"Mr. Spree? Mr. Spree?"

"Yes. Sorry."

"Dr. Whitcomb needs to see you right away."

Twilly rose so fast, it made him wobbly. "Is something wrong?" he asked the woman in pink.

"Please. Come right now."

The dog predated Desirata. It was a gift from Dag Magnusson, president of the Magnusson Phosphate Company, who knew that Palmer Stoat loved to hunt. Dag Magnusson had purchased the dog from a breeder of field-trial champion Labradors in Hibbing, Minnesota. The one selected by Dag Magnusson was the pick of the litter and cost fifteen hundred dollars. Stoat named him Boodle as an inside joke, although the dog technically wasn't a bribe but rather a reward for arranging one.

Dag Magnusson had sought out Stoat because a Magnusson mine in Polk County was about to be shut down by the EPA for polluting a community lake with chemical runoff. The chemical was so vile that it exterminated all life-forms larger than amoebas, and the government was contemplating a whopping six-figure fine against Magnusson Phosphate, in addition to padlocking the facility. The situation was so politically touchy – and the lake so odiferously befouled – that not even the sluttiest congressman could be induced to intervene.

So Palmer Stoat tried another approach. He put Dag Magnusson in touch with a regional EPA administrator who was known to have a weak spot for trout fishing. Dag Magnusson invited the EPA man to accompany him on a trip to a private stretch of blue-ribbon river in western Montana, and it was there the lucky fellow nailed his first twenty-inch rainbow. The fish had barely stopped flopping when the EPA quietly began settling its differences with Magnusson Phosphate, which ultimately agreed to pay a $3,900 fine and erect large warning signs on the shores of the poisoned lake in Polk County. Dag Magnusson was delighted with the outcome, and decided that Palmer Stoat deserved something more than his customarily exorbitant fee.

Hence the dog. Stoat's wife at the time (his second) protested, but to no avail. The wife's name was Abbie, and she had no patience for puppy piddle or puppy poop. Few humans are able to resist the spunky charms of a six-week-old Labrador retriever, but Abbie could and did. She was resolutely not, by her own admission, "an animal person." She felt that anything with fur belonged on a hanger, not under the dining room table licking her pedicured toes. Abbie's attitude toward the puppy was so glacially resentful that it alarmed her husband, who was amused, if not smitten, by his rambunctious new pooch. Palmer Stoat had been mentally compiling reasons to divorce Abbie, and her aversion to Boodle immediately vaulted to the top of his list (replacing, temporarily, her aversion to oral-genital contact).

In the end, Stoat was able to turn his wife's dislike of the puppy to his own legal advantage. One evening he returned home from Tallahassee to find Abbie hysterically flogging the young dog with a rolled-up copy of Women's Wear Daily.Boodle was nearly a year old and already ninety-plus pounds, so he wasn't the least bit harmed or even unnerved by Abbie's outburst (and failed to make a connection between the spanking and the coral red Rossetti sling-back that had become his newest chew toy). The dog thought Abbie was playing, and throughout the attack he kept wagging his truncheon-like tail in appreciation of the rare display of attention. Palmer Stoat burst into the laundry room and wrested the rolled-up fashion magazine from his wife's fist. Within a week he presented her with divorce papers. Abbie signed without a fight, rather than face the lurid accusations of animal cruelty that her husband had vowed to publicize.

After she was gone, Stoat briefly set out to make a hunting dog of his blood-champion Lab. Boodle proved excellent at fetching but not so good at retrieving. He could find a downed mallard in the thickest cattails but invariably he kept swimming. By the time Stoat and his hunting companions chased down the dog, there was too little remaining of the bedraggled game bird to cook. Stoat went through half a dozen Labrador trainers before giving up on Boodle; the retrieval talents for which his canine lineage was famous obviously had skipped a generation. Stoat consigned the dog to household-protection duties, for which he seemed well suited, given his daunting size and midnight blackness.

So Boodle had settled in as lord of the manor. Stoat was undeniably fond of the animal, and enjoyed the company on those rare nights he wasn't away traveling, or drinking at Swain's. To his delight Stoat also discovered that, unlike the vanquished Abbie, most women adored large huggable dogs and were attracted to men who owned them. Boodle (Palmer Stoat would brag to his buddies) turned out to be a "big-time chick magnet." Certainly it had worked on Desie, who'd fallen instantly for the dog. Naively she had regarded Boodle's exuberantly sunny disposition as a positive reflection on his master. Such a happy pooch, she reasoned, could only have been raised by a patient, caring, unselfish man. Desie believed you could tell as much about a potential suitor from his pet as from his automobile, wardrobe and CD collection. Boodle being a riotously content and gentle dog, it seemed unthinkable that Palmer Stoat could be a conniving shitweasel.

Although Desie's view of her husband had grown darker after their marriage, her affection for the dog had deepened. Now Boodle/McGuinn was in the custody of a disturbed young man who might or might not prove to be a maniac, and Desie couldn't convince her husband that it was true. Several days passed before the envelope arrived via Federal Express late one afternoon. Desie wondered what Twilly Spree possibly could have sent that would "make a believer" of her doubting husband. A photograph of the dog, she guessed; the dog depicted in obvious jeopardy. But how – tethered to a railroad crossing? Tied up with a revolver pressed to his head? Desie cringed at the possibilities.

Palmer's flight from Tallahassee was late, so he didn't arrive home until half past eleven, after Desie was in bed. She heard him go into the den, where she'd left the package; heard him open the top drawer of his desk, where he kept the gold-plated scissors. For several moments she heard nothing else, and then came a quavering bleat that didn't sound anything like her husband, though it was.

Desie ran to the den and found him standing away from the desk, pointing spasmodically with the scissors.

"What is it, Palmer?"

"Eeeaaaaaahhh!" he cried.

Desie stepped forward to see what was in the FedEx envelope. At first she thought it was just a sock, a thin, shiny wrinkled black sock, but that wouldn't make any sense. Desie picked up the velvety thing and suddenly it looked familiar, and then she let out a cry of her own.

It was the severed ear of a dog, a large dog. A large black Labrador.

Desie dropped the thing, and it landed like a dead bat on the pale carpet. "Jesus!" she gasped.

Her flushed and trembling husband bolted for the bathroom. Desie pounded furiously on the door. "Now do you believe me?" she shouted over the roar of retching. "How about it. Palmer? Do you believe me now, you smart-assed sonofabitch?"