Bad Monkey (31 page)

To the agent from Oklahoma he said, “Tell me about this fugitive.”

Evan Shook wasn’t worried about Yancy’s safety but rather the tranquillity of the neighborhood and, by extension, the finalization of his real estate deal. As excited as they were about their new house, the Lipscombs would probably walk away from the closing should a gruesome homicide occur at the residence next door. Evan Shook
wondered what Yancy had done to place himself in mortal jeopardy—maybe some low-life gangster he’d once busted had escaped from prison and now was vengefully pursuing him.

“Her name is Plover Chase,” said John Wesley Weiderman, “most recently using the alias of Bonnie Witt. You know her?”

“I don’t.” Evan Shook thinking:
Yancy’s desperado is a chick?

“They were romantically involved for a while,” the agent added.

“Oh no,” Evan Shook said, though it was hardly shocking that his neighbor would date a nut job.

“Here’s a photograph provided by her husband. Did Mr. Yancy ever introduce you to any of his girlfriends?”

“Never.” Evan Shook looked at the picture and said, “She was here the other day. Some younger guy was with her, not the sharpest knife.”

“They’ve since parted ways,” reported Agent John Wesley Weiderman.

“They were squatting in my house—tent, sleeping bags, the whole deal. She said they drove all the way from somewhere and got ripped off. I gave them money for a motel.” Evan Shook looked once more at the photo before handing it back; definitely the same woman. “But she never once mentioned Yancy,” he said.

The lawman told him that Plover Chase had jumped bail from a sex-crimes conviction in Tulsa County.

“What kind of sex crime?” Evan Shook’s imagination began to tingle.

“Sir, I’d rather not get into that.”

“But she’s dangerous, you say?”

“Evidently she’s upset with Mr. Yancy because he’s dating someone new, a doctor. It’s possible she intends to harm both of them,” said John Wesley Weiderman. “However, you should also know Ms. Chase doesn’t have a history of violence. Her past offense was one of … I guess you’d call it exploitation.”

Evan Shook clicked his tongue in fake consternation. In fact he was deeply intrigued. Never had a woman exploited him in a sexual way, but it sounded exhilarating compared to the listless bedroom comportment of his wife and even, in recent months, his mistress.

“These triangle situations can get messy,” the agent from Oklahoma was saying, “and you can never predict how individuals might
react. I was told Ms. Chase might be coming here to settle a score. Arson is a possibility.”

“Holy Christ,” Evan Shook said, although privately he felt that losing Yancy as a neighbor would be good for the subdivision; the man’s dumpy-looking house definitely dragged down property values. Should the fugitive set the place ablaze, Evan Shook would manufacture a milder story for the Lipscombs—it had been a sad accident, Yancy falling asleep with a lighted cigarette or whatever.

“Please let me know if you see anything unusual going on next door,” said Agent John Wesley Weiderman.

“Absolutely. Do you have a card?”

“Of course.”

“And may I see her photo again? Just in case.”

“Here, keep it. I’ve got copies.”

“Thank you,” said Evan Shook, trying to mask an excitement he knew was inappropriate.

Neville couldn’t sleep because he couldn’t stop thinking about the man named Yancy, hurrying off to the house rented by Christopher Grunion and his woman. Why had Yancy gotten so worked up when Neville told him about finding Christopher’s shirt sleeve? Neville had been hoping that the American policeman—if that’s what he really was—would be an ally in the fight to save Green Beach.

Yet what could Mr. Yancy accomplish tonight, all by himself, with a damn hurricane coming? Was his intention to go arrest Christopher? Egg would beat him senseless first, maybe even kill him.

So Neville put on his clothes and took Yancy’s fly rod and left Joyous’s place through the back door. He borrowed her daughter’s bike and pumped as fast as he could toward Bannister Point. Soon headlights appeared in front of him—a car weaving recklessly, forcing Neville to veer off the road.

It was Christopher’s yellow Jeep. In the driver’s seat sat Egg; one massive hand was holding the steering wheel while the other gripped the hair of a frightened dark-haired woman. Neville thought she looked Cuban or maybe from Puerto Rico.

