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use. Loyalty to them is misplaced, a waste. Others will be in a position to further careers, to look after interests. Loyalty to these people will be rewarded. Disloyalty will bring shame and dishonor, pain and ruin.”
    “What happens,” I asked, “if personal loyalty conflicts with moral principles?”
    “Then it would be the truest test of loyalty, would you not agree?”
    I could have objected to the leading question, but I didn’t.
    Before I could agree or disagree, Yagamata turned to greet two local politicians who attended every high-society bar mitzvah, communion, and bayside soiree on the public service gravy train. Yagamata didn’t turn back. He just left me standing there, my paw wrapped around a slender champagne flute. I guess it hadn’t been a question after all. It was a message. Dockworker Francisco Crespo was a damn lucky guy to have his millionaire boss paying a downtown mouthpiece to look the other way. And me, I was being paid handsomely to keep the boss’s name out of the papers and deliver Crespo into the garbage disposal we call the criminal justice system. Do the job right, there’d be others to follow. Screw it up, there’d be pain and ruin.
    You and me both, Francisco. Just a couple of lucky guys.
    N ow perched on the stage, Yagamata was introducing the local celebrities, a collection of county judges, city commissioners, TV anchorfolks, business executives, even a monsignor and two men who claimed to sit on the water and sewer board. Then Yagamata announced he was giving three million dollars to preserve some Art Deco properties on South Beach. In lieu of the mayor, who was on trial for bribery and extortion, the vice mayor of Miami Beach handed him a plaque, and all the politicos applauded politely and jockeyed for position as a local TV crew taped the event. Charlie and I moseyed over to a Henry Moore sculpture that looked like a gray marble camel. It made a fine, if lumpy, picnic table. I dug into a second portion of stone crabs, dipping the white meat into a tangy mustard sauce.
    “
Menippe mercenaria
,” Charlie said with genuine affection, spearing one of my claws. “Sweeter than lobster.”
    “Bad for your cholesterol, Charlie,” I said, hoarding my remaining stoners.
    “Don’t be a spoilsport.” When I signaled a waiter to bring me a beer instead of champagne spiked with vitamin C, Charlie pilfered another claw. I used to stalk stone crabs in the shallow coastal waters each winter. You can find them under rocks or buried in mounds of sand on the grass flats in the bay. Some folks use baited traps, but those attract the wily octopus, which eats your crab by sucking the meat from the shell, and leaves you with a bunch of tentacles to wrestle with. Others use a metal prober and a net, it being illegal to spear our eight-legged friends. Most people simply pay thirty bucks a la carte at Joe’s for a handsome tray of the claws, but I always enjoyed catching them by hand.
    You don’t kill a stone crab. You grab it and rotate the body one way and the claw the other way. The claw snaps off cleanly. Toss the crab back into the water, and it will regenerate the claw. Then, next winter, do it again. Do the crabs feel pain, I wonder. And do they miss their claws?
    Charlie was making slurping noises, leaving a trail of mustard in his beard. “What’s new, Jake? Still handling those chicken-shit civil cases?”
    “You’re close, Charlie. Very close.”
    I told him about Chicken Prince versus Percy’s Perfect Poultry, and Charlie scowled. “Arguing about the
pectoralis minor
muscle of the chicken, for goodness’ sake. Who cares? Now give me a good murder …”
    Charlie went on for a while, reminiscing about a couple of cases we had worked together—the doctor caught in a web of lust and greed, the women strangled as they played computer sex-talk games—as other dignitaries took the stage to heap praise on our host. The director of a local art museum gave his thanks for