Detective Paco in "The Case of the Hot Camel" (Conclusion)

Through a combination of Wronwright’s mother-camel impersonations and the brawn of the Stuyvesant’s two stocky sons, we were able to get Camilla in the horse-trailer with little trouble. Night had fallen, and it looked as if we had a good chance of avoiding detection by any Libyan snoops who might have been watching from the embassy. We hit the road and, after getting lost and shuffling a third of the way to Buffalo, we backtracked and, in the wee hours of the morning, finally found the narrow rural road that ran past the Stuyvesant’s farm.

“There!” Wronwright said. “See that huge mail-box? ‘The Stuyvesants’”.

I turned up a gravel drive, which snaked for nearly a fifth of a mile through pasture land and ended at a large, white clapboard house with what appeared to be a genuine tin roof. This was definitely the place, all right; the Stuyvesants’ truck and trailer were parked outside the garage. There was a light burning by the front door, and it looked as if some of the interior lights were on, too. I parked our rig, and Wronwright and I got out, stretching luxuriously after the long trip. Camilla had been bleating piteously for the last hour, so we took her out and hitched her to the white rail fence that ran along the front of the house; then, we walked onto the porch, and I tapped lightly on the screen door. I heard Freddie’s voice invite us in.

And there they were, sitting on a sofa in the parlor; however, the couple had become a trio. Freddie and Minnie held down one end of the couch, while a clean-shaven man with curly, iron gray hair and an olive complexion held down the other. But what I was mainly interested in was the MAC-10 machine pistol that the stranger was holding on my clients.

A smile creased the gunman’s face. “Come in, my friends, and join the party!”

We sidled into the room and stood facing them. As bad as the situation looked, my mind was occupied with the stranger’s physiognomy. I hadn’t met the man before, but I knew that face.

Freddie was wearing the most woebegone expression I had ever seen. “I’m sorry, Detective Paco. I could have sworn that I had rattled this fellow.”

“’Shaken’ him, dear”, Minnie corrected her husband.

“Yes, that’s right. I was sure that I had shaken him, so I headed here to the farm. Imagine our surprise when he came pushing his way into the house a few minutes after we arrived.”

Oh, I could imagine their surprise, all right. I was feeling a considerable wave of that particular emotion myself.

The gunman, who apparently felt that he wasn’t getting his fair share of good lines, horned in on the conversation.

“In my country, camel rustling is considered a grave offense.”

“In your country?” I inquired.

“Yes. Libya, of course.”

And then it clicked. I finally recognized him, from photos I had seen in the paper.

“Abdel Basset Ali al-Megrahi,” I muttered. “The Lockerbie bomber.”

Al-Megrahi opened his eyes wide, and a wicked smile once again spread across his map.

“Fortunately, that’s not what my passport says, Detective Paco.”

The Stuyvesants gasped, and threw their arms around each other.

“So,” I said, “you’re back in the saddle with Libyan Security again, are you?”

“Well,” he chuckled, with fake modesty, “Gaddafi seems to think I’m pretty good at it. And this little venture was child’s play.”

Minnie said, in a low, trembling voice. “But you were released from prison because you were terminally ill.”

Our new friend laughed. “It seems that the doctors – my compatriots, you’ll remember – turned out to be quite mistaken in their diagnosis. You have no idea how surprised and relieved I was to hear it.”

I stared at him with disgust. “We share your surprise, but you’ll have to pardon us for not joining in your relief.”

He shrugged, and brandished the gun in my direction. “A pity you have recognized me, Detective Paco. It looks like you and your partner, there, have – how do you say? – ‘bought the farm.’ I will take care of you two, first, and then this charming old couple can help me transport the camel back to the embassy. Your husband will drive the trailer, Mrs. Stuyvesant, and you will ride with me in my car – as a guarantee of good conduct by your better half. And I really must insist that you both stay at the embassy and enjoy our hospitality. Now, let’s get going. Hands held high over your head, if you please” He motioned us toward the front door with his gun.

We filed out of the house and gathered around Camilla. Al-Megrahi, covering us with the MAC-10, patted her head. “She doesn’t look any the worse for her little trip.” He slowly began to circle the camel. I whispered to Wronwright. “Have you got any of those butane burritos handy?”

Wronwright pursed his lips. “How can you think of eating at a time like this?”

“Just slip one to me!”

“All I’ve got left is this half-eaten one.”

“Perfect!”

Wronwright handed me the burrito, which I quickly held up to Camilla’s mouth. She hadn’t had anything to eat for hours, so she greedily wolfed it down. Al-Megrahi was standing directly behind her.

A few seconds later, her eyes almost popped out of her head. She bawled angrily, lowered her head, and began kicking violently with her hind legs. Her hitch broke, and she ran off, vanishing into the night.

I steeled myself to tackle the Libyan, who I figured would have been startled by the bucking camel, maybe (I sincerely hoped) dropping his guard as a result. But he had simply dropped, period. He was sprawled on the ground, to all appearances gazing up at the stars, and he had a curious indentation on his forehead that looked remarkably like the footprint of a camel.

I kneeled down to inspect him more closely, checking his pulse, and then stood up and wiped my hands on my pants. “Mr. and Mrs. Stuyvesant, this man is dead.”

“Oh, dear me,” Minnie practically whispered. “Camilla killed him.”

I shook my head and wagged a finger. “No, ma’am. She executed him.”

Wronwright snapped his fingers and started bellowing. “Hey, I know that one! Witness for the Prosecution!”

“Huh?”

