usual.â
âFunny, I thought I was feeling pretty bubbly.â
âYou? Bubbly?â
âRelatively speaking, I mean. Relatively bubbly.â
âOkay, so whenâs the last time you tied a bonefish fly?â
Thorn tugged his line, scanned the basin.
âA month ago? Two months?â
âTwoâs about right.â
âSo whatâve you been doing for income?â
âIâm getting by.â
âYouâre surviving on chunky peanut butter and beer. Raiding the penny jar. Canât even afford Red Stripe, drinking Budweiser, for godsakes.â
âYou volunteering to be my financial planner?â
âTell you what I will do,â he said. âIâll go up there myself, babysit the old man. Lawton and I get along fine. You stay here, get to work.â
âNice try,â Thorn said. âBut I need to do this.â
âWhat you need is to get back to what makes you sane.â
âSo now Iâm insane?â
âYouâre mopey, Thorn. And you been hitting the long-necks hard. Starting early, a six-pack before the sun goes down. You need to get your groove back, my man.â
âMy groove?â
âOh, jeez, now I get it.â Sugar shook his head. Something so obvious taking so long to dawn. âYouâre thinking about moving up there, arenât you? Thatâs what this is about. Desert the Keys, move in with Alexandra. Jesus, Thorn. Thatâs it, isnât it? Live in freaking Miami.â
âHere it comes.â Thorn nodded to his left. âTen oâclock, five yards.â
He angled to his right along the dock and tugged the bobber so it was floating a few feet ahead of the big snookâs path.
âAnd, hey, whatâs with the bobber?â Sugar said. âWhereâs your fly rod?â
âI want to catch this fish, not play with it.â
Sugarman leaned out and watched the snook swim past the finger mullet that dangled below the bobber.
He and Sugar went back to grade school. Though it felt like they went back further than that. Brother yin and brother yang. Sugar was the only guy on earth who could give Thorn the level of shit he did. Tell that kind of truth.
Heâd been a Monroe County sheriffâs deputy, now a security consultant, a term he liked better than private eye. Half Jamaican, half Norwegian. Pale blond mother, Rasta father. A lucky blend. Inherited the laid-back genes of the ganja man and the chiseled cheekbones and long limbs and elegant moves of his lovely mom. Her cold focus. After those two abandoned him when he was still a toddler, his scruples were shaped by a foster mom who raised him in the tropical poverty of Hibiscus Park, Key Largoâs ghetto. Crack houses and heroin dens, rusty cars up on blocks; the only lawful neighborhood business was a hubcap stand along the overseas highway. After a childhood like that, Sugarman had developed an indestructible gristle at his core. He grew up quiet and clear-minded, a man so strictly principled, so secure in his humane convictions, that on countless occasions heâd served as Thornâs true north, hauling him back onto the proper path just as Thorn was about to lurch over some fatal precipice.
Sugar peered into the lagoon.
âDamn, thatâs no snook. Itâs Orca, the killer whale.â
Thorn watched the snook glide across the basin to the mangrove roots that curved into the basin like the bars of an underwater cage.
âItâs checking an escape route. Itâll try to cut me off on those roots.â
Sugar said, âDid I see that right? All those leaders streaming off her mouth? There must be a dozen hooks in her lip.â
âAt least.â
âWhat do you figure? Fish that size, itâs got to be ten, twelve years old?â
âCloser to twenty-one,â said Thorn.
âTwenty-one? And howâd you arrive at that?â
âOne of those leaders is