Don't Sweat the Small Stuff (4 page)

“Moe, there must be something else that could explain these accidents.”

“No. Nothing else. A gear snapped on another ride we nicknamed The Ameba, and the entire operation came to a screeching halt. And this was one day after The Ameba had been thoroughly inspected by a Florida State licensing agent. Thoroughly inspected, guys. We should have been on solid ground.”

“What happened?”

“Two riders slipped under the safety bars and were thrown from their pods. One of them walked away. The other was mangled by the remaining pods. She’s confined to a wheelchair and takes nourishment from a bottle.” Moe sipped his champagne and juice and swirled the liquid in his mouth.

We were all silent for a moment. It was a wonder that Moe Shows were still setting up shop. I was amazed. Being vaguely familiar with the situations and hearing them firsthand was a different situation all together.

Setting his drink down, he said “We’re as thorough as we can possibly be. Our insurance rating,” he spread his hands out palms up, “was very high. Now—now we’re in a couple of nasty lawsuits and some people are reluctant to even visit our little show. This could kill us, guys. Kill us.”

“So you want us to look into this matter?” James sat still as Moe stood up, walked to the kitchen, and brought out the carton and bottle. He poured us another orange juice and champagne.

“Not just look into the matter.” He stood above James, looking down at him with a frown. “I want you to find out who is messing with me. I want to know who’s trying to destroy this business, and I want to know why. The Dragon Tail will be set up this afternoon, and I’d like you guys to keep an eye on the ride. To operate it alongside our two young operators. Check out our staff. Do whatever you need to do. I need to stop these so-called accidents from happening. I can’t afford to have anything else go wrong. Do you understand?”

This was a second job. And I was only along for the ride.

“And keep it quiet. If our employees think that you are investigating them, well, it could be dangerous for you.”

That’s what I needed. More danger in my life.

“Now I’m aware that Skip is only an observer, but I’m
willing to offer the two of you two thousand dollars for this weekend.”

I was no longer an observer. Danger no longer bothered me.

“If you can find out why someone is trying to destroy my livelihood, I need to know why, and I need to know who.”

A pretty big order. So if we were unsuccessful—

“Moe,” James had downed his second drink and was feeling champagne courage. “If we use all of our resources and can’t find any clues at all. I mean if nothing happens at this Moe Show, then we don’t get compensated. Is that what you’re saying?”

Moe Bradley pursed his lips. “I don’t want to be unfair, but—”

“But we may put a lot of effort into this investigation and it may not pan out. Mr. Bradley, I heard you say that sabotage is the only explanation, but really, it’s possible isn’t it that these rides could have just broken? It’s possible that there is no one trying to destroy your carnival.” I wasn’t about to commit myself for the fun of it. James and I had done that before and almost gotten killed.

“Please, call me Moe.”

“Mr. … Moe, we will have expenses.” I was remembering the equipment we bought from our mentor Jody Stacy on our last spy case. High-tech microphones and cameras were expensive. Very expensive. “And if we incur these expenses and there really isn’t a saboteur, if we find nothing, then we’ve gone through a lot of time and money.”

“All right.” Bradley hesitated and I could hear the wheels turning inside his head. “If you find nothing, you still get a thousand dollars. Does that work?”

If someone was sabotaging the rides, they’d already killed a customer. If they found out that James and I were investigating them—

“One thousand dollars for the weekend.”

It worked for me.

“Skip?” James gave me a questioning glance.

I nodded.

Moe had a slight grin on his face.

“We’re on, Moe.” My best friend beamed a smile of confidence. “If there
is
someone here who is trying to sabotage the carnival, we’ll do everything in our power to figure it out.”

Moe nodded. “There’s no question about it, James. Someone is. I have the utmost faith that you two will find out who it is. But keep a low profile. Got it? You don’t know the kind of people we’re dealing with here.”

I knew they were carnies. And you can’t trust a carnie.

By afternoon the rides were up, rock music was blaring from cheap speakers, the colorful lights had been strung, and the whole place looked and smelled just like a carnival. James was escorting Angie to a meat-on-a-stick wagon, his arm around her waist, and I stopped and got a watered-down fresh lemonade. A handful of people wandered about, and the Ferris wheel was slowly spinning in the sky, a couple of kids and a young couple waving at us from above.

