Granted, we'd gotten off to a rocky start, there in the nearly deserted rabbit quarters at the state fair, where, as the late-afternoon sun slanted in through the ventilators, he'd bitten my finger almost in half. But the old man had sexed him wrong, entered him in the wrong category, and now did not want rabbit W-36 around anymore to remind him of his ineptitude.
I took him home, gave him a name, and thus we began a relationship of mutual respect and support. I provided food, warmth, protection, and ear-mite medicine, and he provided friendship and immeasurable steadiness. I loved him and I like to think he loved me, but of course one can never tell for sure the things a rabbit keeps in his heart of hearts.
With his kodo drum-like, single floor thumps, Todd had alerted me to danger more than once. He had served as my silent partner, my sounding board, and occasionally my oracle. (Don't ask.) On one memorable occasion he gnawed his way out of a heavy leather golf bag (again, don't ask), startling a murderous maniac into a suicidal lunge for glory (ditto).
Todd was no apron-string rabbit, though—he could be willful and naughty. Sometimes he wanted nothing to do with me. But we always worked out our differences, and our friendship strengthened year by year.
The day faded, and the glow of the streetlight came through the blinds and lay in soft lines on the carpet.
I sat and stroked his back and ears and discussed many things with him.
He seemed to feel worse after a while; he trembled and gnashed his teeth. He looked up at me. He was in distress from something deep inside.
The thing that had entered the back of my mind at Billie's now popped into the front. I remembered I had once promised Todd that I'd never let anyone hurt him. It was on a dirty staircase in a parking garage, just after I'd abandoned him in fear of my life. Fate had reunited us, and such a promise was the least I could have done on that occasion.
Well. You can make the case that euthanizing a suffering pet is not the same as being cruel to a pet. It's the right thing to do when it's clear the animal is at the end of the road. Out in the woods, old slow Todd would have been snapped up by a hawk or a coyote by now, his suffering cut short by nature. His suffering was my responsibility. I had made a special promise.
Therefore I could not take him to Dr. Metz.
I prepared a hot water bottle and wrapped it well in a towel. Todd nestled into it and closed his eyes, though his trembling did not stop. I kissed the soft fur behind his ears.
It was about eight-thirty, past the McVitties' dinnertime but well before their customary bedtime. Mr. McVittie answered my knock.
"Is Mrs. McVittie available?" I asked at some volume, given his increasing hearing loss.
"Yeah! Mildred!" he yelled.
His wife tottered across the shag carpet into the living room. "Yes, dear? Come in."
"Just for a minute, thank you. Mrs. McVittie, I need to ask you a favor."
Her husband broke in saying, "If it's about the rent—"
"It isn't," I said quickly.
"What can I do for you, dear?" Mrs. McVittie brushed past him and took my shoulder; she could see the look in my eyes.
I said, "I'd like you to give me one of your insulin syringes. Do you have enough? A used one would be all right," I added.
"Yes, I can give you a new one, of course, but I'm wondering, ah—"
"Todd is dying," I said.
"Oh, my dear."
Mr. McVittie cried, "And you think you can cure him with insulin?"
"No," I said. "No."
Sweet Mrs. McVittie took me into the bathroom and got out one of her syringes from a huge multipack on the counter. "Do you know how to use it?"
"Yes, I had to give my uncle injections of anticoagulant for a week last winter."
"All right, dear. Do you want me to fill it?"
"No, thank you."
"You have something … ?"
"Yes."
She hugged me, her bony arms circling me like twigs.
----
Back upstairs I got out the codeine pills I had left over from getting my last wisdom tooth pulled. I put two of the tablets in a heavy ceramic bowl and pulverized them with the butt end of my potato masher, then took the resulting white powder, along with a stainless soup spoon, to the bathroom. I found a candle and matches and brought them in as well. I left everything next to the sink, then went to be with Todd again.
I took my mandolin from its hook and played old plain songs: "Bonny Doon," "Cumberland Gap," "Little Pal," "Take a Drink on Me." Todd opened his eyes but didn't move from his place next to the hot water bottle. His hind legs began to convulse. I picked him up for a while, and the spasms passed.
