Here he was interrupted by the man with the crimson eye.

"Hold on, sport. Nobody said anything about a woman hostage."

"Well, he's got her," Stoat said. "I'm ninety-nine percent sure. That's why the situation is so dicey, why it would be better for you to wait until after he lets Desie go."

The man said, "What makes you so sure she'll want to come home?"

Palmer Stoat frowned. "Why wouldn't she?" Then, as an afterthought: "You don't know my wife."

"No, but I know these situations." The man handed a towel to Stoat and said: "Show me this room where you keep your dead animals."

Stoat wrapped the towel around his waist and tiptoed through the shattered glass. He led the bearded man down the hall to the den. Stoat began giving a stalk-by-stalk history of each mount, but he was barely into the Canadian lynx saga when "the captain" ordered him to shut up.

"All I want to know," the man said to Stoat, "is what exactly he did in here."

"Pried out the eyes and left them on my desk."

"Just the mammals, or the fish, too?"

"All of them." Stoat shook his head somberly. "Every single eyeball. He arranged them in a pattern. A pentagram, according to Desie."

"No shit?" The captain grinned.

"You don't find that sick?"

"Actually, I admire the boy's style."

Palmer Stoat thought: He wouldthink it's cute. Him with his moldy rain suit and funky fifty-cent shower cap and weird fake eye. But then again, Stoat mused, who better to track down a perverted sicko than another perverted sicko?

"You shot all these critters for what reason, exactly?" The man was at the long wall, appraising the stuffed Cape buffalo head. Being so tall, he stood nearly nose-to-nose with the great horned ungulate.

"You shot them, why – for fun or food or what, exactly?" he asked again, twirling the bird beaks on the platted ends of his beard.

"Sport," Stoat answered warily. "For the sport of it."

"Ah."

"You look like you do some hunting yourself."

"On occasion, yes," the man said.

"Whereabouts?"

"The road, usually. Any busy road. Most of what I'm after is already dead. You understand."

Dear God, thought Palmer Stoat: Anotherprofessional hit man. This one shoots his victims on the highway, while they're stuck in 'traffic!

"But certain times of the year," the visitor added, "I'll take a buck deer or a turkey."

Stoat felt a wavelet of relief, perceived a sliver of common ground. "I got my first whitetail when I was seventeen," he volunteered. "An eight-pointer."

The one-eyed man said, "That's a good animal."

"It was. It really was. From then on I was hooked on hunting." Stoat thickly laid on the good-ole-boy routine, and with it the southern accent. "And now, hell, lookit me. I'm runnin' outta wall space! The other day I got a black rhino – "

"A rhino! Well, congratulations."

"Thank you, cap'n. My first ever. It was quite a thrill."

"Oh, I'll bet. You cook him?"

Stoat wasn't sure he'd heard right. "I'm gettin' the head mounted," he went on, "but I jest don't know where to hang the dang thing – "

"On account a ya'll runnin' outta gawdamn wall space!"

"Right." Stoat gave a brittle chuckle. The big sonofabitch was making fun of him.

"Sit your ass down," the man said, pointing toward the desk. The leather chair felt cool against Palmer Stoat's bare back; he tried to cross his flabby thighs but the bath towel was wrapped too snugly. The bearded one-eyed man walked around the desk and stood directly behind the leather chair. The only way Stoat could see the man was to cock his head straight back. From that upside-down vantage, the captain's visage appeared amiable enough.

"So you're a lobbyist," he said to Stoat.

"That's right." Stoat began to explain his unsung role in the machinations of representative government, but the one-eyed man slammed a fist so hard on the polished wood that Stoat's picture frames toppled.

"I know what you do," the man said mildly. "I know all about the likes of you."

Palmer Stoat made a mental note to call a Realtor first thing tomorrow and put his house on the market; it had become a chamber of torture, practically every room violated by demented intruders – first the dognapper, then the sadistic Mr. Gash and now this nutty bald cyclops ...

"I've only got one question," the man said to Stoat. "Where is this Toad Island?"

"Up the Gulf Coast. I'm not exactly sure where."

"You're not sure?"

"No ... captain ... I've never been there," Stoat said.

"That's beautiful. You sold the place out. Single-handedly greased the skids so it could be 'transformed' into a golfer's paradise – isn't that what you told me?"

Stoat nodded wanly. Those had been his exact words.

"Another fabulous golfer's paradise. Just what the world needs," the one-eyed man said, "and you did all this having never set foot on the island, having never laid eyes on the place. Correct?"

In a voice so timorous that he scarcely recognized it, Palmer Stoat said: "That's how it goes down. I work the political side of the street, that's all. I've got nothing to do with the thing itself."

The man laughed barrenly. " 'The thing itself! You mean the monstrosity?"

Stoat swallowed hard. His neck muscles hurt from looking upward at such a steep angle.

"A client calls me about some piece of legislation he's got an interest in," he said. "So I make a phone call or two. Maybe take some senator and his secretary out for a nice dinner. That's all I do. That's how it goes down."

"And for that you get paid how much?"

"Depends," Stoat replied.

"For the Shearwater bridge?"

"A hundred thousand dollars was the agreement." Palmer Stoat could not help himself, he was such a peacock. Even when faced with a life-threatening situation, he couldn't resist broadcasting his obscenely exorbitant fees.

The captain said, "And you have no trouble looking at yourself in the mirror every morning?"

Stoat reddened.

"Incredible," the man said. He came purposefully around the leather chair and with one hand easily overturned the heavy desk. Then he kicked the chair out from under Stoat, dumping him on his butt. The towel came untied and Stoat lunged for it, but the one-eyed man snatched it away and, with a theatrical flair, flung it cape-like across the horns of the stuffed buffalo.

Then he wheeled to stand over Stoat, a bloated harp seal wriggling across the carpet. "I'm going to do this job for your buddy Dick," the man growled, "only because I don't see how notto."

"Thank you," cheeped the cowering lobbyist.

"As for your dog, if he's really missing an ear or a paw or even a toenail, I'll deal appropriately with the young fellow who did it." The captain paused in contemplation.

"As for your wife – is that her?" – pointing at the upended picture frame on the floor, and not waiting for Stoat's answer. "If I find her alive," the man said, pacing now, "I'll set her loose. What she does then, that's up to her. But I do intend to advise her to consider all options. I intend to tell her she can surely do better, much better, than the sorry likes of you."

Palmer Stoat had crawled into a corner, beneath a stacked glass display of antique cigar boxes. The bearded man approached, his legs bare and grime-streaked below the hem of the kilt. Stoat shielded his head with his arms. He heard the big man humming. It was a tune Stoat recognized from an old Beach Boys album – "Wouldn't It Be Great," or something like that.

He peeked out to see, inches from his face, the intruder's muddy boots.

"What I ought to do," Palmer Stoat heard the man say, "I ought to kick the living shit out of you. That's what would lift my spirits. That's what would put a spring in my step, ha! But I suppose I won't." The man dropped to one knee, his good eye settling piercingly on Stoat while the crimson orb wandered.