The other guy is a bigger problem, literally, and it takes Frank a good ten minutes to drag him out onto the deck, then get down behind him and roll the body into the water.

Now what? Frank thinks.

You have to go off the radar for a while, until you can find out who wants you dead, and why, and what to do about it. You can’t just take the blood-soaked boat back to the slip and walk away, because you don’t know who might be waiting for you back there. Thebest option would be the cops, and that’s no option at all. No one’s going to believe that “Frankie Machine” gunned down two mob guys in self-defense.

So…

He goes back into the cabin and looks around. He gets lucky in a storage locker, where he finds scuba gear, tanks, and, underneath that, a piece of gold in the form of a wet suit that he can fit into. He undresses, wriggles into the wet suit, which is very tight. But better tight than loose, Frank thinks. Then he shoves his clothes, a towel, the envelope with the ten K, and Vince’s gun into a wet bag. He wipes his own gun down, then reluctantly throws it over the side. He’ll miss the. 38, but it’s a murder weapon, at least in the jaundiced eye of the law.

Frank steers toward shore, running the boat in about five hundred yards off the coast, then stops the engine. He cranks the wheel out again toward the open ocean, clamps a wheel lock onto it, starts the engine again, ties the wet bag to his ankle, and goes over the side.

The water is cold, even with the wet suit on, and a definite shock to his uncovered head. Five hundred yards is a long swim in these conditions, and his plan is to start slowly and then taper off. He knows right where he is, though, and gets himself into a current that will pull him to the tip of Ocean Beach down by Rockslide. The trick is going to be getting through the break without getting slammed against the rocks, so he swims slowly and lets the current do the work for him.