Carl Hiaasen (30 page)

Like now, for instance. Watching the bad guys.

Ordinarily Krome would’ve had the notebook opened on his lap. Hastily jotting in what Mary Andrea once described as his “serial killer’s scrawl.”

These observations compiled automatically in Tom Krome’s brain as he sat with JoLayne in the scuffed old Boston Whaler she’d rented. Both of them were stiff and tired from a long night aboard the cramped skiff. They’d closed the gap on the rednecks, only to watch the stolen ski boat plow sensationally into a shallow grass bank. It was the first of several detours, as the robbers would spend hours pinballing from one nautical obstruction to another. Tom and JoLayne, astounded at their quarry’s incompetence, followed at a prudent distance.

Now their skiff was tied to a PVC stake at the mouth of a shallow inlet. The makeshift mooring afforded a partially obstructed view of the busy docks at Jewfish Creek, where the rednecks finally had managed an uneventful landing.

Krome grumbling, for the second time: “I should’ve got some binoculars.”

JoLayne Lucks saying she didn’t need any. “It’s the kid. I’m sure of it.”

“What kid?”

“Shiner. From the Grab N’Go.”

“Hey … you might be right.” Krome, cupping both hands at his eyes to cut the glare.

JoLayne said, “The rotten little shit. That explains why he lied about my Lotto ticket. They gave him a piece of the action.”

All things considered, Krome thought, she’s taking it well.

“Guess what else,” she said. “The girl in the shorts and T-shirt?—it looks like the Hooters babe.”

Krome broke into a grin. “The one they were hitting on the other night. Yes!” He could see them boarding the stolen boat: Bodean Gazzer first, followed by the skinhead Shiner, then the ponytailed man, tugging the blond woman behind him.

Pensively JoLayne said, “That’s four of them and two of us.”

“No, it’s fantastic!” Krome kissed her on the forehead. “It’s the very best thing that could happen.”

“Are you nuts?”

“I’m talking about the babe. Her being there changes everything.”

“The babe.”

“Yes
. Whatever grand plan these guys had, it’s in tatters as of this moment!”

JoLayne had never seen him so excited. “In one small boat,” he said, “we’ve got three smitten morons and one beautiful woman. Honey, there’s an incredible shitstorm on the horizon.”

She said, “I’m inclined to be insulted by what you just said. On behalf of all womanhood.”

“Not at all.” He untied the Whaler from the trees. “It’s men I’m talking about. The way we are. Look at those googans and tell me they know how to cope with a girl like that.”

JoLayne realized he was right: The stolen boat had become a time bomb. Any kind of a dispute would set the men off—over cigarets, the last cold beer … or a stolen lottery ticket.

Krome said, “We needed these boys to be distracted. I would say our prayers have been answered.”

“Then God bless Hooters.” JoLayne jerked her chin towards the docks. “Tom, they’re heading back this way.”

“So they are.”

“Shouldn’t we duck?”

“Naw,” Krome said. “Just stay cool until they go past. Turn toward me, OK?”

“Hold on a second. Is this another kiss?”

“A long romantic one. To make sure they don’t see our faces.”

“Aye, aye, captain.”

Judge Arthur Battenkill Jr. was an intelligent man. He knew Champ Powell’s remains would eventually be identified. A
medium-rare lump of tissue was already on its way to the FBI for DNA screening, or so the judge had heard.

A dead law clerk in the torched house of your wife’s lover was not easy to explain, especially if the lover was to return and make an issue of the arson. Which that bastard Tom Krome likely would.

Arthur Battenkill knew his judicial career would soon end in scandal if he didn’t take the bull by the horns. So, being as practical as he was smart, he began making plans to quit the bench and leave the country.

Starting over would be expensive. As a matter of convenience, the judge decided that the insurance carrier for Save King Supermarkets should pay for his new life in the Bahamas, or wherever he and Katie chose to relocate. This meant placing a call to Emil LaGort’s lawyer.

Emil LaGort was a plaintiff in a civil lawsuit filed in Arthur Battenkill’s court. In fact, Emil LaGort was a plaintiff in numerous lawsuits from Apalachicola to Key West—a habitual fraud, a renowned slip-and-fall artist. He was also seventy-four years old, which meant that one of these days he would
really
slip and fall.

