He walked to the airport parking lot and squinted into the sunlight, not knowing exactly what to look for. A horn honked twice. Stoat turned and saw a white Buick station wagon approaching slowly. A man was driving; no sign of Desie. The car stopped beside Palmer Stoat and the passenger door swung open. Stoat got in. In the backseat lay Boodle, an orange-and-blue sponge football pinned beneath his two front paws. His tail thwapped playfully when he saw Stoat, but he clung to the toy. Stoat reached back and stroked the dog’s head.
“That’s the best you can do?” the driver said.
“He stinks,” said Stoat.
“Damn right he stinks. He spent the morning running cows. Now give him a hug.”
Not in a two-thousand-dollar suit I won’t, thought Stoat. “You’re the one from Swain’s,” he said to the driver. “Where the hell’s my wife?”
The station wagon started moving.
“You hear me?”
“Patience,” said the driver, who looked about twenty years old. He wore a dark blue sweatshirt and loose faded jeans and sunglasses. He had shaggy bleached-out hair, and his skin was as brown as a surfer’s. He drove barefoot.
Palmer Stoat said, “You tried to scare me into thinking you cut up my dog. What kind of sick bastard would do that?”
“The determined kind.”
“Where’d you get the ear and the paw?”
“Not important,” the young man said.
“Where’s Desie?”
“Whew, that cologne you’re wearing… ”
“WHERE IS MY WIFE?”
The Roadmaster was heading north, toward Starke, at seventy-five miles an hour. Stoat angrily clenched his hands; moist, soft fists that looked about as menacing as biscuits.
“Where the hell are you taking me? What’s your name?” Stoat was emboldened by the fact that the dognapper appeared to be unarmed. “You’re going to jail, you know that, junior? And the longer you keep my wife and dog, the longer your sorry ass is gonna be locked up.”
The driver said: “That blonde you sometimes travel with, the one with the Gucci bag—does Desie know about her?”
“What!” Stoat, straining to sound indignant but thinking: How in the world does he know about Roberta?
“The one I saw you with at the Lauderdale airport, the one who tickled your tonsils with her tongue.”
Stoat wilted. He felt a thousand years old. “All right. You made your damn point.”
“You hungry?” the driver asked.
He turned into a McDonald’s and ordered chocolate shakes, fries and double cheeseburgers. As he pulled back on the highway, he handed the bag to Palmer Stoat and said, “Help yourself.”
The food smelled glorious. Stoat came to life, and he quickly went to work on the cheeseburgers. Boodle dropped the foam football and sat up to mooch handouts. The driver warned Stoat not to feed the dog anything from the McDonald’s bag.
“Doctor’s orders,” the young man said.
“It’s all your fault he got sick in the first place.” Stoat spoke through bulging, blue-veined, burger-filled cheeks. “You’re the one who yanked all the glass eyeballs out of my trophy heads. That’s what he ate, the big dope—those taxidermy eyes.”
“From the trophy heads. Yes, I know.”
“And did Desie tell you what his surgery cost?”
The driver fiddled with the knobs on the stereo system. Stoat recognized the music; a rock song he’d heard a few times on the radio.
“I tell you what,” the young man said, “these speakers aren’t half-bad.”
“Why’d you steal my dog?” Stoat swiped at his lips with a paper napkin. “Let’s hear it. This ought to be good.” He finished engulfing one double cheeseburger, then wadded the greasy wax wrapper.
The young man’s eyebrows arched, but he didn’t look away from the highway. He said to Stoat: “Don’t tell me you haven’t figured it out.”
“Figured what out?”
“How I chose you. How all this rough stuff got started—you honestly don’t know?”
“All I know,” Stoat said with a snort, “is that you’re some kinda goddamn psycho and I did what you wanted and now I’m here to collect my wife and my dog.” He fumbled on the door panel for the window switch.
“Oh brother,” said the driver.
Stoat looked annoyed. “What now?”
The driver groaned. “I don’t believe this.”