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why she isn't getting pregnant," Sugarman said. "It's 'cause every last drop of my goddamn sperm is going into sterile plastic cups."

    ***

    When Thorn and Sugar finally got the canoe back in the no-wake entrance canal, a narrow channel that shot straight to the docks, the wind died off and Sugarman seemed to get a fresh burst of energy. Thorn kept the rhythm, the canoe racing along, the only noise was the deep rasp of their breathing.
    A seven-foot alligator surfaced beside them, swam along, escorting them back. Rover woke, leaned over the low gunwale and began to bark at the dark creature.
    A few hundred yards from the docks, Thorn heard the roar of an outboard engine behind them and swiveled in time to see a white fishing boat bearing down. He rammed the paddle in deep, drove the canoe hard to the right into the dense mangroves, and the boat blew past, not three feet away, forty miles an hour. Its huge wake pitched them sideways deeper into the branches, nearly tipped them. Thorn lunged for Rover, caught him by the scruff as he was about to tumble overboard, a succulent dollop. For the next ten minutes while they bailed, the alligator drifted nearby eyeing them eagerly.
    At the docks they found the white boat tied up alongside the gas pumps. A man in a red long-sleeve flannel shirt and jeans was lounging against the leaning post, watching them paddle. His hair was tucked under a navy watch cap, big wraparound sunglasses hid his face. A black mustache so bushy it looked like he fertilized it. The man was tall, but with the pinched waist, wide shoulders, and compact physique of a gymnast.
    As the canoe coasted closer, the man reached into his cooler and drew out a speckled sea trout and lobbed it into the basin a few feet in front of their canoe. The water exploded and the fish vanished below the surface. Thorn watched the wide pebbled backs of two large gators slide beneath the water to contest the spoils, churning up a mass of bubbles from their combat.
    Without looking toward the boat, Sugarman paddled the canoe up to the dock, eased out of his seat, stepped out onto the slippery ramp, and hauled the canoe a few feet higher up. He steadied it while Thorn stepped out. Thorn set Rover on the dry part of the ramp, and the puppy shook himself hard and walked up to the shade of a cabbage calm and collapsed.
    "Gators are going berserk," the man said.
    His jeans were tight and a handful of blond hair curled out the neck of his flannel shirt.
    Thorn climbed up the ramp, mounted the dock, and approached the man.
    "Interesting word, berserk ," the man said. He yawned, covered his mouth with a fist, then took it away and gave Thorn a faint smile.
    "It's Norse. Combination of bjorn, which is bear, and sark, which is shirt. Bear shirt. What the Norse warriors wore as armor."
    He leaned forward and opened the fish box again. Full of reds and snook, a year or two short of legal.
    "Sometimes after guzzling too much wine, a Norse warrior would flip out, run into battle, bellowing like crazy, go crashing into the opposing enemy lines without his bear shirt. So that's what it means. Fighting without armor. Going berserk. Taking a risk and not giving a shit."
    Sugarman was there now, standing a couple of steps from Thorn.
    "I like words. I study them. Their histories. They each have one, you know. Like people. They come from some place, they change over time. A blend of different backgrounds. Like people, mating, reproducing. My mother gave me a lifelong interest in words."
    Thorn shifted his feet. He felt something happening behind his eyes, a teakettle's whistle rising to full volume. His face felt chapped.
    "That's a no-wake zone back there, asshole," he said. "You almost swamped us blasting by like that."
    "Oh, really?" the man said. "Golly gee."
    Thorn gave Sugarman a look and Sugar shook his head. Forget it. Another hopeless psycho wandered down from Miami.
    The man reached into his fish box again and grabbed the tails of two