Presidential deal [antikvár]

Near Coconut Grove, Florida Late May, on toward evening of the perfect boater's day. In the distance, hovering over the Biminis, a towering bank of cumulus reflecting the last pink glow of the sun. Stretched out just ahead, the waters of Biscayne Bay. Going steely now. Soon to be indigo, along with the night. Now or never, Deal thought. It was why they'd come out here, after all. Stop stalling. He nodded to himself, reached for the controls, shoved forward, opened up the twin diesels on the Miss Miami Priss. He was wondering if he'd finally gotten things right, if the big engines were going to finally fire in synch, thrust him forward over the swells like something shot out of a sling, lust as likely, though, the balky SOBs would erupt in a thundering explosion that would put an end to all the agony. That's what he was thinking when he saw what was on the surface of the water up ahead. At first he thought it might be a cluster of lobster buoys, broken loose from their traps in Biscayne Bay, drifted out toward the Gulf Stream, but that wasn't right. Too many of them for that, the color, the shape, the movement all wrong. Some kind of floating debris tossed from a cruise liner headed for the islands, that's what crossed his mind next. There were ship's captains who liked to save a few bucks that way—why have your garbage hauled by surly Teamsters in the Port of Miami when you could just chug out past the limit, dump it in the unprotesting sea? But it wasn't that kind of debris, either. He was close enough to see that now. And was cursing the fact that for once in his life, his mechanical abilities had held. The engines had kicked in just the way he'd dreamed. He'd felt the pop at the back of his neck, the kind a schoolboy yearns for when he sees a powerful car. Miss Miami was a forty-five-foot Bayliner with a flying bridge and a patched-up hull. She was a charter fishing craft well past her prime, the kind of boat you see in a backwater marina in the wrong part of the Keys—you might drive by and notice her and think to yourself. She must have been something once. Her glory days were long gone. There were a million younger, faster,