Slowly, I played "Wildwood Flower," his soothing favorite. I played it, then I played it again with some easy variations. I returned to the melody and finished the song.
I went to the bathroom and lit the candle. I removed the syringe from its plastic sleeve and took off the needle cap.
I scooped the pill powder into the spoon and held it over the candle flame. The powder melted almost well enough; I added a few drops of water, then drew the milky liquid into the syringe.
I blew out the candle and took the syringe into the living room where Todd was.
Chapter 26
I dropped an envelope into the post box outside the downtown Greyhound terminal, then went in to buy my ticket. I got a cup of coffee out of a machine and drank it as I waited but for once didn't care how bad it tasted. The last of it had turned cold by the time the bus rolled in.
Carrying a fresh change of clothes in my gym bag, I climbed onto the bus to continue my pursuit of Beverly Austin. I'd spent barely more than twenty-four hours in Detroit.
That morning the McVitties had kindly permitted me to bury Todd in their backyard beneath their raspberry bush, an occasional leaf from which he'd loved to munch. The dawn weather was bitter, but the ground was still pliant for me to dig a deep-enough hole. In bunny heaven, the rabbits chase the dogs, you know. I thought I smelled snow in the air.
The bus lumbered onto the street and accelerated down the ramp to I-75 south. My ticket said Fort Lauderdale, Florida, the place college kids call Fort Liquordale in tribute to the thousands of gallons of tequila, vodka, and schnapps that flow down their teeming gullets every year at spring break. The beach there is wide and pretty, the road along it lined with bars, restaurants, and places to buy T-shirts. I'd been there only once, when my good friend Duane invited me along on a business trip.
I was in for another tedious journey, but I'll spare you the anxiety and boredom of it. Actually, I was too sad to be bored; I mourned Todd, looking out the window at the flat grayish farm country of northern Ohio, remembering so many good times. I didn't sit there sobbing; I just felt empty. And lonelier than I'd felt in a long time.
After Dayton and the first of the rolling country that gradually drops you down to the Ohio River, my memories and self-pitying brain waves got crowded out by worry. I had to prepare to meet Beverly Austin.
Me: OK, so prepare.
Me: Well, I have to, uh, decide how to approach her.
Me: No, you don't, all you have to do is decide what you want from
her.
Me: Right. Well, I want the truth, of course.
Me: You already know the truth.
Me: Yeah, but I want to hear her say it.
Me: That is so unrealistic. You've learned that before.
Me: I know. I'm sure I'll have to settle for something far less—like one good minute alone with her before I call the police. I want to know what she ever felt for me, and I want her to know I caught her. I want her to know you can't get away doing such shit to me.
Me: Don't you think you should at least clue in Stonehauser in advance or at least Tom Ciesla, who could advise you a little bit?
Me: Of course I should. But I'm not going to, because I don't want anybody—
Me: Blowing it for you?
Me: Right.
Me: You're thinking about a citize
n's arrest here, aren't you?
Me: Yes.
Me: Oh, great.
About the only good thing about that bus trip was the finale of Encounter in Borneo, fortunately the longest of all the Calico books to date. I'd forced myself not to finish it on the way to Idaho so that I'd have something to sustain me in a dark hour. I opened the book around Lexington, Kentucky, and immediately found peace.
So Calico Jones, the awesomely strong and beautiful professional international sleuth and avenger of injustice on behalf of those who can least handle injustice being inflicted on them, finally arrives at this crazy scientist's lair in the absolute dead center of Borneo. I can't begin to detail what she goes through after she bests the headhunters, but I'll say the journey involves expert marksmanship against grenade-throwing poachers, gymnastic feats to evade bloodthirsty jungle panthers, and the obligatory anaconda wrestling. I say obligatory as if it were a cliché, but all I mean is you're always hoping for a good constrictor-grappling scene in a book like this.
