“When I was sixteen Bob and Laura decided I was the young love scenario and you can imagine what happened. Bob directs the whole shot. Gloria told me on the phone about the cripple scenario. Laura’s been luring guys off the beach while Bob’s in the upstairs bedroom directing operations with hand signals, binoculars and video camera.” Captain Ted spit out beer in another gale of laughter.

“It just can’t be so. It can’t be.” Warlock’s vertigo was too deep for simple dizziness; it was a chill, numbing sensation that covered his entire body, three quarters of which was wet. He picked an infant shrimp off his shoe. Little lamb, who made thee?

“You might like to know the quarter million represents two years of my trust that started two years ago when I was twenty-one. Dad is crazy. He’s been crazy for thirteen years since we got kicked out of Cincinnati where I grew up. Mother had all the dough and she marries this genius medical researcher, my dad. Everything was fine until I was about ten. Mom sends Dad off to this super fat clinic where he loses well over a hundred pounds. He used to be jolly and wonderful but within a few months he becomes a monster. We had this summer place near Traverse City and we had to move there when the authorities in Cincinnati decided Dad was too hot to handle. He got caught in bed with these teen-agers he had fed a lot of dope to. Mom’s family had the power to protect him for about a year. They sent him to Menninger’s and a few other places. He came back to his senses enough to keep out of jail. During all the good years when he was an inventor he was also a financial genius and he got control of about half of Mom’s money and all of my trust. Now he won’t give me a dime. In a way I feel bad for him and in a way I hate him when I remember the perverted things he did to Mom. Christ, he can’t even get into Palm Beach anymore. There was an expensive cover-up a few years back when he tried some weird sexual invention on an underage girl and she was injured, though not seriously.”

Warlock couldn’t raise his voice past a mumble. He watched a group of alarmed cormorants fly off as the boat drifted toward them, shitting at the last moment to lighten themselves for flight. He was not about to draw conclusions from cormorants or Captain Ted Rabun; it was all too dreary for words. There was a yearning for his special pillow. “I want to go home,” he said bleakly. It would be soothing to cook Diana dinner and prepare a little cheese on toast for Hudley.