Sick Puppy

  "I should hope not." Skink, toying with his buzzard beaks. "Lisa June, I just whittled a serious insult into the man's rear end. He ain't never ever gonna be on my side. And you know that." The captain leaned sideways and smooched one of her kneecaps. "But I sincerely appreciate the information."

  The door to Twilly Spree's room opened and they both got up. A pleasant freckle-faced nurse reported that Mr. Spree was improving by the hour.

  Lisa June Peterson tugged Skink's sleeve. "I'd better be getting back to the capitol. The boss has a busy afternoon."

  "Don't you want to meet the notorious psycho dognapper?"

  "Better not. I just might like him."

  Skink nodded. "That would be confusing, wouldn't it?"

  "Heartbreaking is more like it," she said, "if something bad were to happen."

  When he wrapped his great arms around her, Lisa June felt bundled and hidden; safe. He told her: "Between you and Jim, I've never seen such worriers."

  From somewhere in the deep crinkly folds of his embrace he heard her ask: "But it wouldn't hurt to try, would it? Talking sense to them, I mean. What could it hurt?"

  "It's a hunting trip, darling. Can't be talking out loud during a hunt. You gotta stay real quiet, in order to sneak up on the varmints." Skink pressed his lips to her forehead. "Sorry for making a mess of lunch. How about a rain check?"

  "Anytime."

  "Bye now, Lisa June."

  "Good-bye, Governor."

  They had sex on the lion-skin rug in the den, under the dull glassy gaze of the fish and wild animals Palmer Stoat had killed: the Cape buffalo, the timber wolf, the tuft-eared lynx, the bull elk, the striped marlin, the tarpon...

  Afterward, Estella, the right-wing prostitute from Swain's, asked: "You miss her?"

  "Miss her? I booted her!" Stoat proclaimed. "The dog's a different story. Boodle was good company."

  "You're fulla shit."

  "How about another drink?"

  "Why not," she said.

  They were both nude, and smoking Havana's finest. Romeo y Julieta was the brand. Palmer Stoat was delighted to have found a partner who would keep a lit cigar in her mouth during athletic intercourse. Later, if he could get it up again, he would snap some pictures—the two of them going at it, stogie-to-stogie, like dueling smokestacks!

  Her scotch freshened, Estella rolled on one side and stroked the frizzy auburn mane of the lion skin. "You shot this stud muffin yourself?"

  "I told you, sweetheart. I shot all of 'em." Stoat fondly patted the tawny hide, as if it were the flank of a favorite saddle horse. "This sumbitch was tough, too. Took me three slugs at point-blank."

  It would have taken only one had Stoat not been bowled off his feet by the pack of fourteen half-starved hounds that Durgess had deployed to tree the exhausted cat. While falling, Stoat had squeezed off two wild rounds that struck a hapless grackle and a cabbage palm, respectively. These colorful details were not shared with rapt Estella.

  "Tell me about Africa," she said, pursing her painted lips to launch a halo of blue smoke.

  "Africa. Yes." Most everything he knew about Africa came from National Geographic TV specials.

  "Where did you go to 'bag' this lion—Kenya?"

  "That's right. Kenya." Stoat ran a dry tongue across his lips, dawbing at the honeyed sheen of Johnnie Walker. "Africa is... amazing," he ventured. "Incredible."

  "Oh, I'd give anything to go there someday." Estella said it dreamily, with a shake of her hair.

  Balancing a drink in one hand, Stoat carefully pivoted on his side and fitted himself to the slope of her bottom, spoon-style. "It's so big," he said quietly. "Africa is."

  "Big. Yes." Estella arched seductively and Stoat deftly drew back, so as not to ignite her multi-hued locks with his cigar.

  "Sweetheart, it would take years to see it all."

  "We should go together, Palmer. You could hunt and I could go antiquing," she said. "No charge for the sex, either. You pay for my plane tickets, the nookie is free."

