Still, Clapley sensed that young Rolf was uncomfortable in the role of edgy inquisitor, that he wanted very much to be stoic and unflappable in the Swiss banker tradition ...

"Surely this sort of minor snafu has come up before."

Rolf said, "Yah, shore. Snafus all ze time."

"So there's no cause to get all hot and bothered," said Clapley. "And Rolf?"

"Yah."

"Next time, don't call at such a wicked hour. I've got ladies here."

"Oh."

"That's ladies, plural." Clapley, with a suggestive chuckle.

"Again, sir, my apologies. But ve can hope for no more surprises? That vood be good."

"Oh, that vood be vunderful," chided Robert Clapley, perceiving starch in the young banker's tone, and not liking it. "Now it's time to say good-bye. Somebody's knocking at the door."

"Ah. Perhaps one of your ladies plural."

"Good night, again, Rolf."

Clapley put on a silk robe that almost matched his pajamas. He hurried to the peephole and let out a burble of glee. Palmer Stoat!

Clapley snatched open the door. "You got my rhino dust!"

"No, Bob. Something better."

As Stoat walked past him, Clapley inhaled a foul wave of heat, halitosis and perspiration. The lobbyist looked awful; blotchy and damp-skinned, a nasty purple bruise shining on his head.

"It's about Toad Island," he said, trudging uninvited toward the kitchen. "Where are the future twins?"

"Mass," said Clapley.

"What for – to show off their kneeling?" Stoat was wheezing as if he'd walked all sixteen flights. "By the way, I lined up your cheetah hunt."

"Swell. But what I need right now, more than oxygen, is the horn off a dead rhinoceros."

Palmer Stoat waved a sticky-looking palm. "It's in the works, Bob. On my mother's grave. But that's not what I came here to tell you." He removed a carton of orange juice from the refrigerator and a bottle of Absolut from the liquor cabinet. He fixed himself an extremely tall screwdriver and told Robert Clapley all that had happened to him in the clutches of the maniac dognapper.

"Plus, now he's brainwashed my wife. So here's what I did, Bob. Here's your big news. I advised this fucker – whose name is Twilly, by the way – I told him to keep Desie, keep the damn dog and quit wasting our time. The bridge is going up, I told him. Toad Island's history. So fuck off!" Palmer Stoat smacked his liver-colored lips and smiled.

Clapley shrugged. "That's it?"

Stoat's piggy wet eyes narrowed. "Yes, Bob, and that's plenty. No more extortion. The guy's got nothing I care about. He can't stop us and he can't hurt us."

"You're only half-right," said Clapley, "as usual."

"No, Bob. He's pathetic."

"Really."

"He doesn't matter anymore." Palmer Stoat made this a pronouncement. "He's a gnat. He's a no-place man."

"That's 'nowhere man.' "

"What can he do to us now? What's he got left?" Stoat gave a sickly grin. "He shot his wad, Bob."

Robert Clapley was thinking how unwell Stoat looked. He was reminded of the day Stoat almost swallowed the baby rat.

"So what're you saying, Palmer?"

"Onward and upward is what I'm saying." Stoat tipped another shot of vodka into his drink. "From now on, it's full speed ahead. You build your bridge and dig those pretty golf courses – me, I'm getting a divorce and a new dog."

"You say this diseased cocksucker's name isTwilly."

"Forget about him, Bob. He's Desie's headache now."

Clapley frowned. "No, Palmer, I can't forget about him. He went to a lot of trouble to make his point with you. I expect he's not done screwing with Shearwater yet."

"For God's sake, what's he gonna do – throw himself in front of the bulldozers? Let him be," Stoat said. "It's over, Bob. Call off Mr. Gash and send him back to Liquid, or what-ever-the-hell club you found him at."

"I'm afraid that's not possible."

Stoat gingerly pressed the chilled tumbler of vodka to the knot on his head. "Meaning you don't want to, right?"

"Meaning it's not possible, Palmer. Even if I didwant to," Clapley said. "Mr. Gash isn't communicating with me at the moment. He gets these moods."

