Carl Hiaasen - Native Tongue

by Native Tongue [lit]

  "I saw where they're putting it."

  "No!" Skink was shouting now. "You know who's behind it? That fucking Kingsbury!"

  The wind was getting worse, if that was possible. With his free hand, Skink wrung out the tendrils of his beard. "Goddammit, man, are you listening? It all ties together."

  "What—with Koocher's death?"

  "Everything—" Skink paused for another white sizzle of lightning. "Every damn thing."

  It made sense to Winder. A scandal at the Amazing Kingdom would not only be bad for business, it might jeopardize Francis Kingsbury's plans for developing Falcon Trace. If anyone revealed that he'd lied about the "endangered" voles, the feds might roll in and halt the whole show. The EPA, the Army Corps of Engineers, the Department of Interior—they could jerk Kingsbury around until he died of old age.

  "Look at the big picture," Skink said. With a tin fork he cleaned out the insides of the turtle shell. The wind was dying quickly, and the rain was turning soft on the leaves. The clouds broke out west, revealing raspberry patches of summer sunset. The coolness disappeared and the air turned muggy again.

  Skink put down the fry pan and wiped his mouth on the sleeve of his rainsuit. "It's beautiful out here," he remarked. "That squall felt damn good."

  "It might be too late," Joe Winder said. "Hell, they've started clearing the place."

  "I know." The muscles in Skink's neck tightened. "They tore down an eagle nest the other day. Two little ones, dead. That's the kind of bastards we're talking about."

  "Did you see—"

  "I got there after the fact," Skink said. "Believe me, if I could've stopped them..."

  "What if we're too late?"

  "Are you in or not? That's all I need to know."

  "I'm in," said Winder. "Of course I am. I'm just not terribly optimistic."

  Skink smiled his matinee smile, the one that had gotten him elected so many years before. "Lower your sights, boy," he said to Joe Winder. "I agree, justice is probably out of the question. But we can damn sure ruin their day."

  He reached under the flap of his rainsuit, grunted, fumbled inside his clothing. Finally his hand came out holding a steel-blue semi-automatic pistol.

  "Don't worry," he said. "I've got an extra one for you."

  The woman who called herself Rachel Lark was receiving a vigorous massage when Francis X. Kingsbury phoned. She'd been expecting to hear from him ever since she'd read in the Washington Post about the theft of the blue-tongued mango voles in Florida. Her first thought, a natural one, was that Kingsbury would try to talk her into giving some of the money back. Rachel Lark braced for the worst as she sat up, naked, and told the masseur to give her the damn telephone.

  On the other end, Kingsbury said: "Is this my favorite redhead?"

  "Forget it," said the woman who called herself Rachel Lark, though it was not her true name.

  Kingsbury said, "Can you believe it, babe? My luck, the goddamn things get swiped."

  "I've already spent the money," Rachel Lark said, "and even if I didn't, a deal's a deal."

  Instead of protesting, Kingsbury said, "Same here. I spent mine, too."

  "Then it's a social call, is it?"

  "Not exactly. Are you alone, babe?"

  "Me and a nice young man named Sven."

  The image gave Kingsbury a tingle. Rachel was an attractive woman, a bit on the heavy side, but a very hot dresser. They had met years before in the lobby of a prosecutor's office in Camden, where both of them were waiting to cut deals allowing them to avert unpleasant prison terms. Frankie King had chosen to drop the dime on the Zubonis, while the woman who now called herself Rachel Lark (it was Sarah Hunt at that time) was preparing to squeal on an ex-boyfriend who had illegally imported four hundred pounds of elephant ivory. In the lobby that day, the two informants had amiably traded tales about life on the lam. Later they'd exchanged phone numbers and a complete list of aliases, and promised to keep in touch.