  Stoat was tempted to say yes. God knows he needed to get away. And as soon as the legislature finished its final bit of nonsense next week... well, why not a safari vacation to Africa? By the time he returned, the movers would have cleaned out Desie's stuff and the house would feel like his own again. Stoat could begin remodeling for bachelorhood. (He had changed his mind about moving; it would take years to find a place with such an ideal trophy room.)

  "Let me see what I can do with my schedule," he told Estella, meaning he first wanted to float the Africa idea past his preferred choice of an overseas companion, the Pamela Anderson look-alike from Pube's. At the moment Stoat could not recall her Christian name, though he was sure he'd copied it on a cocktail napkin and saved it in his billfold.

  "What's that empty spot?" Estella, pointing at a conspicuous space on the animal wall.

  "That's for my black rhino. I bagged it a couple weeks ago."

  "A rhinoceros!"

  "Magnificent beast," Palmer Stoat said, taking a prodigious drag. "You'll see for yourself, when the mount is finished."

  "You went back to Africa? When was this?" Estella asked. "How come you never told me?"

  "That's because we're always talking politics, babe. Anyway, it was a quickie trip, just for a couple days," he added dismissively. "I believe it was the same weekend you went to that Quayle-for-President brunch."

  She wriggled around to face him on the lion skin. "Let me get this straight. You went all the way to Kenya for a weekend? God, you must really love to hunt."

  "Oh, I do. And I'm going back Saturday." Instantly, Stoat was sorry he'd said it.

  Estella sat up excitedly, sloshing scotch on both of them. "Can I go, too, Palmer? Please?"

  "No, honey, it's business this time. I'm taking along an important client. I promised him a rhino like mine."

  "Aw, come on. I'll stay out of your way."

  "Sorry, sweetheart."

  "Then bring me back a nice present, all right? And not just cheapo beads or a grass skirt. A cool wood carving, or maybe—I know!—a Masai spear."

  "Consider it done." Stoat, thinking dismally: Where am I going to find something like that in Ocala, Florida?

  "Wow. All the way to Africa." Estella raised her violet-rimmed lashes to the long wall of stuffed animal heads and laminated fish—Stoat's prize trophies. She said: "I've never even fired a cap pistol, Palmer, but every year I give a little money to the NRA. I am totally behind the Second Amendment."

  "Me, too. As you can tell." Stoat airily swept his arm toward the blank-eyed taxidermy. "Like the song says, happiness is a hot gun."

  Estella smiled inquisitively. "I don't think I ever heard that one."

  27

  Krimmler couldn't sleep.

  I might never sleep again, he thought.

  And Roger Roothaus had not believed the "bum in the tree" story!

  Asked Krimmler if he'd been drinking. Suggested he take a vacation, drive the Winnebago up to Cedar Key or Destin.

  "Nothing's happening on the island anyway," Roger Roothaus had said. "Not until we hear otherwise from Mr. Clapley. So go enjoy yourself. It's on me."

  Krimmler protested. Insisted he felt fine. A bum really did break into my camper and beat me up and drag me up a goddamn tree. And left me stranded there, Roger! I had to crawl down in a blinding rainstorm. Nearly broke my ass.

  Man, I'm worried about you, Roothaus had said.

  You should be!

  Don't say a word about this to Mr. Clapley, OK?

  But Clapley sent a guy, too., another freak who busted into my place and roughed me up. He had snuff tapes—

  I gotta take another call, Roothaus had said curtly. You get off the rock for a while, Karl. I'm serious.

  But Krimmler had no intention of leaving Toad Island, because a general never abandoned the battleground, even for an all-expenses-paid beach vacation. So Krimmler loaded his.357 and hunkered down in the Winnebago to await the next intruder.

  Hou
rs passed and nobody came, but the pulse of the island murmured ominously at his door. The breeze. The seabirds. The rustle and sigh of the leaves. Krimmler was a haunted man. Besieged by Nature, he possessed the will and armaments to fight back—but no troops. Truly he was alone.

