“We never been over there,” the fat one said, as Warlock walked back to his car, not wanting to see the kid eat the fish. Youth, like adulthood, was full of economic cruelties. Unless he was a thief, the fat kid must pay plenty for his olive oil fix.

Rabun’s motel down near Lantana on A1A was relatively simple in that it entailed a straight line south from his vision of Singer Island. He went into the lobby and inquired about March reservations and was surprised to find out that they were booked solid after January first. That made those months easy to check with the CPA, but didn’t free a possible coverup in December. He took a brochure that included a room map and went back to the car. On the far side of the road was mostly a nasty mangrove swamp, except for a small clearing where a man sold fruit from a semitrailer. The prospects for comfortable spying were small. Now he recognized that he should have gone for something less noticeable than a tannish-colored BMW. He bought a sack of oranges from the surly Italian that manned the truck; but then the man spoke Spanish to an old woman who assisted him. Cuban. He must avoid clichés like Italian fruit vendors.

The health spa was located on the road to the Wellington Polo Grounds. It was an imposing stucco building, a windowless cube that led one to suspect the occupants were up to no good. So this is where Mrs. Bob Fardel of North County Road suffered irreparable spinal injuries at the hands of a berserk exercise machine? His lip curled with cynicism, imagining the litter of venal lawyers behind the case; the world had become a litigious nightmare, with every driver a potential whiplash supplicant. He would no doubt find the cunt doing cartwheels on her back lawn, behind a shrubbery hedge that would be difficult but not impossible for him to penetrate. It was the age-old question of the right man for the right job. He laid a little rubber out of the parking lot for no particular reason. It was barely after eleven but he was definitely peckish. There were two more possible stops on the map—the architect and the construction company for Mrs. Rabun’s house—but his body felt swept with fatigue, and there was the gesture of leaving something to do in the afternoon.