Chapter 4

Derek looked at the plan for a long moment. Then he looked at me. Then he laughed again, but it was thinner this time, and it came out of him in two pieces.

"Anybody can write a name in a corner."

"It's not just a name," Priya said. "There's a note in the file. From the builder."

She opened the folder and turned it around. The paper inside was old, yellowed at the edge, and the handwriting was the big looping hand of a man who spent his life holding a pencil like a chisel.

I knew the handwriting before I read the words, because I watched it get written.

Hull 48-207. Lines by A. Penrose. Paid in full, and not enough.

Derek read it. He didn't say anything for a second, and in that second I watched him make a decision I've seen a thousand times. It's the decision a certain kind of man makes when the facts start leaning the wrong way. He doesn't change his mind. He changes the subject.

"That's a work note," he said. "That's a contractor. That's not a customer."

"He designed the boat," Priya said.

"He drew some lines. Somebody else built it. Somebody else is buying it." He closed the folder with two fingers and slid it back across the counter. "This is a retail floor, not a reunion."

The glass doors opened and a Broward deputy came in, young, sunglasses pushed up on his head, hand resting easy on his belt. Derek met him halfway and talked for a minute with his back to me. I heard "no," and "not necessary," and "just a walk-out."

The deputy came over. He looked at me the way Kenny had.

"Sir, are you here to purchase something?"

"I am."

"Do you have proof of that?"

I took out the check and held it up. He looked at it, then at Derek, and something moved behind his eyes. Not much. Then he did what deputies do. He stayed neutral.

"Mr. Voss says you're not welcome on the property today," he said. "You're free to stay and argue it, or you can leave. Your call. But I'd rather not write this up."

I folded the check.

"I'll go," I said.

Because he was right about one thing. I wasn't going to stand in a room and argue about my own name while clients watched. My father built boats on this river and he never once had to explain himself to a man in a suit, and I wasn't going to start at sixty-two.

Derek couldn't help himself. He had to put the last nail in.

"Kenny," he said, loud, cheerful. "Walk him out the back."

The back. The same door he'd pointed at when I walked in.

I picked up my hat. Priya was standing by the counter with the folder against her chest, and she looked like she wanted to say something and couldn't find a version of it that wouldn't cost her the job.

I turned toward the hallway. I got four steps. Then I stopped and turned around one more time, because a man doesn't get to see a boat he drew very often, and I wanted to look at her once before I left.

That's when the doors to the dock opened, and the light coming off the water went gold, and the whole room turned at once.