“I know,” DeMarcus said.

I looked at him.

“Incongruous.”

Sill, Eigen, and Gloria were already seated topside at an elegant table. Eigen was dressed in a red bikini, looking like a mathematician in a bikini. Gloria was dressed in white, as she had been in Corsica. Sill was comfortable in jeans and a Parliament (the band) T-shirt. That was when I realized that I was dressed very similarly to Sill and I didn’t know how that had happened. I pulled my shirt away and stared at it upside down. Jethro Tull. I didn’t know who he was, but he looked like an old man.

“On my second rum, old man,” Sill said.

“Oh, Wala, isn’t it a beautiful day?” Eigen said.

“Nice boat,” I said.

“A seventy-nine Morgan,” Sill said.

“I was expecting something grander,” I said, meaning it as an insult.

“No doubt,” he said. “It’s unassuming and simple enough to drive the fucking feds crazy. As unassuming as a yacht can be. This is the sort of thing really rich people buy to show that they’re rich enough not to need the crazy-ass expensive stuff that they keep at the other house. Like my jeans and T-shirt. Just looking at me you’d think casual dude, but if you knew that Bootsy Collins and George Clinton personally sewed the sleeves onto this bad boy, well, that makes it different, doesn’t it?”

“I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

“Never mind. Sit.” The Coast Guard cutter motored by. Sill waved. “Idiots. Captain McHale.”

“Mr. Sill, I’d like to go back to Providence. Perhaps Gloria here will be kind enough to fly me up there.” I nodded to Gloria and she nodded back, though it was none too clear that she knew at all what I was saying. “Eigen, don’t you want to get back to your students?”

“Fuck ’em,” Eigen said, in a voice far from her own.

“You don’t mean that,” I said.

“Of course I mean it. Why would I want to go back there to those privileged little bastards?” The was an undeniable edge to her voice, but her eyes, her gaze was as round as a basketball.

I sat down, looked across the table at Gloria. “Gloria tells me that you killed Aguedo. Is that true, that you dumped him into a pond of sharks?” After he nodded, I asked, “Just how many people have you killed?”

“Well, the sharks did the killing,” he said.

“An important distinction,” Gloria said.

Trigo barked.

“How many deaths are you responsible for?”

“You’re such a fucking boy scout. And here I thought you didn’t believe in anything,” Sill said.

“No, I believe in nothing.”

“I love it when you talk dirty,” Sill said.

Gloria and Eigen laughed.

“Eat, eat, eat,” Sill said. “Enjoy yourself. Gloria will fly you back to Providence after lunch and you can do whatever it is you do up there. Then you can make your way to Tennessee to meet me. Maybe drive your new car.”