Sick Puppy (29 page)

God, Twilly thought, please don’t let him fart. This psycho punk would shoot him in a heartbeat.

Mr. Gash was saying, “Whoever finds your bodies, the first thing they’ll do is call 911. You could be nothing but skeletons and still they’ll call emergency.” Mr. Gash paused to relish the irony. “Know what I’m going to do, Mrs. Stoat? I’m going to get the tape of that phone call, as a remembrance of our one and only night together. What do you think of that?”

“I think you’re a monster.”

“ ‘Possible human remains.’ That’s what the cops call those cases.”

Desie Stoat said, “Please don’t shoot my dog.”

“You crack me up,” said Mr. Gash.

“I’ll do anything you want. Anything.”

Desie sat forward and pinched the damp sleeve of Mr. Gash’s houndstooth coat.

“
Anything,
Mrs. Stoat? Because I’ve got a very active imagination.”

“Yes, we can tell by your wardrobe,” said Twilly. He drew his right hand into a fist, mentally calibrating the distance to Mr. Gash’s chin.

Desie was saying, “Please. There’s no need to do that.”

Mr. Gash shrugged. “Sorry, babe. The mutt dies first.”

“Then I hope you’re into necrophilia,” she told him, trembling, “because if you shoot McGuinn, you’re in for the worst sex of your whole life. That’s a promise.”

Mr. Gash pursed his waxy-looking lips and grew pensive. Twilly could tell that Desie’s threat had hit home; the killer’s kinky fantasies were in ruins.

Finally he said, “OK, I’ll let him go.”

Desie frowned. “Here? You can’t just let him go.”

“Why the hell not.”

Twilly said, “He’s been sick. He’s on medicine.”

“Better sick than dead.”

“He’s a dog, not a turtle. You don’t just let him go,” Desie protested. “He doesn’t know how to hunt for himself—what’s he going to eat out here?”

“You guys, for starters,” said Mr. Gash. “Dogs go for fresh meat, is my understanding.”

Desie blanched. Mr. Gash was paying close attention to her reaction, savoring it. Twilly saw an opportunity. He coiled his shoulder muscles, drew a deep breath and—

Then it hit him, rank and unmistakable. McGuinn!

Mr. Gash’s nose twitched. His face contorted into a gargoyle scowl. “Aw, who cut the cheese? Did
he
do that!”

“What are you talking about?” Twilly, laboring to breathe through his mouth.

“I don’t smell anything,” insisted Desie, though her eyes had begun to well.

“Your damn dog passed gas!”

Mr. Gash was up on his knees, cursing furiously and waving the semiautomatic. McGuinn wore that liquid expression of pure lovable innocence well known to all owners of Labrador retrievers. The Look had evolved over hundreds of years as an essential survival trait, to charm exasperated humans into forgiveness.

Unfortunately, Mr. Gash was immune. “Roll down the goddamn windows!” he gasped at Twilly.

“I can’t. They’re electric and you took the car keys.”

Mr. Gash dug the ignition key out of his pocket and twisted it into the switch on the steering column. Then he threw himself across Twilly’s lap and feverishly began mashing all the window buttons on the door panel. Mr. Gash remained in that position long enough to gag Twilly with a miasmal body funk that, by comparison, made dog flatulence smell like orange blossoms.

Had Twilly been able to draw an untainted breath, he likely could have reached around and broken Mr. Gash’s neck, or at least his firing arm. But the stench off the gamy houndstooth suit had a paralyzing effect, and by the time Twilly recovered, Mr. Gash had thrust the upper half of his torso across the front seat and placed the gun barrel squarely between McGuinn’s calm, still-guileless eyes.

“You were home free, Fido. Then you had to go and fart.”

Desie cried out and threw both arms around the Lab’s trunk-like neck.

For several moments, nobody moved. A piney breeze rushed through the open windows of the Roadmaster. Twilly hoped it might refresh Mr. Gash and cool his fury.

It did not. He cocked the hammer.

