by Carl Hiassen
He stalked to the den and took his throne among the glass-eyed game fish and gaping animal heads. He dialed the governor's mansion and demanded to speak to Dick Artemus. A valet named Sean – Oh perfect! It had to be a Sean! – informed Stoat that the governor had gone to bed early and could not be disturbed, which meant Dick Artemus was off screwing Lisa June Peterson or one of his other triple-named ex-sorority sister aides. Palmer Stoat, who eyed the cigar box on the desk in front of him, believed the arrival of the paw merited a personal conversation with Florida's governor. Stoat felt it was vital for Dick Artemus to know that the dognapper was keeping on the pressure. Stoat felt Governor Dick needed reminding to veto the Shearwater bridge as soon as possible, and to make damn sure it hit the newspapers so the dognapper would see it.
But no – protective, diligent young Sean wouldn't put the call through to the fornicating ex-Toyota salesman!
"What's your full given name, son!" Palmer Stoat thundered over the phone.
"Sean David Gallagher."
"And do you enjoy working at the governor's mansion? Because one word from me about your obstinate attitude and you'll be back at the fucking Pizza Hut, windexing the sneeze hood over the salad bar. You follow, son?"
"I'll give Governor Artemus your message, Mr. Stoat."
"Do that, sport."
"And I'll also say hi to my father for you."
"Your father?" Stoat sniffed. "Who the hell's your father?"
"Johnny Gallagher. He's Speaker Pro Tem of the House."
"Oh. Right." Palmer Stoat mumbled something conciliatory and hung up. Goddamn kids these days, he fumed, can't even get a job without the old man's juice.
Stoat opened the cigar box and peeked again at the dog paw. "Jesus, what next," he said, slapping the lid shut.
He tried to remember what the guy had looked like that night at Swain's, passing him that snarky note. The suntan, the flowered shirt ... Stoat had figured the guy for a boat bum, a mate on a yacht. But the face? He was young, Stoat remembered. But the bar had been smoky, Stoat had been half-trashed, and the kid had been wearing dark shades, so ... no luck with the face. Desie was the one nasty Mr. Gash should consult. She's the one who'd spent time with the dognapper.
But the thought of Mr. Gash alone with Desirata made Palmer Stoat cringe. What a scary little prick he was! Stoat wondered if the disgusting baby rat was still alive – mewling and crawling half-blind through his cereal cupboard, no doubt! It was unbelievable. Shocking, really. One of the most powerful human beings in the state of Florida, and here his lofty shining universe had been reduced to a tabloid freak show – dog dismemberers and Barbie-doll fetishists and armed punk-haired sadists who crammed rodents down his gullet!
Thank God they didn't know about it, all those people who feared and needed and sucked up to Palmer Stoat, big-time lobbyist. All those important men and women clogging up his voice mail in Tallahassee ... the mayor of Orlando, seeking Stoat's deft hand in obtaining $45 million in federal highway funds – Disney World, demanding yet another exit off Interstate 4; the president of a slot-machine company, imploring Stoat to arrange a private dinner with the chief of the Seminole Indian tribe; a United States congresswoman from West Palm Beach, begging for box seats to the Marlins home opener (not for her personally, but for five sugar-company executives who'd persuaded their Jamaican and Haitian cane pickers to donate generously – well beyond their means, in fact – to the congresswoman's reelection account).
That wasPalmer Stoat's world. Those were his people. This other sicko shit, it had to stop. It wouldstop, too, once Porcupine Head tracked down the creep who was holding poor Boodle.
Stoat opened the top drawer of his desk and found a favorite stack of sex Polaroids. He had taken them in Paris, while he and Desie were on a weeklong junket paid for by a multinational rock-mining conglomerate. There wasn't much of Desie to be seen in the photographs – here a thigh, there a shoulder – but it was enough to give her husband a pang in his heart and a tingle in his groin. Where the hell was she?
Palmer Stoat noticed the message light blinking on his answering machine. He punched the play button and leaned back. The first message was from Robert Clapley, sounding uncharacteristically edgy and out of breath.
"It's about that rhino powder," he said on the tape. "Call me right away, Palmer. Soon as you get this message!"
