3

Twilly made it back to the Italian restaurant in time for the show. Under the amused supervision of several police officers, a detachment of workers with rakes and shovels had begun the unsavory task of digging out the BMW. This Twilly watched through field glasses from high in a nearby pine tree. There was no sign of the press, which was a shame – here was a story made for TV. Over the rhythmic crunch of digging, Litterbug's voice could be heard admonishing the sanitation workers to be careful, goddamn you, don't scratch the paint! Twilly found it comical, considering the likely extent of the Beemer's contamination. He imagined virgin leather upholstery ripening under an ambrosial lode of orange rinds, cottage cheese, Heineken bottles, coffee grounds, eggshells, crumpled wads of Kleenex, potato skins, sanitary napkins, pizza crust, fish heads, spare ribs, leaky toothpaste tubes, bacon grease, coagulated gravy, cat litter and chicken necks. Twilly wished he could infiltrate the cleanup crew, to see the ghastly sight up close.

Litterbug's wife/girlfriend could be observed pacing, arms folded, beneath a flickering streetlight. Twilly couldn't make out her expression, but the clip in her step suggested impatience. He wondered if she truly cared about the BMW; in any event, the insurance company would buy her a new one. Twilly also thought about the sanitation workers, being called out so late on such a strange job. He had a feeling they might be enjoying themselves, exhuming a fancy red sports car from a heap of refuse, but still he hoped they were getting overtime.

It was quite an extensive operation, and Twilly wondered why he wasn't feeling a commensurate sense of satisfaction. The answer came with a sour jolt as he studied the litterbug through the binoculars; watched the man unwrap a piece of candy – probably an after-dinner mint from the restaurant – then crumple the wrapper and drop it nonchalantly to the ground. The dumb fuckwad didn't get it! Didn't make the link between his piggish misbehavior on the turnpike and the malicious defilement of his automobile. He probably figured it was the random mischief of vandals; a prank.

I should've left a message, Twilly thought glumly. I should've made it crystal clear. He muttered a curse and climbed cautiously through the darkness down the trunk of the tree. By the time he reached the parking lot, the excavation of the car was complete. Litterbug and his wife/girlfriend could be seen leaving in a taxi. The soiled BMW was being hooked to a tow truck, whose burly driver wore a baby blue hospital mask and joked with the sanitation crew, which was shoveling the last dregs into a Dumpster.

Twilly asked one of the cops what had happened to the red convertible.

"Somebody emptied a garbage truck on it," the officer reported with a harsh chuckle.

"Jesus," said Twilly. "Why?"

"Who the fuck knows. It's the sick society we live in."

Twilly said: "I saw all these police cars, I was afraid there was a murder."

"Naw, just some big shot left his ragtop down in the wrong neighborhood."

"He famous or something?"

"I never heard of him before tonight," said the cop, "but obviously he's got some juice. Otherwise I wouldn't be here, I'd be home in my underwear watching basketball. Stand back now."

The tow truck driver was maneuvering out of the parking lot, the cop waving directions. Twilly knew better than to press for the litterbug's name; he didn't need it anyway. He approached one of the sanitation workers and asked if the Beemer was totaled.

"Yeah, and it ain't right. A sweet car like this."

Twilly said, "Completely ruined, huh?"

"You can't never get the interior clean, not after somethin' such as this. We're talkin' about a minimum – I'm guessin' now – four tons of raw garbage." The man stopped working and rested his weight on the stem of the shovel. "I mean, hell, an expensive car like that – why trash it when you can just steal the damn thing? Any fool leaves the convertible top down deserves to lose his wheels. But this? This is evil shit, you ask me. Taking this much trouble to destroy a perfectly splendid vehicle. Deeply evil shit."

"Sick world," Twilly Spree said, in his own defense.

He was born in Key West, where his father had gone to sell commercial waterfront. Little Phil Spree was a real estate specialist. If a property wasn't on the sea or the Gulf, Little Phil wasn't interested. He would buy and sell beach until there was no more beach to buy or sell, then pack up the family and move to another town where, Little Phil typically would exult, "the coast is clear!" Florida has thirteen hundred miles of shoreline, and young Twilly got to savor plenty of it. His mother, who kept out of direct sunlight, wasn't crazy about the tropics. But Little Phil was making excellent money, so Amy Spree basically stayed indoors for eighteen years, tended to her complexion and endeavored to occupy herself with hobbies. She grew bonsai trees. She started writing a romance novel. She learned to play the clarinet. She took up yoga, modern dance and strong martinis. Meanwhile Twilly ran wild, literally. Every free moment was spent outdoors. His parents couldn't imagine what he was up to.

When Twilly was four, Little Phil briefly moved the family to Marco Island, which was famous for its white dune-fringed beaches. The sand was spangled with ornate tropical seashells, which Twilly collected and organized in shoe boxes. Usually he was accompanied by a sitter, hired by his mother to make sure he didn't wander into the Gulf of Mexico and drown. Years later, at age fourteen, Twilly hot-wired a friend's station wagon and drove back to Marco, in order to prowl the shore for shells. He arrived late at night in a howling downpour, and fell asleep in the car. When he awoke at dawn, he comprehended for the first time what his old man did for a living. The island had sprouted skyline; a concrete picket of towering hotels and high-rise condominiums. Waterfront, of course. Twilly fixed his eyes downward and marched the beach, his shoe box under one arm. He hoped he was seeing a mirage, a trick of the fog and clouds, but when he glanced up, the hotels and condos were still there, looming larger than before. As the sun began to rise, the buildings cast tombstone shadows across the sand. Soon Twilly found himself standing in a vast block of shade – shade, on an open beach under a bright clear sky! He sunk to his knees and punched the hard-packed sand with both fists until his knuckles were skinned.

A woman tourist came up to Twilly and told him to stop carrying on, as he was upsetting her children. The woman wore a stretch two-piece swimsuit and spoke with a New England accent. Her toenails were colored magenta and her nose was buttered with zinc oxide and in one hand she brandished an Arthur Hailey paperback. Twilly howled and resumed pummeling the beach. The woman glowered over the rims of her sunglasses. "Young man," she said, "where is your mother?"

Whereupon Twilly whirled and chomped down on her bare foot and didn't let go until a beefy hotel security man came and pried him off. Little Phil arrived later that day with lawyers and a checkbook. On the trip home Twilly had nothing to say to his father. At bedtime Amy Spree went to her son's room and found him mounting a gaily painted human toenail in his seashell display. The next morning she took him to a psychologist for the first time. Twilly was given a battery of tests, none of which pointed toward violent sociopathy. Though Amy Spree was relieved, her husband remained skeptical. "The boy's not right," he would say. Or: "The boy's not all there." Or sometimes: "The boy's playing on the wrong team."

Eventually Twilly tried to talk to his father about Marco Island and other heartaches. He reminded him that Florida for eons had been underwater and was steadily sinking again, the sea and the Gulf rising each year to reclaim the precious shoreline that Little Phil and others were so avidly selling off. So what? Little Phil replied. That's why people got flood insurance. Twilly said, No, Dad, you don't understand. And Little Phil said, Yeah, well, maybe I don't understand geology so good but I understand sales and I understand commissions. And if this goddamn place starts sinking to where I can see it with my own eyes, then me, you and your mother are packin' up and moving to Southern California, where a man can still make a dandy living off oceanfront.