Palmetto Grove is a small town of a few thousand people located an hour's drive northeast of Sarasota. One of the most unusual towns in America, it isn't listed in any tourist brochure, and few people have even heard of it; the residents prefer it that way. For decades, before the decline of the Big Tops and their accompanying sideshows, Palmetto Grove was where circus freaks, refugees from ultimate birthmarks like mine, owned homes where they went to live in the off-season, or to retire when their "performing" days were over. Although most of the freaks prefer, even here, to stay out of the public eye, the mayor of Palmetto Grove was-the last I'd heard-a "dog-faced man" by the name of Charles Harris. It was not at all unusual to see a half dozen or so "bearded ladies" chatting together in the munic.i.p.al park or pushing their children in strollers. The state trooper unit with jurisdiction over Palmetto Grove often pressed the town sheriff-an eight-foot giant who came complete with his own customized van-into service when they thought the situation demanded. There was no rowdyism, no Sat.u.r.day night bar fights, in Palmetto Grove.

Neither Hertz nor Avis counters at the airport had any models I would feel comfortable driving, or they would feel comfortable renting to me, but I finally found a local car rental agency that handled Isuzus. I rented a Trooper and drove out to Palmetto Grove. I stopped in a motel-restaurant on the highway just outside of town, ordered coffee in a container, and took it out to a pay phone in the fern-lined lobby. I took out a pad and pen, then began thumbing through the local directory, looking for names of people I might know, and who would remember me. By the time I'd finished scanning the C's I already had four names, but I kept going out of curiosity. It was when I reached the R's that I saw a name that made my breath catch in my throat and my mouth go dry. I stared at the name, feeling bittersweet memories swell in my mind, and wondered what this particular woman was doing in a town filled with freaks.

Harper Rhys-Whitney was no freak-not unless you held her accountable for the freakish effect she had on the glands and good judgment of virtually every man who had, at least in the past, laid eyes on her. Including me. Especially me. When, as a teenager, I'd first met her, I had instantly decided that this other teenager was the most beautiful and desirable woman I would ever meet in my lifetime. I'd only been half right. I'd since met a number of beautiful women, had affairs with a few, and loved one-a gorgeous and compa.s.sionate witch from upstate New York, a woman by the name of April Marlowe. April had not only saved my life and mind but had also given me the courage, for the first time in my life, to overcome the insecurities and feeling of emotional vulnerability that go with being a dwarf and loving someone freely in return. However, my deep love for April notwithstanding, no woman had ever had the same instantaneous, raw, and lasting impact on my libido as Harper Rhys-Whitney, with her aura of primal, animal energy and s.e.xuality.

And all of this thinly veiled promise of sensual paradise radiating from a woman who, while almost perfectly proportioned, couldn't have weighed much more than a hundred pounds and stood only five feet tall-not that many inches taller than I am.

I'd been with the circus a year and a half when Harper had descended upon our company with her scaled menagerie like a bolt of heat lightning out of a clear summer day. Although she was nineteen, certainly of age, she was still, in effect, a runaway. And what she was running away from was influential wealth and power that others would have killed for.

Her family, I was to discover, was blue-blood, Mainline Philadelphia society, seriously rich, their fortune made in textiles in an industrial empire founded by her grandfather. As Harper had told it, she and her family never got along; they considered her a juvenile delinquent, primarily because of her defiance of virtually all authority, but also because of her obsession with dangerous reptiles and her propensity, from the time she was thirteen, to run with motorcycle gangs. Over the course of her childhood and adolescence she was frequently punished by having her snake collection taken away, and she was shipped off to more than a half dozen ultra-expensive boarding schools specializing in educating and smoothing the jagged edges off the troubled sons and daughters of the rich. She was thrown out of all the boarding schools and somehow always managed to start a new snake collection no matter where she was. Finally, upon turning eighteen, she invested a not inconsiderable sum of money into a large, and most impressive, collection of exotic reptiles-including not only many species of poisonous snakes but giant constrictors and a full-grown Komodo dragon with a taste for Big Macs and sauerkraut. She put her collection in cages, packed them all up in a truck, and went off looking for a circus. She worked for a few carny shows, didn't like them, set off again. Finally, she found Statler Brothers Circus. Phil hired her on the spot, with only a cursory glance at her menagerie in her truck. s.e.x, he'd patiently explained to his dwarf tumbler, sells tickets; if Harper Rhys-Whitney couldn't really handle snakes, then he'd simply teach her to do something else. Anything else. She had that much presence, was that magnetic.

