Tongue of the Ocean
By Len Vincenti
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places,
and incidents either are products of the author’s imagination
and are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events
or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
Copyright © 2021 by
Len Vincenti
For Laura
My partner in a fifty year adventure
Prologue
The mate collected the lines aboard as the big sport fisherman, her twin diesels rumbling softly, crept out of her slip at Hurricane Hole Marina into the blackness of the Nassau harbor. To anyone who might have noticed, it was just another sport-fishing charter getting an early start so as to have lines in the water by sunrise in the billfish-laden, indigo waters of the deep ocean trench known as “Tongue of Ocean.” Lying against the back of the cockpit was a seven-foot zippered, white vinyl billfish bag with a picture of a blue marlin and the yacht’s name, “Double Indemnity” emblazoned on its side. The bag was not empty.
After they had cleared Paradise Island light beacon, the captain broke the silence of the night and hollered to the mate in the cockpit below, “Sit tight. I’m going to speed her up.” He pushed the throttle levers forward and the vessel momentarily spewed puffs of black diesel smoke. She gracefully rose onto a plane, droplets of white salty spray quartered across her wide foredeck as she pranced ahead at twenty-five knots through choppy seas, her graceful bow piercing the waves with loud, hollow thunks. The captain settled the yacht on a course of 305 degrees and turned on the auto pilot. It was a few minutes past 5 a.m.
When the depth sounder showed fifteen hundred fathoms, over a mile and a half of lightless abyss below the keel, he slowed the boat to an idle and brought her on a course directly into the two foot chop.
The captain turned on the halogen deck cockpit lights up on the tuna tower. He leaned over the rear rail of the flybridge and yelled down to the mate in the cockpit below, “Okay, Sprague, whenever you’re ready.”
The mate was in the process of tightly lashing one end of the billfish bag to a small engine block with nylon line. He opened the stern gate and gave the engine block a shove with his foot. The block hit the water with a loud kerploop. The vinyl bag and its contents almost stood upright as it leapt out the stern gate, tethered to its crude, heavy anchor. The trailing billfish bag looked like a waving white handkerchief as it disappeared into the black, watery chasm below.
The mate peered over the stern and murmured, “So long, cocksucker. Maybe you’ll meet that big blue marlin you lost the other day.”
~1~
I strutted through the big twin oak doors of the prominent Tampa Law firm of Harris, McCovey, Dandridge and White on the thirtieth floor of Century Bank Tower. From the front lobby, I could see through the massive glass walled conference room with its expansive view of the port of Tampa and Hillsborough Bay. Dozens of sailboats were flying their spinnakers on a downwind leg of a race, and massive cruise ships were visible along the dock at Port of Tampa. My deceased parents and grandparents, humble Cuban and Sicilian cigar rollers from the Latin enclave of Ybor City would have been so proud to see what I’ve become and where I work.
I said good morning to Holly, the receptionist. She was feverishly taking calls and pushing buttons on her console. She handed me my stack of messages and managed to give me a quick smile. I picked up the call bell from the reception desk and started dinging it as I walked down the hall to the office of Pierce, “Bunky” Dandridge, the senior trial partner. I opened the door without knocking, still dinging the little bell. Bunky, as usual, was on his cellphone. These days, nobody seemed to use the old-fashioned office land line. He saw me walk in and ended his call with “I’ll have to call you back.” and rose to greet me.
“I get it, Sanchez. You rang the bell. How much did they give you?”
“Two-hundred-twenty K,” I crowed.
“Holy Smokes,” he remarked. “For a whiplash? That’s got to be the record for a soft-tissue case verdict in this county. The TV advertising PI mills are settling those cases every day for seventy-five-hundred bucks. What did you do to that jury, hypnotize them?”
“I did nothing special except be a good advocate. Our client deserved the money. All I did was show them why,” I replied with a boyish smirk. I walked over to Bunky’s antique mahogany side table and opened the ornately carved teak cigar humidor. I acted as if I was going to help myself to one of Bunky’s prized Cuban Cohiba Esplendidos. I knew those cost Bunky forty bucks a pop. I sniffed one the expensive stogies and put it back in the humidor.
