by Carl Hiaasen
Twilly stirred when Desie stroked his brow.
"You awake?"
"Am now," he said.
"Dreaming?"
"I dunno. Is there a giant black dog on my back?"
"I'm afraid so."
"Then I wasn't dreaming," Twilly said.
"I've been lying here wondering... what happens now?"
"The itinerary, you mean."
"The agenda," she said.
"Well, first, I intend to seriously fuck things up so Shearwater never gets built."
Desie cupped his chin in her hands. "You can't stop it."
"I can try."
"They'll fix it so you can't. Palmer and the governor. I'm sorry but that's a fact," said Desie.
"If they say the bridge is a done deal, it's done."
"Just watch."
"There's nothing you can do, Twilly, short of killing somebody."
"I agree."
"My God."
"What?"
"Don't even joke about that," Desie said. "Nothing like this is worth taking a human life."
"No? What's the life of an island worth? I'd be curious to know." Twilly reached behind his head and flicked McGuinn smartly on the tip of the nose. The dog awoke with a startled yelp, releasing his hold on Twilly's neck. He jumped to the floor and began to paw, optimistically, at the doorjamb.
Twilly rose on one arm to face Desie. "Ever been to Marco Island? You can't imagine how they mauled that place."
"I know, honey, but—"
"If you'd seen it when you were a kid and then now, you'd say it was a crime. You'd say somebody ought to have their nuts shot off for what they did. And you'd be right."
Desie said, "If you're trying to scare me off, you're doing a fine job."
"You asked me a question."
Desie pulled him into her arms. "I'm sorry. We can talk about this in the morning."
As if it could end differently.
"The whole damn island," she heard him murmur. "I can't let that happen again."
Dick Artemus offered Lisa June Peterson a drink. He was on his third. She said no thanks.
"Still drivin' that Taurus?" he asked her.
"Yes, sir."
"You break my heart, Lisa June. I can put you in a brand-new Camry coupe, at cost."
"I'm fine, Governor. Thanks, just the same."
The phone on his desk rang and rang. Dick Artemus made no move to pick it up. "Is Dorothy gone home already? Jesus Christ."
"It's six-thirty. She's got kids," Lisa June Peterson said. She reached across the desk and punched a button on the telephone console. Instantly the ringer went mute.
The governor savored his bourbon. He winked and said: "Whaddya got for me?"
Lisa June thought: Great, he's half-trashed. "Two things. About this special session—before we send out the press release, you should know that Willie Vasquez-Washington is pitching a conniption. He says he doesn't want to fly back to Tallahassee next week, doesn't want his vacation interrupted. He says he's going to make himself a royal pain in the ass if you drag the House and Senate back into session—"
"Those his words?" Dick Artemus grimaced. " 'Royal pain in the ass.' But you told him this was for schools, right? For the education budget."
Lisa June Peterson patiently explained to the bleary governor that Willie Vasquez-Washington was no fool; that he'd quickly figured out the true purpose for the special legislative session., namely to revive the Toad Island bridge project on behalf of the governor's buddies—
"Hell, they aren't my buddies!" Dick Artemus spluttered. "They aren't my pals, they aren't my partners. They're just some solid business folks who contributed to the campaign. Goddamn that Willie, he ain't no saint himself... "
Lisa June Peterson informed her boss that Willie Vasquez-Washington didn't know (or care) why the governor had vetoed the bridge appropriation in the first place, but he promised to make the governor suffer dearly for screwing up his travel plans.
"He's going skiing in Banff," Lisa June reported. "Taking the whole family."
Dick Artemus sniffed. "Who's payin' for that?"
"I can find out."
"Naw. Hell." The governor puffed his cheeks in disgust. "Y'know, I never had to deal with shit like this in Toyota Land. What else, Lisa June? Let's have it."
"Clinton Tyree came to see you the other night, when you were in Orlando."
Dick Artemus straightened in the chair. "Damn. What'd he want? What'd he say?"
"He said he'll do what you asked him to—"
"Fannnnn-tastic!"
"—but he'll come back to Tallahassee and murder you if anything happens to his brother Doyle. Murder you slowly, he asked me to emphasize."
"Oh, for God's sake." The governor forced out a chuckle.
Lisa June said, "He mentioned the following items: a pitchfork, handcuffs, a fifty-five-gallon drum of lye and a coral snake."
"He's a nut," the governor said.
"He's also serious."
"Well, don't worry, 'cause nuthin's gonna happen to brother Doyle. For God's sake." Dick Artemus groped distractedly for the bourbon bottle. "Poor Lisa June, you're probably wonderin' what the hell you got yourself into with this crazy job. You can't figger out what the heck's goin' on."
Lisa June Peterson said, "I know what's going on. He showed me the letter you wrote."
"What letter!" Dick Artemus protested. Then, sheepishly: "Ok, scratch that. Yeah, I wrote it. See, sometimes... "
He gazed with a drowsy bemusement into his glass.
Lisa June said, "Sometimes what?"
"Sometimes in this world you gotta do things that aren't so nice."
"For the sake of a golf course."
