Frankly, I don’t know whether to call this manuscript fact or fiction. I know that what I have been able to check is fact, but this is mainly hearsay, as told to me by the real Harley Grant.
I met Harley Grant (of course I have changed his name) in Public Market just as I have had Mike Bender meet him, in the beer isle. The second time I ran into him, I invited him over to the Green Flash our houseboat tied in Losers Lagoon for a drink. Dottie invited him for supper and after supper we sat around drinking Sam Adams.
Dottie finally went to bed and we were still batting our gums. It was then that Harley told me this story that he swears is true. It was two in the morning when he finished. When he finished I shook my head in disbelief. I told him that I was going to check on it. He told me that I would find nothing. Big oil had destroyed any trace that it had ever happened. This I took with a grain of salt.
I told this tale to a friend, a Lt. Commander in the Coast Guard. He said, Let me check on it, maybe I can find something in one of the old logs.
I had almost forgotten about it when he got back to me. Jack, there may be something to that story you told me. I found this entry in the ships log of one of the decommissioned 84 foot cutters. Be on the lookout for a 70 or 80 foot yacht with xs and zs in its name which was last seen in Key West!
This rekindled my interest and I went back to Harley and asked him to show me Hidden Cay. He took me down to the gate, but he said that Mike and Lois were on an extended stay in Goa. Yes, there were peafowl on the property! But that is the only verification that I could find, except I did locate Neal Forest and in a drunken stupor he admitted that he did row a couple of Chinks out to a big yacht.
In this book I of course invented much of the dialogue and changed all the names. I tried to keep it as realistic as it was when Harley first told it by having Mike Bender tell the story. Further research proved fruitless. I was stonewalled everywhere I went! I even had one threat not to write a book about it. To hell with it, I am going to write it and call it FICTION!
