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My Kind of Town Don Chapman |
Wheel of Fortune
>> Off the Big Island
He would have known if they were looking for the yacht. The 99-footer had Doplar weather radar and a satellite radio laser link that picked up signals from around the world. You could scan geographic areas or tune to specific digital frequencies. He kept it tuned right where it was, scanning local police traffic, ship-to-shore radio, commercial radio and television. And so far nobody had mentioned Pet Shop.
But that would change, especially now that the sun was up. Even if the dead crewman hadn't told him, he could have figured out who owned the boat from the photos on the walls, from the private photo albums and leatherbound collection of Pet Shop magazines on a book shelf, and from the home-made videos stored under the big-screen plasma TV. High-profile publisher, high-profile boat. Soon to be high-profile search.
And it had already been gone for three days on this "training run." That's what the former captain had said with one of his latter breaths. In a state of islands that stretch across hundreds of miles of sea, it doesn't take more than one phone call to the Coast Guard from a concerned wife or girlfriend or buddy -- or owner -- for a boat and its crew to be considered missing. The sooner a search is started, the better chance you have of finding a boat that lost power and is drifting, or crewmen bobbing in a raft after their boat goes down. Even if they're able to radio a position, the sea's ever-changing currents pull them far away in a short time. And then there are sharks. "As everyone was recently reminded," he chuckled, starting now to talk to himself out loud. So it would only be a matter of days before somebody called the Coast Guard about this boat. If they hadn't already.
He found the paint in a forward hold -- one can of white, one of black, two of pink. Then he found a quiet cove out of the wind and waves and gave the boat a new name. It was sort of like playing Wheel of Fortune. He saw a way to give the boat a new name without having to paint over the whole thing. To solve the puzzle of turning Pet Shop into something else he had only to change three consonants and didn't have to buy a vowel. First he painted over three consonants with white to match the hull. It came out: _-e-t S-_-o-_.
Then he filled in the blanks with black. But it didn't look consistent, so he gave the letters a coat of black. He couldn't help chuckling. The new name was every bit as appropriate as the old name and far more clever, if he did say so himself.
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Don Chapman is editor of MidWeek. His serialized novel runs daily in the Star-Bulletin. He can be e-mailed at dchapman@midweek.com