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He stood and looked through his condo window, seeing more palm trees, a bay and mangrove islands beyond.

M oe was telling his boss, Bern Heller, “The guy said he’d be back with a gun. I think he means it. No”—Moe ducked his head into the straw cowboy hat he was holding—“I know he means it. It’s one of the fishing guides. The spook.”

“Spook?”

Moe said, “You know, a colored guy. You don’t call them that in Wisconsin?”

Heller gave him a look.

Moe kept going. “You’ve seen him. Javier Castillo. The black guy with the Spanish accent. He’s around here most mornings, getting ice, waiting for his clients.”

“Okay…the skinny one who goes barefoot. He doesn’t look Mexican.”

“No, he’s Cuban. In Florida, that’s what most Mexicans are. Javier owns that boat sitting by the fuel docks. The Pursuit, with twin Yamaha outboards, and the radar. A beauty.”

“The greenish-looking one?”

“Yeah. The open fisherman. Blue-green.” Moe turned sideways and pointed so his boss could sight down his arm.

Heller ignored him.

Heller was CEO of a company that had built three marina communities on Florida’s Gulf coast, most of it on land acquired by his grandfather. This was the newest, Indian Harbor Marina and Resort. Two weeks ago, the eye of a hurricane had spun ashore near Sanibel Island, twenty miles south. Bern had been making rounds since, taking notes, directing cleanup, not saying much.

Their properties hadn’t done badly. A couple of condos had lost roofs. Pool screens, ornamental trees, that sort of thing. The worst was right here in front of him, a boat storage barn that had collapsed. Got hit by a tornado, maybe—which is what he was pushing the insurance people to believe.

Heller watched a crane lift a girder from the wreckage as he asked Moe, “What do you think it’s worth?”

“The Cuban guy’s boat?”

“That’s what we’re talking about. I’m trying to make a point here.”

Moe gave it a few seconds before he named a figure, then added, “It’s a well-known brand, less than a year old. We had it on a rack outside the barn. It didn’t get a scratch.”

Surprised by the value, Heller said, “That’s as much I paid for my BMW. How’d a Cuban get that kind of money?”

“The guy’s a worker. He came over on a raft and hustled his ass off. He’s not a bullshitter, either. That’s why we should call the cops now. Javier’s gonna pull a gun if we don’t let him take his boat. The cops should be here waiting.”

Heller had his grandfather’s smile. He was smiling now because Moe couldn’t keep his voice from catching. The man was scared, even though he acted hard-assed, with that cowboy hat, the redneck nose and chin, the face a triangle of stubble because that’s the way movie stars wore their beards. Moe: a hick from French Lick.

“You like that boat?”

“Sure, of course. But—”

“Do you want it?”

“Who wouldn’t, but—”

Bern cut him off. “Then we don’t want the cops here when the Cuban shows. They’d scare him away. Let him pull the gun and wave it around. That’s when we want the cops. Let them take him to jail…or shoot him.” Heller shrugged.

“Either way,” Heller said, “the boat’s ours.”

I n fact, all the boats were theirs. They belonged to the salvage company contracted to clear the wreckage. And the salvage company belonged to Heller. But he wasn’t going to trust this idiot with that little detail.

For more than two weeks, Moe had had to deal with several hundred pissed-off boat owners who paid storage at the marina but hadn’t been allowed on the property since the hurricane. Every morning, they gathered at the gate, getting madder and madder—Javier Castillo among them.

As soon as the storm had blown through, Heller had asked the state to declare the marina a hazardous area because of storm damage, so the boat owners hadn’t been allowed to step foot on the place. They couldn’t move their boats, inspect them, or recover personal items, nothing.

Then, days later, Heller’s attorney had sent a letter, registered mail, to the state attorney. It declared that, because the owners had failed to secure their vessels against future storms, the marina considered the boats to be derelict. As derelict vessels, they could be claimed as salvage by a licensed company. Legally, it was edgy—but no one had challenged it so far.

For the Hoosier, Heller summarized, instead. “If these boats go floating off in another storm, we’re responsible for damages. A tornado grabs one and drops it in a crowded building? It’s our nuts in the wringer. That’s why the salvage company has to assume ownership.”

When Moe asked, “Yeah, but how can we expect owners to secure their boats when we won’t let them on the property?” Heller stared at him until Moe got so nervous he started laughing. “I was joking, Bern.”

Yeah, Heller was right not to trust this goof with the details.

“It doesn’t matter whether a boat is damaged or not,” Heller told him. “The salvage company deserves a fair profit for cleaning up the mess. Take me around and tell me what all this crap’s worth.”

N ow the two men were in a golf cart, Moe at the wheel. He would drive a few yards, stop, and tell his boss the resale value of this or that. He’d drive a little ways more, then stop again.

It was weird the way the cart tilted with Heller beside him, the man was so big.

“According to the log, we had three hundred and nine boats in the storage barn. But I think we racked a dozen more the day before the storm hit. Last-minute dumbasses who wanted them out of the water. We were so busy, they didn’t get wrote down.”

Heller said, “That figures,” not mad, but keeping Moe on his toes.

They were on the canal side of the storage barn where wreckage hadn’t been cleared. The barn had been the size of a retail warehouse, Sam’s Club or Costco, fitted with steel racks six berths’ high. The racks had collapsed when the barn imploded, one boat falling on top of another, among the twisted steel; outboard motors, canvas, fiberglass hulls; white, yellow, blue, poking out of the mess; everything jumbled, as if deposited by a glacier.

At least a hundred boats had already been plucked free by the crane. They sat in rows on the shell parking lot, all tilted on their bottoms. Just like the golf cart when Heller sat his weight on the seat, which is why Moe now locked the brake, and stood.

He stretched and popped his back, saying, “Even after all the work we’ve done, it still looks bad, I know. Like everything in there’s completely fucked. But it’s not.”

His boss replied, “It’s okay the way it looks.”

“Thanks, Bern. We’ve been humping it ten, twelve hours a day trying to get it cleaned up.”

“That’s not what I meant, you schmuck. Another insurance adjustor’s coming tomorrow, and I asked some guy from the E-P-A to meet me here tomorrow afternoon. We got hit by a natural disaster, so it’s good for them to see it.”

Moe thought: Environmental Protection Agency? Invite those assholes on the property after what you did with the bulldozer?

He didn’t ask. Instead, he stuck to business and talked about the two hundred boats still mixed with the barn’s wreckage.

Y ou’ve got to figure the engines, most of them are fine. Electronics? They’ve all got fish- finders, radar. Fishing gear, stereo systems, G-P-Ss—it all adds up. Plus, a lot of them, you could stick in the water right now, crank the engines, and they’d run like nothing happened.”

“Global Positioning Systems, huh?” Heller said. “I’ve got one in my car. But a boat’s, it’s gotta be different, right?”

Moe said, “Yeah, but it’s not hard. I can show you now if you’re interested.”

Heller was interested because he’d copied the numbers from the nautical map he’d found in his grandfather’s briefcase. He knew they referred to a latitude and longitude but decided he could wait to find out. “Maybe over the