In the morning I packed a gym bag with civilized clothes and a shaving kit and loaded my canoe. The sun was just beginning to streak through the high cypress cover, spackling the leaves and slowly igniting the greenness of the place. I untied and pushed off toward the river. The water was high from the rain. Dry ground was rare here, and the effect of the omnipresent water gave one a constant sense of floating. My shoulders and arms began to loosen after ten minutes of easy paddling. By the time I reached the open water I was ready to grind.

Billy had spent an hour on the phone explaining in his thorough and efficient way why he was making an uncharacteristic call for help. Billy is the most intelligent person I've ever met. A child chess prodigy from the north Philadelphia ghetto, he graduated top of his class at Temple's law school. He then took a second degree in business at Wharton.

He was an intellectually gifted black kid who grew up in one of the most depressed and depressing areas of the country. I was an unambitious son of a cop who grew up in the ethnic, blue-color neighborhoods of South Philly. Our mothers had met and formed a quiet and unusual friendship, one that we had only begun to decipher as men. We did not meet until we made contact on new ground in South Florida, where, for our own reasons, both of us had fled.

I learned early to trust Billy. I also learned to listen carefully to his advice and his stories. He rarely said anything that wasn't thought out and worthy. I had kept that in mind last night as he spun through his reason for calling and I worked through the pot of coffee.

"You know it was Henry Flagler, Rockefeller's Standard Oil partner, who brought the first train down into South Florida?"

"No. But I do now," I said. "Go on."

"It was Flagler who pushed his tracks down the east coast to Palm Beach, where he built the largest winter resort in the world at the time for the rich and powerful New Yorkers like himself.