Wreckers' Key (24 page)

“Yeah, I think that was him. He’s a white Bahamian dude.”

“That’s Pinder. Did he look at your navigation equipment at all?”

“I don’t think so. Why?”

“Well, I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but there have been several big yachts that have gone aground in the past couple of months. We’ve been thinking that if there was something similar in the equipment, a cause we could isolate, like the same brand of GPS for instance, then maybe we could discover a technical cause and correct it.”

I assumed he would have to go look, but he surprised me again. “We have Raymarine units at both inside and outside steering stations, and I have an extra Garmin handheld of my own as backup.”

The
Power Play
had contained all Furuno electronics, so the idea that maybe there was some kind of glitch in the equipment already wasn’t panning out. “Can you tell me what happened the day your vessel grounded outside Hillsboro? What were the conditions?”

“First off, it wasn’t day, it was night, or almost. We were coming back from Bimini and we had cut straight across to Miami, then we were hugging the coast coming north trying to stay out of the Gulf Stream. It had been a rough trip, wind out of the northeast, and we were tired. The owner was aboard and he was anxious to get home. I was on the helm, and even though I had a visual on the coastline, the buildings, and the lighthouse, I was watching the GPS because it’s hard to estimate exactly how far offshore you are with just a visual.”

“Were you using radar?”

“It was clear, and we could see any ships for miles. The little boats would just get lost in the sea clutter, so no. Once we got across the Gulf Stream, I’d turned it off.”
 

“And according to the GPS, you should have been okay?”

“Yeah, we should have rounded the outside sea buoy at least a hundred yards off.”

“I admit I don’t know a whole lot about electronics, but I worry when I think about helmsmen looking at a screen rather than out the window.”

“I agree, and I’ve learned my lesson. I was relying too much on the electronics. The GPS was off by way more than they say—and since it happened, I got on the Net. I’ve read where you can get interference from boat-mounted TV antenna amplifiers, from sunspots, even from the ship’s refrigeration system. But, you know, shit happens.”

I thought about Nestor and how devastated he was when he put
Power Play
on the rocks. “You don’t seem too upset by it.”

“Not my problem. The owner’s not going to fire me over it. He figures that’s what he’s got insurance for.”
 

“And if it makes his premiums go up?”

“It’s chicken feed to this guy.”

“What do you and the owner think about Ocean Towing charging you for a salvage instead of a tow?”

“Again, not our problem. The owner says that’s between Ocean Towing and his insurance company. He’ll let them work that one out.”

On the way south, as I was passing Bahia Mar, almost to the mouth of the New River, I heard a whistle and saw George Rice, a broker friend of mine, with his lovely little varnished launch tied to the stern of a motor yacht named the
Savannah Jane
. He waved me over.

I doubt that George had ever been to England—I’d heard he was really from a small town in Alabama—but he had the best fake English accent I’d ever heard. It was a known fact in the yachting business that women often had the final say as to whether or not their husbands could buy their dream boats. George, apparently, figured that since women really went for men with English accents, he would get more women on his side if he talked like someone off
Masterpiece Theatre
. He wound up sounding like
Fawlty Towers
set in Mobile Bay, but he did sell lots of boats—he had to in order to pay for the expensive hair and nail work he had done at a Las Olas salon.

As I pulled alongside, he leaned down and petted Abaco on the head. “Aren’t you just the most precious little girl?” he sang out in a voice nearly an octave higher than mine.

“How’s it going, George?”

“I just had to call you over to find out if it’s true. You know I have always loved
Gorda
, and there was that one time that your brother teased me, led me on, and made me think that your lovely little boat was going on the market. I was devastated when I found out it wasn’t true, but now a little bird told me that things have changed. That you are ready to sell. I thought I would just let you know that I would be happy to be of service to you.”

“What the hell are you—” I started to light into Rice when I remembered. Pete. Last night at the Downtowner. “Goddammit. You can’t tell anybody anything in this town without everybody knowing it by the next day.”
 

George rubbed his hands together. “So it’s true? You really might sell?”

“I just said I was thinking about it.”

