Big trouble

two

As it happens, the Herk household did have a dog, named Roger. Roger was the random result of generations of hasty, unpla

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 Ke

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, A

"Why do you watch this shit?" he said.

Je

"I watch what I want to watch," said Herk. A

Herk said, "Those guys are fags."

A

"Oh yeah," said Herk, "big-time fags, is what I read."

"He can read?" said Je

"What did you say?" said Herk, coming around the sofa.

A

"What did you say?" said Herk again, standing in front of Je

Je

"Arthur," said A

Herk turned toward A

"Let's see what else is on," he said, and he changed the cha

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, ru