Twenty-four hours later Warlock was skipping across the northwest channel with Captain Ted Rabun at dawn, headed for the vast tidal flats off Cottrell Key. It had taken a full twenty-four hours to begin to recover from the brain-curdling mud bath with Lucette. What a relief pure nature was, especially when the water of the flats was shallow and there was no chance of drowning. Lucette’s soprano occasionally still trilled in his ears in hideous flashbacks, harkening back to the droll fifties when his faculty advisor and chums would sing folk songs—“dicka dicka derry dum dum doodoo”—that sort of thing. The Irish were given to this sort of nonsense, which cost them a lot of tourist dollars, Warlock thought.

Captain Ted pulled back on the throttle and eased the boat up into even shallower water. Their prey would be the wily permit; a picture of the fish at the marina tackle shop looked uncomfortably like the gift pompano in Palm Beach. He thought again of the immense messiness in nature, what with the thousands of kinds of fish, bugs, birds, as if God hadn’t been able to put two and two together. Warlock turned to find Captain Ted Rabun leveling a pistol at him, right smack dab in the middle.

“Jeezo-peezo! What’s the deal?” His breath exploded.

“I’ve got you where I want you. Get out of the boat.”

He fired a shot into the water to emphasize his seriousness.

“Okay, okay. Don’t get excited.” Warlock eased himself over the gunwhale, sinking to mid-thigh in the water and the grassy marl of the bottom.

“Toss me your billfold.” When Warlock paused, Rabun fired another bullet near his left knee. “Make it snappy.”

Captain Ted sorted through the contents of the wallet in a jiffy. Warlock felt a strong tickling sensation deep in his bowels. What on earth could be happening; was the son a less benign lunatic than his father?

“Could you please explain your actions?” Warlock sensed that a shark of fatal proportions was in the vicinity.

“I knew it!” Ted Rabun was looking at a driver’s license. “I knew it. My mother said you drove a tan BMW but you had a compact at the marina. Then my wife said a gray BMW passed our house twice. Bib told me you were an undercover man from Michigan but you didn’t fit Gloria’s description. So you pull up in that car and I look closely and think, it’s got to be you. Have a nice walk. Wait for a passing boat because the ship channel is full of big sharks.” Rabun started the motor.

“Please!” Warlock’s legs weakened to the point that he sat down in the water; it was warm and vaguely comforting, an amniotic fluid that would serve as a liquid shroud. “My god man, are you a savage?”