There was a little girl who had a little girl who had a little girl. The only man who can unravel that riddle is lying in a Florida hospital, battling for his life after being gunned down outside a Calusa bar. Now Matthew Hope’s best friends are fanning out into the heat, retracing his footsteps desperately trying to discover who wanted him dead. They find pieces of a baffling puzzle: a circus teeming with animal trainers, freaks, and carnal knowledge; a curvaceous three-foot tall woman who died a brutal death; a big Florida land deal. How do they fit together? His mind flickering in and out of consciousness, Matthew Hope knows the answer. So does a killer — waiting for him to live, or die.

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Chapter 1

The first bullet hit Matthew Hope in the left shoulder.

The second one hit him in the chest.

He was a lawyer, and therefore subject to a deep-seated American animosity for the legal profession. But he was not normally a target for shooters. Well, he’d been shot once before, but this time hurt more than the last time. People who made movies should tell a person how much it hurts to get shot.

The last time he’d got shot, he had just shoved himself off the fender of a car and was trying to intercept a person being chased by a detective. This time, he was just coming out of a bar, in the same section of town, come to think of it, just stepping outside to see if he’d got the telephone message wrong–were they supposed to meet inside the bar or outside on the sidewalk?–when all at once a shots erupted.

The last time he’d got shot, he was still conscious when the ambulance arrived. This time there was first the searing pain and then a feeling of complete helplessness, his shoulder leaking, his shirt wet with blood, legs going weak, arms flapping mouth gasping for air as he flailed backward through the swinging doors that led into the bar, everything swimming out of focus like in a cheap detective novel, everything getting darker and darker, and somebody screamed. People who made movies should tell a person that getting shot was so painful it caused you to scream aloud.

Everything went black.

Matthew was in the emergency room when his partner Frank Summerville arrived at ten thirty-seven that Friday night. He was told by the attending intern that Mr. Hope had been admitted unconscious at ten twenty-two and was at the moment awaiting emergency surgery. X rays had revealed a relatively insignificant bullet wound in the left shoulder, just above the clavicle, fortunately missing the apex of the lung, passing through the soft tissue of the shoulder instead. The other wound was more serious. The massive loss of blood indicated that the bullet had ruptured at least one major blood vessel–one of the main pulmonary arteries or veins perhaps–or numerous smaller arteries, causing Mr. Hope’s present state of shock. They were currently pouring in saline to bring his blood pressure back up, which at the moment was reading only thirty over palp. Blood for transfusion had been ordered from the blood bank. A sample of his own blood had been sent to the lab for a CBC, a medical screen, and tests of his arterial blood gases. Regardless of what the tests showed, he would be removed to the OR as soon as it was ready for him. A thoracic surgeon and two resident surgeons were standing by.

The intern’s ‘s smock was bloodstained. Victims of accidents or attacks were being carried in on stretchers. Stainless-steel tables kept wheeling past, bottles dripping into long plastic tubes. Police officers kept moving in and out of the entrance door. Outside, ambulances blinked furiously. Bewildered, Frank stood with the intern in the midst of this noisy, swirling maelstrom. Everywhere around then was the detritus of the start of a weekend’s mayhem in any American city or town.

“How did this happen?” Frank asked.

“I have no idea, sir,” the intern said.