Why not now? mused Arthur Battenkill. Why not in the aisle of a Save King Supermarket?

Emil LaGort was suing the store for $5 million, but he gladly would’ve settled out of court for fifty grand and costs. He did it all the time. Therefore his attorney was greatly surprised to receive a phone call, at home, from Judge Arthur Battenkill Jr.

As a rule, Emil LaGort shied from judges—if a deal couldn’t be cut, he’d quietly drop the case. Going to trial was a time-consuming inconvenience that Emil LaGort simply could not afford, what with so many irons in the fire. He had a good thing going with the quickie settlements. Most insurance companies
were pushovers when it came to frail senior citizens who claimed to have fallen on their policyholders’ premises. Most insurance companies wished to spare jurors the sight of Emil LaGort, enfeebled in a neck brace and a wheelchair. So he got paid to go away.

The complaint scheduled to be heard in Arthur Battenkill’s court was fairly typical. It alleged that, while shopping one morning at the Save King, Emil LaGort had slipped and fallen, causing irreparable harm to his neck, spine and extremities; furthermore, that the accident was due to the gross negligence of the store, whereas an extra-large tube of discount hemorrhoid ointment was left lying on the floor of the health-care-and-hygiene aisle, where it subsequently was run over by one or possibly more steel-framed shopping carts, thus distributing the slippery contents of the broken tube in a reckless and hazardous manner; and furthermore, that no timely efforts were made by Save King or its employees to remove said hazardous ointment, or to warn customers of the imminent danger, such negligence resulting directly in the grave and permanent injury to Emil LaGort.

Emil LaGort’s attorney figured that Judge Arthur Battenkill Jr., like everyone else familiar with the case, knew that Emil had purposely knocked the tube of goop off the shelf, stomped it with both feet and then laid himself very gingerly on the floor of the health-care-and-hygiene aisle. The attorney certainly was not expecting the judge to call him at home on a Sunday morning and say:

“Lenny, it would be in your client’s interest to hang tough.”

“But, Your Honor, we were preparing to settle.”

“That would be precipitous.”

“A hundred even was the offer.”

“You can do better, Lenny. Trust me.”

The attorney tried to stay cool. “But I’m not ready for a trial!”

“Put on a little show,” Arthur Battenkill said, needling. “That snotty bone guy you always use as an expert witness, the one with the ratty toupee. Or that lying dipshit of a so-called neurologist from Lauderdale. Surely you can manage.”

“Yeah, I suppose.” The attorney was beginning to get the picture.

The judge said, “Let me ask you something. Do you think Mr. LaGort would be satisfied with, say, $250,000?”

“Your Honor, Mr. LaGort would be fucking jubilant.” And I would, too, the attorney thought. Me and my thirty-five percent.

“All right, Lenny, then I’ll tell you what. Let’s see if we can save the taxpayers some dough. First thing tomorrow we’ll all meet in chambers, after which I anticipate the defendants will be motivated to settle.”

“For two fifty.”

“No, for half a million. Are you following me?” said Arthur Battenkill.

There was an uncomfortable pause on the other end. The attorney said, “Maybe we should have this conversation in person.”

“The phones are clean, Lenny.”

“If you say so.”

“Five hundred is a smart number,” the judge continued, “because Save King’s insurance company can live with it. A trial is too risky, especially if you get a couple old geezers on the jury. Then you’re looking at seven figures, automatic.”

The attorney said, “Amen.”

“Next question: Can Mr. LaGort be persuaded that the court’s costs are unusually high in this case?”

“For the kind of money he’s getting, Your Honor, Mr. LaGort can be persuaded that cows shit gumdrops.”

“Good,” said Arthur Battenkill. “Then you know what to do with the other two fifty.”

“Do I?”

“Escrow, Lenny. You do have an escrow account?”

“Of course.”

“That’s the first place it goes. Then it’s wired overseas. I’ll give you the account number when I get one.”

“Oh.”

“What’s the matter now?”

The attorney said, “It’s just … I’ve never done it this way before.”

“Lenny, do I strike you as a brown-bag-in-the-alley sort of fellow? Do you see me as some kind of low-class bumpkin?”

