Sick Puppy (27 page)

“Ooooch,” he said. “How’d that happen?”

“Climbing a tree,” said Lisa June Peterson.

“This I gotta hear.”

“No, you don’t.”

.  .  .

The name of the strip club was Pube’s.

Upon bribing the bouncer, Robert Clapley was dismayed to be informed that the Barbies had easily won first place in the amateur contest, snatched up the thousand-dollar cash prize and departed the premises with an individual named Avalon Brown, who claimed to be an independent film producer from Jamaica.

“I feel sick,” Clapley said to Palmer Stoat.

“Don’t. It’s the best thing that could happen to you,” Stoat said, “getting rid of those two junkie sluts.”

“Knock it off, Palmer. I need those girls.”

“Yeah, like you need rectal polyps.”

Stoat was in a sour and restless mood. All around him were frisky nude women, dancing on tabletops, yet he couldn’t stop thinking about Desie and the Polaroid.

But those nights were over, as was his marriage.

“Let’s go,” Clapley said. “Maybe they went back to the apartment.”

Palmer Stoat raised a hand. “Hang on.” The stage announcer was introducing the entrants for the final event, a Pamela Anderson Lee look-alike contest.

“Whoa, momma!” Stoat piped.

“If I had a grapefruit knife,” said Robert Clapley, “I’d gouge out my eyeballs.”

“Bob, are you kidding? They’re gorgeous.”

“They’re grotesque. Cheap trash.”

“As opposed to your classy twins,” Stoat said archly, “Princess Grace and Princess Di, who are presently double-fellating some Rastafarian pornographer in exchange for a whole half a gram of Bolivian talc.”

Clapley seized Stoat by the collar. “Palmer, you’re a goddamn pig.”

“We’re both pigs, Bob, so relax. Chill out. I’ll get you a rhino horn and then you’ll win your precious Barbies back.” Stoat pulled free of Clapley’s clutch. “Anyway, there’s nothing you can do to me that hasn’t already been done—starting with that fucking rodent your charming Mr. Gash gagged me with.”

“That was after you tried to rip me off,” Clapley reminded him, “double-billing me for the bridge fix. Or was it triple-billing?”

“So maybe I got a little greedy. But still. . . .”

Onstage, thirteen Pamela Anderson Lees were dancing, or at least bobbling, to the theme music from the
Baywatch
television series. Palmer Stoat sighed in glassy wonderment. “Man, we live in incredible times. Look at all that!”

“I’m outta here.”

“Go ahead. I’ll grab a taxi.” Stoat’s gaze was riveted to the pneumatic spectacle onstage. It was just what he needed to take his mind off Desie.

“Don’t call me again until Governor Dickhead signs over the bridge money and you’ve got your hands on some rhinoceros dust. Those are the only two goddamn news bulletins I want from you. Understand?”

Stoat grunted a vague assent. “Bob, before you take off. . . .”

“What now, Palmer?”

“How about another Cuban?”

Robert Clapley slapped a cigar on the table. “Turd fondler,” he said.

“Sweet dreams, Bob.”

21

On a cool May night, an unmarked panel truck delivered a plywood crate to the Wilderness Veldt Plantation. The crate had been shipped directly to a private airstrip in Ocala, Florida, thereby avoiding port-of-entry inspections by the U.S. Customs Service, Fish and Wildlife and other agencies that would have claimed a jurisdictional interest.

At the Wilderness Veldt Plantation, the scuffed box was loaded onto a flatbed and transported to a low-slung, windowless barn known as Quarantine One. Less than an hour later, Durgess was summoned from home. He was met outside the facility by a man named Asa Lando, whose job title at the hunting ranch was Supervisor of Game.

“How bad?” Durgess asked.

Asa Lando spat in the dirt.

Durgess frowned. “All right, lemme take a look.”

The barn was divided into eight gated stalls, fenced with heavy-gauge mesh from the ground to the beams. Each stall had an overhead fan, a heater and a galvanized steel trough for food and water. The Hamburg delivery was in stall number three.

Durgess said: “You gotta be kiddin’ .”

