"Palmer." But she was leaden with guilt. Of course she'd have sex with him tonight – after what he'd done for the dog, how could she say no?

"It's been a couple of weeks," he noted.

"I know. A rough couple of weeks."

"For both of us, sweetheart. So how about it? Lilac candles. A bottle of French wine – "

"Sounds nice," said Desie.

" – and maybe a spoonful of rhino dust for some extra-special excitement."

"No!"

"Des, come on."

"No way, Palmer. No way!"She removed his hand from inside her panties and told him to mind the road. It took three traffic lights for Stoat to compose himself and rally for the salvage operation.

"You're right," he said to Desie. "Forget the rhino horn, forget I even mentioned it. I'm sorry."

"Promise me you'll throw it away."

"I promise," Stoat lied. Already he was thinking about the intriguing call girl he'd met the other night at Swain's, the one who fucked only Republicans. Certainly shewould have no liberal qualms about aphrodisiacs harvested from endangered species. Nor would Roberta, the free-spirited, prodigiously implanted blonde who was Stoat's occasional travel companion. For the promise of a new and improved orgasm, Roberta would've killed the rhinoceros with her own bare hands.

But to his wife, Palmer Stoat declared: "I'll toss the stuff first thing in the morning."

"Thank you."

With a sly sideways glance, he said: "Does that mean we're still on for later?"

"I suppose." Desie turned her head, pretending to scout the bikinis in the display window of a beachwear shop. She felt the spiderish return of Palmer's fingers between her legs. He left them there after the light turned green.

"You look soooooo gorgeous tonight," he said. "I can't wait to see the pictures!"

Lord, Desie thought. The shutterbug routine again.

"Palmer, I'm not really in the mood."

"Since when? Come on, darling, learn to relax."

Stoat stopped at a convenience store, where he purchased three packs of Polaroid film. He compulsively tore them open inside the truck, throwing the empty boxes into the parking lot.

Desie got out and retrieved each one, much to her husband's consternation.

"What's gotten into you?" he demanded.

"Just drive," she told him. "Just take me home."

So we can get it over with.

That night Twilly Spree was pulled over by a policeman on Route A1A in the snowbird community of Lauderdale-by-the-Sea. Twilly thought he knew why: There had been another incident of anger mismanagement, this one involving four college students, two personal watercrafts and a large volume of beer.

It had happened after Twilly returned the rented Chevrolet Corsica and transferred McGuinn to the black pickup truck. Twilly was minding his own affairs, waiting in traffic on the Commercial Boulevard drawbridge, when he noticed two Jet Skis racing at break-ass speed down the Intracoastal Waterway. One Jet Ski was white with bright blue stripes; the other was white with red stripes. Each carried a matching pair of riders – a young stud at the helm with a young babe behind him, arms locked around his waist. They were jumping the wakes of yachts, buzzing the sailboats, spraying the bait netters and otherwise announcing their drunken idiocy to the world. Such brain-dead antics were so commonplace among water bikers that it was hardly noteworthy, and Twilly Spree would have paid no further attention except that the drawbridge was still up and he was stuck for entertainment. Besides, there was a better-than-average chance that the bozos would crash their noisy toys head-on into the seawall at fifty miles per hour – and Twilly was always eager to see Darwin vindicated in such cinematic style.

Back and forth the Jet Skis went, bitch-howling like runaway chain saws. A frightened pelican took off from a piling, and instantly both water bikes lit out in a deafening pursuit. Twilly jumped from his truck and ran to the bridge rail. McGuinn poked his snout out the window and whined.

It was over in less than a minute. At first the bird flew low to the water, struggling to gain speed. The Jet Ski riders came swiftly from behind, the afternoon rays Clinting off their beer cans. All four kids let loose at the same time, just as the pelican began its ascent. Three of the cans missed the bird, but one struck the crook of a wing. The exploding cartwheel of gold mist told Twilly the beer can was full, as heavy as a rock. The pelican went down in an ungainly spin, landing backward with its beak agape. The water bikers circled the splash once and then sped off, up the Intracoastal in a frothy streak. They were too far away for Twilly to see if they were laughing, but he chose to assume they were. He watched a river taxi retrieve the injured pelican, which was flogging the water with its good wing, trying to lift off.

Twilly got in his truck and turned up the radio and scratched McGuinn under the chin and waited for the bridge to go down. Then he shot free of the traffic and drove north like a psychopath along the waterfront, searching for the marina where the water bikers had put in. At dusk he finally caught up with them, at a public wharf in Pompano Beach. They were winching the Jet Skis up on a tandem trailer that was hitched to a black Cadillac Seville coupe, new but dirty from a long road trip. The expensive car, which bore Maryland license tags, probably belonged to somebody's father. The kids obviously were on spring break from college, and even more obviously drunk. The two young studs had put in some serious gym time, and they wore mesh tank tops to advertise the results. Their girlfriends were both slender and brunette, possibly sisters, and too cadaverously pale for the neon thongs they wore. Their bare bike-wrinkled butt cheeks looked like pita loaves.

Twilly's initial impulse was to ram the Cadillac so hard that it would roll in reverse down the boat ramp. That way he could sink the car and the Jet Skis and all cash and valuables therein. Unfortunately, the Caddy substantially outweighed Twilly's pickup truck, making such an impact problematic. Twilly didn't give a hoot about himself, but there was McGuinn to consider – the last thing the poor dog needed was whiplash.

And besides, Twilly reasoned to himself, what would be accomplished by petty property destruction? The insurance company would replace the luxury coupe and the Jet Skis, and no important lessons would have been learned. The water bikers would fail to see any connection between the vandalism against their belongings and their cruel attack on the pelican. To Twilly, that was unacceptable. Vengeance, he believed, ought never to be ambiguous.

So he clipped McGuinn to the leash and got out of the truck. The two tipsy college girls spotted the huge dog and scampered over, their sandals flopping on the asphalt. They knelt beside McGuinn, cooing and giggling while he licked their salty sunburned faces. This, Twilly had counted on, as Labrador retrievers were magnets for children and women. The beefy college boyfriends wandered up with an air of sullen, incipient jealousy; as trashed as they were, they still resented not being the center of attention. While the girls fawned over the dog, Twilly struck up a conversation with the boyfriends about their nifty water bikes – how fast they went, how much they cost, what kind of mileage they got. The two guys loosened up quickly and started to brag about how their Jet Skis had been illegally modified to go much faster than the factory recommended. Twilly asked if he could have a close-up look. He told them he'd never ridden one before, but said it looked like a blast. And the boyfriends said sure, come on.

Twilly asked the girlfriends if they'd mind keeping an eye on the dog, and they said: Mind? We wanna take him home to Ocean City with us! What's his name, anyway?