“I didn’t fuck a mobster’s crippled wife. You did. I’m being honest. I’m throwing the raw meat on the floor. This world’s for the meat eaters, baby. They shouldn’t let you charming feebs off the farm.” Garth was slipping into the same gangster patois used by Dad.

“Okay. Sorry to bother you. I’ll call Diana and say you’re the most disgusting human I’ve ever known.” Warlock slammed down the phone and began to pack a shoulder case. Why had he left his .38 at home? For the first time in forty-two years his life had been threatened. It was like jumping out of a comic book and landing in World War II.

A half hour later there was the prolonged hysteria of indecision at the cloverleaf of the Florida Turnpike. North or south? Warlock made a dozen turns, turnbacks, circles, pauses. Would Fardello assume he would hightail it for home, in which case he should head south? Or would Fardello assume, in that the man had complimented Warlock’s abilities, that he would go south? There was virtually no east what with the Atlantic, and west on the map held Sarasota, the name of which didn’t have enough masculine consonants to sound safe. He must not lead these immigrant fiends back to Michigan. Hadn’t Laura said she had begged for his life, performing unnameable acts on Bob? Could he put total stock in the whimsical Garth, an art type who had made frequent passes at Diana in defiance of friendship and trust? Garth’s gimcrack southern elegance concealed Irish blood, not the most trustworthy people in conversation, where any fib could be told in favor of a turn of phrase. The image of swart types dressed like Marlon Brando in Guys and Dolls finally turned him south. There was the cowering but stately Diana advanced on by men with machetes. Rape wasn’t out of the question. He desperately needed the solace of her company but he knew he must give up his safety for her own.

It took seven hours and two speeding tickets to reach Key West. His extreme nervousness had forced several meal and drink stops. There was that well known tradition of the “last meal” afforded the condemned man, and he tried to be inventive in his menu studies, somewhat in the manner of one who is asked what book or woman one would take to a desert island? The Bible and Monica Vitti, Shakespeare and Lauren Hutton, Toynbee and Jessica Lange, Garp and Gilda Radner, Pat the Bunny and Brooke Shields?