And yet this wild thing with flowing black hair, full b.r.e.a.s.t.s, and maroon, gold-flecked eyes had turned out to be a consummate professional.

I hadn't known much about reptiles, their care or handling, myself, but I'd been a.s.sured by experts who did know about such things that this fiery girl with the pouting mouth and eerie eyes was one of the best snake handlers they'd ever seen-a talent, apparently, one either had or didn't have, and one which couldn't be taught. The caged Komodo dragon sitting outside the tent, munching on his burgers and kraut, served to very effectively draw the rubes inside; once there, what they saw was sufficient to keep them coming back for more and then spread the word to their friends and neighbors who hadn't yet trekked out to the county fairgrounds to see the circus. Flanked by giant constrictors in cages on either side of her, Harper, dressed in a skintight jumpsuit, sat cross-legged in the center of a huge gla.s.s enclosure with only the hypnotic aura of her swaying body and the musical vibrations of an E harmonica to keep four huge king cobras at bay. When I'd asked her why a harmonica and not the snake charmer's traditional wooden flute, she'd replied that it made no difference whatsoever to the snakes, who couldn't hear the music but only responded to the vibrations, which they picked up with their flicking tongues. Her cobras, she explained, liked E harmonica vibrations. A jazzed-up rendition of "Nearer, My G.o.d, to Thee" seemed to be especially pleasing to them, and on occasion she would actually manage to get all four of the cobras swaying back and forth in front of her, together and in time to the music-a weaving, scaled chorus line of death.

She was bitten once, three months after she joined the circus, and barely survived with the help of an ant.i.toxin flown in by helicopter from Dallas. Phil was apoplectic, insisting that she give up her snake-charming act with the cobras altogether, or at least subst.i.tute rat snakes. She offered to compromise by going with only two cobras, and Phil reluctantly agreed. He had to; like me, Harper could have had a job for the asking with any of the other big shows, including Ringling Brothers.

She also had virtually every male in the circus constantly in heat, a tension-inducing situation Phil tolerated only because Harper was so exceptionally good at what she did. I'd always considered her only slightly less dangerous to a man's well-being than the poisonous snakes she handled with such grace, invention, and courage. Indeed, she displayed far less grace handling the procession of men who were constantly vying to share her bed. n.o.body had ever been killed over her, but over the course of our mutual tenure with the circus there were innumerable fistfights and one stabbing that cost a high-wire artist his spleen and his career. Of course, not a few of her rejected conquests dearly wanted to stab Harper; at least once a week, or so it seemed, Harper ended up "hiding out" with me, usually near the animal pens where I would be keeping Mabel and the other circus animals company. Femme fatale is a term that might have been coined especially in Harper Rhys-Whitney's honor.

I, of course, had l.u.s.ted after her just like all the rest of the men, most of whom would have killed to spend as much time with her as I did. But I was a dwarf, and extremely self-conscious about it. I didn't make plays for women, and I always went out of my way to avoid any emotional entanglement that could be construed as anything but purely platonic friendship. Harper and I had become good friends, and it was me she sought out in her increasingly frequent times of emotional need.

In the Palmetto Grove directory her name had Ph.D. printed after it. Since the Harper Rhys-Whitney I'd known had never graduated from high school, I wondered what the Ph.D. could be all about. There was really only one way to find out, I thought, as I rummaged in my pockets for a quarter. As I dropped it in the coin slot, I noticed that my hand was trembling slightly. I suddenly imagined I could hear the haunting music of her harmonica in my mind, and I thought I had a pretty good idea of how her captive snakes might have felt.