“I wish.” Asa Lando knew he was in trouble. It was his responsibility to procure animals for the hunts.

“First off,” Durgess began, “this ain’t no cheetah.”

“I know—”

“It’s a ocelot or a margay. Hell, it can’t weigh no more’n thirty-five pounds.”

Asa Lando said, “No shit, Durge. I got eyes. I can see it ain’t no cheetah. That’s why I woke you outta bed.”

“Second of all,” said Durgess, “it’s only got two goddamn legs.”

“I can
count,
too.” Asa sullenly poked the toe of his boot into the sawdust. “Could be worse.”

Durgess glared. “How? If he came in a jar?”

“Look, this ain’t the first time we run into this sorta situation,” Asa reminded him. “We got plenty clients happy to shoot gimped-out game.”

“Not this client,” Durgess said. One time they’d gotten away with a three-legged wildebeest, but two legs was out of the question, especially for a big cat.

Morosely the men stared through the fencing. With plucky agility, the ocelot hopped over and began rubbing its butt against the links.

“I wonder what the hell happened to him,” Durgess said.

“Doc Terrell says he was likely a-born that way—one front leg, one back leg. All things considered, he’s got an awful decent disposition.”

Durgess cheerlessly agreed. “Tell me again where you got him.”

“Uncle Wilhelm’s Petting Zoo,” Asa said. “They got rid of him on account he was eatin’ all their parrots. Don’t ast me how he caught the damn things, but I guess he taught hisself to jump like a motherfucker.”

“And how much did we pay?” Durgess braced himself.

“Five grand, minus freight.”

“Sweet Jesus.”

“C.O.D.”

“Asa, buddy, we got a serious problem.” Durgess explained that one of their best customers, Palmer Stoat, was bringing a bigshot business associate to Wilderness Veldt to shoot a cheetah, a full-grown African cheetah.

“It’s a big kill,” Durgess said gravely. “Big money.”

Asa eyed the wiry cat. “Maybe we can fatten him up ’tween now and then.”

“Sure,” Durgess said. “Staple on a couple fake legs while we’re at it. Lord, Asa, sometimes I wonder ’bout you.”

But the Supervisor of Game wasn’t ready to admit failure. “Three hundred yards, Durge, one cat looks like another to these bozos. Remember Gummy the Lion?”

Durgess flicked his hand in disgust. Formerly known as Maximilian III, Gummy the Lion had been the star of a trained-animal act at a roadside casino outside Reno, Nevada. Old age and a lifelong affinity for chocolate-chip ice cream claimed first the big cat’s canines and eventually all its teeth, so Max had been retired and sold to a wildlife wholesaler, who had in turn peddled the animal to the Wilderness Veldt Plantation. Even Asa Lando had been aghast when they’d uncrated it. Durgess had figured they were stuck with a new pet—who’d pay good money to shoot a senile, toothless lion?

A moron named Nick Teeble, it turned out. Eighteen thousand dollars he’d paid. That was how badly the retired tobacco executive had wanted a lion skin for the stone fireplace in his Costa Rican vacation chalet. It had been Asa who had sized up Nick Teeble for the phony he was; Asa who had persuaded Durgess to use the enfeebled Gummy in the canned hunt. And Asa had been right: Nick Teeble was both oblivious and incompetent, an ideal combination for Wilderness Veldt. It had taken Nick Teeble seven shots to hit the lion, whose disinclination to run or even stir from its nap was attributable to a complete and irreversible deafness (brought about by twenty-one years of performing in front of a very loud, very bad casino brass combo).

Durgess said to Asa London: “That was different. Teeble was a chump.”

“
All
our customers are chumps,” Asa Lando pointed out. “They damn sure ain’t hunters. They just want somethin’ large and dead for the wall. Talk about chumps, you can start with your Mr. Stoat.”

“The man he’s bringing here has done real big-game trips. He won’t go for no Gummy routine,” Durgess asserted. “He ain’t gonna buy it if we tell him he
shot
two legs off that cat.”

Asa Lando said, unflaggingly: “Don’t be so sure.”

