Wrecker flies to Miami to visit Roger. Roger suggests Wrecker move back into Roger and Carole’s house, but Wrecker demurs. Roger says he will finally be getting the vaccine, which pleases Wrecker. When Suzanne and Carole pick Wrecker up, Carole reveals that she has gotten vaccinated.

At lunch, Carole tells Wrecker that Breakwater’s terrible song is on the Billboard Top One Hundred. After The Eagles announced they were suing him, he gained popularity as a joke among college students. Now Breakwater has been offered a recording contract in Memphis, Tennessee, and a 28-stop tour.

Wrecker gets a call from the real estate agent who listed Mr. Riley’s home. Mr. Riley has died; there will be no services because Riley’s body is being flown home to Ireland.

Wrecker is relieved to return to Key West. He goes to the cemetery and cleans Sarah’s grave; he sees it as his responsibility now, whether he is getting paid or not. The guards hired to watch Vachs’s crypt approach and tell him that Silver Mustache wants to talk to him. Once Wrecker is in the Mercedes, Silver Mustache tells him that the red Hummer was found torched. Wrecker is sure that Silver Mustache had the men killed. Silver Mustache adds that the information about the missing packages being picked up by a shrimp trawler is incorrect.

Wrecker wants to get out of the car and run, but he is afraid the man will hurt Suzanne as revenge. Silver Mustache tells Wrecker that his new job is driving the green go-fast boat. Wrecker protests that he does not know how to handle a boat that size and speed, but Silver Mustache assures him that he will learn quickly.

Wrecker returns home to find that someone has stolen the pizza boxes containing the forged vaccination cards. He is afraid that tomorrow’s supposed boat-driving lesson is a ruse to get him out to sea where he can be killed and dumped. He considers going to the police as a last resort, but then he sees an envelope propped up where the boxes used to sit. When he reads the note, he realizes that Silver Mustache was not the one who took the packages.

Wrecker meets Willi the next morning. He is furious at her for taking the vaccination cards. She took them to keep them safe, reasoning that the smugglers would eventually search Suzanne’s place. According to her research, no one named Bendito Vachs has died in Key West during the past year. Wrecker angrily tells Willi that he has been trying to keep her out of his problems with the smugglers. He tells her what happened to the men in the red Hummer and insists that she tell him where the pizza boxes are. She promises to text him later.

Despite Wrecker’s fears, his first driving lesson in the go-fast goes well. When he gets home, he is pleased to see that Suzanne has come back home. She shows him an article about the first cruise ship to return to Key West; Friends of Blue Waters is meeting that evening to plan a protest flotilla. On his way to work at the grocery store, Wrecker texts Willi.

That night, he goes to the cemetery in the rain to scrub Sarah’s grave. The security men have left Vachs’s crypt unguarded because they want to stay out of the rain. Because Willi has still not texted him back, he heads for her house. He uses the gate’s security intercom, but she does not respond.

After five days, Willi is still not responding to Wrecker. He goes to his mother and Roger’s house with Suzanne for a family dinner. Roger asks again about Wrecker moving back in with them, but Suzanne quickly points out the reasons why it is more convenient for everyone if Wrecker stays with her. Wrecker is grateful, because he prefers to stay at Suzanne’s. Carole shares the news that Breakwater’s song has fallen off the Billboard chart and the Eagles have dropped their lawsuit. Breakwater’s tour tickets are selling for a ridiculously cheap price. Breakwater has a show in Key West on the following evening, but Wrecker is not planning to attend.

That night, Wrecker practices driving the go-fast boat again. He tells Silver Mustache that he heard a rumor that the boat that picked up the missing packages was called the Last Laugh. Silver Mustache will check it out. Afterward, Wrecker stops by Willi’s house. This time, there is a light on inside. Wrecker slips over the security fence and peeks in a window. He can see Willi scrolling on her phone, but when he calls her, she does not pick up. He tries the intercom at the front door, but it is Willi’s nanny, Mrs. Bascomb, who answers. She tells him to leave the property immediately.

