“Let’s go,” Clapley said. “Maybe they went back to the apartment.”
Palmer Stoat raised a hand. “Hang on.” The stage announcer was introducing the entrants for the final event, a Pamela Anderson Lee look-alike contest.
“Whoa, momma!” Stoat piped.
“If I had a grapefruit knife,” said Robert Clapley, “I’d gouge out my eyeballs.”
“Bob, are you kidding? They’re gorgeous.”
“They’re grotesque. Cheap trash.”
“As opposed to your classy twins,” Stoat said archly, “Princess Grace and Princess Di, who are presently double-fellating some Rastafarian pornographer in exchange for a whole half a gram of Bolivian talc.”
Clapley seized Stoat by the collar. “Palmer, you’re a goddamn pig.”
“We’re both pigs, Bob, so relax. Chill out. I’ll get you a rhino horn and then you’ll win your precious Barbies back.” Stoat pulled free of Clapley’s clutch. “Anyway, there’s nothing you can do to me that hasn’t already been done—starting with that fucking rodent your charming Mr. Gash gagged me with.”
“That was after you tried to rip me off,” Clapley reminded him, “double-billing me for the bridge fix. Or was it triple-billing?”
“So maybe I got a little greedy. But still… ”
Onstage, thirteen Pamela Anderson Lees were dancing, or at least bobbling, to the theme music from the Baywatch television series. Palmer Stoat sighed in glassy wonderment. “Man, we live in incredible times. Look at all that!”
“I’m outta here.”
“Go ahead. I’ll grab a taxi.” Stoat’s gaze was riveted to the pneumatic spectacle onstage. It was just what he needed to take his mind off Desie.
“Don’t call me again until Governor Dickhead signs over the bridge money and you’ve got your hands on some rhinoceros dust. Those are the only two goddamn news bulletins I want from you. Understand?”
Stoat grunted a vague assent. “Bob, before you take off… ”
“What now, Palmer?”
“How about another Cuban?”
Robert Clapley slapped a cigar on the table. “Turd fondler,” he said.
“Sweet dreams, Bob.”
21
On a cool May night, an unmarked panel truck delivered a plywood crate to the Wilderness Veldt Plantation. The crate had been shipped directly to a private airstrip in Ocala, Florida, thereby avoiding port-of-entry inspections by the U.S. Customs Service, Fish and Wildlife and other agencies that would have claimed a jurisdictional interest.
At the Wilderness Veldt Plantation, the scuffed box was loaded onto a flatbed and transported to a low-slung, windowless barn known as Quarantine One. Less than an hour later, Durgess was summoned from home. He was met outside the facility by a man named Asa Lando, whose job title at the hunting ranch was Supervisor of Game.
“How bad?” Durgess asked.
Asa Lando spat in the dirt.
Durgess frowned. “All right, lemme take a look.”
The barn was divided into eight gated stalls, fenced with heavy-gauge mesh from the ground to the beams. Each stall had an overhead fan, a heater and a galvanized steel trough for food and water. The Hamburg delivery was in stall number three.
Durgess said: “You gotta be kiddin’.”
“I wish.” Asa Lando knew he was in trouble. It was his responsibility to procure animals for the hunts.
“First off,” Durgess began, “this ain’t no cheetah.”
“I know—”
“It’s a ocelot or a margay. Hell, it can’t weigh no more’n thirty-five pounds.”
Asa Lando said, “No shit, Durge. I got eyes. I can see it ain’t no cheetah. That’s why I woke you outta bed.”
“Second of all,” said Durgess, “it’s only got two goddamn legs.”
“I can count, too.” Asa sullenly poked the toe of his boot into the sawdust. “Could be worse.”
Durgess glared. “How? If he came in a jar?”
“Look, this ain’t the first time we run into this sorta situation.,” Asa reminded him. “We got plenty clients happy to shoot gimped-out game.”
“Not this client,” Durgess said. One time they’d gotten away with a three-legged wildebeest, but two legs was out of the question, especially for a big cat.
Morosely the men stared through the fencing. With plucky agility, the ocelot hopped over and began rubbing its butt against the links.
“I wonder what the hell happened to him,” Durgess said.
“Doc Terrell says he was likely a-born that way—one front leg, one back leg. All things considered, he’s got an awful decent disposition.”