“Well, I know there are a lot of brokers in this town, but your father and I went way back.”

“George, Red couldn’t stand you.”

“But we’d known each other for years, and your father was just a surly fellow. He treated everyone that way. Why, I just know that if he were alive today—”

“If he were alive, he’d never sell that boat. But it’s true, I am giving it some thought.” I pushed away from his launch and put the outboard in gear. “Give me a call in a few days, okay? We’ll see how I feel then.”

“Oh, absolutely. I’ll call you Friday. Ta ta.”

XXI

B.J. was sitting cross-legged on the seawall in front of my cottage when we came around the bend in the river.

“Boy, am I glad to see you,” I said after I cut the outboard.

“And I’m always glad to see you.”

He took the dinghy painter and pulled the boat under the davits.

“Lightnin’ was acting up last night,” I said as I took the two snap shackles and secured them to the dinghy’s lifting eyes. “And I don’t have time to get into it, to try to figure out what’s wrong, but I need to get over to Arlen’s. Can you drive me?”

Sitting next to him in the cab of his truck, I told him about Neville Pinder and my suspicions. “This guy has only been in this business a little over a year and all of a sudden he’s even getting more work than Sea Tow. Nobody knows where he’s been getting the money to expand like this, and his luck at being the first on scene at wrecks is just a little too uncanny. The captain of the
NautiBoy
told me that Pinder had been aboard shortly before they went aground. I guess my next step after Arlen is to find out if Pinder or someone who works for him had been aboard the
Power Play
.”

He parked in front of Molly’s house since he was going in for another of their marathon study sessions, while I headed across the street to the Sparkses’ house.

Catalina answered the door. She wasn’t looking much better than she had the day before. “Hi, Cat, is Arlen here?”

“Yes. He just got back from a morning running errands. He is right out there on the porch—where his equipment is.”

“Okay. I have a message for you from B.J. He wants you to go over to talk to him and Molly. They’re over there now. It has something to do with this project they’re doing. You’re going to be their project pregnant lady.”

“But if Mrs. Sparks wakes—”

“If she wakes up, I’ll be here. Don’t worry. They’ve been getting along without you all these months. They can manage for a few hours.”

In fact, B.J. had told me to get her out of the house just so she could get a breather from living here. It wasn’t easy caring for a terminal cancer patient, and B.J. and Molly were going to see to it that Catalina got out of the house at least every other day.

The Florida room on the back of the Sparkses’ house had probably been a screened-in porch at one time. Now French doors along the far wall of the living room opened onto a glass-enclosed porch. Tinted glass and bimini shutters prevented the space from growing unbearable in summer, and the shafts of sunlight shining through the cracks in the shutters gave the room a cool tropical feeling. A ceiling fan turned slowly overhead. Arlen Sparks sat at a long table covered with tools and radio equipment, his head bent forward, almost resting on his chest.

I knocked on the French door, and he jerked his head up as though he had been dozing. “Hi, Arlen, you got a minute?”

He drew in a deep breath and ran his hand over the top of his head, smoothing his comb-over from left to right. “Sure, come in. Sit down.” His eyes were bloodshot; when he moved to face me, I smelled his sour body odor.

“Thanks.” I pulled a wicker chair closer to his work area, but not too close. “Catalina just went across the street to Molly’s for a little visit. How’re things working out with her?”

“Great,” he said. “Sarah likes her, and it has taken some of the load off me. I’m able to get out more.” He moved his head from side to side as though trying to work out a crick in his muscles.

“That’s good. You should really try to get some sleep, though. You look tired.”

He blew out air through rounded lips. “I’ve got a lot on my mind these days. It’s hard to know what’s the right thing to do sometimes.” I smelled cigarettes on him, too. I didn’t remember him smoking when I was a kid.

“I know. Boy, do I know. I mean, the stuff I’m dealing with isn’t nearly as bad as you, but still, it’s tough dealing with somebody who’s sick. I remember when I was taking care of my dad just before he died.”

“That’s right. You do know.”

“Arlen, if you don’t mind, I came here today to talk to you about something else. I wanted to ask you some questions about electronics.”

