Carl Hiaasen – Sick Puppy

“Dick says you’re the man.” Robert Clapley raised his bourbon and gave a nod.

“Dick exaggerates,” said Palmer Stoat, well practiced at false modesty.

They were having a late lunch at a walnut-paneled country club in a suburb of Tampa. The governor had set it up.

“Dick’s not the only one,” Clapley said, “to sing your praises.”

“That’s very flattering.”

“He explained the situation?”

“In a general way,” Stoat said. “You need a new bridge.”

“Yes, sir. The funding’s there, in the Senate bill.”

“But you’ve got a problem in the House.”

“I do,” Clapley said. “A man named Willie Vasquez-Washington.”

Palmer Stoat smiled.

“Have you got any earthly idea,” said Clapley, “what he’s after?”

“I can find out with a phone call.”

“Which will cost me how much?” Clapley asked dryly.

“The call? Nothing. Getting your problem fixed, that’ll be a hundred grand. Fifty up front.”

“Really. And how much kicks back to your friend Willie?”

Stoat looked surprised. “Not a dime, Bob. May I call you Bob? Willie doesn’t need your money, he’s got other action—probably some goodies he wants hidden in the budget. We’ll work things out, don’t worry.”

“That’s what lobbyists do?”

“Right. That’s what you’re paying for.”

“So the hundred grand… ”

“My fee,” Stoat said, “and it’s a bargain.”

“You know, I gave a sweet shitload of money to Dick’s campaign. I’ve never done anything like that before.”

“Get used to it, Bob.”

Robert Clapley was new to Florida, and new to the land-development business. Palmer Stoat gave him a short course on the politics; most of the cash flying around Tallahassee could be traced to men in Clapley’s line of work.

He said, “I tried to reach out to Willie myself.”

“Big mistake.”

“Well, Mr. Stoat, that’s why I’m here. Dick says you’re the man.” Clapley took out a checkbook and a fountain pen. “I’m curious—is Vasquez-Washington a shine or a spic or what exactly?”

“A little pinch of everything, according to Willie. Calls himself the Rainbow Brother.”

“You two get along?” Clapley handed the $50,000 check to Stoat.

“Bob, I get along with everybody. I’m the most likable motherfucker you’ll ever meet. Hey, do you hunt?”

“Anything that moves.”

“Then I know just the place for you,” said Stoat. “They’ve got every critter known to man.”

“How about big cats? I made space for a hide on the wall of my library,” Clapley said. “Something spotted would go best with the upholstery. Like maybe a cheetah.”

“Name your species, Bob. This place, it’s like where Noah parked the ark. They got it all.”

Robert Clapley ordered another round of drinks. The waitress brought their rib eyes, and the two men ate in agreeable silence. After a time Clapley said, “I notice you don’t ask many questions.”

Stoat glanced up from his plate. “I don’t have many questions.” He was chewing as he spoke.

“Don’t you want to know what I did before I became a land developer?”

“Not really.”

“I was in the import-export business. Electronics.”

“Electronics,” said Stoat, playing along. Clapley was thirty-five years old and had Yuppie ex-smuggler written all over him. The gold, the deepwater tan, the diamond ear stud, the two-hundred-dollar haircut.

“But everybody said real estate’s the smart way to go,” Clapley went on, “so a couple years ago I started buying up Toad Island and here we are.”

Stoat said, “You’re going to lose the ‘Toad’ part, I hope. Switch to some tropical moth or something.”

“A bird. Shearwater. The Shearwater Island Company.”

“I like it. Very classy-sounding. And the governor says it’s going to be gorgeous. Another Hilton Head, he says.”

“It can’t lose,” said Robert Clapley, “as long as I get my bridge.”

“Consider it done, Bob.”

“Oh, I will.”

Palmer Stoat drained his bourbon and said, “Hey, I finally thought of a question.”

Clapley seemed pleased. “Fire away, Mr. Stoat.”

“Are you gonna finish that baked potato?”

That same afternoon, a man named Steven Brinkman was summoned to a cluttered double-wide trailer on Toad Island. Brinkman was a biologist, fresh out of Cornell graduate school, who had been hired as an “environmental specialist” at $41,000 a year by the prestigious engineering firm of Roothaus and Son, designers of highways, bridges, golf communities, office towers, shopping malls, factories and residential subdivisions. Roothaus and Son had been recruited by Robert Clapley to the Shearwater Island project, for which a crucial step was the timely completion of a comprehensive biological survey. Without such a document, the development would be bogged down indefinitely in red tape, at great expense to Clapley.

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