  Oh, to hear the familiar backfire of an overloaded dump truck, the plangent buzz of chain saws, the metallic spine-jolting ploink of a pile driver... how Krimmler's soul would have cartwheeled with joy!

  But the earth-moving machines he so loved sat mute and untended, and with each passing moment the cursed island resurged; stirred, blossomed, flexed to life. Locked inside the dank-smelling travel camper, Krimmler began to worry for his own sanity. He was teased and tormented by every cry of a sandpiper, every trill of a raccoon, every emboldened bark of a squirrel (which he had come to dread nearly as much as he dreaded chipmunks). The onset of a blustery dusk only seemed to amplify the primeval racket at Krimmler's door, and to drown the din he slammed a Tom Jones CD into the stereo. He turned on all the lights, wedged a deck chair under the doorknob, crawled under the covers—and waited for a slumber that would not come.

  Outside the window, Toad Island mocked him.

  Krimmler plugged his ears and thought: I might never sleep again.

  He squeezed his eyelids together and spun a plot. At dawn he would commandeer one of the bulldozers and start mowing down trees, purely for therapy. Jump into a D6 and plow a wide dusty trench through some quiet, piney thicket. Fuck you, squirrels. Welcome to your future.

  Krimmler smirked at the idea.

  After a while he sat up and listened. The Winnebago had fallen silent except for a steady dripping on the roof from wet branches overhead. Hurriedly Krimmler snatched up the.357 and went to put in another CD.

  That's when he heard the cry, unlike anything he'd heard before. It began as a low guttural moan and built to a winding, slow-waning Scream. The hair rose on Krimmler's forearms and his tongue turned to chalk. The scream was mighty enough to be that of a large cat, such as a panther, but nerdy Dr. Brinkman had said all panthers had long ago been shot or driven out of northwest Florida. In fact (Krimmler recalled), Roger Roothaus had explicitly inquired about the possibility of panthers on Toad Island, because the animals were listed as a protected species. One measly lump of scat and Uncle Sam could padlock the whole Shearwater operation, possibly forever.

  Again the unearthly cry arose. Krimmler shuddered. What else could it possibly be but a panther? That goddamn Brinkman! He lied to us, Krimmler thought—a closet bunny-hugger, as I always suspected! That would explain why he disappeared all of a sudden; probably ran off to squeal to the feds.

  Krimmler jerked open the door of the Winnebago and glared into the blue fog and drizzle. The cat scream seemed to be coming from the same upland grove where he had ordered the oak toads buried. The quavering yowl sounded almost human, like a man slowly dying.

  Heppppppppppppppmeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee!!!

  Well, sort of human, Krimmler mused. If you let your imagination run wild.

  He stepped into a pair of canvas work trousers and pulled on a windbreaker. Grabbing the pistol and a flashlight, he stalked into the mist. To hell with that drunken snitch Brinkman, wherever he is, Krimmler seethed. This bugshit island will be tamed; cleared dredged, drained, graded, platted, paved, stuccoed, painted and reborn as something of tangible, enduring human value—a world-class golf and leisure resort.

  To Krimmler, the screaming in the night was a call to arms. He would not cower and he would not retreat, and he would not allow Shearwater to be thwarted by some smelly, spavined, tick-infested feline. Not after so much work and so much money and so much bullshit politics.

  I'll kill the damn thing myself, Krimmler vowed.

  Again the night was cleaved by wailing, and Krimmler struck out toward it in a defiant rage. This panther is beyond endangered, he thought. This fucker is doomed.

  His charge was halted momentarily when he slipped on a log, the fall shattering his flashlight. Quickly he gathered himself and marched on, slashing with his gun arm to clear a path through the silhouetted trees. The feral cry drew him to the clearing where the toad-mulching bulldozers were parked, and in a frenzy Krimmler started firing the moment he burst from the woods.

  "Here, kitty, kitty!" he exulted with a mad leer.

  Heppppppppppppppmeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee!!!