The second call, thirty minutes later, also from Clapley: "Palmer, you there? I gotta talk to you. It's the Barbies, they're ... Call me,OK? No matter how late."
The third message on Stoat's machine was from Desie. When he heard her voice, he quickly rocked forward and turned up the volume.
"Palmer, I'm all right. I'm going to be gone for a few days. I just need some time away. Please don't worry, uh ... we'll talk when I get home, OK?"
She didn't sound upset or frightened. She sounded perfectly calm. But there was something quite alarming on the tape – a noise in the background. It happened the moment before Desie said good-bye.
Palmer Stoat listened to the message three times, to be sure. The noise was familiar and unmistakable: a dog barking.
Not just any dog, either. It was Boodle.
Stoat moaned and pressed his fleshy knuckles to his forehead. Now the sick bastard had gone and snatched his wife!
Again.
On a warm breezy morning in late April, twelve Japanese men and women stepped from an air-conditioned charter bus that had parked on the shoulder of a two-lane road in North Key Largo. The travelers paired off and climbed into half a dozen candy-colored canoes. Under a creamy porcelain sky they began paddling down a winding creek called Steamboat toward Barnes Sound, where they planned to eat box lunches and turn around. The entire trip was supposed to take four hours, but the canoeists went missing for almost three days. Eventually they were found trudging along County Road 905 in the dead of night and, except for a few scrapes and insect bites, were all found to be in excellent health. Oddly, though, they refused to tell police what had happened to them, and fled from reporters seeking interviews.
The men and women were employed by MatsibuCom, one of Tokyo's most prolific construction companies. Timber being scarce and exorbitant in Japan, MatsibuCom imported millions of board feet annually from the United States; specifically, Montana and Idaho, where entire mountains had been clear-cut, essentially razed down to dusty bald domes, for the purpose of enhancing Tokyo's skyline and, not incidentally, MatsibuCom's profit margin. Having weathered Asia's financial upheaval in relatively robust shape, the company rewarded a dozen of its top executives with a group vacation to Florida. They would begin the week at unavoidable Walt Disney World and finish down in the Keys, at the upscale (and safely Republican) Ocean Reef Club. Ironically, the MatsibuCom executives expressed an interest in ecotourism activities, and so the Steamboat Creek canoe trip was arranged. The men and women were told they might come across manatees, indigo snakes, bald eagles and perhaps even the elusive North American crocodile (which lived in the mangrove lakes and grew to a length of fourteen feet). Many rolls of film were purchased in anticipation.
When the Japanese failed to return on time from the expedition, an intense search was launched using ultralight planes, airboats, skiffs and swamp buggies. Governor Dick Artemus even dispatched a pair of state helicopters to assist (a modest favor, in his view, compared to the free membership he'd been given at Ocean Reef on the day of his inauguration). Meanwhile, Florida tourism officials gloomily pondered how many millennia it would take for the industry to recover if it came to pass that twelve foreign business executives had been devoured by crocodiles – or perished under some equally horrific circumstances – while vacationing in the Sunshine State.
Publicly, authorities stuck to the theory that the Japanese visitors were "lost" in the mangrove creek system, although reporters found no shortage of locals who were both skeptical and happy to be quoted. Steamboat Creek was about as complicated to navigate as Interstate 95, and a thousand times safer. Fear of foul play rose
with the ominous discovery of the missing canoes, shot full of holes and strung together with blue ski rope. The canoes had been hung off the Card Sound Bridge to dangle and spin high over the Intracoastal Waterway, like the baubled tail of an oversized kite. Boaters stopped to snap pictures until police showed up and hastily cut down the rope. The spectacle of the bullet-riddled boats all but vanquished hopes that the MatsibuCom executives would be found safe.
It now appeared that they'd been abducted by either psychopaths or terrorists – a far more devastating scenario, publicity-wise, than a simple crocodile attack. A dour-faced contingent from the Japanese consulate in Miami arrived by private jet at Ocean Reef, where they were given a suite of waterfront rooms and unlimited long-distance privileges. Meanwhile, in Washington, a team of FBI forensic experts already had packed for the trip to Florida – they awaited only the somber phone call, reporting that the decomposing bodies had been located.
