“Usually.”
“Where’d she go?”
“Haven’t seen her since.”
The bootlegger asked, “Could you build a faster one?”
Lynch said, “I drew up plans for a seventy-foot express cruiser with four Libertys turning quadruple screws. She’s waiting for a customer.”
“Could I have her in a month?”
“I don’t see why not.”
Harding bit clean through his stogie. “We can’t do it that fast.”
“Yes we can,” said Lynch. “I’ll have her in the water in thirty days.”
The tall customer with a gun in his coat asked, “Would you have any objection to me paying cash?”
“None I can think of,” said Lynch, and Harding lit a fresh cigar.
Lynch unrolled his plans. The customer pored over them knowledgeably. He ordered additional hatches fore and aft—Lewis gun emplacements, Lynch assumed, since he wanted reinforced scantlings under them—and electric mountings for Sperry high-intensity searchlights.
“And double the armor in the bow.”
“Planning on ramming the opposition?”
“I’d like to know I can.”
They settled on a price and a schedule of payouts keyed to hull completion, motor installation, and sea trials.
The customer started counting a down payment, stacking crisp hundred-dollar bills on a workbench. Midway, he paused. “The seventy-footer you built? The one with three motors. Was it for a regular customer?”
“Nope.”
“Someone you knew?”
“Nope.”
“What was his name?”
“Funny thing you should ask. He paid cash like you. Hundred-dollar bills. After he brought the third payment, I said to Harold here, ‘You know, Harold, we don’t know that fellow’s name.’ And Harold said, ‘His name is Franklin. Ben Franklin.’ Harold meant because his face is on the hundred-dollar bill.”
Harold said, “You want to hear something really funny: The man with no name named the boat. He called it Black Bird.”
“Black Bird?”
“’Counta the boat was
black. I asked him should we paint Black Bird on the transom. He said no, he’d remember it.”
“What will you name yours?” asked Lynch.
“Marion.”
“Should we paint Marion on the transom?”
“In gold.”