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Chapter One

What a difference a year makes.

It was the fall of 2001, exactly twelve months before the debate at East Tallahassee High. Marlon Conrad not only wasn't governor, he wasn't even planning on running for governor. At least not yet. Marlon was going to throw his hat in the ring in 2006, but that was a whole term away. In the meantime, he was perfectly content frittering away his days in a do-nothing political sinecure, tending to his hobbies.

It was a calm October afternoon, and a magnificent tarpon broke the surface of the water. It twisted in midair, trying to throw the hook, and landed back in the ocean with a grand crash. Then up again, tail-walking for its life.

Marlon worked fast with the joystick. He clicked the trigger, easing drag, finessing the tarpon on his computer screen in Silver King Xtreme Fishing.

There was a knock at the door, distracting Marlon, and the fish broke the line. It poked its head from the water and stuck out its tongue before disintegrating off the screen.

"Damn!" He swiveled in his chair. "Come in!"

The door to the office opened. There was gold lettering on the outside: MARLON CONRAD, LIEUTENANT GOVERNOR. In walked a buxom southern belle with poofy blond hair, Babs Belvedere, Marlon's fiancée in an arranged marriage between two of the state's most powerful families.

She wore a transparent pout and held out an index finger. "I have a splinter."

"Another one!" said Marlon, turning back to the computer and hitting the "cast" button on thejoystick.

"You don't love me anymore."

"Foolishness!"

It wasn't exactly a lie. He never had loved her.

The fish took the bait and jumped on the screen. Marlon zigged and zagged with the joystick.

Babs set a large box on the corner of his desk. She held her injured finger in Marlon's face. He pushed her hand out of the way and tried to recover with the joystick, but the damage was done. The fish stuck its tongue out again.

"Damn!"

He turned to Babs, her finger still outstretched.

"Kiss it and make it better," she demanded. Now the pout was real.

"Oh, all right." He gave it a quick peck, and her mood boomeranged to glee. "Guess what?" she said, pulling up a chair, plopping down and slapping both her knees in excitement. "I bought a new puppet!"

She took the case off his desk and placed it in her lap and opened it. Inside was a big frog, the newest in a long line of wooden marionettes that filled the shelves in Babs's bedroom. The source of all the splinters.

"Just what you need -- another puppet."

"You don't respect my art," said Babs, expertly manipulating the frog's strings with both hands. Barely moving her lips: "Ribbit, ribbit, ribbit."

"You possess genius," said Marlon, hitting the "cast" button again.

She actually did have some ability, and could now throw her voice short distances at will. The daughter of Periwinkle Belvedere, she was Miss Tallahassee 2001 and runner-up for Miss Florida. Babs easily could have been Miss Florida, too. She had become a finalist based on the strength of her ventriloquist act in the talent portion of the pageant, but she blew her final question, becoming flustered and saying she wanted to end world peace and promote illiteracy in the Third World.

The scheduled marriage was considered a deal-maker by the capital's movers and shakers. It would consolidate power and grease the skids for all kinds of ecopolitical alliances. Marlon thought she was an airhead.

He still hadn't found the proper way of telling anybody he didn't want to marry her. In the meantime, of course, he had taken the sex. Who wouldn't? What a cheesecake! But now, even that had stopped. Both knew why, and they didn't want to talk about it. Marlon had become sexually traumatized. On a recent evening, he had been going down on Babs when her vagina greeted him with the voice of Howdy Doody.

Babs made the frog hop across Marlon's desk. "Ribbit, ribbit..."

There was another knock at the door.

"Interruptions!" said Marlon, flinging the joystick aside.

Standing in the doorway with a leather organizer was Marlon's chief of staff, Gottfried Escrow. "Sorry, but your appointments are waiting. We really have to get the schedule moving."

Escrow pointed out the door into the lobby. In a row of chairs against the wall, under a giant oil painting of "Two-Fisted" Thaddeus Conrad, sat a conga line of older men in tailored suits. At the head of the line was a local construction magnate facing multiple investigations for shoddy workmanship and fraud. He arose, handed the chief of staff an unmarked envelope, and went inside.

The man took a seat across the desk from the lieutenant governor and placed his hands humbly in his lap. "I told my wife: For justice we must go see Marlon Conrad!"

"Two of your new roofs collapsed after light rain. A girl was hospitalized."

"I am but a simple businessman..."

Behind him, the chief of staff was giving Marlon the high sign to speed things up.

"I'll see what I can do," said Marlon, standing.

The man clasped Marlon's right hand in both of his and shook it earnestly. "Thank you! Thank you!" -- bowing repeatedly as he backed out of the room.

Three appointments later, Escrow came in the office holding a large laminated map mounted on foam board.

"What's that?"

"It's the new voting district we've been working on. I need you to okay it. You're chairman of the party's redistricting committee."

"Work, work, work," said Marlon, squinting at the prop. "Details?"

"We cut a deal with the Black Caucus and cobbled together a gerrymandered district that would be ninety-six percent African-American. Surprisingly, the five surrounding districts...