Carl Hiaasen (38 page)

“I d-don’t got it.” Shiner’s eyes jumped from the Remington to the dark crescent radiating across his trousers. “Can I least tuck myself in?”

“No, you cannot,” JoLayne said sternly. “I want your little white wacker right where it is, hangin’ in the fresh air so we can shoot it off if necessary.”

The clerk looked as if he would weep.

“But, JoLayne, I don’t got your ticket. I don’t know what they done with it, I swear up to God.”

JoLayne turned to Tom Krome. “Give me my gun.”

“Stay cool.”

“Tom, don’t be difficult.”

With a mix of dread and relief, Krome passed her the shotgun. Immediately Shiner began mewling. He saw that he’d shrunk entirely into his pants. JoLayne Lucks poked the barrel inside his zipper.

“Anybody home?” Her voice was so cheery that it gave Shiner an arctic chill.

“Please don’t,” he squeaked.

“Then tell me where the ticket is.”

Krome tapped the face of his watch. “Hurry up, son.” He didn’t think JoLayne would shoot the kid point-blank; the two shitkickers, maybe, but not Shiner.

Unless he tried something stupid.

Krome said to Shiner: “If you’re the least bit fond of those testicles, I’d tell the lady what she wants to know.”

“But I ain’t even seen the damn thing, and that’s the God’s truth!” Shiner, hissing through his teeth.

JoLayne looked at Tom. “You believe him?”

“I hate to say so, but yeah.”

“Well, I’m still not sure.”

She took a step back. True to form, Shiner chose the moment to lunge for the Remington. He was surprised that JoLayne released it without a struggle. He was further surprised to find himself unable to hold on to it, as both his thumbs were abruptly dislocated and rendered useless.

While Shiner flopped on the ground like a mullet, JoLayne thanked Tom for teaching her the trick. He calmly grabbed Shiner around the neck and urged him in the strongest terms to suffer in silence, so as not to alert his travel companions.

“Now, where’s the videotape?”

“It’s hid in my car,” Shiner whispered hoarsely, “back at Chub’s trailer.”

“Chub is the man with the ponytail?”

“And a tire patch on his eye, yessir. Plus a big ole crab on his hand.”

Krome let go of Shiner’s neck and yanked him upright. “What’s his real name?”

“Chub? I never heard him tell.” The kid was moist-eyed and panting. When he snuck a peek at his crooked thumbs, he almost passed out.

“What would your momma say about all this? Lord, I can
just imagine.” JoLayne’s tone was scorching. She picked up the shotgun and sat on the sand beside Shiner. He recoiled as if she were a tarantula.

“Why’d you do this?” she asked. “Why’d you help those bastards?”

“I dunno.” Shiner turned away and clammed up. It was the same strategy he tried whenever his mother hassled him about skipping his hymns or sneaking beer to his room.

Tom Krome said, “He’s hopeless, Jo. Let’s go.”

“Not yet.” Gently she put a fingernail under the young man’s chin and turned his head, so their eyes met.

Shiner said, “It’s just a club, OK? They asked did I wanna join up and I said sure. A brotherhood is what they tole me. That’s all.”

“Sure,” said Tom. “Like Kiwanis, only for Nazis.”

“It ain’t what you think. Least it dint start out that way.” Shiner, mumbling in a childish tone.

JoLayne’s eyes glistened. “You know what your ‘brothers’ did to me? Want me to show you?”

Wordlessly the skinhead pitched forward and threw up. JoLayne Lucks took this as an unqualified no.

Unlike some women her age, Amber held a realistic view of life, love, men and her prospects. She knew where her good looks could carry her and how far to let things go. She would not fall for the blond modeling routine (drawing the line at calendar tryouts), and she would not dance tables (despite the staggering sums involved). She would remain a waitress at Hooters and finish junior college and get a respectable job as a cosmetologist or perhaps a paralegal. She would stay with jealous Tony until someone better came along, or until she could no longer tolerate his foolishness. She would not become the mistress of any
man old enough to be her father, no matter how much money he had or how great a bay front apartment he offered to rent for her. She would borrow from her parents only in emergencies, and she would pay back every dime as soon as she could. She would keep only one credit card. She would not fake an orgasm two nights in a row. She would stay off cigarets, which had killed her uncle, and avoid Absolut vodka, which caused her to misbehave in public. She would not be automatically impressed by men with black convertibles or foreign-language skills.