An anemic roller coaster ran up small inclines and down shallow valleys on a neon orange track with only three occupied cars, and as I watched an old man throw darts at the balloons in a nearby booth I felt something bump my butt. Hard.

Spinning around, I saw the culprit. A mangy goat with a brown goatee looked up at me with what looked like a frown. I stepped back and the goat stepped forward. No horns, but the animal gently butted my leg, then shook his head and gave me that nasty frown again.

“Sorry, there. She’s just playin’.”

He’d surprised me as much as the goat had. The little guy
stood about four feet tall and wore a pair of faded blue overalls. No shirt, just those overalls and a pair of black rubber rain boots.

“Esmerelda walked away from the petting zoo over there,” he pointed to my right, “and Garcia didn’t even notice.”

“Garcia?”

“That old sheepdog. See? He’s supposed to help round up the animals, but sometimes I think the job overwhelms him.” The man was gently chewing. Food, gum, something. As he chewed, the goat chewed.

Rust-colored rails surrounded the small circle of dirt and sand where the man’s petting zoo was located, and a lone trailer stood off to the side. I could see the big dog panting in the Carol City heat as he watched the little man, the goat, and me from inside the rails.

“I’m Winston.” The short guy stuck his hands in his pockets, eyeing me. “That’s my zoo.”

I glanced back and saw a small donkey, what looked like a black pig, several ducks and chickens, and a deer.

“Winston Pugh. Actually, Winston Pugh Charlemagne, but I just use the first two.” He frowned and spit tobacco from between his two front brown-stained teeth. I stepped back and the goat stepped forward.

“Esmerelda. Back off.”

Two carnies pounded poles into the dirt in front of Winston’s zoo with small sledgehammers. They lifted a wooden sign up and hung it from hooks on the poles.

W
INNEY
P
UGH’S
P
ETTING
Z
OO

“You’re the new marketing director?”

I felt somewhat self-conscious looking down at the little guy. Even with his head tilted back I was staring at the top of his shiny scalp and two tufts of white hair that framed his ears.

“No. That’s my roommate James. He’s with Agent—” I caught myself. “Uh, Angie, over by that food wagon.”

“Ah, Angie. She’s a pistol, that one. You two be careful of her, you hear me?” Pugh kept on chewing. And frowning.

“Careful?”

“Trust no one, son. Best advice I can give you.”

Two chubby children ran by, the girl with a cone of cotton candy and the boy holding a stick with a cellophane streamer that halfheartedly blew in the still air. Their overweight parents trailed behind, already appearing to be exhausted from the excitement.

I turned my attention back to Winston. “And you call your zoo Winney Pugh’s Petting Zoo?”

He looked back at the sign, turning back with a gleam in his eye. “I do. And Disney hates it.”

“Disney hates what?”

“Come on. You know.”

I gave him my puzzled look.

“Walt Disney World. You know. They’ve been trying to close me down for years now.”

“Why would Disney try to close down your petting zoo?” I stared over at the run-down trailer, the rusty rails that surrounded the ring, and the mangy animals that seemed subdued by the midday heat.

“Why? Because they are the mouse that roared. Because, young man, they can. Disney owns the copyright on Winnie the Pooh, and they claim I’m infringing. Imagine. Me?” He reached into a deep pocket of his overalls and pulled out a crumpled sheet of paper. “Here’s the letter.”

I shook my head.

“No, read it.”

I unfolded the yellowed document and glanced at the print. I could tell right away that there were too many
herewiths
and
The party to whiches
and all the other legal verbiage that I would never understand. The letter was dated September 1, 2001, and
signed by Don Witter, Esquire. Very official. I nodded, looked at the technical language for thirty seconds, and handed it back to Winston.

“It says they’re gonna sue me, doesn’t it? Doesn’t it? But I ain’t changin’ the name.” The little guy folded his arms across his chest and shook his head.

“Good for you.”

He spit a stream of brown juice that almost hit my foot. “You stop by some time. I live in that little trailer over there, and we’ll have a shot of tequila. We’ll talk about this den of thieves and the stuff that goes on here. You wouldn’t believe.”

