“Casey, come on down here!”

Maurice’s voice broke Casey’s trance. Since they left the ICW and pointed out to the open water he’d been staring over the side at the waves, getting lost in counting their rows as far out to the horizon as he could. He pushed himself up off the rail and walked down into the hold. Maurice held the wheel with one hand and with the other he ran his fingers over the chart next to him. He did not look like a man who had just killed somebody. He looked in tune with his surroundings, focused, a little bit exhilarated. When he heard the door to the cabin click shut, he spoke over his shoulder.

Casey still didn’t speak.

“We come clear a that nonsense alright I ‘magine. Hold her steady and let me go up top a minute.”

Maurice liked to drive boats from the high deck, a navy habit, but he’d stayed below until they got away from traffic. Casey took the wheel and watched Maurice walk by the red cooler on the floor and out the door. When the door shut it was quiet, the engine hum low and even. A moment later Maurice’s voice came through the intercom.

“You could leave it now, Case.”

Casey felt the wheel move under his hand. He stepped back away from it and went to the cooler. The lid flipped up and Casey looked inside again. Down one inside wall beer was stacked on top of blue ice packs. The rest of it held money wrapped tight in thick plastic and sealed shut. Casey removed one of the bags. It was heavier that he thought. He took it over to the row of cushioned benches and lifted the seat up on its hinge. The inside of the chest was finished with cedar. Casey had been on boats with those kind of chests before when he crewed for his Dad, when he was still fishing. He’d never smelt cedar before, though. It was a fancy yacht. He put the package of money in the chest. He paused after he shut the cushioned lid, went back to the cooler, took another bag of money and placed it beside the first. He did not try to know how much money was in those bags. He had no way of knowing or even imagining, it only occurred to him to take the second bag because the money in the cooler looked uneven with only the one bag missing.

Up top Maurice surveyed the horizon. He slipped one of his cigs out of his breast pocket, lit it inside his shirt collar, and pulled on it. They were on a fishing course, cruising out to a marlin ground he knew of. Maurice understood sea traffic. He knew the only thing the Coast Guard boys noticed on the satellites was unusual vectors. If you stayed on the usual vectors all you had to worry about was what you saw around you. His eyes were better than most. The thing to do was to get rid of the body as soon as they could, and then decide where they could put in for fuel before they ran down to the Bahamas. It was simple enough. Killing always makes things simple. There’s only so many options once you’ve killed somebody. You’ve got to get out of town. You’ve got to disappear. The good news, Maurice thought, is that it’s easiest to keep people’s mouth shut once someone’s dead. No one wants to be involved, not even the authorities unless they get pressure from the outside. Most people go on outraged that only about half of murder cases get solved. It’s a laugh if you’ve been in the system. It’s a miracle they solve that many. If you kill somebody bad enough and you know how to handle yourself, there’s usually no trouble at all. Maurice had never worried about Clarence. He was one of the few quiet men. Casey was just a kid, though. Maurice trusted his make-up, but kids will change on you.

The sky was a pale burnt out blue. The water had gone from brown in the ICW, to a shade of green in the outer channels, to the deep blue of the Gulf Stream. A cloud of gulls hovered over the wake, barking and diving. Casey stepped out of the hold and walked to one of the deep-sea fishing chairs and sat down. His face bore the same intent expression, his brow knitted and his mouth turned down and pinched shut, like he was looking at something very small and concentrating hard. His dad would miss him soon. He’d expect Casey to go to the store and he’d wander out to the porch and start calling for him. He still looked for Casey outside, like the boy would be playing in the mud somewhere. Usually Casey was either well gone from the house or he was upstairs reading his comics. When his Dad called, he’d let him near wear himself out with the effort before he’d walk downstairs and go out on the porch to ask what he wanted.

“There you are now, Casey. I’s lookin all around and you was right next to me the whole time,” he said the same thing every time. It was not so much that he was too drunk to remember he always said it—though he was always drunk—it was that the drink had carved habits into him the way water carves channels into rock.

“Whyn’t you run on down and get us sumpin to eat and some tobacco. Tell Roger he could put it on my account.”

The tobacco and food from Roger’s place always came with a liter of liquor. There was no account anymore, hadn’t been for over two years. Casey paid Roger himself. Roger would miss Casey, too. He would start to ask around after him. Not so much because he cared, but he counted on the fifteen bucks Casey brought like clockwork. Darnell sometimes went away for a few days at a time, to Atlanta or out with a fishing crew, but Casey was like clockwork at Roger’s store. Casey felt Maurice cut the engine back to idle.