Блейз Клемент - Duplicity Dogged Тhe Dachshund

An old mango tree at the far end of the wall emitted a pungent odor of rotten fruit, and I could hear the scurrying of fruit rats as I approached. Careful not to step on any of the mushy mangoes on the ground, I slipped under the overhanging branches and stopped behind the tree’s thick trunk. A rat the size of a cat leaped past me with a mango in its mouth, giving me a red-eyed glare as if it thought I had come to steal its booty.

Cautiously, I angled my head so I could see the back of the house, but all I got was a view of a five-car garage and the pavement in front of it. All the garage doors were closed. Above the garage, the deck shimmered in the afternoon sun. A blue-and-white-striped table umbrella made an occasional movement from the sea breeze, but that was the only sign of life. No doors slammed, no car motors started, no music or conversation sounded. With Reggie’s keen senses, I was surprised he wasn’t barking at the fruit rats. Or at me. But maybe he wasn’t here. Maybe Denton had taken him someplace else. I didn’t want to think about the someplace else he might have taken him.

After a while I got the prickly, uneasy feeling that happens when somebody is staring, as if eyes were boring into the back of my head. I looked behind me, but all I saw was a screen of palmetto fronds, potato vines, and trailing banyan branches. No-see-ums were beginning to snip at my flesh and get into places no living creature should get into without specific permission. If I ever gave permission to go there, it wouldn’t be to an invisible biting insect. Not that anybody was asking.

I looked at my watch. It would soon be time to start on my afternoon pet rounds, and the drive home would take me about forty minutes. I shouldn’t have come here. I should have stayed home and taken a nap. What had I expected to see, anyway?

A sound reached me, the mechanical whine of the front gate swinging open, then the sound of a car engine. A shiny red car came to a jerking stop in front of the garage. I squinted through the leaves at it. I knew that car. It was the classic red Honda I’d seen in Birdlegs Stephenson’s garage. I knew the man getting out of it too. It was Leo Brossi, still with his nose taped and wearing dark glasses to hide his swollen eye.

One of the garage doors lumbered up, and Denton Ferrelli strolled out to meet Brossi. They stood close together and spoke in low tones for a couple of minutes, then Brossi laughed and stepped back.

He said, “Where you going to kill him?”

Denton said, “I thought I’d take him out to the country where nobody can see.”

“That’s good. You can throw him in the river for the alligators.”

“You want to come watch?”

“Sure. I haven’t seen a dog killed in a long time.”

Denton went back inside the garage and came out with Reggie on a leash. My mouth went dry. Now I knew why Reggie hadn’t barked. He wore a muzzle buckled around his mouth to keep him quiet. He looked listless too, as if he were drugged or exhausted.

Brossi said, “I don’t want that dog in my car. He might shit or throw up or something.”

Denton looked down at him with a pouting frown, but went back inside the garage and prodded Reggie into the backseat of a black Land Rover. Denton backed the car out of the garage, and Leo Brossi got in the passenger side. Denton swung the car back and then moved forward toward the front gate. As they drove off, I could see them laughing.

I ran for the Bronco, pulling out my cell phone as I went. I started the motor while I punched in Guidry’s number. Something seemed different, and I looked at the phone screen.

“Fuck!”

There was no light on the screen, no nagging little logo of a lone battery trying to get my attention. My phone was dead.

I threw the phone on the passenger seat and waited until I was sure Denton had turned onto Gulf of Mexico Drive before I tore out after him. This wasn’t about catching the killer of Conrad and Stevie Ferrelli anymore. This was about preventing Reggie’s murder.

At Gulf of Mexico Drive, I looked south and saw Denton’s car half a mile ahead. I stayed well back, passing cars that got in my line of vision, but not getting close enough for him to recognize me. At St. Armand’s circle, I slowed at every crosswalk to let wilted pedestrians creep across the street, then turned onto John Ringling Boulevard and picked up speed. Denton had had to slow down too, though, so I hadn’t lost him. We raced over the new causeway to the mainland, where Denton hung a right along the curve of the bay.

Keeping my eyes on Denton and traffic, I tried the cell phone again, as if it might have resurrected itself. It was still dead. I had the feeling that it was glad I was being punished for not charging it, like its nasty little electric innards were saying, See what you made me do?

I sped up to get through a yellow light before it turned red, and got closer to Denton to make sure I hadn’t lost him. That was him, all right. That was Leo Brossi in the passenger seat and that was Reggie standing muzzled and forlorn in the backseat. We were going south on Tamiami Trail. At Clark Road, which leads to Interstate 75 or the Myakka River, Denton turned.

I got a sick taste in my mouth. Birdlegs had said Gabe Marks lived in the country near the Myakka River. Now Brossi’s crude jibe about throwing Reggie to the alligators seemed even more cruel, because he probably meant it literally. The Myakka River is full of brooding alligators waiting for new flesh to eat.

After a few miles, Denton crossed 75 and continued southeast. Toward the Myakka. Perhaps toward Gabe Marks’s place.

I slowed the Bronco and pulled to the shoulder. This was insane. I should turn around now. I should go home and make my afternoon rounds. I should go home and plug in my dead cell phone and recharge its battery. I should wait for Guidry to bring a transmitter for me to wear when I accosted Denton Ferrelli.

But Denton had Reggie with him, and he planned to kill him. Reggie wasn’t a fellow human being, but he was a fellow being, and he was a damn sight more deserving of respect than a lot of humans.

While Denton’s car got smaller and smaller in the distance, I sat and debated with myself. Then I took my foot off the brake and drove straight ahead. In the end, it all boiled down to one thing—if I didn’t try to save Reggie, I would never be able to live with myself.

Out of the city, Clark Road becomes State Highway 72. There was enough traffic to keep me from feeling conspicuous, but I stayed three or four cars behind Denton. After about ten miles of orange groves and vegetable and plant farms, he left the highway, turning right on a side road. To let him get farther ahead, I stopped on the highway shoulder for a couple of minutes before I turned. The new road was a paved farm-to-market that cut between densely wooded pinelands interspersed with occasional cattle farms. The pines had once been farmed for turpentine, but when the turpentine market bottomed out, trees were cut to make way for cows.

Denton’s Land Rover was a black dot ahead of me. I imagined him laughing with Leo Brossi as they planned Reggie’s murder. The black dot turned left and disappeared, and I stomped on the gas. When I reached the turn, he was already half a mile away. If he had been observant, he might wonder at a car taking the same route. On the other hand, he was headed directly toward the Myakka River and the popular Myakka River State Park. The park comprises almost thirty thousand acres of prairie grasses and wildflowers that have been obliterated in the rest of Florida, so it’s a state treasure. The Myakka flows through twelve miles of the park on its way to Charlotte Harbor. Outside the park, a few farmers and ranchers cling to a way of life that in just one generation has become an anachronism.