Yet even the most centered and well-grounded young woman would have been rightfully terrified to be kidnapped by an armed militia. However, waitressing in ludicrously skimpy shorts had given Amber an unshakable confidence in her ability to handle jerks of all kinds. Of the three rednecks, Shiner was the weak link and consequently the chief target of her attentions. Amber of course had never actually worked in a tattoo parlor and knew nothing about the art, but she’d correctly surmised that young Shiner was so hunger for her touch that he would allow her to poke holes in his flesh with a rusty fishhook.

Early on, she’d sensed that Shiner’s heart wasn’t in hate crimes and that he’d joined up with Chub and Bodean Gazzer mainly out of smalltown boredom and curiosity. After Shiner confided about the stolen Lotto ticket and the $14 million prize, Amber realized his two buddies intended to ditch him at their earliest convenience. Which meant she’d be left alone with the camouflaged colonel and the one-eyed panty-sniffing stoner, both of whom she perceived as more brutish and less malleable than the novice skinhead. Almost certainly they were not averse to the notion of forcible sexual intercourse.

Amber believed that keeping Shiner in the equation would improve her chances of avoiding a rape, and also of escape.

To that end, she’d devised for the young man a strategy of rudimentary blackmail. She was astounded he hadn’t thought to
demand a cut of the lottery prize—he was like a half-witted busboy, too thick or too shy to ask for his tip-out at the end of the night. The hammer (as Amber patiently explained to Shiner) was the security video from the Grab N’Go.

She had only one misgiving about helping the kid get a piece of the Lotto jackpot: It was somebody else’s money. Some black chick, according to Shiner. A girl from his hometown. Amber felt crummy about that, but decided it was premature to get the guilts.

For now the priority was emplacing the blackmail plan. It wasn’t a bad one, either, concocted on short notice under adverse conditions, with an accomplice of limited cognitive range. The made-up business about the phone call to Shiner’s mother, about her readiness to retrieve the videotape in the event of a double cross—those were nifty touches. The plan’s chief flaw, as Amber now realized, was the time line. It gave Bode and Chub almost a whole day’s grace, enough of a window to leave the island, destroy the incriminating tape and bolt to Tallahassee to claim the lottery.

Which is what they were preparing to do when she confronted them at the boat after her morning swim.

“Take those ridiculous pants off your face.” One hand zipping up the top of the jumpsuit, the other clenching Chub’s pistol, which earlier Amber had removed from the
Reel Luv
and concealed in some bushes near the campfire.

“Take ’em off. You look like a pervert.” Then shooting once at Chub’s feet, just to find out what it felt like; a huge heavy gun going off. And also to make the rednecks understand she was serious and would not negotiate with any grown man wearing shorts over his face.

“Now, what did you guys do with Shiner?”

Nothing, they replied.

“He went off to have a piss,” Bodean Gazzer said.

“Well, he’s gone.”

“Bull,” said Chub.

“Let’s go find him. Get some clothes on,” Amber said.

“Not jest yet.” Chub, grinning lopsidedly. “Sure you don’t see somethin’ you like? Somethin’ hot ‘n’ tasty?”

He waggled his sunburned peter, inspiring Amber to fire once again. This time the Colt nearly jumped out of her hand. The slug passed between Bode and Chub, snapping through the mangroves and splooshing in the water.

As leaves and twigs fluttered into the boat, the demon crab unaccountably dropped off Chub’s ripening hand. The animal was long dead, it turned out. Chub jabbed the rancid blue husk with a bare toe and muttered, “Motherfucker.”

Bode Gazzer raised his arms for Amber. “OK, sweet thing, quit with the damn gun. You made yer point.”

“Tell your friend.”

“Don’t worry. He’s on board.”

Chub said, “Like hell. Not till we play some lollipop, her and me.”

Bode scowled disgustedly. The man was unbelievable; no sense of priorities. No sense at all.

Amber said, “He’s pushing it, Colonel.”

“What can I say? Sometimes he’s a complete fuckhead.”

“Think I should shoot him?”

“I’d rather you didn’t.”

Chub was studying his infected hand like it was a busted carburetor. “I still got the damn claw, though.”

