Homemade Sin (35 page)

Hussey turned on her heel and disappeared into the bar.

“Hey Champ.” Tony smiled when Cutter and Dee Dee stepped into the bar. “Looks like your man lost. That means you and Miss Dee Dee each owe me five grand. Pay up.”

Dee Dee, ignoring Tony, slipped onto a stool and ordered an absinthe from Roland as she laid out the newspaper article in front of her. While Roland poured the emerald green spirit over a cube of sugar, Dee Dee perused the article:

Dogs Cured by Canine Conjurer

By Misty Day

Staff Writer

St. Pete Beach — On a recent trip to the Campbell Greyhound Racetrack this reporter witnessed a miracle. Longtime racing, and longtime losing greyhound, Moreover, owned and trained by Tinker Jones, burst out of the gate and quickly left the other racing dogs in the dust as he tore toward the finish line. Previously the dog had displayed erratic behavior causing him to lose consistently, but on this day I witnessed a dog transformed, a dog with a mission. I spoke with Mr. Jones after the race who explained that a local woman, one Hussey Paine, employee of the Santeria Hotel and Fugu Lounge, administered a magical powder she called ‘Mambo' to the dog and cured him of what could only be diagnosed as a serious personality disorder. I researched this canine healer and discovered that curing the greyhound was not the first time Miss Paine has worked magic with her Mambo powder on man's best friend. An article in a February edition of the Cassandra Oracle reported that Miss Paine, in her hometown of Cassandra, Florida, also cured a traumatized Australian Shepherd. The shepherd had apparently suffered a traumatic experience with a ram and as a result had developed an acute fear of sheep. One dose of Miss Paine's Mambo cure returned the dog to his herding self. This reporter conducted a brief interview with Miss Paine who conjectured that her miracle cure had possible human applications.

In a related story our own restaurant critic, Winfrey Pinth Merrmian, who recently reviewed the Fugu Lounge, at the Santeria Hotel, was quoted as saying: ‘The Fugu Lounge is a gastronomical Parthenon, and I do not believe the cuisine at that delightful establishment in any way contributed to my close friend's recent illness and subsequent death.'

Dee Dee smiled, laid the paper on the bar and focused on the conversation between Cutter and Tony.

“I don't have the money Tony,” Cutter whined. “I'll try to get it to you in a couple of weeks.”

“You know that's going to accrue interest at double a week.” Tony grinned. “So next week you're gonna owe me ten large.”

“Shit,” Cutter whispered to Dee Dee. “I put everything I didn't deposit into Hussey's account down on the fight. I don't have any money, you got any?”

“Nope,” Dee Dee whispered back, “I lost all I won at Daytona playing poker.”

“Well,” Tony said, “you better get me that money pretty damned quick if you don't want to be walking funny.”

When Tony left, Cutter turned to Dee Dee, “We gotta do another one quick. I need the money. Tony is connected to the Mafia somehow and, if I don't pay the guy, he is going to have someone break my legs.”

Dee Dee brought out a slip of paper from her pocket and scanned it. “OK,” she said, scanning the list, “we still have the skier with chionophobia, the anthrophobia-apiphobia golfer and the rodeo rider with coulrophobia.”

“When is the rodeo in town?”

“They're sitting up in Clearwater right now. The rodeo opens in a couple of days.”

“Can you bet on a rodeo rider?” Cutter said.

“You can bet on anything.” Dee Dee smiled.

“I think he's our man,” Cutter said. “I'll drive up to Clearwater and give him one of those free stay cards.”

Hussey breezed into the bar and took a seat by Dee Dee at the bar. “I finally got rid of them.” She exhaled loudly.

They were all startled by the sound of barking in the lobby. It sounded like feeding time at the pound.

“I wouldn't be so sure,” Roland said.

“Shit! I'm going to sue that damned newspaper.” Hussey said as she stalked off toward the lobby.

Four men, who called their little group the Four Horsemen, sat in a harbor-front bar in Tampa eating stone crab claws and drinking Mexican beer. They were not the original four horsemen. The original group of four, representing Big Law, Big Medicine, Big Insurance and Big Pharmaceuticals, had been formed in the 1920s in Washington, D.C and had been active in charting the course of American health care ever since. This group of four were third or fourth generation members of the group. Each time one retired, another member of his profession was selected to serve on the select committee.

In the tradition of the biblical four horsemen of the apocalypse, the man representing Big Insurance was referred to as Famine, as people were going without food to afford medical insurance. The man who represented Big Pharmaceuticals was called Pestilence for obvious reasons; the man from Big Law took the role of War because of the confrontational nature of his profession and the representative of the medical profession, Big Medicine, the leader of the group, was referred to as Death, again, for obvious reasons.

They had all met in Tampa Bay to attend a medical convention, and maybe get some fishing in on Death's yacht.

Death slid copies of the Saint Petersburg Beach Times and the Cassandra Oracle across the table.

“What am I looking for?” War said.

“Some girl in Saint Petersburg,” Death said. “Hussey something. The article in the St. Pete paper says she's come up with some kind of concoction that cured a couple dogs of their psychological problems; a shepherd scared of sheep and a racing greyhound with some other sort of psychological problem that kept him from winning races. The article in the Cassandra Oracle describes how she cured the shepherd, and it has a picture of her. It's probably nothing, just a fluke, but worth checking out. I mean, since we're close by.”

