Sick Puppy (30 page)

From Twilly’s vantage, the bony white ankles looked like aspen saplings. He clasped a hand around each one and jerked. The killer went down hard and unquietly. McGuinn retreated, moon-howling in confusion.

Twilly wriggled from under the car and hurled himself upon the thrashing Mr. Gash. The resulting splatter of muck glooped uncannily into Twilly’s good eye, completing his decline to full sightlessness. Wild punches landed harmlessly upon the brawny arms and shoulders of Mr. Gash, who simply bucked Twilly aside, raised his gun and fired.

This time Twilly knew it for a fact: He was shot. The slug slammed into the right side of his chest and knocked him goony. He didn’t fall so much as fold.

He heard the wind blowing. Desie sobbing. That weird sleigh-bell jingling in the trees. His own heart pounding.

Twilly believed he could even hear the blood squirting from the hole in his ribs.

And a strange new voice, possibly imaginary.

“I’ll take it from here,” it said, very deeply.

“What? Like hell you will.” That was Mr. Gash, the killer.

“The boy comes with me.”

“Ha! Pops, I should’ve shot your ass, back up the road. Now get the fuck outta here.”

“Mister, run! Go get help! Please.” That would be Desie.

“Shut up, Mrs. Stoat”—the killer again—“while I blow this sorry old fart’s head off.”

“I said, the boy’s mine.” The deep voice, astoundingly calm.

“You mental or what? I guess maybe so,” Mr. Gash said. “Whatever. It’s just one more dead troublemaker to me.”

Twilly felt himself sliding away, as if he were on a raft spinning languidly downriver. If this was dying, it wasn’t half-bad. And if it was only a dream, he had no desire to awaken. Twenty-six years of unspent dreams is what they owed him.

On impulse he decided to summon McGuinn—a dog was always good company on a river.

“I said, the boy is mine.”

Who’s he talking about? Twilly wondered. What boy?

He also wondered why he could no longer hear himself whistling, why suddenly he couldn’t hear anything at all.

24

“What is it you want, Willie?”

The age-old question. Palmer Stoat tinkled the ice cubes in his glass and awaited a reply from the vice chairman of the House Appropriations Committee.

“You and your rude-ass manners,” Willie Vasquez-Washington said. “Man, I’ll tell you what I want. I want the Honorable Richard Artemus to not fuck with my spring snow skiing, Palmer. I want to be in Canada next week. I do
not
want to be in Tallahassee for some bullshit ‘special session.’ ”

“Now, Willie, it’s too late—”

“Don’t ‘now Willie’ me. This isn’t about the schools budget, amigo, it’s about that dumb-ass bridge to that dumb-ass Cracker island, which I thought—no, which you
told
me!—was all ironed out a few weeks ago. And then. . . .” Willie Vasquez-Washington paused to sip his Long Island iced tea. “Then your Governor Dick goes and vetoes the item. His own baby! Why?”

Palmer Stoat responded with his standard you-don’t-really-want-to-know roll of the eyes. They were sitting at the bar in Swain’s, the last place on the planet where Stoat wanted to retell the squalid dognapping saga. After all, it was here the lunatic had sent the infamous phantom paw. The bartender was even rumored to have named a new drink after it, to Stoat’s mortification.

“Fine. Don’t tell me,” said Willie Vasquez-Washington. “But guess what? It ain’t my problem, Palmer.”

“Hey, you got your inner-city community center.”

“Don’t start with that.”

“Excuse me. Community
Outreach
Center,” said Stoat. “Nine million bucks, wasn’t it?”

“Back off!”

“Look, all I’m saying. . . .” The lobbyist dropped his voice, for he did not wish to appear to be insulting an Afro-Haitian-Hispanic-Asian-Native American, or any combination thereof (assuming Willie Vasquez-Washington was telling the truth about at least one of the many minorities he professed to be). In any case, the upscale cigar-savoring clientele at Swain’s was relentlessly Anglo-Saxon, so the presence of a person of color (especially one as impeccably attired as Representative Vasquez-Washington) raised almost as many eyebrows as had the sight of the severed Labrador paw.

