They were parked in palmetto scrub off a dirt road near Zolfo Springs when Vecker Darby came into their lives. It was close to midnight. Presumably, Desirata Stoat was home in Fort Lauderdale with her worthless dick-head of a husband, and Twilly found himself thinking about her. He was sitting in the rental car with an empty pizza box on his lap. McGuinn already had downed supper, four heaping cups of premium dry dog food; Desie had strictly instructed Twilly on which brand to purchase. Vet’s orders, she’d said. Typically, McGuinn wolfed the whole pile in about fourteen seconds. Afterward Twilly would sneak out the antibiotic pills, each concealed in a square-folded slice of rare roast beef, which McGuinn eagerly inhaled.
Twilly had the radio turned up loud for Derek and the Dominoes, so at first he didn’t hear Vecker Darby’s flatbed truck. Certainly he didn’t see it, as Vecker Darby was driving without headlights. Twilly was drumming his fingertips on the pizza box and wondering if, in retrospect, he’d been too hasty in his decision to ditch Mrs. Stoat in Bronson. Not that she would run to the cops; he had a strong feeling she wouldn’t. No, what bothered Twilly was how he sort of missed her. She was good company; plus, she had a lovely laugh. The dog was terrific, a real champ, but he didn’t light up the car the way Desie Stoat did.
I wonder if I’ll ever see her again, Twilly thought.
When the song ended, he turned off the radio. That’s when he heard the truck nearby—specifically, the grinding hydraulics of the flatbed being tilted. McGuinn raised his huge black head and barked. Hush! Twilly whispered. He slipped from the car and circled back through the scrub until he gained a clear view of the truck and what the driver was doing. As the incline of the flatbed steepened, the truck’s unbound cargo began sliding off the back—assorted barrels, drums, tanks and cylinders, tumbling one after another down a gentle mossy embankment toward the banks of the Peace River, where Twilly Spree had hoped to spend a soothing, restful night.
The driver, whose name Twilly wouldn’t learn until he saw it in the paper, didn’t bother to watch his own handiwork. He leaned one hip against the fender and smoked a cigarette and waited until the whole load went down the slope. Then he lowered the flatbed, climbed in the cab and drove the five miles home. Vecker Darby was still in the shower when Twilly hot-wired the truck and raced back to the river to retrieve the barrels, drums, tanks and cylinders. Two hours later, when Twilly returned, Vecker Darby was sleeping in his favorite Naugahyde recliner with six empty Coors cans at his feet and the Playboy Channel blaring on the television.
He failed to awaken when one of the bedroom windows was pried open and the screen was cut, and therefore didn’t see the broken-off end of a plastic rain gutter being inserted into his house by a stranger clad in Vecker Darby’s own canary yellow hazmat moon suit (which Vecker Darby almost never wore but stored faithfully under the seat of his truck, in case of encountering an EPA inspector).
Nor did Vecker Darby awaken during the following ninety minutes, during which approximately 197 gallons of virulent and combustible fluids were funneled from barrels, drums, tanks and cylinders directly into the house. The resulting toxic soup contained the ingredients of xylene, benzyl phythlate, methanol, toluene, ethyl benzene, ethylene oxide and common formaldehyde, any of which would have caused a grave and lasting damage to the Peace River. The risk to an occupied home dwelling was equally dire but would prove far more spectacular, visually.
What finally aroused Vecker Darby from sleep were the caustic fumes. He arose, coughing violently and keenly aware that something was amiss. He fully intended to exit the premises, after first emptying his bloated bladder of beer. Conceivably, he would have survived a brief detour to the bathroom had he not (out of dull, brainless habit) lighted up a Marlboro on the way.
From the stark photograph in the Fort Myers News Press, it appeared that Vecker Darby’s house had burned all the way to the slab. He had lived alone in what was once a small orange grove, miles out of town, so that no one became aware of the inferno until it was spotted by the pilot of a commercial jetliner. By the time the fire engines arrived, even the victim’s flatbed truck had melted to a skeletal husk. The newspaper article identified Vecker Darby as the owner of a private waste-disposal firm, servicing industrial clients from Sarasota to Naples. Farther down the story, it was noted that the late Mr. Darby had once paid a $275 fine for illegally dumping used hypodermics, surgical dressings and other contaminated hospital waste in a public Dumpster behind a Cape Coral kindergarten.