‘I’m not eager to find out,’ Cab replied.

‘You and me both. No snipping for me. Not that I’m looking to have more kids, but who knows? If I’m eighty, and I still have two marbles rolling around in my head, I might want to put my other marbles to good use.’ He chuckled.

‘Are you married, Mr Warren?’

‘Divorced. Twice. It cost me the gross national product of Brazil both times. That’s two and out for me. From now on, I drive, but I don’t park. What about you, Detective? Are you married?’

‘No.’

‘And you’ve got money. Smart man. That’s the way to keep it.’

Warren sipped coffee from a ceramic mug with his own face on it. It was Saturday morning, and Cab felt the Gulf heat tightening his eyes and shrinking his face like a mummy. The sharp creases in his charcoal suit were flattening like a wrinkled shirt in the shower. The two men stood on open green lawn in front of a radio station headquarters building, in the shadow of half a dozen enormous white satellite dishes. To their left, cars shot westward off the Tampa bridge to the crowded Gulf cities. Cab smelled dead fish wafting from the nearby beach.

One of the drivers on the highway spotted Chuck Warren and honked loudly. Warren waved back and gave a thumbs-up sign like a manic leprechaun. Two more drivers leaned on their horns in support, but another driver jerked an arm out his window at Warren with the middle finger extended.

Warren offered a cheery return salute. ‘Socialist,’ he said, laughing. He sat down on a bench near one of the satellite dishes. Balancing his coffee mug on the bench, he slid a cigar from the pocket of his navy sport coat and offered it to Cab, who shook his head. Warren lit the cigar, puffed, and picked up his coffee again. ‘So do you listen to my show, Detective?’

‘Sorry, no.’

‘You a Socialist?’

‘I’m a nothingalist.’

‘I just figured, Hollywood mama and all, you had to be a crazy Dem.’

‘No, just crazy.’

‘Well, sooner or later, we all have to take sides,’ Warren said.

The former Congressional candidate – and current radio talk show host – was in his early fifties but looked younger. He was about five-foot-eight. He had shock-white hair, as wiry as a brush, and a smooth face that had probably seen its share of Botox and plastic surgery. His cherubic expression – easy smile, twinkling brown eyes – belied his reputation for extreme rhetoric. He was, according to his website, a happy patriot, relentlessly cheery as he tore into left-wing politics. He had charisma. All once-and-future politicians did. As much as you could dislike a politician on television, Cab decided, it was hard to dislike one in person.