I made coffee. In years long past I wouldn't have bothered, but it so happened that the boat sailed at what had become my usual bedtime, and it would have been embarrassing to fall asleep amid the revelry and on the job. Around ten- thirty I got back on my bike and headed toward the harbor once again.
I skirted Redmond's, skirted thoughts of Maggie, and at the far end of a brand-new pier I found The Lucky Duck. It could not have been mistaken for; say, the QE2. It was smallish—a hundred ten, a hundred twenty feet. Its paint was lumpy and its fittings were scratched and tarnished. But it would not be fair to say it was a tub. It was just old, and obsolete, degraded like a pushed-aside executive by a succession of ever-lower uses. It had a nice line to it, and in its heyday—probably the twenties—it had likely been a helluva private yacht. The rails were gullied now but teak; the main cabin was sided with mahogany and the cleats that held the dock lines were solid brass.
I lined up at the bottom of the gangplank. The boat, I guessed, could take around a hundred fifty people, but this was a Monday toward the end of April, and there weren't more than sixty in the line. Every one of us cheapskates had a discount coupon with Mickey Veale's portrait on it.
After a while we paid our $19.95 and boarded. I made a quick tour of the ship. In what had once been the wheelhouse, there was a small bar and three poker tables. The room smelled of cigars and whiskey spilled on felt that never quite dried. A sort of breezeway led back to the main saloon, which was a complete casino in miniature. Slot machines lined the port-holed walls; a craps table and a roulette wheel took up two corners. A second bar shared the aft bulkhead with a bleak buffet that looked like something from a chain motel close by to an interstate. Between the cold cuts and the booze was a narrow stairway that led down to the heads and, I imagined, to the boss's shipboard office.
The engines started, the gangplank was raised, and the crowd fell on the cubes of Swiss cheese and the little tubes of turkey like they were going to the gallows in the morning.
I stepped outside to watch our progress through the harbor. We passed buoys that, up close, were gigantic, then rounded the jetty at Fort Zack and headed out to sea. A late moon was rising, sluggish, pink and dusty; waves of phosphorescence spread out from our bow. I took a deep breath that smelled of iodine and fish, and realized rather suddenly that I had no plan. What exactly was I doing here? I hated buffets and I didn't like to gamble. Why squander adrenaline that could be saved for less contrived emergencies? I hoped, of course, to study Mickey Veale. But if he wasn't aboard, it would be a long and wasted night.
Then a subversive little question started pricking me: Wasted as compared with what?
I kicked that one aside and watched the stars. In another fifteen minutes or so, just inside the reef, we crossed the three-mile limit. I felt the boat slip into neutral, heard the grinding fall of the anchor chain. The hook was set with a slow jolt in reverse, then someone rang a bell and it was time for the gaming to begin.
I enjoyed a last calm moment and stepped into the casino. After the clean tang of the ocean, the cabin seemed very smoky, and held another smell I dimly remembered from, like, junior high school dances—the soupy smell of nervous desire, of libido twisted up like breath in a trombone. Cards were being shuffled. There was the dry click of chips being stacked, the muted ring of coins. I picked my way over to the bar. There were seven or eight stools, most of which were empty. It seemed a time and place for bourbon. I ordered one and reached for my wallet.
"It's free," the bartender advised, "if we bring it to you while you're playing."
"Thanks," I said. "I'll pay for it."
He looked at me as though I were some grand eccentric, then went on to other business. I drank. I watched. There was a blackjack player with a dreadful tic, a cocktail waitress whose gender was in doubt. Bored, I drank too fast. Then Mickey Veale appeared in the stairway not ten feet from where I sat.
He was even heavier than his picture made him look, a bloated product of late empire. He wore an enormous mint-green guayabera that hung down far below his middle; even so, you could tell that the waistband of his pants had been exiled to some damp place beneath the epic belly. His swelling arms seemed attached as though by webbing to his flanks; his neck was crinkled like a dryer hose.
He lumbered up the steps, pushing weightily on the brass banister, eyes raking the tables and gauging the action at the slots. He began to work the room. A handshake here, a backslap there. His smile was wide and flubbery and his eyes squeezed shut when he laughed—by all appearances, your basic gregarious and jolly fat man. Lydia Ortega had said he was a sneak. He didn't look sneaky to me. Unless he was the type who distracted by sheer mass and flamboyance, who used an excess of impressions to hide the real goods underneath.