But who has that kind of beef with me? he wonders.
Get real, he tells himself, it’s a long list.
Frank starts the engine. Then he goes back out and unmoors the boat from its slip. One piece of luck is that the two flanking boats are both empty, battened down for the winter. He goes back in, lets the engines warm up, then backs the boat out of the slip.
He steers it into the channel and heads out to sea.
9
Not a good night to be out on the open ocean.
Too much swell and chop, and the roll coming out of the storm keeps working the boat back toward the coast.
Frank hacks it out about ten miles into the ocean anyway. He fished these waters hundreds of times as a kid. He knows every current and channel and he knows just where he wants to dump the bodies so if they ever come to shore, it’ll be in Mexico.
Thefederales will figure it’s a dope deal gone bad, and put about two minutes’ work into solving the case.
Still, it’s a bitch out here tonight, with the wind and rain and the roll, and Frank’s biggest fear is that he’ll run into a Coast Guard vessel that will stop him and want to know what kind of jackass is taking a boat out on a night like this.
I’ll just play stupid, Frank thinks.
Which shouldn’t be hard, given my track record tonight.
His neck hurts from the wire. But pain is good, he figures, seeing as how by all rights he shouldn’t be feeling anything.
It had to be Mouse Senior, he thinks, making sure I don’t flip on the Goldstein hit.
Don’t think about that now, he tells himself.
Take care of one thing at a time.
He finds the current he’s looking for, tosses out an anchor, and shuts the running lights out.
It’s a lot of work, dragging two bodies over the side. Hence the expressiondead weight, he thinks as he gets his arms under Vince’s and hefts him to the afterdeck. Fortunately, it’s a sportfishing boat with a step-down aft, so he doesn’t have to lift him over the rail, just drag him to the aft and kick him off.