Harper's home on the outskirts of Palmetto Grove was a three-story Gothic affair, slightly spooky and not a little amusing, totally unlike any of the single-frame houses in the area. It had cost her some money to build. The huge lawn in front of the house was carefully manicured, and there was an abundance of bright flowers in a number of beds and flanking the walk leading up to the front door. Just visible behind the house were two long, low buildings that might have been greenhouses except for the fact that they appeared to be all wood, with no windows in them at all.

I parked the Isuzu at the curb across the street from the house, turned off the ignition. Harper had obviously been watching for me out the window, because I had just stepped down out of the car and was closing the door when she burst out of the front door, bounded down the steps, and came running toward me.

The sight of her, with the bouncing of her full b.r.e.a.s.t.s only slightly restrained by the fabric of her form-fitting jumpsuit, took my breath away, and I just stood, dumbfounded by my own feelings, as she approached. Her hair, once jet-black, was now a smoky gray, and she wore it pulled back from her oval face and tied into a pony tail with a bright red calico ribbon. It didn't surprise me that she did not dye her hair, but its grayness seemed to be her only concession to age. Her strange, gold-flecked maroon eyes had lost none of their shine, and her trim, lithe body was exactly as I remembered it from when we were both teenagers. For me, at least, she had lost none of the aura of sensuality that seemed to radiate from her like some light beyond the visible spectrum, a glow that worked directly on the other senses.

The woman's effect on me was absolutely ridiculous, I thought. Virtually paralyzed, I was still harboring that thought when she finally reached me, draped her arms around my neck, and hugged me to her. The result was to crush my left cheek against the ample, soft mound of her left breast; I could feel her heart beating, and her hard nipple, through the fabric of her clothing.

Outrageous.

"Mmmph," I said.

She finally relaxed her grip-but that was all; she kept her hands locked behind my neck as she slowly forced me to turn with her in a full circle, her eerie maroon eyes locked on mine, her face with its slightly pouty mouth only inches away. I didn't think she was wearing perfume, but she had a pleasing, clean smell about her, like that of finely milled soap.

"Robby, Robby, Robby," she intoned in the voice, still so familiar in my mind, that had always seemed impossibly low and sultry to be coming from such a small body. "Mongo the Magnificent. How I've missed you over the years. You look absolutely scrumptious.'"

"Yeah, me too. I mean, uh, I've also thought a lot about you over the years. And you look scrumptious."

The best lines of a red-hot lover. Talk about feeling foolish and tongue-tied . . .

"Robby, your face is red."

"Jesus, Harper, you do look absolutely magnificent."

"Come on," she commanded, grabbing my left hand and half leading, half hauling me across the street toward the sidewalk to her house. "Did they feed you on the plane?"

"Yeah. Lunch."

"I know what airline food is like. I'll make you something to eat."

"I'm, uh, really not hungry."

"Then I'll make us drinks."

"That I could use," I said feebly as she hauled me up the steps, across the porch, and through the open front door into an oak-paneled foyer made bright and airy by a skylight. Two Edward Hopper originals hung on the walls flanking the entrance to the living room.

Something heavy suddenly came to rest on my right shoulder as something else flicked against my right cheek and ear; the something else tickled. I shied away, half turned, and found myself face-to-face with a thick, triangular snake's head that was as big as my fist. The head was attached to a sinuous neck that tapered down to a huge, tubular body coiled like the hawser of an ocean liner in a pool of sunlight directly beneath the skylight; the snake's body was easily as big around as me.

"Jeesus!" I shrieked at the top of my lungs as I shot backward and landed hard on my backside.

Undeterred by what could have been interpreted as a rejection, the snake slithered through my splayed legs, came up over my groin and stomach and onto my chest until its head was once again in my face, its fleshy, forked tongue flicking out at my eyes. I couldn't decide whether it was hungry or wanted to make love, and neither prospect particularly appealed to me.

"JEEEsus!" I shrieked again, even louder, and abruptly raised myself on my hands and feet and crabbed backward until my head collided hard and painfully with the wall behind me.

