"It can't lose," said Robert Clapley, "as long as I get my bridge."

"Consider it done, Bob."

"Oh, I will."

Palmer Stoat drained his bourbon and said, "Hey, I finally thought of a question."

Clapley seemed pleased. "Fire away, Mr. Stoat."

"Are you gonna finish that baked potato?"

That same afternoon, a man named Steven Brinkman was summoned to a cluttered double-wide trailer on Toad Island. Brinkman was a biologist, fresh out of Cornell graduate school, who had been hired as an "environmental specialist" at $41,000 a year by the prestigious engineering firm of Roothaus and Son, designers of highways, bridges, golf communities, office towers, shopping malls, factories and residential subdivisions. Roothaus and Son had been recruited by Robert Clapley to the Shearwater Island project, for which a crucial step was the timely completion of a comprehensive biological survey. Without such a document, the development would be bogged down indefinitely in red tape, at great expense to Clapley.

Brinkman's task was to make a list of species that lived on the small barrier island: plants, insects, birds, amphibians, reptiles and mammals. The job could not be sloppy or hurried, because the government would be doing its own survey, for comparison. Steven Brinkman, in fact, once had been offered a position of staff biologist with the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, but had chosen the private sector for its higher salaries and broader opportunities for advancement. That was the upside. The downside was having to answer to soulless cretins such as Karl Krimmler, the project supervisor, who would have been rapturous to hear there was no wildlife whatsoever on Toad Island. In nature Krimmler saw neither art nor mystery, only bureaucratic obstacles. A flight of swallowtail butterflies or the chirp of a squirrel could send him into a black funk that lasted for days.

Now Krimmler wedged a phone at one ear and fanned himself with Brinkman's list. Krimmler was an engineer, not a biologist, and he reported directly to Roger Roothaus. It was Roothaus to whom Krimmler was now speaking on the phone.

"Gators?" Krimmler relayed the query to Brinkman.

Brinkman shook his head.

"Bald eagles? Anykind of eagles?"

Brinkman said no. Into the phone Krimmler said: "He's sure. No eagles. You want me to read you what he's got? Yeah. No. OK, lemme ask."

To Brinkman then Krimmler explained: "All we're really worried about is endangereds."

"I haven't found any yet."

"You're positive? We don't want any surprises – six months from now, some fucking red-bellied caterpillar turns out to be the last of its race. That we don't need."

Steven Brinkman said: "So far, I haven't found a single endangered species."

To Krimmler this was the happiest of news, and with a satisfied tone he repeated it into the phone. He chuckled at Roothaus's reply, saying, "I know, I know. It's too damn good to be true. But the young man tells me he's sure."

"So far," Brinkman interjected tentatively, "none so far." There was always a chance of the odd burrowing owl or gopher tortoise.

Krimmler glanced up. "Mr. Roothaus wants to know if you've found anything weird. Anything we need to take care of before the eco-pinheads from Fish and Wildlife show up."

Brinkman took a deep breath. It didn't take much to set Krimmler off.

"Well, there's this." The biologist held out his right hand.

Krimmler peered. "The hell is it?" Then, into the phone: "Hold on, Rog."

"It's a toad," Brinkman said.

"Gee, and here I thought it was a baby unicorn. I knowit's a toad, OK? I know what a goddamn toad looks like. The question is, what kind of goddamn toad, Mr. Brinkman?"

"It's doctor. Doctor Brinkman." Some things you couldn't let slide, even at forty-one grand a year.

Krimmler glared. He cupped a hand over the receiver and whispered, "I'm waiting."

"Bufo quercicus."

"Now in English."

"It's an oak toad."

"And?"

"The smallest toad native to North America."

"That I can believe," Krimmler said. "But it's not on the endangered list?"

"No, sir."

"The 'threatened' list?"

"No."

"Any other goddamn lists?"

"None that I'm aware of."

"Then what's the problem?" Into the phone he said, "Hey, Roger, young Dr. Brinkman brought me an adorable baby frog ... Well, that's what I'm trying to find out."

Brinkman said, "There's no problem, really, with the oak toads. It's just they're all over the place, by the hundreds. I've never seen so many."

"That would probably explain the name of the island."

"It would," Brinkman said, sheepishly.

The toad in his palm was smaller than a quarter. Its coloration was a mottled gray and brown, with a vertical orange stripe bisecting its back. The toad blinked its shiny eyes and began to squirm. Gently, Brinkman closed his fingers around it.

Krimmler said, "Take your little pal outside before he pees on this fine linoleum. I'll be with you in a second."

Brinkman shut the door behind him. The sun was so bright it made his eyes water. He knelt and placed the diminutive toad on the ground. Immediately it hopped off, into the shade of the trailer.

Five minutes later, Krimmler came down the steps. "Mr. Roothaus says you're doing a super job. He's a little concerned about those toads, though."

"They're completely harmless," Brinkman said.

"Not necessarily. These days it wouldn't take much to stir up another snail-darter scenario. I mean, if some tree-hugger type really wanted to throw a wrench in this project."

Brinkman said, "I told you, they're not endangered. They don't even take a cute picture."

Krimmler shrugged. "Still and all, we can't be too careful. Where exactly did you find these toads. Dr. Brinkman?"

"All over the island, like I said."

"Uplands or wetlands?"

"Uplands, mostly," said Brinkman.

"Excellent."

"In the flatwood and shrub. There's so many, you'll never catch them all."

"You're absolutely right," Krimmler said. "That's why we're going to bury 'em instead."

4

On the drive to the airport, the man tossed from the Range Rover a styrofoam coffee cup and the cellophane wrapper from a Little Debbie's cinnamon-raisin roll. This happened at eighty miles an hour in breakneck traffic on the interstate, so Twilly was unable to pull over and retrieve the trash. By now he had ditched his dirty black pickup and rented a generic maroon Chevrolet Corsica, of which there were no fewer than half a million on the highways of South Florida during tourist season. Twilly enjoyed feeling inconspicuous behind the wheel; for the sake of appearances, he even spread a road map upside down across his lap. He followed the litterbug all the way to the airport parking garage and, by foot, into the terminal. Twilly shouldn't have been surprised to see the man greeted affectionately at the Delta gate by a top-heavy blond woman with a Gucci overnighter, but Twilly wassurprised, and a bit pissed off. Why, he didn't know. He drove back to the litterbug's house and waited for the wife/girlfriend to make a move. She came out wearing a short tennis ensemble and carrying not one but three oversized rackets. Twilly watched her slide into a black BMW that her husband/boyfriend must have leased to replace – temporarily, Twilly felt certain – the ruined red one.

After she was gone, Twilly slipped through the hedgerow into the backyard and scoped out the window jambs, which were wired for an alarm. He wasn't concerned. Based on his observations of Litterbug and wife/girlfriend, Twilly had a hunch the alarm wasn't set. And, sure enough, neither of them had remembered to lock the laundry room door, which Twilly nudged open. No sirens, beeps or whistles went off. Twilly stepped inside and listened for a maid or a cook or a nanny. Through a doorway he could see into the kitchen. While there was no sign of movement, Twilly thought he heard breathing.