“Back to Plan A,” he said.

Twilly dove across the seat and slammed his right fist into Mr. Gash’s rib cage, the nearest availing target. The punch didn’t land right—Twilly had expected the sting of bone against bone but the impact was softer, as if he’d slugged a sofa. He could not have foreseen that Mr. Gash would be wearing, beneath the jacket, holster and long-sleeved shirt, a padded corset of cured rattlesnake hides.

The device had been fashioned by the same Washington Avenue upholstery wizard who’d customized Mr. Gash’s iguana-skin sex harness. Why Mr. Gash would don a corset undergarment was a question Twilly never would get to ask. The answer: The killer had a vain streak when it came to his physique. He was driven to take measures that artificially streamlined his midsection, which in recent years had shown signs of incipient tubbiness—an unnerving development that Mr. Gash bitterly blamed on the dull sedentary lifestyle of a hit man. It was an occupation that neither required nor allowed much physical exercise; plane trips, car rides, endless stakeouts in motel rooms and bars. For Mr. Gash, already self-conscious about his short stature, the sight of a marbled, thickening belly was intolerable. A discreetly tailored corset seemed a good temporary solution, at least until he found time to join a spa. And because he lived on South Beach, not just any corset would do. Yet that’s all Mr. Gash could find when he went shopping: starchy medical corsets, white or beige; no colors, no patterns. Mr. Gash wanted something with élan, something that didn’t look like a flab-binding swathe, something he wouldn’t be ashamed to display when stripping off his clothes for the women he took home, something intriguing enough to divert their eyes away from his gelatinous tummy.

Snakeskin was the obvious choice. With snakeskin you couldn’t go wrong anywhere on Ocean Drive. Mr. Gash had chosen Eastern diamondback because the women who consented to go home with him typically were danger freaks and would therefore (Mr. Gash reasoned) be more aroused by the remains of a venomous serpent than those of a common boa or python. And over time the rattlesnake-hide corset had served Mr. Gash very well, both socially and cosmetically. When he wasn’t wearing it, he felt shy and bloated—and, oddly, shorter! Without the corset, Mr. Gash would not have fit comfortably (or even attempted to fit) into his trademark houndstooth ensemble.

None of this was known to Twilly Spree. All he knew was that he hit the man with an exceptionally good punch and that the man sagged but did not keel, gulped but did not cry out, grimaced but did not roll his eyes in the manner of the soon-to-be unconscious. So Twilly clutched Mr. Gash desperately around the waist, struggling to flip him backward and get at the gun. That’s when a bomb went off in Twilly’s right eardrum, and white-hot starbursts exploded in his eye sockets. He hoped it was the beginning of another dream, but it wasn’t.

23

The breeze felt good. More important to McGuinn, it
tasted
good; a tantalizing smorgasbord for doggy senses. There was the tangy trace of boar raccoon, the musky whiff of mother opossum, the familiar fumes of randy tomcat—and a host of intriguing new woodland scents that required immediate investigation. The night beckoned McGuinn and, once the dog food was gone, he saw no reason not to answer the call.

Except for Desie.

Desie kept hugging him, and nothing in the world was more pleasurable to a Labrador retriever than the cooing affection of a female human. They smelled fantastic! So McGuinn was torn between the primal urge to prowl and mark territory and the not-so-primal urge to be coddled and stroked.

The gunshot clinched it—so loud it made him jump, yet nevertheless triggering one of the few learned responses to have lodged for more than a day or two in his quicksand memory. A gunshot meant McGuinn was supposed to run! This he explicitly recalled from all those frosty dawns in the marsh with Palmer Stoat. A gunshot meant ducks falling from the sky! Warm, wet, tasty ducks! Ducks to be scented out and snapped floating from the pond, carried off at a gallop to be eagerly gnawed upon until hollering male humans up and snatched them away. That’s what gunfire meant to McGuinn.

