Dave Barry: Big trouble

As it happens, the Herk household did have a dog, named Roger. Roger was the random result of generations of hasty, unplanned dog sex: Among other characteristics, he had the low-slung body of a beagle, the pointy ears of a German shepherd, the enthusiasm of a Labrador retriever, the stubby tail of a boxer, and the intelligence of celery.

On this evening, Roger was, as usual, patrolling the backyard, but he represented no threat to human intruders. Roger loved humans, all of them, unreservedly. Because you never knew when a human was going to, out of nowhere, like magic, produce food. And Roger really loved food.

What Roger hated was the toad. This was a Bufo marinus, a very large South American toad that had become common in South Florida since its introduction in the 1940s by well-meaning idiots who believed that Bufo would control sugarcane pests. The toads multiplied and thrived in the moist, fetid subtropical soil; before long, they had become the pests.

The particular toad that Roger hated, the Enemy Toad, had thrived to a weight of three pounds; it was a squat, hideous, warty, mud-brown, beady-eyed creature the size of a catcher's mitt. As far as Roger was concerned, this toad was the most evil being in the universe, because it ate his food. Each day, Nina, the maid, would fill Roger's bowl with a heaping mound of dog food and place it on the patio outside the family room. And each day, just as Roger was about to devour his food, the toad, with a startlingly quick movement, would launch its bloated body into the air and land splat in the center of Roger's dish, where it would commence to chow down on Roger's kibble.

The first time this happened, Roger, naturally, tried to eat the toad. Big mistake. In nature, you do not become a big fat toad without a defense against predators, and Bufo marinus had developed a dandy: Behind each eye, it had a gland that secretes a chemical called bufotenine, which is toxic. (It's also hallucinogenic; people have been known to lick these toads to get high. Sometimes, these people die. You could argue that they deserve to.)

So when Roger bit the toad, he got a mouthful of bufotenine. Fortunately for him, he spat it out rather than swallowing it, so instead of going to the Big Kennel in the Sky, he merely got very sick. Roger was not a rocket scientist, but he knew that he'd better not bite the toad again. The toad knew it, too. And so every day, for hours on end, the toad sat in Roger's dish, leisurely eating Roger's food, while Roger sat exactly thirty inches away, growling at the toad. This activity occupied most of Roger's working day, but he made time in his schedule for other important chores such as barking at the doorbell, licking his private region, and greeting any humans who ventured into the yard, in case they had food.

When the two men climbed over the fence this night, Roger trotted happily up to them and gave them a friendly, tail-wagging welcome, which was why they elected not to shoot him. After determining that they did not have any food for him, Roger trotted back to his dish on the patio and resumed growling at his archenemy, the toad. You had to be vigilant.

A few feet away from Roger, on the other side of the sliding-glass door, Anna Herk and her daughter, Jenny, were sitting side by side on the family-room sofa, watching Friends, which they both liked a lot. They were laughing together, and then they stiffened together when they heard the unsteady footsteps of Arthur Herk clomp into the room behind them. He clomped over to the bar and, for the fourth time that evening, filled a tall glass with red wine. Holding the drink and swaying slightly, he stood directly behind Anna and Jenny. They were looking at the TV, but they could feel him back there.

"Why do you watch this shit?" he said.

Jenny, who rarely spoke to her stepfather, said nothing. Anna, willing her voice to be calm, said: "We like this show, Arthur. If you don't like it, you don't have to watch it."

"I watch what I want to watch," said Herk. Anna was tempted to point out that this statement, in the current context, made no sense, but decided against it. For a few seconds, the three of them watched the attractive, witty, zero-body-fat Friends characters, who were sitting on sofas bantering.

Herk said, "Those guys are fags."

Anna and Jenny said nothing.

"Oh yeah," said Herk, "big-time fags, is what I read."

"He can read?" said Jenny, softly, looking straight ahead.

"What did you say?" said Herk, coming around the sofa.

Anna put her arm in front of her daughter. "Arthur," she said, "leave her alone."

"What did you say?" said Herk again, standing in front of Jenny, his head bobbing, wine sloshing from his glass.

Jenny stared straight ahead, as if looking right through Herk. She wished she could disappear into the TV set, become part of Friends, live with fun, nice people instead of this drunk asshole who hated her and hit her mom.

"Arthur," said Anna, knowing that she would pay for this later. "You get away from her."

Herk turned toward Anna, his head still bobbing, his eyes unfocused and red. Anna couldn't believe that she once found this man attractive. He took a step toward her, sloshing more wine. Anna was watching his right hand, the one without the glass. He saw her looking at it, and he made his hand into a fist and jerked it toward her. Anna flinched. Herk liked that. He made her flinch again, then turned and picked up the remote control.

"Let's see what else is on," he said, and he changed the channel.

Outside in the humid darkness, at the edge of the patio, the two men — both swatting mosquitoes; one holding a rifle — were watching the Herks through the sliding-glass door. Their names were Henry and Leonard, and they were being paid $25,000 apiece, plus first-class round-trip expenses from their nice homes in suburban New Jersey, to shoot Arthur Herk with real bullets.

Henry and Leonard had been hired by a Miami company called Penultimate, Inc., where Arthur Herk was a mid-level executive. Penultimate was one of the largest engineering and construction firms in South Florida. It specialized in government contracts, and it made spectacular profits. Penultimate's formula for success was simple: aggressive management, strict employee discipline, and a relentless commitment to cheating. The company lied extravagantly about its technical qualifications, submitted absurdly unrealistic lowball bids to get contracts, and tacked on huge add-on charges. Penultimate was able to do these things because it paid excellent bribes to government officials. Penultimate was as good at municipal corruption as it was bad at actually building things. In political circles, it was well known that Penultimate could be absolutely relied upon to do the wrong thing. In South Florida, a reputation like that is priceless.

Granted, sometimes there were problems. There was the time Penultimate won a large contract to build a prisoner-detention facility in downtown Miami. The facility was supposed to feature a state-of-the-art electronic security-door system, and the taxpayers certainly paid for a state-of-the-art security-door system. But what actually got installed was a semi-random collection of hardware that included, as a central element, garage-door openers purchased on sale at Home Depot for $99.97 apiece. The result was that, during a bad lightning storm shortly after the facility went into service, a number of key doors simply opened themselves, leaving it up to the prisoners to decide, on the honor system, whether they wished to remain in jail.

As it happened, 132 prisoners, out of a possible 137, decided that they did not wish to remain in jail. It was a huge story: a horde of criminals, some of them murderers, running loose on the streets of downtown Miami, pursued by a frantic posse of police and media. The highlight came when the capture of an escaped prisoner was shown live, nationally, on the NEC Nightly News, and a reporter shouted to the prisoner, as he was being hustled into a police cruiser, "Who masterminded the escape?"