Sick Puppy (36 page)

Twilly said no thanks.

“You ever licked toads to get high?” Skink asked.

“Nope.”

“Don’t.”

Twilly said, “I should warn you, I’m not much of a shot.”

“Maybe you won’t have to be.” Skink dragged heavily on the joint. “All kinds of bad shit can happen to foolish men in the woods.”

“Still, a plan would be helpful.”

“It would, son.”

Twilly stretched out, using McGuinn as a pillow. The rhythmic rise and fall of the dog’s chest was soothing. Skink dumped water on the fire, and the aroma of wood smoke mingled sweetly with the marijuana.

“What time is it, Governor?”

“Late. You get some rest, we’ll figure something out.”

“They’ve got more guns than we do.”

“That’s undoubtedly true.”

The Labrador stirred slightly beneath Twilly’s head, and he reached up to scratch the dog’s chin. One of McGuinn’s hind legs started to kick spasmodically.

Twilly said, “There’s him to consider, too.”

“No need to bring him along. We can tie him to a tree, where he’ll be safe.”

“And what happens to him if we don’t make it back?”

The captain exhaled heavily. “Good point.”

Twilly Spree fell asleep and had another dream. This time he dreamed he was falling. There was a bullet hole in his chest, and as he fell he leaked a curlicued contrail of blood. Far below him were a break of green waves and a long white beach, and in the sky all around him were the seabirds, falling at the same velocity; lifeless clumps of bent feathers and twisted beaks. Somewhere above was the faint, fading sound of a helicopter. In the dream Twilly snatched wildly at the falling gulls until he got one. Clutching the broken bird to his breast, he plummeted in a clockwise spin toward the beach. He landed hard on his back, and was knocked momentarily senseless. When he awoke, Twilly glanced down and saw that the gull had come to life and flown away, out of his hands. It was dark.

And Clinton Tyree was looming over him. Around his neck was a pair of binoculars. Hefted in his arms like an overstuffed duffel was McGuinn, looking chastened.

Twilly raised his head. “What?”

“A flatbed and a forklift. You won’t believe it.”

Skink rekindled the fire and made coffee. Wordlessly they changed into camouflage jumpsuits and broke out the guns and ammunition. Twilly removed the dog’s collar, so it wouldn’t jingle.

“Hey, captain, I got one for you. Not a plan but a poem.”

“Good man.”

“ ‘I should have been a pair of ragged claws,’ ” Twilly said, “ ‘Scuttling across the floors of silent seas.’ ”

The former governor of Florida clapped his hands in delight. “More!” he exhorted. “More, more, more!” His laughter crashed like a hailstorm through the tall trees and scrub.

Durgess awoke everybody an hour before dawn. No one in the hunting party had the stomach for a hearty breakfast, so the four men gathered quietly around the table for coffee, aspirins, Imodium and, in Robert Clapley’s case, two Bloody Marys. Willie Vasquez-Washington had correctly guessed that khaki would be the fashion order of the day. He wondered if Clapley, Stoat and Governor Dick had purchased their nearly identical big-game wardrobes at a sale (although Stoat’s absurd cowboy hat somewhat set him apart).

The mood at the table was subdued; a few lame hangover jokes, and halfhearted inquiries about the weather. Durgess sat down to explain how the hunt would be organized. Because the rhinoceros was Clapley’s kill, he and Durgess would go first into the bush. Asa Lando would follow twenty or so yards behind, accompanied by the governor, Palmer Stoat and Willie Vasquez-Washington. Ten yards behind them would be the governor’s two regular bodyguards.

Weaponry was the next subject, Robert Clapley announcing he had come armed with a .460 Weatherby, “the Testarrosa of hunting rifles.”

Durgess said, “That’s all we’ll need.” Thinking: A slingshot and a pebble would probably do the job.

Not to be outdone, Stoat declared he was bringing his .458 Winchester Magnum.

“My choice, too,” interjected Dick Artemus, who had never shot at anything larger, or more menacing, than a grouse. The governor had yet to fire the powerful Winchester, which he had received as a bribe six years earlier while serving on the Jacksonville City Council.