So he vaulted from the station wagon—out of Desie’s loving arms, through an open window (yipping as his surgical wound grazed the lock button), into the misting darkness in quest of . . . ducks? But where?

.  .  .

Mr. Gash watched him run away and said, “That solves the dog problem.”

He pushed Twilly Spree’s lifeless form out of the car, pulled the door shut, and climbed into the backseat with Desie. He considered moving her to the rear cargo bed, but it was cluttered with mangled chew toys and carpeted with Labrador sheddings. Mr. Gash preferred sex that did not require a head-to-toe vacuuming afterward.

“Take off your clothes.” He placed the gun to Desie’s temple. Mechanically she removed her sweatshirt, bra and jeans. Mr. Gash shook himself out of the houndstooth coat and with his free hand folded it neatly into a square.

“Stick this under your head,” he told Desie.

“What about your pants?” She was so frightened, so strung out with terror that her own voice seemed to be echoing from a cavern; some remote, untouchable part of her consciousness that urged her to stall, drag it out, keep the monster occupied as long as you can.

As awful as it might get.

“My pants?” said Mr. Gash.

“They’re wet.”

“Yeah, they are. From the
rain.
”

“I know,” Desie said, “but it’s cold on my skin. Could you please take them off? The shirt, too.” She was lying on her back, covering her nipples with her hands. Now it was purely about survival; nothing could be done for Twilly, who was either dead or dying. Desie would cry for him later, if she made it.

Mr. Gash sat poised on the edge of the seat. “Don’t you move,” he told her. “Don’t you even blink.”

He unzipped his brown shoes and placed them under the seat. Then he tugged off his damp trousers and laid them across one of the headrests. Next came the shoulder holster, then the shirt.

“What’s that?” Desie asked. Even in the dark she could tell it was a most unusual garment.

“Bulletproof vest,” Mr. Gash lied.

“Is that from a snake?”

“Sure is. Wanna touch?”

“No.”

“It’s dead. Go on and touch it.”

Desie did what she was told, tracing her fingertips across the corrugated scales of the hide. She shivered not at the sensation but at the thought of where it had come from.

“Please take that off, too,” she said.

As Mr. Gash fumbled to unlace the corset, he said, “Mrs. Stoat, I don’t think you get it. This isn’t a goddamn honeymoon, it’s what the cops would call an aggravated sexual battery. And you’re making me more damn aggravated by the minute.”

When he climbed on top of her, she robotically positioned a hand on each of his shoulders, which felt greased and lumpy. Something hard poked her neck, and she correctly assumed it was the handgun.

Mr. Gash said, “Oh shit.”

“What?”

“There’s a leak in this damned car.”

Desie looked up and noticed a dime-sized hole in the Roadmaster’s roof. The hole was from the bullet that accidentally fired from the killer’s gun when he smacked it against Twilly Spree’s head. Now water was dripping from the hole onto Mr. Gash’s bare torso.

“Right down the crack of my ass,” he reported sourly.

He sat up and hastily plugged the leak with a wadded-up discount coupon for chicken-flavored Purina. Then he again lowered himself on Desie, saying, “Now.
Finally.
”

She resolved not to fight; Mr. Gash was too muscular. But she had another plan: to will herself paralyzed from the neck down, so she wouldn’t feel him. It was a technique Desie had developed while engaged to the multi-baubled Andrew Beck. Later, the self-numbing hypnosis had proved useful with Palmer Stoat, during the nights when his Polaroid antics became tedious.

Her trick was to imagine she was living in a borrowed body, through which she could see and speak but not feel. And at first she didn’t feel anything of Mr. Gash.

“Gimme second.” His breathing came in a heavy rhythm, as if he was practicing a meditation. “Just hang on,” he said.

Elatedly, Desie thought: The creep can’t get it up!

But relief gave way to gloom, for she realized he would kill her anyway—probably even sooner now, in a violent rage of frustration.

“Help me out here, babe.”

He was grinding against her with somber determination. His hipbones banged into her hipbones, his chest slapped against her breasts, his chin dug into her forehead. . . .