"Don't get me started, darling. It's a lot more complicated than that." The governor raised his face to offer a paternal smile. "There's a natural order to consider. A certain way things work. You know that, Lisa June. That's how it's always been. You can't change it and I can't change it and some crazy old homicidal hermit—Skink, isn't that what he calls himself?—well, he damn sure can't change it, neither."
Lisa June Peterson stood up, smoothing her skirt. "Thanks for the pep talk, Governor."
"Aw, don't get sulky on me. Sit down, now. Tell me what he looked like. Tell me what happened, I'm dyin' to hear."
But even if Dick Artemus had been sober, Lisa June couldn't have brought herself to share what had happened at the campfire—that the ex-governor had kept her up all night with a fevered monologue; that he had told her true stories of old Florida, that he had ranted and incanted and bellowed at the stars, stomping back and forth, weeping from one eye while the other smoldered as red as a coal; that he had painted teardrops on his bare scalp with fox blood; that he had torn his queer checkered kilt while scrambling up a tree, and that she'd put it back together with three safety pins that she'd found in a corner of her purse; that he'd kissed her, and she'd kissed him back.
Lisa June Peterson couldn't have brought herself to tell her boss that she'd left Clinton Tyree snoring naked and sweaty in the woods a mere ten miles from the capitol, or that she'd rushed home with the intention of putting it all down on paper—everything he'd said and done, and said he'd done—saving it for the book she planned to write. Because when she got home to her apartment, showered, fixed a cup of hot tea and sat down with a legal pad, she could not put down a word. Not one.
"Nothing much happened," Lisa June Peterson told the governor.
Dick Artemus rocked forward and planted his elbows on his desk. "Well, what does he look like? He's a big fucker, according to the files."
"He's big," Lisa June confirmed.
"Taller'n me?"
"He looks old," Lisa June said.
"He is old. What else?"
"And sad."
"But he's still freaky, I bet."
"I've seen freakier," said Lisa June.
"Aw, you're pissed at me. Don't be like this." Dick Artemus held out his arms imploringly. "I wasn't really gonna
evict the man's brother from that lighthouse, Lisa June. You honestly think I'd do something as shitty as that?"
"The letter was enough."
"Oh, for God's sake." The governor grabbed his bourbon and leaned back, balancing the glass on his lap. "All I want him to do is find that crazy kid with the dog. That's all."
"Oh, he'll find him," Lisa June Peterson said. "Now, how do you want to deal with the Honorable Representative Vasquez-Washington?"
"That fucking Willie." Dick Artemus hacked out a bitter laugh. "You know what to do, Lisa June. Call Palmer Stoat. Get him to make things right."
"Yes, sir."
"Hey. What happened to your knee?" The governor, craning his neck for a better angle.
"Just a scrape." Lisa June thinking: I knew I should've worn hose today, Dick Artemus being an incorrigible ogler of legs.
"Ooooch," he said. "How'd that happen?"
"Climbing a tree," said Lisa June Peterson.
"This I gotta hear."
"No, you don't."
The name of the strip club was Pube's.
Upon bribing the bouncer, Robert Clapley was dismayed to be informed that the Barbies had easily won first place in the amateur contest, snatched up the thousand-dollar cash prize and departed the premises with an individual named Avalon Brown, who claimed to be an independent film producer from Jamaica.
"I feel sick," Clapley said to Palmer Stoat.
"Don't. It's the best thing that could happen to you," Stoat said, "getting rid of those two junkie sluts."
"Knock it off, Palmer. I need those girls."
"Yeah, like you need rectal polyps."
Stoat was in a sour and restless mood. All around him were frisky nude women, dancing on tabletops, yet he couldn't stop thinking about Desie and the Polaroid.
But those nights were over, as was his marriage.
"Let's go," Clapley said. "Maybe they went back to the apartment."
Palmer Stoat raised a hand. "Hang on." The stage announcer was introducing the entrants for the final event, a Pamela Anderson Lee look-alike contest.
"Whoa, momma!" Stoat piped.
"If I had a grapefruit knife," said Robert Clapley, "I'd gouge out my eyeballs."
"Bob, are you kidding? They're gorgeous."
"They're grotesque. Cheap trash."
"As opposed to your classy twins," Stoat said archly, "Princess Grace and Princess Di, who are presently double-fellating some Rastafarian pornographer in exchange for a whole half a gram of Bolivian talc."
Clapley seized Stoat by the collar. "Palmer, you're a goddamn pig."
"We're both pigs, Bob, so relax. Chill out. I'll get you a rhino horn and then you'll win your precious Barbies back." Stoat pulled free of Clapley's clutch. "Anyway, there's nothing you can do to me that hasn't already been done—starting with that fucking rodent your charming Mr. Gash gagged me with."
"That was after you tried to rip me off," Clapley reminded him, "double-billing me for the bridge fix. Or was it triple-billing?"
"So maybe I got a little greedy. But still... "
Onstage, thirteen Pamela Anderson Lees were dancing, or at least bobbling, to the theme music from the Baywatch television series. Palmer Stoat sighed in glassy wonderment. "Man, we live in incredible times. Look at all that!"