“Not to mention with our forty per-cent cut, you earned the firm a tidy eighty-eight thousand dollar fee. Do you know how many hours one of our insurance defense drones has to bill to bring in that much?” He said. “Hell, that’s more than two months of fifty billable hour weeks for a junior associate.”
“Yes, Bunky, my heart bleeds for them. You’d better treat them well or they’ll all want to jump the fence and become “Justice for the Little Guy” plaintiffs lawyers,” I said, making a sarcastic reference to Bennett and Bennett, the ubiquitous multi-state PI firm that appears on nearly every billboard and TV spot in the state. I am an anomaly in this waspy, silk stocking law firm. In most big downtown law firms do not like to dirty their hands with plaintiffs’ personal injury work. HMD, as we are called, represents some of west Florida’s biggest players-West Florida Electric Company, Tampa Metropolitan Hospital, five major real estate developers, a dozen technology firms, and are local counsel for several national liability insurance companies. As a junior associate, I’m much like the scratch handicap ringer invited to play in a bigwig corporate golf foursome. They keep me around because I bring in big fees to the firm. I’m also the token Latino in a good ol’ boy Anglo law firm - a pitifully transparent accommodation to ethnic diversity and political correctness. The firm only has one female partner and the rest of the female lawyers are the daughters or otherwise proteges of various partners. Likewise, with African-American attorneys, of which there are two. Antonio Chambers is a former corner back for the Tampa Bay Buccaneers. He is worth his weight in gold for the good PR he brings to the table. Clarence Beaumont is the son of a Federal Judge, and his skin is fairer than of any of the partners who spend any time on their yachts or on the golf course.
So long as I continue to bring in the big contingency fees, I’m given pretty much a free rein, and do I not have to abide by the constant pressure to rack up billable hours like the other associates in the firm. All I have to do is continue to double the income of my hourly billing counterparts, and I’m free to work my own hours and to come and go as I please. For me, it’s a sweet deal - generous salary, and I have none of the overhead and management hassles of running my own shop. Besides, my personal tastes are pretty simple.
“I’m taking the next couple weeks off and going sailing,” I said.
“Go right ahead, son, you’ve earned it. I’m going to take some time off myself. I’m going to go fishing with Hollis Bradley.”
“Who is that?”
“He is Senior VP of claims at National Mutual. They’ve got a big company boat they keep over at Stuart. I’ve known Hollie since he was a shave-tail field adjuster and I was a first-year associate.”
He went over to the varnished walnut paneled I-Love-Me wall opposite his desk. It was covered with an array of certificates, photographs and plaques. Sandwiched between a plaque bearing a gavel, honoring Bunky’s chairmanship of some committee or other and a certificate extolling his generosity for donating money to worthy causes. Bunky pointed to an eight by ten photo of three middle-aged, pot-bellied, sunburned men grinning next to a big, bloody billfish hanging from a derrick by its tail, its sightless, cloudy black eye revealing its recent, violent death. The sign on the derrick holding up the fish read, Cat Cay Club, Bahamas, a posh private island for the ultra-rich and their lucky guests.
“This was taken last year,” He said. “The guy on the left is Hollie.”
I bent over to take a closer look. “I know this other guy,” I said. “This is Mark Seigel, a PI lawyer from across the bay in Clearwater. What are you and some big insurance company honcho doing socializing with a plaintiffs’ attorney?”
“No, I know Seigel and that’s not him,” he said. “That’s some other guy down from National Mutual. I don’t remember his name. He does kind of look like Seigel, though, doesn’t he?”
“Well if that’s not Mike Seigel then he has a twin. Come to think of it, I heard he disappeared. Suspected of absconding with settlement funds.”
