"Goddamn!" Chaz cried, a warm trickle running down his fingers.

The blackmailer said, "As you can tell, I'm taking this whole thing very personally. Tell me why you did it and I'll row you back to the docks."

"I just can't."

"Chazzie, you know that I know exactly what happened. All I'm asking you is why."

The guy had a point. He already knew everything, and Chaz wasn't keen on getting smacked again.

"What if you're wearing a wire?" Chaz was pinching his nostrils, trying to stanch the bleeding. Now he sounded like a cartoon duck.

Again the blackmailer's grin gleamed in the starlight. "You're priceless," he said, peeling off his T-shirt. Then he held the flashlight at arm's length and aimed it back toward his bare chest, which was quickly darkening with mosquitoes.

"See? No hidden microphones," he said to Chaz. "Feel better now?'

"I guess."

"Then answer the question, please."

"I thought Joey had busted me," Chaz heard himself say. "I thought she'd figured out the water scam."

"And for that you heaved her overboard? In the middle of the fucking Gulf Stream?"

"You don't understand," Chaz said. "If she ever blew the whistle on me and Mr. Hammernut… you can't possibly understand the implications. The thing is, I was out of options. If only she…"

"What, Chaz?"

If only she'd given me a reason not to do it, Chaz thought. Like showing me the new will.

"Never mind," he said.

The blackmailer began paddling with more purpose, and Chaz marveled at how briskly they were gliding across the water. Being averse to exercise, he'd never been a fan of canoes; a ski boat powered by a two-hundred-horse Mercury was Chaz's idea of a dream ride.

"How's the shnoz?" the blackmailer asked him.

"It hurts." Chaz's nose had swollen to the size of a bell pepper.

Soon they came to the long canal through which they'd entered the bay, and Chaz was immensely relieved. The blackmailer was taking him back to Flamingo.

Suddenly the man stopped rowing and leaned back. Chaz could see the shine of his sweat and hear the ravenous buzz of insects on his face and chest. "Want some bug spray?" Chaz asked.

The man chuckled. "No thanks." He extended the paddle to Chaz and said, "Your turn, killer."

"What?"

"Yeah, I'm whipped."

Chaz took the paddle and examined it as if it were an intricately engineered device.

"Please don't tell me you've never rowed a canoe," the blackmailer said.

"Of course I have."

Chaz tried to remember the last time-way back in grad school, on some scummy lake in North Carolina. He and another student were helping a professor trace the dissolution of muskrat feces in bottom sediment. Chaz had ended the day with oozing blisters on the palms of both hands. He couldn't swing a golf club for a month.

"Hurry up, Chazzie, we're drifting back to Whitewater."

"Sorry, but I'm not up for this. My head's killing me."

"You'll be fine."

"But I'm still bleeding, for God's sake."

"Did you ever see Deliverance?" the blackmailer said. "Remember what happened to the chubby guy?"

Chaz Perrone started paddling.

Being labeled a crook was a new experience for Karl Rolvaag, and it kept him awake much of the night. He was more intrigued than indignant, for it was impossible to feel insulted by someone like Charles Perrone. The blackmail accusation was so boggling that the detective viewed it as a critical twist in the case, a clue no less important than the fingernails in that soggy bale of weed.

Rolvaag stood in his ritual cold shower for nearly twenty minutes, replaying in his head the odd conversation with Joey Perrone's husband. He didn't doubt that the man was being extorted, but by whom? And with what sort of information?

Perrone had snidely referred to a "bogus eyewitness," which raised in Rolvaag's mind the tantalizing possibility of a real one. Yet such a scenario would require that the witness be nearly as venal and ice-blooded as Perrone himself; someone capable of watching a woman murdered and not trying to stop it; someone who, instead of rushing to the police, would go directly to the killer with a demand for hush money.

Given the pestilential abundance of lowlifes in South Florida, it was surely possible that Perrone's crime had been randomly observed by someone equally degenerate. Still, Rolvaag thought it more likely that the blackmailer wasn't a fellow cruise passenger but, rather, some enterprising scammer who'd read about Joey Perrone's disappearance in the newspapers. In any event, the detective was not displeased that the threat had driven Perrone into such paranoid agitation that he'd accuse a police detective of masterminding the plot. Criminals in such a ragged state of mind often made reckless mistakes, and it was Rol-

vaag's hope that the remorseless widower would continue on a path of self-sabotage.

Most tantalizing was the link between Perrone and Samuel Johnson Hammernut. Rolvaag had found nothing to substantiate Perrone's flimsy story that the sixty-thousand-dollar Humvee had been a gift from his wife, with Hammernut acting innocently as a middleman. Rolvaag believed that the farm tycoon had intended the Hummer- and one could only imagine what else-as payola for Chaz. It had been Rolvaag's observation that men like Red Hammernut were not spontaneously generous, and usually demanded something valuable in return.

What would a lazy, unscholarly biologist such as Perrone have to offer? The detective had a hunch.

Then there was the remarkable Last Will and Testament of Joey Perrone, which had excited even the laconic Captain Gallo. If the will proved to be bogus, the forger was most likely the blackmailer. What better way to turn up the heat on Perrone than to chum up the cops with a $13 million motive for murder?

However, if the will was genuine…

The detective turned off the water and stood there, dripping and thinking. He wasn't sure if the damn thing was legit or not. One handwriting expert said the signature looked authentic; another thought it was a fake. The trust officers in charge of Joey Perrone's fortune had a signed will in their files, but they had balked at providing a copy in the absence of a death certificate.

Whether or not the document delivered anonymously to Rolvaag proved genuine, he intended to do everything in his power to prevent Mr. Perrone from collecting a nickel from Mrs. Perrone's estate. The surest way to accomplish that, in the detective's view, was to lock Mr. Perrone away for the rest of his natural life. That mission had come to occupy Karl Rolvaag so exclusively that he had temporarily postponed the chore of boxing his belongings for the move to Minnesota.

He toweled off and pulled on a pair of jeans. On his way to the kitchen he noticed that another sheet of paper had been slipped under his door, presumably by Mrs. Shulman or one of her operatives. The repeat intrusion was enough to make the detective consider a blocking measure, such as shag carpeting, but he'd be vacating the apartment soon enough.

Rolvaag picked up the paper. It was a flyer featuring a color photograph of a frail-looking, rheumy-eyed dog:

LOST!!! Pinchot, 11-year old male Pomeranian (neutered)

Cataracts, diverticulitis, gout

If found, please do not approach or attempt to handle!

Please contact Bert or Addie Miller at Sawgrass Grove 9-L

$250 Reward!!!

Rolvaag was heartsick. Even though the condominium board had warned the Millers about letting their senescent pooch off the leash, the detective felt personally responsible for the fate of little Pinchot- hobbled, half-blind and easy pickings for a prowling python. Rolvaag resolved to spend the remainder of his Saturday searching the property for his escaped pets, one of which doubtlessly would be slowed by a telltale Pomeranian-sized lump. Of course the Millers would be consoled and fully compensated.