Carl Hiassen - Sick Puppy

"Somebody took him – "

"You don't know that."

" – and it's all your fault."

"Desie, now."

It was his fault that she was so jittery. In retrospect, he shouldn't have shown her what had been done to the trophy heads in the den. Yet at the time Stoat was half-wondering if the furtive vandal might be Desie herself; maybe she'd gone postal on him. She definitely was no fan of his big-game hobby – he remembered the grief she'd given him about the rhinoceros kill. And, in truth, it wasn't difficult to envision his wife perched on the library ladder and using one of the sterling lobster forks – a wedding gift from the pari-mutuel industry – to meticulously remove the simulated eyeballs from his hunting trophies.

But Desie couldn't have been the one who had done it. Palmer Stoat knew by her reaction to the macabre pentagram on the desk and the wall of eyeless animal faces. Desie had paled and run from the room. Later she implored her husband to hire some security guards to watch the house; she didn't feel safe there anymore. Stoat said, Don't worry, it's just some local weirdos. Kids from the neighborhood breaking in for kicks, he told her. But privately he suspected that both the glass eyeball episode and the desecration of the BMW were connected to his lobbying business; some disgruntled, semi-twisted shithead of a client ... or possibly even a jealous competitor. So Stoat had the locks on the house changed, got all new phone numbers, and found an electronics dweeb who came through and swept the place for listening devices. For good measure, he also polygraphed the maid, the gardener and the part-time cook. Desie made her husband promise to set the alarm system every night from then on, and he had done so faithfully ...

With the exception of the previous night, when he'd gone to a Republican fund-raiser and gotten so plastered that a cab had to carry him home. The time was 3:00 a.m., an hour at which Stoat could barely identify his own house, much less fit the new key in the door; typing a nonsequential five-digit code on the alarm panel required infinitely too much dexterity.

Still, he couldn't believe somebody had snuck in behind him and grabbed the Labrador. For one thing, Boodle was a hefty load – 128 pounds. He had been trained at no small expense to sit, fetch, shake, lie down, heel, and not lope off with strangers. To forcibly abduct the dog, Stoat surmised, would have required more than one able-bodied man.

Then Desie reminded him that Boodle wasn't functioning at full strength. Days earlier he had been rushed into emergency surgery after slurping five of the glass eyeballs from Stoat's desktop. Stoat didn't notice the eyes were missing until the taxidermy man came to repair the mounts. Soon afterward Boodle grew listless and stopped eating. An X ray at the veterinarian's office revealed the glass orbs, lodged in a cluster at the anterior end of the Lab's stomach. Four of them were removed easily during a laparotomy, but the fifth squirted into the intestinal tract, out of the surgeon's reach. Another operation would be needed if Boodle didn't pass the lost eyeball soon. In the meantime the dog remained lethargic, loaded up on heavy antibiotics.

"He's gonna die if we don't get him back," Desie said morosely.

"We'll find him, don't worry." Stoat promised to print up flyers and pass them around the neighborhood.

"And offer a reward," Desie said.

"Of course."

"I mean a decent reward, Palmer."

"He'll be fine, sweetie. The maid probably didn't shut the door tight and he just nosed his way out. He's done that before, remember? And he'll be back when he's feeling better and gets hungry, that's my prediction."

Desie said, "Thank you, Dr. Doolittle." She was still annoyed because Palmer had asked the veterinarian to return the glass eyes Boodle had swallowed, so that they could be polished and re-glued into the dead animal heads.

"For God's sake, get some new ones," Desie had beseeched her husband.

"Hell no," he'd said. "This way'll make a better story, you gotta admit."

Of the surgically retrieved eyeballs, one each belonged to the Canadian lynx, the striped marlin, the elk and the mule deer. The still-missing orb had come from the Cape buffalo, Stoat's largest trophy head, so he was especially eager to get it back.

Her own eyes glistening, Desie stalked up to her husband and said: "If that poor dog dies somewhere out there, I'll never forgive you."

"I'm telling you, nobody stole Boodle – "

"Doesn't matter, Palmer. It's your dumb hobby, your dumb dead animals with their dumb fake eyeballs. So it's your damn fault if something happens to that sweet puppy."

As soon as Desie had left the den, Stoat phoned a commercial printer and ordered five hundred flyers bearing a photograph of Boodle, and an offer of $10,000 cash to anyone with information leading to his recovery. Stoat wasn't worried, because he was reasonably sure that none of his enemies, no matter how callous, would go so far as to snatch his pet dog.

The world is a sick place, Stoat thought, but not that sick.

Twilly Spree had followed the litterbug's taxi from the party to the house. He parked at the end of the block and watched Palmer Stoat stagger up the driveway. By the time Stoat had inserted the key, Twilly was waiting thirty feet away, behind the trunk of a Malaysian palm. Not only did Stoat neglect to lock the front door behind him, he didn't even shut it halfway. He was still in the hall bathroom, fumbling with his zipper and teetering in front of the toilet, when Twilly walked into the house and removed the dog.

With the Labrador slung fireman-style across his shoulders, Twilly jogged all the way back to the car. The dog didn't try to bite him, and never once even barked. That was encouraging; the big guy was getting the right vibrations. The smart ones'll do that, Twilly thought.

Even after they got to the motel, the Lab stayed quiet. He drank some cold water from the bathtub faucet but ignored a perfectly scrumptious rawhide chew toy.

"What's the matter, sport?" Twilly asked. It was true he often spoke to animals. He didn't see why not. Even the bobcat with which he'd shared a tent in the swamp. Don't bite me, you little bastard is what Twilly had advised.

The dog settled in at his feet. Twilly patted its glossy rump and said, "Everything's going to be all right, buddy." He couldn't bring himself to address the animal by the name on its tag – Boodle. It was a quaint synonym for bribe, Palmer Stoat at his wittiest.

"From now on," Twilly said to the dog, "you're McGuinn."

The Lab raised its head, which seemed as wide as an anvil.

"After a great guitar player," Twilly explained. The dog uncurled and stretched out on his side. That's when Twilly noticed the tape and bandage. He knelt beside the dog and gingerly peeled the dressing from a shaved patch of belly. Beneath the gauze was a fresh surgical incision, in which Twilly counted twelve steel staples. He pressed the tape back in place and lightly stroked the dog's ribs. It let out one of those heavy sighs that Labs do, but didn't appear to be in pain.

Twilly worried about the wound, wondered what could have gone haywire on such a strapping critter – the gallbladder? Do dogs even have gallbladders? I know they get arthritis and heart disease and autoimmune disorders and cancers – for sure, they get cancer. All this was going through Twilly's mind; a juicer commercial on the television and Twilly hunched with his elbows on his knees, on the corner of the bed, with McGuinn snoozing on the burnt-orange shag.

That dog, it had the softest breathing for an animal that size. Twilly had to bend close to hear it, the breathing like a baby's in a crib.

And Twilly thinking: This poor fella's probably on some heavy-duty dope to get past the surgery. That would explain why he'd come along so meekly. And the longer Twilly thought about it, the more certain he became about what to do next: Return to Palmer Stoat's house and find the dog's medicine. Risky – insanely risky – but Twilly had no choice. He wanted nothing bad to happen to McGuinn, who was an innocent.