“Hey, the man wants a cheetah, which is the fastest land mammal in the whole entire world. This poor critter here”—Durgess gestured at the lopsided ocelot—“couldn’t outrun my granny’s wheelchair.”

As if on cue, the cat hip-hopped itself in a clockwise motion, hoisted its tail and sprayed through the mesh of the cage, dappling both men’s pants.

“Damn!” cried Asa Lando, jumping back from the stall.

Durgess turned and trudged out of the building.

Riding in silence, they crossed the old bridge in late afternoon. Twilly Spree headed for the beach instead of the bed-and-breakfast, even though they were hungry. He hoped a sunset would improve Desie’s spirits.

But a front was pushing through, and the horizon disappeared behind rolling purple-tinged clouds. A grayness fell suddenly over the shore and a cool, wet-smelling breeze sprung off the Gulf. Twilly and Desie held hands loosely as they walked. McGuinn loped ahead to harass the terns and gulls.

“Rain’s coming,” Twilly said.

“It feels great.” Desie took a long deep breath.

“At each end of this beach is where they want to put those condos,” said Twilly, “like sixteen-story bookends. ‘Luxury units starting in the low two hundreds!’ ” This was straight off a new billboard that Robert Clapley had erected on U.S. 19. Twilly had noticed it that morning while driving back to the island.

Desie said, “I’ve got a question. You don’t have to answer if you don’t want.”

“OK.”

“Two questions, actually. Have you ever killed a person?”

Twilly thought of Vecker Darby’s house exploding in a chemical cloud with Vecker Darby, slow-footed toxic dumper, still inside.

“Have you?” Desie asked.

“Indirectly.”

“What kind of answer is that?”

“A careful one,” Twilly said.

“Would you do it again? Over toads? Honey, you
arrest
somebody for mushing toads. You don’t murder them.”

Twilly let her hand slip from his fingers. “Desie, it’s not just the toads, and you know it.”

“Then what—over condos? Two lousy high-rises? You act like they’re paving the whole coast.”

“And you’re beginning to sound like your husband.”

Desie stopped in her tracks, the tail of a wave washing over the tops of her feet. A gust of wind blew the hair away from her neck, her astonishingly lovely neck, and Twilly fought the impulse to kiss her there.

She said, “This is all my fault.”

“What is?”

“I should never have told you about this island, about what they’re planning to do.”

“Why not? It’s horrible what they’re planning.”

“Yes, but now you’re talking about killing people, which is also wrong,” said Desie, “not to mention a crime, and I don’t particularly want to see you go to jail. Jail would not be good for this relationship, Twilly.”

He said, “If it wasn’t Shearwater, it’d be something else. If it wasn’t this island, it would be another. That’s what you need to understand.”

“And if it wasn’t me with you here on this beach, it would be someone else. Right?”

“Please don’t.” Twilly reached for her waist but she spun away, heading back (he assumed) toward the car.

“Desie!”

“Not now,” she called over her shoulder.

From the other direction came an outburst of barking. At first Twilly thought it was another big dog, because he’d never heard McGuinn make such a racket.

But it was him. Twilly could see the familiar black hulk far down the beach, alternately crouching and dashing circles around somebody on the sand. The behavior looked anything but playful.

Twilly broke into a run. A nasty dog-bite episode was the last thing he needed to deal with—the ambulance, the cops, the wailing victim. Just my luck, Twilly thought glumly. How can you possibly piss off a Labrador retriever? Short of hammering them with a baseball bat, they’d put up with just about anything. Yet someone had managed to piss off ultramellow McGuinn. Probably some idiot tourist, Twilly fumed, or his idiot kids.

He jogged faster, kicking up water whenever a wave slid across his path. The run reminded him of his two dreams, without all the dead birds and the panic. Ahead on the beach, McGuinn continued to carry on. Twilly now could see what was upsetting the dog—a stocky, sawed-off guy in a suit. The man was lunging with both arms at the Labrador, which kept darting out of reach.

What now? Twilly wondered.

As he drew closer, he shouted for the dog to come. But McGuinn was in manic mode and scarcely turned his head to acknowledge Twilly’s voice. The stranger reacted, though. He stopped grabbing for the dog and arranged himself into a pose of calm and casual waitfulness.