It was hopeless to object, but Durgess felt obliged. “Mr. Clapley’s gun is plenty. I’ll be armed and so will Asa, in case the animal gives us any trouble. And so will the governor’s men.” The FDLE bodyguards had lightweight Ruger assault rifles, semiautomatics.

“He’s right,” Clapley chimed in. He didn’t want anybody else sneaking a shot at his trophy rhino.

“Just hold on,” Palmer Stoat said to Durgess. “You said this was a killer, right? A rogue.”

“Yessir.”

“Then—no disrespect meant to you, Bob, or to Dick’s security people—but I intend to protect myself out there. I’m bringing my own rifle.”

“Me, too,” the governor said. “The more the merrier.”

Durgess relented without comment. It was always the same story with these big-city shitheads, always a dick-measuring contest. One guy gets a gun, they
all
gotta have one.

The guide turned to Willie Vasquez-Washington. “You a Winchester man, too?”

“Nikkormat. Pictures is all I’m shooting.”

“That’s cool.” Once Durgess had turned down an offer to guide big-game photo safaris in South Africa because he’d heard that hunters tipped better than photographers. Sometimes, on mornings such as this, Durgess wished he’d taken the gig anyway.

Robert Clapley said, “One thing we’ve got to get straight right now. It’s about the horn—I’m taking that sucker home with me.
Today.
”

Durgess thought: Sure, tough guy. Soon as we see the dough. Otherwise Mr. Yee awaits, cash in hand.

“The horn? What in the world you gonna do with that?” Willie Vasquez-Washington asked.

Palmer Stoat explained how rhinoceros horn was ground into an illicit powder that was sold as an aphrodisiac. “It didn’t put any extra lead in Bob’s pencil, but his two blond babeniks went animal for the stuff.”

Willie Vasquez-Washington chortled in astonishment.

“They got so wet, Bob needed a spatula to scrape ’em off the sheets.” Stoat winked archly at Clapley, who turned as red as his tomato cocktail.

Still hollow-eyed from the night before, Dick Artemus gamely looked up from his coffee cup. “I heard about that stuff from a buddy works for Toyota HQ. These horns are very pricey, he says, plus you’ve got to go all the way to Hong Kong or Bangkok to find one. Supposedly you sprinkle it in your
sake
and get a hard-on that lasts longer than a hockey season.”

“Some men do, but not Bob,” Palmer Stoat chirped.

Willie Vasquez-Washington couldn’t believe what he was hearing—Clapley clearly was more excited about scoring the sex powder than stalking the formidable African rhinoceros. White guys were truly pathetic, the worst, when it came to fretting about their dicks.

Addressing the table, Robert Clapley said, “Palmer disapproves of my two ladies, though I suspect he’s just jealous. They have exotic tastes, it’s true—and talents to match.”

There was a ripple of appreciative laughter.

“So bring a hacksaw for the horn,” Clapley instructed Durgess firmly.

“Yessir.”

“You know what’s also supposed to be good for boners? Bull testicles,” the governor volunteered informatively. “Rocky Mountain oysters is what they call ’em out West. Can you imagine eating barbecued bull’s balls?”

Durgess rose sluggishly, as if cloaked in cast iron. “We best be movin’ out now,” he told the men. “I’ll go fetch Asa. You fellas meet us in front.”

“With our guns,” Palmer Stoat added.

“Yessir. With your guns,” Durgess said, with dull resignation.

29

They found a knoll with a clear downhill view of the towering moss-draped oak, which stood alone at the confluence of two slopes. The men laid down in the tallest grass to wait, Twilly sighting with the Remington while Skink scanned with the field glasses. McGuinn sat restlessly between them, nosing the foggy dawn air. The end of his leash was looped once around Skink’s ax-handle wrist.

“Is it alive?” Twilly, squinting through the rifle scope.

“Hard to say,” Skink said.

They were talking about the black rhinoceros.

“Lookie there!”

“What?”

Skink, who needed only half of the binoculars, said: “It’s eating. See for yourself.”

Twilly positioned the crosshairs and saw twin puffs of mist rising from the beast’s horned snout. Its prehensile upper lip browsed feebly at a bale of hay.

