Bernard Squires struggled to remain cool and disdainful. "Bluffing is a waste of time," he said.

"I couldn't agree more." From a breast pocket Moffitt took a business card, which he gave to Squires. "That's the reporter who'll be doing the story. He'll probably be calling you in a few days."

Squires' hand was trembling, so he slapped the card flat on the table. It read:

Thomas P. Krome

Staff Writer

The Register

"A real prick," Moffitt added. "You'll like him."

Bernard Squires picked up the reporter's card and tore it in half. The gesture was meant to be contemptuous, but the ATF agent seemed vastly entertained.

"So Mr. Tarbone doesn't mind reading about himself in the press? That's good. Guy like him needs a thick hide." Moffitt rose. "But you might want to warn him, Bernie, about Grange."

"What about it?"

"Very conservative little place. Folks here seem pretty serious about their religion. Everywhere you go there's a shrine to one holy thing or another – haven't you noticed?"

Dismally Squires thought of the gimp with the bloody holes in his hands and the weird couple chanting among the turtles.

"People around here," Moffitt went on, "they do not like sin. Not one damn bit. Which means they won't be too wild about gangsters, Bernie. Gangsters from Chicago or anyplace else. When this story breaks in the paper, don't expect a big ticker-tape parade for your man Richard the Icepick. Just like you shouldn't expect the Grange town fathers to do backflips for your building permits and sewer rights and so forth. You follow what I'm saying?"

Bernard Squires held himself erect by pinching the chairback with both elbows. He sensed the agent shifting here and there behind him, then he heard the doorknob turn.

"Any questions?" came Moffitt's voice.

"No questions."

"Excellent. I'll go find the ladies. It's been nice chatting with you, Bernie."

"Drop dead," said Squires.

He heard the door open, and Moffitt's laughter trailing down the hall.

Without rising, Demencio said: "You're early. Where's the lucky lady?"

"She's got an appointment," said Tom Krome.

"You bring the money?"

"Sure did."

Trish invited him inside. It was a peculiar scene at the kitchen counter: she and her husband in yellow latex gloves, scrubbing the shells of JoLayne's baby turtles.

Krome picked up one the cooters, upon which a bearded face had been painted.

"Don't ask," Demencio said.

"Who's it supposed to be?"

"One of the apostles, maybe a saint. Don't really matter." Demencio was despondently buffing a tiny carapace to perfection.

Trish added: "The paint comes right off with Windex and water. It won't hurt 'em."

Tom Krome carefully placed the cooter in the tank with the others. "Need some help?"

Trish said no, thanks, they were almost done. She remarked upon how attached they'd become to the little buggers. "They'll eat right out of your fingers."

"Is that right."

"Lettuce and even raw hamburger."

"What my wife's trying to say," Demencio cut in, "is we'd like to make JoLayne an offer. We'd appreciate the opportunity."

"To do what?"

"Buy 'em. All forty-five," he said. "How's two grand for the bunch?"

The man wasn't joking. He wanted to own the turtles.

Trish chirped: "They'll have a good home here, Mr. Krome."

"I'm sure they would. But I can't sell them, I'm sorry. JoLayne has her heart set."

The couple plainly were disappointed. Krome took out his billfold. "It wouldn't be hard to catch your own. The lakes are full of'em."

Demencio said, "Yeah, yeah." He finished cleaning the last turtle and stepped to the sink to wash up. "I told you," he muttered to his wife.

Tom Krome paid the baby-sitting fee with hundred-dollar bills. Demencio took the money without counting it; Trish's job.

"How about some coffee cake?" she offered.

Krome said sure. He figured JoLayne would be tied up at the real estate office for a while. Also, he felt the need to act friendly after squelching the couple's cooter enterprise.

To give Demencio a boost, he said: "I like what you did with the Madonna. Those red tears."

"Yeah? You think it looks real?"

"One-hundred-proof jugular."

"Food coloring," Trish confided. She set two slices of walnut cinnamon coffee cake in front of Krome. "It took a day or so for us to get the mixture just right," she added, "but we did it. Nobody else in Florida's got one that cries blood. Perfumedblood! You want butter or margarine?"

"Butter's fine."

Demencio said the morning's first busload of Christian pilgrims was due soon. "From South Carolina – we're talkin' hellfire and brimstone, a damn tough crowd," he mused. "If theygo for it, we'll know it's good."

"Oh, it's good," Trish said, loyally.

As Krome buttered the coffee cake, Demencio asked: "You see the papers? They said you was dead. Burned up in a house."

"So I heard. It was news to me."

"What was that all about? How does somethin' screwy like that happen?" He sounded suspicious.

Tom Krome said, "It was another man who died. A case of mistaken identity."

Trish was intrigued. "Just like in the movies!"

"Yep." Krome ate quickly.

Demencio made a skeptical remark about the bruise on Krome's cheek – Bodean Gazzer's last earthly footprint. Trish said it must hurt like the dickens.

"Fell off a boat. No big deal," Krome said, rising. "Thanks for the breakfast. I'd better run – JoLayne's waiting on her cooters."

"Don't you wanna count 'em?"

Of course, Krome already had. "Naw, I trust you," he said to Demencio.

He grabbed the corners of the big aquarium and hoisted it. Trish held the front door open. Krome didn't make it to the first step before he heard the cry, quavering and subhuman; the sound of distilled suffering, something from a torture pit.

Krome froze in the doorway.

Trish, staring past him: "Uh-oh. I thought he was asleep." A slender figure in white moved across the living room toward them. Demencio swiftly intervened, prodding it backward with a long-handled tuna gaff.

"Nyyahh froohhmmmm! Hoodey nyyahh!"the frail figure yodeled.

Demencio said, sternly: "That'll be enough from you."

Incredulous, Tom Krome edged back into the house. "Sinclair?"

The prospect of losing the cooters had put him into a tailspin. Trish had prepared hot tea and led him to the spare bedroom, so he wouldn't see them swabbing the holy faces off the turtle shells. That (she'd warned Demencio) might send the poor guy off the deep end.

To make sure Sinclair slept, she'd spiked his chamomile with a buffalo-sized dose of NyQuil. It wasn't enough. He shuffled groggily into the living room at the worst possible moment, just as the baby cooters were being carried away. Sinclair's initial advance was repelled by Demencio and the rounded side of the gaff. A second lunge aborted when the crusty bedsheet in which Sinclair had cloaked himself became snagged on Demencio's golf bag. The turtle fondler was slammed hard to the floor, where he thrashed about until the others subdued him. They lifted him to Demencio's La-Z-Boy and adjusted it to the fully reclined position.

When Sinclair's eyes fluttered open, he blurted at the face he saw: "But you're dead!"

"Not really," Tom Krome said.

"It's a blessed miracle!"

"Actually, the newspaper just screwed up."

"Praise God!"

"They should've waited on the DNA," said Krome, unaware of his editor's recent spiritual conversion.

"Thank you, Jesus! Thank you, Lord!" Sinclair, crooning and swaying.

Krome said: "Excuse me, but have you gone insane?"

Demencio and his wife pulled him aside and explained what had happened; how Sinclair had come to Grange searching for Tom and had become enraptured by the apostolic cooters.