Desie resisted the impulse to comment upon the killer's platinum-tinted eyebrows.

"How exactly do you pronounce your name?" Mr. Gash asked. "Dez-eye-rotta? Is that close?"

" 'Desie' is fine."

"Like the Cuban guy on the old Lucy show."

"Close enough."

"Take off your earrings," Mr. Gash told her. "I've got a friend in Miami, an Italian girl, she'll look wicked hot in those. Almost as hot as you."

Desie removed the pearl studs and handed them over.

Mr. Gash said, "You're way too pretty for that crybaby porker of a husband. And since I haven't been laid in six days, I say what the hell. I say go for it."

Twilly tensed. "Don't be an idiot. Clapley isn't paying you to molest the wives of his friends."

"Friend? According to Mr. Clapley, Stoat's nothing – and I quote – but a 'turd fondler.' Besides," said Mr. Gash, "my job is cleaning out the troublemakers. And, Mrs. Stoat, sleeping with a troublemaker makes you a troublemaker, too."

Desie pretended to stare out the fogged-up windows. A tear crawled down one cheek.

"The way I see it," Mr. Gash went on, "is a murder-suicide. The young hothead boyfriend. The married woman who refuses to leave her rich husband. The lovers argue. Boyfriend goes postal. Whacks the broad, whacks the puppy dog, and then finally he whacks himself. Of course, they find the weapon" – Mr. Gash, nodding at his own – "at the scene."

Twilly said, "Not very original."

"The murdered dog makes it different. That's what the cops'll be talking about," said Mr. Gash. " 'What kind of creep would hurt an innocent dog?' Speaking of which, before I shoot you I've gotta ask: Where'd you get that damn ear, the one you sent to Stoat? Jesus, was he freaked!"

Twilly shifted slightly in the driver's seat. He braced his back against the door and casually took his right arm off the steering wheel.

"You really collect those horrible tapes?" Desie's voice was like acid.

"By the trunkload." Mr. Gash flashed a savage smile.

For a few moments, a chorus of ragged breathing was the only sound in the car; all three humans, including Mr. Gash, were on edge. Twilly glanced over the seat to check on McGuinn, who had finished off the dog food and was now mouthing the paper sack. The Lab wore an all-too-familiar expression of postprandial contentment.

God, Twilly thought, please don't let him fart. This psycho punk would shoot him in a heartbeat.

Mr. Gash was saying, "Whoever finds your bodies, the first thing they'll do is call 911. You could be nothing but skeletons and still they'll call emergency." Mr. Gash paused to relish the irony. "Know what I'm going to do, Mrs. Stoat? I'm going to get the tape of that phone call, as a remembrance of our one and only night together. What do you think of that?"

"I think you're a monster."

" 'Possible human remains.' That's what the cops call those cases."

Desie Stoat said, "Please don't shoot my dog."

"You crack me up," said Mr. Gash.

"I'll do anything you want. Anything."

Desie sat forward and pinched the damp sleeve of Mr. Gash's houndstooth coat.

"Anything,Mrs. Stoat? Because I've got a very active imagination."

"Yes, we can tell by your wardrobe," said Twilly. He drew his right hand into a fist, mentally calibrating the distance to Mr. Gash's chin.

Desie was saying, "Please. There's no need to do that."

Mr. Gash shrugged. "Sorry, babe. The mutt dies first."

"Then I hope you're into necrophilia," she told him, trembling, "because if you shoot McGuinn, you're in for the worst sex of your whole life. That's a promise."

Mr. Gash pursed his waxy-looking lips and grew pensive. Twilly could tell that Desie's threat had hit home; the killer's kinky fantasies were in ruins.

Finally he said, "OK, I'll let him go."

Desie frowned. "Here? You can't just let him go."

"Why the hell not."

Twilly said, "He's been sick. He's on medicine."

"Better sick than dead."

"He's a dog, not a turtle. You don't just let him go," Desie protested. "He doesn't know how to hunt for himself – what's he going to eat out here?"

"You guys, for starters," said Mr. Gash. "Dogs go for fresh meat, is my understanding."

Desie blanched. Mr. Gash was paying close attention to her reaction, savoring it. Twilly saw an opportunity. He coiled his shoulder muscles, drew a deep breath and –

Then it hit him, rank and unmistakable. McGuinn!

Mr. Gash's nose twitched. His face contorted into a gargoyle scowl. "Aw, who cut the cheese? Did hedo that!"

"What are you talking about?" Twilly, laboring to breathe through his mouth.

"I don't smell anything," insisted Desie, though her eyes had begun to well.

"Your damn dog passed gas!"

Mr. Gash was up on his knees, cursing furiously and waving the semiautomatic. McGuinn wore that liquid expression of pure lovable innocence well known to all owners of Labrador retrievers. The Look had evolved over hundreds of years as an essential survival trait, to charm exasperated humans into forgiveness.

Unfortunately, Mr. Gash was immune. "Roll down the goddamn windows!" he gasped at Twilly.

"I can't. They're electric and you took the car keys."

Mr. Gash dug the ignition key out of his pocket and twisted it into the switch on the steering column. Then he threw himself across Twilly's lap and feverishly began mashing all the window buttons on the door panel. Mr. Gash remained in that position long enough to gag Twilly with a miasmal body funk that, by comparison, made dog flatulence smell like orange blossoms.

Had Twilly been able to draw an untainted breath, he likely could have reached around and broken Mr. Gash's neck, or at least his firing arm. But the stench off the gamy hound-stooth suit had a paralyzing effect, and by the time Twilly recovered, Mr. Gash had thrust the upper half of his torso across the front seat and placed the gun barrel squarely between McGuinn's calm, still-guileless eyes.

"You were home free, Fido. Then you had to go and fart."

Desie cried out and threw both arms around the Lab's trunk-like neck.

For several moments, nobody moved. A piney breeze rushed through the open windows of the Roadmaster. Twilly hoped it might refresh Mr. Gash and cool his fury.

It did not. He cocked the hammer.

"Back to Plan A," he said.

Twilly dove across the seat and slammed his right fist into Mr. Gash's rib cage, the nearest availing target. The punch didn't land right – Twilly had expected the sting of bone against bone but the impact was softer, as if he'd slugged a sofa. He could not have foreseen that Mr. Gash would be wearing, beneath the jacket, holster and long-sleeved shirt, a padded corset of cured rattlesnake hides.

The device had been fashioned by the same Washington Avenue upholstery wizard who'd customized Mr. Gash's iguana-skin sex harness. Why Mr. Gash would don a corset undergarment was a question Twilly never would get to ask. The answer: The killer had a vain streak when it came to his physique. He was driven to take measures that artificially streamlined his midsection, which in recent years had shown signs of incipient tubbiness – an unnerving development that Mr. Gash bitterly blamed on the dull sedentary lifestyle of a hit man. It was an occupation that neither required nor allowed much physical exercise; plane trips, car rides, endless stakeouts in motel rooms and bars. For Mr. Gash, already self-conscious about his short stature, the sight of a marbled, thickening belly was intolerable. A discreetly tailored corset seemed a good temporary solution, at least until he found time to join a spa. And because he lived on South Beach, not just any corset would do. Yet that's all Mr. Gash could find when he went shopping: starchy medical corsets, white or beige; no colors, no patterns. Mr. Gash wanted something with elan, something that didn't look like a flab-binding swathe, something he wouldn't be ashamed to display when stripping off his clothes for the women he took home, something intriguing enough to divert their eyes away from his gelatinous tummy.