“No, Your Honor.”

“I hope not,” Arthur Battenkill said. “By the way, next week there will be an announcement of my pending retirement, for unspecified health reasons. Tell Mr. LaGort not to be alarmed.”

The attorney endeavored to sound genuinely concerned. “I’m sorry to hear that. I didn’t know you’d been ill.”

The judge laughed acidulously. “Lenny, you’re not too swift, are you?”

“I guess not, Your Honor.”

Not for a moment did it occur to Mary Andrea Finley Krome that the newspapers might be wrong and that her husband was still alive. She departed Missoula on an upswelling of sympathy from Loretta (or was it Lorie?) and her other new acquaintances among the
Menagerie
cast, and with the director’s personal assurance that the role of Laura Wingfield would be waiting when she returned.

Which, of course, Mary Andrea had no intention of doing.
She believed that being a famous widow would open new doors, careerwise.

The long flight to Florida gave Mary Andrea time to prepare for the bustle of attention that awaited. Knowing she’d be asked by interviewers, she tried to reconstruct the last time she’d seen Tom. Incredibly, she could not. Probably it was at the apartment in Brooklyn, probably in the kitchen over breakfast. That was usually when he’d tried to initiate the so-called serious discussions about their marriage. And probably she’d gotten up from the table and moseyed into the bathroom to pluck her eyebrows, her customary response to the subject of divorce.

All Mary Andrea could remember with certainty was that one morning, four years ago, he hadn’t been there. Poof.

The previous night, she’d come home from rehearsals very late and fallen asleep on the sofa. She expected to be awakened, as she had so many days, by the sound of Tom munching on his cereal. He was partial to Grape-Nuts, which had the consistency of blasted granite.

What Mary Andrea recalled most distinctly from the morning was the silence in the apartment. And of course the brief note, which (because it had been Scotch-taped to the cereal box) had been impossible to take seriously:

Only later did Mary Andrea discover that Tom had lifted the line from a Warren Zevon song, an irritating detail that merely fortified her resolve to stay married.

As for the last time she’d actually laid eyes on her husband, what he’d said to her, his mood, the clothes he’d been wearing—none of this could Mary Andrea remember.

She did recall what she’d been doing on the afternoon the lawyer phoned, that asshole Turnquist. She’d been reading
Daily
Variety
and running through her vocal exercises; octaves and whatnot. She remembered Turnquist saying Tom wanted to give her one more chance to sit down and work out the details, before he filed the papers. She remembered manufacturing a giggle and telling the lawyer he’d been the victim of an elaborate practical joke her husband arranged every year, on their anniversary. And she remembered hanging up the telephone and breaking into tears and wolfing three Dove bars.

Compared to other newsworthy breakups it seemed mundane, and Mary Andrea saw no benefit in launching her public widowhood by boring the media. So, gazing from the window of the plane at the scooped-out cliffs of the Rocky Mountains, she invented a suitable parting scene that she could share with the press. It had happened, say, six months ago. Tom had surprised her in, say, Lansing, where she’d landed a small part in a road tour of
Sunset Boulevard
. He’d slipped in late and sat in the rear of the theater, and surprised her with pink roses backstage after the show. He’d said he missed her and was having second thoughts about the separation. They’d even made plans to get together for dinner, say, next month, when she was scheduled to come back east with the production of
Lambs
.

Sounds pretty good, Mary Andrea thought. And who’s to say it didn’t happen? Or wouldn’t have happened, if Tom hadn’t died.

As the flight attendant freshened her Diet Coke, Mary Andrea thought: Crying won’t be a problem. When the cameras show up, I’ll have gallons of tears. Heck, I could cry right now.

Because it
was
terribly sad, the senseless death of a young and moderately talented and basically goodhearted man.

So what if she didn’t lie awake at nights, missing him. She’d really never known him well enough to miss him. That was sort of sad, too. Imagining the intimacy and caring that might have been; the kind of closeness only years of separation could bring.

Mary Andrea Finley Krome dug through her handbag until she located the rosary beads she’d found at a Catholic thrift shop in Missoula. She would clutch them in her left hand as she got off the plane in Orlando, and mention in a choked voice that they’d been a gift from Tom.