But no—protective, diligent young Sean wouldn’t put the call through to the fornicating ex-Toyota salesman!
“What’s your full given name, son!” Palmer Stoat thundered over the phone.
“Sean David Gallagher.”
“And do you enjoy working at the governor’s mansion? Because one word from me about your obstinate attitude and you’ll be back at the fucking Pizza Hut, windexing the sneeze hood over the salad bar. You follow, son?”
“I’ll give Governor Artemus your message, Mr. Stoat.”
“Do that, sport.”
“And I’ll also say hi to my father for you.”
“Your father?” Stoat sniffed. “Who the hell’s your father?”
“Johnny Gallagher. He’s Speaker Pro Tem of the House.”
“Oh. Right.” Palmer Stoat mumbled something conciliatory and hung up. Goddamn kids these days, he fumed, can’t even get a job without the old man’s juice.
Stoat opened the cigar box and peeked again at the dog paw. “Jesus, what next,” he said, slapping the lid shut.
He tried to remember what the guy had looked like that night at Swain’s, passing him that snarky note. The suntan, the flowered shirt… Stoat had figured the guy for a boat bum, a mate on a yacht. But the face? He was young, Stoat remembered. But the bar had been smoky, Stoat had been half-trashed, and the kid had been wearing dark shades, so… no luck with the face. Desie was the one nasty Mr. Gash should consult. She’s the one who’d spent time with the dognapper.
But the thought of Mr. Gash alone with Desirata made Palmer Stoat cringe. What a scary little prick he was! Stoat wondered if the disgusting baby rat was still alive—mewling and crawling half-blind through his cereal cupboard, no doubt! It was unbelievable. Shocking, really. One of the most powerful human beings in the state of Florida, and here his lofty shining universe had been reduced to a tabloid freak show—dog dismemberers and Barbie-doll fetishists and armed punk-haired sadists who crammed rodents down his gullet!
Thank God they didn’t know about it, all those people who feared and needed and sucked up to Palmer Stoat, big-time lobbyist. All those important men and women clogging up his voice mail in Tallahassee… the mayor of Orlando, seeking Stoat’s deft hand in obtaining $45 million in federal highway funds—Disney World, demanding yet another exit off Interstate 4; the president of a slot-machine company, imploring Stoat to arrange a private dinner with the chief of the Seminole Indian tribe; a United States congresswoman from West Palm Beach, begging for box seats to the Marlins home opener (not for her personally, but for five sugar-company executives who’d persuaded their Jamaican and Haitian cane pickers to donate generously—well beyond their means, in fact—to the congresswoman’s reelection account).
That was Palmer Stoat’s world. Those were his people. This other sicko shit, it had to stop. It would stop, too, once Porcupine Head tracked down the creep who was holding poor Boodle.
Stoat opened the top drawer of his desk and found a favorite stack of sex Polaroids. He had taken them in Paris, while he and Desie were on a weeklong junket paid for by a multinational rock-mining conglomerate. There wasn’t much of Desie to be seen in the photographs—here a thigh, there a shoulder—but it was enough to give her husband a pang in his heart and a tingle in his groin. Where the hell was she?
Palmer Stoat noticed the message light blinking on his answering machine. He punched the play button and leaned back. The first message was from Robert Clapley, sounding uncharacteristically edgy and out of breath.
“It’s about that rhino powder,” he said on the tape. “Call me right away, Palmer. Soon as you get this message!”
The second call, thirty minutes later, also from Clapley: “Palmer, you there? I gotta talk to you. It’s the Barbies, they’re… Call me, OK? No matter how late.”
The third message on Stoat’s machine was from Desie. When he heard her voice, he quickly rocked forward and turned up the volume.
“Palmer, I’m all right. I’m going to be gone for a few days. I just need some time away. Please don’t worry, uh… we’ll talk when I get home, OK?”
She didn’t sound upset or frightened. She sounded perfectly calm. But there was something quite alarming on the tape—a noise in the background. It happened the moment before Desie said good-bye.