As Shelly spoke, she was staring down at Lice Peeking, and not in an admiring way. “That's why the world is so messed up, Noah. That's why history books are full of so much heartache and tragedy. Politicians, dictators, kings, phony-baloney preachers-most of 'em are men, and most of 'em lie like rugs,” she said. “Don't you dare grow up to be like that.”

At first I thought she was making fun of me, but then I realized she was serious.

“Your daddy doesn't drink, does he?” she said. “That's truly amazing.”

It was sort of unusual, for the Keys. People who didn't know my father automatically assumed he had to be drunk to do some of the things he did, but he wasn't. He never touched a drop of alcohol, even on New Year's. It wasn't a religious thing; he just didn't care for the taste.

“Why can't I find a guy like that?” Shelly said in a small voice.

I couldn't help but notice that she was using Lice Peeking's head as a footrest. It didn't seem to bother him, though. He kept snoring away.

“You go to the public school?” she said. “Then you must know Jasper Jr.”

“Sure,” I said.

“Is that boy still nasty as a pygmy rattler?”

“Nastier,” I answered honestly.

Shelly shook her head. “He's been that way since he was about three foot high. Honestly? I don't see a bright future there.”

Her mentioning Jasper Jr. reminded me of what my dad said about Shelly and Dusty Muleman, about how she'd gotten so fed up with him that she'd moved out. I decided to find out if she still felt that way.

“Didn't you used to work on the Coral Queen?” I asked.

“For almost three years,” said Shelly.

“Was it a fun job?”

She rolled her eyes. “Tending bar? Oh yeah, it was a barrel of laughs. Very glamorous, too. Come on now, what're you drivin' at?”

“Nothing. I swear.”

“There you go again, Noah.”

Shelly was sharp when it came to sniffing out fibs, so I just came out and asked her: “Did you ever hear about anything crooked going on with that boat?”

“Crooked how?” she asked.

“Like dumping sewer water into the basin.”

She laughed in a way that sounded hard and bitter. “Sweetie,” she said, “the only sewage I ever saw was the human kind. That's what you call the ‘downside' of my job.”

“Oh.”

“This has somethin' to do with your old man, doesn't it? About him sinkin' Dusty's boat?”

“Maybe.” It sounded silly as soon as I said it. “Maybe” almost always means “yes.”

“Okay, let's hear the whole story.” Shelly cocked her head and cupped one of her ears, which had, like, five silver rings in it. “Come on, Noah,” she said, “I'm listening.”

There was no way I wasn't going to cave in and blab everything. She was a pro at shaking the truth out of guys who were a lot bigger and tougher than I was.

But then Lice Peeking came to the rescue. He stopped snoring, flopped over on his back, and opened one bleary red eye.

Shelly thumped him with both heels and said, “Get up, you sorry sack of beans, before I park that slimy aquarium on your head.” I didn't wait around to see if she was serious.

The next morning the lawyer stopped by our house. Mr. Shine looked about a thousand years old, but Mom said he knew his way around the courthouse. She had hired him twice before to get my father out of trouble.

Mr. Shine put his briefcase on the kitchen table and sat down. He looked mopey and gray, and his eyelids drooped. Abbey said he reminded her of Eeyore from Winnie-the-Pooh.

My mother made a pot of coffee and began dropping hints that Abbey and I should leave them alone. Abbey grabbed a bagel out of the toaster and ran off to play on the computer. I got my spinning rod from the garage and biked up to the drawbridge at Snake Creek.

The police won't let you fish from the top of the bridge because of the traffic, but you can go down underneath and cast from the sandbags, in the shade. Sometimes homeless people sleep under the bridges, but they usually don't bother anybody. The last time I'd been to Snake Creek, some woman in an army jacket had made a campsite high on the bank, under the concrete braces. She'd even started a small fire, burning the wood slats from a broken stone-crab trap. I gave her a nice mangrove snapper that I caught, and she had it cleaned and cooking over the flames in five minutes flat. She said it was the best meal she'd eaten in a year. The next day Abbey and I went back with some homemade bread and a pound of fresh Gulf shrimp, but the lady was gone. I never even got her name.

On the day Mom was meeting with Mr. Shine, nobody was under the bridge when I got there. The tide was running in from the ocean, and schools of finger mullet were holding in the still water behind the pilings. Every so often they'd start jumping, trying to escape some bigger fish that was prowling for lunch. I started casting a white bucktail and in no time jumped a baby tarpon that wasn't even ten pounds. Then I hooked something heavy, probably a snook, that ran out a hundred feet and broke the line.

As I was tying on another jig, I heard an outboard engine-it was a johnboat, maybe twelve feet long, motoring along Snake Creek. Two people were in the boat, and as it drew closer I recognized them as Jasper Jr. and an older kid named Bull.

They spotted me right away. I probably should have taken off, but I was really enjoying myself, fishing under that bridge. So I set down my spinning rod and watched Jasper Jr. nose the johnboat into the shallows.

Bull was in the bow. He climbed out first and looped a rope around one of the pilings. He's a hefty guy, but that's not how he got his nickname-people call him Bull because you can't believe a word he says. For instance, he told everyone at school he was dropping out to play double-A ball for the Baltimore Orioles. This is at age sixteen, right? We all knew that Bull couldn't catch a pop fly if it landed in his lap, so we weren't exactly surprised to see him bagging groceries that spring at the Winn-Dixie.

After Bull tied off the johnboat, he called up to me: “Hey, buttface, better run for your life. Jasper's got a speargun!”

“Yeah, right,” I said.

When Jasper Jr. hopped out of the boat, I saw that he didn't have a speargun or any other weapon. Even so, running away would have been an excellent idea. I just didn't feel like it.

Jasper Jr. walked up and asked, “What're you lookin' at?”

“Absolutely nothing,” I said with a straight face.

“I told you I was gonna find you, didn't I?”

I knew that Jasper Jr. wasn't looking for me at Snake Creek-he and Bull were heading out to poach lobsters or pull some other mischief.

But I played along. “Well, you found me. Now what?”

That's when he socked me in the right eye. It hurt, too. Jasper Jr. seemed surprised that I didn't fall down.

So was Bull. He said, “You got a hard head, for a buttface.”

The way my cheekbone was throbbing, I figured that Jasper Jr.'s knuckles weren't feeling so good, either. He was trying to act like a tough guy, but I noticed that his eyes were watering from the pain. I probably could have knocked him flat, but I didn't.

My father's a large man, very strong, but he says fighting is for people who can't win with their brains. He also says there are times when you've got no choice but to defend yourself from common morons. If Jasper Jr. had taken another swing at me, I definitely would have punched him back. Then Bull would have beaten me to a pulp and the whole thing would have been over.

But Jasper Jr. didn't hit me again. Instead he spit in my face, which was worse in a way.

He forced a laugh and called me a couple of dirty names and headed back toward the johnboat. He was shaking the hand that he'd hit me with, as if there were a crab or a mousetrap attached to it. Bull was following behind, cackling like a hyena. They got into the boat, and Jasper Jr. jerk-started the outboard while Bull shoved off from the bow.