And you usually get it, but in this case it's an exceptionally good one. Calico's tangled in this barbed vine and can't get away from the snake, so she grabs a passing peccary and kills it with her bare hands—have you ever seen one of those? They're terrible, brutal jungle pigs with jaws like a pit bull's and teeth swarming with unsavory microbes. OK, so she kills this passing peccary as bait for the anaconda, which goes, Hey, fresh meat, and stops advancing on Calico. But she's not totally off the hook yet, though, at which point—well, I shouldn't tell that whole part.
Between Knoxville and Chattanooga, I read how she finally locates this laboratory and shoots the guards with silent blow-gun darts dipped in sleep-inducing plant sap, which the headhunter queen showed her how to obtain—you remember the headhunter queen—and gets to the heart of the building to find these enormous vats holding billions of mutant insect larvae aswim in liquid nutrients, which this evil scientist is raising to fill a series of small rockets, which if launched into the troposphere will fragment, releasing these bugs whose chemical makeup and genetically-determined excretory habits would permanently alter the earth's climate for the worse. I'm not talking about reversing things to the way they were before the cotton gin; I'm talking about a new and sudden Ice Age. Plus it's obvious he's not considering all possible complications, including the effects of high-altitude nuclear testing by rogue nations on larvae that are already mutant.
The truth is, the guy's a dangerous jackass who intends to transform the governments of the world into his dues-paying hostages, or else. He discovers Calico Jones as she's mixing up a batch of simple Clorox and mineral oil, which if properly administered will kill the mutant larvae. Then the team of good scientists from the countries that signed the Ottawa Climate Petition will have enough time to finish their safe, tested climate-adjustment project involving harmless activated charcoal and synthetic emeralds, you'll remember.
Well into the state of Georgia I got to the part where the evil scientist meets his end. There's no way I saw it coming. First of all, Calico Jones doesn't want to kill the son of a bitch (because then she has to write a longer report), but he forces her to by attacking her first, and boy, is his death grisly. I won't reveal the surprise, but suffice it to say it involves mutant insect larvae, Clorox, and mineral oil. Then of course you just know Calico's going to get a reward administered by the fabulously gorgeous, intelligent, and loving Swedish doctor Ingrid.
Somewhere on the outskirts of Macon, I finished the story and closed the book with a sigh of satisfaction. Those books are just so good. That author knows how to tell a story up one side and down the other. I wondered whether I'd be able to find the next in the series at John King, my favorite dirt-cheap used bookstore.
I felt that Calico Jones would approve of my plan of action.
----
Even though I had no time to waste, I'd resisted the temptation to fly down to Fort Lauderdale. Number one, my credit card was nearing max out, and I had more spending to do. Number two, I was certain I had enough time for a slower trip: I was no Calico Jones, but I could beat the U.S. Mail. Moreover, number three, I wanted the U.S. Mail itself to help me locate Beverly Austin's exact whereabouts.
How to conjure Florida for you? People like to call Florida Michigan's third peninsula because so many pasty Midwesterners go there on winter vacation. Then there are the retirees. So many people tell me they hate Florida that I'm always prepared for it to be a dreadful, ugly place full of sunburned, wrinkled golfing persons who've never heard of pesto or Susan Sontag or IKEA. But the reality, as the Greyhound stopped at the state line and us passengers piled out to go to the toilet and drink free cups of orange juice proffered by a shirtsleeves-clad employee of the tourist board, was so different. At least the reality I experienced.
The main thing about Florida is that when you get off the bus, the air is moist and gloriously warm, in stark contrast to the cold, dry situation you left 1,100 miles behind. The air is full of oxygen emitted by all the green grass and trees, plus all that thick roadside vegetation that looks unstoppable until you realize that they manage to keep the ditches open somehow. The smell of green in Florida is deeper than the smell of green you get during a Michigan summer. It is a serious, wet green that stays even when you turn the air-conditioning on.
