Sick Puppy

by Carl Hiaasen

  As he descended the lighthouse, the former governor of Florida counted all seventy-seven steps again. When he reached the bottom he got on his belly and wedged through a gap in the plywood that had been nailed over the entrance to keep out vandals and curious tourists.

  From the darkness of the beaconage, Clinton Tyree emerged, squinting like a newborn, into a stunning spring morning. He stood and turned his tear-streaked face to the cool breeze blowing in off the Atlantic. He could see tarpon crashing a school of mullet beyond the break.

  The plywood barricade to the tower was papered with official notices, faded and salt-curled:

  NO TRESPASSING

  CLOSED TO THE PUBLIC UNTIL FURTHER NOTICE

  STATE PROPERTY—KEEP OUT

  But someone recently had tacked a business card to the plywood. The tack was shiny, not rusted, and the card stood out white and crisp. Clinton Tyree put his good eye to it and smiled. The inaugural smile.

  LISA JUNE PETERSON

  Executive Assistant

  Office of the Governor

  He took the card off the board and slipped it under the elastic band of his shower cap. Then he trudged down the beach, over the dunes and through the sea oats, across the street to the Peregrine Bay Visitor Center and Scenic Boardwalk, where the navy blue Roadmaster was parked.

  Palmer Stoat was buried with his favorite Ping putter, a Polaroid camera and a box of Cuban Montecristo #2s, a cause for authentic mourning among the cigar buffs at the ceremony. The funeral service was held at a Presbyterian church in Tallahassee, the minister eulogizing Stoat as a civic pillar, champion of the democratic process, dedicated family man, lover of animals, and devoted friend to the powerful and common folk alike. Those attending the service included a prostitute, the night bartender from Swain's, a taxidermist, three United States congressmen, one retired senator, six sitting circuit judges, three dozen past and present municipal commissioners from throughout Florida, the lieutenant governor and forty-one current members of the state Legislature (most of whom had been elected with campaign funds raised by Stoat, and not because he admired their politics). Those sending lavish sprays of flowers included the Philip Morris Company, Shell Oil, Roothaus and Son Engineering, Magnusson Phosphate Company, the Lake County Citrus Cooperative, U.S. Sugar, MatsibuCom Construction of Tokyo, Port Marco Properties, the Southern Timber Alliance, the National Rifle Association, University of Florida Blue Key, the Republican Executive Committee and the Democratic Executive Committee. Messages of regret arrived from Representative Willie Vasquez-Washington and Governor Richard Artemus, neither of whom could make it to the service.

  "Our grief today should be assuaged," the minister said, in closing, "by the knowledge that Palmer's last day among us was spent happily at sport, with his close friend Bob Clapley—just the two of them, walking the great outdoors they loved so much."

  Burial was at a nearby cemetery, which, fittingly, served as the final resting place for no less than twenty-one of Florida's all-time crookedest politicians. The joke around town was that the grave digger needed an auger instead of a shovel. The Stoats had attended the funerals of several of the dead thieves, including some convicted ones, so Desie was familiar with the layout. For Palmer she selected an unshaded plot on a bald mound overlooking Interstate 10. Since he had so often (and enthusiastically) predicted Florida would someday be as bustling as New York or California, she figured he would appreciate a roadside view of it coming to pass.

  At the grave, more kind words were spoken. Desie, who sat in front with her parents and Palmer's only cousin, a defrocked podiatrist from Jacksonville, found herself weeping tears of true aching sadness—not over the eulogies (which were largely fiction), but over the unraveling of her own feelings about her husband, and how that had contributed to his untimely death. While she could take no blame for the freakish hunting mishap, it was also indisputable that the doomed rhino expedition had been precipitated by the dognapping crisis—and that the dognapping had been complicated by Desie's attraction to, and abetment of, Twilly Spree.

  True, Palmer would still have been alive had he, early on, done the honorable thing and bailed out of the Shearwater fix. But there had been no chance of that, no reasonable expectation that her husband would suddenly discover an inner moral compass—and Desie should have known it.

