Sick Puppy

by Carl Hiaasen

  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.

  And in the dream he cried out. He shut his eyes and let go of the rail and fell back into the flow, the current spinning him like a sodden chunk of timber. Something soft touched his cheek and he swiped at it, thinking it was a dead sandpiper or a gull.

  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 did want 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!

  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 was Palmer Stoat's world. Those were his people. This other sicko shit, it had to stop. It would stop, 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 pack
ed 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.