  Besides the money, what Robert Clapley missed most about the drug business was the respect. If you were known to be a smuggler of serious weight, the average low-life schmuck wouldn't dream of screwing with you.

  A schmuck such as Avalon Brown, for instance—making Clapley stew for forty-five minutes in the lobby of the Marlin Hotel while he attended to "important business" upstairs with the two Barbies.

  Although Avalon Brown obviously found it amusing to be rude to a wealthy American real-estate developer, he would never (Clapley was certain) treat a major importer of cocaine with such reckless disrespect. The longer Clapley had to wait, the more his thoughts turned to Mr. Gash—now, there was a fellow who could teach Avalon Brown some manners, and would be pleased to do so.

  Clapley wondered why Mr. Gash had not phoned from Toad Island. Shootings, even if not fatal to the target, customarily resulted in a first-person report from the field. Maybe Mr. Gash was sulking, Clapley speculated, because the dognapper had survived. Mr. Gash took a great deal of pride in his work.

  Still, he ought to call soon, Clapley thought. Wait'll I tell him about Avalon Brown—a turd fondler like that would be just the thing to brighten Mr. Gash's spirits; the sort of assignment he'd been known to do for free.

  "Bobby?"

  In the lobby stood Katya and Tish, aloof but not outwardly sullen. There was no sign of Jamaica's answer to Stanley Kubrick.

  "Bobby, Mr. Brown vonts to know vere is movie money."

  "My lawyers are drawing up the partnership papers. Let's go eat lunch," Robert Clapley said.

  As they strolled to the News Cafe, Clapley was nearly overcome by distress. The Barbies looked ghoulish. They had frizzed their hair and dyed it as black as onyx, shading lips and eyelids to match. They wore musty lace shawls over loose diaphanous halters, tight leather pants and buckled, open-toed shoes as clunky as tugboats. It was criminal, Clapley lamented silently. The women were made for short skirts and high heels; hell, he ought to know. He was the design engineer! At no small expense, he had re-formed Katya and Tish into perfect twin images of the American beauty icon. And here was the thanks he got: rebellion. Toenails painted black!

  Over cappuccinos and bagels, he asked: "You girls miss me?"

  "Shore, Bobby," Tish said.

  "Score any rhino dust yet?"

  Tish shook her head tightly. Katya dropped her eyes.

  "No luck, huh?" Clapley clucked in mock sympathy.

  "Just cocaine. Cocaine is bo-rink." Katya, crunching into a toasted raisin bagel.

  "Very boring," Robert Clapley agreed. "What's with the new look? Is that for your movie?"

  "Is casual Goth, Bobby." By way of explanation, Tish pointed to a silver crucifix hanging from her neck. Katya was wearing one, too, Clapley noticed.

  "Goth? You mean bats and vampires and shit like that."

  "Ya," Katya said, "and blude vership."

  "Also, good dance clubs," Tish added.

  Clapley chuckled caustically. "Blood worship and rave. You're definitely in the right town."

  His whole body twitched and perspired with wanton anxiety. Every ounce of concentration was required to steady the coffee cup in his hands. Meanwhile, the Barbies were giddily diverted by a shirtless young man racing backward on Rollerblades; the requisite ponytail, Oakley shades and a white cockatoo on one shoulder.

  "Girls." Robert Clapley felt like a teacher who hears giggling in the back of the classroom. "Katya! Tish!"

  Their naughty smiles evaporated.

  "Do you still want some rhino dust?"

  Tish glanced at Katya, who cocked an unplucked eyebrow.

/>   "Vere?" she asked suspiciously.

  "The condo in Palm Beach."

  "Ven? You have now?"

  "Not today," Clapley said. "Day after tomorrow."

  Tish said, "No boolshit, Bobby? You got horn?"

  "I will."

  "How you find? Vere it is?" Katya demanded.

  Clapley could hardly bear to look at them, their hair and makeup were so appalling. Plus, they were noshing like a pair of starved heifers!

  "Vere you get dis horn?" Katya persisted.