"You silly goose," Harper said to me as she peremptorily grabbed the snake about a foot behind its head and draped it over her left shoulder. The triangular head disappeared from sight behind her back, then reappeared a moment later on her other shoulder. It nosed its way around her neck, up through her hair, peeked at me over the top of her head. "Frank won't hurt you; he was just being friendly. Reticulated pythons usually have a lot of personality. Sometimes they can be downright playful, like a dog. Frank is my watchsnake. He's harmless, but I like to think that the sight of him might deter burglars."

I glanced at Frank, who had now closed his eyes. He looked as if he might be purring. "Yeah," I said, rubbing the b.u.mp that had already begun to form on the back of my head. "I can see why you might think that."

Tm surprised you didn't recognize him; he may have recognized you. Frank used to be with me in the circus."

"Do tell. He looks bigger now."

"He is bigger now," Harper said approvingly in a tone of voice that most definitely had the ring of maternal pride. "Twenty-five feet. That's pretty close to a record for a reticulated python in captivity, or in the wild."

"Yeah? What do they do in this neighborhood, count the dogs and kids every night?"

Harper laughed-obviously a.s.suming that I'd been trying to be funny. "I've also got an anaconda, two rock pythons, and a fair-size boa, but I keep them out in the garage. The anaconda's downright nasty, and the others don't have Frank's predictable toilet habits. But Frank is a p.u.s.s.ycat. That's why I let him have the run of the house." She paused, frowned slightly. "I really am sorry, Robby. I guess I should have warned you. The truth of the matter is that my friends and I are so used to having him around, I forget he might come as a shock to someone not expecting to see him."

"Think nothing of it, Harper. My nervous and adrenal systems have been in need of a major overhaul like this for years. I feel like a new man."

She laughed again, said, "Actually, Robby, I'm a little surprised at you. As I recall, you used to have an almost mystical bond with animals. I envied it a lot."

"My mystical bonding techniques tend to break down when a giant constrictor sneaks up behind me and pecks me on the cheek. Are you sure Frank doesn't eat dwarfs-or wouldn't like to?"

Harper smiled, shook her head, then reached up and chucked her giant, cold-blooded companion under its broad jaw before casually undraping its head and neck from her shoulders and dropping them on top of the rest of its ma.s.sive, coiled body resting in the pool of sunlight. Then she abruptly reached down, grabbed my right hand, and hauled me to my feet. This little girl was strong.

"You really are a scream, Robby. But then, you were always funny."

Frank was resting his head on one of his hawser coils and eyeing me. I eyed him back. "Who's being funny? Considering Frank's size, he might not consider me much more than an appetizer."

"Frank eats chickens. I buy them frozen, wholesale, by the crate. I used to raise them myself, but chickens are really a pain-messy like you wouldn't believe-and I found out it wasn't all that much more expensive to just buy them. But I still breed my own mice and rats."

"That's because Frank requires a balanced diet, right?"

She shook her head again, smiled cryptically, led me toward the archway at the end of the foyer. "Come on, Robby; let's get you that drink."

"Well, in honor of my reunion with dear old Frank, now you can make it a double-or even triple-Scotch, with a couple of ice cubes."

Harper's large living room had leather sofas at either end, lots of gla.s.s, and original Pica.s.so charcoal sketches of circus clowns and dancers. In the middle of the room was a circular bar. She motioned for me to sit down on one of the sofas, but I followed her to the bar and stood beside her as she made us both drinks. Her Scotch on the rocks was as overstuffed as mine, and mine was big.

"I'm not just a snake charmer anymore, Robby," she said in her low, husky voice as we clicked gla.s.ses. "Now I'm a herpetologist-and quite a noted one, I might add without even an attempt at false modesty."

"I noticed the Ph.D. after your name in the phone directory, Dr. Rhys-Whitney."

"Indeed, Dr. Frederickson."

"I have to admit I was more than a little surprised to find you in Palmetto Grove-almost as surprised as I was to find you listed under your maiden name."

"Oh, I've been married, Robby. Four times, as a matter of fact. After my last divorce, I decided that either my husbands had lied when they told me they didn't mind my snakes, or I just wasn't cut out to be somebody's wife. It's probably both. As far as my living here is concerned, I finally realized that the only people who had ever truly cared about me for something besides my looks or money were my friends from the circus. That's why I moved here and built this house. It was eight years ago."

