by Carl Hiassen
Mr. Gash rose and handed his empty cup to Fishback. "Well, these sorts of stories need to be checked out. Where you moving to, Mayor?"
"Vegas."
"Whoa. Land of opportunity."
"No, it's just I got sinus problems." Mr. Gash smiled encouragingly. "You'll love it there."
Krimmler had warned Dr. Steven Brinkman to curtail his drinking, but it wasn't easy. Brinkman was depressed so much of the time. He had nearly completed the biological survey of Toad Island without documenting one endangered species. That was splendid tidings for Roger Roothaus and Robert Clapley, but not for the remaining wildlife; not for the ospreys or the raccoons, not for the gray squirrels or the brown tree snails, not for the whip-tailed lizards or the western sandpipers. Because now, Brinkman knew, there was no way to block the Shearwater resort. The creeps who'd bulldozed the tiny oak toads would do the same to all other creatures in their path, and no law or authority could stop them. So Dr. Brinkman's exhaustively detailed catalog of Toad Island's birds, mammals, reptiles, amphibians, insects and flora was for all practical purposes a death list, or that's how the young biologist had come to think of it. Sometimes, at night, he would sneak into the construction trailer to brood over the impressive Shearwater mock-up – how verdant and woody the layout looked in miniature! But Brinkman knew it was an illusion created by those two immense golf courses – a wild, rolling splash of green rimmed by houses and condos, a chemical hue of emerald found nowhere in nature. And the suckers were lining up to buy! Occasionally Brinkman would crouch by the scale model in mordant contemplation of Clapley's "nature trail" – a linear quarter-mile trek through a scraggle of pines at the north hook of the island. And there was the scenic little saltwater creek, for kayaks and canoes. In the mock-up the creek was painted sky blue, but in real life (Brinkman knew) the water would be tea-colored and silted. A school of mullet would be cause for great excitement. Meanwhile Clapley's people would be leveling hundreds of acres for home-sites, parking lots, the airstrip, the heliport and that frigging shooting range; they'd be dredging pristine estuary for the yacht harbor and water-sports complex and desalinization plants. Along the beach rose the dreaded high-rises; on the model, each sixteen-story tower was the size of a pack of Marlboro mediums.
Steven Brinkman felt awful about his complicity in the Shearwater juggernaut, and about his career calling in general. Go with the private sector – that's what his old man had advised him. His old man, who'd spent twenty-six years with the U.S. Forest Service and had nothing positive to say about government work. If I had it to do all over again, he'd grumble, I'd jump on that job with the timber company. Private sector, son, all the way!
And though it was the handsome salary that had induced Steven Brinkman to sign on with Roger Roothaus, he also honestly thought he could make a difference. Fresh out of school, he naively believed it was possible to find middle ground between the granola-head bunny lovers and the ruthless corporate despoilers. He believed science and common sense could bring both sides together, believed wholeheartedly in the future of "environmental engineering."
Then they put him to work counting butterflies and toads and field mice. And before long, Brinkman was also counting the days until he could go home. He didn't want to be on Toad Island when the clearing started. And he would never return afterward, to see if it ended up looking like the scale model.
For living quarters, Roothaus had provided a secondhand Winnebago but Steven Brinkman rarely used it, choosing instead to sleep under the stars in the doomed woods. Here he could drink recklessly without drawing Krimmler's ire. Most evenings he'd build a campfire and play R.E.M. on the small boom box that his sister had given him. The locals had long ago pegged Brinkman as a flake, and let him be.
Rarely was his outdoor solitude interrupted by anything noisier than a hoot owl, so he was therefore surprised to see a stocky stranger clomping into his camp. The man's blond hair was eccentrically spiked, but it was the houndstooth suit that put Brinkman on edge, even after half a quart of Stoli.
"I'm looking for a dog," the man announced, in a voice that was almost soothing.
Brinkman tottered to his feet. "Who're you?"
"A black Labrador retriever is what I'm looking for."
Brinkman shrugged. "No dog here."
"Possibly with one ear cut off. I don't suppose you'd know anything about that."
"No – "
In a flash the man pinned him against the trunk of a pine tree. "I work for Mr. Robert Clapley," he said.
"Me, too," said Brinkman. "What's the matter with you?"
