Sick Puppy (35 page)

The first stop was a Barnett bank, where he made a cash withdrawal that by chance equaled, almost to the dollar, three whole years of Lt. Jim Tile’s Highway Patrol salary. Even the former governor was taken aback.

“Inheritance,” Twilly said thickly. “My grandfather’s spinning in his grave.”

The next stop was a GM dealership on the way out of Tallahassee.

“What for?” the captain demanded.

“We need a car.”

“I walk most everywhere.”

“Well, I don’t,” Twilly said, “not with a hole in my lung.”

Jim Tile appeared highly entertained. Twilly sensed that Clinton Tyree was accustomed to running the show.

“Can I call you Governor?”

“Rather you didn’t.”

“Mr. Tyree? Or how about Skink?”

“Neither.”

“All right,
captain,
” Twilly said, “I just wanted to thank you for what you did on the island.”

“You’re most welcome.”

“But I was wondering how you happened to be there.”

“Spring break,” Skink said. “Now, let’s get you some wheels.”

With McGuinn in mind, Twilly picked out another used Roadmaster wagon, this one navy blue. While he filled out the paperwork in the salesman’s cubicle, the trooper, the captain and the big dog ambled around the showroom. None of the other salesmen dared to go near them. Afterward, in the parking lot, Jim Tile admired the big Buick. McGuinn was sprawled in the back, Twilly was in the front passenger seat and Skink was behind the wheel.

“I don’t really want to know where you three are headed,” the trooper said, “but, Governor, I do want to know what you did with that gun I gave you.”

“Gulf of Mexico, Jim.”

“You wouldn’t lie to me?”

“I threw it out of the chopper. Ask the boy.”

Twilly nodded. It was true. The pilot wisely had asked no questions.

“But the cell phone is a sad story, Jim. I must’ve dropped it in the woods,” Skink said. “The great state of Florida should buy you a new one. Tell Governor Dick I said so.”

Jim Tile circled to Twilly’s side of the car and leaned down at the window. “I assume you know whom you’re traveling with.”

“I do,” Twilly said.

“He is a dear friend of mine, son, but he’s not necessarily a role model.”

Skink cut in: “Another public service announcement from the Highway Patrol!”

Twilly shrugged. “I’m just looking for peace and quiet, Lieutenant. My whole mortal being aches.”

“Then you should take it easy. Real easy.” The trooper returned to the driver’s side. Clearly something was bothering him.

Skink said, “Jim, you believe the size of this thing!”

“How long since you drove a car?”

“Been awhile.”

“Yeah, and how long since you had a license?”

“Twenty-two years. Maybe twenty-three. Why?” The captain idly walked his fingers along the steering wheel. Twilly had to grin.

“Tell you what I’m going to do,” Jim Tile said. “I’m going to leave right now, so that I don’t see you actually steer this boat off the lot. Because then I’d have to pull you over and write you a damn ticket.”

Skink’s eye danced mischievously. “I would frame it, Jim.”

“Do me a favor, Governor. This young man’s already been through one shitstorm and nearly didn’t make it. Don’t give him any crazy new ideas.”

“There’s no room in his head for more. Am I right, boy?”

Twilly, deadpan: “I’ve turned over a new leaf.”

The trooper put on his wire-rimmed sunglasses. “Might as well be talking to the damn dog,” he muttered.

Clinton Tyree reached up and chucked him on the shoulder. Jim Tile gravely appraised his road Stetson, the brim of which had been nibbled ragged by McGuinn.

“Governor, I’ll say it again: I’m too old for this shit.”

“You are, Jim. Now, go home to your bride.”

“I don’t want to read about you two in the paper. Please.”

Skink plucked off the trooper’s shades and bent them to fit his face. “Elusive and reclusive! That’s us.”

“Just take care. Please,” Jim Tile said.

As soon as he was gone, they drove straight for the interstate. Twilly drifted in and out of codeine heaven, never dreaming. Near Lake City the captain excitedly awakened him to point out a dead hog on the shoulder of the highway.

“We could live off that for two weeks!”

Twilly sat up, rubbing his eyes. “Why are you stopping?”

“Waste not, want not.”

“You love bacon that much, let me buy you a Denny’s franchise,” Twilly said. “But I’ll be damned if you’re stashing a four-hundred-pound pig corpse in my new station wagon. No offense, captain.”

In the back of the car, McGuinn whined and fidgeted.

“Probably gotta pee,” Skink concluded.

“Makes two of us,” Twilly said.

“No, makes three.”

