As the parade disbanded, Pedro Luz eased the wheelchair off the curb and approached the Seminole float. The pretty young singer was not to be seen; there was only the driver of the float and Dr. Kukor, the park veterinarian, who had climbed aboard to revive the heatstruck lioness. Dr. Kukor was plainly flabbergasted by the sight of Pedro Luz.
“I lost my foot in an accident,” the security chief explained.
Dr. Kukor hadn’t noticed the missing foot. It was the condition of Pedro Luz’s face, so grossly inflated, that had generated the horror. The man looked like a blow-fish: puffed cheeks, bulging lips, teeny eyes wedged deep under a pimpled, protuberant brow.
To Pedro Luz, Dr. Kukor directed the most inane inquiry of a long and distinguished career: “Are you all right?”
“Just fine. Where’s the young lady?”
Dr. Kukor pointed, and Pedro Luz spun the wheelchair to see: Princess Golden Sun stood behind him. She was zipping a black Miami Heat warm-up jacket over the halter.
Pedro Luz introduced himself and said, “I’ve seen you before, right?”
“It’s possible,” said Carrie Lanier, who recognized him instantly as the goon who shot up her double-wide, the creep she’d run over with the car. She noticed the bandaged trunk of his leg, and felt a pang of guilt. It passed quickly.
“You sing pretty nice,” Pedro Luz said, “but you could use a couple three inches up top. If you get my meaning.”
“Thanks for the advice.”
“I know a doctor who specializes in that sort of thing. Maybe I could get you a discount.”
“Actually,” said Carrie, patting her chest, “I kind of like the little fellas just the way they are.”
“Suit yourself.” Pedro Luz scratched brutally at a raw patch on his scalp. “I’m trying to figure where I saw you before. Take off the wig for a second, okay?”
Carrie Lanier pressed her hands to her eyes and began to cry—plaintive, racking sobs that attracted the concern of tourists and the other pageant performers.
Pedro Luz said, “Hey, what’s the matter?”
“It’s not a wig!” Carrie cried. “It’s my real hair.” She turned and scampered down a stairwell into The Catacombs.
“Geez, I’m sorry,” said Pedro Luz, to no one. Flustered, he rolled full tilt toward the security office. Speeding downhill past the Wet Willy, he chafed his knuckles trying to brake the wheelchair. When he reached the chilled privacy of the storage room, he slammed the door and drove the bolt. In the blackness Pedro Luz probed for the string that turned on the ceiling’s bare bulb; he found it and jerked hard.
The white light revealed a shocking scene. Someone had entered Pedro’s sanctuary and destroyed the delicate web of sustenance. Sewing shears had snipped the intravenous tubes into worthless inch-long segments, which littered the floor like plastic rice. The same person had sliced open every one of Pedro’s unused IV bags; the wheelchair rested, literally, in a pond of liquid dextrose.
But by far the worst thing to greet Pedro Luz was the desolate sight of brown pill bottles, perhaps a half-dozen, open and empty on the floor. Whoever he was, the sonofabitch had flushed Pedro’s anabolic steroids down the John. The ceramic pestle with which he had so lovingly powdered his Winstrols lay shattered beneath the toilet tank.
And, on the wall, a message in coral lipstick. Pedro Luz groaned and backed the wheelchair so he could read it easier. A wild rage heaved through his chest and he began to snatch items from the storage shelves and hurl them against the cinder block: nightsticks, gas masks, flashlights, handcuffs, cans of Mace, pistol grips, boxes of bullets.
Only when there was nothing left to throw did Pedro Luz stop to read the words on the wall again. Written in a loopy flamboyant script, the message said:
Good morning, Dipshit!
Just wanted you to know I’m not dead.
Have a nice day, and don’t forget your Wheaties!
It was signed, “Yours truly, J. Winder.”
Pedro Luz emitted a feral cry and aimed himself toward the executive gym, where he spent the next two hours alone on the bench press, purging the demons and praying for his testicles to grow back.