Sick Puppy (21 page)

Political suicide, marveled Lisa June Peterson. The man would’ve had more success trying to legalize LSD.

To an avid student of government, Clinton Tyree’s stay in Tallahassee was as fascinating as it was brief. He was probably right about almost everything, thought Lisa June Peterson, yet he did almost everything wrong. He cursed at press conferences. He gave radical speeches, quoting from Dylan, John Lennon and Lenny Bruce. He let himself go, shambling barefoot and unshaven around the capitol. As popular as Clinton Tyree had been with the common folk of Florida, he’d stood no chance—none whatsoever—of disabling the machinery of greed and converting the legislature to a body of foresight and honest ethics. It was boggling to think a sane person would even try.

But perhaps Tyree was not sane. Look at his brother, thought Lisa June Peterson; maybe it runs in the family. Look at the way the governor had blown town, fleeing the capitol after his Cabinet had betrayed him by closing a wildlife preserve and selling the seaside property to well-connected developers. So swift and complete was Tyree’s disappearance that people initially thought he’d been kidnapped or murdered, or even had done himself in—until the letter of resignation arrived, the angry slash of a signature verified by FBI experts. Lisa June Peterson had made two photocopies of the historic missive; one for Dick Artemus and one for her scrapbook.

For a short while after Clinton Tyree vanished, the newspapers had been full of gossip and speculation. Then nothing. Not a single journalist had been able to find him for an interview or a photograph. Over the years his name had popped up intermittently in the files of the state Department of Law Enforcement—purported sightings in connection with certain crimes, some quite bizarre. But Lisa June Peterson had found no record of an arrest, and in fact no solid proof of the ex-governor’s involvement. Yet the mere idea he was still alive, brooding in some gnarly wilderness hermitage, was beguiling.

I’d give anything to meet him, Lisa June thought. I’d love to find out if he really snapped.

Never would she have guessed what her boss wanted with her research. She didn’t know Dick Artemus had stayed up until 4:00 a.m. one night, grubbing through the documents and clippings until he seized with excitement upon the tragic story of Doyle Tyree, the ex-governor’s brother. Nor did Lisa June Peterson know about the unsigned communiqué given by her boss to the black state trooper, or the icy nature of her boss’s threat.

And so she was unaware of the event she had set in motion: a man coming wounded and bitter out of deep swamp; a man such as she had never known, or imagined.

“Money is no object,” Palmer Stoat said into the phone.

On the other end was Durgess. “This ain’t only about money. It’s about major jail time.”

“The Chinaman hung up on me.”

“Yessir. He don’t like telephones.”

“One lousy horn is all I need,” Stoat said. “Can’t you reach out to him? Tell him the money’s no object.”

Durgess said, “You gotta understand, it’s not been a good year for the rhino trade. Some of the boys we normally use, they got busted and went to jail.”

“Does he know who I am? The Chinaman,” said Stoat, “does he know how well connected I am?”

“Sir, you shot the last rhino we had on-site. Used to be Mr. Yee could do business direct with Africa, but Africa’s shut down for a couple months. Africa got too hot.”

Palmer Stoat paused to light up an H. Upmann, only to find the taste metallic and sugary. It was then he remembered, with revulsion, the cherry cough drop in his cheek. Violently he spit the lozenge onto his desk.

“You mean to tell me,” he said to Durgess, “that for the obscene price of fifty thousand dollars, your intrepid Mr. Yee cannot locate one single solitary rhinoceros horn anywhere on planet Earth?”

“I didn’t say that,” said Durgess. “There’s a private zoo in Argentina wants to sell us an old male that’s all broke down with arthritis.”

“And he’s still got his horns?”

“Damn well better,” Durgess said.

“Perfect. How soon can you get him?”

“We’re workin’ on it. They tell me a month or so.”

“Not good enough,” Stoat said.

“Lemme see what I can do.”

“Hey, while I got you on the line”—Stoat, giving the Upmann another try—“how’s my head mount coming? Did you get with your fiberglass guy?”

“He’s on the case,” Durgess said. “Says it’ll look better’n the real thing, time he gets done. Nobody’ll know it’s fake except you and me.”

“I can’t wait,” Palmer Stoat said. “I can’t wait to see that magnificent beast on the wall.”

“You bet.”

