I am your boating accident.
— A Human Iceberg
It was noon, but I just got home after spending the night in a mark's house. I was searching his place and he came home. I hid in a closet until he fell asleep, but then I fell asleep. So that went well.
I was rummaging through the kitchen looking for the least healthy thing I could find when Claire came bouncing down the hallway with way too much oomph.
"Hey hey! Shay Shay! Something happened while you were away!"
"Dear God, why are you talking like that?"
"Remember Ray Ray?"
"Was he the one living on a bro boat?"
"Ever since his wife threw him out, yeah."
"Right. He was one of the pictures I showed you when we first met. I'd been saving him for a while."
"And you forgot about him, which is why we didn't get to him sooner. You need a system for this shit, girl."
"Fuck you. What's up?"
"I got him in the hot tub two weeks ago. Have you done your thing yet?"
"Nope. I like to put distance between your date with a mark and when I search for his Bitcoin seed words, just as a precaution. Why?"
"You might want to rethink that for this jalapeño."
"He's hot?"
"He gives me heartburn. Look."
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, in Gary. You don't fuck with the Jacksons. They're still a big deal around here. They made Indiana 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 lying about your stash being 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 another 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's in 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... Okay, I didn't have a plan, but it didn't matter. It was 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.
There had to be more, so I stood on my desk and pounded the ceiling to summon Claire. Her bedroom was directly above my 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. She's wicked, but he's worse. He only married her for the money, then he ended it and got half. She found out he was cheating while they were married, so she's trying to get it all back."
"And you know this because...?"
"I know for the same reason I know he has large testicles."
"Which is?"
"He bragged about it. Wanna know what happened when he sat down in the hot tub though?"
"Oh, no."
"Butternut squash."
"Okay. Wow. Well... is he smart?"
"Does he sound smart?"
"It looks like he was smart enough to hide his Bitcoin. I think I found a decoy wallet."
"Artichoke that asshole, Shay."
"I don't know what that means, Claire, but it looks like I'm headed back to the boat to try again."
Maybe Ray Ray had another set of seed words? More likely, he was using a passphrase.
Seed words are like the keys to 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 there's more.
The next day, I went back to The Raytrix for a more thorough search. 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, dates, and phone numbers for the women he was banging, plus his 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 most of 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.