  Rachel's specialty was wildlife, and Kingsbury phoned her soon after opening the Amazing Kingdom of Thrills. Before then, he had never heard of the Endangered Species Act, never dreamed that an obscure agency of the federal government would casually fork over two hundred thousand dollars in grant money for the purpose of preserving a couple of lousy rodents. Rachel Lark had offered to provide the animals and the documentation, and Kingsbury was so intrigued by the plan—not just the dough, but the radiant publicity for the Amazing Kingdom—that he didn't bother to inquire if the blue-tongued mango voles were real.

  The government check had arrived on time, they'd split it fifty-fifty and that was that. Francis Kingsbury paid no further attention to the creatures until customers started noticing that the voles" tongues were no longer very blue. Once children openly began grilling the Amazing Kingdom tour guides about how the animals got their name, Kingsbury ordered Pedro Luz to get some food coloring and touch the damn things up. Unfortunately, Pedro had neither the patience nor the gentle touch required to be an animal handler, and one of the voles—the female—was crushed accidentally during a tongue-painting session. Afraid for his job,

  Pedro Luz had told no one of the mishap. To replace the deceased vole, he had purchased a dwarf hamster for nine dollars from a pet store in Perrine. After minor modifications, the hamster had fooled both the customers and the male vole, which repeatedly attempted to mount its chubby new companion. Not only had the hamster rejected these advances, it had counterattacked with such ferocity that Pedro Luz had been forced to hire a night security guard to prevent a bloodbath.

  Matters were further complicated by the appearance of an ill-mannered pinhead from U.S. Fish and Wildlife, who had barged into the theme park and demanded follow-up data from the "project manager." Of course there was no such person because there was no project to manage; research consisted basically of making sure that the rodents were still breathing every morning before the gates were opened. With the feds suddenly asking questions, Charles Chelsea had quietly put out an all-points bulletin for a legitimate biologist—a recruiting effort that eventually induced Dr. Will Koocher to come to the Amazing Kingdom of Thrills.

  Kingsbury decided not to burden Rachel Lark with the details of the doctor's grisly demise; it was irrelevant to the purpose of his call.

  "Forget the money," Kingsbury told her.

  "I must be hearing things."

  "No, I mean it."

  "Then what do you want?"

  "More voles."

  "You're joking."

  "My customers, hell, they go nuts for the damn things. Now I got spin-offs, merchandise—a major warehouse situation, if you follow me."

  "Sorry," Rachel Lark said, "it was a one-time deal." She'd pulled off the endangered-species racket on two other occasions—once for a small Midwestern zoo, and once for a disreputable reptile farm in South Carolina. Neither deal made as much money as the mango-vole scam, but neither had wound up in the headlines of the Washington Post, either.

  Kingsbury said, "Look, I know there's no more mango voles—"

  "Hey, sport, there never were any mango voles."

  "So what you're saying, we defrauded the government."

  "God, you're quick."

  "I'm wondering," said Kingsbury, "those fucking fur-balls I paid for—what were they? Just out of curiosity."

  Rachel Lark said, "Give me some credit, Frankie. They were voles. Microtus pitymys. Common pine voles."

  "Not endangered?"

  "There's billions of the darn things."

  It figures, Kingsbury thought. The blue tongues were a neat touch. "So get me some more," he said. "We'll call 'em something else, banana voles or whatever. The name's not important, long as they're cute."

  The woman who called herself Rachel Lark said: "Look, I can get you other animals—rare, not endangered—but my advice is to stay away from the feds for a while. You put in for another big grant, it's a swell way to get audited."

  Again Kingsbury agreed without objection. "So what else have you
got, I mean, in the way of a species?"

  "Lizards are your best bet." Rachel Lark stretched on her belly and motioned the masseur, whose real name was Ray, to do her spine.

  "Christ on a Harley, who wants goddamn lizards!" Kingsbury cringed at the idea; he had been thinking more along the lines of a panda or a koala bear. "I need something, you know, soft and furry and all that. Something the kiddies'll want to take home."

