As it happens, the Herk household did have a dog, named Roger. Roger was the random result of generations of hasty, unplanned dog sex: Among other characteristics, he had the low-slung body of a beagle, the pointy ears of a German shepherd, the enthusiasm of a Labrador retriever, the stubby tail of a boxer, and the intelligence of celery.
On this evening, Roger was, as usual, patrolling the backyard, but he represented no threat to human intruders. Roger loved humans, all of them, unreservedly. Because you never knew when a human was going to, out of nowhere, like magic, produce food. And Roger really loved food.
What Roger hated was the toad. This was a Bufo marinus, a very large South American toad that had become common in South Florida since its introduction in the 1940s by well-meaning idiots who believed that Bufo would control sugarcane pests. The toads multiplied and thrived in the moist, fetid subtropical soil; before long, they had become the pests.
The particular toad that Roger hated, the Enemy Toad, had thrived to a weight of three pounds; it was a squat, hideous, warty, mud-brown, beady-eyed creature the size of a catcher's mitt. As far as Roger was concerned, this toad was the most evil being in the universe, because it ate his food. Each day, Nina, the maid, would fill Roger's bowl with a heaping mound of dog food and place it on the patio outside the family room. And each day, just as Roger was about to devour his food, the toad, with a startlingly quick movement, would launch its bloated body into the air and land splat in the center of Roger's dish, where it would commence to chow down on Roger's kibble.
The first time this happened, Roger, naturally, tried to eat the toad. Big mistake. In nature, you do not become a big fat toad without a defense against predators, and Bufo marinus had developed a dandy: Behind each eye, it had a gland that secretes a chemical called bufotenine, which is toxic. (It's also hallucinogenic; people have been known to lick these toads to get high. Sometimes, these people die. You could argue that they deserve to.)
So when Roger bit the toad, he got a mouthful of bufotenine. Fortunately for him, he spat it out rather than swallowing it, so instead of going to the Big Kennel in the Sky, he merely got very sick. Roger was not a rocket scientist, but he knew that he'd better not bite the toad again. The toad knew it, too. And so every day, for hours on end, the toad sat in Roger's dish, leisurely eating Roger's food, while Roger sat exactly thirty inches away, growling at the toad. This activity occupied most of Roger's working day, but he made time in his schedule for other important chores such as barking at the doorbell, licking his private region, and greeting any humans who ventured into the yard, in case they had food.
When the two men climbed over the fence this night, Roger trotted happily up to them and gave them a friendly, tail-wagging welcome, which was why they elected not to shoot him. After determining that they did not have any food for him, Roger trotted back to his dish on the patio and resumed growling at his archenemy, the toad. You had to be vigilant.
A few feet away from Roger, on the other side of the sliding-glass door, Anna Herk and her daughter, Jenny, were sitting side by side on the family-room sofa, watching Friends, which they both liked a lot. They were laughing together, and then they stiffened together when they heard the unsteady footsteps of Arthur Herk clomp into the room behind them. He clomped over to the bar and, for the fourth time that evening, filled a tall glass with red wine. Holding the drink and swaying slightly, he stood directly behind Anna and Jenny. They were looking at the TV, but they could feel him back there.
"Why do you watch this shit?" he said.
Jenny, who rarely spoke to her stepfather, said nothing. Anna, willing her voice to be calm, said: "We like this show, Arthur. If you don't like it, you don't have to watch it."
"I watch what I want to watch," said Herk. Anna was tempted to point out that this statement, in the current context, made no sense, but decided against it. For a few seconds, the three of them watched the attractive, witty, zero-body-fat Friends characters, who were sitting on sofas bantering.
Herk said, "Those guys are fags."
Anna and Jenny said nothing.
"Oh yeah," said Herk, "big-time fags, is what I read."
"He can read?" said Jenny, softly, looking straight ahead.
"What did you say?" said Herk, coming around the sofa.
Anna put her arm in front of her daughter. "Arthur," she said, "leave her alone."
"What did you say?" said Herk again, standing in front of Jenny, his head bobbing, wine sloshing from his glass.
Jenny stared straight ahead, as if looking right through Herk. She wished she could disappear into the TV set, become part of Friends, live with fun, nice people instead of this drunk asshole who hated her and hit her mom.
"Arthur," said Anna, knowing that she would pay for this later. "You get away from her."
Herk turned toward Anna, his head still bobbing, his eyes unfocused and red. Anna couldn't believe that she once found this man attractive. He took a step toward her, sloshing more wine. Anna was watching his right hand, the one without the glass. He saw her looking at it, and he made his hand into a fist and jerked it toward her. Anna flinched. Herk liked that. He made her flinch again, then turned and picked up the remote control.