“Willie, all I’m saying,” Palmer Stoat continued, “is that the governor kept his end of the deal. He did right by you. Can’t you help him out of this one lousy jam? These were circumstances beyond his control.”

“Sorry, man.”

“We can’t pull this off without you.”

“I’m aware of that.” Willie Vasquez-Washington, drumming his fingernails on the oak. “Any other time, Palmer, but not now. I’ve been planning this vacation for years.”

Which was a complete crock, Stoat knew. The junket was being paid for secretly by a big HMO as a show of gratitude to Willie Vasquez-Washington, whose timely intervention had aborted a potentially embarrassing investigation of certain questionable medical practices; to wit, the HMO encouraging its minimum-wage switchboard operators to make over-the-phone surgical decisions for critically ill patients. What a stroke of good fortune (Stoat reflected wryly) that Willie Vasquez-Washington played golf every Saturday with the State Insurance Commissioner.

“Willie, how’s this? We fly you in for the Toad Island vote, then fly you straight back to Banff. We’ll get a Lear.”

Willie Vasquez-Washington eyed Stoat as if he were a worm on a Triscuit. “And you’re supposed to be so damn sharp? Lemme spell it out for you, my brother: I cannot skip the special session and go skiing, like I want. Why? Because they would crucify my ass in the newspapers, on account of the newspapers have bought into the governor’s bullshit. They think we’re all headed back to the capital to vote more money for poor little schoolkids. Because, see, the papers don’t know jack about your bridge scam. So I am one stuck-ass motherfucker, you follow?”

Now it was Willie Vasquez-Washington’s turn to lower his voice. “I’m stuck, man. I gotta go to this session, which means no skiing, which means the wife and kids will be supremely hacked off, which means—sorry!—no new bridge for Honorable Dick and his friends.”

Palmer Stoat calmly waved for another round. He handed a genuine Montecristo Especial No. 2 to Willie Vasquez-Washington, and lighted it for him. Stoat was mildly annoyed by this impasse, but not greatly worried. He was adept at smoothing over problems among self-important shitheads. Stoat hoped someday to be doing it full-time in Washington, D.C., where self-importance was the prevailing culture, but for now he was content to hone his skills in the swamp of teeming greed known as Florida. Access, influence, introductions—that’s what all lobbyists peddled. But the best of them also were fast-thinking, resourceful and creative; crisis solvers. And Palmer Stoat regarded himself as one of the very best in the business. A virtuoso.

Shearwater! Jesus H. Christ, what a cluster fuck. It had cost him his wife and his dog and nearly his life, but he would not let it cost him his reputation as a fixer. No, this cursed deal
would
get done. The bridge would get funded. The cement trucks would roll and the high rises would rise and the golf courses would get sodded. The governor would be happy, Robert Clapley would be happy, everybody would be happy—even Willie Vasquez-Washington, the maggot. And afterward they would all say it never would have come together except for the wizardly lobbying of Palmer Stoat.

Who now whispered through a tingling blue haze to the vice chairman of the House Appropriations Committee: “He wants to talk to you, Willie.”

“I thought that was your job.”

“Face-to-face.”

“What the hell for?”

“Dick’s a people person,” Stoat said.

“He’s a damn Toyota salesman.”

“He wants to make this up to you, Willie. He wants to know what he can do to make things right.”

“Before the session starts, I bet.”

Stoat nodded conspiratorially. “They’ll be some money floating around next week. How’s your district fixed for schools? You need another school?”

“Man. You serious?” Willie Vasquez-Washington laughed harshly. “Suburbs get all the new schools.”

“Not necessarily,” said Palmer Stoat. “There’s state pie, federal matching, lottery spill. Listen, you think about it.”

