Cheap Fish

Dragger Delray is a Salty, a commercial fisherman in Montauk who is not quite ready for retirement. A life of longlining has left him with a bum arm and the limits are killing the commercials. Fishing is all he knows. What's a Salty to do? Become partners with a Sporty (sports fisherman), a tree-hugger, and his favorite bartender on a floating bordello, chock full of Mermaids. The oldest profession takes to the sea with a former priest turned Captain with his own groupie known as the "Appendage," and Dragger's physical therapist, oddly named Chase Hooker, who climbs aboard for a change of profession. When a murder occurs outside a local dive bar, Liars Saloon, fingers are pointed and shocking secrets revealed. Meanwhile Dragger's ex-wife is helping him fight the Montuak Morality Mission, a misplaced group of hypocrites with short memories and a vengeance to shut down the "whore boat." And why aren't the MMM's concentrating on their usual dilemma, parking and overspill at the fedora laden Smurf Lodge, instead of bothering a pleasure boat in the middle of the ocean? Somebody has a bone to pick and speaking of bones, who fileted a burly sea captain like a tuna with the "Dexterity" of a serial killer? "The town is not all pretty postcard, there's an underbelly...things that go on quietly," Dragger tells his physical therapist. "Why the whore boat if this is hardly Victorian England?" she asks. "You ever read Lady Chatterley's Lover?" "Touche." Sex, fish, Mermaids, love, guts, murder and intrigue await you aboard the saltiest whore boat in the Atlantic Ocean.

Nanci E. LaGarenne is a former local freelance journalist for Dan’s Papers and contributing writer to The Montauk Sun. A former karaoke host in Montauk fishermen’s bars for twelve years. She lives in East Hampton with her husband.