Read Hazards for Free Online

hate to bother Him unless it’s absolutely necessary.”
    “We’re never leaving the island again,” muttered Ramon unhappily.
    “Why not?” I asked. “I mean, you’ve got your ready-made disguises, so why ain’t you and Miss Felicity out in polite canine and pachyderm society?”
    “We were,” said Miguel. “Well, some of us were.”
    “And some of us have never left the island,” said Felicity. “You’d be surprised how few places in South America an elephant can go without drawing undue attention.”
    “Yeah, I can see where it’s difficult to hide out in a crowd if there ain’t no crowd on hand,” I said. “Maybe you should have hitched a ride to Africa.”
    “I don’t want to go to Africa!” she wailed. “I just want to be a woman again.”
    “Our transformations were completed a decade ago,” said Ramon. “The police are no longer hunting for us. Our case files are closed. We have returned to the island to be changed back into human beings.”
    “Well, that seems reasonable,” I allowed.
    “It’s reasonable,” said Ramon. “It’s just not likely.”
    “Oh?” I said. “Why not?”
    “Because that foul fiend has raised his prices!” growled Ramon.
    “It’s extortion!” chimed in Miguel. “Where is a moose going to get fifty thousand dollars — especially in these difficult economic times?”
    “And there’s no sense threatening him,” added Felicity. “He knows that we don’t dare risk hurting the one man who can turn us back into men and women.”
    “So you figure you’re going to be a full-time long-term elephant?” I asked her.
    She began crying again. “I used to be so beautiful! I never wanted to be an elephant! I wanted to be something sleek and feline. And thin. Do you know what it’s like for someone who counted calories all her life to eat five hundred pounds of grass and shrubs a day on a minimum maintenance diet?”
    “There there,” said Miguel, trying to comfort her. “There there.”
    “And the worse part of it is Cedric!” she continued.
    “Cedric? Who’s Cedric?” I asked.
    “My partner,” said Felicity. “Doctor Mirbeau turned him into a mouse, and now I’m scared to death of him!”
    “What did you two do before you came here?” I asked.
    “Hardly anything at all,” said Felicity. “We didn’t kill anywhere near as many of my husbands as they claimed. Just nine or ten.” She paused. “Maybe twelve at the outside.”
    “You don’t know how many husbands you killed?”
    “Some of them died from natural causes,” she said defensively.
    I didn’t see no sense in arguing with her, because it was certainly natural for a heart to stop beating after someone had pumped half a dozen bullets into it.
    “At least Cedric is alive and wandering around the island somewhere,” said Ramon. “Not like poor Omar.”
    “Omar was your partner?”
    “Yes.”
    “What happened to him?” I asked. “Did he die on Doctor Mirbeau’s operating table?”
    “No,” said Ramon. “Doctor Mirbeau turned him into a rabbit.” A tear came to his eye. “I ate him.”
    “You ate your own partner?”
    “It was instinct,” said Ramon. “He shouldn’t have run. Ever since the operation I have this compulsion to chase things.”
    “How about you?” I said, turning to Miguel. “You got a partner too?”
    “No,” said Miguel. Then: “Well, not anymore, anyway.”
    “But you did have one?”
    “I had four,” he said. “A father, two sisters, and a brother. It was a family business.”
    “And are they wandering around the island too?” I asked.
    “No,” said Miguel. “I turned them all in for the reward years ago.”
    “So here we are on the Island of Lost Souls,” said Ramon, “just a few hundred yards from the man who could transform us back into human beings but refuses to do so.”
    “Sometimes I get so frustrated I could just sit on him,” said Felicity.
    “I know you’re having dinner with him tonight, Doctor Jones,” said