Wrecker hurries to the gate and scales it; outside the estate, a police officer tackles him, calling him “boy” in a way that is meant as a racist insult (186). Officer Nugent—a recent addition to Key West’s police force whom Wrecker has never seen before—continues making racist remarks as he takes Wrecker to the station to charge him with trespassing. Fortunately, Willi’s father declines to press charges and a more ethical officer, Van Zorn, intervenes. Wrecker and Van Zorn talk about fishing and the upcoming harbor blockade; Van Zorn is sympathetic. When Wrecker gets home, Willi texts him to apologize, but he is still angry at her.

At midnight, he goes to the cemetery. He is startled to discover that Sarah’s grave has been removed. Then, he hears the singing of the black-haired girl, and he hurries over to Cabeza’s grave. He records her song on his phone. Two of Silver Mustache’s men appear and scare the girl away. Wrecker follows her as she escapes; snagged on top of the fence where she went over, he finds a surprising clue.

At the cemetery the next day, the sexton tells Wrecker that Sarah’s remains have been taken back to Ireland to be buried with Mr. Riley’s. At the docks, Wrecker’s father shows up to invite him to his show that evening. Wrecker says he is busy. Valdez VII asks to talk, and Wrecker reluctantly agrees. While Wrecker fishes, his father talks about his hopes for his career, mentioning a new song: “Here Comes the Moon.” Wrecker tells his father that plagiarizing the Beatles (who wrote the hit “Here Comes the Sun”) is not a good strategy.

Before dinner, Wrecker drops his latest payment from Silver Mustache into Suzanne’s donation jar for Friends of Blue Water. After he and Suzanne eat, Wrecker heads to the pier, where he and Willi have agreed to meet. Wrecker confronts Willi about her habit of ghosting him; even if she does not feel like communicating, it is not fair to make him worry. He is struggling to trust her because of what he found on the cemetery fence: The black wig she was wearing when she sang at Cabeza’s grave. He plays the recording of her singing.

Willi finally admits what has been troubling her so much: her discovery that her great-great-grandfather was one of the white men who tortured and killed Cabeza. The wig was to prevent anyone from recognizing her—Key West is a small town, and she is concerned about people discovering this shameful secret from her family’s past. Wrecker promises not to tell anyone; from now on, they can mourn at Cabeza’s grave together.

Wrecker and Willi begin surveilling Silver Mustache’s henchmen in the graveyard. The men regularly depart early when the weather is bad, so Wrecker and Willi make a plan to break into the Vachs crypt on a stormy night. In the meantime, Silver Mustache asks Wrecker to drive his boat for a “dry run” (211).

On the go-fast, Silver Mustache shows Wrecker a route programmed into the boat’s GPS and says his associates will meet Wrecker on the lee side of a beach on Boca Grande Key. First, however, Wrecker will stop at Ballast Key and drop Silver Mustache off. Wrecker realizes suddenly that it is not a “dry run” at all—Silver Mustache wants to be dropped off so that if Wrecker is stopped by the authorities near Boca Grande, Silver Mustache will not be aboard.

Wrecker is to meet a man named Rodrigo and give him a Yeti cooler full of money. Then, Rodrigo’s men will ferry pizza boxes full of vaccination cards from Rodrigo’s boat to the go-fast. Although Wrecker is unhappy with the plan, it goes smoothly. When Wrecker picks Silver Mustache up again, the man tells him that he investigated Wrecker’s tip about the Last Laugh and found it to be bogus. Wrecker shrugs it off as baseless gossip; secretly, he is pleased to have wasted so much of Silver Mustache’s time.

The next morning, Wrecker is nervous about the large sum of money Silver Mustache gave him for driving. Not wanting to be caught with $1000, he decides to hide it in the handle of a fishing gaff. Then, he takes the gaff out in his skiff, stopping above the wreckage of a small barge. He dives down with the gaff. Unexpectedly, he encounters a moray eel, which gives him a nasty bite before swimming away. He hides the gaff in the barge wreckage and then returns to the surface. As he sits in his skiff shaking off the pain of the bite, he gets a text from Willi: There is rain in the forecast for that night.