Grabbing the goat by the skin on her back, he trudged back to his small zoo, his oversized black rubber boots kicking up dust and the goat tripping over its feet as it struggled to keep up. The sheepdog gave him a sharp bark and frantically wagged his stub of a tail.

I watched him go, wondering what kind of a life he had. On the road with the Moe Show, traveling with a herd of small animals and the proudest moment in his life was showing off a letter from a Disney attorney threatening to close his little rundown animal parade. A letter from 2001. They’d probably forgotten all about Winston Pugh Charlemagne.

“Hey, pard. The chicken on a stick really—”

“Sucks.” Angie Clark finished the sentence. “I think your roommate James believes I’m a cheap date.” She gave me a great smile and I smiled back. “If this is the best he can do—”

I whiffed her perfume. Frangipani, sweet and sensual.

“James usually starts with cheap beer and peanuts. This is a step up, Angie.”

“Oh. Then I’m flattered.” She grabbed his hand and held on tight. If this was love at first sight, then maybe there was hope for all of us.

I wanted to tell James I’d already had a lead. Well, maybe it
was a lead. Winston had suggested we have a drink and talk about ‘the stuff that goes on here.’ Sounded like a lead to me.

“Skip, have you seen the Dragon Tail in action?” He pointed over his shoulder and I realized I’d missed it altogether. Hard to imagine. The ride was as impressive in size as it was in motion.

“There’s a family of four just got on.”

The golden head of the fire-breathing dragon puffed billows of real smoke from its mouth, and the body shimmered green, like scales on a big fish.

“Thing’s frightening, isn’t it?” He and Angie watched as the tail slowly curled and twelve green and gold cages curled with it.

“So the tail is just that string of cages?”

Angie’s eyes got wide and she looked at me. “Just a string of cages? Oh no. They’re called cars, but there’s more than that. You wait, Skip. This ride is crazy.”

The tail straightened out from the curl, then, like the snap of a whip it shot into the air.

There was a crack and I heard shouts from the riders. It looked like the chubby family of four was in the end car, but I couldn’t tell as the tail rose straight up, did a twirl at maybe forty feet and snapped to the left, hung there for several seconds, snapped to the right, and dropped like a stone.

“My God.” My stomach flipped and I wasn’t even on the Dragon.

“Want to ride it with me, James?” She squeezed his hand even tighter, and I could tell right then. Angie Clark was a thrill freak.

He looked back at me, rolled his eyes, then back at the Dragon Tail, the smokey, fire-eating dragon with a devil’s tail that threatened to shake every bone in your body.

“Sure. I’ll take you on the ride of your life.”

“We’re next.” She looked longingly into his eyes.

“But not tonight.”

“Not tonight?”

“No. Sorry. Skip and I have someplace we’ve got to be in about fifteen minutes and we can’t be late.”

She pouted and let go of his hand.

“Tomorrow, Angie, I promise.”

James turned, grabbed me by the shoulder, and steered me toward the trailer. Looking over his shoulder he said, “See you later, babe.”

“You coward.” I looked him in the eye. “I can’t believe you just pulled that. You’re a coward.”

“Coward? Coward?” He sounded somewhat proud of the accusation.

“You heard me.”

“Cowards live to fight another day, pard.”

He continued to push me along, and I searched my mind for the quote.

“I give up. Who in what movie said cowards live to fight another day?”

“It’s not from a movie.”

“Then where’s it from?”

“Some Greek guy named Demosthenes. I read it somewhere in school. At least it was something similar to it, like the dude who runs away stays alive. But I made this one up. A coward lives to fight another day.” He let go of my shoulder as we approached the silver Airstream. “It’s kind of the way I live my life, Skip, in case you hadn’t noticed.”

“So you think this Winston guy knows something? Already you’ve reached that conclusion?”

I straddled the kitchen chair, taking a long pull of beer. “No. I don’t think he knows anything. Well, maybe, but he did say this was a den of thieves and that I wouldn’t believe what went on here. Who knows, James? I think it’s worth talking to him.”

“Let’s have that cactus juice. Let’s sit down with the little guy and see what he has to say.” James sipped on his beer, sprawled on the couch, his foldaway bed.