Big Trouble Read Free Page B

gave Puggy a five-dollar bill.
    â€œYou are strong,” he said.
    â€œI guess,” said Puggy. It was true, although a lot of people didn’t see it because he was also short.
    â€œCome back tomorrow,” said the bearded man. “Maybe I have another job for you.”
    That was how Puggy began his employment at the Jolly Jackal. Usually he came to work in the late afternoon and stayed until Leo (that was the bartender’s name) or John (that was the bearded man’s name) told him to go home. Some days they didn’t need him to do anything, but they let him stay anyway. When they did need him to work, it was always moving heavy crates—sometimes from the Mercedes to the room; sometimes from the room to the Mercedes. Each time, when it was done, John gave him a five. One time, Puggy asked what was in the crates. John just said, “Equipment.”
    Mainly, Puggy watched TV and drank beer, which Leo almost never charged him for. It was like a dream. If Puggy had known jobs were like this, he would have tried to get one a long time ago.
    At night, when they told him to leave, he went back to his tree. He had found the tree on his third night in Coconut Grove. He’d spent the first two nights in a park near the water, but some kind of nasty ants were biting him, plus, on the second night, from a distance, he’d seen Eddie and Snake go past, heading toward the dinghy dock. Snake was limping.
    So Puggy went looking for another place. He discovered that, if you walked just a short way in Coconut Grove, you could be in a whole different kind of neighborhood, a rich people’s neighborhood, with big houses that had walls around them and driveway gates that opened by a motor. There were strange trees everywhere, big, complicated trees with roots going every which way and vines all over them and branches that hung way out over the street. Puggy thought it looked like a jungle.
    He found a perfect tree to live in. It was just inside a rich person’s wall, but across a big, densely vegetated yard from the house, so it was private. Puggy got into the tree by climbing the wall; he was a natural climber, even after many beers. About twenty feet up in the tree, where three massive limbs branched off from the trunk, there was a rickety, mossy wooden platform, a kids’ treehouse from years before. Puggy fixed it up with some cardboard on the platform and a piece of plastic, from a construction site, that he could drape over the top when it rained. Sometimes he heard people talking in the house, but whoever they were, they never came back to this end of the yard.
    Late at night, there was always music coming from one end of the house. It was some kind of music with a flute, soft, coming through the jungle to Puggy. He liked to lie there and listen to it. He was very happy the way things were going, both with his career and with his tree. It was the most secure, most structured, least turbulent existence he had ever known. It lasted for almost three weeks.

    â€œI look at this ad,” the Big Fat Stupid Client From Hell was saying, “and it doesn’t say to me, ‘Hammerhead Beer.’”
    Eliot Arnold, of Eliot Arnold Advertising and Public Relations (which consisted entirely of Eliot Arnold), nodded thoughtfully, as though he thought the Client From Hell was making a valid point. In fact, Eliot was thinking it was a good thing that he was one of the maybe fifteen people in Miami who did not carry a loaded firearm, because he would definitely shoot the Client From Hell in his fat, glistening forehead.
    At times like these—and there were many times like these—Eliot wondered if maybe he’d been a bit hasty, quitting the newspaper. Especially the way he’d done it, putting his foot through the managing editor’s computer. He’d definitely burned a bridge there.
    Eliot had spent twenty-one years in the newspaper business. His plan, coming out of college,