Kennedy for the Defense by George V. Higgins

Author:George V. Higgins [Higgins, George V.]
Language: eng
Format: azw3, epub
ISBN: 9780307947338
Publisher: Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group
Published: 2012-03-05T16:00:00+00:00

IN MIDAFTERNOON of the next day, Harris made the first footsteps on the marina catwalk that I had heard all day. I was sitting on the catwalk while French was tinkering with Catapult. French looked up in the sun, sweat drooling down his mirrored sunglasses. Harris—at the time I thought his name was Gould—wore a pale green button-down shirt with a pale yellow stripe, the collar open and the sleeves rolled up, the brown knit tie loosened so that the knot was at his breastbone. The shirt, full of belly, bulged over the brown suit pants and the gold belt buckle. Harris wore brown loafers, and a Corum goldpiece watch on a snakeskin strap. His Ray-Bans were mirrored glass, and his gray hair was cut short.

“How’s it going?” Harris said.

“Ahh, you know,” French said. “It’s hot.”

Harris looked at me. I said, “Hi.” Evidently I persuaded him that I was just a casual loafer.

Harris surveyed the sky, as though the thought had not occurred to him. Appearing to find it reasonable, he said, “Yeah, but if you gotta have hot days, this is the place to be on them. ‘Stead of inside, in an office someplace.”

“Depends,” the Frenchman said. “They air-condition offices, ’way I get it.” He resumed work with the torque wrench on the left cylinder head of the port engine.

“You’re pretty handy with that thing,” Harris said, approvingly.

The Frenchman did not look up. “Yeah,” he said. “When I was in college, which was long enough ago, all my wealthy friends had Corvettes, and I had all their wealth, ’cause I could fix them.

“Then one day,” he grunted on the wrench, “the thought occurred to me, why am I going to all the trouble of taking their money, and then just going and handing it over to this place that’s teaching me a whole lot of things I obviously don’t need to know, and charging the ass off me to do it? So, I quit.”

He stood up in the engine well. He wiped his forehead with his forearm. “Now, I know the answer: so I wouldn’t have to spend hot days in the open, instead of an air-conditioned office. Only now it’s too late.”

“What’re you doing?” Harris said, gesturing vaguely in the direction of the boat.

“I’m not really sure, you want the truth,” French said. “I think what I’m doing is maintaining engines that get used too hard. This one here,” he said, pointing to the port engine, “she started leaking a little oil, and it turned out to be a gasket. The starboard”—he pointed over his shoulder with his left thumb—“was misfiring, but I didn’t get to that, yet. Probably a couple bad plugs. Down there,” he said, pointing to a thin black line around the bilge at the level of the crankcases, “you can see the oil.”

Harris looked as though he did not really understand. “What’ll she do, when she’s right?” he said.

“Ahh,” French said, “tell you the truth, I really dunno. She’s fast, though, with this iron in her.

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