can get. There’s a two-thousand-mile geographical separation, for one thing, and a seven-thousand-foot difference in altitude. There’s also close to a hundred percent difference in humidity: nothing ever rusts in New Mexico, nothing ever stops rusting in Florida. They are both popular resort and retirement areas, but the people who gravitate to the high Southwest are not the same type of people as those who gravitate to the low Southeast. The artists and intellectuals and screwballs who tend to choose Santa Fe have very little in common with the conventional businessmen who generally vacation or retire around Miami.
But the biggest difference is perhaps in the field of recreational transportation. In New Mexico it’s horses and off-road vehicles. In Florida it’s boats, boats, boats. Unfortunately, the nautical scene, although I’ve been exposed to it fairly often in the line of duty, is still something of a mystery to me. After considering the situation carefully myself, and having some checking done by others, I decided to consult a professional nautical expert before deciding what to do next—more specifically, how to approach the problem that concerned me next. The problem and the person.
The fact that the person in question was known to have consulted the same nautical expert—not just once but twice—was, of course, a factor in my decision.
From Albuquerque, where I gave the red-clad Avis lady back her car, I got a flight to Dallas that connected after a fashion with one to Miami, where a courier met me with some materials I’d requested. Then I picked up the DC-3 that flutters uncertainly down the Florida Keys to Key West with one stop at Marathon. Another rental car awaited me at the little Marathon airport.
The Faro Blanco Marine Resort hadn’t changed much in the years since I’d last been down there. It was still a palmy refuge from the hot-dog-and-hamburger atmosphere of the nearby Overseas Highway, as it’s called—the crazy string of bridges and causeways, linked by stretches of beatup pavement, flanked by motels and filling stations, that connects the Keys with each other and the mainland, replacing the long-ago railroad built by a guy named Flagler that blew away in a hurricane. I drove past the office and down through the park-like grounds with their scattered little resort cabins, to the waterfront. The marina hadn’t changed much, either. Even many of the boats seemed to be the same. The Queenfisher still had the same slip among the charter-fishing boats along the sea wall. Harriet Robinson—Cap’n Hattie as she was known locally—was down in her engine room as usual. I might never have been away.
“ Queenfisher , ahoy!” I called.
She surfaced in the cockpit with a smudge of grease on the side of her nose, a tall handsome woman in oil-stained khakis, about whom I knew more than probably anybody else around. She had once lived considerably farther north and had a lot more money and an ineffectual husband she didn’t think much of. Her name hadn’t been Robinson then, or Harriet, either, but never mind that. A forceful person with very strong opinions, she’d gotten herself mixed up in something violent and moderately unpatriotic she shouldn’t have, something that concerned us. She’d been obliged to disappear in the end as an alternative to going to prison; and now she was down here in the Keys without wealth or husband, but with a boat she loved and handled very well, that made her a pretty good living.
We’d originally played on opposing teams, but more recently, tracked down, she’d reluctantly done me a considerable favor, like saving my life. In payment—although she’d asked no payment—we’d done our best to wipe out the criminal past for her, although there are limits to what can be done along those lines by an organization such as ours. But legally, she was no longer the grand lady I’d first met. She couldn’t be, since that rich dame—wanted by the
But the biggest difference is perhaps in the field of recreational transportation. In New Mexico it’s horses and off-road vehicles. In Florida it’s boats, boats, boats. Unfortunately, the nautical scene, although I’ve been exposed to it fairly often in the line of duty, is still something of a mystery to me. After considering the situation carefully myself, and having some checking done by others, I decided to consult a professional nautical expert before deciding what to do next—more specifically, how to approach the problem that concerned me next. The problem and the person.
The fact that the person in question was known to have consulted the same nautical expert—not just once but twice—was, of course, a factor in my decision.
From Albuquerque, where I gave the red-clad Avis lady back her car, I got a flight to Dallas that connected after a fashion with one to Miami, where a courier met me with some materials I’d requested. Then I picked up the DC-3 that flutters uncertainly down the Florida Keys to Key West with one stop at Marathon. Another rental car awaited me at the little Marathon airport.
The Faro Blanco Marine Resort hadn’t changed much in the years since I’d last been down there. It was still a palmy refuge from the hot-dog-and-hamburger atmosphere of the nearby Overseas Highway, as it’s called—the crazy string of bridges and causeways, linked by stretches of beatup pavement, flanked by motels and filling stations, that connects the Keys with each other and the mainland, replacing the long-ago railroad built by a guy named Flagler that blew away in a hurricane. I drove past the office and down through the park-like grounds with their scattered little resort cabins, to the waterfront. The marina hadn’t changed much, either. Even many of the boats seemed to be the same. The Queenfisher still had the same slip among the charter-fishing boats along the sea wall. Harriet Robinson—Cap’n Hattie as she was known locally—was down in her engine room as usual. I might never have been away.
“ Queenfisher , ahoy!” I called.
She surfaced in the cockpit with a smudge of grease on the side of her nose, a tall handsome woman in oil-stained khakis, about whom I knew more than probably anybody else around. She had once lived considerably farther north and had a lot more money and an ineffectual husband she didn’t think much of. Her name hadn’t been Robinson then, or Harriet, either, but never mind that. A forceful person with very strong opinions, she’d gotten herself mixed up in something violent and moderately unpatriotic she shouldn’t have, something that concerned us. She’d been obliged to disappear in the end as an alternative to going to prison; and now she was down here in the Keys without wealth or husband, but with a boat she loved and handled very well, that made her a pretty good living.
We’d originally played on opposing teams, but more recently, tracked down, she’d reluctantly done me a considerable favor, like saving my life. In payment—although she’d asked no payment—we’d done our best to wipe out the criminal past for her, although there are limits to what can be done along those lines by an organization such as ours. But legally, she was no longer the grand lady I’d first met. She couldn’t be, since that rich dame—wanted by the
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