“I am not believin’ this shit.”

Stoat took out a fountain pen and wrote something in neat block letters on a paper cocktail napkin. He slid it down the bar to Willie Vasquez-Washington, who chuckled and rolled the cigar from one corner of his mouth to the other.

Then he said: “OK, OK, I’ll meet with him. Where?”

“I’ve got an idea. You ever been on a real big-game safari?”

“Not since I took the bone out of my nose, you asshole.”

“No, Willie, this you’ll dig. Trust me.” Stoat winked and signaled for the check.

Willie Vasquez-Washington’s gaze once more fell upon the cocktail napkin, which he discreetly palmed and deposited in an ashtray. On the drive back to Miami, he thought about the words Palmer Stoat had written down, and envisioned them five feet high, chiseled into a marble façade.

WILLIE VASQUEZ-WASHINGTON SENIOR HIGH SCHOOL.

Asa Lando urged Durgess to check out the horn; the horn was first-rate. Durgess could not disagree. However. . . .

“This rhino is how old?” he asked.

“I don’t honestly know,” said Asa Lando. “They said nineteen.”

“Yeah? Then I’m still in diapers.”

It was the most ancient rhinoceros Durgess had ever seen; even older and more feeble than the one procured for Palmer Stoat. This one was heavier by at least five hundred pounds, which was but a small consolation to Durgess. The animal had come to the Wilderness Veldt Plantation from a wildlife theme park outside Buenos Aires. The park had “retired” the rhino because it was now sleeping, on average, twenty-one hours a day. Tourists assumed it was made from plaster of paris.

“You said money was no object.”

Durgess raised a hand. “You’re right. I won’t even ask.”

“His name’s El Jefe.” Asa Lando pronounced it “Jeffy,” with a hard
J.

“Why’d you tell me that?” Durgess snapped. “I don’t wanna know his name.” The guide slept better by pretending that the animals at Wilderness Veldt actually were wild, making the hunts less of a charade. But named quarry usually meant tamed quarry, and even Durgess could not delude himself into believing there was a shred of sport to the chase. It was no more suspenseful, or dangerous, than stalking a pet hamster.

“El Jeffy means ‘the boss,’ ” Asa Lando elaborated, “in Spanish. They also had a name for him in American but I forgot what.”

“Knock it off. Just knock it off.”

Durgess leaned glumly against the gate of the rhino’s stall in Quarantine One. The giant creature was on its knees, in a bed of straw, wheezing in a deep and potentially unwakable slumber. Its hide was splotched floridly with some exotic seeping strain of eczema. Bottleflies buzzed around its parchment-like ears, and its crusted eyelids were scrunched into slits.

Asa Lando said: “What’d ya expect, Durge? He’s been locked in a box for five damn days.”

With a mop handle Durgess gingerly prodded the narcoleptic pachyderm. Its crinkled gray skin twitched, but no cognitive response was evident.

“Besides,” said Asa Lando, “you said it didn’t matter, long as the horns was OK. Any rhinoceros I could find, is what you said.”

Durgess cracked his knuckles. “I know, Asa. It ain’t your fault.”

“On short notice, you can’t hope for much. Not with endangereds such as rhinos and elephants. You pretty much gotta take what’s out there, Durge.”

“It’s awright.” Durgess could see that El Jefe once had been a strapping specimen, well fed and well cared for. Now it was just old, impossibly old, and physically wasted from the long sweltering flight.

“Can he run,” Durgess asked, “even a little bit?”

Asa Lando shook his head solemnly.

“Well, can he
walk
?”

“Now and again,” said Asa Lando. “He walked outta the travel crate.”

“Hooray.”

“Course, that was downhill.”

“Well, hell,” Durgess said impatiently. “He must move around enough to eat. Lookit the size of the bastard.”

