Stormy Weather

"You seriously don't want any ransom?"

"I didn't say that. Money is what I don't want."

"Then what?" Max flicked his cigaret into the water. "Tell me what the hell it's all about. I'm sick of this game, I really am!"

Skink was amused by the display of anger. Maybe there was hope for the precious little bastard. "What I want," he said to Max Lamb, "is to spend some time with your wife. She intrigues me."

"In what Way?"

"Clinically. Anthropologically. What in the world does she see in you? How do you two fit?" Skink gave a mischievous wink. "I like mysteries."

"If you touch her—"

"What a brave young stud!"

Max Lamb took two steps toward the madman, but froze when Skink raised a hand to his own throat. The collar! Max felt a hot sizzle shoot from his scalp down the length of his spine. Instantly he foresaw himself hopping like a puppet. Had he known that the battery in the Tri-Tronics remote control had been dead for the past six hours, it wouldn't have softened his reaction. He was a slave to his subconscious. He had come to understand that the anticipation of pain was more immobilizing than the pain itself-though the knowledge didn't help him.

When Max settled down, Skink assured him he had no carnal interest in his wife. "Christ, I'm not trying to get laid; I'm trying to figure out man's place in the food chain." His long arms swept an arc across the stars. "A riddle of the times, Tourist Boy. Five thousand years ago we're doodling on the walls of caves. Today we're writing odes to fruit-flavored douche."

"It's a job," Max Lamb replied petulantly. "Get over it."

Skink yawned like a gorged hyena. "That's a damn big engine coming. I hope your Bo

"I warned her not to."

Skink went on: "My opinion about your wife will be shaped by how she handles this situation. Whom she brings. Her attitude. Her composure."

Max Lamb asked Skink if he had a gun. Skink clicked his tongue against his front teeth. "See the ru

"No."

"Toward Key Biscayne. Over there."

"Oh, yeah."

"Two engines, it sounds like. I'm guessing twin Mercs."

Somebody aboard the boat had a powerful spotlight. It swept back and forth across the flats of Stiltsville. As the craft drew nearer, the white light settled on the porch of the stilt house. Skink seemed unconcerned.

He began to remove toads from his pockets; gray, jowly, scowling, lump-covered toads, some as large as Idaho potatoes. Max Lamb counted eleven. Skink lined them up side by side at his feet. Max had nothing to add to the scenario, perhaps it was all a dream, begi

The pudgy Bufo toads began to squirm and huff and pee. Skink rebuked them with a murmur. When the beam of the speedboat's spotlight hit them, the toads blinked their moist globular eyes and jumped toward it. One by one they leaped off the dock and plopped into the water. Skink hooted mirthfully. "South, boys! To Havana, San Juan, wherever the hell you came from!"

Max watched the toads disappear; some kicked for the depths, others bobbed on the foamy crests of waves. Max didn't know what would happen to them, nor did he care. They were just ugly toads, and barracudas could devour them, as far as he was concerned. His only interest was in drawing a lesson from the episode, one that might be employed to handle the cyclopean kidnapper.

But Skink already seemed to have forgotten about the Bufos. Once more he was rhapsodizing about the hurricane. "Look at Cape Florida, every last tree flattened– forest to moonscape in thirty blessed minutes!"

"The boat—"

"You ponder that."

"It's flashing a light at us—"

"The gorgeous fury inside that storm. And you with your video camera." Skink sighed disappointedly. "'Sin is a thing that writes itself across a man's face.' Oscar Wilde. I don't expect you've read him."

Max's silence affirmed it.

"Well, I've been waiting," said Skink, "to see it written across your face. Sin."

"What I did was harmless, OK? Maybe a bit insensitive, but harmless. You've made your point, captain. Let me go now."

The speedboat was close enough to see it was metallic blue with a white jagged stripe, like a lightning bolt, along the hull. Two figures were visible at the console.

"There she is," said Max.

"And no cops." Skink waved the boat in.

One of the figures moved to the bow and tossed a rope. Skink caught it and tied off. As soon as the rope came tight, the twin outboards went quiet. The current nudged the stern of the boat against the pilings, into the lantern's penumbra.

Max Lamb saw that it was Bo

Skink smiled at the reunion scene, and slipped back into the shadows of the stilt house. The driver of the boat made no move to get out. He was young and broad-shouldered, and comfortable on the open water. He wore a pale-blue pullover, cutoffs and no shoes. He seemed unaffected by navigating a pitch-black bay mined with overturned hulls and floating timbers.

From the darkness, Skink asked the young man for his name.

"Augustine," he answered.

"You have the ransom?"

"Sure do."

Bo

"I can see that," came Skink's voice.

The boat driver stepped to the gunwale. He handed Bo

Max Lamb said: "Bo

"I'm considering it," Skink said.

"Talk to me about what?"

The driver of the boat reached inside the console and came out with a can of beer. He took a swallow and leaned one hip against the steering wheel.

Bo