“That’s news to me,” Bunky said. “Hell of a job, Nick. Keep it up and you’ll make partner in record time. I want to gloat every time your name is mentioned. You’re the goose that laid the golden egg.” He broke eye contact and started staring at his phone.
I took that as the cue that I was being dismissed. Everyone in the trial department kisses Bunky’s ass. Technically, I’m not part of the firm’s liability defense trial department, even though it was Bunky who had hired me away from my old firm, Nolan and Hernandez, a top-notch Tampa plaintiff’s PI firm. They don’t need splashy billboards, or those pitiful daytime TV commercials. They handle high-end serious injury cases, like class actions against manufacturers of exploding tires and drug manufacturers who lobby the FDA to rush their products to market. I was doing well there, but as in all law firms, junior associates were expected to put in long hours. I didn’t mind the hard work and the pay was okay, but it did not leave me enough time to get out on my boat. I’m not the type who goes to bar association meetings, and I don’t hang at out any downtown after-hours watering holes, where the city’s inexhaustible supply of lawyers and stockbrokers hold forth and try to impress one another up with their own self-important bluster.
I spend most weekends on my boat that I keep at a marina across Tampa Bay in Madeira Beach.
“Sure, Boss. When I get back, you can take me to lunch at your ritzy club upstairs in the penthouse. Maybe when Eddie Diaz, your token Hispanic lawyer dies off, you might even propose me for membership.”
“I didn’t think you were interested. You’re usually conspicuously absent from any of the firm’s social occasions. Any time you would like to go with me upstairs to the club, let me know.” I knew he did not believe I was likely to ever take him up on the invitation.
¿Hablan español?
“Get out of here, wiseass. Get on your boat and go sailing.”
He picked up the phone, an obvious cue that my audience with the great man was over. I went out into the hall and dinged the little bell all the way back to the receptionist’s desk. I put the bell back on Holly’s desk, blew her a kiss, and left the office suite.
I rode the elevator down to the third-floor parking garage and got into my faded green 1978 International Scout. It’s the only car I ever owned, and I do all the work on it myself. Finding parts for it is a continuing challenge. A car older than I am, is eligible for a Florida classic car auto tag, but I never did think of it as a classic. My tag is whatever random number they give me at DMV- no Save the Manatee specialty plate or hipster vanity plate like Bunky’s, which is LITAG8R.
I tooled down the spiral ramp onto Ashley Street and headed north out of downtown onto the Interstate and over the Howard Franklin Bridge across Tampa Bay. Once on the west side of the bay, I pulled into a Publix supermarket to pick up a few things for my cruise. If phone booths were not extinct, I would probably be the only remaining person on the face of the planet without a cellphone. I am strictly a low-tech sort of guy. I try to avoid the local and national news. There’s nothing I can do about it, anyway.
***
Henry’s Cove is one of the few marinas in the Tampa Bay area that still allows liveaboards. There are rarely new vacancies. The hardy souls who call their boats home are a tight-knit group. They are forever fending off assaults on their nautical lifestyles by the solons at city hall, who want them to either move on or move ashore and get on the property tax rolls. Every year or so, there is a proposal by the city council to pass an ordinance to get rid of the liveaboards. I am their pro bono mouthpiece, and I appear at city council meetings on their behalf. I point out to the commissioners that all the real estate in the city is already occupied, and that the liveaboards are all law-abiding citizen who contribute significantly to business with local merchants. Most of them have lived at Henry’s Cove for years.
I parked the in the far corner of the lot where the weekenders are less likely to bash my car with a boat trailer, and I walked over and got the pushcart next to the main dock. I loaded it with provisions and wheeled it onto the dock down to Laughing Gull, my old wooden thirty-five foot cutter. I had found her rotting away in a boat yard in Tarpon Springs the year I graduated from law school. I spent all my spare time, scraping, caulking, painting and restoring her. I removed all her bad Philippine mahogany planks and fastening new ones to her ash ribs with bronze screws. When she was finally seaworthy, I moved her over to Henry’s Cove. I studied for the bar exam in her cozy cabin.
