too. Ever eat a Maine lobster? Tasty, eh? I like lobster myself. Lobsters and crabs are recycled dead meat, but it doesn’t do to be picky. Dogfish meat is also good, but it’s a hassle to drag those big buggers across the gunwale. Lobsters I dive for, grab a few from where they wave their antennae between the seaweed. In winter I go down, too. I have a good dry-suit. It’s fun down there between the waving kelp, especially when the sunlight filters through marine foliage.
The pirated yacht, under new management, sets a course around Florida and is sold to a Venezuelan oil mogul or a Mexican police general or a Colombian drug lord who had been checking out some luxury harbors. The foreign visitor points his choice out to the charming young boating types he has been introduced to by his U.S. Organized Crime agent, a two-sided government mini-mogul, most likely. Ese bote me sirve, amigos, Don Ladron says and pays some cash up front, promises the balance on delivery in a Mexican harbor, and drives his rental limo to a private jet waiting at Bar Harbor airport.
Good business, also for the heirs of the dead owners who, in time, will collect some considerable insurance.
A couple of those charming young boating types did appear in Bunkport three summers ago, and, a few weeks later, a yacht owned by a former CEO (now “pursuing other interests,” he told us, buying drinks at the Thirsty Dolphin) got reported as missing, together with Moneybags and his ladies. The very same lads showed again last summer, but this time the situation was different. Both pirates were shot dead, the hired skipper and his wife were executed, and all four corpses were found on the yacht Take It Easy, so a Coast Guard lieutenant told us.
So what happened?
Here, I put together a script.
Crime story #3
A local one-legged Vietnam veteran is enjoying his therapy in his converted fishing boat. It’s autumn. He watches summer birds taking off for the south and winter birds coming in to replace them. The fellow suffers from a Multi Traumatic Disorder. The psychiatrist told him his best bet to stay normal would be, apart from taking his medication regularly, to do next to nothing.
Our protagonist feels it’s time to take a nap. He maneuvers his boat behind some huge rocks where it is protected from currents. He drops his anchor. Just as he wants to slip into the cabin he spots the top of a mainsail on the other side of the rocks. He claws himself onto the roof of his boat’s cabin and witnesses Dramatic Action.
What do you know? There are the two beach bums in designer jeans he remembers from their previous appearance at the Thirsty Dolphin, where Commodore Moneybags hired them to run his vessel. The Cloud Nine was presumed to be lost at sea with the commodore, passengers, and crew lost forever.
And here we go again. From what the veteran is witnessing from his vantage point between sheltering granite formations, the charming young men are about to take over another sea castle, the Take it Easy, a Walton Wharf creation with a price that takes awhile to write down due to a multitude of zeros.
A month before Elizabeth’s appearance I was listening to an older couple who recently sold their ancient wooden mini schooner after sailing her around the world. Not having gotten much for their worm-eaten vessel, they put an ad in the Down Easter Courier offering to take yachts from A to B, which was answered promptly by the owner of the Take It Easy. Would the couple take his brand-new multimillion dollar yacht from Bunkport, Maine to Mobile, Alabama?
Why, sure, sir.
The owners flew down, were impressed by the old weather-beaten couple; up-front cash appeared, hands were shaken.
“Godspeed and see you soon. If you need a crew, feel free to hire.”
Taking the Take It Easy out for trials, the couple (this hypothetical script has it) is approached by our killers, on one of Bunkport’s floating docks, unseen by our veteran.
Our veteran now sees the new victims, the old man in his weathered Greek sailing cap and worn U.S. Navy peacoat and his wife in an overall and a battered hat, kneeling on the boat’s deck, looking into the barrels of the pirates’ pistols. The young men bring back their guns’ hammers slowly — crrrack, crrrack — and lightly touch their triggers. The shots ring out loudly. The old folks are knocked over backward.