Thicker Than Water (A Leo Waterman Mystery) Read Online Free PDF Page A

souls.
    Didn’t take long for sanity to rear its head.
    “Hey!” he hollered.
    “Still here,” I said.
    “Yeah…maybe I could use…you know…”
    Took us three or four minutes to wiggle him all the way out. Tore a jagged hole in the shoulder of his coveralls in the process, but at least he was right side up.
    He was pushing fifty, with a weathered, windblown face, and a body lean and lithe for a guy his age. He ran a greasy hand through his hair and introduced himself as Neil Robbins.
    “’Preciate the help,” he said disgustedly. “Had to practically dismantle the exhaust system just to change the damn water pump,” he complained. “By the time I got it outta there wasn’t nothing left to lever myself out with.”
    He began to pick up his tools. I stood on the rolling dock and watched as he worked at making the Tolly shipshape. I looked around the marina. Still not an empty slip in sight. “Looks like there’s no shortage of work to be had,” I commented.
    “The work’seasy,” he growled. “It’s gettin” paid that’s the trick.”
    “Tough times,” I said.
    “Used to be, three of us couldn’t keep up with the work. Now…” He threw a greasy hand in the air. “These days I gotta work on whatever I can.”
    “Nobody pays his boat mechanic first.”
    “Or second or third…” He found a hose and washed off the deck. “These days we get ’em back way more often than we ship ’em out.”
    I gestured with my head. “Millennium looks like its hanging in there.”
    He shook his head. “They’re circling the bowl,” he said. “Wasn’t that he owned the building, he’d be out on his ass like the resta them. That’s the only damn thing keeping him afloat, ’cause he sure as hell ain’t moving any boats.”
    “How long you been busting knuckles around here?”
    “Nine years.”
    “You know any of the salesmen?”
    “Sales associates,” he corrected with a malicious grin.
    I laughed.
    “They’re all gone. All off selling refrigerators or something.”
    “You know Brett Ward?”
    “At least he could actually drive a boat,” the guy said as he gathered the water pump parts and stowed them in the lazarette. “Some of these yahoos…” He rolled his eyes.
    We both knew exactly what he was talking about. While society at least goes through the motions of making sure someone knows the rules of the road and is prepared to operate a motor vehicle in traffic, no such precautions aredeemed necessary when it comes to boats. Anybody with gas money and a watery wish is permitted to operate a boat, which, of course, produces predictable results, particularly among the big boat set.
    For reasons best left to psychoanalysis, there seemed to be a feeling among the well-to-do that the skills necessary to operate the vessel were transferred along with the title. After all, these were people who’d attained a certain level of success and thus had displayed a certain level of competence. They were good at things. Why shouldn’t they be good at operating a yacht?
    Usually they had to lose an anchor or crash into the fuel docks or run over half-a-dozen bow lines and foul the prop before they figured out that boats don’t just turn left when you want them to, that little things like the wind and the tide and the forces of motion and inertia affect boats in ways theretofore unimagined. At that point they either get somebody to show them how to properly slide a vessel of that size around and then practice their little hearts out, or they read the handwriting on the wall and hire a professional to do it for them. Still others just kept bumbling around. The SPD water cops and the Coast Guard were busy all year long.
    He threw his tool bag over his shoulder and held out a hand. I yarded him up onto the dock in a single smooth motion. Wasn’t till he was standing beside me that he realized how big I was. He looked up and grinned. “It was you stuck in there, we’dda had to gut her to the waterline to