  Rachel Lark explained that the Florida Keys were home to a very limited number of native mammals, and the sudden discovery of a new species (so soon after the mango-vole announcement) would attract more scientific scrutiny than the Amazing Kingdom could withstand.

  "You're saying, I take it, forget about pandas."

  "Frank, they'd die of heatstroke in about five minutes."

  Exasperated, Kingsbury said, "I got problems down here you wouldn't believe." He nearly told her about the blackmailing burglars.

  "A new lizard you can get away with," she said, "especially in the tropics."

  "Rachel, what'd I just say? Fuck the lizards. I can't market lizards."

  Rachel Lark moaned blissfully as the masseur kneaded the muscles of her neck. "My advice," she said into the phone, "is stay away from mammals and birds—it's too risky. Insects are another story. Dozens of species of insects are discovered every year. Grasshoppers, doodlebugs, you name it."

  There was a grumpy pause on the other end. Finally, Francis X. Kingsbury said, "Getting back to the lizards. I mean, for the sake of argument..."

  "They're very colorful," said the woman who called herself Rachel Lark.

  "Ugly is out of the question," Kingsbury stated firmly. "Ugly scares the kiddies."

  "Not all reptiles are ugly, Frankie. In fact, some are very beautiful."

  "All right," he said. "See what you can do."

  The woman who called herself Rachel Lark hung up the phone and closed her eyes. When she awoke, the masseur was gone and the man from Singapore was knocking on the door. In one hand was a small bouquet of yellow roses, and in the other was a tan briefcase holding a large down payment for a shipment of rare albino scorpions. Real ones.

  EIGHTEEN

  On the morning of July 23, a semi-tractor truck leaving North Key Largo lost its brakes on the Card Sound Bridge. The truck plowed through the tollbooth, jack-knifed and overturned, blocking both lanes of traffic and effectively severing the northern arm of the island from the Florida mainland. The gelatinous contents of the container were strewn for ninety-five yards along the road, and within minutes the milky-blue sky filled with turkey buzzards—hundreds of them, wheeling counterclockwise lower and lower; only the noisy throng of gawkers kept the hungry scavengers from landing on the crash site. The first policeman to arrive was Highway Patrol Trooper Jim Tile, who nearly flipped his Crown Victoria cruiser when he tried to stop on the freshly slickened pavement. The trooper tugged the truck driver from the wreckage and, while splinting the man's arm, demanded to know what godforsaken cargo he'd been hauling.

  "A dead whale," moaned the driver, "and that's all I'm saying."

  Charles Chelsea was summoned to Francis X. Kingsbury's office at the unholy hour of seven in the morning.

  Kingsbury looked as if he hadn't slept since Easter. He asked Chelsea how long it would take to get the TV stations out to the Amazing Kingdom of Thrills.

  "Two hours," Chelsea said confidently.

  "Do it." Kingsbury blew his nose. "On the horn, now."

  "What's the occasion, if I might ask?"

  Kingsbury held up five fingers. "Today's the big day. Our five-millionth visitor. Arrange something, a fucking parade, I don't care."

  Charles Chelsea felt his stomach yaw. "Five million visitors," he said. "Sir, I didn't realize we'd reached that milestone."

  "We haven't." Kingsbury hacked ferociously into a monogrammed handkerchief. "Damn my hay fever, I think it's the mangroves. Every morning my whole head's fulla snot." He pushed a copy of the Wall Street Journal at Chelsea. A column on the front page announced that Walt Disney World was expanding its empire to build a mammoth retail shopping center, one of the largest in the Southeastern United States.

  "See, we can't just sit here," Kingsbury said. "Got to come back strong. Big media counterpunch."

  Chelsea skimmed the Journal article and laid it on his lap. Tentatively he said, "It's hard to compete with something like this. I mean, it goes so far beyond the realm of a family theme park—"

  "Bullshit," said Kingsbury. "The Miami-Lauderdale TV market is—what, three times the size of Orlando. Plus CNN, don't they have a bureau down here?" Kingsbury spun his chair and gazed out the window. "Hell, that new dolphin I bought—can't you work him into the piece? Say he rescued somebody who fell in the tank. A pregnant lady or maybe an orphan. Rescued them from drowning—that's your story! 'Miracle Dolphin Saves Drowning Orphan.' "

  "I don't know if that's such a good plan," said Chelsea, though inwardly he had to admit it would have been one helluva headline.