“Looks about a thousand years old,” Twilly said.

Skink sounded somber. “If we’re going to do this thing, whatever it is, it’s gotta happen before they plug that poor sonofabitch. That I won’t watch, you understand?”

McGuinn edged cagily toward the slope, but Skink yanked him on his butt. Twilly pointed on a line with his rifle: “Here they come, captain.”

The hunting party arrived in a zebra-striped Chevy Suburban, parking no more than two hundred yards from the solitary oak. Eight men in all, the group made no effort at stealth. The great El Jefe, masticating serenely beneath the tree, seemed oblivious to the slamming doors, clicking gun bolts and unmuffled male voices.

At the front of the truck they held a brief huddle—Skink spotted the orange flare of a match—before the stalk began in earnest. Two men headed out first, both armed. Twilly didn’t recognize either of them but he knew one had to be Robert Clapley.

Four men followed in a second group. Twilly didn’t need a scope to pick out Desie’s husband. He remembered Palmer Stoat’s oversized cowboy hat from that first day, when he had pursued the obnoxious litterbug down the Florida Turnpike. Another giveaway was the bobbing cigar; downwind or upwind, only a stooge such as Stoat would smoke while tracking big game.

Skink said, “There’s your boy.” He recognized Stoat’s dough-ball physique from the night he’d broken into the lobbyist’s house and usurped his bathroom. Seeing him again now, in such an inexcusable circumstance, Skink was even less inclined toward mercy. Twilly Spree had related how all the madness had started—Stoat blithely chucking hamburger cartons out the window of his Range Rover. The ex-governor had understood perfectly Twilly’s infuriated reaction, for such atrocious misbehavior could not be overlooked. In Skink’s view, which he kept to himself, Twilly had shown uncommon restraint.

In the same contingent of hunters as Palmer Stoat marched the governor, looking theatrically chipper in an Aussie bush hat. Dick Artemus carried his gun in a way that suggested he practiced everything except shooting. A third man, leaner and darker, held a long-lensed camera but no weapon. The fourth man in the group walked out front with a rifle at the ready; he was older and wiry-looking, dressed more like a mechanic than a hunter.

The last two members of the motley safari stayed many paces behind and shouldered shorter rifles—semiautomatics, Skink somberly informed Twilly. The men wore jeans, running shoes and navy blue windbreakers with the letters fdle visible on the back.

“Governor Dick’s bodyguards,” Skink said, “with Mini-14s, if I’m not mistaken.”

Twilly didn’t like the odds. The sun was rising behind the knoll, which meant he and the captain would get some cover from the glare. But still. . . .

Skink nudged him. “Make the call, son. I’m not getting any younger.”

Like a disjointed centipede, the hunting party advanced tentatively along the cleft at the base of the grassy slopes. Drawing closer to their prey, the two men out front altered their walk to a furtive stoop, pausing every few steps to rest on their haunches and strategize. The one doing all the pointing would be the guide, Twilly figured, while Robert Clapley would be the one bedecked like an Eddie Bauer model.

Viewed from a distant perch, the stalk unfolded as comic mime of a true wild hunt. Whenever the lead duo halted and crouched, the men trailing behind would do the same. The bare grass offered the trackers neither protection nor concealment, but none was necessary. The killer rhinoceros continued chewing, unperturbed.

“If you had to take out one of them,” Twilly said to Skink, “who would it be—Governor Dickless?”

“Waste of ammo. They got assembly lines that crank out assholes like him. He wouldn’t even be missed.”

“Stoat, then?”

“Maybe, but purely for the entertainment. Tallahassee has more lobbyists than termites,” Skink said.

“That leaves only Mr. Clapley.” Twilly closed one eye and framed the developer square in the crosshairs. Clapley’s face appeared intent with predatory concentration. Twilly carefully rested a forefinger on the Remington’s trigger.

Skink said: “It’s his project. His goddamned bridge. His hired goon who tried to kill you.”

Twilly exhaled slowly, to relax his shooting arm. The hunting guide and Clapley had approached to within forty yards of the rhinoceros.