"I'm sorry, Harper. I didn't mean to be so personal."

She raised her eyebrows. "Oh, you didn't? I was kind of hoping you had meant to be so personal. I certainly did. You know who inspired me to go back to school? You. You were my role model. Every winter, while the rest of us were kicking back and sunning ourselves down here in Florida, you were off to school in New York to pick up more credits. I missed you during the winter, Robby. Everybody missed you. And then one day you were off for good, to be a college professor, of all things. That's when I really started to miss you. A year later, I decided to follow your example. I picked up a GED around here and then talked my way into a community college. I got straight A's on my way to an a.s.sociate's degree, and that got me into a four-year school. Then I went on to graduate school." She paused, gestured around her, continued: "Obviously, I couldn't afford all this on savings from a circus career and income as a herpetologist. My parents were overjoyed when I went back to school, and that's an understatement. It turned out they didn't mind me playing with snakes, just as long as some school was going to give me a degree for doing it. All was forgiven. I was reinstated in the family's good graces and will, and when my folks died a few years back I inherited the family fortune."

"I'm sorry to hear about your parents, Harper. I never met them, but they must have been very special to have cooked you up."

Her lips curled back in a bittersweet smile, and she again clicked her gla.s.s against mine. "Thank you. You're right; they were certainly p.i.s.sers. I'm glad we finally became friends before they died. I do believe they were even proud of me. I certainly gave them more than their share of grief while I was growing up. Anyway, back to the first subject, I wasn't the only one who missed you, Robby. For a dwarf, my friend, you filled up a whole lot of s.p.a.ce. Everybody missed you-animals as well as people. With the possible exception of Mabel, though, I think I'm the one who missed you most, and I'm so glad that I finally have the chance to see you and tell you that."

The stiffness of Harper's nipples was clearly visible through the fabric of her form-fitting jumpsuit. I looked down into my gla.s.s of whiskey as I raised it to my lips.

"I've embarra.s.sed you, haven't I, Robby?"

"No," I mumbled, forcing myself to look back up into her maroon eyes. "But you do flatter me. Thank you."

We both studied each other as we sipped at our drinks. Then she abruptly grabbed my left elbow, steered me around the bar and toward a set of double doors at the far end of the room. "Now if s time to continue the tour," she said brightly. "I want to show you my office."

Her "office" turned out to be one of the long, low buildings I had glimpsed from the road. There were four rows of gla.s.s cages running the length of the building, separated by two aisles. Inside each case was something deadly. In the case directly in front of me was a black mamba. In this snake there was none of the tubular sleekness one often sees in reptiles like Frank, the reticulated python, or in rattlesnakes. The mamba was a dull black, and puffy, as if it had no skeleton to hold in its guts. It looked like what it was, an ugly, black bag of death.

"I milk venomous snakes for pharmaceutical companies, other private researchers, and a number of universities," Harper said. "I also conduct research on hemo- and neurotoxins myself. My labs are in the other building. I have a full-time staff of lab a.s.sistants and keepers, but I sent them all home after I received your call." She paused, smiled broadly. "I wanted you all to myself."

She paused, turned toward me, set down her drink on top of one of the gla.s.s cases, and pulled up the sleeves of her pale blue jumpsuit. There were a number of tiny scars on both forearms and on the backs of her hands.

"I've been bitten more than forty times," she continued matter-of-factly. "The trick is in surviving the first two or three bites. After that, it gets easier. You develop antibodies. Now I'm virtually immune to most kinds of snake venom, and my blood is almost as good as any ant.i.toxin scrum. Once, when a kid in Idaho was bitten by a rattlesnake and they couldn't get the right serum, they gave him a pint of my blood. He lived."

"I'm impressed, Harper," I said evenly.

"Good," she said brightly as she picked up her drink again. "I want you to be, because I'm certainly impressed by you. I've been reading and hearing stories about you for years. You're quite a famous man, you know."

"It's not something I give a lot of thought to, Harper."

