Carl Hiaasen - Chomp

“I’m on a tight schedule,” he said, glancing at his wristwatch.

Wahoo ran to the house and returned with his father. Raven Stark handled the introductions. Mickey managed a smile as he shook Derek’s hand.

“We’re lookin’ forward to working with you,” Mickey said, which wasn’t exactly true but it sounded good.

Wahoo appreciated his father’s effort to be respectful. Staging a nature show for a network star like Derek was a big deal. If everything went smoothly, it might lead to more TV jobs.

“Let’s go see Alice, shall we?” said Raven Stark.

The gator was snoozing on the bank of the pond. Derek took one look at the huge reptile and said, “She’s perfect.” Then he turned to Raven Stark. “When can we move her?”

“Move her?” Mickey asked.

Raven Stark said, “We’re going to be shooting on location out by the Tamiami Trail.”

Wahoo thought: Here we go.

“She weighs six hundred and twenty pounds,” his father said.

Derek chuckled. “No worries, mate. We’ll hire a crane and a truck.”

Mickey Cray stepped close to Derek. “Alice doesn’t travel,” he said. “You want Alice? Shoot the scene here.”

Years earlier, Wahoo’s father had constructed a small but convincing Everglades set at one end of the property. There was a lush pool ten feet deep, complete with pickerelweed and water lilies, for staging underwater scenes.

Derek didn’t want to hear about it. “Save your pretty little lake for an air-freshener commercial.”

Mickey said, “If it’s good enough for Disney, it’s plenty good enough for you, mate.”

Wahoo worried that his father would say or do something so insulting that he’d lose the Expedition Survival! job even before it got started.

Raven Stark edged between the men. “What about the smaller gators?”

“They fit in the back of my pickup,” said Wahoo’s father. “They travel fine.”

Derek looked down at Alice, who was still asleep. “She’s the only one I want,” he declared.

Then he turned and stalked off.

In a stiff tone, Raven Stark said, “Mr. Cray, you signed a contract.”

“Which I intend to use as toilet paper-”

Wahoo cut in with a bluff: “Our lawyer looked at the contract. She said it won’t stick.”

Julie wasn’t really a lawyer yet, but it wouldn’t be long.

“Good luck finding another tame gator like Alice,” Mickey said.

Raven Stark bristled. “We paid you a deposit, remember? Eight hundred dollars.”

“Good luck finding that, too.”

Wahoo volunteered to show the fake Everglades set to Derek so he could see for himself how authentic it looked. Raven walked to the car to get him, but she returned alone.

“He’s on the phone,” she reported soberly, “with our producers in California.”

Mickey mumbled something sarcastic under his breath and headed back to the house.

“Look, we can still make this work,” Wahoo said to Raven.

“Not if your father insists on being difficult.”

“I’ll deal with Pop, okay?”

“You’re only a kid, no offense.”

Wahoo tried to remain polite. “I’m his kid. He listens to me.”

“And you guys need the money, right?” Raven looked around at the pens and cages. “It’s got to be expensive, keeping all these animals. This would be a nice payday for your family, no?”

Wahoo felt his throat tighten. “Tell Mr. Badger we’re on.”

Raven was smiling. “How old are you, Wahoo?”

“Old enough to get it done,” he said.

Back at the house, he found his father lying on the couch with an ice pack over his forehead.

Wahoo sat down beside him. “Pop, this show is really important.”

“So’s Alice.” Mickey reached for the TV remote. “Hey, look what I TiVo’d the other night.”

He touched a button and an episode of Expedition Survival! came on the screen-Derek Badger, roaming a rainy jungle in Costa Rica. A teaser at the beginning showed the star sleeping in a hammock made of vines while a fat hairy spider crawled up his bare arm.

Wahoo’s father shook a scarred finger at the TV. “Five bucks says he kills that thing and fries it up for dinner!”

“I’m not taking that bet.”

“You know there’s a cameraman standing two feet away with a can of Raid, ready to blast that poor, pitiful tarantula.”

“It’s showbiz,” said Wahoo.

“The guy’s such a tool!”

“I know, Pop, but we need the work.”

They watched the program for a little while longer. Sure enough, Derek Badger pretended to awaken just before the creeping spider reached his neck. Then he knocked it away and stomped it with a boot. He didn’t fry the flattened victim, though; he grilled it over a small fire, all the time smacking his wormy lips and yammering about how he’d narrowly escaped a horrible, painful death.

However, Wahoo and his father knew something that most faithful viewers of Expedition Survival! didn’t know-that tarantulas almost never bite people. When they do, the sting is no worse than a bumblebee’s.

Grumbling in disgust, Mickey Cray switched off the TV and tossed the remote onto the coffee table. “The other shows we’ve done, even the lame ones, were all about the wildlife,” he said, “but this is just about him.”

Wahoo didn’t like the idea of working for Derek Badger any more than his father did. “Pop, we’ve got bills to pay,” he said. “Alice needs to eat, right?”

“Okay, but Alice doesn’t travel. And that’s final.”

“Fine, Alice doesn’t travel,” said Wahoo. “But you’ve gotta admit, it would’ve been fun watching those bozos try to haul her out of the pond.”

Mickey Cray laughed. “Oh yeah.”

Although she would never say it aloud, Raven Stark believed she was grossly underpaid. Her job title was “senior production assistant,” but in reality she was also a babysitter, nurse, chauffeur, bartender, courier, valet, personal groomer and amateur psychologist.

Derek Badger was a handful.

“We’re late,” she said, knocking once more on the door of his hotel suite.

There was still no response, so she used the plastic key card. Derek wasn’t inside the room; he was standing on the balcony, overlooking a golf course.

Raven said, “For heaven’s sake, put on some clothes.”

The star of Expedition Survival! was clad only in tartan boxer shorts and a pair of black knee-high socks. It wasn’t a pretty sight.

“I refuse to work with that ignorant redneck,” he said, meaning Mickey Cray.

“People are staring, Derek. Let’s go inside.”

“Are you telling me that’s the only humongous alligator available in South Florida, which is the humongous alligator capital of the world?”

Raven was quite familiar with Derek’s tantrums. “This particular specimen happens to be perfect for what we need.”

“Perfect how?” he whined.

“Time to put on your pants. Let’s go.”

The script for Derek’s Everglades adventure called for him to swim beside a huge gator, which required renting one that would tolerate Derek’s nonsense and resist the urge to bite off his fool head. Mickey Cray’s son had assured Raven that Alice had never purposely hurt anybody (he’d again blamed himself for the thumb removal), and that the reptile was accustomed to the noisy presence of camera crews.

“But we can’t stage our biggest scene in some nitwit’s backyard,” Derek complained in the car, traveling to the Crays’ house.

Raven assured him that the family’s Everglades set didn’t look like a backyard. “It looks like a real-life swamp. You’ll be impressed.”

Derek sniffed. “No, they’ll be impressed when they see me jump that monster gator.”