"There's a license that costs almost three hundred bucks, and with the conservation restrictions nowadays you have to wait your turn in a lottery to get one. When applying for it, you have to choose the area and season you want to dive in. Wardens inspect it very carefully. Tells them whether you're legal in black and white."

"Your trays were packed full," Nimec said. "Seems to me you're doing okay."

Ricci nodded again.

"Also seems to me that would get noticed fast during a period of decline in the overall yield. By other divers, buyers, and the warden if he's got his eyes open."

Ricci looked straight at him and nodded a third time. "You won't find a whole lot of guys who like going out as far, or down as deep as I do... especially not this time of year, when the water temperature can still drop near freezing and the currents are rough. But there are hundreds of tiny islets in the bay, a few of them within my diving area, and I hit on one that's got a deepwater cove where the urchin count's wild and wonderful."

Nimec looked thoughtful.

"Word got around," he said.

"Uh-huh," Ricci said. "When you're talking about a stake that's worth serious cash, and men who are having a hard time feeding their families, it's a volatile combination. There are resentments toward people from away that go back a long, long time and are maybe even a little justified. Back around the turn of the century, rich out-of-towners started buying up acres and acres of bay-front land around their summer mansions as privacy buffers against the fishermen and clam diggers they thought of as white trash. Stuck 'No Trespassing' signs up everywhere, restricting their access to the water that was their livelihood."

"Somebody twist the locals' arms to sell?" Megan said.

Ricci gave her a sharp look.

"Either you've never been poor, or you've forgotten what that can be like," he said brusquely. "Watch your kids starve through a Maine winter, and you won't need any other kind of arm-twisting."

She sat there in the brittle silence that followed, wondering if his reaction had made her feel guiltier about her remark than she should have.

"Dex and the warden cut some kind of deal?" Nimec said. The last thing he wanted was to get sidetracked.

Ricci turned his coffee cup in his hands, seeming to concentrate on the steam wisping up from it.