"I have a thick file of clippings about you somewhere in the house. Its seems dwarf private investigators who get involved in the kinds of bizarre cases you handle get a lot of press coverage. I know you live in New York City. I've thought of calling you a number of times over the years."

Somehow we had become separated as we continued to talk; I had veered off and gone down the aisle on the right while Harper had continued on down the other aisle. I was about three quarters of the way through my drink. It had been a big one, but I'd drunk a good deal more on other occasions without feeling any ill effects. Now, however, I felt positively giddy as I looked across the tops of the gla.s.s cases filled with very dangerous creatures into the maroon eyes of another very dangerous creature.

"Why didn't you?" I asked quietly. I felt slightly short of breath.

"I'm not sure," she replied thoughtfully, c.o.c.king her head slightly and studying me through narrowed lids. "I think I was afraid of you."

Of all the possible answers, or excuses, she might have offered, that was absolutely the last one I'd have expected to hear. "You were afraid of me?"

"You tame wild things, Robby," she said softly. "You do it whether you mean to or not."

Feeling as light-headed as I did, I reacted naturally-by taking another long pull on my drink. Then I looked down. The gla.s.s case in front of me looked empty except for some leaves, a few bare branches, and sand with tiny crawl marks in it. "What's supposed to be in here?" I asked.

"Oh, it's there; it's very small, and it's probably hiding behind some leaves. It's a krait. In Africa, they call it the 'hundred-foot snake.' Obviously, it's not called that because of its length. It gets its name from the fact that a hundred feet is about as far as a man can stagger or crawl after he's been bitten by one. Ounce for ounce, it's probably the most poisonous snake in the world."

"Charming."

"Venomous snakes are of enormous medical benefit, Robby. Medicines made from venom are responsible for saving thousands of lives each year. Observing how venom acts on the mammalian nervous system has taught researchers an enormous amount about the nervous system itself. I try to spend a few weeks each year in Brazil with an international research team looking for new species, trying to keep ahead of the people who are cutting down the trees. At the rate the rain forests are being destroyed, it's conceivable that dozens of unknown species could vanish before we're even aware of their existence. It's also conceivable that the venom from any one of those unknown species could provide us with a cure for multiple sclerosis, muscular dystrophy, maybe even cancer."

"I loved you, you know," I blurted out, looking up across the rows of cases into the woman's eyes.

"I know, Robby," she replied evenly. "I believe I loved you too, but I just didn't realize it. I was such a child. I mean, I had all those big, burly things after me, and you were just a dwarf. How could I be in love with a dwarf? At that time, you were something I needed far more than just another lover; you were a friend, probably the only real friend I had during that period of my life, or at least the best one. You truly cared for me as a person, and you always did your best to look out for my interests."

"You never needed anyone to look out for you, Harper."

She shook her head impatiently, sipped at her drink, said, "It never occurred to me at the time that I might love you. You were just the person who related well to all the wild things in the circus."

I looked away, drained off the rest of my Scotch. Now I was feeling really giddy. Softheaded.

"I never saw the man then," Harper continued.

"Mmm."

"You were always there when I needed you-or when anyone or anything else needed you." "Mmm."

"Are you married, Robby?"

"No."

"In all those years, Robby, who was there for you when you needed a friend?"

"The wild things."

"You were always cheerful and even-tempered; you always had a kind word or a joke to cheer up someone who was sad. It was only after you left that it occurred to me how lonely you must have been all those years you were with the circus."

I walked to the end of the aisle, around the cages, back up the second aisle toward Harper. My gait, like my speech, was steady enough, so I decided it wasn't the Scotch I had consumed that was responsible for my light-headedness. Harper had once again set her drink down on top of one of the snake cages and was waiting for me, arms at her sides. I knew she was waiting to be kissed.

I stopped a pace away from her and held my empty tumbler in front of me like a shield. "Phil Statler's in trouble," I said. "It's the reason I flew down here."

If she was surprised at my reluctance to take her in my arms, she didn't show it-and I decided that my notion about her waiting for me to kiss her had only been a fantasy. Her brows knitted, and shadows moved in her expressive eyes. "What's the matter with him, Robby?"