"Let's see what else is on," he said, and he changed the channel.
Outside in the humid darkness, at the edge of the patio, the two men — both swatting mosquitoes; one holding a rifle — were watching the Herks through the sliding-glass door. Their names were Henry and Leonard, and they were being paid $25,000 apiece, plus first-class round-trip expenses from their nice homes in suburban New Jersey, to shoot Arthur Herk with real bullets.
Henry and Leonard had been hired by a Miami company called Penultimate, Inc., where Arthur Herk was a mid-level executive. Penultimate was one of the largest engineering and construction firms in South Florida. It specialized in government contracts, and it made spectacular profits. Penultimate's formula for success was simple: aggressive management, strict employee discipline, and a relentless commitment to cheating. The company lied extravagantly about its technical qualifications, submitted absurdly unrealistic lowball bids to get contracts, and tacked on huge add-on charges. Penultimate was able to do these things because it paid excellent bribes to government officials. Penultimate was as good at municipal corruption as it was bad at actually building things. In political circles, it was well known that Penultimate could be absolutely relied upon to do the wrong thing. In South Florida, a reputation like that is priceless.
Granted, sometimes there were problems. There was the time Penultimate won a large contract to build a prisoner-detention facility in downtown Miami. The facility was supposed to feature a state-of-the-art electronic security-door system, and the taxpayers certainly paid for a state-of-the-art security-door system. But what actually got installed was a semi-random collection of hardware that included, as a central element, garage-door openers purchased on sale at Home Depot for $99.97 apiece. The result was that, during a bad lightning storm shortly after the facility went into service, a number of key doors simply opened themselves, leaving it up to the prisoners to decide, on the honor system, whether they wished to remain in jail.
As it happened, 132 prisoners, out of a possible 137, decided that they did not wish to remain in jail. It was a huge story: a horde of criminals, some of them murderers, running loose on the streets of downtown Miami, pursued by a frantic posse of police and media. The highlight came when the capture of an escaped prisoner was shown live, nationally, on the NEC Nightly News, and a reporter shouted to the prisoner, as he was being hustled into a police cruiser, "Who masterminded the escape?"
"Ain't nobody mastermind shit" the prisoner shouted back. "The mufuh doors opened."
Even by Miami standards, this was considered a major screwup. Under intense pressure from the media, Penultimate explained, through its dense firewall of high-priced attorneys, that all the blame belonged to… subcontractors. The politicians, who did not want Penultimate to get into trouble, inasmuch as almost all of them had received money from the company, pounced on this explanation like wild dogs on a pork chop: Yes! That was it! Subcontractors were responsible!
Unfortunately for the cause of justice, most of the key subcontractors involved either fled the country or died, generally in boating accidents. Eventually, the investigation lost steam, and the issue degenerated into a vast steaming bog of lawsuits and counter-lawsuits that would not be settled within the current geological era. Everybody lost interest, and Penultimate went back to winning contracts.
One of these was for a six-story downtown parking garage that wound up costing, what with one thing and another, just under four times the original contract figure. Each price increase was approved with virtually no discussion by key political leaders, who were invited to make speeches at the garage dedication ceremony, which fortunately was held outside the structure, which is why only two people were injured when the entire central portion of the structure collapsed during the opening prayer.
Once again there was outrage; once again there were statements and hearings; once again the finger of blame ultimately wound up being pointed at — it is so hard to get good help — those darned subcontractors. Who of course by that point were disappearing faster than weekend houseguests in an Agatha Christie story. And Penultimate continued to prosper and grow and benefit from its reputation as a company that only a fool would mess with.
As it happened, Arthur Herk, in addition to being an abusive alcoholic, was a fool. To pay off a gambling debt, he had embezzled $55,000 from Penultimate. Unbeknownst to him, his bosses, experts in the field of dishonesty and far smarter than Arthur, had discovered the theft almost immediately. They viewed embezzlement as a fairly serious violation of corporate policy, punishable by death.
And so Penultimate had hired two specialized subcontractors, Henry and Leonard, the men waiting in the humid darkness outside the sliding-glass door to the Herk family room. In whispered voices, they were discussing scheduling.
"We shoot him now," Leonard was saying, "we make the eleven-forty flight to Newark."
"I can't shoot him now," Henry said. "He's too close to the women." Henry was the man with the rifle; Leonard's main jobs were to drive and keep Henry company.
"You don't shoot him soon," Leonard said, "I'm dead, from these fucking mosquitoes." He slapped one on his wrist, leaving a quarter-sized blot of blood and bug parts. "Look at this thing," he said. "He's the size of that fucking dog."
