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processors followed his lead."
    "Ah."
    "Yes. I sent him a thank-you card."
    Kate was amused. "What'd it say?"
    Lamar's grin widened around a mouthful of toast. He swallowed and quoted, " 'Thanks to you, Denton, I didn't have to duck once this summer. Keep up the good work!' "
    Kate laughed. "Denton Harvey superintendent at Whitfield again this year?"
    Lamar beamed. "He sure is. Gotta love the guy."
    Kate didn't, but she sympathized. The fish hawk was not the most welcome sight to rise up over a fisherman's horizon, and over the years more than one fisherman had been moved to express his displeasure, sometimes at the business end of a .30-06. "Listen, Lamar, you ever hear of a guy name of Calvin Meany?"
    "Cal Meany?" Lamar's coffee cup halted, suspended in midair. "What do you want with that asshole?"
    "Just curious. He delivered to the Freya yesterday. I've never met him before."
    "Lucky you," Lamar said, and paused when their cheerleader came around with the coffeepot. He stirred four packets of creamer into his coffee with more vigor than was necessary.
    Kate used six. "So you know him," she said, sipping cautiously at the still-dark brew. She didn't gag at the resulting taste, but only because she was a strong woman.
    "Yeah, I know him." Lamar fortified himself with a long swallow. "He lives in Anchorage. He's got the setnet site east of the beach from Amartuq Creek, right next to the Flanagans'."
    "What?" Kate was confused. "No, he's not a setnetter, he's a drifter, he delivered off theah, that's right, a no-namer, all he's got is an AK number on the bow."
    "No, he owns the setnet site, too, and God only knows what else."
    "Wait a minute. I thought you couldn't own two permits, I thought it was against the law."
    Lamar set down his mug, and leaned forward, eager and earnest. Lamar loved his job, almost as much as he did explaining its labyrinthine ramifications to the unenlightened, maybe even more than he did catching a perpetrator and soon-to-be felon in the act. "You can't own more than one drift permit, Kate. But you can own a drift permit and a setnet permit and a seine permit and fish them at different times of the year. Of course," he added, "that's just here, in Prince William. You can't own a drift permit in Prince William Sound, another in Cook Inlet and a third in Bristol Bay. Or you can," he amended, "but you can't fish them all the same year, Prince William in June, Bristol Bay in July, Cook Inlet in August, you can't do that."
    "You can't follow the fish," Kate said, nodding.
    "Exactly."
    "So who's fishing Meany's setnet site while he's drifting?"
    "His brother. And," Lamar added, "before you ask, they've got a formal lease agreement. I checked."
    "So, they're within the letter of the law." If not its spirit, she thought, and thought again of the boy, and of the boy's sullen fury, and of the expression on Auntie Joy's face. In the normal course of events Auntie Joy and Calvin Meany would have had nothing to do with each other, personally or professionally. Auntie Joy lived in the Park, Meany lived in Anchorage. Auntie Joy fished a mile up the creek, Meany drifted. Auntie Joy fished subsistence, Meany commercially. They were forty years apart in age, a world apart in culture. How had Meany managed to come into contact with Auntie Joy and offend her to the point of speechlessness?
    As if he'd been reading her thoughts, Lamar said, "Are Joyce and Viola up at fish camp this year, Kate?"
    Evidently he had been too busy to see the four aunties the day before. With perfect truth Kate said, "I haven't been up the creek yet this year, Lamar."
    He raised a skeptical eyebrow. "There's still an injunction against subsistence fishing there."
    Tim Sarakovikoff burst through the door and rescued Kate from dancing any further around the truth. He grabbed the first fisherman he saw and babbled out the news. The second man, at first disbelieving, asked him a question. Tim gave a violent nod. The fisherman turned to the man