Randy White - Twelve Mile Limit

It was Gulf Coast Florida: part tropical idyllic, part Shaker-Heights-by-the-Sea, part theme-park deco.

I love the region and love being on a fast boat alone. I cracked a cold beer, sat back in the swivel seat, and watched the barrier islands slide past-Gasparilla, Manasota Key, Venice, and Siesta Key-sunglasses on, ball cap pulled low, feet up on the console, steering that solid skiff with one bare toe.

Cortez is a village of four thousand or so souls, a settlement of piling houses and gray docks clustered on Sarasota Bay, south of St. Pete and just across the bridge from Bradenton Beach.

Just before 5 P.M., I raised the bridge. I banked east through Longboat Pass, its riverine tide fast beneath my hull, the water tannin-stained, a perfect place for snook or bull sharks on a feed. Ahead was Jewfish Key, a few tin roofs silver in the late sunlight beneath a canopy of palms. The bridge was to the north; Cortez a clutter of buildings and docks to the northeast.

Cortez is among the last of Florida’s old-time fish camps. Among the last, because increasingly stringent fishing laws and bans are gradually squeezing independent fisher families out of business, leaving international factory ships to strip the sea bottom and supply the world’s demand for seafood. An irony of government intervention: By disabling the people it can control, bureaucracy empowers the people and nations it cannot control.

Because the village is built out and isolated on a mangrove peninsula, Cortez has a time-warp feel. The firestorm of development that is strip-mall Florida might have blazed past without noticing the little fish markets and piney-woods houses. Back in the 1930s, the men and women of Cortez wove their own nets, grew peppers and pineapples and mangoes; they wholesaled mullet and stone crabs caught from boats that they had built up from wooden stringers and glassed themselves.

Things hadn’t changed much. But they would.

As I dropped down off plane and began to idle toward the docks, I noted mountains of wooden stone crabs traps stacked behind buildings, curtains of shrimp net strung to cure or dry. The air smelled of creosote, diesel, and exposed barnacles.

Ahead was a two-story warehouse made of white cement, a massive blue fuel-storage tank beside it. The sign over the docks read: A. P. Bell Fish Company.

It was a big commercial operation. Inside would be freezers, perhaps even a blast freezer, and container-sized holdings of every variety of salable sea life. From this small place of debarkation, the wealth of waters adjoining Sarasota Bay would be shipped around the world.

Next to the warehouse was Star Fish Company, a two-story building that was spray-creted white. The sign read: Retail Sales amp; Restaurant. Beer on Tap, so I tied up at the dock and went through the door into the air-conditioned market. Nice little place: snapper, grouper, sea trout, clear-eyed and fresh, lined in the display case on a bed of ice, plus oysters, clams, and shrimp, too. Someone had gone to the trouble to hand paint the tiles that decorated the little room. Behind the counter was a nice-looking woman, her brown hair tied back with a red handkerchief, wearing a white apron that read Don’t Kiss the Cook!

I laughed as I said, “If I promise not to kiss you, can I get something to eat?”

The woman had a nice smile and the sort of country-girl face that reminded me a little of Janet. “Skipper, you got here just in time ’cause I was getting ready to shut down the grill. There’s the menu. What’ll you have?”

I ordered a dozen oysters, raw, the grouper sandwich, and a beer with ice. I took the beer out to the picnic tables beneath the awning and sat there looking at the line of commercial boats moored to the docks. There were bay shrimpers, purse seiners, crab haulers, deep-water shrimpers, and maybe thirty grouper boats. A couple had just gotten in-sea gulls screamed overhead in a cloud while fish were offloaded. A couple of vessels were getting ready to head back to sea-men in stained T-shirts muled boxes of groceries, cigarettes, and beer aboard. Most of the boats, though, were stolid, empty-looking, as they sat motionless on the black water. A few had been decorated for Christmas: lights in the rigging, reindeer and plastic Santas waving from wheelhouse windows.

One by one, I checked the names of the oceangoing boats.

There was no Nan-Shan.

When the woman brought my food, I invited her to have a seat. She hesitated, then did; she sat down gratefully, as if her feet hurt.

Her name was Stella. An old-timey name that matched her old-timey face. I sat there and ate the good, cold oysters and listened to her tell me about Cortez, the kind of place it was. How it’d changed since they tore down the Albion Inn to build the Coast Guard station, and now there were banks and 7-Elevens sprouting up out east on 648. The village people were still holding it together, trying to save what they could and preserve their own dying history.

Stella said, “They want to put something on the Endangered Species list? They ought to put the independent commercial fishermen. Now there’s something darn near extinct.” She paused and looked toward the docks. “That your Maverick skiff, skipper? It sure is a pretty boat.”

I nodded.

“Hope you don’t take no offense. I know you sport anglers got a different view of things.”

I told her no offense taken, then used that as an opening to say, “Truth is, a couple of friends and I are thinking about investing in a commercial boat, maybe let someone run it as a shrimper. That should come close to making the payments, and we can use it occasionally for long trips to the Tortugas, or maybe even Belize. I hear the fishing’s pretty good over there.”

“Sounds like a pretty smart idea, skipper,” she answered affably.

“That’s one reason I’m in the area. Someone told my partner that a shrimper named the Nan-Shan might be on the market. Owned by a guy named Dexter Money. He’s the friend of a friend, I guess. You know where I can find him? Or maybe get a quick look at the boat?”

Her demeanor changed instantly, and so did the expression on her face. It was as if I had just strung together all the foulest words in the language. “The Nan-Shan, ” she said, deadpan. “You say you’re interested in buying the Nan-Shan?”

I said, “Maybe. I haven’t seen her. We’ll be looking at a lot of boats.”

She stood abruptly. “Well, sir, I’m not in the boat-selling business, so I guess I can’t help you.” Her tone was now chilly, formal, and I was no longer “skipper.” I was “sir.”

I held up an index finger, asking her to give me a minute. “Stella, would you please explain something to me. We were getting along great, having a nice conversation, then, suddenly, it’s like I’m poison. Did I say something to offend you?”

“I have no idea what you’re getting at, sir. Is your food okay? I’ve got to get back to work.”

I smiled at her. “Come on, now, somehow I just screwed up. Can’t you give me just a hint about what it was I said?”

She looked at me for a moment, pressed her lips together, thinking. Reluctantly, she said, “Okay, I’m probably being a dope again, but I’ll take a chance. You really do seem like the nice, solid sort, so I’ll risk it. You said you got friends who are friends of Dex Money? Well, mister, you’re keeping the nastiest kind of company, then. And you ain’t got no friends in Cortez if you’re fixing to do business with that kind’a scum. Forgive my French. Or maybe you’re one of the feds after him again, sneaking around trying to get information. Either way, something ain’t right.”

I said softly, “I’ve never met the man, Stella. I meant it when I said I didn’t know where to find him.”