The next morning Captain Ted and Warlock were speeding at dawn in a gray BMW toward Palm Beach. Even more shocking water had gone over the dam, so shocking that Warlock sat in the passenger’s seat with clenched jaws while Ted put the car through its paces. In a twenty-four hour baptism of fire he had experienced the soaring bitterness of sophistication, the bitter fruit of comprehending a large portion of reality. Captain Ted had taken this broken waif home and fed him a fine Hunanese meal (cold chicken salad with noodles and cucumber slices, ginger shrimp, hot and sour fish), and his lovely wife had let Warlock rock their colicky infant to sleep, singing “Bobby Shafto’s gone to sea, a silver buckle on his knee, he’ll come back and marry me, pretty Bobby Shafto.” He hadn’t been able to locate Diana on the phone. He called his dad to run an exhaustive make on Dr. Rabun. He called Clete because he somehow wanted to talk to Hudley, which wasn’t possible. Clete said it was urgent that he call Patty, she of the bowling alley parking lot blowjob. Promiscuity was somewhat limited in Traverse City and Clete was a roamer, running into Patty at the selfsame bowling alley. Warlock contacted Patty and, after some arch inanities, was informed that her mother was Dr. Rabun’s cleaning woman, and this selfsame Rabun was having a longstanding affair with Warlock’s wife, Diana. Patty chortled maniacally until Warlock hung up with dry sobs shooting convulsively through his body. Dad called in while Ted and Warlock were conceiving a plan to turn the tables.

“Johnny? Your so-called employer is the biggest pervert in the country. I would not trust a Holstein in his vicinity. He should be destroyed like a rabid dog but all these airhead liberals …” Warlock hung up on Dad. Hate swelled in his heart.

Chapter 43