"Are you Steven Brinkman?"
"Dr. Brinkman. Yeah, now – "
"The troublemaker?"
Brinkman struggled to break free. "What? I'm a field biologist."
The spiky-haired man grabbed him by the throat. "Where's the goddamn dog, Doctor?"
Brinkman spluttered a protest but Clapley's man knocked him down with a punch to the gut. "Jesus, you don't know what I'm talking about," the man said disgustedly. He kicked through the campsite, swearing. "You don't have the goddamn dog. You're not the one."
"No." Brinkman was on his knees, gasping.
"But you're still a troublemaker. Mr. Clapley doesn't like troublemakers." The man took out a pistol. "And you're trashed on top of it. Not good."
Brinkman fearfully threw up his dirt-smeared palms. "There was a guy here, a couple days ago. He had a black Lab."
"Go on." The man brushed a moth off his lapel.
"On the beach. Guy my age. Very tan. He had a big black Lab."
"How many ears?"
"Two, I think." Brinkman was pretty sure he would've remembered otherwise.
"What else, doctor?"
The man placed the gun to Brinkman's temple. Brinkman had been drinking so heavily that he couldn't even pee in his pants, couldn't make neurotransmitter contact with his own bladder.
He said, "The guy drove a black pickup truck. And there was a woman."
"What'd she look like?"
"Beautiful," Brinkman said. "Outstanding." The Stoli was kicking in magnificently.
The spiky-haired man whacked him with the butt of the pistol. " 'Beautiful' covers a lot of territory, doesn't it?"
Brinkman tried to collect himself. He felt a warm bubble of blood between his eyebrows. "She was a brunette, in her early thirties. Hair so long" – Brinkman, using both hands to indicate the length – "and the dog seemed to be hers. The Lab."
"So they weren't, like, a couple."
"Is it Mr. Clapley's dog? Those people – did they steal it?"
The man in the checked suit smirked. "Do I look like a person who wastes his time chasing lost pets? Seriously? Would I need a gun for that? Here, whistle dick, have another drink."
He shoved the Stoli bottle at Steven Brinkman, who took a swig and pondered what the blond man had said. He was a professional killer, of course. Clapley had sent him to the island to murder somebody, over something to do with a dog. Brinkman was too drunk to find it anything but hilarious, and he began to giggle.
The man said, "Shut up and tell me the guy's name."
"He never said." Again Brinkman felt the cold poke of the gun barrel against his temple.
"They never gave their names. Neither one," he told the spiky-haired man. "Why would I lie?"
"I intend to find out."
Then, as sometimes happened with vodka, Steven Brinkman experienced a precipitous mood plunge. He remembered that he'd sort of liked the tan young man and the outstandingly beautiful woman with the friendly black dog. They had seemed entirely sympathetic and properly appalled about what was happening out here; the burying of the toads, for instance. Not everyone cared about toads.
And now here I am, Brinkman thought morosely, ratting them out to some punk-headed hit man. Just like I ratted out Bufo quercicusto Krimmler. Ratted out the whole blessed island. What a cowardly dork I am! Brinkman grieved.
"The name," said the killer. "I'm counting to six."
"Six?" Brin
kman blurted.
"It's a lucky number for me. Three is another good one," the killer said. "Want me to count to three instead? One ... two ... "
Brinkman wrapped one hand around the gun barrel. "Look, I don't know the guy's name, but I know where he's camping tonight."
"That would be progress." Clapley's man holstered the gun and motioned for Brinkman to lead the way.
The biologist picked up a gas lantern and set off through the woods, though not stealthily. He was exceedingly tipsy and barely able to hoist his feet, much less direct them on a course. As he plowed ahead, pinballing off tree trunks and stumbling through scrub, Brinkman heard the blond stranger cursing bitterly from behind. Undoubtedly the pine boughs and thorny vines were taking a nappy toll on the houndstooth suit.
