As she rides by

how much money those guys drag down an hour—on a Saturday afternoon (double overtime) when I’d been fifty feet away the whole time helping this laconic and well-grizzled sea dog scupper his barnacles, or whatever the fuck we were doing besides absolutely ruining my nails, and had seen nary a sign of a carpenter. I had seen a large, well-muscled beach bum type go aboard my client’s boat a couple of times and stroll around the poop deck briefly, but that was all. Incidentally, according to the sea dog, my client’s boat was a converted U.S. Navy minesweeper, he wasn’t sure what class, maybe the MSL1 Cove, it coulda been, worth somewheres between $250,000-$300,000, depending. The sea dog’s leaky piece of waterlogged junk, he told me in a rare moment of loquacity, was an old mahogany-over-oak offshore lobster boat, as if I cared. All I knew was it was upside down in an adjoining slip to my client’s, otherwise known to one and all as G. Z. I’d rather be known by some nifty nickname than by initials, Hollywood style. I wonder why?
    Anyway, there I was, stripped to the waist and trousers rolled up, scraping away while Popeye sawed a new piece of timber to replace a rotted bit in the hull. Well, I couldn’t stand around doing nothing but stare over at G. Z.’s ship, could I, making the occasional note as well, I did have to try and fit in, so I’d told Popeye my first morning on the job who I was and what I was up to and said I was more than willing to work for my keep. He looked at my I.D., then at King, then at me.
    “Know anythin’ about boats?”
    “Some float,” I said.
    “Start scrapin’,” he said. And, so far so good, I figured. Another couple of hours and a few more blisters and I’d be out of there, I’d be history, I’d vanish into thin air like a tinhorn Casanova’s oaths of love the morning after, another job well done, a few more greenbacks for the piggy bank. And maybe even a better class of dog food for my boy, like meat.
    I was scraping and musing when Popeye said to me quietly, “Friends of your’n?”
    I looked up. Coming down the concrete slipway toward us were three gents, the beach bum from G. Z.’s boat, a larger one, and a smaller but stockier one. One carried a piece of pipe, one a chunk of two-by-four. All were wearing shorts and tank tops.
    “Don’t rightly guess so,” I said. “Hold the dog, would you?”
    “Sure.”
    “And keep out of it.”
    “Sure.”
    “And you don’t know nothing.”
    “Never did.”
    The hole in the hull that Popeye was fixing to repair was on the side of the lobster boat away from the three stooges, covered temporarily with a patch of tarp. I dodged around, eased up a corner, dumped in my wallet and notebook, then hardly having broken stride, continued around the hull back into their view and began ambling slowly toward them, trying to put in a little distance between me and Popeye, King, and the hole in the hull. Hell, maybe even they were just out for a little sea air and weren’t really planning to put a hole in my head. If so, I’d just keep amblin’ and later figure out some way of retrieving pooch and personal effects.
    But, like the rebirth of dead hair follicles, it was not to be.
    “Goin’ somewhere, pal?” the beach bum inquired as we drew abreast.
    “Have to get the kids from school,” I said. “It’s my day.”
    “And maybe not,” the beach bum said. His mates snickered. I thought, oh well, all that scraping was playing hell with my manicure, anyway.
    “Been hanging around quite a lot recently, haven’t ya?”
    “Oh, from time to time,” I said. “Like to give the old fellow a hand.”
    “Uh huh,” the stocky one said. “What was his name again?”
    “I always called him Pop,” I said, “seeing as he was sort of like a father to me.”
    They exchanged knowing glances.
    “We been asked,” the beach bum said, “seeing as all this is private property, to escort you from the premises.”
    “Man, I’m history,” I said, spreading my arms, palms upward. “Adios, gents.”
    “We also been asked,” the biggest guy said, opening his mouth for the first time and tossing the length of pipe from hand to hand, “to politely find out who you are and what you’re doin’ here.”
    “Is that all!” I exclaimed. “Why didn’t you say so? My name is Hugh Gross, I live just off Atlanta , near the Fairview Hospital there, I’m in storm windows, and you already know what I was doing, giving Pop a hand