Stoat failed to detect the mockery in Durgess’s tone, and he hung up, satisfied that he’d lit a blaze under the guide’s slothful butt. Stoat fastidiously nubbed the ash of his cigar and went to shower. He carried a portable phone into the bathroom, in case Desie called from Hostage World, wherever. . . .

The lights went out while Stoat had a head covered with shampoo lather. He groped in the dark, cursing and spitting flecks of soapy foam, until he found the shower knobs. When he tried to open the door, it wouldn’t budge. He leaned a shoulder to the glass, with no better result.

Through stinging eyes Stoat saw a hulking shadow on the other side of the shower door. A cry died in his throat as he thought: Mr. Gash again. Who else could it be?

Then the glass disintegrated, an earsplitting echo off the imported Italian marble. The door fell in pieces around Stoat’s bare feet. Afterward the only sound in the bathroom was his own stark, rapid breathing. He felt a stinging sensation on his right leg, and a warm trickling toward his ankle.

The shadow no longer loomed face-to-face; now it was seated on the toilet, evidently evacuating its bowels.

“Mr. Gash?” The words came out of Palmer Stoat in a choke.

“Wrong,” the shadow said.

“Then who are you?”

“Your friend Dick sent me,” the shadow man said. “Dick the governor. Something about a missing pooch.”

“Yes!”

“Suppose you tell me.”

“Now? Here?”

The lights came on. Palmer Stoat squinted, raising one hand to his brow. With the other hand he covered his shrunken genitals. Broken glass lay everywhere; it was a miracle he’d only been nicked.

“Start talking,” said the shadow man. “Hurry, soldier, life is passing us by.”

As Stoat’s eyes adjusted, the broad-shouldered figure on the toilet came into focus. He had sun-beaten features and a silvery beard, exotically platted into two long strands. Tied to each of the strands was a beak, yellow and stained like old parchment. The man wore ancient mud-caked boots and a dirty orange rain jacket. Bunched at his ankles was a legless checkered garment that might have been a kilt. On his head the man wore a cheap plastic shower cap, through which shone a shiny bald scalp. Something was odd about his eyes, but Stoat couldn’t decide what it was.

“Do you have a name?” he asked.

“Call me captain.” The visitor spoke in a low rumble, like oncoming thunder.

“All right,
captain
.” Stoat didn’t feel quite so terrified, with the guy sitting where he was. “Why didn’t you just ring the doorbell?” Stoat said. “Why break into the house? And why’d you bust the shower door?”

“To put you in the proper frame of mind,” the man replied. “Also, I was in the mood for some serious goddamn noise.”

“Dick Artemus sent you?”

“Sort of.”

“Why—to get my dog back?”

“That’s right. I’m from Animal Control.” The man barked sarcastically.

Palmer Stoat fought to stay calm. Considering the political stakes, it almost made sense that Governor Dick would recruit his own tracker to take care of the dognapper—maybe not to kill him but certainly to stop him before he caused more trouble. But where had the governor found such a crazed and reckless brute? Stoat wondered. He was like Grizzly Adams on PCP.

Stoat asked: “Are you a manhunter?”

“More like a shit scraper,” the visitor replied, “and I’m starting with you.”

“Look, I’ll tell you the whole story, everything, but first let me towel off and put on some clothes. Please.”

“Nope. You stay right there.” The man rose and reached for the toilet paper. “In my experience,” he said, hoisting his checkered kilt, “men who are buck naked and scared nutless tend to be more forthcoming. They tend to have better memories. So let’s hear your sad doggy story.”

Stoat realized what was bothering him about the manhunter’s eyes: They didn’t match. The left eyeball was artificial and featured a brilliant crimson iris. Stoat wondered where one would procure such a spooky item, and why.

“Are you going to start talking,” the man said, “or just stand there looking ridiculous.”

Palmer Stoat talked and talked, nude and dripping in the shower stall amid the broken glass. He talked until the dripping stopped and he had completely dried. He told the one-eyed stranger everything he thought might help in the manhunt—about the tailgater in the black pickup truck; about the cruel trashing of Desie’s Beemer convertible; about the break-in at his house and the perverse defacing of his trophy taxidermy; about the swarm of dung beetles set loose inside his sports-utility vehicle; about Boodle’s abduction and the ensuing eco-extortion demand; about the resort project turning Toad Island into Shearwater Island, and the ingenious wheeling and dealing required to get a new bridge funded; about the mocking note from the stranger in sunglasses at Swain’s, probably the damn dognapper himself; about the severed ear arriving soon after, by FedEx, followed by the paw in the cigar box; about the governor agreeing to veto the bridge; about how Stoat was expecting the lunatic to free his beloved Labrador any day now, and also his wife—

Here he was interrupted by the man with the crimson eye.

