Chapter 1 Out on the cold, blustery end of a Brooklyn pier, Herman Rios and Angel Oviedo had just caught a flounder when death literally drifted into their lives. "What the hell is that?" said Herman as his friend reeled in the unhappy fish. Prior to this moment, they had never seen one of the bottom-dwelling creatures in its natural state. Angel stared at the fish, which had both eyes on one side of its flat body. He dropped it on the concrete and backed away fast. "Throw it back," urged Herman. "That bastit must've grew up near a nuclear power plant." "Least I caught something," Angel said, glancing at his friend's empty bucket. Herman shrugged. He bent down and rummaged through his tackle box until he found a new lure. The guy at the bait shop had sworn by it: The head was lead and the body was comprised of four little pieces of surgical tubing. Angel stared out at where his line led down into the gray-green water. He was hoping for a few stripers, which were supposed to run well in the cold weather. After a while he grew tired of watching the filament and his gaze traveled beyond the sheltered cove. Red Hook was a humble neighborhood of warehouses and machine shops, but the waterfront offered a spectacular view of New York Harbor lying under a vast cloud-dappled plain of sky. Across the south stretched the spare, simple span of the Verrazano-Narrows Bridge. To the southwest, across the gleaming harbor, lay the wooded shoreline of Staten Island. The Statue of Liberty stood in the middle of the harbor; she seemed so close Angel almost believed he could chuck a rock and hit her green torch. Some anonymous island covered with low brick buildings sat in the water farther north, and then the view was dominated by the southern skyline of Manhattan, bold glass buildings reflecting back the morning sun. There was a huge recent hole there, but Angel preferred not to think about it. He glanced at his line again--still quiet--and then something moving in along the edge of the cove caught his eye. "You see that?" he asked his friend. "What you think that is?" Herman squinted at an object bobbing along in the bright choppy water. His eyes grew big. "It looks like some kind of cwawfin." Indeed it was, a homemade wooden box just four and a half feet long. Copyright (c) 2007 by Gabriel Cohen. All rights reserved. Excerpted from The Graving Dock by Gabriel Cohen All rights reserved by the original copyright owners. Excerpts are provided for display purposes only and may not be reproduced, reprinted or distributed without the written permission of the publisher.