Florida is flat, which people seem to hold against it. Yet when you make your way to the ocean, you know it's coming. It's hard to explain, there's just this sense of the sky opening bigger and bigger, drawing you ahead, and then the signs and motels and bait shops stop but the flat-bottomed clouds keep going, from where you are all the way across the ocean to the horizon, and then a pelican flaps by, and you smell shrimp cooking somewhere and you want to run across the sand to the surging ocean and jump in, and you do.
In addition to its beach, Fort Lauderdale is famous for its complicated network of canals that connect dozens of marinas and little lakes. You can dock your boat in a slip a mile from the ocean, and when you want to go see the blue horizon, you motor slowly through, essentially, people's backyards for half an hour or so.
All those canals and marinas are part of this thing called the Intracoastal Waterway, which is a nautical route along the Eastern Seaboard that threads along, hugging the lee side of barrier islands, avoiding the open ocean, so that practically anybody can jump in a boat and just go. You can see the biggest yachts in the world tied up in the swanky marinas served by water taxis and floating convenience stores, but most of the boats in Fort Lauderdale are ordinary cabin cruisers or fishing boats or sailboats.
The bus pulled into the Fort Lauderdale terminal around seven in the morning. I'd dozed in my seat, and I felt creaky and tired. In town I rented the cheapest car I could find, which turned out to be a tiny white Hyundai. I bought a detailed map at a grocery store along with a three-dollar pair of sunglasses and some provisions: four apples, an orange, a bag of Doritos, a brick of cheddar, a box of Triscuits, a six-pack of Pepsi (on sale over Coke), a box of Ziploc food-storage bags, a small bottle of sanitizing hand gel, and a pack of Camel Filters.
Now, even though my appetite hadn't been too hot lately, I was well fixed for my stakeout. I put on my Vietnam-surplus sun hat that I'd packed in my gym bag, added the sunglasses, and checked myself in the Hyundai's rearview mirror. The brown plastic wraparounds and floppy khaki hat made me look like an extra in an Elvis movie, but I didn't care.
Yes, my stakeout. Amanda Austin had written "Barbara Anders" into my notebook, explaining that that was Beverly's current code name. Beneath it she'd copied out, "c/o Kendall Marine Supply" and an address on a numbered street in this town.
Therefore, Beverly would only pick up mail there, unless she was living on a cot in the stockroom.
It was just after nine a.m. when I cruised past Kendall Marine Supply, a small business that looked grimly unprosperous. Kendall Marine's sign had sagged all cockeyed, and the paint was peeling off its concrete-block walls. The windows were dirty, and the only vehicle in the small
parking lot was a Toyota pickup truck that looked as if it'd been dredged up from one of the canals. Kendall Marine had a good location, though, situated smack between two massive marinas that ought to have represented so much business for it. The boats in the marinas were arranged in rows more or less according to size. I'd never seen this much white fiberglass in one place, never.
The morning was lovely, maybe seventy degrees, with clear sunshine streaming down between breaks in the cloud parade—fluffy, friendly clouds.
I parked the Hyundai across the street, adjusted the rake of my seat to ease my back, and began to watch and wait.
Chapter 27
The envelope I had mailed from Detroit before boarding the bus was a large flat one containing only a piece of cardboard, addressed to "Barbara Anders" at Kendall Marine Supply Co. It was bright white, and the cardboard made it rigid.
The delivery of it could prompt one of two scenarios, either one advantageous to me. Beverly Austin could show up to pick up the envelope, or someone could take it to her. I'd made the envelope conspicuous by choosing an eighteen-inch white one; the cardboard made it unlikely that someone would fold it smaller. So, even if it was delivered in a stack of mail, or bundled with catalogs, I should be able to see someone carrying it out.
I could have merely waited for Beverly Austin to pick up her passport whenever it got there from her sister in Idaho. The main problem with that, however, was that the wait could be a long one—up to two weeks, given mailing times and so on. And the longer the wait, the more the chance that something could change. Beverly could decide to move on; she could call her sister with a new address; she could abandon the passport plan altogether. My nerves couldn't take a two-week stakeout anyway.
My envelope could realistically be delivered today, tomorrow, or next day at the latest.
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