  So she was feeling guilt. And grief, too, because even as she kept no romantic love for Palmer, she also kept no hate. He was what he was, and it wasn't all rotten or she wouldn't have married him. There was a companionable, eager-to-please side of the man that, while it couldn't have been called warm, was lively enough to be missed and even grieved for. Putting the Polaroid in his coffin had been Desie's idea, an inside joke. Palmer would have laughed, she thought, although he undoubtedly would have preferred the bedroom snapshots. Those, she had destroyed.

  As the casket was lowered, a murmuring rippled lightly through the mourners. Desie heard panting and felt something wet and velvety brush her fingers. She looked down to see McGuinn, nuzzling her clasped hands. The big dog had a black satin bow on his neck, and a chew toy clamped in his teeth. The toy was a rubber bullfrog with an orange stripe down its back. The frog croaked whenever McGuinn bit down on it, which was every ten or twelve seconds. A few people chuckled gently, grateful for the distraction, but the minister (who was busy walking through the valley of the shadow of death) raised his glacial eyes with no hint of amusement.

  Not a dog person, Desie decided, and extracted the chew toy from McGuinn's jaws. The Labrador curled up at her feet and watched, curiously, as another big wooden box disappeared into the ground. He assumed it contained a one-eared dog, like the one in the box that had been buried on the beach. But if there was death in the air, McGuinn couldn't smell it for all the flowers.

  Meanwhile, the widow Stoat glanced expectantly first over one shoulder and then the other, scanning the faces of the mourners. He wasn't there. She opened her hand and looked at the rubber toy, which actually resembled a toad more than a bullfrog. She turned it over in her palm and saw that someone had written in ballpoint ink across its pale yellow belly: I dreamt of you!

  And then a postal box number in Everglades City, not far from Marco Island.

  The sneeze set his lungs afire.

  Twilly Spree grimaced. "You sure didn't have to jump on me like that."

  "Oh, I damn sure did," Skink said. "I'd never catch you on a dead run downhill. You're way too fast for an old fart like me."

  "Yeah, right. How much did you say you weigh?"

  "I just figured you might not want to get shot again, so soon after the first time. And that's likely what would have happened out there with those two peckerheads blasting away with their cannons. Either that or the damn rhino would have stomped you into a tortilla."

  "All right, all right—thank you," Twilly said sarcastically. "Thank you very much for jumping on my broken ribs. I'd forgotten how good that feels."

  He sneezed again, the pain causing his eyes to well.

  Skink said, "I've got an idea. Pull off at the next exit."

  At a gas station they vacuumed the dog hair out of the station wagon—enough of it, Skink observed, for a whole new Labrador. Twilly's sneezing was cured. They headed southbound on the Florida Turnpike, which recently had been renamed (for reasons no one could adequately explain) after Ronald Reagan.

  "Name a rest stop after him. That would make sense," Skink groused. "But the whole turnpike? Christ, he was still making cowboy movies when the damn thing was built."

  Twilly said he didn't care if they dedicated the road to Kathie Lee Gifford, as long as they raised the toll to one hundred dollars per car.

  "Not nearly high enough. Make it half a grand," Skink decreed. "Twice as much for Winnebagos."

  Traffic was, as usual, rotten. Twilly felt a familiar downward skid in his mood.

  "Where you headed now?" he asked the captain.

  "Back to Crocodile Lakes, I suppose. My current residence is a cozy but well-vent
ilated NASCAR Dodge. You?"

  "Everglades City."

  Skink canted an eyebrow. "What for?"

  "Strategic positioning," Twilly said. "Or maybe just to catch some redfish. Who knows."

  "Oh man."

  "Hey, there's something I've been meaning to ask: All these years, you never thought about leaving?"

  "Every single day, son."

  "Where to?" Twilly said.

  "Bahamas. Turks and Caicos. Find some fly-speck island too small for a Club Med. Once I bought a ticket to the Grenadines and got all the way to Miami International—"

  "But you couldn't get on the plane."

