The last thing Ricci did before going under was check the submersible instrument console attached to a port atop his scuba tank by yet another rubber hose. On the console were two gauges--a digital readout for measuring depth and temperature, and an analog PSI air gauge below it. The air gauge showed the tank to be at its maxrated 4,000-psi working pressure, with the standard ten-percent safety overfill.

Glancing topside, he saw Dex lean forward over the rail, still grinning and poking his thumb skyward.

Ricci kicked away from the hull of the skiff, dumped air from his BC, and submerged.

Dex's smile lasted only as long as it took for Ricci's outline to disappear underwater. Then it, too, vanished. His eyes narrow, his mouth a thin line of tension, he stood at the gunwale watching the bubbles from Ricci's exhalations reach the surface, the words they'd exchanged earlier that morning suddenly echoing in his mind.

"Regular as you are 'bout where an' when you dive, buggers ought to have you figured by now," he'd said to Ricci, before going on with some nonsense about the urchins moving out of town or some such. Just kind of wanting to break the silence between them.

"Can't figure anything unless you have brains to speak of, " Ricci had answered. "And they don't. "

Well, Dex thought, maybe the urchins didn't have brains bigger than tiny specks of sand in their heads, didn't even have heads that Dex could see, but he had smarts enough to do some figurin' of his own. Not that God had made him a genius; if that was the case he wouldn't have to be tendin' boat every winter season, when the bitter mornin' cold was like to shrivel your balls up into your stomach an' turn the drip from your nose to icicles. But he knew for sure that Ricci would be thinkin' about what happened with Cobbs an' Phipps, and gettin' to wonder about him bein' in on the shake-down too. Was maybe even holdin' onto some suspicions about that already, to guess from how he'd been quieter than usual this mornin'-not that he was any kind of chatterbox in what you might call his sunniest moods.