Harry’s voice on the phone said, “Shit. Well, it doesn’t look like he’s gonna have my sixteen five, does it?”

Bobby Deo said, “Let me see what I can do.” And drove back to the Ganz estate: along Ocean Boulevard past walls of flowering oleander and wind-blown Australian pines to the spray-painted sign in the vegetation that said PRIVATE DRIVE and below it KEEP OUT. Bobby backed into the drive, eased his Cadillac through the vegetation growing wild and stopped when he heard it scraping the car. He got out and walked along the drive through sea grape, palmettos, sabal palms, past an old gumbo-limbo spreading all over the place, through this jungle to the house with no furniture in it. He looked again in windows to see the rooms still empty before walking around to the ocean side of the property and was pretty sure he’d found Mr. Chip Ganz.

In a lounge on the red-tiled patio, reading the paper and smoking a joint, ten-thirty in the morning.

Bobby’s first impression of Chip Ganz, he saw a skinny guy in his fifties trying to look hip: the joint, a full head of hair with gray streaks in it brushed back uncombed, and tan. Bobby had never seen an Anglo this tan and thought at first Chip Ganz was lying there with nothing on but his sunglasses. No, the guy was wearing a little swimsuit, a black one. Or it was his underwear. Bobby had some like it with the name Bill Blass on them; he had them in red, blue, green, different colors. This Chip Ganz was the kind wanted you to think he was cool: the way he lowered the paper now and looked this way, but not acting surprised to see a person he didn’t know watching him.

Bobby said, “How you doing, Chip?” and took time to look around, notice the sea grape taking over the frontage along the ocean. “Your property needs a lot of work. You know it?”