Carl Hiassen - Sick Puppy

On the morning of April 24, an hour past dawn, a man named Palmer Stoat shot a rare African black rhinoceros. He fired from a distance of thirteen yards and used a Winchester .458, which knocked him flat on his back. The rhinoceros wheeled, as if to charge, before snorting twice and sagging to its knees. Its head came to rest under a spread of palmettos.

Palmer Stoat instructed his guide, a former feed salesman named Durgess, to unpack the camera.

"Let's first make sure she's dead," Durgess said.

"Are you kidding? You see that shot?"

Durgess took the Winchester from his client. He approached the lifeless mass and poked it in the rump with the rifle barrel.

Stoat grinned as he dusted off his mailorder khakis. "Hey, Bungalow Bill, look what I killed!"

While Durgess assembled the video equipment, Stoat inspected his newest trophy, which had cost him thirty thousand dollars, not including ammo and gratuities. When he moved the palmetto fronds away from the rhino's face, he noticed something wrong.

"You ready?" Durgess was wiping down the lens of the video camera.

"Hey, look here." Stoat pointed accusingly.

"I'm lookin'. "

"Care to explain?"

"Explain what? That's a horn," said Durgess.

Stoat gave a yank. It broke off in his hands.

Durgess said, "Now see what you done."

"It's fake, Jethro." Angrily Stoat thrust the molded plastic cone at Durgess.

"The other one's real!" Durgess said defensively.

"The other one's a nub!"

"Look, it wasn't my idea."

"You glued a phony horn on my thirty-thousand-dollar rhinoceros. Is that about right?"

Nervously Durgess cracked his knuckles.

"What'd you guys do with the real one?" Stoat demanded.

"Sold it. We cut it off and sold it."

"Perfect."

"They's worth a fortune in Asia. Supposably some kinda magic dick medicine. They say it gives you a boner lasts two days." Durgess shrugged skeptically. "Anyhow, it's serious bucks, Mr. Stoat. That's the program for all our rhinos. Some Chinaman over Panama City buys up the horns."

"You bastards are gypping me."

"Nossir. A jenna-wine African rhinoceros is what the catalog says, and that's what you got."

For a closer look, Stoat knelt in the scrub. The rhino's cranial horn had been taken off cleanly with a saw, leaving an oval abrasion. There the plastic replacement had been attached with white gummy industrial adhesive. A foot or so up the snout was the animal's secondary horn, the caudal, real enough but unimpressive; squat and wart-like in profile.

"The whole idea," Stoat said irritably to Durgess3 "was a head mount for my den."

"And that's a helluva head, Mr. Stoat, you gotta admit."

"Except for one tiny detail."

Stoat tossed the fake horn at Durgess. Durgess let it drop to the ground, now sodden with rhino fluids. He said, "I got a taxidermy man does fiberglass on the side, he'll fix you up a new one. Nobody'll know the difference, sir. It'll look just like the real deal."

"Fiberglass."

"Yessir," Durgess said.

"Hello, why not chrome – ever thought of that? Rip the hood ornament off a Cadillac or maybe a 450-SL. Glue it to the tip of that sucker's nose."

Durgess gave Stoat a sullen look. Stoat took the Winchester from the guide and slung it over his shoulder. "Anything else I should know about this animal?"

"Nossir." There was no point telling Stoat that his trophy rhinoceros also had suffered from cataracts on both eyes, which accounted for its lack of alarm at the approach of heavily armed humans. In addition, the animal had spent its entire life as tame as a hamster, the featured attraction of an Arizona roadside zoo.

Stoat said, "Put the camera away. I don't want anybody to see the damn thing like this. You'll get with that fiberglass man right away?"

"First thing tomorrow," Durgess promised.

Palmer Stoat was feeling better. He rubbed a hand across the rhino's bristly plated hide and said, "What a magnificent creature."

Durgess thought; If only I had ten bucks for every time I've heard that line.

Stoat produced two thick cigars and offered one to his faithful guide. "Cohibas," Stoat said, "the genuine article." Theatrically he fired up.

Durgess declined. He grimaced at the acrid comingling of fumes, stogie and rhino piss.

Stoat said, "Tell me something, little bwana."

Oh blow me, Durgess almost said.

"How old you figure this animal to be?"

"I ain't too sure."

Stoat said, "She looks to be in her prime."

"Yeah, she does," said Durgess, thinking: Blind, tame, fat and half-senile – a regular killing machine, all right.

Palmer Stoat continued to admire the carcass, as he felt this was expected of a triumphant hunter. In truth, it was himself he was admiring, as both he and Durgess knew. Stoat patted the flank of the carcass and said to his guide: "Come on, man. I'll buy you a beer."

"Sounds good." Durgess took a portable two-way radio from a pocket of his safari jacket. "First lemme call Asa to bring the flatbed."

Palmer Stoat had more than enough money to go to Africa, but he didn't have the time. That's why he did his big-game hunting at local safari ranches,, some legal and some not. This one, located near Ocala, Florida, was called the Wilderness Veldt Plantation. Officially it was a "private game preserve"; unofficially it was a place where rich people went to shoot exotic wild animals. Palmer Stoat had been there twice before, once for a water buffalo and once for a lion. From Fort Lauderdale it wasn't a bad drive, a shade over four hours. The hunts were staged early in the morning, so usually he was home in time for dinner.

As soon as he made the interstate, Stoat got on the phone. He had three cellular lines to his Range Rover, as his professional services were in high demand.

He called Desie and told her about the kill. "It was classic," he said, smacking on the cigar.

"How so?" his wife asked.

"Just being out there in the bush. The sunrise. The mist. The twigs crackling under your boots. I wish you'd come along sometime."

"What did she do?" his wife asked. "When you blasted her, I mean."

"Well – "

"Did she charge?"

"No, Des. Everything was over in a second. It was a clean shot."

Desirata was Palmer Stoat's third wife. She was thirty-two years old, an avid tennis player and an occasional liberal. Stoat's buddies once called her a bunny hugger because she wasn't a fan of blood sports. It all depends on whose blood you're talking about. Stoat had said with a taut laugh.

"I suppose you took video?' Desie said to her husband. "Your first endangered species and all."

"As a matter of fact, no. No video."

"Oh, Dick's office called."

Stoat rolled down the window and flicked the ash off his Cuban. "When?"

"Four times," Desie said. "Starting at seven-thirty."

"Next time let the machine pick up."

"I was awake anyway."

Stoat said, "Who in Dick's office?"

"Some woman."

That really narrows it down, Stoat thought. Dick Artemus was the governor of Florida, and he liked to hire women.

Desie said, "Should I make dinner?"

"No, let's you and I go out. To celebrate, OK?"

"Great. I'll wear something dead."

"You're a riot, Alice."

Palmer Stoat phoned Tallahassee and left a message on the voice mail of Lisa June Peterson, an aide to the governor. Many of Dick Artemus's staff members went by three names, a vestige of their college sorority days at FSU. So far, none of them had consented to have sex with Palmer Stoat, but it was still early in the new administration. Eventually they would come to see how clever, powerful and charismatic Stoat was, one of the two or three top lobbyists in the state. Only in politics would a job like that get you laid; no normal women were impressed by what Stoat did for a living, or even much interested in it.