While I waited, I stripped off my shirt and kicked out of my leather Docksides and sat at the wood-planked table. The air had gone thick and moist. I leaned back and propped my heels up on the table and surveyed: Bunk bed. Two warped armoires. A stainless-steel sink and drain board under a hanging row of mismatched cabinets. Old-style Key West shutters at the four windows on all sides and a high, pyramid-shaped ceiling topped with a slatted cupola to vent the rising warm air.

The shack had once been a hunting lodge for rich tourists in the early 1900s. It was passed to state researchers in the '50s, who used it as a home base for studying the surrounding ecosystem. It then lay abandoned for years, until my friend and attorney, Billy Manchester, somehow obtained the lease and rented it to me when I was searching for an escape from my Philadelphia past.

The only change I'd made was new screening and the installation of a wondrous trap Billy had found for the tiny gnats that could slip through the smallest barriers. One of his acquaintances, and Billy had hundreds, was a University of Florida researcher who'd cobbled together a CO2 contraption to kill the no-see-ums. Knowing that it is the CO2 that lures the insects to humans and other air-breathers, the researcher had configured a bucket-shaped container coated with a sticky oil and then inverted on a stem pedestal. Threaded with a CO2 line, the stem emitted a small trail of gas, less than what two people talking would emit. The bugs came for the CO2, got trapped in the oil, and I lived nearly unbitten on the edge of the Glades. I was ruminating on the simple genius of the idea when the rattle of my boiling coffeepot sat me up and then the electronic chirping of a cell phone made me curse. I went to the coffee first and then searched for the phone.

"Yeah?" I answered.

"Max," said Billy, his voice straight and efficient. "Max. I need your help."