They all got out and walked toward the fringe of the woods. The ex-governor glanced longingly over his shoulder, toward the roadkill hog. McGuinn sniffed at it briefly before loping off to explore a rabbit trail. Twilly decided to let him roam for a few minutes.

When they got back to the car, the captain asked Twilly how he felt.

“Stoned. Sore.” With a grunt, Twilly boosted himself onto the hood. “And lucky,” he added.

Skink rested one boot on the bumper. He peeled off the shower cap and rubbed a bronze knuckle back and forth across the stubble of his scalp. He said, “We’ve got some decisions to make, Master Spree.”

“My mother saved all the clippings from when you disappeared. Every time there was a new story, she’d read it to us over breakfast,” Twilly recalled. “Drove my father up a wall. My father sold beachfront.”

Skink whistled sarcastically. “The big leagues. More, more, more.”

“He said you must be some kind of Communist. He said anybody who was anti-development was anti-American.”

“So your daddy’s a patriot, huh? Life, liberty and the pursuit of real estate commissions.”

“My mother said you were just a man trying to save a place he loved.”

“And failing spectacularly.”

“A folk hero, she said.”

Skink seemed amused. “Your mother sounds like a romantic.” He refitted the shower cap snugly on his skull. “You were in, what, kindergarten? First grade? You can’t possibly remember back that far.”

“For years afterward she talked about you,” Twilly said, “maybe just to give my dad the needle. Or maybe because she was secretly on your side. She voted for you, that I know.”

“Jesus, stop right there—”

“I think you’d like her. My mother.”

Skink pried off the sunglasses and studied his own reflection in the shine off the car’s fender. With two fingers he repositioned the crimson eye, more or less aligning it with his real one. Then he set his gaze on Twilly Spree and said, “Son, I can’t tell you what to do with your life—hell, you’ve seen what I’ve done with mine. But I will tell you there’s probably no peace for people like you and me in this world. Somebody’s got to be angry or nothing gets fixed. That’s what we were put here for, to stay pissed off.”

Twilly said, “They made me take a class for it, captain. I was not cured.”

“A class?”

“Anger management. I’m perfectly serious.”

Skink hooted. “For Christ’s sake, what about
greed
management? Everybody in this state should get a course in
that.
You fail, they haul your sorry ass to the border and throw you out of Florida.”

“I blew up my uncle’s bank,” Twilly said.

“So what!” Skink exclaimed. “Nothing shameful about anger, boy. Sometimes it’s the only sane and logical and moral reaction. Jesus, you don’t take a class to make it go away! You take a drink or a goddamn bullet. Or you stand and fight the bastards.”

The ex-governor canted his chin to the sky and boomed:

“Know ye the land where the cypress and myrtle

Are emblems of deeds that are done in their clime;

Where the rage of the vultures, the love of the turtle,

Now melt into sorrow, now madden to crime?”

Quietly, Twilly said, “But I’m already there, captain.”

“I know you are, son.” Slowly he lowered his head, the braids of his beard trailing down like strands of silver moss. The two bird beaks touched hooks as they dangled at his chest.

“Lord Byron?” Twilly asked.

Skink nodded, looking pleased. “The Bride of Abydos.”

With a thumb Twilly tested his bandaged wound. The pain was bearable, even though the dope was wearing off. He said, “I suppose you heard about this big-game trip.”

“Yes, sir.”

“You wouldn’t happen to know where it is.”

Here was Skink’s chance to end it. He could not.

“I do know where,” he said, and repeated what Lisa June Peterson had told him.

“So, what do you think?” Twilly asked.

“I think a canned hunt is as low as it gets.”

“That’s not what I mean.”

“Ah. You mean as the potential scene of an ambush?”

“Well, I keep thinking about Toad Island,” Twilly said, “and how to stop that damn bridge.”

Skink’s blazing eye was fixed on the highway, the cars and trucks streaking past. “Look at these fuckers,” he said softly, as if to himself. “Where could they all be going?”

Twilly slid off the hood of the station wagon. “I’ll tell you where
I’m
going, Governor, I’m going to Ocala. And on the way I intend to stop at a friendly firearms retailer and purchase a high-powered rifle. Want one?”

“The recoil will do wonders for your shoulder.”

“Yeah, it’ll hurt like a sonofabitch, I imagine.” Twilly plucked the car keys from Skink’s fingers. “You don’t want to come, I can drop you in Lake City.”

“That’s how you treat a folk hero? Lake City?”

“It’s hot out here. Let’s get back on the road.”