Then the dozen Japanese canoeists surprised everybody by turning up alive, unharmed and closemouthed. By daybreak on April 30, the MatsibuCom men and women were on a chartered Gulfstream 5, speeding back to Tokyo. The local press milked what it could from the ecotour-gone-awry angle, but in the absence of first-person quotes (and corpses), the story faded quickly from the headlines.
Lt. Jim Tile had heard about it before it made the TV news; the state Highway Patrol sent five road troopers and its top K-9 unit to join the search for the important visitors. The discovery of the canoes – and the emphatic manner in which they'd been sabotaged and strung up for display – confirmed Jim Tile's suspicions about the incident on Steamboat Creek. He was hopeful the Japanese would remain silent, so that no other authorities would make the connection. Obviously Dick Artemus had not. Jim Tile purposely hadn't shared his theory about the ecotour abduction with the governor during their brief meeting in Tallahassee.
That afternoon, though, the trooper dialed the voice-mail number they customarily used to trade messages – he and his friend, the long-ago governor – and was annoyed to find the line disconnected. So he packed an overnight bag, kissed Brenda good-bye and drove south nonstop, virtually the full length of the state. The sun had been up an hour by the time he arrived at the gatehouse of the Ocean Reef Club in North Key Largo. The trooper was admitted to the premises by a surly young security guard who apparently had failed the rudimentary knuckle-dragging literacy quiz required to join regular police departments. The guard reluctantly escorted Jim Tile to the club's executive offices, where – after producing a letter of introduction from the attorney general – the trooper was permitted to examine a roll of film that had been found in a camera bag left behind by one of the Japanese canoeists.
The film had been developed into a black-and-white contact sheet by the local sheriff's lab technician, who had understandably failed to recognize its evidentiary value: Thirty-five of the thirty-six frames were dominated by a blurred finger in the foreground – not an uncommon phenomenon, when a 35-mm camera was placed in the excitable hands of a tourist. But, to Jim Tile, the finger in the snapshots from Steamboat Creek did not appear to be the wayward pinkie of a slightly built Japanese business executive, but rather the fleshy, hairy, crooked, scarred-up middle digit of a six-foot-six Anglo-American hermit with a furious sense of humor.
The last photograph on the roll, the only photograph without the finger, was of equal interest to the trooper. He turned to the slug-like security guard and said: "Does the club have a boat I can borrow? A skiff would do fine."
"We keep a twelve-footer tied up at the marina. But I can't letcha take it out by yourself. That'd be 'gainst policy."
Jim Tile folded the contact sheet and slipped it into a brown office envelope, the same envelope Dick Artemus had handed to him at the governor's mansion.
"So, where's the marina?" the trooper asked the security guard.
"You ain't authorized."
"I know. That's why you're coming with me."
It was a shallow-draft johnboat, powered by a fifteen-horse outboard. The guard, whose name was Gale, cranked the engine on the third pull. Over his ill-fitting uniform he buckled a bright orange life vest, and told Jim Tile to do the same.
"Policy," Gale explained.
"Fair enough."
"Kin you swim?"
"Yep," said the trooper.
"No shit? I thought black guys couldn't swim."
"Where you from, Gale?"
"Lake City."
"Lake City, Florida."
"Is they another one?"
"And you never met a black person that could swim?"
"Sure, in the catfish ponds and so forth. But I'm talking about the ocean, man. Saltwater."
"And that's a different deal?"
"Way different," the guard said matter-of-factly. "That's how come the life jackets."
They crossed Card Sound behind a northerly breeze, the johnboat's squared-off hull slapping on the brows of the waves. Gale entered the mouth of Steamboat Creek at full throttle but slowed beneath the low bridge.
He said to the trooper, up in the bow: "How far you need to go?"
"I'll tell you when we get there, Gale."
"Is that a .357 you got?"
"It is."
"I don't got my carry permit yet. But at home I keep a Smith .38 by the bed."
"Good choice," said Jim Tile.
"I b'lieve I'll get somethin' heavier for the streets."
"See the eagle? Up there in the top of that tree." The trooper pointed.
"Cool!" exclaimed Gale the security guard. "Now for that, you need a pump gun, twenty-gauge minimum ... Hey, I gotta stop'n take aleak."