By the time he reached Christopher’s place, Neville was wind-beaten
and drenched to the skin. Silvery needles of rain cut sideways through the broad wash of floodlights. The coconut palms heaved and shook like wild-maned giants. To Neville these visions appeared otherworldly though not hellish, for he’d been through hurricanes before. Drawing closer he heard back-and-forth shouts and he darted forward, careful to remain in the shadow lines.

At the north corner of the house stood three figures holding a triangular formation while the weather raged around them. One was Mr. Yancy; he was facing the others. The second person was a woman, Christopher’s woman, clutching a piglet or some sort of small critter. The man with his back to Neville was large enough to be Egg but he had too much hair. It had to be Christopher, and the thing he was pointing at Yancy had to be a gun.

Unfolding in a slice of light, the scene confirmed to Neville the ruthless criminality of Christopher and also the importance of the American. Christopher wouldn’t go to the trouble of shooting a man unless he posed a serious threat.

Neville had no time to search for a heavy rock or a limb. He snapped Yancy’s fly rod over one knee, rushed up behind Christopher and stabbed him hard with the broken stub. The impact splintered the rod’s graphite tubing down to the cork grip and unseated the reel, which fell into a puddle.

Neville wasn’t a young fellow, but his arms were strong from years of conching and boat work. And while the fly rod was designed to wiggle at the tip, the butt segment was stiff and inflexible. Christopher Grunion dropped face-forward with the smallest of cries, the shotgun pinned beneath him. His woman began to caw and hop about on her knees.

Neville grabbed Yancy by the arm and said, “Come along, mon.”

“I can’t.”

“Run!” Neville was now pushing the American ahead of him, through the hedges and trees, away from the floodlit house, down the road into the teeth of the wind.

After a hundred yards Yancy halted abruptly and bent at the waist.

“Rosa,” he gasped.

“Who’s dot?”

“My girlfriend. She’s still back there.”

“No, she ain’t,” Neville said.

Yancy straightened. “But she’s alive?”

“Yeah, mon, I seen her.”

“Okay. Okay.” The cop was still panting, fists on his hips. In the sky lightning flared, giving Neville a metallic glimpse of the American’s face, exactly what he was thinking.

“Tell me where she is, Mr. Stafford.”

“I tink I know,” said Neville, waiting for more thunder.

Twenty-three

Driggs was a white-faced capuchin born into a show-business clan. His father had worked for a few seasons on a popular television comedy called
Friends
, and an older female cousin had appeared with several look-alikes in
Ace Ventura: Pet Detective
, a high-grossing feature film starring Jim Carrey. Swinging deeper into the family tree, a great-great-grandmother of Driggs’s had played the organ grinder’s sidekick in an edgy Parisian musical about the Nazi occupation, the cross-dressed primate sporting hand-polished jackboots and a Hitler-style mustache clipped from Belgian broom bristles.

Born Baby Tom, Driggs was reared among other domestic capuchins on a ranch outside Santa Barbara. He showed none of his forebears’ gifts for acting—his disposition was prickly, his attention span fluttering. Unlike his camp mates, he failed to outgrow an adolescent preoccupation with his own genitalia, and this too hampered his career.

A scrotum-grooming reverie, broadcast live on the stadium Jumbotron, brought an end to a short-lived stint as the official “Rally Monkey” of the Los Angeles Angels. The next morning, his team of exasperated trainers sold Driggs to a freelance animal wrangler named Martell, who hoped to cash in on the monkey boom that was sweeping through cinema and television.

Thanks to an improbable connection at Disney studios—Martell had succesfully housebroken a dwarf lemur belonging to the senior comptroller—Driggs was allowed to audition for a series of action movies based on a popular theme-park ride called Pirates of the Caribbean.
The part naturally called for the garb of a pint-sized swashbuckler. Knowing Driggs was averse to costuming, Martell prepped his would-be star for the audition by spiking the animal’s noontime Snapple with a shot of Wild Turkey. No more relaxed performer ever set foot on the Disney lot. Two months later, he was in the Bahamas with Johnny Depp.

Driggs had been hired as a backup to another capuchin, Dolly, who was docile, obedient and attention-loving. Martell hoped she and Driggs might become off-camera playmates, and that Driggs would begin to chill in her company. It didn’t happen.

