I am your boating accident.
— A Human Iceberg
"Hey hey! Shay Shay!"
"Dear God, Claire, why are you talking like that?"
"Remember Ray Ray?"
"He's the bro living on a boat, right?"
"Since his wife threw him out. Yeah. I got him in the hot tub two weeks ago. Have you gotten to him yet?"
"Nope. I like to put distance between your date with a mark and my visit to his place, just as a precaution. Why?"
"You might want to rethink that, for this asshole."
"Oh?"
She handed me a newspaper, folded open. There was a story about a guy who got caught vandalizing the Jackson 5 mural on Lake Street. You don't fuck with the Jacksons. They're still a big deal in Gary. They made this town proud.
"Third paragraph in the article," Claire said. "Read the name."
"Oh, wow. It's Raymond Raybe."
"Yup. And he had priors, so when he got caught, they hauled him straight to jail. He'll be there for at least a couple days."
"Why would he vandalize that mural? He doesn't like music?"
"Shay. He's racist as hell. Look at the picture. He painted a goddamn white power symbol over it."
"Oh, fuck that! Looks like it's time for Ray Ray to have a boating accident."
"A what what?"
"A Boating Accident. It's Bitcoin slang for hiding your stash and lying to say it's gone. It's like, 'Don't ask me for money, bro. I lost all my coins in a tragic boating accident.'"
"I don't get it."
"It's a meme."
"Well, he's locked up, so it's a great time for him to get got."
When she's right, she's right. Robbing Ray Ray while he was in jail jail? That's karma.
It was fun, too.
I went to the Portage Marina the next afternoon. I brought a bottle of tequila, in case I needed a cover story. When some geezer asked if I belonged there, I held up the bottle and yelled, "Yeah, buddy! Whoo! If the boat's a rockin', don't be mockin'!" He cursed and walked away. Problem solved.
My plan was to wander through the marina and make a list of which boats might be Ray Ray's, then go back at night and... OK, I didn't have a plan, but it didn't matter. It became obvious which boat was his.
On the third dock after the boat ramp, next to a little red speedboat...
There it was. The Raytrix.
It was a middle-aged balding tech-bro boat. Not a yacht. Not a fishing boat. This was a white fiberglass piece of crap with a sad stripe down the side to make it look fancy. Or sporty? And it had a tiny radar hat on top like it was pretending to be a real ship. The cabin was just big enough to sleep two. This thing had midlife crisis written all over it.
Boats are bonkers. If you're hiding Bitcoin seed words on a boat, you're a damn fool. A boat means easy access for me and limited space for you to hide stuff. I was out of there in twenty minutes.
In fact, it took me longer to find his boat than his seed words. They were engraved in a piece of metal, hidden at the bottom of a tackle box. "Huh. I see a tackle box but no fishing gear." Of course it was in there. Come on bro.
After that, I went back to my place to make sure I could figure out how to restore his Bitcoin wallet. Ray Ray did a bad bad job of engraving his seed words into a credit-card sized metal plate. I could barely read them. When I finally figured out what the words were, I found a wallet that only had a hundred bucks worth of Bitcoin. That couldn't be right, so I stood on my desk and pounded the ceiling to summon Claire. Her bedroom was directly above my basement workshop.
She came down a few minutes later.
"You could just call me, Shay."
"I know, but this way's more fun. So, hey, what's the deal with Ray Ray? He's supposed to be loaded, right?"
"Yeah. His ex-wife is rich. He divorced her and took half, but she found out he cheated while they were married, so she's trying to get everything back."
"And you know this because...?"
"He bragged about it. He's a total douchebag."
"Is he smart?"
"Does he sound smart?"
"Well, it looks like he was smart enough to hide his Bitcoin. I think I found a decoy wallet."
That meant I needed to go back to The Raytrix and search again. Maybe he had another set of seed words? More likely, he was using a passphrase.
Seed words represent numbers that generate a Bitcoin wallet. A passphrase is your own custom text that you use with the seed, to create a hidden wallet that can only be found using the seed and the passphrase.
Some Bitcoiners put a little Bitcoin in the wallet generated by the seed words to use as a decoy, and they hide the rest in the wallet for the seed and passphrase.
That seems smart, except, whoa bro, a decoy wallet doesn't work if the thief knows you're loaded.
The next day, I went back for a thorough search of The Raytrix. It took a while, but I found a small spiral notepad in a ziplock bag, stashed in a panel for accessing electrical stuff. The notepad had all kinds of info. It had names and phone numbers for the women he was banging, plus bank accounts and financial info... passwords... It was all in there.
I took two pictures of every page.
I kept a set for myself, just in case, and I put the other set in a shoebox, which I left on his ex-wife's porch. I pounded on her door and rang the bell, then ran like hell. I hid behind a car and watched, just to make sure she found my gift.
Ray Ray got got.
I have no idea how long he was in jail, but I bet he wished he never got out.