  "This celebration, make it for noon," Kingsbury said. "Whoever comes through the turnstiles, strike up the band. But make sure it's a tourist, no goddamn locals. Number five million, okay? In giant letters."

  His gut tightening, Chelsea said, "Sir, it might be wiser to go with two million. It's closer to the real number...just in case somebody makes an issue of it."

  "No, two is—chickenshit, really. Five's better. And the parade, too, I'm serious." Kingsbury stood up. He was dressed for golf. "A parade, that's good video," he said. "Plenty of time to get it for the six-o'clock news. That's our best demographic, am I right? Fucking kids, they don't watch the eleven."

  Chelsea nodded. "What do we give the winner? Mr. Five Million, I mean."

  "A car, Jesus Christ." Kingsbury looked at him as if he were an idiot. A few years earlier, Disney World had given away an automobile every day for an entire summer. Kingsbury had never gotten over it. "Make it a Corvette," he told Chelsea.

  "All right, but you're looking at forty thousand dollars. Maybe more."

  Kingsbury extended his lower lip so far that it seemed to touch his nose; for a moment he wore the pensive look of a caged orangutan. "Forty grand," he repeated quietly. "That's brand new, I suppose."

  "When you give one away, yes. Ordinarily the cars should be new."

  "Unless they're classics." Kingsbury winked. "Make it a classic. Say, a 1964 Ford Falcon. You don't see many of those babies."

  "Sure don't."

  "A Falcon convertible, geez, we could probably pick one up for twenty-five hundred."

  "Probably," agreed Chelsea, not even pretending enthusiasm.

  "Well, move on it." Francis X. Kingsbury thumbed him out of the office. "And tell Pedro, get his ass in here."

  Pedro Luz was in the executive gym, bench-pressing a bottle of stanozolol tablets. He was letting the tiny pink pills drop one by one into his mouth.

  A man named Churrito, lounging on a Nautilus, said: "Hiss very bad for liver."

  "Very good for muscles," said Pedro Luz, mimicking the accent.

  Churrito was his latest hire to the security squad at the Amazing Kingdom of Thrills. He had accompanied Pedro Luz on his mission to Miami, but had declined to participate in the beating. Pedro Luz was still miffed about what had happened—the old lady chomping off the top joint of his right index finger.

  "You're useless," he had told Churrito afterward.

  "I am a soldier," Churrito had replied. "I dun hit no wooman."

  Unlike the other security guards hired by Pedro Luz, Churrito had not been a crooked cop. He was a Nicaraguan contra who had moved to Florida when things were bleak, and had not gotten around to moving back.

  While Churrito was pleased at the prospect of democracy taking seed in his homeland, he suspected that true economic prosperity was many years away. Elections notwithstanding, Churrito's buddies were still stuck in the border hills, frying green bananas and dynamiting the rivers for fish. Meanwhile his uncle, formerly a sergeant in Somo
za's National Guard, now lived with a twenty-two-year-old stewardess in a high-rise condo on Key Biscayne. To Churrito this seemed like a pretty good advertisement for staying right where he was.

  Pedro Luz had hired him because he looked mean, and because he'd said he had killed people.

  "Comunistas," Churrito had specified, that night at the old lady's apartment. "I only kill commoonists. And I dun hit no wooman."

  And now here he was, lecturing Pedro Luz about the perils of anabolic steroids.

  "Make you face like balloon."

  "Shut up," said Pedro Luz. He was wondering if the hospital in Key Largo would sell him extra bags of dextrose water for the IV. Grind up the stanozolols, drop them in the mix and everything would be fine again.