Because some of the film’s stunts were staged to occur on a ship’s rigging—no place for a drunken monkey—Martell had halted the palliative dispensation of bourbon. Predictably, Driggs reverted to the execrable antics that had cost him the Angels gig. From remote shooting locations on Great Exuma came reports of unprovoked biting, wanton vandalism, wardrobe destruction and of course feces throwing, the signature method of protest for unhappy simians. Depp was spared only because Driggs tolerated him, but several other actors and even one of the stuntmen refused to come on the set unless it was Dolly’s turn to work.

Her demure presence, far from calming Driggs, pitched him into a state of fiendish priapism that literally came to a head when an assistant director caught him jerking off on a rack of brunette wigs. Driggs and, by association, Martell were fired within the hour. The studio agreed to pay the trainer’s airfare back to Nassau though not the expensive connecting segments to Los Angeles. No return ticket was provided for Driggs, not even in cargo.

Worn out by his dissolute trainee, Martell unloaded Driggs for seventy-five Bahamian dollars to a sponge fisherman from Andros, who was bloodied and soiled by his new pet on their homeward passage. That winter, kind fate appeared as a casual game of dominoes in which the sponger happily took a flop in order to divest the horrid creature on a gullible fellow named Neville Stafford from Lizard Cay.

Neville was a gentle, patient man, and the capuchin did not despise him. The name change from Tom to Driggs was an easy adjustment, as was the dietary switch from healthy seedless fruits to batter-fried chicken, conch fritters and coconut cakes, which Driggs soon learned
to crave. His skin grew scaly and then inflamed, and thereafter he began losing his fur in handfuls. The unattractive condition was worsened by the tropical heat, and by the nonstop feasting of doctor flies and mosquitoes. Wild capuchins smash millipedes and smear themselves with the guts as a natural insect repellent, but Driggs was too far removed from his Central American roots to innately know that trick. Consequently he remained wretched and welted during the summers, which possibly explained why Neville cut him so much slack.

Throughout Rocky Town the animal became notorious for his crudities and hotheadedness. The only people who thought he was cute were rum-dented tourists and of course the daffy Dragon Queen, who remained convinced he was an unusually small boy, not a monkey. No sooner had the strange old woman taken ownership of Driggs than he began to miss life with Neville. Unsentimental by nature, capuchins do possess keen memories—and Driggs was quite aware that his situation had taken a downward turn.

Never once had Neville teased or prodded Driggs the way the voodoo witch did. The animal hated human diapers but at least Neville had been diligent about changing the dirty ones; the lazy Dragon Queen would let Driggs sit for a whole day in his own shit unless he caused a scene. She also dressed him in cheap doll clothes that made him snarl at his own reflection in the coffeepot. The shack in which she lived was smelly and vile even by monkey standards, whereas Neville had always kept his house tidy and open to the sea breezes.

Driggs did enjoy riding up and down the road on the old woman’s motorized scooter chair, though he disliked the capering dances that she made him perform; to defy her, however, meant there would be no fritters. And no pipe, either.

Smoking had been taught to him by the Dragon Queen as a comic stunt, diabolically reinforced with ladles of peanut M&M’s. The loopy witch never told him not to inhale, so in short order Driggs became addicted to the Dunhill blend provided by the hag’s companion, a hulking hairless figure whose jealousy of Driggs was as plain as the fungus beneath his toenails.

Some nights, after the Dragon Queen passed out, the man called Egg would leer at Driggs and whisper harrowing taunts. The monkey would bare his teeth and squeal until the old woman stirred; once he
even hurled an empty liquor bottle that Egg deflected with a forearm. The bottle shattered on the floor and roused the Dragon Queen, who punished Driggs by lashing him with his own leash, something that had never occurred during all his time with dull, reliable Neville.

That’s when Driggs began plotting an escape. An opportunity came the very next day when the old lady and her companion became tangled on the scooter chair during a braying act of human sex that the monkey mistook for a terrible fight. Swiftly Driggs made his move, snatching a pipe, lighter and tobacco stash before leaping from a window. Off he ran through a soaking rain that seemed different from other summer squalls, as did the galloping surge of the clouds.

A wild capuchin might have intuited a hurricane was coming; if not, he surely would have been alerted by senior members of his troop, who would have organized a collective refuge in heavy limbs below the forest canopy. Driggs, however, was a city monkey by birth and upbringing. He understood only that he preferred to be dry, cozy and shielded from the quaking thunder, which literally scared him shitless.