"She," said Henry, continuing to watch the Herk family through the window.
"She?" asked Leonard. "She what?"
"The mosquito," said Henry. "It's a she."
Leonard looked closely at the blot on his wrist, then back at Henry. "How fiiefuck can you tell that?" he asked.
"This show on the Discovery Channel," explained Henry. "They said only the female mosquito sucks your blood."
Leonard looked at the blot again. He said, "Bitch."
"What they didn't explain," said Henry, "is what do the male mosquitoes eat?"
"What, are you worried about them?"
"No, I'm not worried about them. I'm just…»
"You want I should go get a fucking pizza for them, set it out here in the jungle so they don't starve?"
"I'm just saying, what do they eat? If they don't suck blood? Is all I'm saying."
"Maybe they suck each other," said Leonard.
Henry had to smile at that, which only encouraged Leonard.
"Oh, Bruth!" Leonard said in a lisping mosquito whisper. "YouhaveaBIGthtinger!"
Henry was quietly quaking with laughter now; his rifle barrel vibrated in the gloom.
Inside the family room, Arthur Herk was methodically, relentlessly changing channels. He was doing this partly because the instinct to change channels is embedded deep in the male genetic code, and partly because he knew his wife and stepdaughter hated it. For a few minutes, Anna and Jenny stared at the flashing jumble of images, expressionless, not wanting to give Herk any satisfaction. Finally, Jenny sighed and stood. Addressing Anna, she said, "I'm gonna go to my room, where it's not so, I don't know… stupid. Good night, Mom."
Herk kept changing channels.
Anna said, "I think I'll let Roger in and go to bed, too."
Herk stopped changing channels and looked at her. She recognized the look. She hoped he'd pass out in the family room tonight. She hoped he would not make it to the bedroom. She rose from the sofa.
Outside, Henry whispered, "They're leaving."
"They're leaving," whispered Matt. He and Andrew, having received a warm but brief welcome from Roger, had moved to an observation point next to a large potted plant at the edge of the patio, about thirty feet from Henry and Leonard.
"Whadda we do?" asked Andrew.
"I think she's gonna let the dog in," said Matt. "When she opens the door, we run up, and I shoot her, and you witness it."
"I'm gonna witness it from here," said Andrew, "in case her father shoots us."
"With what?" said Matt. "The remote control? You gotta come with me so Jenny sees that you witnessed it."
"He has a gun somewhere," Andrew said. "This is Miami."
Matt could not argue with that. Sounding braver than he felt, he whispered, "Come on," and started across the patio toward the sliding-glass door. Andrew followed, reluctantly, a few feet behind.
Henry and Leonard did not see the boys immediately; they were both intently watching Anna Herk as she moved toward the door from the other side.
"Fine-looking woman," Leonard observed.
"Shut up," Henry observed. He raised his rifle and trained the sight on Arthur Herk, thinking about how he was going to do this. If Herk stayed in the room, sitting in front of the TV, it would be easy. But Henry had to be ready in case Herk got up and followed the women out. Henry didn't want to shoot with the women still in the room, but he would if he had to.
Anna Herk reached the patio door, unlatched it, slid it open, and called, "Roger, c'mon, boy." At this point, a number of things happened in extremely quick succession:
— Roger, calculating with his nine functioning brain cells that the chances were better of getting food inside the house with the humans than outside with the Enemy Toad, left his surveillance post and shot, a low-flying, furry missile, through the door opening into the family room.
— Right behind him came Matt, rushing toward the opening, holding his realistic SquirtMaster Model 9000. He had planned to yell, "HEY, JENNY!" but he was very nervous, so it came out more like, "HENNY!"
— Anna, seeing a shape rushing out of the night toward her yelling unintelligibly, screamed.
— Two steps behind, Jenny, hearing her mom scream, then seeing the shape, screamed.
— Arthur Herk, hearing both women screaming, dropped the remote control. Roger immediately went over to see if it was food.
— Outside in the gloom, Leonard said, "What the fuck?"
— In about the same time that it took for Leonard to come to that conclusion, Henry, who had a gift for processing information and making decisions very rapidly, which is why he was the one with the rifle, decided that, whatever this other shooter was there to do, he, Henry, was there to shoot Arthur Herk, and he had better do it right now.
— As Henry was deciding, Matt burst through the door opening past the screaming Anna Herk and aimed his SquirtMaster Model 9000 at the screaming Jenny.
