As a result of 88 million years of isolation from human intervention, 90 percent of the species on Madagascar can be found nowhere else on Earth. Things move a little more quickly with sociology, but the principal persists.

Welcome to St. Croix. Land of unimpeachable enterprise and autonomous commerce. Pride of the wicked and cull of the virtuous. Wanton effete and objectovism incarnate.

Borne, has this sovereign nation, under cloak of night, countless discrete ranks; rogues, royal of blood, sundry of lineage. Devine of endowment and blessed with hallowed Continental serendipity.

This town has tallied as many dreams come true as die, and seldom plays host to anything between. You haven’t heard of it before because many work to keep it so. It is an industry secret among those careered in the parcel of contraband.

But don’t let the location fool you. The tribes here don’t want to be in New York or California.

They want to be right here.

It’s a perfect storm, and they’re in the eye. It is the result of careful planning and reckless impetuosity. Set 20 miles north of the Everglades, it is cradled between East Coast conviction and a West Coast sunset.

The right place, the right time, the right country, and the right people. A friend of wealth and enemy of fame.

The warriors here are post-modern gangsters. Old money thugs. There is a breed here that has not been seen before, and never will again. Endangered wild animals on the preserve. Children raised in crime and bred for success. All of them robbed of their childhoods, yet never quite grew up.

Laws, more here than anywhere else, are a vague, crude approximation of moral right. The law may or may not be enforced, but the dollar always holds weight.

Laws cannot hope to control men so much as limit their power to mess things up. And when money and law dispute, it’s easy to choose between them.

The Social Contract has long since left these parts. And the police make too much money to start enforcing the law.