“One thing at a time,” Bode Gazzer told him. “Put on your clothes and let’s go find the skinhead.”

“Not until my darling Amber blows me.”

“She’s gonna blow you, awright. She’s gonna blow your sorry ass to kingdom come.”

Chub said, “No, I don’t believe so. I believe I’m due for some good luck.”

“Hell’s
that
mean?”

“It means Amber ain’t gone shoot nobody. That’s azackly what it means.”

He stepped toward her; an exaggerated Hitler-style goose step. Then another. By now she was gripping the pistol with both fists.

“He’s asking for it,” she warned Bode.

“So I see. My opinion, it’s the damn glue.”

Chub chuckled. “It ain’t the glue, Colonel. It’s true fucking love.”

With a giddy warble he attacked. Amber pulled the trigger but all she heard with a flat harmless click. The gun didn’t fire—the cylinder turned, the hammer fell, but no slug came out.

Because there was no bullet in that particular chamber; instead, a small piece of sand-gritted paper, bleached by sweat and saltwater, and folded tightly to fit the small round hole. If she’d been able to remove the paper and examine it, Amber would have seen that it bore six numerals and the likeness of a pink flamingo, official mascot of the Florida lottery.

“I tole you!” Chub crowed.

He was naked on the ground, and waving with his undamaged arm the recaptured Colt Python. Pinned in the sand and seaweed beneath him was Amber, struggling in silence. “I tole you, yes I did.” Chub, breaking into coarse vicious laughter. “I tole you fuckers I was due for some decent luck!”

Bodean Gazzer hadn’t had sex in eleven months, his excuse for celibacy being that it was against the Bible to consort with non-white women, and all the white women he met demanded too
much money. Still, his feverish pent-up desires regarding the fragrant and available Amber were clouded by misgivings.

Her unwillingness to service the White Clarion Aryans was evident from her vigorous resistance to Chub as he ungently disrobed her. And although Bode was intoxicated by the vision of Amber’s breasts spilling out of the Mossy Oak camo, he nonetheless was disturbed to be participating in the rape—and that’s where this was headed—of a white Christian woman of European descent. In fact, Bode would’ve been reluctant even if she were a Negro or a Cuban, not so much for the immorality of the crime but for the legal risks. Unlike Chub, Bode Gazzer had spent enough months behind bars to know it wasn’t worth knocking off a Burger King or boosting a Cadillac, or even two minutes of humping natural-blond pussy. Rape was felony time, and in Florida the rape of a white woman—even by a white man—could mean a long stretch in not-so-scenic Starke.

Bode also knew that Chub, in his current frame of mind, was immune to such logic. All Bode could do was hold the Colt revolver and stand there hoping it wouldn’t take long, hoping they wouldn’t make much noise. The shiver of arousal sparked by Amber’s nudity had already died of distraction at the heaving, pink-butted spectacle of Chub; grimy and grunting and drool-flecked. The arresting sights and smells graphically reminded Bode Gazzer of his partner’s many hygienic lapses and killed any spark of temptation to join in the fun.

“Hol’ still! Hol’ still!” Chub kept huffing.

But the agile Amber would not.

“Hurry up,” Bode said, checking over his shoulder. The skinhead Shiner would go ballistic if he saw what was happening.

“I can’t get it in! Goddamn, make her hol’ still!” Chub used his weight to constrain her. Ribbons of brown turtle grass clung to his thighs.

“Use the damn gun!” he hollered at his partner.

“Shit.” Bode knelt and placed the barrel to Amber’s head. She stopped squirming. Behind a tangle of yellow-blond hair, her eyes narrowed with acceptance; not coldness and wild anger, like that crazy Negro woman up in Grange.

This is the way it’s supposed to be, Bode mused. You see the gun, you quit trying to fight. “Be still now,” he said. “It’ll be over soon.”

“Listen to the man.” Chub seized Amber’s wrists, pulling them away from her chest. “And do your lips … all pushed out and pouty … you know, like how Kim Basinger does.”

Amber said, “OK, on one condition. Tell me your name.”

“What for!”

“I can’t make love to a man,” she said, “unless I know his name. I just can’t do it, I’d rather die.”

Bode Gazzer told Chub: “Don’t be an idiot.”

Chub, pinning Amber’s arms over her head, catching his breath. “Gillespie,” he said. “Onus Gillespie.”