“Maybe I’ll write a book about you instead.”
“I enjoy Graham Greene. I’d like to think he would have found me interesting,” Skink mused, “or at least moral.”
“I do,” Lisa June said.
“No, you write a book about Governor Dickless instead—and publish it before the next election. Wouldn’t that be a kick in the kumquats!” Skink’s mandrill howl startled a middle-aged patient wearing a neck brace and rolling an IV rig down the hallway. The man made a wobbly U-turn and steamed back toward the safety of his room.
Lisa June Peterson lowered her voice. “Look, I was thinking… ”
“Me, too.” The captain, playfully pinching one of her ankles.
“Not about that.”
“Well, you should. It’ll do you good.”
“The new bridge,” Lisa June whispered. “Shearwater.”
“Yeah?”
“The deal’s not sewn up yet. There’s one more meeting.” She told him who would be there. “And Palmer Stoat, too, of course. He set the whole thing up. It’s a hunting trip.”
Skink’s thatched eyebrows hopped. “Where?”
“That’s the problem. They’re going to a private game ranch outside Ocala. You need an invitation to get in.”
“Darling, please.”
“But let’s say you did get in,” Lisa June continued. “I was thinking you could talk to them about Toad Island. Talk to them the way you talked to me about Florida that night by the campfire. Who knows, maybe they’d agree to scale down the project. Leave some free beach and a few trees at least. If you can just get Dick on your side—”
“Oh, Lisa June—”
“Listen! If you can get Dick on your side, the others might go along. He can be incredibly persuasive, believe me. You haven’t seen him at his best.”
“I should hope not.” Skink, toying with his buzzard beaks. “Lisa June, I just whittled a serious insult into the man’s rear end. He ain’t never ever gonna be on my side. And you know that.” The captain leaned sideways and smooched one of her kneecaps. “But I sincerely appreciate the information.”
The door to Twilly Spree’s room opened and they both got up. A pleasant freckle-faced nurse reported that Mr. Spree was improving by the hour.
Lisa June Peterson tugged Skink’s sleeve. “I’d better be getting back to the capitol. The boss has a busy afternoon.”
“Don’t you want to meet the notorious psycho dognapper?”
“Better not. I just might like him.”
Skink nodded. “That would be confusing, wouldn’t it?”
“Heartbreaking is more like it,” she said, “if something bad were to happen.”
When he wrapped his great arms around her, Lisa June felt bundled and hidden; safe. He told her: “Between you and Jim, I’ve never seen such worriers.”
From somewhere in the deep crinkly folds of his embrace he heard her ask: “But it wouldn’t hurt to try, would it? Talking sense to them, I mean. What could it hurt?”
“It’s a hunting trip, darling. Can’t be talking out loud during a hunt. You gotta stay real quiet, in order to sneak up on the varmints.” Skink pressed his lips to her forehead. “Sorry for making a mess of lunch. How about a rain check?”
“Anytime.”
“Bye now, Lisa June.”
“Good-bye, Governor.”
They had sex on the lion-skin rug in the den, under the dull glassy gaze of the fish and wild animals Palmer Stoat had killed: the Cape buffalo, the timber wolf, the tuft-eared lynx, the bull elk, the striped marlin, the tarpon…
Afterward, Estella, the right-wing prostitute from Swain’s, asked: “You miss her?”
“Miss her? I booted her!” Stoat proclaimed. “The dog’s a different story. Boodle was good company.”
“You’re fulla shit.”
“How about another drink?”
“Why not,” she said.
They were both nude, and smoking Havana’s finest. Romeo y Julieta was the brand. Palmer Stoat was delighted to have found a partner who would keep a lit cigar in her mouth during athletic intercourse. Later, if he could get it up again, he would snap some pictures—the two of them going at it, stogie-to-stogie, like dueling smokestacks!
Her scotch freshened, Estella rolled on one side and stroked the frizzy auburn mane of the lion skin. “You shot this stud muffin yourself?”
“I told you, sweetheart. I shot all of ’em.” Stoat fondly patted the tawny hide, as if it were the flank of a favorite saddle horse. “This sumbitch was tough, too. Took me three slugs at point-blank.”