"I'm outta here."
"Go ahead. I'll grab a taxi." Stoat's gaze was riveted to the pneumatic spectacle onstage. It was just what he needed to take his mind off Desie.
"Don't call me again until Governor Dickhead signs over the bridge money and you've got your hands on some rhinoceros dust. Those are the only two goddamn news bulletins I want from you. Understand?"
Stoat grunted a vague assent. "Bob, before you take off... "
"What now, Palmer?"
"How about another Cuban?"
Robert Clapley slapped a cigar on the table. "Turd fondler," he said.
"Sweet dreams, Bob."
21
On a cool May night, an unmarked panel truck delivered a plywood crate to the Wilderness Veldt Plantation. The crate had been shipped directly to a private airstrip in Ocala, Florida, thereby avoiding port-of-entry inspections by the U.S. Customs Service, Fish and Wildlife and other agencies that would have claimed a jurisdictional interest.
At the Wilderness Veldt Plantation, the scuffed box was loaded onto a flatbed and transported to a low-slung, windowless barn known as Quarantine One. Less than an hour later, Durgess was summoned from home. He was met outside the facility by a man named Asa Lando, whose job title at the hunting ranch was Supervisor of Game.
"How bad?" Durgess asked.
Asa Lando spat in the dirt.
Durgess frowned. "All right, lemme take a look."
The barn was divided into eight gated stalls, fenced with heavy-gauge mesh from the ground to the beams. Each stall had an overhead fan, a heater and a galvanized steel trough for food and water. The Hamburg delivery was in stall number three.
Durgess said: "You gotta be kiddin'."
"I wish." Asa Lando knew he was in trouble. It was his responsibility to procure animals for the hunts.
"First off," Durgess began, "this ain't no cheetah."
"I know—"
"It's a ocelot or a margay. Hell, it can't weigh no more'n thirty-five pounds."
Asa Lando said, "No shit, Durge. I got eyes. I can see it ain't no cheetah. That's why I woke you outta bed."
"Second of all," said Durgess, "it's only got two goddamn legs."
"I can count, too." Asa sullenly poked the toe of his boot into the sawdust. "Could be worse."
Durgess glared. "How? If he came in a jar?"
"Look, this ain't the first time we run into this sorta situation.," Asa reminded him. "We got plenty clients happy to shoot gimped-out game."
"Not this client," Durgess said. One time they'd gotten away with a three-legged wildebeest, but two legs was out of the question, especially for a big cat.
Morosely the men stared through the fencing. With plucky agility, the ocelot hopped over and began rubbing its butt against the links.
"I wonder what the hell happened to him," Durgess said.
"Doc Terrell says he was likely a-born that way—one front leg, one back leg. All things considered, he's got an awful decent disposition."
Durgess cheerlessly agreed. "Tell me again where you got him."
"Uncle Wilhelm's Petting Zoo," Asa said. "They got rid of him on account he was eatin' all their parrots. Don't ast me how he caught the damn things, but I guess he taught hisself to jump like a motherfucker."
"And how much did we pay?" Durgess braced himself.
"Five grand, minus freight."
"Sweet Jesus."
"C.O.D."
"Asa, buddy, we got a serious problem." Durgess explained that one of their best customers, Palmer Stoat, was bringing a bigshot business associate to Wilderness Veldt to shoot a cheetah, a full-grown African cheetah.
"It's a big kill," Durgess said gravely. "Big money."
Asa eyed the wiry cat. "Maybe we can fatten him up 'tween now and then."
"Sure," Durgess said. "Staple on a couple fake legs while we're at it. Lord, Asa, sometimes I wonder 'bout you."
But the Supervisor of Game wasn't ready to admit failure. "Three hundred yards, Durge, one cat looks like another to these bozos. Remember Gummy the Lion?"
Durgess flicked his hand in disgust. Formerly known as Maximilian III, Gummy the Lion had been the star of a trained-animal act at a roadside casino outside Reno, Nevada. Old age and a lifelong affinity for chocolate-chip ice cream claimed first the big cat's canines and eventually all its teeth, so Max had been retired and sold to a wildlife wholesaler, who had in turn peddled the animal to the Wilderness Veldt Plantation. Even Asa Lando had been aghast when they'd uncrated it. Durgess had figured they were stuck with a new pet—who'd pay good money to shoot a senile, toothless lion?
A moron named Nick Teeble, it turned out. Eighteen thousand dollars he'd paid. That was how badly t
he retired tobacco executive had wanted a lion skin for the stone fireplace in his Costa Rican vacation chalet. It had been Asa who had sized up Nick Teeble for the phony he was; Asa who had persuaded Durgess to use the enfeebled Gummy in the canned hunt. And Asa had been right: Nick Teeble was both oblivious and incompetent, an ideal combination for Wilderness Veldt. It had taken Nick Teeble seven shots to hit the lion, whose disinclination to run or even stir from its nap was attributable to a complete and irreversible deafness (brought about by twenty-one years of performing in front of a very loud, very bad casino brass combo).