During the job interview at the Amazing Kingdom, Charles Chelsea had told him: "You work for us, you'd better keep it in your pants, understand?"

"I've got a girlfriend now," Joe Winder had said.

"Don't think you won't be tempted around here."

Winder hadn't been tempted once, until today. Now he was thinking about Carrie Lanier, the fearless beauty inside a seven-foot raccoon suit.

This is what happens when you turn thirty-seven, Winder thought; the libido goes blind with fever. What else could explain his attraction to Nina? Or her attraction to him?

Being a newspaper reporter had left Joe Winder no time for such reckless attachments. Being a flack left him all the time in the world. Now that he was forbidden to write about trouble, he seemed determined to experience it.

He finished his omelet and opened a beer and slumped down on the floor, between the stereo speakers. Something had been nagging at him all afternoon, ever since the insufferable Chelsea had drafted him to help with the robbery crisis. In the push toward his deadline, it was clear to Joe Winder that none of his writing skills had eroded – his speed at the keyboard, his facile vocabulary, his smooth sense of pacing and transition. Yet something from the old days was missing.

Curiosity. The most essential and feral of reporters' instincts, the urge to pursue. It was dead. Or dying.

Two strangers had invaded a family theme park in broad daylight and kidnapped a couple of obscure rodents from an animal exhibit. Winder had thoroughly and competently reported the incident, but had made no effort to explore the fascinating possibilities. Having established the what, he had simply ignored the why.

Even by South Florida standards the crime was perverse, and the old Joe Winder would have reveled energetically in its mysteries. The new Joe Winder had merely typed up his thousand words, and gone home.

Just as he was supposed to do.

So this is how it feels, he thought. This is how it feels to sell out. On the stereo, Warren Zevon was singing about going to the Louvre museum and throwing himself against the wall. To Joe Winder it sounded like a pretty good idea.

He closed his eyes tightly and thought: Don't tell me I'm getting used to this goddamn zombie job. Then he thought: Don't tell me I'm getting drunk on one lousy beer.

He crawled across the carpet to the phone, and tried to call Nina at the service. The woman named Miriam answered instead, and launched into a complicated fantasy involving trampolines and silver ankle bracelets. Miriam was struggling so valiantly in broken English ("Ooooh, bebee, chew make me comb so many time!") that Joe Winder didn't have the heart to interrupt.

What the hell, it was only four bucks. He could certainly afford it.

FOUR

On the morning of July 17, Danny Pogue awoke in a cold sweat, his T-shirt soaked from neck to navel. He kicked the covers off the bed and saw the lump of gauze around his foot. It wasn't a dream. He limped to the window and from there he could see everything: the Olympic-sized swimming pool, the freshly painted tennis courts, the shady shuffleboard gazebo. Everywhere he looked there were old people with snowy heads and pale legs and fruit-colored Bermuda shorts. All the men wore socks with their sandals, and all the women wore golf visors and oversized sunglasses.

"Mother of Christ," said Danny Pogue. He hollered for his partner to come quick.

Bud Schwartz ambled in, looking settled and well rested. He was spooning out half a grapefruit, cupped in the palm of one hand. "Do you believe this fucking place?" he said to Danny Pogue. "What a gas."

"We gotta get out."

"How come?"

"Just look." Danny Pogue pointed out the window.

"So now you got a problem with senior citizens? What – they don't have the right to have fun? Besides, there's some young people that live here, too. I saw a couple a hot ones out by the swimming pool. Major titties."

"I don't care," mumbled Danny Pogue.

"Hey," Bud Schwartz said. "She shot your foot, not your weenie."

"Where is she?"

"Long gone. You want some lunch? She loaded up at the Publix, you should see. Steaks, chops, beer – we're set for a couple a weeks, easy."

Danny Pogue hopped back to the bed and peeled off the damp shirt. He spotted a brand-new pair of crutches propped in the corner. He said, "Bud, I'm gonna split. Seriously, I'm taking off."

"I can give you ten thousand reasons not to."

"Speaking of which."

"She's bringing a grand for each of us, just like she promised," said Bud Schwartz. "Good faith money is what she called it."

"Invisible is what I call it."

"Hey, lighten the fuck up. She's an old lady, Danny. Old ladies never lie." Bud Schwartz lobbed the grapefruit skin into some kind of designer wastebasket. "What's wrong with you, man? This is like a vacation, all expenses paid. Look at this freaking condo – two bedrooms, two bathrooms. Microwave in the kitchen, Cinemax on the cable. Say what you will, the old geezer knows how to live."

"Who is she?" Danny Pogue asked.

"Who cares?"

"I care. She shot me."

Bud Schwartz said, "Just some crazy, rich old broad. Don't worry about it."

"It's not you that got shot."

"She won't do it again, Danny. She got it out of her system." Bud Schwartz wiped his hands on the butt of his jeans to get the grapefruit juice off. He said, "She was pissed, that's all. On account of us losing the rats."

Danny Pogue said, "Well, screw that deal. I'm leaving." He made a move for the crutches but faltered, hot and dizzy. Molly McNamara had fed him some pain pills late last night; that much he remembered.

"I don't know where you think you're going," said Bud Schwartz. "The truck's history."

"I'll hitch," said Danny Pogue woozily.

"Look in the mirror. Your own mother wouldn't pick you up. The Hell's Fucking Angels wouldn't pick you up."

"Somebody'll stop," Danny Pogue said. "Especially with me on them crutches."

"Oh, sure."

"Maybe even some girls." Danny Pogue eased himself back on the pillow. He took deep breaths and tried to blink away the haze in his brain.

"Have another codeine," said Bud Schwartz. "Here, she got a whole bottle." He went to the kitchen and came back with a cold Busch.

Danny Pogue swallowed two more pills and slurped at the beer can noisily. He closed his eyes and said, "She ain't never gonna pay us, Bud."

"Sure she is," said his partner. "She's loaded, just look at this place. You should see the size of the TV."

"We better get away while we can."

"Go back to sleep," said Bud Schwartz. "I'll be down at the pool."

The Mothers of Wilderness met every other Tuesday at a public library in Cutler Ridge. This week the main item on the agenda was the proposed bulldozing of seventy-three acres of mangroves to make room for the back nine of a championship golf course on the shore of North Key Largo. The Mothers of Wilderness strenuously opposed the project, and had begun to map a political strategy to obstruct it. They pursued such crusades with unflagging optimism, despite the fact that they had never succeeded in stopping a single development. Not one. The builders ignored them. Zoning boards ignored them. County commissioners listened politely, nodded intently, then ignored them, too. Of all the environmental groups fighting to preserve what little remained of Florida, the Mothers of Wilderness was regarded as the most radical and shrill and intractable. It was also, unfortunately, the smallest of the groups and thus the easiest to brush off.

Still, the members were nothing if not committed. Molly McNamara steadfastly had refused all offers to merge her organization with the Audubon Society or the Sierra Club or the Friends of the Everglades. She wanted no part of coalitions because coalitions compromised. She enjoyed being alone on the fringe, enjoyed being the loose cannon that establishment environmentalists feared. The fact that the Mothers of Wilderness was politically impotent did not diminish Molly McNamara's passion, though occasionally it ate at her pride.