Brinkman's idea – it would hardly qualify as a plan – was to tromp along until he found a clearing in which he could wheel around and clobber Clapley's man with the lantern. Only fine vodka could have imbued Brinkman with such grandiose estimations of his own strength and agility, but the anger in his heart was true and untainted. The spiky-headed intruder had become an ideally crude and lethal symbol for Shearwater and its attendant evils. Wouldn't it be cool to knock out the bastard and turn him over to the cops? And then? Sit back and watch Robert Clapley squirm,, trying to explain such shenanigans to the media – a hired thug with a gun, turned loose to hunt down "troublemakers" on the island! Brinkman grinned, somewhat prematurely, at the headline.
Suddenly he found himself stepping out of the pines and into a broad opening, which filled with the lantern's pale yellow light. Brinkman saw squat machines, furrows and mounds of dry dirt – and, beneath his boots, a corrugated track. He knew where he was; a good place to do it, too. He gulped for the cool salty air and quickened his pace.
"Hey, shithead." It was Clapley's man.
Dr. Brinkman didn't turn all the way around, but from the corner of an eye he spotted the shadow – a flickery figure projected by lantern light on the blade of a bulldozer, like a puppet on a wall.
"Hey, you think this is funny?"
Clapley's man, striding faster now, coming up behind him. Dr. Brinkman deliberately slowed his pace, laboring to clear the buzz from his head, straining to gauge the proximity of the killer's footsteps, knowing the timing of this grand move had to be absolutely flawless ... flawless timing, unfortunately, not being a typical side effect of massive vodka consumption.
So that when Steven Brinkman spun and swung the hefty lantern, Clapley's man was still five yards from reaching him, and safely out of range. Centrifugal physics whirled Brinkman almost 360 degrees, an involuntary rotation halted only by the force of the lantern striking the tire of a four-ton backhoe. Brinkman saw a white-pink flash and then a bright blue flash, heard one sharp pop and then another louder one – the lantern exploding, followed by something else. Brinkman went down in darkness, finding it fascinating (in a way that only a drunk man could) to feel the onrushing dampness of his own blood yet no pain from the bullet. He tried to run without getting up, his legs cycling haplessly in the dirt until he was breathless.
The clearing had become shockingly silent, and Brinkman momentarily rejoiced in the possibility that Clapley's man had taken him for dead and run off. But then Brinkman heard the bulldozer start, backfiring once before lurching into gear. Then he knew. Even with his brain awash in Stoli, he knew what was coming next; knew he should have been terrified to the marrow. But Steven Brinkman mainly felt tired, so tired and chilly and wet that all he wanted now was to sleep. Anyplace would do, anyplace where he could lie down would be dandy. Even someplace deep in the ground, among tiny man-mulched toads.
14
Twilly dreamed about Marco Island. He dreamed he was a boy, jogging the bone white beach and calling out for his father. The long strand of shore was stacked as far as he could see with ghastly high-rise apartments and condominiums. The structures rose super-naturally into the clouds, blocking the sunshine and casting immense chilly shadows over the beach where young Twilly ran, a shoe box full of seashells tucked under his arm.
In the dream, the first he could ever remember, Twilly heard Little Phil from somewhere on the far side of the high-rises; a voice echoing gaily along the concrete canyon. Twilly kept running, searching for a way between the buildings. But there was no path, no alley, no beckoning sliver of light: Each tower abutted the next, forming a steep unbroken wall – infinitely high, infinitely long – that served to blockade the island's entire shore.
Twilly Spree ran and ran, shouting his father's name. Above the boy's head flew laughing gulls and ring-billed gulls and sandwich terns, and around his bare legs skittered sanderlings and dowitchers and plovers. He noticed the tide was rising uncommonly fast, so he ran harder, kicking up soft splashes. In the dream Twilly couldn't make out his father's words, but the tone suggested that Little Phil was not addressing his lost son but closing a real-estate deal; Twilly recognized the counterfeit buoyancy and contrived friendliness.
Still the boy ran hard, for the beach was disappearing beneath him. The salt water had reached his ankles – shockingly cold, too cold for swimming – and Twilly dropped the shoe box so he could pump with both arms to make himself run faster. The sting of the salt caused his eyes to well up, and the shoreline ahead grew blurry. In the dream Twilly wondered how the tide could be racing in so swiftly, because there was no storm pushing behind it, not the smallest breath of wind. Beyond, the water lay as flat and featureless as polished glass!
