"That's good," Mr. Gash said. "That's really rich."

"Look, I didn't mean anything."

"Hey, it's OK. I'm laughing because the man on that tape, he's dead. Dead as a fucking doornail. Those were his last mortal words you heard: 'You crazy damn bitch!!' The last living breath out of his mouth."

Mr. Gash chuckled again, then stepped into the night.

It was nine-thirty, and Lisa June Peterson was alone in her office, which adjoined the governor's own. When the phone rang, she assumed it was Douglas, the probate attorney she'd been dating. Every time Douglas called, the first question was: "What're you wearing, Lisa June?"

So tonight, being in a frisky mood, she picked up the phone and said: "No panties!"

And a male voice, deeper and older-sounding than Douglas's, responded: "Me neither, hon."

The governor's executive assistant gasped.

"Ah, sweet youth," the voice said.

Lisa June Peterson stammered an apology. "I'm so – I thought you were somebody else."

"Some days I think the same thing."

"What can I do for you?" Lisa June asked.

"Get me an appointment with the governor."

"I'm afraid he's out of town." Lisa June, trying to recover, hoping to sound cool and professional.

The caller said: "Then I'll catch up with him later."

She was troubled by something in the man's tone – not menace, exactly, but a blunt certainty of purpose. "Maybe I can help," she said.

"I seriously doubt it."

"I can try to reach him. Does Governor Artemus know you?"

"Apparently so," the man said.

"May I have your name?"

"Tyree. You need me to spell it?"

"No." Lisa June Peterson was floored. "Is this some kind of a joke?"

"Anything but."

"You're GovernorTyree – no bullshit?"

"Since when do fine young ladies use that word in formal conversation? I am shocked to the marrow."

Lisa June Peterson already was on her feet, collecting her purse and car keys. "Where are you now?" she asked the caller. "Pay phone down on Monroe."

"Meet me in front of the capitol. Ten minutes."

"Why?"

She said, "I drive a Taurus wagon. I'm wearing a blue dress and glasses."

"And no panties, 'member?"

Nothing in Lisa June Peterson's experience prepared her for the sight of Clinton Tyree. First his size – he looked as big as a refrigerator. Then the wardrobe – he was dressed like a squeegee man: boots, homemade kilt and shower cap. As he got in her car, the dome light offered an egg-white glimpse of shaved scalp, a ruby Clint from a prosthetic eye. But it wasn't until they were seated side by side on upturned cinder blocks in front of a campfire that Lisa June Peterson got a good look at the lush cheek braids and the bleached bird beaks adorning them.

"Buzzards," the former governor said. "Bad day."

His face was saddle-brown and creased, but it opened to the same killer smile Lisa June remembered from her research; from those early newspaper photographs, before things went weird. The inaugural smile.

She said, "It's really you."

"Just the chassis, hon."

They were in a wooded lot outside of town, near the municipal airport. The ex-governor was skinning out a dead fox he'd scavenged on the Apalachee Parkway. He said it had been struck by a motorcycle; said he could tell by the nature of the dent in the animal's skull.

"What should I call you?" Lisa June Peterson asked.

"Let me think on that. You hungry?"

"I was." She turned away while he worked at the haunches of the dead fox with a small knife.

He said, "This is my first time back to Tallahassee."

"Where do you live now?"

"You know what's tasty? Possum done right."

Lisa June said, "I'll keep my eyes peeled."

"Tell me again what it is you do for Mr. Richard Artemus."

She told him.

Clinton Tyree said: "I had an 'executive assistant,' too. She tried, she honestly did. But I was pretty much an impossible case."

"I know all about it."

"How? You were just a baby."

Lisa June Peterson told him about the research that Governor Artemus has asked her to do. She did not tell him the scheme that had been kicking around her head, keeping her up nights; her idea to do a book about Clinton Tyree, Florida's lost governor.

"Did your boss say what he wanted with my files?" The grin again. "No, I didn't think so."

"Tell me," said Lisa June.

"You poor thing."

"What is it?"

"Your Governor Dickie has an errand for me, darling, and not a pleasant one. If I don't oblige, he's going to throw my poor helpless brother out on the street, where he will surely succumb to confusion. So here I am."

Lisa June felt a stab of guilt. "Doyle?"

Clinton Tyree raised a furry eyebrow. "Yes. My brother Doyle. I suppose thatwas in your damn research, too."

"I'm so sorry." But she was thinking: Dick Artemus isn't capable of such a cold-blooded extortion.

The ex-governor speared the sliced pieces of fox on the point of a whittled oak branch, balancing it over the flames. "The reason I came to see him – your boss – is to let him know the dire ramifications of a double cross. He needs to be aware of how seriously I regard the terms of this deal."

Lisa June Peterson said: "Isn't it possible you misunderstood?"

Clinton Tyree gazed down at her with a ragged weariness. Then he dug into a dusty backpack and brought out a brown envelope crookedly folded and dappled with stains. Lisa June opened it and read the typed letter that had been delivered to Clinton Tyree by his best friend, Lt. Jim Tile. It didn't matter that there was no signature at the bottom – Lisa June recognized the bloated phrasing, the comical misspellings, the plodding run-on sentences. The author of the threat could only be the Honorable Richard Artemus, governor of Florida.

"My God." Despondently she folded the letter. "I can't hardly believe it."

Clinton Tyree snatched her under the arms, drawing her face close to his. "What I can't believe," he rumbled, "is that your boss had the piss-poor, shit-for-brains judgment to come fuck with me.Me of all people."

His crimson eye jittered up toward the stars, but the good eye was fixed steady and lucid with wrath. "Anything bad happens to my brother from all this nonsense, someone's going to die a slow, wretched death involving multiple orifices. You get the picture, don't you?"

Lisa June Peterson nodded.

The ex-governor eased her to the ground. "Try some fox leg," he said.

"No, thanks."

"I advise you to eat."

"Maybe just a bite."

"People speak of me as Skink. You call me captain."

"OK," said Lisa June.

"Any reason you need to be home tonight?"

"No. Not really."

"Dandy," said Clinton Tyree, stoking the campfire. "That'll give us time to get to know each other."

The flight from Fort Lauderdale to Gainesville took ninety minutes, plenty of time for Palmer Stoat to reflect on a productive half day of work. With a two-minute phone call he'd made forty grand. The woman on the other end was the chairperson of the Miami-Dade County Commission, who had obligingly moved to the bottom of the night's agenda an item of large importance to Palmer Stoat. It was a motion to award the exclusive fried-banana concession at Miami International Airport to a person named Lester "Large Louie" Buccione, who for the purpose of subverting minority set-aside requirements was now representing himself as Lestorino Luis Banderas, Hispanic-American.

To avoid the unappetizing prospect of competitive bidding, Lester/Lestorino had procured the lobbying services of Palmer Stoat, whose sway with Miami-Dade commissioners was well known. Once he had identified the necessary loophole and lined up the requisite voting majority, all that remained for Stoat was to make sure the fried-banana contract was placed far down on the agenda, so that the "debate" would be held no sooner than midnight. The strategy was to minimize public input by minimizing public attendance. A sparse crowd meant sparse opposition, reducing the likelihood that some skittish commissioner might get cold feet and screw up the whole thing.