  "No, I could not. It felt like I was sneaking out the back door on a dying friend."

  Twilly said, "I know."

  Skink hung his head out the car and roared like a gut-shot bear. "Damn Florida," he said.

  For ten miles they rode in silence. Then Twilly felt the heat of that gaze—and from the corner of an eye he saw the buzzard beaks, twirling counterclockwise on the tails of the burnished braids.

  Skink said, "Son, I can't tell you how to handle the pain, or where to find a season of peace—or even one night's worth. I just hope you have better luck at it than I did."

  "Governor, I hope I do half as well."

  With a tired smile, Skink said, "Then I've got only one piece of advice: If she's crazy enough to write you, be sure to write back."

  "Gee. I'll try to force myself. By the way, how'd it go with your brother?"

  "You've been so good not to ask."

  "Yeah, well, it's been a hundred miles," Twilly said, "so I'm asking now."

  "It went fine. We had a good talk." And, in a way, they had. Skink dug out Jim Tile's mirrored sunglasses and pinched them to the bridge of his nose. "You taking the Trail across?"

  Twilly nodded. "I thought I would. Nice straight shot."

  "And an awful pretty drive. Drop me at Krome Avenue, I'll hitch to the Keys."

  "Like hell. I want to see this alleged race car." Twilly reached for the stereo. "Is Neil Young OK with you?"

  "Neil Young would be superb."

  So they flew past the exit for the Tamiami Trail and remained on the Ronald Reagan Turnpike. It was the tail of rush hour and the traffic was still clotted; frenzied. The unspoken question bubbling like nitroglycerin inside the Buick Roadmaster was whether they could make it through Miami, whether they could actually get out of the godforsaken city before somebody did something that simply couldn't be overlooked...

  And somehow they did get out, navigating onward through the turgid hellhole of west Kendall toward Snapper Creek, Cutler Ridge, Homestead—until finally the highway delivered them, more or less sane, to Florida City. They glowered at the blighted dreck of mini-marts and fast-food pits until escaping on Card Sound Road, bounded only by scrub and wetlands, and aiming the prow of the Buick toward North Key Largo; both men breathing easier, Twilly humming and Skink even tapping his boots to the music, when—

  "You see that?" Twilly stiffened at the wheel.

  "See what?"

  "That black Firebird ahead."

  "What about it," Skink said.

  But of course he had seen what Twilly had seen: a beer bottle fly out the front passenger's window, spooking a great blue heron off the canal bank.

  "Asshole," Twilly muttered, knuckles tightening on the wheel.

  Another airborne beer bottle, this time from the driver's side. Skink counted four bobbing heads inside the Firebird—two couples, launching a festive vacation. They looked young. The car was a rental.

  "Unbelievable," Twilly said.

  No, it's not, Skink thought dismally. More, more, more...

  The next item of litter from the Firebird was a plastic go-cup, followed by a lighted cigarette butt, which skittered into the crackling dry grass along the shoulder of the road.

  Skink swore. Twilly hit the brakes, threw the station wagon into reverse and backed up to the spot where the cigarette had landed. He jumped from the car and stomped out the small flame, and kept on stomping in tight circles for a full minute. It looked like excellent therapy. Skink felt like joining him.

  When Twilly got back in the driver's seat, he calmly put the pedal to the floor. Skink watched the speedometer tick all the way up to 110. The Firebird was no longer a distant speck on the blacktop; it was getting bigger rapidly.

  "I was wondering," Twilly said, perfectly composed. "You in a rush to get home?"

  Skink thought about it; thought about everything. Palmer Stoat. Dick Artemus. Doyle. Twilly. The hardworking heron whose supper was so rudely interrupted by a beer bottle.

  And he thought of the two couples in the Firebird, laughing and drinking but plainly oblivious to the two unkempt, deeply disturbed men riding their bumper. How else to explain what happened next—an Altoids tin casually ejected through the Firebird's sunroof. It glanced off the windshield of the pursuing station wagon and landed, as trash, in the water.

