Petunia growled at him.

Sturm had sent the clowns over to the vet hospital with a large horse trailer. Frank and Pine lined the inside with chicken wire, preparing it to haul the cats out to Sturm’s ranch, listening to the monkeys chatter and screech at the two men. It took a while, mostly because the construction took a back seat to drinking beer.

* * * * *

Sturm pulled in, followed closely by a giant white SUV. The guy who got out of the driver’s seat was big, as big as Sturm was short. He was near the end of his fifties, and looked like he might have been a football player in his day, but fat had grown off the muscles like a fungus and now everything kind of wilted off his large frame. He walked with a barely perceptible limp as if he was casually cheating at golf wherever he went. He looked like he’d swallowed about a gallon of red food coloring and tried to vomit it back up straight away, but it leaked out and soaked out through his face instead.

He shook Frank’s hand with a hand big enough Frank thought the man might have been wearing a catcher’s mitt. “Bob Bronson. How ya’ doing.”

It was like Castellari: Frank wasn’t sure if the guy was asking a question or just stating a fact. Frank went with a generic, “Good, good,” but Bronson was already moving down the line, attacking the clowns’ hands, beaming, saying, “Bob Bronson. Nice to meet ya,” and “Bob Bronson. Good to see ya.”

The other guy’s name was Fairfax, and he might as well have been wearing a sign that said, “Lawyer.” He wore clothing so new Frank wasn’t surprised when he saw a long sticker on the back of his thigh, announcing to everyone that he wore a 54 waist, 28 length. His boots were so stiff that he winced whenever he took a step.

Sturm wanted to introduce the men to the cats, acting like a proud father showing off his infant daughter for the first time, so Frank walked everyone through a tour of the facilities, having fun with his new words and calculations. The real problem was administering the anesthesia to the animals. You couldn’t just shoot them with tranquilizers every time.

“Why not?” Pine asked.

Frank didn’t have an answer right away. He just felt it was kind of cruel to the cats, but he didn’t want to give that as his real reason. “Lotta problems with that. You never know how much of the tranquilizer was administered for one. Two, there’s always a strong risk of striking the animal in the bone, perhaps tearing cartilage. And if the subcutaneous tissue gets infected…well.” He looked at all of them. “I think we all know what would happen then.”

Everybody nodded sagely.

“Gentlemen,” Sturm said, “I suggest we get this show on the road. My boy, Theo, will be hunting one of these fine animals this afternoon, and Jack and Chuck should be back by now. I’ve been promised that dinner will be served at eight o’clock sharp, and it’s gonna be a goddamn treat, I’m telling you. I got just one word for you, just one word to start them taste buds.” He sucked in a breath, looking around at the semi-circle of men. “Abalone.”

“Algae?” Fairfax cocked his head.

“Abalone,” Sturm said with uncharacteristic patience. “It’s basically just a shellfish, spends its life on the same damn rock, just turning in a slow circle, eating algae and slime and shit. You’ve seen the shells, right? Lot of folks along the coast use ’em for decoration. But not many people have ever tasted abalone, and for good reason. Black market prices go for over ninety bucks a pound. Just wait ‘till you taste it. I give them Japs credit. Nobody even thought about eating ’em here, but not them slant-eyed boys. They figured it out. You fellas just wait.”

* * * * *

Sturm patted Theo’s shoulder and said, “Now, you pick out which one you like. Look at their eyes,” he murmured into his son’s ear.

Theo took his time, walking slowly along the cages, letting his fingers trail along the chain-link fence. The cats watched him out of the corners of their eyes, tails flicking, acting disinterested. Theo stopped at the last cage, curling his fingers through the fence. The lioness inside, a large cat with tinges of black in her muzzle, growled low, almost inaudibly, and pressed her body against the warm cement, tail flicking back and forth. “This one,” Theo breathed.

Sturm looked at Frank expectantly. Frank and Pine rolled the squeaking hand truck down the corridor, maneuvering the anesthetic tank closer. Frank handed the hose to Pine and cranked the two handles open. Pine held the plastic cup as close as he could to the lioness. All four heard the hiss of the gas emit from the end of the tube, but the lioness didn’t move. The men at the far end stood still, trying not to breathe. After ten seconds, the tail flicking grew sluggish, and Frank saw the cat’s muscles relax.

He opened the cage, moving slower than a watch’s second hand. Pine turned his head away and pulled his “Bacon is a Vegetable” T-shirt over his mouth, and tried to hold his breath. Frank crept inside, moving slow, slow. Pine started to work the plastic cup through the chain-link fence. Frank stopped, watching the cat carefully.

“Just fucking do it!” Theo yelled.

The cat flinched. Claws, nearly an inch long and sharper then a needle, erupted from its paws. Frank froze. The cat gradually relaxed. Frank moved forward, slowly, deliberately, took the cup from Pine, and gently placed over the cat’s nose and mouth. Soon, the cat’s head rolled off to the side and before long, it was resting on the cement. Frank kept the cup over the muzzle, letting the cat breathe the anesthesia for a full two minutes, before he crouched down and injected Ace into the lioness’s left back leg. The cat slumped even further, sinking deeper into the concrete. Frank removed the plastic cup and watched and waited. The cat continued to sleep.

He motioned to Jack and Theo and the three of them dragged the sleeping cat to the cage door. There, they lifted her onto a wooden dolly used for carrying heavy pallets of dog food back and forth along the cages. They wheeled the cat out the back door, across the overgrown lawn, to the waiting horse trailer. Once the cat was inside, sprawled awkwardly on a bedding of straw, Frank said, “She should be out, four, five hours, at least. Give her another hour or two to wake up completely, and she’ll be ready for a hunt.”

“Perfect!” Sturm declared after checking his watch. “That’ll be perfect. Goddamn. Couldn’t of worked it out better myself.” He shook Frank’s hand vigorously. “Good timing. Perfect. Thank you for getting this hunt off to a splendid start.”

“Yeah,” Frank said.

“Okay then.” He tuned to the clowns. “Don’t know what the hell all you dipshits are standing around like slack-jawed morons. Snap to it. We got us a hunt to organize.”

Frank wasn’t sure what was left to organize, but he locked the back door to the vet office behind him, and jumped into the Pine’s truck. Everyone pulled out of the parking lot, slowly, slowly, as if it was a funeral procession, instead of a hunt. Sturm led in his pickup, Bronson and Fairfax next, followed by Pine and Frank towing the horse trailer with the sleeping lioness. Chuck and Jack brought up the rear.

* * * * *

The convoy wound its way through town. Folks stopped whatever they were doing, and stood at the edge of the highway, just watching the procession, as if they knew what was inside the horse trailer. The few people actually left in town proper, all stepped out of their shops to witness the parade roll through downtown, watching the vehicles drive slowly away down the highway, shiny and sharp in the afternoon sun.

When they got to the Sturm ranch, Sturm drove right through his front lawn, through the pine trees that surrounded the lawn and the house, and out to the middle of the main field, a dry, dusty expanse that was ostensibly being prepared for next year, but it was obvious that the soil was quite dead. Pine and Frank parked, left the keys and the sleeping lion behind and slowly walked back to the farmhouse, passing a bottle back and forth.