“No, Willie, this you’ll dig. Trust me.” Stoat winked and signaled for the check.
Willie Vasquez-Washington’s gaze once more fell upon the cocktail napkin, which he discreetly palmed and deposited in an ashtray. On the drive back to Miami, he thought about the words Palmer Stoat had written down, and envisioned them five feet high, chiseled into a marble facade.
WILLIE VASQUEZ-WASHINGTON
SENIOR HIGH SCHOOL
Asa Lando urged Durgess to check out the horn; the horn was first-rate. Durgess could not disagree. However…
“This rhino is how old?” he asked.
“I don’t honestly know,” said Asa Lando. “They said nineteen.”
“Yeah? Then I’m still in diapers.”
It was the most ancient rhinoceros Durgess had ever seen; even older and more feeble than the one procured for Palmer Stoat. This one was heavier by at least five hundred pounds, which was but a small consolation to Durgess. The animal had come to the Wilderness Veldt Plantation from a wildlife theme park outside Buenos Aires. The park had “retired” the rhino because it was now sleeping, on average, twenty-one hours a day. Tourists assumed it was made from plaster of paris.
“You said money was no object.”
Durgess raised a hand. “You’re right. I won’t even ask.”
“His name’s El Jefe.” Asa Lando pronounced it “Jeffy,” with a hard J.
“Why’d you tell me that?” Durgess snapped. “I don’t wanna know his name.” The guide slept better by pretending that the animals at Wilderness Veldt actually were wild, making the hunts less of a charade. But named quarry usually meant tamed quarry, and even Durgess could not delude himself into believing there was a shred of sport to the chase. It was no more suspenseful, or dangerous, than stalking a pet hamster.
“El Jeffy means ‘the boss,’ ” Asa Lando elaborated, “in Spanish. They also had a name for him in American but I forgot what.”
“Knock it off. Just knock it off.”
Durgess leaned glumly against the gate of the rhino’s stall in Quarantine One. The giant creature was on its knees, in a bed of straw, wheezing in a deep and potentially unwakable slumber. Its hide was splotched floridly with some exotic seeping strain of eczema. Bottleflies buzzed around its parchment-like ears, and its crusted eyelids were scrunched into slits.
Asa Lando said: “What’d ya expect, Durge? He’s been locked in a box for five damn days.”
With a mop handle Durgess gingerly prodded the narcoleptic pachyderm. Its crinkled gray skin twitched, but no cognitive response was evident.
“Besides,” said Asa Lando, “you said it didn’t matter, long as the horns was OK. Any rhinoceros I could find, is what you said.”
Durgess cracked his knuckles. “I know, Asa. It ain’t your fault.”
“On short notice, you can’t hope for much. Not with endangereds such as rhinos and elephants. You pretty much gotta take what’s out there, Durge.”
“It’s awright.” Durgess could see that El Jefe once had been a strapping specimen, well fed and well cared for. Now it was just old, impossibly old, and physically wasted from the long sweltering flight.
“Can he run,” Durgess asked, “even a little bit?”
Asa Lando shook his head solemnly.
“Well, can he walk?’
“Now and again,” said Asa Lando. “He walked outta the travel crate.”
“Hooray.”
“Course, that was downhill.”
“Well, hell,” Durgess said impatiently. “He must move around enough to eat. Lookit the size of the bastard.”
Asa Lando cleared his throat. “See, they, uh, brought all his food to him—branches and shrubs and such. He pretty much just stood in the same spot all day long, eatin’ whatever they dumped in front of his face. Give him a big shady tree, they told me, and he won’t go nowheres.”
Durgess said, “I’m sure.”
“Which is how I figure we’ll set up the kill shot. Under one a them giant live oaks.”
“Oaks we got,” Durgess sighed.
He thought: Maybe we can get us two birds with one stone. Maybe Mr. Stoat’s big-shot hunter would go for a jenna-wine African rhinoceros over a cheetah; even a sleepy rhino was an impressive sight. And El Jefe’s front horn was primo—fifty grand is what Stoat said he could get for a decent one. Durgess idly wondered if the mysterious Mr. Yee might be enticed into a bidding war…