"Let's get back to whether it's usually me who drives the catch to market," he said at last. "I've been working with Dex for over a year and never went there without him before today. Guy likes wheeling and dealing, likes to get the wholesalers bidding. The whole thing from soup to nuts, you know?" He paused. "He also looks forward to having his cash in hand. But this morning he tells me something about needing to rush home to watch his kids after school. Said his wife had to work late and there was nobody else. The minute we pull the boat in, he's up and away."

"Happens when you're a parent," Nimec said, thinking he could have cited any number of comparable situations from when his own children were young and his wife was not yet his ex-wife.

Ricci shook his head.

"You don't know Dex," he said. "Ask him to recommend a local bar, he'll rattle off the names of two dozen watering holes from here to New Brunswick and tell you every kind of beer they have on tap. Ask him his kids' birthdays, he'd be stumped."

"So you think he arranged for you to be driving by yourself when you got stopped," Nimec said.

Ricci turned his coffee cup but said nothing.

Nimec sighed. "Was it the warden who pulled you over?"

"Yeah. Cobbs is one of those down-easters I told you about resents outsiders ... and just about everybody and everything else besides, but that's just his endearing personality. I move here from Boston, earn a decent buck, it's like I'm taking something away from him. Add that I'm a cop ... an ex-cop... and he gets even more bothered."

"He feels intimidated and threatened by you, and that translates into a sort of competitive hostility," Nimec said. "Common equation in places where they don't get much new blood. Especially when it's coming from the big city."

Ricci shrugged.

"There's all that, and with Cobbs it goes even further," he said. "He's a weasel and he's dirty. I'd heard stories about him from divers as well as lobstermen. Give him a skim of your profits, he'll let you operate without a license or outside your zone, even look the other way if you row out at night and raid somebody's lobster traps. Up until now, you didn't play along, he'd hassle you for the slightest infraction of the rules, but wouldn't actually squeeze anybody outright. The stunt he tried to pull on me takes him to a new level."

"Claiming he'd seen you dive outside your zone so he could confiscate your entire catch," Nimec said. "That it?"

Ricci snapped his pointer finger out at him and nodded.

"Like you said, times are rough," Nimec said. He exhaled, deciding to take another stab at a question Ricci had already angled past twice."I want to try this with you again... you think Dex and Cobbs have something going?"