Asa Lando cleared his throat. “See, they, uh, brought all his food to him—branches and shrubs and such. He pretty much just stood in the same spot all day long, eatin’ whatever they dumped in front of his face. Give him a big shady tree, they told me, and he won’t go nowheres.”

Durgess said, “I’m sure.”

“Which is how I figure we’ll set up the kill shot. Under one a them giant live oaks.”

“Oaks we got,” Durgess sighed.

He thought: Maybe we can get us two birds with one stone. Maybe Mr. Stoat’s big-shot hunter would go for a jenna-wine African rhinoceros over a cheetah; even a sleepy rhino was an impressive sight. And El Jefe’s front horn
was
primo—fifty grand is what Stoat said he could get for a decent one. Durgess idly wondered if the mysterious Mr. Yee might be enticed into a bidding war. . . .

“I gotta make a phone call,” Durgess said to Asa Lando.

“One more thing. It might could help.”

“What?”

“He stomped a man to death, Durge.”

“No shit!”

“Six, seven years ago. Some superdumb tourist,” Asa Lando said, “hopped on his back so the wife could take a picture. Like he was ridin’ a bronco. Old El Jeffy went nuts is what them Argentinos told me. Threw the tourist fellow to the ground and mushed his head like a tangelo. Made all the papers in South America.”

Durgess smiled crookedly. “So it ain’t just any rhino we got here, Asa. It’s a
killer
rhino. A world-famous killer rhino.”

“Exactly right. That help?”

“You bet your ass,” Durgess said. “Call me when he wakes up.”

Mr. Gash couldn’t believe that the bum with the crimson eye and the weird checkered skirt had showed up in the dead of night, in the middle of the woods. And packing a pistol!

“I said, the boy is mine.”

Mr. Gash leered. “You’re into
that,
huh, pops? A rump ranger.”

“I’ll take the woman, too.” The bum motioned with the gun toward the station wagon containing Desirata Stoat.

“Pops, you can have the ‘boy.’ He’s dying anyway. But the lady,” said Mr. Gash, waving with his own gun, “she stays with me. Now get the fuck outta here. I’m counting to six.”

The bum flashed his teeth. The braids of his beard were dripping after his jog through the rain; tiny perfect globes, rolling off the bleached buzzard beaks. Mr. Gash was unnerved by the sight, as he was by the man’s eerie calm. Being cold and unclothed had put Mr. Gash at a psychological disadvantage in the standoff. By rights he should have felt cocksure, a single-action Smith being no match for his trusty semiautomatic. Yet all it would take would be one lucky shot in the dark—and even a bum could get lucky.

Mr. Gash elected to proceed carefully, lest his pecker be blown off.

He said to the bum: “You can have the dog, too.”

“I was hungry enough, Mr. Gash, I just might.”

“What kinda sick kink you into, pops?” Mr. Gash levered himself to one knee. His foot made a sucking sound when he tugged it out of the mud. He was somewhat flattered that the bum knew his name.

“The governor sent me, Mr. Gash. I’ll take over from here.”

“Hooo! The governor!”

“Yessir. To fetch that young man.”

“Well, Mr. Robert Clapley sent
me,
” said Mr. Gash, “to do the exact same thing. And my guess is Mr. Clapley pays a whole lot handsomer than the governor. So we got a conflict, don’t we?”

A jingling came from the pines, and McGuinn’s shadow appeared at the edge of the clearing. The second gunshot had launched the dog on another fruitless search for falling ducks, and he had returned only to encounter yet another human with a gun; an uncommonly large human who smelled of fried opossum and wood smoke. McGuinn’s mouth began to water. Unspooling his tongue, he trotted forward to greet the stranger in the customary Labrador manner.

Mr. Gash saw what was coming and steadied his arm, preparing to fire. Here was the opportunity he’d been awaiting: The bum wouldn’t be able to ignore the dog.
Nobody
could ignore that loony pain-in-the-ass mutt. And the moment the bum got distracted, Mr. Gash would shoot him in the heart.