Kingsbury said, "I know what you're thinking but, hell, he's worth ten of yours. Twenty of yours! Any sonofabitch that would bite off his own damn leg – you tell me, is that tough or what?"

The marshal rose stiffly to leave. "Tough isn't the word for it," he said.

The trailer fire had left Carrie Lanier with only three possessions: her Buick Electra, the gun she had taken from Joe Winder and the newly retired raccoon suit. The costume and the gun had been stowed in the trunk of the car. Everything else had been destroyed in the blaze.

Molly McNamara offered her a bedroom on the second floor of the old house. "I'd loan you the condo but the cleaners are in this week," Molly said. "It's hard to rent out a place with bloodstains in the carpet."

"What about Joe?" Carrie said, "I'd like him to stay with me."

Molly clucked. "Young lady, I really can't approve. Two unmarried people – "

"But under the circumstances," Carrie persisted, "with all that's happened."

"Oh...I suppose it's all right." Molly had a sparkle in her eyes. "I was teasing, darling. Besides, you act as if you're in love."

Carrie said it was a long shot. "We're both very goal-oriented, and very stubborn. I'm not sure we're heading in the same direction." She paused and looked away. "He doesn't seem to fit anywhere."

"You wouldn't want him if he did," Molly said. "The world is full of nice boring young men. The crazy ones are hard to find and harder to keep, but it's worth it."

"Your husband was like that?"

"Yes. My lovers, too."

"But crazy isn't the word for it, is it?"

Molly smiled pensively. "You're a smart cookie."

"Did you know that Joe's father built Seashell Estates?"

"Oh dear," Molly said. A dreadful project: six thousand units on eight hundred acres, plus a golf course. Wiped out an egret rookery. A mangrove estuary. And too late it was discovered "that the fairways were leaching fertilizer and pesticides directly into the waters of Biscayne Bay.

Molly McNamara said, "Those were the bad old days."

"Joe's still upset."

"But it certainly wasn't his fault. He must've been barely a teenager when Seashell was developed."

"He's got a thing about his father," Carrie said.

"Is that what this is all about?"

"He hears bulldozers in his sleep."

Molly said, "It's not as strange as you might imagine. The question is, can you take it? Is this the kind of fellow you want?"

"That's a tough one," Carrie said. "He could easily get himself killed this week."

"Take the blue bedroom at the end of the hall."

"Thank you, Miss McNamara."

"Just one favor," Molly said. "The headboard – it's an antique. I found it at a shop in Williamsburg."

"We'll be careful," Carrie promised.

That night they made love on the bare pine floor. Drenched in sweat, they slid like ice cubes across the slick varnished planks. Eventually they wound up wedged headfirst in a corner, where Carrie fell asleep with Joe Winder's earlobe clenched tenderly in her teeth. He was starting to doze himself when he heard Molly's voice in the adjoining bedroom. She was talking sternly to a man who didn't sound like either Skink or the two redneck burglars.

When Winder heard the other door close, he delicately extricated himself from Carrie's bite and lifted her to the bed. Then he wrapped himself in an old quilt and crept into the hall to see who was in the next room.

The last person he expected to find was Agent Billy Hawkins of the Federal Bureau of Investigation. Trussed to a straight-backed chair, Hawkins wore someone else's boxer shorts and black nylon socks. A bandage was wadded around one bare thigh, and two strips of hurricane tape crisscrossed his mouth. He reeked of antiseptic.

Joe Winder slipped into the room and twisted the lock behind him. Gingerly he peeled the heavy tape from the agent's face.

"Fancy meeting you here."

"Nice getup," Billy Hawkins remarked. "Would you please untie me?"

"First tell me what happened."

"What does it look like? The old bird shot me."

"Any particular reason?"

"Just get me loose, goddammit."

Winder said, "Not until I hear the story."

Reluctantly, Hawkins told him about Bud Schwartz and the long-distance phone call to Queens and the possible exposure of a federally protected witness.

"Who's the flip?"

"I can't tell you that."

Joe Winder pressed the hurricane tape over Hawkins's lips – then fiercely yanked it away. Hawkins yelped. Tears of pain sprang to his eyes. In colorful expletives he offered the opinion that Winder had gone insane.

The excruciating procedure was repeated on one of Billy Hawkins's bare nipples and nearly uprooted a cluster of curly black hairs. "I can do this all night," Winder said. "I'm way past the point of caring."

The agent took a long bitter moment to compose himself. "You could go to prison," he mumbled.

"For assaulting you with adhesive tape? I don't think so." Winder placed one gummy strip along the line of soft hair that trailed southward from Billy Hawkins's navel. The agent gaped helplessly as Winder jerked hard; the tape came off with a sibilant rip.

"You – you're a goddamn lunatic!"

"But I'm your only hope. Who's going to believe you were shot and abducted by an elderly widow? And if they should believe it, what would that do to your career?" Joe Winder spread the quilt on the floor and sat cross-legged in front of the hog-tied agent.

"Blaine, Washington," Winder said. "Isn't that the FBI's equivalent of Siberia?"

Hawkins conceded the point silently. The political cost of prosecuting a grandmother and a pair of candyass burglars would be high. The Bureau was hypersensitive to incidents incongruous with the lantern-jawed crime-buster image promoted by J. Edgar Hoover; for an FBI agent to be overpowered by a doddering senior citizen was a disgrace. An immediate transfer to some godforsaken cowtown would be a certainty.

"So what can you do?" Hawkins asked Winder sourly.

"Maybe nothing. Maybe save your skin. Did Molly make you call the office?"

The agent nodded. "At gunpoint. I told them I was taking a couple of sick days."

"They ask about this Mafia thing?"

"I told them it wasn't panning out. Looked like a bullshit shakedown." Hawkins sounded embarrassed. "That's what she made me say. Threatened to shoot me again if I didn't go along with the routine – and it didn't sound like a bluff."

"You did the right thing," Joe Winder said. "No sense chancing it." He stood up and rewrapped himself in the quilt. "You'll have to stay like this a while," he told the agent. "It's the only way."

"I don't get it. What's your connection to these crackpots?"

"Long story."

"Winder, don't be a jackass. This isn't a game." Hawkins spoke sternly for a man in his ridiculous predicament. "Somebody could get killed. That's not what you want, is it?"

"Depends. Tell me the name of this precious witness."

"Frankie King."

Joe Winder shrugged. "Never heard of him."

"Moved down from New York after he snitched on some of Gotti's crowd. This was a few years back."

"Swift move. What's he calling himself these days?"

"That I can't possibly tell you."

"Then you're on your own, Billy. Think about it. Your word against Grandma Moses. Picture the headlines: 'Sharpshooter Widow Gunned Me Down, Nude G-Man Claims.' "

Hawkins sagged dispiritedly. He said, The flip's name is Francis Kingsbury. You happy now?"

"Kingsbury?" Joe Winder raised his eyes to the heavens and cackled raucously. "The Mafia is coming down here to whack Mr. X!"

"Hey," Billy Hawkins said, "it's not funny."

But it was very funny to Joe Winder. "Francis X. Kingsbury. Millionaire theme-park developer and real-estate mogul, darling of the Chamber of Commerce, 1988 Rotarian Citizen of the Year. And you're telling me he's really a two-bit jizzbag on the run from the mob?"