"It's a second-day lead, Skip—"

"Here we go again, Mr. Journalism School." Wiley was gnawing his lower lip, a habit manifested only when he composed a news story. "You got some good details in here. The red Royal Tourister. The black Ray-Bans. That's good, Ricky. Why don't you toss out the rest of this shit and move the juicy stuff up top? Do your readers a favor, for once. Don't make 'em go on a scavenger hunt for the goodies."

Bloodworth was getting queasy. He wanted to defend himself, but it was lunacy to argue with Wiley.

"Maybe later, Skip. Right now I'm jammed up for the first edition."

Wiley jabbed a pencil at the video screen, which displayed Bloodworth's story in luminous green text. "Brutal?That's not the adjective you want. When I think of brutal I think of chain saws, ice picks, ax handles. Not rubber alligators. No, that's mysterious,wouldn't you say?"

"How about bizarre?"

"A bit overworked these days, but not bad. When's the last time you used bizarre?"

"I don't recall, Skip."

"Try last week, in that story about the Jacuzzi killing in Hialeah. Remember? So it's too early to use bizarreagain. I think mysteriousis the ticket."

"Whatever you say, Skip."

Wiley was boggling, when he wanted to be.

"What's your theory, Ricky?"

"Some sex thing, I guess. Sparky rents himself a bimbo, dresses up in this goofy outfit—"

"Perhaps a little S-and-M?"

"Yeah. Things go too far, he gags on the rubber alligator, the girl panics and calls for help. The muscle arrives, hacks up Sparky, crams the torso into the suitcase, and heaves it into Biscayne Bay. The goons grab the girl and take off in Sparky's car."

Wiley eyed him. "So you don't believe it's murder?"

"Accidental homicide. That's my prediction." Bloodworth was starting to relax. Wiley was rocking the chair, a look of amusement on his face. Bloodworth noticed that Wiley's long choppy mane was starting to show gray among the blond.

Bloodworth said, a little more confidently, "I think Harper's death was a freak accident. I think the girl will come forward before too long, and that'll be the end of it."

Wiley chuckled. "Well, it's a damn good yarn." He stood up and pinched Ricky's shoulder affectionately. "But I don't have to tell youhow to hit the hype button, do I?"

For the first edition, Ricky Bloodworth moved the paragraph about the coconut oil higher in the story, and changed the word brutalto mysteriousin the lead.

The rest of the afternoon Bloodworth spent on the phone, gathering mawkish quotes about Sparky Harper, who seemed venerated by everyone except his former wives. As for blood relatives, the best Bloodworth could scrounge up was a grown son, a lawyer in Marco Island, who said of his father:

"He was a dreamer, and he honestly meant well."

Not exactly a tearjerker, but Bloodworth stuck it in the story anyway.

After finishing, he reread the piece once more. It had a nice flow, he thought, and the tone graduated smoothly: shock first, then outrage and, finally, sorrow.

It's good, a page-one contender, Bloodworth told himself as he walked down to the Coke machine.

While he was away, Skip Wiley crept up and snatched the print-out of the story off his desk. He was pretending to mark it up with a blue pencil when Bloodworth came back.

"What now, Skip?"

"Your lead's no good."

"Come on, I toldyou—"

"Hey, Ace, it's not a second-day story anymore. Something broke while you were diddling around. News,they call it. Check with the police desk, you'll see."

"What are you talking about?"

Wiley grinned as he tossed the pages into Ricky Bloodworth's lap. "The cops caught the guy," he said. "Ten minutes ago."

Brian Keyes slouched on a worn bench in the lobby of the Dade County jail, waiting to see the creep the cops just caught. Keyes looked at his wristwatch and muttered. Twenty minutes. Twenty goddamn minutes since he'd given his name to the dull-eyed sergeant behind the bullet-proof glass.

Keyes had run into this problem before; it had something to do with the way he looked. Although he stood five-ten, a respectable height, he somehow failed to exude the authority so necessary for survival in rough bars, alleys, police stations, jails, and McDonald's drive-throughs. Keyes was adolescently slender, with blue eyes and a smooth face. He looked younger than his thirty-two years, which, in his line of work, was no particular asset. An ex-girlfriend once said, on her way out the door, that he reminded her of a guy who'd just jumped the wall of a Jesuit seminary. To disguise his boyishness, Brian Keyes had today chosen a brown suit with a finely striped Cardin tie. He was clean-shaven and his straight brown hair was neatly combed. Still, he had a feeling that his overall appearance was inadequate—not slick enough to be a lawyer, not frazzled enough to be a social worker, and not old enough to be a private investigator. Which he actually was.

So the turtle-eyed sergeant ignored him.

Keyes was surrounded by misery. On his left, a rotund Latin woman wailed into an embroidered handkerchief and nibbled on a rosary. "Pobrecito,he's in yail again."

On the other side, an anemic-looking teenager with yellow teeth carved an obscenity into the bench with a Phillips screwdriver. Keyes studied him neutrally until the kid looked up and snapped, "My brother's in for agg assault!"

"You must be very proud," Keyes said.

This place never changed. The hum and clang of the electronic doors were enough to split your skull, but the mayhem in the lobby was worse, worse even than the cell blocks. The lobby was crawling with bitter, bewildered souls, each on the sad trail of a loser. Girlfriends, ex-wives, mothers, brothers, bondsmen, lawyers, pimps, parole officers.

And me, Keyes thought. The public defender's office had tried to make the case sound interesting, but Keyes figured it had to be a lost cause. There'd be some publicity, which he didn't need, and decent money, which he did. This was a big-time case, all right. Some nut hacks up the president of the Chamber of Commerce and dumps him in the bay—just what South Florida needed, another grisly murder. Keyes wondered if the dismemberment fad would ever pass.

From the governor on down, everybody had wanted this one solved fast. And the cops had come through.

"Mr. Keyes!" The sergeant's voice echoed from a cheap speaker in the ceiling.

Keyes signed the log, clipped on a plastic visitor's badge, and walked through three sets of noisy iron gates. A trusty accompanied him into an elevator that smelled like an NFL locker room. The elevator stopped on the fifth floor.

Ernesto Cabal, alias Little Ernie, alias No-Way Jose, was sitting disconsolately on the crapper when the trusty opened the cell for Brian Keyes.

Ernesto held out a limp, moist hand. Keyes sat down on a wooden folding chair.

"You speak English?"

"Sure," Ernesto said. "I been here sixteen years. By hereI mean here, dees country." He pulled up his pants, flushed the John, and stretched out on a steel cot. "They say I kill dees man Harper."

"That's what they say."

"I dint."

Ernesto was a small fellow, sinewy and tough-looking, except for the eyes. A lot of cons had rabbit eyes, but not this one, Keyes thought. Ernesto's brown eyes were large and wet. Scared puppy eyes.

Keyes opened his briefcase.

"You a lawyer, Mr. Keyes?"

"Nope. I'm an investigator. I was hired by your lawyers to help you."

"Yeah?"

"That's right."

"You're a very young guy to be an investigator," Ernesto said. "How old? Dirty, dirty-one?"

"Good guess."

Ernesto sat up. "You any good?"

"No, I'm totally incompetent. A complete moron. Now I've got a question for you, chico.Did you do it?"