Arrow's Rest by Joel Scott (best books to read all time .TXT) 📗

allowed for security reasons. It helps to cut down on the casual theft. Thieves will come into the marina in small boats or inflatables, cruise the docks, pick a boat, pop the companionway padlock, and do a quick in-and-out. It’s hard to stop that kind of crime altogether, but people living and sleeping inside the marina certainly helps. They would know who belongs there and who doesn’t.” Jared looked up at the gate entrance. “I don’t see any surveillance cameras here. I’m sure there will be some out on the docks to catch the incoming boats, but given that our lot came by taxi, they won’t help us.”

Jared paused and pulled out his wallet and began flicking through cards as an elderly man in cargo shorts and a Tilley cap strode briskly down the docks towards the gate.

“Thanks, mate,” Jared said, catching the gate on its backswing and holding it for Danny as they passed through. “I know the damn card is in here somewhere. Seen Alfie around today?”

“Haven’t spotted him,” the man replied.

“Who’s Alfie?” Danny asked as they moved along the walkway past the first finger of moored boats.

“Damned if I know. It’s a big club and the geezers don’t like to admit they can’t remember. The visitors dock is down at the far end. Small chance our guys are tied up there, but seeing as we’re here we might as well have a walkabout. You never know.”

“If I see anybody in a fedora, I’ll crouch down and track them,” Danny said. “I should have brought along moccasins.”

The marina had five main docks running from the street side out to the deeper water where the overnight moorage for visiting boats was located. Smaller fingers extended out from the main docks, ranging from twenty-five-foot slips in the shoal end up to sixty-foot slips out where the larger boats were located. Jared knew the club had a five-year waiting list for the smaller berths and a considerably longer period of time for the larger slips and boathouses. When he’d brought Arrow back home to Vancouver he’d inquired about moorage at the various yacht clubs in the lower mainland. They were all booked for the foreseeable future and he’d ended up in the commercial basin with the fishing boats in one of the slips they allotted for live-aboards. In retrospect it was a more suitable location for Arrow. Jared knew some of the fishermen and nobody ever objected to a noisy gathering aboard a boat in the basin.

“Hey, how you doing, long time no see. You’re looking great,” Danny said, as he enthusiastically pumped the hand of a codger who was carefully polishing the large stainless-steel anchor on the bow of his boat.

“Don’t overdo it,” Jared said as they moved along.

“You’ve got reciprocal privileges here, right?”

“As a matter of fact I believe I do.”

Danny said, “So we could moor Arrow here for a couple of days if we wanted to?”

“Yep. We might even be able to stay for a week or two if we pushed a little. They’d probably put us in one of the vacant slips where the member’s off cruising.”

“That could be worth considering. It would give us time to check things out,” Danny said, as they made their way down the main dock. “You never know, we might get lucky. At the very least we’d be doing something. And I hear yacht club bars serve cheap drinks.”

The visitors dock was bustling with boats, most of them American flagged. Dinghies were heading out into the bay towards the downtown Vancouver shopping district, while others were returning loaded to the gunwales with goods.

“Welcome to the Third World,” Danny said. “Not bad enough that my country gets taken over by your lot, now it’s the American dollar taking it over all over again.”

“How do you think us white guys feel?” Jared said.

Halfway down the visitors dock a long gangway ran back into the sheds where the larger powerboats were tied up. Some of the sheds were well over a hundred feet long.

“What are the rules about staying aboard overnight for members?”

“Most places it’s allowed if you’re getting ready to go away on a trip, more than a night or two would be frowned upon out on the docks. But here, inside these mega boathouses, how the hell would they even know if anyone is on board? For that matter why would they care? The boats are self-sufficient; any power they do use is metered, and they have their own holding tanks. There are no real costs to the club involved. It’s more the smaller outside boats they patrol. In here with the fat cats, no problem. You can bet that a good number of these powerboats belong to past and present officers of the club. People with money and influence in any case.”

The boat sheds were divided into two equal-sized sections. The first was a large open unit with a corrugated roof and a six-foot walkway running down the middle with numbered slips on each side. Each berth was capable of holding a powerboat up to eighty feet in size. The second section consisted of individual boathouses partitioned off from their neighbours, each unit under separate lock and key. These slips were even larger than the ones in the open area and had nameplates of the boat and its owner prominently displayed on engraved brass plates. Some of the boathouse slips were vacant and the doors left open. Danny and Jared entered one of these and walked down the narrow catwalk that ran the full length of the berth. The back of the slip exited onto a wide channel. Access to the channel from the boathouse was through two large garage doors that rolled up and stored against the roof at the click of a remote.

“Pretty slick,” Danny said.

“All you need is money. Probably twenty grand a year moorage, and that’s still less than they would pay at a commercial marina. If our guys from the Sergeant at Arms came off one