Skink said, “Did I miss something? Is there a plan?”

“Not just yet.” Twilly Spree licked his lips and whistled for the dog.

28

Durgess warmed his hands on a cup of coffee while Asa Lando gassed up the big forklift. It was three hours until sunrise.

“You sure about this?” Durgess asked.

“He ain’t moved since yesterday noon.”

“You mean he ain’t woke up.”

“No, Durge. He ain’t
moved.
”

“But he’s still breathin’, right?”

Asa Lando said, “For sure. They said he even took a dump.”

“Glory be.”

“Point is, it’s perfectly safe. Jeffy isn’t going anywheres.”

Durgess poured his coffee in the dirt and entered the building marked Quarantine One. Asa Lando drove the forklift around from the rear. The rhinoceros was on its chest and knees, a position the veterinarian had described as “sternal recumbency.” The vet had also estimated the animal’s age at thirty-plus and used the word
dottering,
which Asa Lando took to mean “at death’s door.” Time was of the essence.

Durgess opened the stall and Asa Lando rolled in atop the forklift. They couldn’t tell if the rhino was awake or asleep, but Durgess kept a rifle ready. El Jefe exhibited no awareness of the advancing machine. Durgess thought he saw one of the ears twitch as Asa Lando cautiously slid the steel tines beneath the rhino’s massive underbelly. Slowly the fork began to rise, and a tired gassy sigh escaped the animal’s bristly nostrils. Hoisted off the matted straw, the great armored head sagged and the stringy tail swatted listlessly at a swarm of horseflies. The stumpy legs hung motionless, like four scuffed gray drums.

“Easy now,” Durgess called, as Asa Lando backed out the forklift and headed for the flatbed truck. Durgess was astounded: Suspended eight feet in the air, the rhinoceros was as docile as a dime-store turtle. A tranquilizer dart would have put the damn thing into a coma.

In preparation for the fragile cargo, Asa Lando had padded the truck bed with two layers of king-sized mattresses. Upon being deposited there, the pachyderm blinked twice (which Durgess optimistically interpreted as a sign of curiosity). Asa tossed up an armful of fresh-cut branches and said, “Here go, Mr. El Jeffy. Breakfast time!”

Durgess himself had selected the location for the kill: an ancient moss-covered live oak that stood alone at the blue-green cleft of two vast grassy slopes, about a mile from the Wilderness Veldt lodge. A hundred years ago the land had produced citrus and cotton, but back-to-back winter freezes had prompted a switch to more durable crops—watermelon, cabbage and crookneck squash. It was the sons and grandsons of those early vegetable growers who eventually abandoned the farm fields and sold out to the Wilderness Veldt Plantation Corporation, which turned out to be co-owned by a Tokyo-based shellfish cartel and a Miami Beach swimsuit designer named Minton Tweeze.

In the dark it took Durgess a half hour to find the designated oak tree—he was driving the flatbed slowly so as not to lose Asa Lando, who was following with the forklift. Durgess parked the truck so that its headlights illuminated the clearing around the craggy trunk of the old tree. Before unloading the rhino, Durgess looped one end of a heavy cattle rope around its neck. The other end he secured to the trailer hitch of the flatbed.

“Why bother?” Asa Lando said.

“I got fifty thousand excellent reasons.”

But the rhino never made a move to break free; in fact, it made no movement at all. When Asa lowered the animal to the ground, it settled immediately to its knees, its drowsy demeanor unchanged. If it was happy to be outdoors again, neither Durgess nor Asa Lando could tell. They might as well have been rearranging statuary.

Uneasily, Durgess studied Robert Clapley’s high-priced quarry in the twin beams of the truck lights. “Asa, he don’t look so good.”

“Old age. That’s what he’s dyin’ from.”

“Long as he makes it till morning.” Durgess cocked his head and put a tobacco-stained finger to his lips. “You hear a dog bark?”

“No, but I heard a wheeze.” Asa Lando jerked a thumb toward the rhino. “Chest cold. Doc Terrell says he probably picked it up on the aeroplane.”

Durgess hastily stubbed out his cigarette. “Christ. A rhinoceros with fucking asthma.”

“Comes and goes, Durge. Same with the arthritis.”

“To hell with that. I heard a dog out there, I swear I did.”

He cupped a hand to his ear and listened: Nothing. Asa Lando shrugged. “I’m tellin’ you, it’s Jeffy got a chest wheeze. That’s all.”

