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you’re with me they won’t.”
    â€œYou have any ideas who might be doing it—trying to chase them out?”
    Hervey shrugged. “Normally, you’d have to suspect the neighbors first.”
    â€œYou say that like you don’t suspect your relatives’ neighbors at all.”
    He thought for a moment. “I don’t, really. The Johnny Egret clan is the other Tequesta family. I don’t remember much about them, but I know my mama’s folks and them have always been pretty close. Same tribe and all, it’s almost like one big family.”
    â€œHow many people in the Egret clan?”
    â€œI don’t know,” he said. “We can check into that when we get up there.”
    â€œSo who do you think is doing it?”
    â€œFor now, your guess is as good as mine.”
    I thought for a moment. “The fact that they live on property controlled, apparently, by neither regular state or federal authorities opens up all kinds of possibilities. Plus, you have one or more people who are clandestinely robbing the burial mound. Maybe they’re looking for something specific. And maybe they can’t complete a thorough search with your folks there.”
    â€œThat’s a possibility. So we start with the grave robbers?”
    â€œThat’s what I would do.”
    â€œThe idea of some creep dressed up in a gorilla suit stealing that little girl really pisses me off.”
    â€œI know what you mean.”
    â€œAnd if I for sure found the guy, I’d have a real desire to fix it so he spent the rest of his natural life walking on his knuckles.”
    â€œRevenge and justice aren’t always synonymous—but they sometimes should be.”
    He smiled. “I have a feelin’ I’ve got the right guy for the job, MacMorgan.”
    â€œAnything for a friend,” I said.
    Â 
    When Hervey had left, his little flats skiff disappearing into the pale horizon of sea, I slid out of shorts and khaki pants and resumed my position on the porch.
    I had missed the morning. By my Rolex watch it was just after noon.
    But that’s the good thing about living alone upon the sea. It instills you with a sense of the infinite; a perception that makes a mockery of all watches and all clocks and all time everywhere.
    If I had missed this lone morning, there would be a million more to replace it.
    The morning never dies. Not on the sea, it doesn’t.
    Only people do.
    The two beers I had drunk with Hervey had been just enough to make me feel useless and sleepy and lazy. A droning deerfly circled about my feet, and I gave him every opportunity to escape before catching him with a sweep of my hand.
    High against the sky, a frigate bird added dark dimension to the gathering cumulus clouds, all portents of storm.
    Far out on the flats, something caught my attention: a milky stream amid the clear water. To a fisherman in the Florida Keys, that is always suggestive. And unfailingly attractive.
    I went back inside and grabbed the new Quick ultralight reel loaded with six-pound Sigma line on the fine boron rod. I gathered a handful of jigs, a spool of mono leader, and my Polaroid glasses.
    My little Boston Whaler flew me over the clear waters as if on air. Pods of brain coral and turtle grass disappeared in my wake. Before me, a big ray materialized from the bottom and exploded toward sanctuary. A cormorant banked abeam the skiff, flapping, it seemed, in a hopeless parody of flight. I read the movement of water over the flats and brought the skiff well uptide, then shut it off.
    The bonefish were feeding in a school over the bottom, sending up the gray wake.
    It was a small school—maybe a dozen or so fish.
    But very big bonefish indeed. From a distance, they were ghostly in the aquamarine shallows, their tails broaching as they nosed down to forage for small crabs and shrimp. Beyond, the sea blended into pale sky, blue and swollen and filled with promise.
    On my