"Then stop," said Jim Tile.
"I drank about a gallon of Sanka this morning and I'm fit to 'splode."
"Anywhere's fine. Gale."
The guard cut the engine and the boat coasted silently in the milky green water. Gale removed the life vest and modestly turned around to urinate off the stern. The featherweight boat swung sidelong in the current, and at that moment an ill-timed gust of wind disrupted Gale's golden outflow, blowing it back on the front of his uniform. He let out a yowl and clumsily zipped himself up.
"Goddammit. That won'twork." He started the engine and idled the nose of the boat into the trees, up against the bank. Stepping out, he snagged one foot on a barnacled root and nearly went down. "Be right back," he told the state trooper.
"Take your time, Gale."
To escape the messy effect of the breeze, the security guard clomped twenty yards into the woods before choosing a spot to unzip. He was midstream – and pissing gloriously, like a stallion – when he heard the chuk-a-chukof the outboard motor. Gale strained to halt his mighty cascade, tucked in his pecker and charged back toward the water's edge. When he got there, the johnboat was gone.
Jim Tile headed down Steamboat Creek at half throttle. A school of finger mullet scattered in silvery streaks ahead of the bow. From behind he heard Gale the security guard bellowing hoarsely in the mangroves. He hoped the young man wouldn't do something completely idiotic, such as attempt to walkout.
As he followed the creek, the trooper closely scanned the shoreline along both sides. He wasn't expecting an obvious sign; a flotilla of searchers had been up and down the waterway and found nothing. Jim Tile knew his friend would be careful not to leave tracks. The trooper shed the life vest and reached inside his shirt, where he'd hidden the brown envelope. He took out the contact sheet and glanced once more at frame 36.
The photo had been snapped with the camera pointed aimlessly downward, as if the shutter had been triggered by mistake. And even though the picture was underlit and out of focus, Jim Tile could make out a patch of water, a three-pronged mangrove sprout and – wedged in the trident-like root – a soda-pop can. Schweppes, it looked like.
A Schweppes ginger ale, of all the unlikely brands.
At least it was something.Jim Tile started scouring the waterline for cans, and he found plenty: Coke, Diet Coke, Pepsi, Diet Pepsi, Mountain
Dew, Dr Pepper, Orange Crush, Budweiser, Busch, Colt .45, Michelob – it was sickening. People are such slobs, the trooper thought, trashing such a fine and unspoiled place. Who could be so inexcusably disrespectful of God's creation? Jim Tile had grown up in neighborhoods where there was more broken glass than grass on the ground, but his mother would've knocked him on his scrawny black butt if she'd caught him throwing a soda can anywhere but in a trash bin ...
The trooper had twisted the throttle down so that the johnboat was barely cutting a wake. Back and forth across the creek he tacked, scooping up floating cans where he saw them; easy to spot., Clinting in the bright sun. But no Schweppes. Jim Tile felt foolish for chasing such a weak clue – he knew that weather skidded flotsam all over these creeks. And if the tide rose too high, the trident-shaped mangrove bud would be submerged anyway; invisible. The trooper crumpled the photographic contact sheet and shoved it into his pocket.
Still he kept searching the banks, mechanically collecting other cans and bottles and paper cups. Soon the inside of the johnboat began to look like a Dumpster. He was turning a wide bend in the creek when something caught his attention – not a ginger-ale can or a three-pronged mangrove sprout., but a slash of canary yellow paint. It appeared as a subtle vector across a cluster of tubular stalks, a yard above the waterline, where somebody had dragged something heavy and brightly painted into the trees. Something like a canoe.
Jim Tile tied off the bow and rolled up his trousers and pulled off his shoes. He bird-stepped from the johnboat and gingerly made his way into the snarl of trees. His left foot poked something smooth and metallic: The Schweppes can from the photograph, trapped beneath the surface by its mangrove talon. The trooper moved ahead, excruciatingly, the soles of his feet rasped by roots and shards of broken mollusks. He slipped repeatedly, and twice nearly pitched onto his face. Jim Tile was aware that he sounded like a herd of drunken buffalo, and not for a moment did he entertain the fantasy that he could sneak up on the governor. It would have been impossible, even on dry land.