  Twilly clicked his tongue impatiently. "Well, Governor? Shall we?"

  He thought: Oh, what the hell.

  "Anytime you're ready, son."

  Epilogue

  With the death of robert clapley, the Zurich-based SwissOne Banc Group withdrew all lines of credit for the Shearwater Island Development Corporation, which immediately folded. At a bankruptcy auction arranged by Clapley's estate, his extensive waterfront holdings on Toad Island were sold to an anonymous buyer, who eventually renamed it Amy Island and deeded every parcel for preservation. No new bridge was built.

  norva stinson, the only remaining private landowner on Toad Island, staunchly refused to sell her tiny bed-and-breakfast to the Nature Conservancy for any sum less than $575,000—six times its appraised value. Her demand was politely rejected, and Mrs. Stinson still lives in the house today, subsisting mainly on canned donations from a local church group.

  Three months after the collapse of the Shearwater project, bird-watchers hiking on Toad Island discovered a man's skeleton. The legs had been crushed by an enormous weight, and a Nokia cellular telephone was clutched in the bones of one hand. FBI pathologists later identified the remains as darian lee gash, a convicted felon, registered sex offender and well-known player on the South Beach club scene. The cause of death was determined to be bullet wounds from two different.357-caliber handguns, only one of which was ever recovered.

  The 911 tape recording of Mr. Gash's frantic, though largely unintelligible, plea for help has been included in Volume Four of The World's Most Bloodcurdling Emergency Calls, and widely marketed on television and the Internet. The cassette is priced at $9.95 and the compact disc is $13.95, not including shipping and handling.

  The body of karl krimmler was found in the shallows of a brackish marsh in the pine uplands of Toad Island. He was pinned inside the cab of a Caterpillar D-6 bulldozer that he inexplicably had driven at full throttle into the water. An autopsy determined he had drowned, the pathologist noting "a large number of viable tadpoles in the victim's upper trachea." In the same marsh, police divers discovered a Smith & Wesson model.357 pistol that was later linked to the shooting of Darian Lee Gash. Because of Mr. Gash's checkered past, detectives theorized that the deaths of the two men were a sordid murder-suicide. The remains of dr. steven brinkman were never recovered.

  Following the botched rhinoceros "hunt," the wilderness veldt plantation was raided by federal wildlife agents, who broke into the compounds and discovered twelve impalas, eight Thompson's gazelles, a defanged Malaysian cobra, a juvenile Cape buffalo, three missing circus chimpanzees, a troop of heavily sedated baboons, a mule painted to resemble a zebra, and a feisty two-legged ocelot. The facility was swiftly shut down by the U.S. Attorney's Office, which alleged multiple violations of the Endangered Species Act and other statutes. The rhinoceros known as el jefe was safely recaptured, tranquilized and transported to a protected game reserve in Kenya, not far from where it had been born thirty-one years earlier. Its massive front horn was painlessly removed, so that the ani
mal would have no value to poachers or hunters.

  john randolph durgess relocated to West Texas, where he took a job as a guide on a private 22,000-acre hunting reserve called Serengeti Pines. There he was killed and partially devoured by a wild cougar, which had jumped the fence to feast on imported dik-diks.

  asa lando was hired as an animal handler at Walt Disney World's Animal Kingdom theme park, near Orlando. Two months later he was quietly dismissed, following the unexplained disappearance of the attraction's only male cheetah.

  Double Your Pleasure, Double Your Pain, featuring katya gudonov and tish karpinski, Was released by Avalon Brown Productions and went instantly to home video. Within weeks, the Mattel Corporation obtained an emergency injunction prohibiting the two stars of the film from "performing, portraying, attiring, advertising or in any way representing themselves as Barbie dolls, a trademarked symbol; this order to include but not expressly be limited to such oral and visual depictions as 'Goth Barbies,' 'Undead Barbies,' and 'Double-Jointed Vampire Barbies.' " Both women received unfriendly visits from agents of the U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service, and soon thereafter left the United States on an extended working vacation to the Caribbean.