“On the other hand,” Skink was saying, “it might be more productive just to snatch the bastard and haul him down to the Glades for three or four months. Just you and me, re-educating his ass on the Shark River.”

Twilly turned his head. “Captain?”

“Could be fun. Like a high-school field trip for young Bob Clapley, or holiday camp!” Skink mused. “We’ll send him home a new man—after the banks have called in his construction loans, of course. . . .”

“Captain!”

“It’s your call, son.”

“I
know
it’s my call. Where’s the damn dog?”

“The dog?” Skink sprung up and looked around anxiously. “Oh Jesus.”

So many enthralling smells!

McGuinn reveled in the country morning: Sunrise, on the crest of a green hill, where seemingly everything—leaves, rocks, blades of grass, the dew itself—was laced with strange intoxicating scents. Large animals, McGuinn concluded from their potent musks; jumbos. What could they be? And what sort of place was this?

Although most of the smells that reached the hill were too faint to merit more than a cursory sniff or a territorial spritz of pee, one scent in particular hung fresh and warm, cutting pungently through the light fog. McGuinn was itching to bolt loose and track it.

The scent was not that of a domestic cat or another dog. Definitely not duck or seagull. Negative also for deer, rabbit, raccoon, skunk, muskrat, mouse, toad, turtle or snake. This earthy new animal odor was unlike any the dog had previously encountered. It made his hair bristle and his nose quiver, and it was so heavy in the air that it must have been exuded by a creature of massive proportion. McGuinn yearned to chase down this primordial behemoth and thrash it mercilessly . . . or at least pester it for a while, until he found something better to do.

In the distance a vehicle stopped and emptied out a new bunch of humans, and soon McGuinn detected other aromas—gasoline exhaust, sunblock, aftershave, coffee, cigar smoke and gun oil. But it was the smell of the mystery beast that beckoned irresistibly. The dog glanced around and saw that nobody was paying attention to him. The young man, Desie’s friend, was preoccupied with pointing a gun down the hill. Similarly distracted was his travel companion, the hairy-faced man who was perfumed indelibly with burnt wood and dead opossum, and on whose wrist was limply fastened the cursed leash.

McGuinn levered his butt imperceptibly off the grass, scooted backward a couple of inches, then sat down again. Neither of the men looked up. So McGuinn did it again, and still again, until the slack in the leash was gone and all that remained was to coil his muscles and execute The Lunge—a heedless, headlong escape maneuver familiar to all owners of Labrador retrievers. During many an evening walk, McGuinn had employed The Lunge to excellent effect, leaving Palmer Stoat or Desie standing empty-handed, snatching at thin air, while he dashed off to deal with an insolent Siamese, or to take a dip in the New River. The dog was well aware he was exceptionally fast, and virtually impossible for humans to overtake on foot.

Once he made his break.

This time it happened so smoothly that it was anticlimactic. McGuinn surged forward and the leash simply came free, slipping so cleanly off the hand of the hairy-faced man that he didn’t feel it. The next thing the dog knew, he was barreling away, unnoticed and unpursued. Down the long slope he ran—ears unfurled, tongue streaming, velvet nose to the grass—faster and faster until he was but a black streak, hurtling past the dumbstruck hunters. He heard a flurry of agitated voices, then a familiar angry command—“Boodle, no!”—which he gleefully disregarded. Onward he sped, the leash flopping at his heels, the powerful alien fragrance reeling him in as if he were a barracuda hooked on a wire. Directly ahead loomed a gnarled mossy tree, and beneath it stood a great horned creature so immense and unflinching, McGuinn thought at first that it was made of stone.

But, no, smell it! A piquant blend of mulchy digestive vapors, sour body mold and steaming shit. With a self-congratulatory howl, the dog bore in. He circled first one way and then the other before dropping to a snarling crouch behind the animal’s gargantuan armor-plated flanks. McGuinn expected the beast to wheel in self-defense, yet the stately rump remained motionless. McGuinn inched around cautiously to confront the snouted end, where he initiated a sequence of spirited head fakes, left and right, to feign a charge. Yet the creature did not shirk, bridle or jump at its tormentor’s well-choreographed hysterics. The creature did not move; merely stared at the dog through crinkled, gnat-covered slits.

