Before spotting the black Lab, Twilly had searched 220 miles of highway and counted thirty-seven other dog carcasses—mostly mutts, but also a golden retriever, two Irish setters, a yellow Lab and a pair of purebred Jack Russell terriers with matching rhine-stone collars. The Russells had perished side by side in a school zone on Coconut Grove’s busy Bayshore Drive. Twilly speculated it might have been a double suicide, if dogs were capable of such plotting. Evidence of a cold and heartless master was the fact that the two stumpy bodies of the Russells lay uncollected in the roadway; they would have easily fit in a grocery bag. It took Twilly twenty minutes to bury the dogs between the roots of an ancient banyan tree. Before that, he had jotted down the numbers off the rabies tags, so that someday—when he had more time—he could track down the owner of the terriers and ruin his or her day.
The roadkill Lab wore no tags or identification collar. Twilly was saddened to think it might be a stray, but he would have been equally depressed to know it was somebody’s beloved pet; a child’s best buddy, or an old widow’s faithful companion. A dead dog was just a sad thing, period. Twilly didn’t feel good about what he had to do, but the animal was long past suffering and the cause seemed worthy.
McGuinn was pacing behind the rental car. He whined and kept his head low, and every few steps he would glance apprehensively toward the trunk, as if expecting the dead Lab to spring out and attack. Twilly calmed McGuinn and put him in the front seat. As an extra precaution, Twilly tethered the leash to the steering wheel. Then he walked back to the rear of the car and snapped open his pocketknife, a splendid three-inch Al Mar from Japan. The blade was wicked enough to shave tinsel.
Twilly was glad the dead dog’s eyes were shut. He stroked its silky brow and said: “Better it’s me than the damn buzzards.” Afterward he tucked the severed ear in his back pocket and drove around Miami until he spotted a FedEx truck on the Don Shula Expressway. For a two-hundred-dollar tip the driver was pleased to pull over for an unscheduled pickup.
10
The king-sized hot tub was outdoors, on the scalloped balcony of Robert Clapley’s beachfront condominium. All four of them peeled off their clothes and slipped into the water—Clapley, Katya, Tish and Palmer Stoat, who needed three cognacs to relax. Stoat was self-conscious about his pudginess, and slightly creeped out by the two Barbies; he wished Clapley hadn’t told him the details.
“Twins!” Clapley had chortled.
“No kidding.”
“Identical twins—in time for next Christmas!”
“They speak English, Bob?”
“Damn little,” Clapley had replied, “and I intend to keep it that way.”
Now one of the Barbies was attempting to straddle Stoat in a balmy swirl beneath tropical stars, and Stoat caught himself peeking under her immense high-floating breasts for telltale surgical scars. Gradually the cognac began to soothe him.
“In Moscow,” Clapley was saying, “there’s a school where they go to become world-class fellatrixes.”
“A what?”
“Blow-job artists,” Clapley explained. “An actual school—you hear what I’m saying!”
“Oh, I hear you.” Stoat thinking: They can hear you all the way to St. Augustine, dip-shit.
Robert Clapley got very loud when he was coked up and drunk. “I’d like to be there for final exams!” he said with a salacious grunt. “I’d like to personally grade those SATs—”
“Which one’s from Russia?” Stoat inquired.
Clapley pointed at the Barbie now laboring to wrap her legs around Stoat’s waist. “Yours!” he said. “You old horndog!”
“And she… went… to… this… ‘school’?”
“She’s the one who told me about it. Isn’t that right, Katya? Show Mr. Stoat what you learned.”
“Me, too!” exclaimed Tish. Her vast bosom pushed a wake like a shrimp trawler as she sloshed across the tub to join her future twin. They spread Palmer Stoat’s legs and, with merry jostling, squeezed between them.
He said, “Really, Bob.”
Robert Clapley laughed. “I should get the camcorder!”
“Not unless you want to see it in pieces.” Normally Stoat was more of a sport, but not tonight. Desie was heavy on his mind; also, the severed dog ear that had been delivered by the FedEx man.