Durgess edged toward the somnolent load and unslipped the rope. It seemed unnecessarily harsh to keep the aged creature tied down, as some prey had to be (due to the incompetent riflery of Wilderness Veldt clients, most of whom had no reasonable chance of hitting anything that wasn’t tethered to a stake).

Asa Lando took out a camera and snapped a picture of the rhinoceros, for posting on the Wilderness Veldt’s Web site. Then he heaved a bale of wheat in front of the animal, which acknowledged the gesture with a gravelly sniff.

“Well, Durge, that’s it. All we can do now is go back to the lodge until dawn.”

“And say our prayers,” Durgess said. “What if he up and dies, Asa? You think he’ll fall over on one side, or will he stay . . . you know. . . .”

“Upright? That’s a good question.”

“Because if he don’t fall, I mean, if he just sorta keeps on his knees. . . .”

Asa Lando brightened. “They won’t even know!”

“There’s a strong possibility,” Durgess agreed. “The damn thing could be stone-dead and. . . .”

“From fifty yards away, how could they tell?”

“That’s what I’m sayin’, Asa. These clowns’ll never figger it out. Long as Jeffy here don’t keel over before they actually squeeze off a shot.”

Durgess took a step closer, into the spear of white light and swirling insects. He peered skeptically at the motionless rhino. “You still with us, old-timer?”

“He is,” Asa Lando said. “Unless that’s a puddle of
your
piss on the grass.”

The hunting party had come in the night before and, against Durgess’s advice, celebrated into the late hours with rich desserts, cognac and Cuban cigars. It was rare that the governor was able to cut loose and relax without fear of ending up in a snarky newspaper column—ordinarily he was careful not to be seen socializing so intimately with insider lobbyists such as Palmer Stoat or shady campaign donors such as Robert Clapley. And upon first arriving at the Wilderness Veldt, Dick Artemus had been subdued and remote, his wariness heightened by a recent unsettling event inside the governor’s mansion.

Gradually, however, the chief executive began to feel at ease within the gated privacy of the Wilderness Veldt Plantation, drinking fine whiskey and trading bawdy stories in cracked leather chairs by a cozy stone fireplace. This was what it must have been like in the good old days, the governor thought wistfully, when the state’s most important business was conducted far from the stuffy, sterile confines of the capitol—hammered into law by sporting men, over smoky poker games at saloons and fish camps and hunting lodges; convivial settings that encouraged frank language and unabashed horse trading, free from the scrutiny of overzealous journalists and an uninformed public.

Willie Vasquez-Washington, however, wasn’t so comfortable among the walnut gun cabinets and the stuffed animal heads, which unblinkingly stared down at him from their stations high on the log walls. Like the governor, Willie Vasquez-Washington also felt as if he’d taken a step backward to another time—a time when a person of his color would not have been welcome at the Wilderness Veldt Plantation unless he wore burgundy doublets and waistcoats, and carried trays of Apalachicola oysters (as efficient young Ramon was doing now). Nor was Willie Vasquez-Washington especially enthralled by the company at the lodge. He had yet to succumb to the famous charms of Dick Artemus, while Palmer Stoat was, well, Palmer Stoat—solicitous, amiably transparent and as interesting as cold grits. Willie Vasquez-Washington was no more favorably impressed by Robert Clapley, the cocky young developer of Shearwater, who had greeted him with a conspicuously firm handshake and a growl: “So you’re the guy who’s trying to fuck me out of a new bridge.”

It was Willie Vasquez-Washington’s fervent wish that the political deal could be settled that night, over dinner and drinks, so he would be spared the next day’s rhinoceros hunt. Half-drunk white men with high-powered firearms made him extremely nervous. And while Willie Vasquez-Washington was not, in any sense of the term, a nature freak, he had no particular desire to watch some poor animal get shot by the likes of Clapley.

So Willie Vasquez-Washington attempted on several occasions to draw the governor aside, in order to state his simple proposal: A new high school in exchange for a yea vote on the Toad Island bridge appropriation. But Dick Artemus was caught up in the frothy mood of the pre-hunt festivities, and he was unwilling to tear himself away from the hearth. Nor was Palmer Stoat a helpful intermediary; whenever Willie Vasquez-Washington approached him, the man’s face was so crammed with food that his response was indecipherable. In the soft cast of the firelight, Stoat’s damp bloated countenance resembled that of an immense albino blowfish. What meager table manners he had maintained while sober deteriorated vividly under the double-barreled effects of Rémy Martin and babyback ribs. The ripe spray erupting from Stoat’s churning mouth presented not only an unsavory visual spectacle but also (Willie Vasquez-Washington suspected) a health hazard. The prudent move was to back off, safely out of range.

