Flush - Carl Hiaasen [44]
“She won’t have to know a darn thing,” Abbey said, “because next time we’ll do it right.”
The “we” was a given. I wasn’t about to let my sister go anywhere near that marina again without me.
We unlocked our bikes and started pedaling home in the thick July heat. I knew I stunk from the crappy water, but Abbey claimed she didn’t smell a thing. I kept thinking about how easy it was for Dusty Muleman to get away with what he was doing. With so many big boats on the water, nobody had been able to trace the pollution along Thunder Beach directly to the Coral Queen.
Or maybe nobody had tried hard enough.
It was time that somebody did.
“We can’t get Dad involved in this, either,” I said to Abbey. “He’s had enough trouble already.”
“Definitely.” She grinned. “Noah, does this mean you’ve got a plan?”
“Don’t get carried away,” I said, which ought to be the Underwood family motto.
THIRTEEN
Dad was serious about getting serious.
The same morning he was released from jail, he went out and got himself hired by a company called Tropical Rescue. It wasn’t the sort of work that my father could put his heart into, but I knew why he took the job.
It was the boat.
They let him use a twenty-four-foot outboard with a T-top and twin 150s—not for fishing but for towing in tourists who ran out of gas or rammed their boats aground.
Normally my father has no patience for these sorts of bumblers. He calls them “googans” or even worse, depending on what kind of fix they’ve gotten themselves into. But Dad needed the job, so he buttoned his lip and kept his opinions to himself.
Unless it’s a life-or-death emergency, the Coast Guard refers disabled-boat calls to private contractors like Tropical Rescue, which charge big bucks. They stay busy, too. It’s amazing how many people are too lazy to read a fuel gauge, a compass, or a marine chart. They just point their boats at the horizon and go. All around the Keys you can see their propeller trenches—long ugly gouges, like giant fingernail scrapes, across the tidal banks. It takes years for the sea grass to grow back.
Dad’s first rescue job was a boatload of software salesmen from Orlando who were stranded all the way out at Ninemile Bank. Somehow they’d managed to beach a brand-new Bayliner on a flat that was only four inches deep. That’s not easy to do, unless you’re bombed or wearing a blindfold.
Miraculously, Dad restrained himself from saying anything insulting. He didn’t get mad. He didn’t make fun of the bonehead who’d been driving the boat.
No, my father—the new and improved Paine Underwood—stayed calm and polite. He waited patiently for the tide to come up, tugged the Bayliner off the bank, and towed it back to Caloosa Cove. He told us he almost felt sorry for the software salesmen when he handed them the bill, which didn’t even include the hefty fine from the park service for trashing the sea grass. It was probably one of the most expensive vacations those guys ever had.
Even though Dad didn’t like dealing with googans, he was ten times happier on the water than he was driving a taxi. That meant Mom was in a better mood, too, laughing and kidding around the way she used to do.
The two of them were getting along so well that Abbey and I were extra careful not to mention the sticky subject of Dusty Muleman’s casino boat. We discussed our new plan of attack only when we were alone and away from the house, where our parents couldn’t hear us.
A couple of days after my father got out of jail, the Parks Department took down the pollution warnings at Thunder Beach. The next morning, Abbey and I put on our bathing suits and grabbed a couple of towels and dashed outside. Mom and Dad figured we were heading for the park, which is exactly what we wanted them to think.
Because we were really going to Shelly’s trailer.
I had to knock a half dozen times. When she finally came to the door, she didn’t seem especially delighted to see us. Her eyes were puffy and half closed, and it looked like somebody had set off a firecracker in her hair.