Minutes after Ricca departed, Chaz heard Tool come in the front door. He poked his anvil-size head in the bedroom and asked with dull indifference if everything was cool.

"Yeah. Peachy."

"Who was the girl? I seen her car here before."

"Grief counselor," Chaz said.

Tool eyed the doctor's trousers and boxer shorts, which were crumpled in a heap by the bed. He said, "When my momma passed, they sent a Pentecostal preacher by the house."

"Everybody's got their own way of coping. Did you find your stick-ems?"

"Just one so far. But it's brand-new." Tool pivoted to exhibit the shaved spot where he'd slapped the fentanyl patch on his shoulder blade. "Maybe I'll go crash for a spell," he said.

Charles Perrone waved. "Sweet dreams."

He waited until Tool disappeared into the guest room, then reached into the nightstand and took out his new gun. Overwhelmed by the selection at Wal-Mart, he'd gone to a pawnshop in Margate, where an imaginatively tattooed neo-Nazi had sold him a basic Colt.38. Sitting in bed now, Chaz hefted the blue-plated pistol from one hand to the other and wondered about its murky provenance. For all he knew, it could have been used in some vicious robbery, or even to kill a person. There was a box of hollow-point bullets in the drawer, but Chaz was hesitant to load the weapon. He'd once heard on CNN that homeowners who buy guns for protection are about fifty times more likely to shoot themselves, or be shot, than they are to cap an intruder. Since he'd never fired anything more powerful than a BB rifle, Chaz inserted the bullets with the utmost care.

After returning the.38 to the drawer, he sank into a melancholy rumination. What if flaky Ricca was right? He'd purged every remnant of his dead wife from the house, and still his pecker remained obstinately on strike. Although he'd never confess it to Ricca, the only time Chaz experienced the slightest twitch of spontaneous lust was when he thought about Joey. That morning in the shower, for example, he'd been going over the crime moment by moment in his head-why, he didn't know. Remembering the tang of the ocean; the drizzling rain on his face; the amber lights lining the rails of the deck; the low, heavy drone of the ship's engines.

And Joey's ankles. That's what had done it for him-remembering how silky and warm her ankles had felt when he'd grabbed them. God, what outstanding legs!

Feeling a blissfully familiar pulsation, Chaz had peeked down to greet his little perpendicular accomplice. Avidly he had hunched over on himself, kneading and tugging to no avail, until finally the hot water ran out and all was lost.

So, it's possible that Ricca is right, he thought. Maybe his subconscious hadn't yet let go of Joey, though it was only the sexual part of the marriage that he missed. Otherwise I'm as steady as an ox, Chaz assured himself; I did what had to be done. Sooner or later his wife would have caught him screwing around and, out of spite, ratted on him for faking the Everglades data. She would have ruined everything-his credentials as a biologist, his secret pact with Red, his whole golden future.

Because she knew the truth. Of course she did. Hadn't she seen it with her own eyeballs, him forging the water charts?

I only did what was necessary, Chaz thought, and I could do it again.

On impulse he snatched the phone and dialed a golfing buddy, a well-known wild man on the weekend club scene. "You know those pills you tried to feed me at Richardson's bachelor party? I've got a friend wants to try the stuff."

"A friend. Sure, Chaz."

"Jesus, they're not for me! My wife just died, in case you hadn't heard. What kind of a heartless prick do you think I am?"

"Sorry, man. I'm really sorry. How many does he want? Your friend."

"I don't know-what's in a starter kit?" Chaz asked. "Haifa dozen?"

"No problemo."

"And you said they're stronger than what doctors give out?"

"Oh yeah. The FDA definitely would not approve."

"Where you at now? Have you got 'em on you?"

"I'm hitting a bucket of balls at Boca Pines North. Your friend's in a hurry, huh?"

"Yeah. I think he's got a hot date."

"Meet me at the clubhouse in, like, an hour."

"Perfect," Chaz said. "I owe you one."

"Hey, don't worry about it." Then, after a discomfited pause: "Man, it's really terrible what happened to Joey-that's gotta be so fucking rough. How you hangin' in?"

"Oh, some days are better than others," said Chaz Perrone.

After leaving Kipper Garth's law office, Mick Stranahan went back to Dinner Key to see if Joey had returned to the marina. There was no sign of his kayak or the rented Suburban.

Stranahan didn't feel like driving up to Boca, but he couldn't wait in Coconut Grove all afternoon; these days he had no patience for anything but fishing. From his billfold he retrieved a scrap of paper on which he had written the tag number of the blue Ford belonging to Chaz Perrone's mistress of the moment. Only two investigators at the State Attorney's Office remembered Stranahan favorably enough to help, and he phoned one of them as he headed north on the interstate. By the time he passed the county line, Stranahan had a name, age, address, marital status and occupation.

Ricca Jane Spillman held a cosmetology license from the state of Florida, so it was simply a matter of figuring out where she worked. Stranahan made a pit stop in Hallandale to find a pay phone, ripping a sheaf of beauty-salon listings from the Yellow Pages. He narrowed his search to the western suburbs of northern Broward, and after only fifty-five minutes of blind calling he located Chaz's girlfriend. She was a senior stylist/colorist at a shop called Hair Jordan, and by chance she happened to have an opening at 5:30 p.m.

Like many of Boca's finest establishments, the salon was shoe-horned into a coral-colored strip mall. Mick Stranahan parked the rust-eaten Cordoba in the rear, where it was less likely to draw stares. He drew a few himself as he walked through the door of Hair Jordan in his grease-stained shirt, faded khakis and scuffed Top-Siders. Taking cover behind a magazine, Stranahan attempted to immerse himself in the travails of Eminem, a deep though conflicted young man. Apparently wealth, fame and unlimited sex are nice, but true spiritual happiness must come from within.

"Mr. Smith? Hi."

It was Ricca, motioning for Stranahan to follow her. "You can bring the magazine if you like."

He was somewhat embarrassed by his hair, which was tacky with salt and piled oddly to one side, a result of the windy boat ride across Biscayne Bay. Ricca said nothing about it, but during the shampoo she commented admiringly on his deep tan. Stranahan said that his job kept him out in the sun.

"Yeah? Where do you work?" she asked, lightly toweling his head.

"On a cruise ship."

"Oh."

Stranahan watched her expression closely in the mirror. "You ever been on one?"

"A cruise? No," Ricca said, less bubbly than before.

"The ships are like a city, they're so big."

She removed a pair of shears from the sterilizer. "How short do you like it-tops of the ears?"

"I was thinking of a buzz cut, like Clint Eastwood had in that Grenada movie."

"Okay."

"Just kidding," Stranahan said. He let her work in silence for a few minutes-Ricca obviously distracted-before he started up again. "Do you get seasick? Lots of people do."

"Sometimes," she said. "What exactly do you do on the ship? Your job, I mean."

"Security."

"Oh wow."

Stranahan bowed his head to accommodate the arc of her trimming. "As I said, it's like a city. Good citizens, bad citizens."

"But it's mostly drunks, right? They don't have, like, serious crimes out there."

"You'd be surprised," he said. "Just the other night, some guy pushed his wife overboard."