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about twenty yards down the beach from me. He was cranking on his twelve-foot surf-casting outfit, and his lure had snagged my line.
    â€œNate, dammit,” I said. “It’s me. Brady Coyne.”
    â€œOh, yeah. Mama’s lawyer. Well, get your ass off my beach.” His lure had run down my line and snagged my fly. He reeled it up, then reached down with a knife and cut my fly off.
    Nate wore one of those fore-and-aft fishing caps with one bill over the back of his neck and another over his eyes, along with cutoff jeans and a gray shirt with the sleeves rolled up past his elbows. Pale curlyhair grew thick on his legs and arms and poked out from under his cap, and in the shadow of his visor I could see that he wore dark sunglasses and had a bushy sun-bleached beard.
    â€œGimme my fly,” I said.
    â€œScrew you, lawyer. Just get the hell offa my beach.”
    I reeled up my line, then went over to where he was standing. He stood there glowering at me. He was holding his long surf rod in both hands like a lance. I wondered if he intended to run me through. My slender fly rod was no match for his heavy weapon.
    â€œFor Christ’s sake, Nate, grow up,” I said. “This beach belongs to your mother, not you. I have her permission to fish here, and I intend to do that.”
    He stepped close to me. “Yeah? Well, she’s up there dying in her wheelchair and I’m standing right here. So what’re you gonna do about that?”
    â€œI’m going to keep fishing. There’s plenty of room for both of us on this beach.”
    He pushed his face close to mine. “I don’t share my beach with nobody, never mind some goddam lawyer who wants to sell it off. So if you don’t—”
    At that moment I heard a shout. When I turned, I saw J.W. coming down the sandy path toward us.
    I was glad to see him.

Chapter Three

J.W.
    T he Derby started at midnight, and I made my first cast about ten seconds later, laying my Robert’s Ranger out through the darkness toward the horizon I could not see. I was shoulder to shoulder with other angling hopefuls, each of us quite willing to catch a champion fish on the first day of the Derby. But, like everyone else on the beach, I caught only some smallish blues, the biggest of which I dutifully took to the morning weigh-in.
    The day’s winners all came in from somewhere else, unspecified spots such as “the South Shore,” “the North Shore,” or “Chappaquiddick,” for it is one of the curiosities about fishermen that they are secretive about where they catch fish. Of course, the reason for such closed lips is that the fishermen don’t want anybody else to know where the big fish are.
    However, on Martha’s Vineyard there are only so many places where you can fish, and everybody knows where all of them are, so there are no secret spots. Moreover, yesterday’s fish may well not be there today, so even if you had a secret spot, the chances of more giant blues or bass being there the next time yougo are fairly dim. Still, most fishermen feel obligated to lie about where they caught yesterday’s fish. It’s an honored tradition.
    I annoy my fishing friends by telling everyone where and when and with what lure I managed to catch my fish.
    Tony D’Agostine, sergeant of the Edgartown Police, had planned, I knew, to be out on the beaches at midnight with the rest of us, but after I got to the morning weigh-in at the shed that used to be the Edgartown Junior Yacht Club and learned that my nice little five-pound blue wasn’t going to be a contender, I went out into the parking lot and ran into Tony. He was looking as red-eyed as I knew I looked.
    â€œWell, at least you got a fish,” he said. “I didn’t even wet a line.”
    â€œYou’re probably smart not to play with the big boys,” I said. “After all, what chance would a mere small-town cop have competing