"Dispatch, Four. Disregard. Vessel's not a match."
There was a pause on the channel, a long one, longer than radio traffic usually allowed, and then Roxanne's voice came back slower and with less paperwork in it.
"Four, is that Mr. Henry's boat? The little white one with the green stripe?"
Bud Theriot laughed out loud. It was a big laugh, the kind that came up from the stomach and went out over the water and probably woke the pelican.
"Affirmative," Wade said.
"Copy, Four." Another pause. "Tell him Roxanne said his wife's spring rolls gave her heartburn last Easter and she'd like some more."
Wade let go of the button and did not tell him anything. He held out the registration and the flashlight. Mr. Tran took the registration and slid it back into its sleeve. He looked at the flashlight in Wade's hand for a moment and then shook his head.
"Keep that one in your car. The cheap one is no good for color."
"I can't accept—"
"It's a flashlight. Not a bribe. When you find the right boat, you will need to see it."
Wade put the flashlight in his jacket pocket because there seemed to be no dignified way to keep holding it out. The sky over the Sound had begun to turn the gray of a pearl, and in that thin new light he could see, without any flashlight at all, that the stripe was green. It had been green the whole time. The sun was simply arriving to confirm it, the way the sun does, without any interest in how anybody feels about it.
"All right," he said. "Sorry for the delay. You have a good day, sir."
Mr. Tran looked at him with an expression Wade could not read and would think about for a long time afterward. It was not anger. It was closer to the look a man gives a young dog that has just run headlong into a screen door: not surprised, a little tired, mostly curious whether it will happen again.
"You were going to say on the radio that you found the stolen boat," Mr. Tran said.