Palmer Stoat shut his eyes. Down one pallid cheek rolled a single clear droplet from the vodka glass. "Would he hurt Desie?"

"Under certain conditions, sure," Clapley said. "Hell, you met the man. He's a primitive. Take a hot shower, Palmer, you'll feel better. Later we'll go look for the twins."

All night he waited in vain for the Buick station wagon. He was parked in a grove of pines not far from Mrs. Stinson's bed-and-break-fast. Playing over and over in the tape deck was one of his most prized 911s – a private bootleg not for sale anywhere at any price, not even on the Internet. Mr. Gash had learned of the recording one afternoon while hanging in his custom iguana-skin sex harness from the rafters of his air-conditioned South Beach apartment. One of the three women in bed below him fortuitously turned out to be a police dispatcher trainee from Winnipeg, Canada, who had a friend who had a friend who worked fire rescue in Duluth, Minnesota, where the bizarre incident was rumored to have occurred.

For three hundred dollars Mr. Gash had procured the tape recording, raw and unedited. He set the conversation to Mozart's Offertory in D Minor, "Misericordias Domini."

caller: I've got an emergency!

dispatcher: Go ahead.

caller: My wife thinks I'm in Eau Claire!

dispatcher: Sir?

caller: But I'm eighteen thousand feet over Duluth and dropping like a fucking stone!

dispatcher: Sir, this is Duluth fire rescue. Please state your emergency.

caller: OK, here's my emergency. I'm on an airplane that's about to fucking crash. We lost an engine, maybe both engines – whoaaaaa, Jesus! – and we're coming down, and my wife thinks I'm in Eau Claire, Wisconsin.

dispatcher: You're on a plane?

caller: Yes! Yes! I'm calling from a cellular.

dispatcher: And you're in Duluth?

caller: No, but I'm getting closer every second. Oh God! Oh God, we're ro – ro – rolling …

dispatcher: Hold on, sir, hold on ...

caller: Please, you gotta call my wife. Tell her the company sent me upstate at the last minute. Tell her ... I dunno, make something up, I don't give a shit ... anything!

dispatcher: Sir, I'm ... sir, did your pilot have a heart attack?

caller: No! I'd let you talk to him but he's kinda busy right now, trying to pull us outta this nosedive ... whooaaaaa ... Mother Mary ... whooaaaaaaa!!!

dispatcher: What type of aircraft? Can you give me a flight number?

caller: I don't know ... Oh God, it's so dizzy, so dizzy, oh Jesus ... I think I see, uh, cornfields ... My wife's name is Miriam, OK? Phone number is area ... uh, area code –

dispatcher: Cornfields? Anything else? Can you see Duluth yet?

caller: Oooooeeeeeeeehhhhh ...

dispatcher: Sir, I need a location or I can't assign units.

caller: It's way too late for units, mister ... Whoaaaaaaa ... you just ... whoaaaaaa, Jesus, you just tell 'em to look for the giant smoking hole in the ground. That'll be us ... Oh fuck me, FUCK MEEEEEEEEEE! ...

dispatcher: Sir, I have to put you on hold but don't hang up. Sir? You there?

Mr. Gash was tantalized by the call – the idea that a cheating husband aboard a crashing airplane would find the composure to dial 911 just to cover his doomed ass. What admirable futility! What charming desperation!

A dozen times he replayed the tape. Everything was on there, eighteen thousand feet of gut-heaving panic. Everything was there but the fatal impact and explosion.

Too late for units.

Man, thought Mr. Gash, was that poor bastard ever right.

Mr. Gash's Duluth connection had enclosed a newspaper clipping with the cassette. The flight was a twin-engine commuter out of St. Paul. It went down in a farm field; twenty-one dead, no survivors. Local authorities didn't release the name of the passenger who had placed the telephone call from the cabin; they said it would upset the relatives. The original 911 tape was turned over to the National Transportation Safety Board and sealed as evidence in the accident investigation. The version sent to Mr. Gash was a second-generation copy of high quality.