THE BEGINNING OF THE END COMES ONE SULTRY NIGHT IN KEY WEST.
An evening like so many here, Nathaniel Linville thinks, even as he wonders if he’ll be around to ever witness another. Linville has just used the last of his cocaine. It’s only a temporary fix, though, something to stave off the crushing, terrifying pain of withdrawal from his other addiction, heroin. ¶ He walks out of his apartment—its floor covered with newspapers, a month’s worth of dirty clothes, and scattered piles of needles—and into the darkened streets. He has a hundred dollars in his pocket, what’s left of his money. He owes far more than that amount to every dealer in town, so this is a fishing expedition, and a blind one at that.
In the shadows, just off a backstreet, he spots a man sitting on a piece of old coral rock, exactly the type of man, Linville knows after all of these years, that he’s looking for. He sits down next to him. The man pulls out a crack pipe, takes a hit, and then offers it to Linville. Linville inhales a hit and wipes his dripping nose—a telltale sign that the dope sickness is already beginning—and then tells the man that he is looking for that “boy,” slang for the heroin he so desperately wants.
“I got you,” the man says. “I got you.”
Linville hands him all of his money. He knows better, but the cocaine and the fear and the sickness override any logic. The man walks away, swearing he’ll be right back. Just wait right here. Linville does as he’s told. The hours tick away. He eventually returns to his apartment, empty-handed, and sits on the edge of his bed. He is totally broke, out of drugs, and shaking with the sickness. He decides at that moment that he needs help.
It’s eleven years later now, the winter of 2021. Nathaniel Linville is standing in the bow of a skiff that’s floating on a turtle grass flat near Man Key, just off of Key West. He is tall and
