Carl Hiassen - Sick Puppy

The vice chairman of the House Appropriations Committee rubbed his jaw thoughtfully. With his other hand he touched a button on the Nikkormat, still hanging from his neck, and set off the automatic rewind. The hum from a swarm of wasps would not have been more unsettling to Dick Artemus.

Ruefully his eyes fell on the camera. "You got some pictures, huh?"

Willie Vasquez-Washington nodded. "A whole roll."

"Color or black-and-white?"

"Oh, color."

Dick Artemus turned and stared straight ahead. Just then, a white-tailed buck crashed out of the cabbage palms and entered the path in front of the truck. The agent who was driving stomped the accelerator and swerved expertly around the deer.

"Nice move!" Willie Vasquez-Washington cheered, bouncing in the seat.

The governor never flinched, never blinked.

"Willie," he said, wearily.

"Yeah?"

"What is it you want?"

Twilly Spree tried to go after McGuinn but he was chased down and tackled by Clinton Tyree, who whispered in his ear: "Let it happen, son."

Said it with such a startling serenity that Twilly understood, finally, what sustained the man – an indefatigable faith that Nature eventually settles all scores, sets all things straight.

So they let the dog go, then watched as the rhinoceros snorted to action. It ran halfway up the slope before turning back toward the hunting party, which dissolved in bedlam. Viewed from the bank of the knoll, the debacle unfolded with eerie, slow-motion inevitability – the two idiots swinging their rifles as the beleaguered rhino attempted to cut between them, a triangulated aim turning linear and deadly. And when the shots rang out, it indeed appeared that Palmer Stoat and Robert Clapley had managed to blast one another in a brainless cross fire.

Skink and Twilly were quite surprised to see both men lever to their knees. They were somewhat less surprised to see the rhino swing around once more, this time charging blind from behind the shooters.

Skink sucked in his breath. "Say good night, Gracie."

Clapley was groping inanely in the grass when the rhinoceros scooped him up at a full trot. His screams carried up the slope, echoing among the caws of grumpy crows. Like a frog on a gig, Clapley frantically tried to push himself off the rhino's horn (which at forty-nine centimeters would have been considered truly a splendid prize). Furiously the animal bucked its head, tossing and goring Clapley as it ran.

Ran directly at the injured Palmer Stoat, whose Winchester was in pieces and whose reflexes were in disarray. Stoat spastically waved one pudgy arm in an attempt to intimidate the beast (which, Skink later noted, couldn't possibly have seen him anyway; not with Robert Clapley's body impaled so obtrusively on its nose). With McGuinn nipping at its hocks, the rhinoceros – all two and one-quarter tons of it – flattened Stoat as effortlessly as a beer truck.

Twilly and Skink waited to come down off the hill until the animal had run out of steam, and the zebra-striped Suburban carrying the governor and his bodyguards had sped away. One of the guides remained on the ground, balled up like an armadillo. Skink checked on him first, while Twilly went through the messy formality of examining Palmer Stoat. The lobbyist's eyes were open, fixed somewhere infinite and unreachable. They reminded Twilly of the glassy orbs he'd removed from Stoat's animal heads.

The exhausted rhinoceros had returned to the shade of the live oak and collapsed to its knees. From thirty yards away, Skink and Twilly could hear the animal wheezing and see the heat rippling off its thick hide. Across the prow-like snout hung Robert Clapley, limp and contorted.

Skink asked Twilly: "What's with the dog?"

Once the armor-plated behemoth had quit playing runaway, McGuinn had grown bored and sniffed elsewhere for mischief: The tree. A human was up in the tree! The dog decisively stationed himself beneath the tall oak and commenced a barking fit, punctuated by the occasional lunge.

To the man in the branches, Twilly said: "You OK up there?"

"Pretty much. Anyway, who the hell are you?" It was the other hunting guide, the one dressed like a mechanic.

"Nobody. We just came for the dog."

"That's yours? You see what all he did?" The man in the tree was highly upset. "You see the holy shitstorm he caused, your damn dog!"

"I know, I know. He's been a very bad boy."

Twilly whistled the dinner whistle. McGuinn, having already lost track of the time of day, fell for it. Sheepishly he lowered his head, tucked his tail and sidled toward Twilly in a well-practiced pose of contrition. Twilly grabbed the leash and held on tight. He didn't want the dog to see what had happened to his former master.

Skink ambled up and seized McGuinn in a jovial bear hug. The Labrador chomped one of Skink's cheek braids and began to tug, Skink giggling like a schoolboy.

Twilly said, "We'd better go."

"No, son. Not just yet."

He got up, took out the .45 and strode purposefully toward the rhinoceros.

"What are you doing?" Twilly called out. In the tumult he'd left his Remington up on the knoll. "Don't!"

As Skink approached the rhinoceros, a voice from the tree inquired: "Are you fuckin' nuts?"

"Hush up," said the former governor of Florida.

The rhino sensed him coming and struggled to rise.

"Easy there. Easy." Skink stepped gingerly, edging closer. His arm gradually reached out, the blue barrel of the Colt pointing squarely at the animal's brainpan – or so it appeared to Twilly, who had kept back. Morosely he wondered why Skink would kill the old rhino now; perhaps to spare it from being shot by somebody else, a cop or a game warden. Meanwhile, McGuinn bucked at the leash, thinking the opossum-smelling man had cooked up a fun new game.

"Hey, what're you doing?" Twilly shouted again at Skink.

The rhino's view remained obstructed by the lumpy object snagged on its horn. El Jefe could not clearly see either the silver-bearded man or the gun at its face, which was just as well, though the man had no intention of harm.

Watching Skink's arm stiffen, Twilly braced for the clap of a gunshot. None came, for Skink didn't place the weapon to the ancient animal's brow. Instead he touched it firmly to Robert Clapley's unblinking right eye, to make absolutely sure the fucker was dead. Satisfied, he stepped back and lowered the gun. The man in the tree hopped down and scampered away. McGuinn barked indignantly, which made the rhinoceros stir once more. With a volcanic grunt and a violent head shake, it launched Robert Clapley's beanbag body, which landed in a khaki heap.

Skink went over and poked it with a boot. Twilly saw him bend over and pick something up off the ground. Later, striding up the slope, he removed the article from his pocket and showed it to Twilly. "What do you make of this?" he asked.

It was a voluptuous blond doll, dressed in a skimpy deerhide outfit of the style Maureen O'Sullivan wore in the old Johnny Weismuller movies. Barbie as Jane.

"Came off Clapley," Skink reported, with a troubled frown. "A girl's doll."

Twilly Spree nodded. "Sick world."

It was seventy-seven steps to the top of the lighthouse. He counted each one as he went up the circular stairwell. Where the steps ended stood a warped door with flaking barn-red paint and no outside knob. The former governor of Florida gave three hard raps, waited a few moments, then knocked again. Eventually he heard movement on the other side; more a shuffling than a footfall.

"Doyle?"

Nothing.

"Doyle, it's me. Clint."

He could hear his brother breathing.

"Are you all right?"

The only light slanting into the stone column came from a row of narrow salt-caked windows. Littering the floor from wall to wall were envelopes – hundreds of identical envelopes, yellowed and unopened. Payroll checks from the State of Florida. It had been a very long time since Clinton Tyree had seen one.