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that deepwater mahogany tan you don’t get without a lot of time out on the ocean. He was about sixty, strong looking, and had clear blue eyes.
    “Hope you have better luck than this bunch,” he said, tipping his head toward the crew beside the barge.
    “Problem?”
    “Seawall repair,” Oliver said, pulling a face. “Going okay until this morning, then busted a winch first crack out of the box. They need a welder and don’t have one.”
    “You mean a welding machine, sir, or a welder?”
    “Both, either.” He cocked an eye at Mickey. “You weld, son?”
    “Yes, I do,” Mickey said. “Machine’s on the truck.”
    Oliver grinned. “You’re my new hero, Mickey, you surely are. Come here, I want you to meet some people.”
    A tall, good looking guy in expensive pants stood on the seawall with two women. All three of them were improbably good looking. One woman was dark and slender. The other a high-end bottle blonde with biggish tits. Oliver introduced them to Mickey.
    “Phillip Carlyle, my architect,” he said. “And these are his engineers, Nadine Olson and Motýl Falk.”
    “Mah...?” Mickey said, caught by the blonde’s name.
    She smiled easily and said it again, mah-tee-yell, or something similar. “It’s Czech, means butterfly,” she said. “Don’t worry; I’ve been explaining that to people since I was about three years old.”
    Both women, Mickey noticed, had rings in their noses. Odd. Pretty, but odd to see two of them together like that. “What seems to be the problem?” he asked.
    Carlyle pointed to the boat. “Broken weld, I think,” he said. “Better ask the guys down there.”
    One of the guys on deck squinted up at him. “Goddamned weld was perfect,” he said. “Did it myself, and I just don’t know what happened.”
    “Mind if I have a look?” Mickey asked.
    “Might as well, everybody else has.”
    A heavy wire winch had been welded to a wide steel plate to distribute its weight. The plate was bolted to the barge deck in six places, and the weld had broken ugly and jagged along its length.
    “Did you wire feed this?” Mickey asked, running his fingertips over the torn metal.
    “What else?” the guy asked sourly.
    “Just wire, right? Not flux core?”
    “What’s wrong with that?”
    “Not enough heat,” Mickey said. “Shoulda burned it in with stick, or run the MIG hot as hell with flux core.”
    “Shit,” he guy said, disgusted.
    “You got a grinder?” Mickey asked.
    “Yeah.”
    “Okay. Give me a pencil.” Mickey made heavy lines along either side of the weld. “Grind that out to clean metal. I’ve got to go pull the props off Mr. Oliver’s boat. Clean this up while I’m doing it, I’ll drag out the Miller and we’ll stick it together again. Be done before lunch.”
    “How much?”
    Mickey grinned. “How much you losing sitting on your thumb?”
    “A fucking bunch,” the guy said. “Still, I gotta know what...”
    “Fifty an hour, including set up and tear down,” Mickey said. “Maybe a hundred, hundred and a half. You doing the grinding will save you another hundred.”
    “Christ.”
    “Cash,” Mickey said. “Cost you more if you call somebody in.”
    “You better be worth it.”
    “Don’t worry, I know my shit,” Mickey said. “Be back in thirty, forty-five minutes.”
    Pulling props was no problem. He used the correct pullers and a wrench. Mickey didn’t like beating on things unless they needed beating on. He tied them both off to the dock and climbed out of the water only bleeding in a couple of places from the barnacles. Then he stripped the dive gear off and hauled the props up so Pete Oliver could see them.
    “I’m supposed to take some people out this coming Wednesday,” Oliver said, looking unhappily at the damaged starboard prop.
    “Darrel is a good man,” Mickey said. “He’ll have these babies like new by Sunday, and I’ll be here bright and early Monday to rehang them.” He motioned to the boat. “Needs her