At 1:00 a.m., Willie Vasquez-Washington gave up. He headed upstairs to bed just as Stoat and Clapley broke into besotted song:

“You can’t always do who you want,

No, you can’t always do who you want. . . .”

They stopped at a shop with a Confederate flag nailed to the door, on U.S. 301 between Starke and Waldo. Twilly Spree purchased a Remington 30.06 with a scope and a box of bullets. Clinton Tyree got Zeiss night-scope binoculars and a secondhand army Colt .45, for use at close range. A five-hundred-dollar cash “donation” toward the new Moose Lodge served to expedite the paperwork and inspire a suddenly genial clerk to overlook the brief waiting period normally required for handgun purchases in Florida.

Skink and Twilly stopped for dog food, camo garb and other supplies in the town of McIntosh, seventeen miles outside Ocala. At a diner there, a shy ponderous waitress named Beverly blossomed before their very eyes into a svelte southern version of Rosie O’Donnell—a transformation hastened by a hundred-dollar tip and the gift of a one-of-a-kind Chihuahua-hide vest, which Skink good-naturedly took off and presented to her on the spot. Beverly pulled up a chair and offered numerous scandalous anecdotes about what went on at the Wilderness Veldt Plantation and, more importantly, flawless directions to it. By nightfall Twilly and Skink were comfortably encamped on the north end of the spread, having conquered the barbed ten-foot fence with a bolt cutter. The ex-governor built a small fire ring in a concealed palmetto thicket, while Twilly took McGuinn to scout the area. The dog was like a dervish on the leash, pulling so hard in so many different directions that it nearly dislocated Twilly’s acutely tender right shoulder. By the time they returned to the campsite, Skink had dinner cooking over the flames—for Twilly, a rib-eye steak and two baked potatoes; for himself, braised rabbit, alligator tail and fried water moccasin, all plucked, freshly smote, off a bountiful two-mile stretch of pavement south of Micanopy.

Skink said, “Any sign of the warriors?”

“No, but I could see the lights of the main lodge at the top of a hill. I’m guessing it’s three-quarters of a mile from here.” Twilly looped McGuinn’s leash over one ankle and sat down with a jug of water by the fire. The dog rested its chin on its paws, gazing up longingly at the sizzling meat.

“Still no brainstorm?” Skink inquired.

“Truth is, we ought to just shoot the fuckers.”

“It’s your call, son.”

“How about some input?” Twilly wanted the captain to assure him there was another way to save Toad Island, besides committing murder.

Instead Skink said, “I’ve tried everything else and look where it’s got me.”

“You’re just tired is all.”

“You don’t know the half of it.”

They ate in restive silence, the night settling upon them like a dewy gray shroud. Even McGuinn inched closer to the fire. Twilly thought of Desie—he missed her, but he was glad she wasn’t with him now.

“I propose we sleep on it.” Skink, crunching on the last curl of snake.

Twilly shook his head. “I won’t be sleeping tonight.”

“We could always just snatch ’em, I suppose.”

“Yeah.”

“Make a political statement.”

“Oh yeah. Just what the world needs,” Twilly said.

“Plus, hostages are a lot of work. You’ve gotta feed ’em and take ’em to the john and wash their dirty underwear so they don’t stink up the car. And listen to all their goddamn whining, sweet Jesus!” Skink laughed contemptuously.

“On the other hand,” Twilly said, “if we kill them, then the entire Federal Bureau of Investigation will be chasing us. That’s not a happy prospect.”

The ex-governor pried loose his glass eye and tossed it to Twilly, who held it up before the fire. The thing appeared surreal and distant, a glowering red sun.

“Beats a plain old patch,” Skink said, swabbing the empty socket.

Twilly handed the prosthetic eye back to him. “What do you think they’ll be hunting tomorrow?”

“Something big and slow.”

“And when it’s over, they’ll gather around the fireplace, drink a toast to the dead animal and then get down to business. Make their greedy deal and shake hands. And that gorgeous little island on the Gulf will be permanently fucked.”

“That’s how it usually goes.”

“I can’t sit still for that, captain.”

Skink tugged off his boots and placed them next to the binoculars case. In a pocket of his rain suit he found a joint, which he wedged into his mouth. He lowered his face to the edge of the flames until the end of the doobie began to glow.

“Son, I can’t sit still for it, either,” he said. “Never could. Want a hit?”