McGuinn was flabbergasted. Even the laziest, stupidest dairy cow would have spooked by now! The dog backed off to catch his breath and sort through his options (which, given a Lab’s cognitive limitations, were modest and few). He affected a baleful pearly drool, only to stare in bewilderment as the monster placidly resumed nibbling from its bale of forage. Incredible!

Then came the approach of measured footsteps, followed by urgent human whispers. McGuinn knew what that meant: No more fun here. Soon someone would be snatching up his leash and jerking the choke chain. Time was running out. One last try: The dog growled, flattened his ears and insinuated himself into a wolf-like slink. Once more he began circling the torpid brute, which (McGuinn noticed) had ceased chewing, its jaws bewhiskered with sodden sprouts. But now the dog directed his focus at the stern of his prey: a sparse cord of a tail, dangling invitingly.

A leap, a flash of fangs and McGuinn had it!

Instantly the beast erupted, whirling with such hellish might that the dog was flung off, landing hard against the trunk of the sturdy old oak. He scrambled upright and shook himself vigorously from head to tail. With a mixture of surprise and elation, he observed that the monster was running away—and pretty darn fast, too!

McGuinn broke into lusty pursuit, driven by ancient instincts but also by sheer joy. Was there a better way to spend a spring morning, racing free through cool green meadows, snapping at a pair of fleeing hindquarters while slow-footed humans yammered helplessly in protest?

Every dog dreamed of such adventure.

No one was more rattled than Palmer Stoat to see a black Labrador charging into the line of fire, because it looked like his dog—Jesus H. Christ, it
was
his dog!—gone for all these days, only to surface at the worst possible time in the worst possible place. Stoat felt an upswell of despair, knowing the dog wasn’t running downhill to greet him, but rather to flush Robert Clapley’s prize rhinoceros, thereby disrupting the hunt and possibly mucking up (yet again!) the Shearwater deal.

It was no less than a curse.

“Boodle, no!” Stoat yelled, cigar waggling. “Bad boy!”

A few yards ahead stood Clapley, his aggrieved expression revealing all: He wanted to shoot the dog, but Durgess wouldn’t permit it. In fact, the guide was signaling all of them to remain still.

“Hold up here,” Asa Lando dutifully instructed Stoat’s group.

Dick Artemus leaned in and whispered, “Palmer, is that your damn fool dog?” Willie Vasquez-Washington chuckled and began shooting pictures. In mute wonderment the guides and hunters watched the Labrador circle and taunt the rhinoceros; even Asa Lando found it difficult not to be entertained. The dog really was a piece of work!

Palmer Stoat shaded a nervous eye toward Clapley, huddled in a heated discussion with Durgess. Of all those present, Stoat alone knew of Clapley’s peculiar obsession. Stoat alone knew without asking that the man had brought dolls, and probably a miniature pearl-handled hairbrush, concealed inside his ammo vest. Stoat alone knew the wanton seed of Clapley’s motivation (which had nothing to do with sport), and understood the true base nature of his panic. No rhino, no horn; no horn, no live Barbies! In such a fraught equation, one frolicsome Labrador carried zero weight.

Only too late did it dawn on Stoat that he should have taken Bob aside the night before and explained that the “killer” rhinoceros would not and could not escape, due to the insurmountable barbed fence that enclosed the Wilderness Veldt Plantation. And though the news might have taken a bit of luster off the hunt, it might also have lowered Robert Clapley’s buggy anxiety to a saner level, at which he might not have attempted to sight his Weatherby on something so inconsequential as a pesky hound. From the spot where Stoat knelt, he could see Clapley trying again and again to raise the gun barrel, only to have it slapped down by Durgess.

In desperation Stoat bellowed: “Boodle! Come!”

Dick Artemus stuck two fingers in his cheeks and gave a whistle that sounded like the screak of a tubercular macaw. The Labrador failed to respond. Peering at the confrontation through a 500-mm lens, Willie Vasquez-Washington could make out amazing details—the electric green bottleflies buzzing about the rhino’s rear end, the shining strands of spittle on the dog’s chin. . . .