“I don’t mind. What do you want to know?”

“Did you ever do any work with GPS?”

He rubbed his eyes before he answered. “GPS? Not really.” He pointed to the ham radio equipment on the table. “At Motowave, I worked primarily on radio equipment.”

“Do you know much about GPS?”

“More than the average layman, I’m sure, but it’s not my specialty.”

“Okay, well, you surely know more than I do. Here’s what I want to know. Would it be possible to mess with another boat’s GPS?”

“Well, sure, if I can get into the guts of any electronic equipment, I can mess with the signals.”

“Okay. Do you think you could put something in a boat’s GPS that would make it go off course when it reached a certain location or something?”

“I’m not sure I understand your question.”

“And I’m not sure how to ask because I have no idea what’s possible. I know this sounds kind of like science fiction stuff, but I mean would it be possible to, I don’t know, point a ray gun or laser or something at a boat from another boat and send a signal that would make their GPS go out of whack?”

He narrowed his eyes as I was talking, and when I’d finished he barked out a laugh that turned into a coughing fit.

“Do you want me to get you a glass of water?”

“No, no, just give me a minute.” He cleared his throat a few more times. It sounded like he had a huge wad of phlegm in there.

I wished he’d excuse himself and go spit somewhere. Maybe he’d been smoking longer than I thought.

“Sorry about that. I’ve had a cold.” He coughed again. “It’s been so long since I’ve laughed I’ve forgotten how.”

“I know it sounds crazy and far-fetched, Arlen, but the way I see it, our government has got to be working on something like this. I mean in desert warfare, everybody is navigating now with GPS. Surely they’re working on a way to screw with the enemy’s equipment, right?”

“If so, Seychelle, I don’t know a thing about it.”
 

“From what you do know, though, don’t you think it’s possible? I mean, I’ve heard that GPS on a boat can get screwed up by being too close to other electronics or even refrigeration. So if that stuff can mess it up, doesn’t it stand to reason that somebody could invent some kind of thing that would purposely aim interfering energy waves at a boat that would cause it to go off course and go aground?”

He reached forward and patted me on the knee. “You’ve got a good imagination, honey.” Then, leaning back in his chair, he said, “Of course, anything’s possible. That’s what we scientists and inventors have to believe.”

“But you’ve never heard of anything like that?”

He shook his head. “Sorry. Why are you asking?”
 

“It’s a long story. Just a theory I had. I’ve been doing some digging around, trying to figure out what’s going on with a recent rash of boat groundings.”

“Are you certain there really has been an increase? Lots of times we perceive an increase in the number of events around us, but our perceptions are skewed. For example, if you have a loved one injured or killed in a plane crash, you’ll likely think there’s an increase in the number of plane crashes over the next few months because you’ll be predisposed to notice. Just as you are predisposed to notice the number of groundings now that you work on your father’s tugboat. Do you know that there really have statistically been more wrecks?”

 
“No, you’ve got a point. It’s just seemed that way to me. I mean, I have been at this over three years now full time, and before that I often crewed for Red.”

“I suspect you’re seeing a problem where one doesn’t really exist.”

“In a way, I hope you’re right. Maybe I should go talk to the Coast Guard and see what the numbers say.”
 

“Why is this so important to you?”

“Well, for one thing, this is my industry. I don’t like the idea that there might be crooks in it. I believe we need to police ourselves, report anything that’s illegal. But the real reason is Nestor. To Catalina, it’s about his honor and integrity. Nestor was convinced someone had messed with the GPS on his boat. He believed someone got aboard and messed with the equipment, causing it to malfunction. And according to you, it sounds like if it happened, that was probably how. If somebody did do something like that, it would mean he wasn’t an incompetent captain who ran that new multimillion-dollar yacht on the stones. That matters to lots of people, but most of all to his wife.”

“I can see that.”

“So I promised her I’d check it out for her. There’s a guy I know, he’s working for this towing company now, and hopefully, within a few days, I’ll have something solid to take to the police. Then they can try to figure out what’s possible and what isn’t.”