— Arthur Herk, seeing a gunman come through the door, dove forward off the sofa to the floor in front of the television, which was fortunate for Arthur, because…
— maybe a tenth of a second later, a bullet from Henry's rifle passed directly through the middle of the airspace where Arthur's head had been and into the thirty-five-inch diagonal screen of the Herk family TV set, which imploded with a brief, brutal "POP," shattering, in a bright bluish flash, the image of the president of the Hair Club for Men.
— Arthur Herk, hearing the explosion, scrabbled frantically at the floor with his hands and knees and shot forward, alligator-like, out of the family room and into the hallway leading to Nina's room.
— Anna Herk, a mother instinctively and fearlessly protecting her baby, jumped on Matt's back, causing him to stagger forward into Jenny, such that the three of them collapsed to the floor in a human sandwich, with Matt in the middle and both women pounding him and screaming.
— Down the hall, Nina, hearing screams, an explosion, then more screams, opened her door and saw Arthur coming out of a crouch and hurtling down the hall toward her with the face of a crazed animal. She slammed the door, which came violently open again as Arthur burst through it. Convinced she was about to be raped, Nina leaped onto her bed and slithered out the open window, dropped onto the lawn, and, wearing only a blue nightgown, sprinted, barefoot and terrified, into the night.
— At the edge of the patio, Leonard and Henry heard a siren and, without exchanging words, began quickly and professionally to get the hell out of there.
— Thirty feet to the right, Andrew, less professionally but just as quickly, did the same.
— In Roger's dish, the toad, which did not achieve its current station in life by being easily distracted, continued to eat Roger's kibble.
Nina reached the wall first; in fact, in the darkness beneath the huge ficus tree, she ran into the wall. Emitting a sharp, high-pitched cry of pain, she stumbled backward, directly in the path of Leonard, who emerged from a thicket moving at top middle-aged-guy speed and slammed into her, causing her to cry out again as they both went down, with Leonard tripping over her and hitting the wall headfirst, hard.
Three seconds later, Henry, puffing, burst through the thicket and stopped as he saw two entangled shapes on the ground by the wall, both moaning. Crouching, Henry approached the shapes, turning the rifle around in his hands so he could use it as a club.
"Leonard?" he said. "Leonard?"
One of the moaning shapes began, slowly, to sit up. It was not Leonard. Henry raised his rifle and braced himself, ready to strike. He was in that pose when Puggy landed on his head. Henry crumpled to the ground and dropped the rifle, which Puggy, bouncing quickly to his feet, snatched up.
Puggy had never shot a rifle; he had never even touched a rifle. He held this one the way he had seen people hold rifles on TV, kind of looking down the barrel with one eye. He stepped back a few feet and pointed the rifle in the general direction of Henry.
If there had been more light, and if Henry hadn't had searing blasts of pain stabbing his neck and right shoulder, he might have noticed that whoever this stocky little man holding his rifle was, he still had the safety on, and he didn't have his finger inside the trigger guard. If he had been his usual self, Henry might have made a play on this guy — kick his feet out, roll sideways, come up moving, going for the gun he kept in an ankle holster.
But Henry was not his usual self, and he knew it, and could hear that the sirens were very close now, and as much as he wanted to know what was going on here, he figured his best play was to continue getting the hell out of there. Keeping his eye on Puggy, moving slowly, keeping his hands in view, he got his knees under himself, then his feet, then stood up. Puggy watched him.
"I don't want any trouble," Henry said.
"Me neither," said Puggy. Puggy never wanted trouble.
"I'm gonna get my friend here," Henry said.
"Don't touch the girl," Puggy said.
Henry thought, Girl? But he said, "No, no, I'm just gonna get my friend, OK?" He moved slowly to the wall and… shit, there was a girl. What was going on here? He grabbed Leonard's shoulder and shook it.
"C'mon," he said. "Come on, dammit!"
Leonard sat up a little, his eyes starting to focus. First he saw Henry, right over him; then he saw a girl in a nightgown, on the ground next to him; then he saw a guy with a rifle. His head hurt and there was blood in his eyes and he could hear sirens really loud.
He said: "What the fuck?"
"Come on," said Henry, yanking Leonard up, feeling a nauseating stab of pain in his shoulder. He looked one more time at the stocky man, who was still pointing the rifle vaguely in his direction. Henry knew this guy was not a pro. Henry was pretty sure he could get the rifle back — he did not want to leave the rifle — but Leonard was very shaky, and the siren had stopped, which meant the cops were here.
Henry pushed Leonard over to the wall, got his shoulder under Leonard's ass — another stab of pain — and shoved him over the wall; then he followed. He herded Leonard as quickly as he could to the rental car and shoved him into the backseat. He climbed gingerly in the front and drove out of the neighborhood, watching the rearview, thinking about how he was going to word the phone call.