THE TRUTH MAY BE ELUSIVE in other places, but here in Puerto Madero and La Cigüeña, I believe it never actually exists. Even as events occur, they immediately become something else. An outsider can never know anything for certain, and this is partly because we are mythological creatures, born of conquistadors and sitting on our mountain of gold in El Norte. We aren't believable ourselves, even our existence, so we're told stories, and every story is about one thing: money. It made perfect sense for everyone to try to take my boat. And it makes perfect sense now that Long's story should be buried.

I have to admit, I still feel a bit of the old fear as I walk through the palapas along Puerto Madero's waterfront to the fishing area, where the pangas line the beach. I never saw any fish brought into port ten years ago, but this time I actually see a few, and the man cleaning them suddenly calls my name and smiles. It's my old friend Santiago.

It's difficult to know the nature of this place. I like Santiago, and he still feels like a friend. He has the nicest house in town now, cement and tile, painted a light blue. He tells me what happened to all the people I knew from before. Gordo was killed a year after I left, he says, picking up drugs over the Guatemala border. At least four others were killed, too. Santiago shows me who he says the drug runners are now, a row of identical pangas with new 115-horse outboards. He says they run small loads along the coast, usually to Acapulco but sometimes all the way up to California.

Listening to Santiago very nearly got me killed ten years ago. I tried to recover my stolen outboard engine from his friend's house at night and found a Glock in my face, cocked. It was right here along the slough where these pangas are kept. But I decide to trust him now, because I have few other options.

Santiago says yes, he will go to La Cigüeña and ask around. I pay him generously for this, in advance, which is a mistake. The next day he tells me he's found someone there who will tell him the truth and even cross into Guatemala to find out what he can, since the pirates, Santiago says matter-of-factly, are Guatemalan. This extra day means more money, of course, and I feel all the old scams revving up. But Santiago does go to La Cigüeña the next day, and then, the day after that, I go with him.

It turns out his contact is Israel, the fisherman who originally took me to Long's boat. He isn't drunk this time, but his version of things keeps shifting. First he says he saw Long's boat at 4 A.M., sailing with the lights on, and that it crashed ashore around 5 A.M. The waves were huge, the winds high, and he had to wait several hours for the tide to go out before he could try heroically to get to the boat to rescue whoever might be trapped. Then, a few minutes later, his story is that the boat hit the beach at about 8:30 A.M., and the waves weren't very high at all. There was money on the beach, or no money, or just two dollar bills and a ten. He didn't take anything, of course. The guys who did this are from Guatemala, and then they're not. Drug traffic here is constant, he says, or maybe there's no drug traffic at all. The pangas only go out with gas to refuel larger drug boats.

Talking with Israel is like talking with the new port captain in Puerto Madero. But I'm hoping I'll learn more from the Mexican navy. They recovered the body, and they had divers in the Cúlin for an hour, looking for other victims. They must know something.

The navy base is in Puerto Chiapas, opposite the new cruise-ship port. They take my passport and misunderstand that I'm part of Long's family. Nobody can read my official letter, as it's in English, but the existence of a signed document in multiple copies means everything here. Half a dozen guards melt away.

I wait in an air-conditioned lobby, and Lieutenant Jorge Castillo Hurtado finally comes out. I ask where the body was found, and he refers me to the police. I ask what might have happened, and he refers me to the police. I ask about the EPIRB, but he says the navy has no information about an EPIRB.

Hurtado is a tall man, in a beautiful white uniform. He remains consummately polite, even when I push with questions. The funny thing is that I like him. The whole show works. And as he walks me out to the taxi, he actually opens up a bit. Their force is too small, he says. They're not a big base, like Manzanillo, and they're overwhelmed, unable to deal with all the local drug trafficking. Sure enough, several months later, the Mexican newspaper El Universal will report that the coast of Chiapas has become so dangerous the navy has "initiated a land, sea, and air operative," mobilizing helicopters, airplanes, and blockade ships in search of boats running drugs up from Central America.