Twilly prepared for trouble. He pulled up and walked the last twenty yards, to catch his breath and assess the situation. Immediately, McGuinn positioned himself between Twilly and the stranger, who clearly was no tourist. The man wore a rumpled houndstooth suit and ankle-high leather shoes with zippers. He had a blond dye job and a chopped haircut that belonged on somebody with pimples and a runny nose.

“Down!” Twilly said to McGuinn.

But the Lab kept snapping and snarling, his lush coat bristling like a boar’s. Twilly was impressed. Like Desie, he believed animals possessed an innate sense of danger—and he believed McGuinn’s intuition was correct about the out-of-place stranger.

“Obedience school,” the man said. “Or try one of those electrified collars. That’ll do the trick.”

“He bite you?” Twilly’s tone made it clear he was not stricken with concern for the stranger’s health.

“Naw. We’re just playing. What’s his name?”

“You might be playing,” Twilly said to the man, “but he’s not.”

McGuinn lowered himself on all fours. He rumbled a low growl and panted unblinkingly. His haunches remained bunched and taut, as if readying to launch at the stranger.

“What’s his name?” the man asked again.

Twilly told him.

“Sounds Irish,” the man remarked. His eyes cut back and forth between Twilly and the dog. “You Irish?” he said to Twilly.

“You’ll have to do better than this.”

The stranger acted innocent. “What do you mean? I’m just trying to be friendly.”

Twilly said, “Cut the shit.”

The weather was coming up on them fast. A cold raindrop hit the side of Twilly’s neck. The man with the spiky hair took a fat one on the nose. He wiped it dry with the sleeve of his jacket.

“Rain’ll ruin those shoes of yours,” Twilly said, “in about two minutes flat.”

“Let me worry about the footwear,” the stranger said, but he glanced down anyway at his feet. Twilly knew he was thinking about how much the brown leather shoes had cost.

“McGuinn! Let’s go.” Twilly clapped his hands loudly.

The dog wouldn’t move, wouldn’t shift his stare from the man in the musty-smelling suit. The Labrador had retained little from his short-lived time as a hunting dog in training, but one thing that had stayed with him was an alertness to guns. A human with a gun carried himself in a distinctly different manner. The Palmer Stoat who clomped through the marsh with a 20-gauge propped on his shoulder practically was a separate species from the Palmer Stoat who each night clipped McGuinn to a leash and covertly led him next door to crap on the neighbor’s garden. To Stoat and his human hunter friends, the transformation in themselves—bearing, gait, demeanor and voice—was so subtle they didn’t notice, yet it was glaringly obvious to McGuinn. A visual sighting of the gun itself was superfluous; humans who carried them had an unmistakable presence. Even their perspiration smelled different—not worse, for in the ever-ripe world of dogs there was hardly such a thing as a bad odor. Just different ones.

For a moment the stranger acted as if he wanted to make friends. He reached a hand beneath his moldy-smelling coat and said, “Here, boy. I’ve got something you’ll like. . . .”

McGuinn, cocking his head, licking his chops, never taking his hopeful brown eyes off the stranger’s hand, which emerged from under the coat with . . .

The gun. Had to be.

Now, from behind, the Labrador heard the young man say:

“Stay, boy. Don’t move!”

Never had McGuinn detected such urgency in a command. He decided, on a whim, to obey.

There was another gun-toting human on Toad Island: Krimmler, who had taken to carrying a loaded .357 after Robert Clapley’s hired freak accosted him in the Winnebago.

The pistol added to Krimmler’s nervousness, and he had plenty of time to be nervous. Construction on the Shearwater resort project remained suspended, and the lush new quiet on the island made Krimmler restless and edgy—it was the very sound of Nature, gradually reclaiming the ground plowed up by his beloved bulldozers. One morning he was appalled to find a green shoot sprouting in the old dirt tracks of a front-end loader. A baby tree! Krimmler thought, ripping it from the soil. A baby tree that would otherwise grow to be a tall chipmunk-harboring tree!