This time Twilly knew it for a fact: He was shot. The slug slammed into the right side of his chest and knocked him goony. He didn't fall so much as fold.
He heard the wind blowing. Desie sobbing. That weird sleigh-bell jingling in the trees. His own heart pounding.
Twilly believed he could even hear the blood squirting from the hole in his ribs.
And a strange new voice, possibly imaginary.
"I'll take it from here," it said, very deeply.
"What? Like hell you will." That was Mr. Gash, the killer.
"The boy comes with me."
"Ha! Pops, I should've shot your ass, back up the road. Now get the fuck outta here."
"Mister, run! Go get help! Please." That would be Desie.
"Shut up, Mrs. Stoat" – the killer again – "while I blow this sorry old fart's head off."
"I said, the boy's mine." The deep voice, astoundingly calm.
"You mental or what? I guess maybe so," Mr. Gash said. "Whatever. It's just one more dead troublemaker to me."
Twilly felt himself sliding away, as if he were on a raft spinning languidly downriver. If this was dying, it wasn't half-bad. And if it was only a dream, he had no desire to awaken. Twenty-six years of unspent dreams is what they owed him.
On impulse he decided to summon McGuinn – a dog was always good company on a river.
"I said, the boy is mine. "
Who's he talking about? Twilly wondered. What boy?
He also wondered why he could no longer hear himself whistling, why suddenly he couldn't hear anything at all.
24
"What is it you want, Willie?"
The age-old question. Palmer Stoat tinkled the ice cubes in his glass and awaited a reply from the vice chairman of the House Appropriations Committee.
"You and your rude-ass manners," Willie Vasquez-Washington said. "Man, I'll tell you what I want. I want the Honorable Richard Artemus to not fuck with my spring snow skiing, Palmer. I want to be in Canada next week. I do notwant to be in Tallahassee for some bullshit 'special session.' "
"Now, Willie, it's too late – "
"Don't 'now Willie' me. This isn't about the schools budget, amigo, it's about that dumb-ass bridge to that dumb-ass Cracker island, which I thought – no, which you told me ! –was all ironed out a few weeks ago. And then ... " Willie Vasquez-Washington paused to sip his Long Island iced tea. "Then your Governor Dick goes and vetoes the item. His own baby! Why?"
Palmer Stoat responded with his standard you-don't-really-want-to-know roll of the eyes. They were sitting at the bar in Swain's, the last place on the planet where Stoat wanted to retell the squalid dognapping saga. After all, it was here the lunatic had sent the infamous phantom paw. The bartender was even rumored to have named a new drink after it, to Stoat's mortification.
"Fine. Don't tell me," said Willie Vasquez-Washington. "But guess what? It ain't my problem, Palmer."
"Hey, you got your inner-city community center."
"Don't start with that."
"Excuse me. Community OutreachCenter," said Stoat. "Nine million bucks, wasn't it?"
"Backoff!"
"Look, all I'm saying ... " The lobbyist dropped his voice, for he did not wish to appear to be insulting an Afro-Haitian-Hispanic-Asian-Native American, or any combination thereof (assuming Willie Vasquez-Washington was telling the truth about at least one of the many minorities he professed to be). In any case, the upscale cigar-savoring clientele at Swain's was relentlessly Anglo-Saxon, so the presence of a person of color (especially one as impeccably attired as Representative Vasquez-Washington) raised almost as many eyebrows as had the sight of the severed Labrador paw.
"Willie, all I'm saying," Palmer Stoat continued, "is that the governor kept his end of the deal. He did right by you. Can't you help him out of this one lousy jam? These were circumstances beyond his control."
"Sorry, man."
"We can't pull this off without you."
"I'm aware of that." Willie Vasquez-Washington, drumming his fingernails on the oak. "Any other time. Palmer, but not now. I've been planning this vacation for years."
Which was a complete crock, Stoat knew. The junket was being paid for secretly by a big HMO as a show of gratitude to Willie Vasquez-Washington, whose timely intervention had aborted a potentially embarrassing investigation of certain questionable medical practices; to wit, the HMO encouraging its minimum-wage switchboard operators to make over-the-phone surgical decisions for critically ill patients. What a stroke of good fortune (Stoat reflected wryly) that Willie Vasquez-Washington played golf every Saturday with the State Insurance Commissioner.
"Willie, how's this? We fly you in for the Toad Island vote, then fly you straight back to Banff. We'll get a Lear."
Willie Vasquez-Washington eyed Stoat as if he were a worm on a Triscuit. "And you're supposed to be so damn sharp? Lemme spell it out for you, my brother: I cannot skip the special session and go skiing, like I want. Why? Because they would crucify my ass in the newspapers, on account of the newspapers have bought into the governor's bullshit. They think we're all headed back to the capital to vote more money for poor little schoolkids. Because, see, the papers don't know jack about your bridge scam. So I am one stuck-ass motherfucker, you follow?"
Now it was Willie Vasquez-Washington's turn to lower his voice. "I'm stuck, man. I gotta go to this session, which means no skiing, which means the wife and kids will be supremely hacked off, which means – sorry! – no new bridge for Honorable Dick and his friends."
Palmer Stoat calmly waved for another round. He handed a genuine Montecristo Especial No. 2 to Willie Vasquez-Washington, and lighted it for him. Stoat was mildly annoyed by this impasse, but not greatly worried. He was adept at smoothing over problems among self-important shitheads. Stoat hoped someday to be doing it full-time in Washington, D.C., where self-importance was the prevailing culture, but for now he was content to hone his skills in the swamp of teeming greed known as Florida. Access, influence, introductions – that's what all lobbyists peddled. But the best of them also were fast-thinking, resourceful and creative; crisis solvers. And Palmer Stoat regarded himself as one of the very best in the business. A virtuoso.
Shearwater! Jesus H. Christ, what a cluster fuck. It had cost him his wife and his dog and nearly his life, but he would not let it cost him his reputation as a fixer. No, this cursed deal wouldget done. The bridge would get funded. The cement trucks would roll and the high rises would rise and the golf courses would get sodded. The governor would be happy, Robert Clapley would be happy, everybody would be happy – even Willie Vasquez-Washington, the maggot. And afterward they would all say it never would have come together except for the wizardly lobbying of Palmer Stoat.
Who now whispered through a tingling blue haze to the vice chairman of the House Appropriations Committee: "He wants to talk to you, Willie."
"I thought that was your job."
"Face-to-face."
"What the hell for?"
"Dick's a people person," Stoat said.
"He's a damn Toyota salesman."
"He wants to make this up to you, Willie. He wants to know what he can do to make things right."
"Before the session starts, I bet."
Stoat nodded conspiratorially. "They'll be some money floating around next week. How's your district fixed for schools? You need another school?"
"Man. You serious?" Willie Vasquez-Washington laughed harshly. "Suburbs get all the new schools."
""Not necessarily," said Palmer Stoat. "There's state pie, federal matching, lottery spill. Listen, you think about it."