PROLOGUE
In the early 18th century, Pass-a-Grille had been called “Passe-a-Grilleurs” - ‘the Passageway of the Grillers’ - by the sailors who camped there, grilling their fresh-caught fish and sucking down jugs of rum on the soft white sands, tourists amidst the sea-oats and grasses that were otherwise the sole residents of the island. Located at the Southern tip of the chain of barrier islands separating Pinellas County’s mainland from the blue-green waters of the Gulf of Mexico, the little community’s two-and-a-half-miles of sugar-sand beach had become ‘home base’ for a group of young men and women who came of age in the late 60’s and early 70′s, a time when the island lifestyle, laid-back and easy-going, created an environment and ethos that encouraged them to establish careers in what was known as ‘The Trade’. Their lives would become an ongoing adventure, dodging law enforcement agents and would-be hijackers while travelling to remote and occasionally exotic places to meet often dangerous people, while making (and sometimes losing) immense fortunes in the process.
