And Twilly said, Forget I even mentioned it.

On the eve of Twilly's eighteenth birthday, Little Phil drove him to a banker's office in Tampa, where it was explained to Twilly that he was about to inherit approximately $5 million from a man he had met only once, Little Phil's father, the late Big Phil. Big Phil Spree made his fortune off copper mines in Montana, and had retired at age sixty to travel the world and play golf. Not long afterward he dropped dead in a sand trap on the sixteenth hole at Spyglass. His will left a third of his money to Little Phil, a third in trust to his only grandchild, Twilly, and a third to the National Rifle Association.

As they walked out of the bank, Little Phil threw an arm around his much taller son and said: "That's a shitload of dough for a young fellow to handle. But I believe I know what your grandfather would have wanted you to do with it."

"Let me guess. Oceanfront?"

"You're a smart one," said Little Phil, beaming.

Twilly shook free. "Mutual funds," he announced.

"What?" Little Phil was aghast.

"Yep."

"Where'd you hear about such nonsense?"

"I read."

"Look around, boy. Hasn't real estate done right by us?" Little Phil rattled off all the fine things in their life, from the swimming pool to the ski boat to the summer time-share in Vermont.

Twilly said: "Blood money."

"Uh?"

"What Grandfather left me is mine, and I'll do what I please with it. That'll be no-load mutuals."

Little Phil grabbed his shoulder. "Lemme see if I understand. I'm offering you a half partnership in a two-hundred-and-twenty-room Ramada at Daytona, beachside,but you'd rather stick the cash on that insane roulette wheel otherwise known as the New York Stock Exchange?"

"Yep," said Twilly.

"Well, I always knew you were playing for the wrong team. This ices it," said his father. "Did I mention the motel comes with a liquor license?"

A few months later Little Phil ran off to Santa Monica with a secretary from a title-insurance company. Despite her son's unease in structured settings, Twilly's mother beseeched him to enroll at Florida State University, in the state capital of Tallahassee. There Twilly majored in English for three semesters before dropping out and moving in with a poetry professor, who was finishing a doctorate on T. S. Eliot. She was a dynamic and intelligent woman who took a fervid interest in her new boyfriend, particularly his inheritance. She encouraged him to use the fortune to do good and noble deeds, beginning with the purchase of a snazzy new 280-Z for her garage. Eventually Twilly was spiffed up and presented to the dean of the English department, who proposed the funding of a resident Poet's Chair to be named in honor of Twilly's late grandfather, a man who wouldn't have known W. H. Auden from Dr. Seuss.

Twilly said sure, what the hell, but the gift was never made; not because Twilly welched but because in the interim he was arrested for assault and battery on a state legislator. The man, a Democrat from Sarasota County, had been written up in the news for blocking clean-water reforms while at the same time accepting illicit campaign donations from a cattle ranch that was flushing raw manure into an estuary. Twilly had spotted the legislator in a restaurant and followed him to the rest room. There Twilly shoved him into a stall and lectured him for forty minutes on the immorality of water pollution. In fear the legislator feigned contrition, but Twilly saw through the act. Calmly he unzipped his jeans, pissed prodigiously on the man's Bally loafers and said: "There, that's what your pals on the ranch are doing to Black Drum Bay. How do you like it?"

When a sanitized version of the incident hit the press, the dean of the English department decided it would set a poor precedent to accept grant money from a deranged felon, and broke off contact with Twilly Spree. That was fine with Twilly, for although he enjoyed a good poem, he felt subversion was a worthier cause. It was a view that only hardened as he grew older and met more people like his father.

"Dick says you're the man." Robert Clapley raised his bourbon and gave a nod.

"Dick exaggerates," said Palmer Stoat, well practiced at false modesty.

They were having a late lunch at a walnut-paneled country club in a suburb of Tampa. The governor had set it up.

"Dick's not the only one," Clapley said, "to sing your praises."

"That's very flattering."

"He explained the situation?"

"In a general way," Stoat said. "You need a new bridge."

"Yes, sir. The funding's there, in the Senate bill."

"But you've got a problem in the House."

"I do," Clapley said. "A man named Willie Vasquez-Washington."

Palmer Stoat smiled.

"Have you got any earthly idea," said Clapley, "what he's after?"

"I can find out with a phone call."

"Which will cost me how much?" Clapley asked dryly.

"The call? Nothing. Getting your problem fixed, that'll be a hundred grand. Fifty up front."

"Really. And how much kicks back to your friend Willie?"

Stoat looked surprised. "Not a dime, Bob. May I call you Bob? Willie doesn't need your money, he's got other action – probably some goodies he wants hidden in the budget. We'll work things out, don't worry."

"That's what lobbyists do?"

"Right. That's what you're paying for."

"So the hundred grand ... "

"My fee," Stoat said, "and it's a bargain."

"You know, I gave a sweet shitload of money to Dick's campaign. I've never done anything like that before."

"Get used to it, Bob."

Robert Clapley was new to Florida, and new to the land-development business. Palmer Stoat gave him a short course on the politics; most of the cash flying around Tallahassee could be traced to men in Clapley's line of work.

He said, "I tried to reach out to Willie myself."

"Big mistake."

"Well, Mr. Stoat, that's why I'm here. Dick says you're the man." Clapley took out a checkbook and a fountain pen. "I'm curious – is Vasquez-Washington a shine or a spic or what exactly?"

"A little pinch of everything, according to Willie. Calls himself the Rainbow Brother."

"You two get along?" Clapley handed the $50,000 check to Stoat.

"Bob, I get along with everybody. I'm the most likable motherfucker you'll ever meet. Hey, do you hunt?"

"Anything that moves."

"Then I know just the place for you," said Stoat. "They've got every critter known to man."

"How about big cats? I made space for a hide on the wall of my library," Clapley said. "Something spotted would go best with the upholstery. Like maybe a cheetah."

"Name your species, Bob. This place, it's like where Noah parked the ark. They got it all."

Robert Clapley ordered another round of drinks. The waitress brought their rib eyes, and the two men ate in agreeable silence. After a time Clapley said, "I notice you don't ask many questions."

Stoat glanced up from his plate. "I don't havemany questions." He was chewing as he spoke.

"Don't you want to know what I did before I became a land developer?"

"Not really."

"I was in the import-export business. Electronics."

"Electronics," said Stoat, playing along. Clapley was thirty-five years old and had Yuppie ex-smuggler written all over him. The gold, the deepwater tan, the diamond ear stud, the two-hundred-dollar haircut.

"But everybody said real estate's the smart way to go," Clapley went on, "so a couple years ago I started buying up Toad Island and here we are."

Stoat said, "You're going to lose the 'Toad' part, I hope. Switch to some tropical moth or something."

"A bird. Shearwater. The Shearwater Island Company."

"I like it. Very classy-sounding. And the governor says it's going to be gorgeous. Another Hilton Head, he says."