The man walked out onto the deck overlooking the harbor, a vantage from which he could see full across the neighborhood: the smattering of stilted houses, a few palm trees scattered throughout, the Intracoastal Waterway Bridge towering over them to the west. There were cigarette butts and empty beer bottles on the porch from the night before. He kicked one and watched it roll.

He went down the steps and turned back under the house, past the decrepit skiff with its torn netting and rope overlay, and onto the main road, where he continued up a few blocks until coming to a lightened green house with white shutters, the paint of which had been badly stripped by the sea air. He took the back stairs up to a sliding glass door and knocked. No one answered so he knocked again.

“He’s not home.”

The man turned toward the voice. Sitting on the porch of the house next door was an elderly man, thin and sun-scorched and leathery. He was sitting on a cooler, baiting a line, staring into the sun as he worked his bony fingers.

“He left this morning,” he said.

“Do you know where he went?”

The old man looked over. His eyes were cloudy, and the bluish pupils refected light like a mirror. “No,” he said, “but he had his gear with him. You could probably find him at the jetties.”

The man wondered how the old timer knew his associate was carrying anything at all, but before he asked, an orange tabby stole his attention running up the patio stairs. The cat rubbed against his leg, back arched and purring.

“That’s Critter,” the old man said. “Probably thinks you have bait. And to answer your question: I know what folks are carrying around and carrying on about because I can hear.” He tapped the space between his ear and temple with two fingers. “I can hear all sorts of things.”

“Yeah, like what?”

“Like what you’re carrying---what you’re running from. I can even hear it coming for you.”

“And what’s that?”

The old man looked down at his knobby hands, covered in salt and blood and stained with tar. “That Old Man River,” he said. He returned his gaze to warmth of the smoldering morning sun. “Check the jetties, you’ll find what you’re looking for.”

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