My Danger Days were behind me too. There had been a period when I just couldn’t seem to stay out of trouble—with the criminal element or with the law. It had been two blissful years since the last episode, since anybody had tried to kill me. And by the looks of things, I was free and clear.
Okay, so maybe not so free and clear since I was now fighting my way across six lanes of the Indy 500 trying to make the Wacker Drive exit. But I’m a New Yorker. I simply bullied my way across the interstate, leaned on my horn and cut everybody off. Tires screeched and legions of irate Chicagoans flipped me the bird, their lips pantomiming expletives. The scariest part was that a disproportionate number of them actually looked like their patron saint, Mike Ditka.
I’d never been to Chicago before. Downtown seemed much like parts of Manhattan but with mostly named streets. It’s just that there was a river cutting through part of it, and I had a little trouble getting across it to where my hotel was. Soon enough, though, I was in the semicircular driveway of the glass monolith, a cadre of valet parking guys eyeing my car with the thinly disguised trepidation of cowpokes approaching a fiery bull. I was used to this. To these twenty-five-year-old kids, my black ’66 Lincoln convertible, with its giant steering wheel, knobs, and tranny hump was an alien, unpredictable thing. Other than some SUVs, cars haven’t been made this heavy or this long since way before these dudes were born.
As the bellhops unloaded my gear from the trunk, I eyed the oldest valet. “You ever drive a vintage ride like this?”
He paused, and did so too long.
The youngest of the bunch piped up.
“My gramps has a ’72 Eldorado. Drove it to Vegas last summer. She made wide turns, you know?”
“Circle gets the square.” I tossed him the keys.
“Dope!” He smiled. “Circle gets the what?”
“Forget it.” I tucked a twenty in his shirt pocket as he moved toward the driver’s seat. “Car’s got a new paint job so be nice to her.”
I followed the bellhops into the shiny building, did all that check-in stuff, and by 6:00 p.m. I was laying on the bed in my shiny room. Then the phone rang.
“This Carson?” a man’s voice asked.
“Who’s this?”
“Wilberforce/Peete, right?”
“Yes. Is this Mr. Fulmore?”
“Yeah, that’s me. Car’ll pick you up in an hour. Howzat?”
“Sounds fine.”
“That’s cool. I’ll leave the front door open. See you in a few.”
“Sure.”
I’ll be the first to admit that I have a prejudiced perspective on big game hunters because my work seems to bring me eyeball to eyeball with the worst of them. But a lot has changed since midcentury when trophy hunting was done without conscience or forethought. True sportsmen today are equal part conservationists, promoting sustainable-use programs and contributing to international efforts to keep the populations of game animals healthy enough so that they can continue to kill them. I know, it sounds counterproductive, but I guess it’s the Omelet Theory in action, and they’re breaking a few eggs. Argue that it would be better to hatch the eggs if you must, but there’s no denying that these big game hunters channel a lot of money, effort, and influence toward conservation efforts that otherwise wouldn’t be there. For example, the biggest, oldest, and most venerable award in trophy hunting used to be called the Oglevy Cup and was awarded to the hunter with the most spectacular kill. Today, that same award is called the Oglevy Conservation Award and is given to the hunter who has contributed the most toward improving the sport—i.e., keeping the animals around. Hats off to the nature lovers who do their bit, but the luminaries of big game hunting do their bit and then some.
For obvious reasons, most of the big game hunters I visited were eager to try to grease my wheels. They wanted the highest appraisal possible, if not for insurance reasons, then for bragging rights. If they ever got into a pissing contest with other hunters, even if they didn’t have a saber-toothed wombat or hoary tree kangaroo among their trophies, they could always pull the trump card by announcing how much their collection was worth. Sad, really. True collectors such as myself tend not to be competitive on that scale—we’re more apt to be kindred spirits, appreciating the sensibilities evidenced in someone else’s collection. Taxidermy is art. But with hunters, their “trophies” were exactly that: a show of prowess.
My motto? Don’t let other people make their problems yours. If these guys wanted to smoke cigars, drink sixty-year-old Scotch, and lock horns over whose dead animals were bigger, better, or worth more money, let them have at it. Besides, it benefited me. Whenever I visited these big game hunters, they wined and dined me, sent cars, and lavished me with Cuban cigars I didn’t smoke—it was only the gold watches and home entertainment systems that Wilberforce/Peete forbade me to accept. And of course, these erstwhile Hemingways, knowing I was exposed to some of the finest trophy collections, wanted me to be their magic mirror and tell them theirs was the finest in all the land.
An hour after Fulmore’s call, I was in a limo headed for an upper-crust Chicago suburb. And I couldn’t help but reflect, once again, how dramatically my life had changed in a year. Nothing highlights the notion that you’re no longer treading water than having the captain send out his launch for you. Pipe me aboard! I was liking this new life. A lot.
