When he left the phone booth two gay men waved a greeting and Warlock felt a blush rise slowly to his stillpallid face. What was the deal, he wondered? He didn’t want to make any more phone calls in a booth that smelled like pee-pee. He forgave Diana for the fact that her concern could not possibly match the degree of his trepidation. It might just be time to check on the two addresses he had for Rabun’s son. The disguise was gradually allowing his inherent strength to regather itself, a strength that had carried him through lesser crises, and now seemed to be mustering itself for the big one.

The compact car had a comforting overheated quality to it. Danger, secrecy, stealth, were all conducive to sweat. He would ask Dad to run an exhaustive check on Roberto Fardello. As frightened as he had been, Warlock’s stomach and shoulders now tightened in reaction. A certain Palm Beach Sicilian ganglord, kingpin, bully, wife-beater, Mafia don, might just have bitten off a little more than he could chew. I’m a tad tougher than pasta, Warlock thought.

There was a shifty piece of vertigo in his stomach when he discovered that neither of the addresses he had been given for Rabun’s son existed. His mind wandered into the idea behind “a wild goose chase”; even tame geese were nearly impossible to catch unless strictly confined. He went into what looked like a working class bar for his first drink in thirty-six hours, a time span that proved his limited good sense. It was just that self-criticism sometimes crippled a man.

The bar was blindingly dark and he stood still for a full minute to avoid tripping. There was a curious sense of danger, as if he was on the verge of being sucker-punched. There was an odd sprinkling of hippies, fishing guides and layabouts. Warlock returned the bearded bartender’s rude stare.

“I’d like some sort of strange drink of the tropics.”

“We’d prefer if you would drink at a bar with your own kind, sir.”

“What’s my kind for god’s sake?” Warlock had sat down before the full import of the statement had hit him. Everyone was staring at him with a kind of science fiction intensity.

“He’s saying that down here heterosexuals and homosexuals don’t make a habit of drinking together,” a big fat man said.