Electronics are minimal-no GPS or other frivolous gadgets. Never have needed them. My old fashioned compass works fine. A single twelve-volt battery powers the VHF radio and the running lights. Her cabin lighting is provided by brass oil lamps. I cook on venerable a Homestrand alcohol stove. Two fifty-pound blocks of ice will last several days the deep, zinc lined cooler in her tiny galley. I’ve had many offers to sell her for a princely sum to wealthy yacht club types, the same ones who buy fully restored classic cars at auctions. I always turn them down without giving it a second thought. Laughing Gull is not for sale and never will be-even when I’m too old and feeble to climb aboard. She is as seaworthy as any yacht of any size. The harder it blows, the more she seems to like it, plowing ahead through steep broaching seas under deep-reefed main and staysail. It was on gale force days like those that the stink-potters, the pejorative which sailors often uttered by sailors when referring to power-boaters, were high tailing it for safe harbor. Me, I’m headed out John’s Pass and into the open Gulf to take green water over the bow. I am happier donning full foul weather gear and sea boots than I am was in my navy-blue trial lawyer suit.
I finished stowing the provisions and headed up the dock with the cart to get a block of ice.
“Hey, Nick.” It was Nate Briscoe, one of Henry’s Cove’s full-time residents and one of my best friends.
“Waddaya say, Nathan?”
“So how goes it in your other life?”
“I’m putting my powdered wig away for a while and going sailing.”
“Where you off to this time?”
“I thought I might head on down to Key West, maybe the Dry Tortugas.”
“Wow. Sounds great. Wish I was going with you. I’m in the middle of trying to install a new GPS interfaced auto-pilot.”
He is the antithesis of me far as gadgets are concerned. He lives aboard a gorgeous, sixty-five foot British built Oyster, named Yottabyte. He crams it with every electronic gadget that appears in glossy, full-page, color ads in Yachting magazine.
“That should do you a lot of good, seeing as how you never leave your slip,” I said.
“And how do you know that? You’re gone more than you’re here. I get out plenty.”
“And the last time would be. . .?”
“Well the last time was when you were with me, but I’m planning on taking a major shakedown cruise any day now,” he said.
He was one of those computer geniuses who made a fortune and retired before he was thirtysomething, and he receives a seven-figure stipend for sitting on the board of his former Silicon Valley company. He owns a waterfront mansion in Tierra Verde but uses it mainly as a computer classroom for underprivileged kids from south St. Pete, who has someone pick up once a week and bring to his house. He spent the rest of the time on his boat playing with his gadgets and planning the world cruise he will probably never screw up the gumption to take.
“Well,” I said, “I’d appreciate it if you could help me with my lines as soon as I come back with my ice.”
“It’s getting a little late in the day, isn’t it, Skipper?”
“Perfect time to leave. I’ll be out in the open Gulf by sunset. Sail all night and pull into Boca Grande Pass and have coffee in the morning at Cabbage Key.”
I loaded the ice into the cart and wheeled it backdown the dock to Laughing Gull. I placed the blocks on the catwalk and climbed into the cockpit. Then I grabbed the blocks with the ice tongs and swung them aboard and slid them forward in the cockpit against the companionway, where I could reach them to stow below in the zinc cooler.
For many years, I sailed her without an engine, in homage to both economic and purist concerns. I did make a mild concession to modernity and installed a small Atomic 4 gas engine to get me through draw bridges and to give me access to inland waterways I can’t navigate under sail alone. I started the engine as soon as I saw Nate coming down the dock. He untied the bow lines from the dock and tossed them aboard. I reached over with a boat hook and retrieved the stern lines from the pilings. I placed the engine in reverse and backed out of my slip.
“Bon Voyage, mon capitaine. Give me a shout on the VHF when you get under the bridge,”.
“No can do, old buddy, I’ve got to preserve my battery to keep the running lights going all night. I can’t stand the thought of breaking the peaceful night’s sailing by running the engine to recharge it. See you in a couple weeks.”
