Stoat slept past noon and woke up to a grim hangover and a silent house. Spears of sunlight slanted harshly through the Bahamas shutters. Stoat buried his face in a pillow and thought again of the voluble prostitute at Swain's. To meet someone with genuine political ideals was a rarity in Stoat's line of work; as a lobbyist he had long ago concluded there was no difference in how Democrats and Republicans conducted the business of government. The game stayed the same: It was always about favors and friends, and who controlled the dough. Party labels were merely a way to keep track of the teams; issues were mostly smoke and vaudeville. Nobody believed in anything except hanging on to power, whatever it took. So, at election time, Palmer Stoat always advised his clients to hedge generously by donating large sums to all sides. The strategy was as immensely pragmatic as it was cynical. Stoat himself was registered independent, but he hadn't stepped inside a voting booth in fourteen years. He couldn't take the concept seriously; he knew too much.

Yet it was refreshing to hear the call girl go on so earnestly about the failure of affirmative action and the merit of prayer in public schools and the dangerous liberal assault on the Second Amendment. None of those subjects affected Palmer Stoat's life to the point that he'd formed actual opinions, but it was entertaining to meet someone who had, someone with no covert political agenda.

If only he'd been able to screw her, Erika the call girl. Or was it Estelle? Brightly Stoat thought: Now there's a candidate for an evening of fine wine and rhino powder. He reminded himself to reach out once more to the mysterious Mr. Yee in Panama City.

The ring of the telephone cleaved Stoat's cranium like a cutlass, and he lunged for the receiver. The sound of his wife's voice befuddled him. Maybe he was in the wrong house! If so, how had Desie found him?

"I didn't want you to worry," she was saying on the other end.

"Right." Stoat bolted upright and looked around the room, which he was relieved to recognize.

"I can explain," Desie was saying, an odd jittery edge in her tone.

"OK."

"But not right now," she said.

"Fine."

"Aren't you going to ask if I'm all right?"

"Yes, sweetie. I've been, huh, out of my mind wondering where you went."

An unreadable pause on the other end. Then, too sweetly, Desie saying, "Palmer?"

"Yes, hon."

"You didn't even know I was gone, did you?"

"Sure I did. It's just ... see, I got home late and crashed in one of the guest bedrooms – "

"Sixteen hours."

" – so I wouldn't wake you up."

"Sixteen bloody hours!"

Stoat said, "What?"

"That's how long it's been."

"Christ. Where? Tell me what happened."

"You just got up, didn't you? Unbelievable." Now Desie sounded disgusted. "You were so smashed, you never bothered to check in the bedroom."

"Desie, I'll come get you right now. Tell me where."

But when she told him, he thought she was joking.

"An Amoco station in Bronson? Where the hell's Bronson?"

"Not far from Gainesville," Desie said. "That's where you should send the plane to pick me up."

"Now hold on – "

"It doesn't need to be, like, a jet. I'm sure one of your rich big-shot clients has something they can loan out. Did I mention I was kidnapped?"

Stoat felt bilious and fevered. Bobbling the phone, he sagged back on the pillows.

"It wasa kidnapping, sort of," Desie was saying. "It's a long freaky story, Palmer."

"OK."

"But I did find Boodle."

"Hey, that's great." Stoat had almost forgotten about the missing dog. "How's the big guy doin'?"

"Fine. But there's a slight problem."

Stoat grunted. "Why am I not surprised."

Desie said, "I'll tell you everything when I see you."

"In Bronson," Stoat said weakly.

"No, Gainesville. Remember?"

"Right. Where I send the private plane."

Once they got some black coffee into Dr. Brinkman, he was able to pull himself together for a short tour of soon-to-be Shearwater Island.

Here's where the yacht harbor will be dredged. There's where the golf courses go. That's being cleared for the airstrip. And, everywhere else: homesites.

"Houses?" Desie asked.

"Very expensive houses," Brinkman said. "But also condominiums and town homes and even some year-round rentals. Duplexes and triplexes."

Twilly pulled off the road into the shade of some pine trees. "What's the tallest building they've got in the plans?" he asked Brinkman.

"Sixteen stories. There'll be one at each end of the island."

"Assholes," Twilly muttered.

Desie remarked on the multitude of peeling, bleached-out signs advertising other past projects. Brinkman said they'd all gone bust.

"But these new fellows have serious capital and serious financing," he added. "This time I think it's a done deal."

"Provided they get their bridge," said Twilly.

"Obviously."

"And your job here," Desie said to the biologist, "is what exactly?"

Brinkman told them about the field survey. "Basically a complete inventory," he explained, "of every living plant, animal and insect species on the island."

"Wow," said Desie.

Twilly snickered contemptuously. "Fuck 'wow.' Dr. Steve, please tell Mrs. Stoat why she shouldn't be so impressed."

"Well, because ... " Brinkman looked uncomfortable. "Because it's fairly routine, a survey like this. More bureaucracy than science, if you want the truth. Sure, it makes us appear responsible and concerned, but the purpose isn't to figure out what trees and animals to save. The purpose is to make sure the developers don't run into a snail-darter type of crisis."

Desie looked to Twilly for elaboration.

"Endangered species," he told her. "That would be a showstopper, am I right, Dr. Steve? Shut down the whole works."

Brinkman nodded emphatically.

"And I'm guessing," Twilly continued, "that you finished your field study this week, and didn't come across anything like a snail darter or a spotted owl on this entire island. Nothing so rare that it would get in the way of the building permits. And I'm also guessing that's why you went out and got plastered last night, because you'd secretly been hoping to come across something, anything, to block this project – even an endangered gnat. Because you're probably a decent human being at heart, and you know exactly what's going to happen out here once these bastards get rolling."

In a voice raw with sadness, Brinkman said, "It's already started."

Then he took them into the upland woods to see what had become of the oak toads. Right away McGuinn started digging.

"Make him stop," Brinkman implored.

Desie hooked the dog to his leash and tugged him along. Twilly Spree walked ahead, kicking at the fresh-churned dirt, following the checkerboard tread marks of a large earth-moving machine. When they reached the area where the bulldozers were parked, Brinkman pointed and said: "That's the one I fell from. I was trying to get the darn thing started."

"What for?" Desie asked.

"I was drunk."

"That, we've established."

"I had a notion to destroy Mr. Clapley's billboard."

Twilly said, "He's the main guy?"

"Mr. Shearwater Island himself," said Brinkman. "Robert Clapley. I've never met the man, but he put up a huge sales sign. You must've seen it when you came across the old bridge. I suppose I was wondering what it might look like, that goddamn billboard, all busted to splinters."

Twilly said, "I could be persuaded to wonder the same thing."

"What about the frogs?" Desie asked. McGuinn was on the prowl again, jerking her around like a puppet.

"Toads." Steven Brinkman made a sweeping notion with one arm. "They buried them."