Desie fought off waves of nausea—the man stank of rancid perspiration, syrupy cologne and unlaundered clothes.

“I’m not . . . used to . . . this.” Mr. Gash, panting gaseously.

The rank heat of his breath made Desie shudder.

“Used to what—women?” she said. “You bi?”

“No! What I’m not . . . used to . . . is
one
woman. I’m used to . . . more.”

“How many more?”

“Two . . . three. Sometimes four.” He told her what he liked to do (and have done to him) while hanging in his lizard-skin sling from the ceiling.

“Whew,” Desie said. “Can’t help you there, chief.”

Mr. Gash stopped grinding and pushed himself up on his arms. “Sure you can. There’s lots of things you can do, Mrs. Stoat.”

Twilly awoke facedown in mud. He blew clods out both nostrils when he lifted his head.

His head! He’d never known such pain. He tried to spit and again nearly blacked out. His left ear clanged like a fire alarm. The whole side of his skull felt flaming hot; liquid and distended.

Twilly thought: I guess I’ve finally been shot. He was incensed but not especially afraid, which was a chronic problem in his life—anger supplanting normal, well-founded fears. Twilly had an unhealthy lack of concern for his own safety.

He rolled over and saw stars. They vanished behind a wispy curtain of fast-moving clouds. It was nighttime and a hard rain was ending. Twilly didn’t know where he was, or what he was doing there, but he had a hunch somebody would bring him up to speed. He raised an exploratory hand to his head and located a large raw knot, but no bullet wound. His fingers came back sticky so he held them in front of his face to check the color of the blood; the brighter the better. That’s when he knew he’d lost the vision in his left eye.

“Hell,” he muttered.

With a forefinger Twilly gingerly probed the socket and was relieved to find the eyeball externally intact. Slowly he raised on his forearms, teetering in the sloppy mud. Overhead the stars and clouds spun madly around the treetops. Twilly waited patiently for the world to slow down. With his good eye he discerned bulky motionless shapes on either side of him—to his left, a bulldozer; to his right, a boat-sized station wagon.

Progress, he told himself.

Gradually the locomotive ringing subsided and Twilly could make out distinct noises—the wind in the pines, an incongruous jingling in the understory, almost like sleigh bells. . . .

And, from inside the car, a muffled struggle.

Twilly tried to stand, bracing himself on the fender. He noticed it was shimmying. Once on his feet, he felt dizzy and sick to his stomach. Meanwhile the jingling sounded closer, causing him to speculate it was all inside his head; something loose or broken.

But the station wagon
was
rocking—not much, but enough to keep Twilly’s shaky equilibrium in flux. Miserably he sunk to his knees and listed against the car, his cheek mashed against the cool steel. He groped for purchase and found a door handle.

There he hung like a drunken rock climber until the latch clicked and the heavy door swung open. Twilly lost his grip and slid limply to the mud. He lay blinking at the heavens as his eardrums pealed with the jingle bells of the oncoming sleigh. Where’s the snow? he wondered sleepily.

Moments later, Twilly saw the sleigh shoot over him, a hulking black shadow that momentarily blotted out the stars and the clouds. He smelled it, too, though it didn’t smell like Christmas. It smelled like a big wet dog. From inside the car came a startled cry, and suddenly Twilly remembered where he was, and what was happening. He remembered everything.

“He thinks it’s a game,” Desie explained.

“Make him let go!”

“He won’t hurt you.”

“Get him off me, goddammit, so I can kill him.”

The mutt was riding Mr. Gash as if he were a pony. The wet, filthy mutt! Its yellow fangs were planted on his neck—not hard enough to break the skin, but firmly enough to bring severe distress to Mr. Gash, who was not an animal lover. (He regarded the 911 tape of the testicle-chomping chow as one of the most harrowing in his extensive collection.)

“I’ve shot dogs,” he hissed at Desie, “for a lot less than this.”

