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He didn’t wait for any kind of a comment on that from me.

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His lips were clamped. I was getting him bad-tempered, too. But he stayed patient. Laced the patience with an icy sarcasm.

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I shook my head.

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I shook my head.

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I nodded.

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“A guitar player who died sixty years ago? Why? Are you a guitar player?”

“No,” I said.

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I nodded.

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I shrugged. Tried to explain.

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I shrugged.

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So it was being abandoned. It was very expensive to run. The Coast Guard’s budget was into serious deficit. The president said he couldn’t increase it. In fact, he’d have to cut it. The economy was in a mess. Nothing else he could do. So the interdiction initiative would be canceled in seven days’ time. The president was trying to come across like a statesman. Law enforcement big shots were angry, because they figured prevention was better than cure. Washington insiders were happy, because fifty cents spent on beat cops was much more visible than two bucks spent out on the ocean two thousand miles away from the voters. The arguments flew back and forth. And in the smudgy photographs, the president was just beaming away like a statesman saying there was nothing he could do. I stopped reading, because it was just making me angrier.