Once off the highway, we cruised through a Tudor-style retail strip and into a lane canopied by the thick branches of towering sycamores. Portico lights twinkled through the hedgerows.
It was obviously trash night in Upper Crust, Illinois. You know you’re in a schmancy neighborhood when all the houses have matching trash cans—the clean green PVC kind with rubber wheels, whisper-quiet hinged lids, and no house numbers spray painted on the sides. I’d bet the garbage trucks were electric and the sanitation workers wore matching white jumpsuits and sneakers so as not to wake anybody. Like the tooth fairy, the rubbish fairies fluttered in and out without so much as causing a head to lift from its pillow.
The chauffeur slowed as we approached a drive with a white lawn jockey next to it. For the uninitiated, a drive is distinguished from a driveway by the semicircular, dual entrance design that obviates having to use reverse gear. When you think about it, the less you have to use reverse gear the richer that means you are. Any place you would shop has valet parking where you just pull straight up to the entrance and somebody else parks and retrieves your car. You don’t have to park in the regular parking spaces at the Foodco because you no longer food shop—your staff does. If you have a garage, somebody brings the car “around for you.” And eventually, you just stop driving altogether—why even risk having to use reverse in an emergency? All that bothersome neck and head twisting. That’s what you pay a personal trainer for, after all.
Passing a sea of green stuff—it was way too neatly trimmed and uniform to be grass—the limo approached a Georgian façade: red brick, white pillared portico, ivy, dormers. I had to remind myself I wasn’t dropping in on a bank president, but a running back named Sprunty who probably favored wild pool parties awash in cheerleaders and controlled substances. I could only imagine the fuss his neighbors had made when he’d signed the deed to this mansion. But that was their problem. Not mine.
The limo rolled to a stop in front of the portico and the driver killed the engine. This wasn’t like calling a town car in New York. Here, a limo would wait, no matter how long. And instead of some surly Balkan malcontent sharing his highly original views on impromptu capital punishment to the accompaniment of a radio blaring balalaika disco, my driver hadn’t said a word the whole trip. If he was Bosnian or Croatian, I had no idea. He could even been Hutu or Tutsi. I didn’t notice.
My briefcase and I stepped out of the limo, and from the portico’s vantage I surveyed the sea of green. Fireflies looped and blinked their way through the vapor looking for their mates. Toads chirped. Crickets cheeped. As somnolent a June evening as ever there was.
I turned to t
he door, which was about six feet wide. When Sprunty had said on the phone that he’d leave the door open, I thought he meant unlocked. But it was open open.
“Mr. Fulmore?” My voice bounced up and around the soaring entryway like a Super Ball. An Escheresque staircase stood directly ahead, so long it should have been an escalator. “Hello?”
No butler or housekeeper in evidence. I stepped into the foyer. “Hello?”
On my right was a living room, all in white, with lots of plants and nothing on the walls. To my left was an open door that led to an oak-paneled library, the kind you’d think more appropriate for John Houseman than Fulmore. Ahead, to the right of the stairs, was a white door held partially open by a bear’s paw.
Bear’s paw?
“Mr. Fulmore?” I strode over to the paw, which was lying on the floor. It was nearly the size of a baseball mitt, with claws like golf tees. Had to be Kodiak. I pulled the door open—it was one of those spring-loaded jobs that swung both ways, and it led into a pantry. Attached to the paw was the bear’s forearm, and I picked it up with both hands. By the looks of the stump, it had been hastily cut from its mount. A few feet ahead was a large red puddle. I froze. Then I looked closer.
A woman’s slip. And beyond that? A large brassiere, also red. I’m no expert, but I’d guess it was a 38D. Okay, so what man at forty-six doesn’t have some knowledge of bras?
I didn’t like the looks of this. The trail led to a door on the far side of the pantry. Beyond? The red panties, no doubt. I grimly surmised Sprunty was in rut, and I didn’t want to be the one to turn the hose au deux d’amor.
So the bear arm and I beat a retreat to the living room, where I sat upon a couch that looked like it had never been sat on, neatening up the contents of my briefcase: a calculator, some lined legal pads, twenty-five-cent pens, a date book, some bottled water, and a box of Milk Duds. Maybe not exactly the contents of Donald Trump’s attaché, but I’m told he does like the occasional Milk Dud.
Also contained within was a stack of papers Angie had handed me before I left. It was a dossier of dog breeds. I’d been avoiding reading through it all because I wasn’t sure I really wanted a dog—but Angie seemed dead set on acquiring a canine to share our digs. We already had Otto, our jack-of-all-trades, and he was like a dog, wasn’t he? Better still, I didn’t have to chase him down the street with a Baggie on my hand, picking up his warm, moist loafs from the pavement. On the other hand, I felt a wee bit guilty. Angie and I had opted not to have kids, and if she felt the urge at this late stage for a third party, how could I refuse her a fur bearin’ critter? One that wasn’t stuffed, that is. Sighing, I started flipping through the info on midsized to small terriers. Jack Russell, Wire Fox, Schnauzer…but it was hard to stay focused.