“Hold on, sport. Nobody said anything about a woman hostage.”

“Well, he’s got her,” Stoat said. “I’m ninety-nine percent sure. That’s why the situation is so dicey, why it would be better for you to wait until after he lets Desie go.”

The man said, “What makes you so sure she’ll want to come home?”

Palmer Stoat frowned. “Why wouldn’t she?” Then, as an afterthought: “You don’t know my wife.”

“No, but I know these situations.” The man handed a towel to Stoat and said: “Show me this room where you keep your dead animals.”

Stoat wrapped the towel around his waist and tiptoed through the shattered glass. He led the bearded man down the hall to the den. Stoat began giving a stalk-by-stalk history of each mount, but he was barely into the Canadian lynx saga when “the captain” ordered him to shut up.

“All I want to know,” the man said to Stoat, “is what exactly he did in here.”

“Pried out the eyes and left them on my desk.”

“Just the mammals, or the fish, too?”

“All of them.” Stoat shook his head somberly. “Every single eyeball. He arranged them in a pattern. A pentagram, according to Desie.”

“No shit?” The captain grinned.

“You don’t find that sick?”

“Actually, I admire the boy’s style.”

Palmer Stoat thought: He
would
think it’s cute. Him with his moldy rain suit and funky fifty-cent shower cap and weird fake eye. But then again, Stoat mused, who better to track down a perverted sicko than another perverted sicko?

“You shot all these critters for what reason, exactly?” The man was at the long wall, appraising the stuffed Cape buffalo head. Being so tall, he stood nearly nose-to-nose with the great horned ungulate.

“You shot them, why—for fun or food or what, exactly?” he asked again, twirling the bird beaks on the platted ends of his beard.

“Sport,” Stoat answered warily. “For the sport of it.”

“Ah.”

“You look like you do some hunting yourself.”

“On occasion, yes,” the man said.

“Whereabouts?”

“The road, usually. Any busy road. Most of what I’m after is already dead. You understand.”

Dear God, thought Palmer Stoat:
Another
professional hit man. This one shoots his victims on the highway, while they’re stuck in traffic!

“But certain times of the year,” the visitor added, “I’ll take a buck deer or a turkey.”

Stoat felt a wavelet of relief, perceived a sliver of common ground. “I got my first whitetail when I was seventeen,” he volunteered. “An eight-pointer.”

The one-eyed man said, “That’s a good animal.”

“It was. It really was. From then on I was hooked on hunting.” Stoat thickly laid on the good-ole-boy routine, and with it the southern accent. “And now, hell, lookit me. I’m runnin’ outta wall space! The other day I got a black rhino—”

“A rhino! Well, congratulations.”

“Thank you, cap’n. My first ever. It was quite a thrill.”

“Oh, I’ll bet. You cook him?”

Stoat wasn’t sure he’d heard right. “I’m gettin’ the head mounted,” he went on, “but I jest don’t know where to hang the dang thing—”

“On account a ya’ll runnin’ outta gawdamn wall space!”

“Right.” Stoat gave a brittle chuckle. The big sonofabitch was making fun of him.

“Sit your ass down,” the man said, pointing toward the desk. The leather chair felt cool against Palmer Stoat’s bare back; he tried to cross his flabby thighs but the bath towel was wrapped too snugly. The bearded one-eyed man walked around the desk and stood directly behind the leather chair. The only way Stoat could see the man was to cock his head straight back. From that upside-down vantage, the captain’s visage appeared amiable enough.

“So you’re a lobbyist,” he said to Stoat.

“That’s right.” Stoat began to explain his unsung role in the machinations of representative government, but the one-eyed man slammed a fist so hard on the polished wood that Stoat’s picture frames toppled.

“I know what you do,” the man said mildly. “I know all about the likes of you.”

Palmer Stoat made a mental note to call a Realtor first thing tomorrow and put his house on the market; it had become a chamber of torture, practically every room violated by demented intruders—first the dognapper, then the sadistic Mr. Gash and now this nutty bald cyclops. . . .

“I’ve only got one question,” the man said to Stoat. “Where is this Toad Island?”