Yet now it was rising to Twilly's kneecaps, and running had become impossible. The boy was seized by a paralyzing chill, as if a spike of ice had been hammered into his spine. Through the blur he could make out the W-shaped silhouettes of seabirds wheeling and slanting and skimming insanely above the roiled foam. He wondered why the birds didn't simply fly upward and away, far out to the Gulf, but instead they went crashing blindly into the monolith of buildings; dull concussions of feather and bone. In wild whirling torrents the birds smashed themselves into windowpanes and balconies and awnings and sliding doors, and before long the facades of the hulking high rises were freckled top to bottom with bloody smudges. Twilly Spree no longer heard his father's voice.
In the dream he squeezed his eyes closed so that he would no longer see the birds dying. He stopped trying to move his legs because the water had reached his waist, water so frigid that it would surely kill him in minutes. Twilly wondered how the sea could be so unbearably chilly – in southern Florida! Latitude twenty-six degrees! – but then the answer came to him, and so simple. The water was cold because there was no sun to warm it; because the goddamned skyscrapers on the beach had blotted out every ray of sunlight, leaving the Gulf in a perpetual unholy shade. So it got plenty cold. Sure it did.
Twilly decided to float. In the dream the water was up to his armpits and he was fighting so frantically to catch his breath that he was making weird peeping noises, like a tree frog.
Not acceptable, nossir! Floating – now there's a nifty idea. Float on my back, let the tide carry me up to one of these buildings, where I'll just climb outta this freezing soup. And keep climbing as high and as long as it takes to get dry, climbing like the clever little froggy I am. Water's gotta lay down sometime, right?
In the dream Twilly opened his stinging eyelids and began to float, yipping for breath. He drifted up to a condo, maybe a thousand stories tall, and hooked his arms over a balcony rail. He hung there hoping to regain some strength. Bobbing air around him in the foam were the bodies of seabirds, tawny clumps with rent beaks, clenched yellow claws, disheveled red-smeared plumage ...
The boy struggled to hoist himself out of the frigid water and onto the dry terrace. He raised his chin to the rail but that was as high as he got, because standing there in baggy wet Jockey shorts on the balcony was his father, Little Phil. Cupped in his outstretched palms were hundreds of tiny striped toads, bug-eyed and bubble-cheeked, peeping with such ungodly shrillness that it hurt Twilly Spree's ears.
But it wasn't. It was Desie's hand. Twilly opened his eyes and could not believe where he was: lying warm in her arms. He could hear her heart.
"Everything's all right now," she told him.
"Yes." He felt a light kiss on his forehead.
"You're shaking."
He said, "So that's what they call dreaming."
"Let me get you another blanket."
"No, don't move."
"All right," Desie said.
"I don't want you to go."
"All right."
"I mean ever,"Twilly said.
"Oh."
"Consider it. Please."
The house was dark and silent. No one had set the alarm. Palmer Stoat opened the door. He called out Desie's name and started flipping on light switches. He checked the master bedroom, the guest bedrooms, the porch, the whole house. His wife wasn't home, and Stoat was miffed. He was eager to show her the latest atrocity – the dog paw in the Cuban cigar box. He wanted to sit her down and make her recall every detail about the crazy man who'd snatched Boodle. And he wanted her to tell it all to that sadistic porcupine-haired goon of Robert Clapley's, so then the dognapper could be hunted down.
And killed.
"I want him dead."
Palmer Stoat, hollow-eyed in front of the bathroom mirror. He looked like hell. His face was splotchy, his hair mussed into damp wisps. In the bright vanity lights he could even see the shiny crease on his chin where the surgeon had inserted the rubber implant.
"I want him dead." Stoat said the words aloud, to hear how severe it sounded. Truly he didwant the man killed ... whacked, snuffed, offed, done, whatever guys like Mr. Gash called it. The man deserved to die, this young smart-ass, for interfering with the $28 million bridge deal that Palmer Stoat had so skillfully orchestrated; for abducting good-natured Boodle; for using severed dog parts as a lever of extortion; for mucking up Palmer Stoat's marriage ... how, Stoat wasn't sure. But ever since she'd encountered the dognapper, Desie had been acting oddly. Case in point: Here it was ten-thirty at night and she wasn't home. Mrs. Palmer Stoat, not home!