“Why? What do you mean why? I want that boat.”
“How are we going to steal a boat from all those gangsters?”
“Haven’t figured that out yet.”
They followed for hours as it picked its way carefully through the twisty channel and finally out into South Oyster Bay and across it to Great South Bay. A dim gray dawn began to lighten the east. Soon the old man and his granddaughter could see the faintest hint of the black boat silhouetted against it.
“Where are we, Grandpa?” Robin whispered.
“Off Great River, I believe.”
“Have you figured out how we’re going to steal it?”
“Not yet.”
“Maybe Mr. Bell could help us.”
“That goody two-shoes don’t steal boats.”
“But if we did him a favor . . .”
Out of the mouths of babes, old Darbee thought. What a smart little girl she was. A chip off the old block.
“. . . maybe Mr. Bell would do one back.”
• • •
“THE METAL IS FLYING,” bellowed Ross Danis.
The big farrier had a handsome head of hair, an amiable grin, and bright eyes. Sweat glistened on his broad chest and streamed from his massive arms. Asa Somers found it hard to believe that a man could have so many muscles. He bulged like the Jack Dempsey advertisements for Nuxated Iron.
It was Babies Day at the Monmouth County Fair.
Following the baby show would be a horse show and then horse racing, which meant Danis was busy at his portable forge. Asa Somers offered to crank his bellows to keep his fire white-hot. This kept both hands free to go at it, in the farrier’s own words, “hammer and tongs,” fitting shoes, driving and clinching nails into hoofs, finishing with his rasp. It had the side advantage of keeping him talkative.
When Danis finally stopped for a swig of water, and a furtive slug from a flask, Somers showed him the worn Neverslip shoe. “Could you have put this shoe on a horse?”
“Hope not. Looks like the animal threw it, which would make me look bad.”
“He didn’t throw it.”
“Where’d you get it?”
“Wall Street.”
“Never worked on Wall Street.”
“I didn’t mean you did it on Wall Street.”
“Not only did I never work on Wall Street, I find it hard to imagine a horse I shoed ever being on Wall Street. That’s across the river in New York City. Is it a swell’s carriage horse?”
“Is this your mark on this wedge?”
Danis leaned over it to look, dripping sweat on Somers’s arm. “I’ll be darned. Where’d you find this?”
“The horse was pulling a coal wagon.”
“Coal wagon? I don’t understand. No teamster’s going to drive his coal wagon all the way to New Jersey to shoe his horse.”