“He thinks we’re playing.”

“You mean he’s pulled this shit before? While you were screwing?”

“To him it’s wrestling. He hates to be left out.” The combined weight and aromas of the two animals, the Lab and Mr. Gash, made it difficult for Desie to speak up.

“Who taught him how to open a car door?” Mr. Gash said snidely.

“I dunno. That’s a new one.”

“Make him get off! He weighs a fucking ton.”

Weakly, Desie said, “McGuinn, down!”

The dog held its position. They heard a tail flopping mirthfully against the upholstery.

“Jesus, he’s drooling all over me!” Mr. Gash cried.

Desie saw a strand of slobber glistening from one of his earlobes. He swung the gun away from her neck and reached it behind his own head, so the barrel was jammed to the Labrador’s jaw.

“Big mistake,” said Desie.

“What?” The dumb mutt
had
to die—first, because he had interrupted Mr. Gash’s strenuous efforts to achieve an erection; second, because he had fouled Mr. Gash’s hair with spit.

“You have any idea,” Desie said, “how hard that dog’s head is?”

“What’re you saying, Mrs. Stoat? This is a forty-five-caliber handgun.”

“I’m saying his noggin is like a cinder block. The bullet could bounce off him and wind up in you or me. It’s something to think about, that’s all.”

Mr. Gash did think about it. She had a point. The beast was glommed to his very spine, after all. Plus, it would be a blind shot, backhanded over the shoulder. Very risky.

“Shit,” said Mr. Gash. The evening was not playing out as he had hoped. “How long does he usually hang on?”

“Till he gets bored. Or hungry.” Desie felt suffocated and claustrophobic.

“He farts again, I’m definitely pulling the trigger.”

“Tell that to
him,
” she muttered at Mr. Gash, “not me.”

Twilly Spree was on all fours in the slop, peering up into the backseat through the open door. In the greenish glow of the dome light he saw Desirata Stoat and her dog, with Mr. Gash sandwiched obscenely between them. None of them could see Twilly, who listened only briefly to the taut conversation before scooting like a water bug underneath the Roadmaster.

He thought: Crazy damn dog, he’ll get her killed.

It wouldn’t take much for Mr. Gash to blow a gasket and start shooting. The challenge was to get McGuinn off the killer, then somehow get the killer off Desie.

“Let go a me, you dumb bastard! Let go a me!” The rising fury of Mr. Gash.

Twilly licked his lips and tried to whistle. Nothing came out—he was trembling too much from the damp cold.

He heard Desie cry out: “What’re you doing!”

Then Mr. Gash: “Making do.”

The car began rocking again. Twilly vigorously rubbed the clamminess from his cheeks. He was striving for a specific two-note whistle; the whistle used to summon McGuinn for supper. Twilly puckered and blew. This time it worked.

The station wagon stopped shaking. There was a shout, a splash, an inquisitive bark. The dog had let go of the killer and was out of the car, hunting for the source of the dinner call. Twilly could track McGuinn’s pacing by the tinkling of his collar. It was only a matter of moments before the ever-hungry Lab sniffed out Twilly’s hiding place.

“Who made that noise!” Mr. Gash bellowed from the backseat.

“What noise?” came Desie’s voice. “That bird, you mean.”

“It was no goddamned bird.”

Twilly whistled again, this time with a whimsical lilt. He saw McGuinn’s legs stiffen—all senses on full alert. The dog was zeroing in.

Not yet, Twilly thought, please. He heard more movement above him: Mr. Gash, scrambling from the station wagon.

“That’s it,” the killer was saying, “somebody’s out there. Some asshole troublemaker.”

Twilly sucked in his breath as McGuinn’s twitching snout appeared below the rear bumper. The dog began to whine and scratch at the ground. No! Twilly thought.
Stay!

Finally, the two pale feet Twilly was awaiting emerged from the car and descended into view. They disappeared into the mud as the killer stood up.

“Damn,” Mr. Gash rasped. “That’s cold.”