Ricci smiled faintly.
“People have different nicknames for them around here, but they shared your father’s sentiments till recently, when everybody heard about the Asian demand and got a yen for the yen,” he said. “Before that, they were just considered nuisances. Most of the old-time lobstermen still refer to them as whore’s eggs because they mess up their traps. Clog the vents, eat the bait, even chew through the headings and lathe to get at the bait. The nasty little buggers have some sharp teeth to go with their spines.”
“You gather the urchins yourself?”
“Harvesting’s done in teams of at least one scuba diver and a tender, who waits above in the boat,” Ricci said. “I like to do the underwater work alone. Take a big mesh tote below with me and pick the best-looking urchins. When a bag’s full, I send up a float line so my tender, this guy named Dexter, can spot it and hoist it aboard.”
“Tender?” Megan said. “Define, please.”
“It’s the diver’s equivalent of a golf caddy. He’s supposed to maintain the scuba equipment, look out for the diver’s safety, make sure the catch doesn’t freeze, and if time allows, cull the urchins. Something goes wrong, how he reacts can be critical.” He paused. “That’s why the profits get split down the middle.”
Nimec raised an eyebrow. “I heard you mention a Dex when you were facing off with the deputy….”
“That’s him,” Ricci said.
“Didn’t sound like your partnership’s exactly rock solid.”
Ricci shrugged.
“Maybe, maybe not,” he said. “I’ll get to that.”
Megan watched him, warming her hands around her cup. “Is it always your job to bring the catch to market?”
He leaned back slightly in his chair.
“I’m getting around to that too,” he said, and drank more coffee. “The urchins are found in colonies, usually in subtidal kelp beds. Once upon a time they practically carpeted the bottom of the Penobscot from the shoreline on out, so you could scoop them up without dunking your head.” He paused. “Past few years have been slim pickings. Overharvesting’s driven the value of the catch up into the stratosphere, and made people so protective of their zones they’re baring their teeth and beating their chests if you come anywhere close to them.”
“These zones… I presume they’re demarcated by law.”
Ricci nodded.
“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.
“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?”
Ricci stared at his cup, still turning and turning it in his hands. It was no longer steaming.