Ed McBain_Matthew Hope 12 by Gladly the Cross-Eyed Bear Page A

friend went by the name of Amberjack James.
    He had got the name not because the color of his skin sort of matched the fish’s color—what the rednecks down here used to
     call “high yeller” back when such shit was still tolerated—but because he’d caught the biggest jack ever fished in the waters
     off Calusa, a hundred-and-ten-pound beauty that now hung mounted on a plaque in the living room of the small house he shared
     with a girl much darker than he was but only half his age and a lot prettier. Amberjack was thirty-seven. The girl had just
     turned eighteen.
Less
than half his age, actually. She was in the kitchen fixing lunch while Warren and Amberjack sat on the back porch of the
     house, looking out at the river and the boat Warren hoped to borrow.
    Amberjack’s real name…
    Or rather the name he’d been born with, or rather the name that had been
foisted
upon him at birth since nobody—the way he looked at it—was ever
born
with a name tattooed on his forehead or his belly button, he was just born naked and squawking and helpless till some higher
     authority
put
a name on him.
    In this case the higher authority happened to be his daddy, and the name he’d put on poor powerless little Amberjack was Harry
     James. This was in honor of a white trumpet player Amberjack’s daddy admired, he playing the cornet himself, which was a fine
     tribute, to be sure, if it didn’t so happen that James was also the
family
name, which made the baby come out Harry James James. Never did amount to much of a horn player, Amberjack’s daddy, but he
     left Amberjack’s mama a goodly sum of money when he died of cancer at the age of sixty-two, and he’d left Amberjack himself—in
     addition to the stupid fuckin name—the thirty-foot powerboat from which he’d caught his record fish two years later, thereby
     leaving behind forever the name of the honky bugler he’d never heard of, anyway.
    It was the boat Warren was here to borrow.
    “What you gonna do with it?” Amberjack asked.
    Both men were drinking Coors beer and munching on fried pork rinds they were plucking out of a red and yellow cellophane bag
     even though Mercedes had yelled twice from the kitchen to stop snackin less they spoil they appetites. The beer was cold and
     tasty and the rinds were salty and crisp. It was another scorching-hot day here in Calusa. Warren kept thinking it’d be cooler
     out on the water, on Amberjack’s boat. The boat was tied up at a ramshackle wooden dock that thrust out into a narrow canal.
     The shallow water here near the shore was choked with green. The air was still.
    “I just need to borrow it for a few days,” Warren said.
    “For what?”
    “Something I have to do.”
    “Something legal?”
    “Come on, Am, I’m a licensed P.I.”
    “Cause, nigger, I got to tell you. You use my boat to run any kind of controlled substance up onto the beach…”
    “This is nothing like that, Am.”
    “Then answer my question. Is what you plan to do with my boat
legal
?”
    “Yes, it’s legal,” Warren said, lying in that what he had in mind wasn’t
strictly
legal. Not that anyone would condemn him for doing it. Still, it
was
Am’s boat, and he had every right to ask Warren what he planned to do with it, just as Warren had every right to
lie
about his plans.
    “You even know
how
to run a boat?” Amberjack asked.
    “Oh, sure,” Warren said.
    “Where you gonna take this boat?”
    “Out on the Gulf.”
    “How far out?”
    “Twenty, thirty miles.”
    “Better not go any further’n that,” Amberjack said. “She holds a hundred gallons of gas, burns about ten gallons an hour,
     so plan accordingly. I usually figure I can go a hun’ forty miles on a tank of gas.”
    “I’ll be careful.”
    “What’s out on the Gulf?”
    “Thought I’d do some fishing.”
    “Maybe I’ll go with you.”
    “I feel the need for solitude, Am.”
    “You takin some woman out there with you?”
    Warren smiled.
    “What I figured