I couldn’t imagine Sprunty hadn’t heard me enter. Surely when he was finished slipping the wood to that cheerleader he’d come looking for me. He wouldn’t want to keep his appraiser waiting long. I might get testy.
After half an hour of looking for the least objectionable mutt, I was getting impatient. If I had a cell phone, I would have called somebody. The bear arm was beginning to worry me too. Why would Sprunty cut the arm off his own bear mount, and right before an appraisal? Was it possible he’d cut it off somebody else’s trophy on a wager or something?
Weary of the delay, I determined to barge in on them. Half an hour was long enough for him to have done what he needed to do. Now they were probably just in there having cosmos and cheese curls or something.
I pushed through the door at the far end of the pantry. When the door swung closed behind me, I was in darkness, awash in ripples of aquamarine, enveloped in the hushed silence of wall-to-wall carpeting. Across a sizeable room and beyond a gargantuan sectional sofa was a large array of sliding glass doors leading to a patio and lighted pool. That’s it—they must be out by the pool.
But moments later I was outside standing next to the blue glow of the pool. No Sprunty. No cheerleader. No panties. Just the frogs and crickets chirping away.
I walked back through the sliding doors and felt along the wall for a light switch. Suddenly, Sprunty’s trophy room blazed all around me. I could see that it extended almost the full width of the house, with dark paneled walls, white cathedral ceilings, white wall-to-wall shag, and white upholstered furniture.
Fulmore certainly had bragging rights. The pieces on the wall were mostly exotic, many full-bodied, and few of them small. A brooding black cape buffalo the size of a Cooper Mini was parked in one corner, a gnu at full gallop charging out from another. Along one wall, three rows of gazelle heads were arranged by size like some taxonomic display. There were mountain goats standing on fake rocks in the room’s center, a lion jumping a Grants gazelle beyond that. Elk, moose, and rhino up there, an eight-hundred-pound black marlin up over there. A snarling polar bear clawed the air to the left of the stone fireplace, a cougar jumped a pronghorn by the bar, and a wolf gnashed its teeth over the door. It was like one of those sporting goods megastores. Taxidermy overkill. Or just plain overkill.
My eyes finally locked onto the Kodiak bear, which was standing in the corner to my right, his elbows stirring the air. Both forearms were missing, and I only held one of them in my hand. What kinda nut cuts both the arms off of his own trophy?
The Kodiak was helping the polar bear flank the fireplace on the far side of a large sectional couch. To get there, I sauntered around behind the sectional, around the mountain goats, and in front of the bar. Ahead I saw something red.
Ah, the panties. I reached down to pick them up.
But what I encountered was wet. It was two dimensional. It was a stain.
My eyes swam—it must be red paint, cranberry juice, grenadine, Campari, raspberry syrup…but then the metallic bite of blood stung my nose.
I found my back pressed against the front of the bar, my hand reaching for the phone next to the beer taps. Fumble: Carson knocks the whole phone off the bar and onto the floor behind it.
“Nine one one, nine one one…” I was afraid I might forget the number as I stumbled behind the bar in search of the phone.
I stumbled, all right.
Onto Sprunty.
He’d been mauled by a bear. How’d I know? Sure, those gashes in his chest could have been made by a knife. But Fulmore’s intestines were wrapped around the Kodiak’s missing arm.
There was blood everywhere, and I almost slipped as I reached for the phone next to his head. I was averting my eyes from the gore, my breath coming fast, grunting with disgust, when I grabbed Sprunty by the nose by accident. His eyes, thankfully, were mostly closed. But his mouth was open. Something white was sticking out of it. A lizard? No, a gecko, probably a common house gecko. Dead too? I didn’t know, I didn’t care.
I grasped the phone and wheeled back around to the other side of the bar, falling to my knees on the clean white carpet. I misdialed three times before I got it right.
That was the day Sprunty’s problems became mine.
SLEEP WITH THE FISHES
A Dell Book / October 2006
Published by Bantam Dell
A Division of Random House, Inc.
New York, New York
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
All rights reserved
Copyright © 2006 by Brian M. Wiprud
Dell is a registered trademark of Random House, Inc., and the colophon is a trademark of Random House, Inc.
www.bantamdell.com
eISBN: 978-0-440-33633-4
v3.0
it-filter: grayscale(100%); -moz-filter: grayscale(100%); -o-filter: grayscale(100%); -ms-filter: grayscale(100%); filter: grayscale(100%); " class="sharethis-inline-share-buttons">share
Sleep with the Fishes Page 17