“Do we know what's in the drug?” War asked.

“The article says she cured the dogs with something she calls Mambo powder,” Death said. “I have a friend who's the vet for all the dogs at the track. I got him to take a blood sample from the greyhound. My folks at the FDA checked it out. So far, they've only been able to isolate some kind of mushroom spore and buzzard DNA.”

“Buzzard DNA?” War said.

“Yes,” Death said, “apparently there is some kind of enzyme in buzzard DNA that stimulates brain cell regeneration.”

“Legal and financial implications?” War asked.

“It might be nothing, but if it has the same effect on humans we could lose a lot of money.”

“People would be self-diagnosing and self-medicating and psychiatrists would lose patients, which means insurance revenues would go down,” Famine said.

“And our pharmaceutical companies would lose revenue in drug sales,” said Pestilence.

“And think of the losses in malpractice suits,” War said.

“We must protect the public from this stuff,” said Death.

“Besides,” Famine said, “it gives us justification to take the yacht around the bay for a week or so. We can charge the government for a ‘fact finding' excursion.”

“Nobody likes a mean clown!” Clint had yelled over the laughter of the crowd.

Cowpie, the rodeo clown, had sat on top of his safety barrel shaking with laughter.

Yes, he had a mean streak, but it sure was fun. He loved to terrorize Clint, because it was so easy. Clint was terrified of clowns, the last thing a grown man wants a clown to know. No clown can resist that kind of temptation.

This last little prank had taken a little planning but it was going to go down in history as one of the all-time-best Cowpie pranks on Clint the Clown-fearing Cowboy. Cowpie had found a deal on a few hundred rubber scary-clown masks on the internet and had an epiphany. ‘Scary Clown Mask Day' at the rodeo.

Of course, Cowpie had not clued the rodeo management or the riders in on his little promotional idea, he'd just sprung it on them, especially Clint.

At the turnstiles, as the audience strolled in, Cowpie had handed a big gruesome rubber mask to each child who passed through. In no time the stands were filled with scary clowns.

Clint hadn't looked at the crowd as he'd settled into the saddle and wrapped the reins round his right hand, holding his hat in his left. He'd nodded to the gatekeeper he was ready, the gate had opened and Clint's horse had bolted out of the chute, bucking and twisting as Clint held on for his ride. Finally, Clint had gazed up at the audience and beheld a sea of scary clowns in the stands. Terrified, he'd performed a flying dismount from the bronco in mid-ride. He'd thrown down his cowboy hat and stormed off to his trailer.

The horse had continued to kick and buck around the circular corral.

Yes, Cowpie the clown had a mean streak bigger than Texas. Of course, not many people knew Cowpie was a closet sadist. Most saw him as an average rodeo clown, running across the rodeo yard distracting an angry bull long enough for the thrown rider to limp to safety. Cowpie would then dive into a strategically placed empty barrel and pop his head out occasionally to make faces at the frustrated bull. Between events Cowpie would sometimes race out of a pen, riding a broomstick horse, pantomiming slapping it on the flanks as he ran around the corral to the delight of the audience.

But Cowpie had a dark side. Probably the worst prank Cowpie pulled was the time in Reno when he paid a hooker to pick up Clint in the hotel bar. When Clint emerged from the bathroom he found the hooker sitting on his bed, naked except for an ‘insane clown' mask. Cowpie had heard Clint couldn't have sex for a month after that.

Of course Clint wasn't exactly an angel. Once, when the rodeo was setting up in Amarillo, Clint found a rattlesnake slithering around the corral, pinned it down with a forked stick and grabbed it behind its head. He had pressed its mouth open and drained the venom from its fangs using his belt buckle, before dropping it into Cowpie's escape barrel. Clint laughed so hard he fell off the corral fence as he watched Cowpie, chased by a thousand pounds of mad bull, dive into the barrel only to emerge a second later leaping from the barrel and racing toward the stands, the angry bull so close on his tail that Cowpie must have been able to feel the bull's hot breath through his baggy pants. Cowpie had managed to launch himself into the stands just as the bull gored the wooden wall where he had been a second before.

Lately the Clint-Cowpie rivalry had become worse, and Cowpie was terrorizing Clint so often that Clint had not won a single rodeo event in six months. Every time Clint eased himself onto a horse's back and tied his hand in, he would start shaking, not in anticipation of the horse's behavior but of Cowpie's. Every prank was something new and each more diabolical than the last.

Today at the second show in Clearwater, as Clint was having a pretty good ride with no Cowpie in sight, he'd looked up to the stands and witnessed what appeared to be a scary clown convention. He'd kicked dirt clods all the way back to his trailer, and cussed and swore to get even with the diabolical clown.

A figure had appeared beside him and asked him for an autograph. The figure shook his hand and, as he did, he placed a slip of paper in Clint's palm. Clint stuck the paper in his pocket without looking at it.

Later that afternoon in Clearwater, the rodeo boss called Clint into his office and told him that unless he started winning some events soon he would be out of the rodeo. Clint decided to find a bar and drown his sorrows. Reaching into his pocket he pulled out the slip of paper the autograph hound had given him, it read:

The Fugu Lounge

In the Santeria Hotel, St. Pete Beach

Extreme Dining at its Best

Good for one entrée

And a one night stay