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of snook, several sheepshead, their color leached gray.

Folklore credits animals with knowing in advance when a killer storm is coming. It suggests they escape to a safe place.

Folklore is often wistful.

From Tomlinson’s direction, I heard a muted shout. I turned and saw a white truck similar to the truck parked at the marina gate. Big tires, windows open, security on the door. Inside were two men, their expressions cop- serious as they accelerated toward Javier’s boat, where Tomlinson was still arguing.

Augie Heller’s group was watching, too, reading body language, no longer focused on me. The owner said something. He watched a moment longer, then decided that’s where he was needed. They headed off at an angle to intercept Jeth, who was walking faster now.

In a rush, I freed my boat’s bowline, and grabbed the bucket from the casting deck. It was heavy. I popped the plastic top, the smell of organic rot and metal blooming. Looked to make certain I wasn’t being watched, then poured the contents into the flooded live well.

The artifacts I had cleaned sank to the bottom, still wrapped in their towels.

Had Jeth mentioned the owner’s name?

Whoever he was, I knew he wouldn’t settle for half of nothing. He wouldn’t give me his special smile—not if I handed him an empty bucket.

J avier’s boat was on the far edge of the clearing near a hill-sized mound of dirt. The hill was backdropped by wreckage of uprooted trees where shoreline changed from shell to asphalt. The shell was bone gray against the wet asphalt, the survey stakes the same shade of yellow as a backhoe parked on that raw space.

It was land being prepped for a parking lot. Or more condos.

The boat’s trailer, I now noticed, was hitched to a hydraulic handcart. Maybe Javier had been muling his boat toward the ramp when Tomlinson came along.

Which didn’t explain why Tomlinson was still trying to climb aboard the damn thing. I watched him attempt to vault himself onto Javier’s boat again…watched the hard hats pull him to the ground.

There were a half dozen of them, different sizes, and ages. They wore their helmets straight like derbies, no scratches showing, new safety gear worn by novices not old construction hands. They looked like school-crossing guards confronting a homeless person, this shirtless outsider with hippie hair and baggy shorts.

Amusing. But not to Tomlinson, who was furious. His chin was thrust forward, fists clenched as if he might take a swing at somebody. Also amusing. Tomlinson, the Rienzi Zen Master. The passive, nonviolent hemp smoker. Tomlinson the Gandhi devotee. The worst he might do was give them a stern lecture, or a forgiving hug.

I stood at the wheel of my skiff, idling toward the clearing. I was in a hurry, but going slow in this shallow water, protecting my new propeller, which was attached to my new engine, which was mounted on the transom of my new skiff. It gave me time to allow my eyes to drift along the shoreline. As I did, I felt the same emotional jolt as when I’d arrived an hour earlier, seeing the place as it had been, unchanged. Not as it was.

What had been subtropical forest was now a hollow geometric; a rectangular space that had been bulldozed flat, surveyed, and graded—the precursors of high-rise construction so obvious that the sky seemed already darkened by stucco.

PRECONSTRUCTION PRICES. PENTHOUSE SUITES. GATED WATERFRONT, ASSOCIATION DUES, ASSIGNED DOCKAGE.

There should be standardized billboards, the destiny of commercial waterfront in Florida is so predictable. There probably were similar billboards on the road into this place: a village that was now a commercial venture to be split up, repackaged, and sold like berths on a cruise ship.

Pre-Death Chambers. A Tomlinson phrase.

There had once been a fishing village here…

I pictured a woman I’d lost only a few years ago standing on the porch of a house that no longer existed. Yellow house of pine, a tin roof. The woman had Deep South eyes that hinted how the weight of her body would feel, her footsteps resonating on wood, leading me to a cooler and darker place, her skin burning beneath my fingers.

I could hear the woman’s woodwind voice in fragmented sentences, the oboe notes of her laughter:

“Way I’m built, when it gets cold? You could see my nipples through a raincoat…

“I’m a Gemini born on the cusp. But with Leo rising. Like two people in one body, both of us bossy…

“We can have separate lives, Ford. We’ll be like secret partners.”

The voice of a woman I’d liked and admired, Hannah Smith. Maybe even loved, though I’ve never settled on a comfortable definition for that overused word. I stood at the wheel, imagining the sound and shape of her, feeling nostalgic…

Irritated, I caught myself. There’s a long list of self-indulgent emotions, and nostalgia is as pointless as—

“Doc! Get over here.”

Jeth’s voice.

Startled, I refocused.

Now what?

Tomlinson’s confrontation was no longer amusing. There was Jeth, striding up behind the hard hats, giving the situation some gravity because of his size. Arriving at the same time was Augie Heller’s group, the oversized boss man already elbowing his way in. Nearby was the security truck, doors open, two men keeping an eye on things from striking distance. The tallest of them wore a cowboy hat. White straw.

“Doc?”

Jeth called again as I watched Tomlinson step toward the marina manager. He was overexcited, and moved too far into the big man’s space, bumping him accidentally. Immediately, though, he declared a truce with his hands, eager to talk.

That’s not the way the owner read it. He stepped aside as if dodging a bull, dwarfing Tomlinson. Then he reached and caught Tomlinson’s hair in his fist. He did a competent trip-step, and jerked my friend’s head backward as his knees hit the ground. The man yanked hard a couple more times to demonstrate his control, Tomlinson’s neck snapping puppetlike.

“Doc!”

I leaned on the throttle, throwing a geyser of muddy water astern, hull shuddering as my boat plowed shoreward. Before the Maverick grounded itself, I bailed into water calf-deep, and ran…

6

The hard hats had formed a screen to keep Jeth back. Nearby, men from the security truck were stirring. Jeth was their main concern…until they spotted me coming.

I ran into the clearing where there were mounds of gravel and survey stakes all around, slipping my glasses into my shorts, my eyes adjusting to a world that blurred, the security guys watching.

I was near enough to hear: “All I wanted to do was talk, man! My buddy owns the damn boat, so what’s the big deal?”

Tomlinson was yelling, not pleading, but pain inserted exclamation points. The manager was hurting him.

“Let go…you are really blowing your cool, man. That’s not hair. You’re pulling my flag, man!”

The manager telling him, “You come charging at me, what do you expect?” Smiling as he talked. The accent was Minnesota or Wisconsin, only a generation or two removed from migration.

As I sprinted, the hard hats turned from Jeth to me, realizing that they’d have to intercept. Nervous men sometimes use body language to anchor an alibi. These guys were already telegraphing excuses: This wasn’t their fight. For the money they were making?

It gave them a reason to get out of my way.

I slowed to a walk. “Let him up,” I told the big man. “Get your hands off him.”

Augie pointed. “He’s the one I told you about, Uncle Bern. With the big mouth. I’d be happy to shut it, if you