“Charles Laughton has just got Tyrone Power off on a murder charge, but he’s really guilty and his wife, Marlene Dietrich, stabs him, and somebody says, ‘she killed him’, and then Laughton says, ‘No, she executed him’”. He stood there beaming, as if he were nine years old and he’d just won a spelling bee.

“All right, all right,” I muttered. “I didn’t say it was original. But it’s true, folks. This man was a terrorist who masterminded one of the most heinous mass murders in history, and he was released from jail as part of an oil deal, on the obviously false pretext that he was terminally ill. Al-Megrahi still owed justice a debt; this is simply the collection of a payment deferred.”

“Payment Deferred! Another great Charles Laughton film, and also very appropriate. You see, Laughton murders his wealthy nephew…”

“Enough with Charles Laughton’s filmography, ok, Wronwright?” While I mulled the situation over, Freddie cleared his throat and spoke up.

“I suppose,” he inquired uncertainly, “that we should call the police?”

I looked at Minnie, who suddenly gave me a coy smile. “Would that be one of the better policies, Detective Paco?”

She was a cool customer, no doubt about it. I grinned in spite of myself. “Yes, but perhaps not the best policy.” Turning to Freddie, I said, “Bringing the police into this matter would just create a lot of confusion. We’d have to explain the whole business about the camel, which you’d have to return to the Libyans, and then there’s this dead terrorist we’ve got on our hands, and who knows what vindictive action Gaddafi might take in connection with his bizarre demise. Tell me something, Mr. Stuyvesant; about that greenhouse of yours…those carnivorous plants of yours just eat bugs, right?”

“Well, they do consume them, but it’s really an opportunistic form of feeding. They draw most of their nutrients from the soil.”

“What do you think your plants would make of a man-sized meal?”

“You mean…bury the fellow in the greenhouse?” Freddie got that wistful look, again, wondering, no doubt, about nature’s short-sightedness in failing to create a species of T-Rex flora.

“Wronwright and I can take care of the burial, your plants get enough fertilizer to last for months, and you get to keep Camilla.”

The Stuyvesants agreed to my proposal, so Wronwright and I performed the necessary task. An hour later, we walked into the house, washed our hands, and were offered some piping hot coffee by our clients.

Freddie seemed a little anxious about the whole thing. Poor fellow, I thought to myself. He probably wasn’t expecting anything this dramatic when he embarked on a life of crime. I sighed, and offered to change the plan. “Mr. Stuyvesant, I realize this is a lot for you to take on. Would you like us to dig up the body and dispose of it somewhere else?” Wronwright shot me an angry stare; he had the aspect of a man who has done all the shovel work he intends to for one day.

“What?” Freddie asked vacantly. “Oh, no, no, I wasn’t thinking about the legal problem of having a corpse buried in the greenhouse. I was just wondering about Mr. al-Megrahi’s acid content.”

“His…what?”

“Well, I’m worried that he may have an adverse effect on the soil’s pH balance. My carnivorous plants are rather sensitive to that sort of thing. How deep did you bury him?”

“The regulation six feet.”

“Oh” he said, greatly relieved. “That ought to be fine, then.”

The new day was dawning, and our attention was arrested by a plaintive bleating noise outside the front door. We all proceeded into the yard, and there was Camilla. One glance at Wronwright, and she began frisking and gamboling with joy. He walked over and let her nuzzle his face one last time. When he turned, he was wiping a tear from his eye. “Damned hay fever”, he said. I pretended to believe him.

My partner and I then discussed our mopping-up operation. He would drive the rented trailer, and I would follow in al-Megrahi’s sedan. We’d both pull over at some likely spot near the state line and abandon the car, then I’d ride with him the rest of the way to Englewood and we’d return the trailer to the Stuyvesants’ sons. Fortified with Minnie’s strong coffee, we said our good-byes and began the long return trip home.

* * *

The scene: the large dining room in the Libyan ambassador’s home in Englewood, New Jersey. The ambassador’s distinguished guest – Muammar Abu Minyar al-Gaddafi, Brotherly Leader and Guide of the Revolution – sits at one end of the mahogany dining-room table, among a somber group of Libyan diplomatic and security officials. He is attired in one of his more subdued uniforms: a maroon tunic with white Sam Brown belt, and lavender pants tucked into the kind of tall riding boots that J.E.B. Stuart would have envied. There is a moody scowl on his face causing him to resemble an Easter Island statue that has just stubbed its toe.

“So, Mr. Ambassador, there has been no word from al-Megrahi at all?”

“No, Excellency, he seems to have vanished from the face of the earth. He simply said something about being hot on the trail of the stolen camel.”

Gaddafi sighed. It had perhaps been a bad idea to accede to al-Megrahi’s wishes and let him come to the United States to work his terrorist magic against the Number One Enemy. And he had so been looking forward to a dish of roast baby camel meat.

“Well, what’s on the menu, then?”

At that moment, the ambassador’s dining room staff paraded into the room from the kitchen, laden with covered silver dishes. The ambassador nervously fingered his tie and cleared his throat.

“I’m sorry, Excellency, but we had a power outage today and we were not able to prepare the kind of meal that would be truly worthy of your refined person. I am afraid we had to send for take-out.”

A servant placed a dish in front of Gaddafi and removed the cover, revealing two pale, pocket-shaped lumps of food. The Libyan strongman sniffed at it skeptically.

“What is this stuff?”

“Oh, it’s quite good, Excellency! It comes from a local shop that is famous for this specialty. It’s called a “bean burrito.”