Addressing the table, Robert Clapley said, "Palmer disapproves of my two ladies, though I suspect he's just jealous. They have exotic tastes, it's true – and talents to match."

There was a ripple of appreciative laughter.

"So bring a hacksaw for the horn," Clapley instructed Durgess firmly.

"Yessir."

"You know what's also supposed to be good for boners? Bull testicles," the governor volunteered informatively. "Rocky Mountain oysters is what they call 'em out West. Can you imagine eating barbecued bull's balls?"

Durgess rose sluggishly, as if cloaked in cast iron. "We best be movin' out now," he told the men. "I'll go fetch Asa. You fellas meet us in front."

"With our guns," Palmer Stoat added.

"Yessir. With your guns," Durgess said, with dull resignation.

29

They found a knoll with a clear downhill view of the towering moss-draped oak, which stood alone at the confluence of two slopes. The men laid down in the tallest grass to wait, Twilly sighting with the Remington while Skink scanned with the field glasses. McGuinn sat restlessly between them, nosing the foggy dawn air. The end of his leash was looped once around Skink's ax-handle wrist.

"Is it alive?" Twilly, squinting through the rifle scope.

"Hard to say," Skink said.

They were talking about the black rhinoceros.

"Lookie there!"

"What?"

Skink, who needed only half of the binoculars, said: "It's eating. See for yourself."

Twilly positioned the crosshairs and saw twin puffs of mist rising from the beast's horned snout. Its prehensile upper lip browsed feebly at a bale of hay.

"Looks about a thousand years old," Twilly said.

Skink sounded somber. "If we're going to do this thing, whatever it is, it's gotta happen before they plug that poor sonofabitch. That I won't watch, you understand?"

McGuinn edged cagily toward the slope, but Skink yanked him on his butt. Twilly pointed on a line with his rifle: "Here they come, captain."

The hunting party arrived in a zebra-striped Chevy Suburban, parking no more than two hundred yards from the solitary oak. Eight men in all, the group made no effort at stealth. The great El Jefe, masticating serenely beneath the tree, seemed oblivious to the slamming doors, clicking gun bolts and unmuffled male voices.

At the front of the truck they held a brief huddle – Skink spotted the orange flare of a match – before the stalk began in earnest. Two men headed out first, both armed. Twilly didn't recognize either of them but he knew one had to be Robert Clapley.

Four men followed in a second group. Twilly didn't need a scope to pick out Desie's husband. He remembered Palmer Stoat's oversized cowboy hat from that first day, when he had pursued the obnoxious litterbug down the Florida Turnpike. Another giveaway was the bobbing cigar; downwind or upwind, only a stooge such as Stoat would smoke while tracking big game.

Skink said, "There's your boy." He recognized Stoat's dough-ball physique from the night he'd broken into the lobbyist's house and usurped his bathroom. Seeing him again now, in such an inexcusable circumstance, Skink was even less inclined toward mercy. Twilly Spree had related how all the madness had started – Stoat blithely chucking hamburger cartons out the window of his Range Rover. The ex-governor had understood perfectly Twilly's infuriated reaction, for such atrocious misbehavior could not be overlooked. In Skink's view, which he kept to himself, Twilly had shown uncommon restraint.

In the same contingent of hunters as Palmer Stoat marched the governor, looking theatrically chipper in an Aussie bush hat. Dick Artemus carried his gun in a way that suggested he practiced everything except shooting. A third man, leaner and darker, held a long-lensed camera but no weapon. The fourth man in the group walked out front with a rifle at the ready; he was older and wiry-looking, dressed more like a mechanic than a hunter.

The last two members of the motley safari stayed many paces behind and shouldered shorter rifles – semiautomatics, Skink somberly informed Twilly. The men wore jeans, running shoes and navy blue windbreakers with the letters fdle visible on the back.

"Governor Dick's bodyguards," Skink said, "with Mini-14s, if I'm not mistaken."

Twilly didn't like the odds. The sun was rising behind the knoll, which meant he and the captain would get some cover from the glare. But still ...

Skink nudged him. "Make the call, son. I'm not getting any younger."

Like a disjointed centipede, the hunting party advanced tentatively along the cleft at the base of the grassy slopes. Drawing closer to their prey, the two men out front altered their walk to a furtive stoop, pausing every few steps to rest on their haunches and strategize. The one doing all the pointing would be the guide, Twilly figured, while Robert Clapley would be the one bedecked like an Eddie Bauer model.

Viewed ,from a distant perch, the stalk unfolded as comic mime of a true wild hunt. Whenever the lead duo halted and the men trailing behind would do the same. The bare grass offered the trackers neither protection nor concealment, but none was necessary. The killer rhinoceros continued chewing, unperturbed.

"If you had to take out one of them," Twilly said to Skink, "who would it be – Governor Dickless?"

"Waste of ammo. They got assembly lines that crank out assholes like him. He wouldn't even be missed."

"Stoat, then?"

"Maybe, but purely for the entertainment. Tallahassee has more lobbyists than termites," Skink said.

"That leaves only Mr. Clapley." Twilly closed one eye and framed the developer square in the crosshairs. Clapley's face appeared intent with predatory concentration. Twilly carefully rested a forefinger on the Remington's trigger.

Skink said: "It's his project. His goddamned bridge. His hired goon who tried to kill you."

Twilly exhaled slowly, to relax his shooting arm. The hunting guide and Clapley had approached to within forty yards of the rhinoceros.

"On the other hand," Skink was saying, "it might be more productive just to snatch the bastard and haul him down to the Glades for three or four months. Just you and me, reeducating his ass on the Shark River."

Twilly turned his head. "Captain?"

"Could be fun. Like a high-school field trip for young Bob Clapley, or holiday camp!" Skink mused. "We'll send him home a new man – after the banks have called in his construction loans, of course ... "

"Captain!"

"It's your call, son."

"I knowit's my call. Where's the damn dog?"

"The dog?" Skink sprung up and looked around anxiously. "Oh Jesus."

So many enthralling smells!

McGuinn reveled in the country morning: Sunrise, on the crest of a green hill, where seemingly everything – leaves, rocks, blades of grass, the dew itself – was laced with strange intoxicating scents. Large animals, McGuinn concluded from their potent musks; jumbos. What could they be? And what sort of place was this?

Although most of the smells that reached the hill were too faint to merit more than a cursory sniff or a territorial spritz of pee, one scent in particular hung fresh and warm, cutting pungently through the light fog. McGuinn was itching to bolt loose and track it.

The scent was not that of a domestic cat or another dog. Definitely not duck or seagull. Negative also for deer, rabbit, raccoon, skunk, muskrat, mouse, toad, turtle or snake. This earthy new animal odor was unlike any the dog had previously encountered. It made his hair bristle and his nose quiver, and it was so heavy in the air that it must have been exuded by a creature of massive proportion. McGuinn yearned to chase down this primordial behemoth and thrash it mercilessly ... or at least pester it for a while, until he found something better to do.