Carl Hiaasen (12 page)

Sammy Tigertail could not disagree.

“And it’d be even better,” Gillian said, “if there was a steamy romance to tell ’em about. But I guess I could use my imagination—you wouldn’t mind, right? What they call ‘creative license’?”

“Go wild,” said Sammy Tigertail.

Lily Shreave was having a massage when the phone rang. The masseur’s name was Mikko and he claimed to have trained for eleven years in Bali. Lily had found the fanciful lie endearing, given his Sooners tattoos and Oklahoma accent. She pressed a fifty-dollar bill into one of his large oily palms, motioned him out of the room and reached for her cell.

“It’s not happening,” Dealey said on the other end.

“You’re giving up already? But you just got there.”

“They’re inside a damn trailer, Mrs. Shreave. I have no shot.”

Lily got down from the massage table. “You mean like a Winnebago?”

“Not a motor home,” said Dealey, “a
mobile
home. I’ll never be able to get the angle I need.”

Lily wrapped herself in a towel. “Is she with him? I don’t understand.”

“Let me paint you the picture. I’m sitting in an SUV at a trailer court in some glorified fish camp in the armpit of the Everglades. I can’t even get out of my vehicle because there’s not one but
two
pitfucking-bull dogs waiting to gnaw my nuts off. Meanwhile your bonehead husband and his fake-Fonda lady friend just carried their bags into a mobile home that looks like it was built when Roosevelt was president and decorated by one of Tarzan’s apes.”

Dealey sounded very discouraged. Lily said, “This doesn’t make sense. Boyd always stays at Marriotts.”

“Mrs. Shreave, there are no Marriotts here. They’re lucky to have running water.”

Lily asked the private investigator if it was possible to peek inside the trailer.

“Negative. Curtains on all the windows,” he reported, “and, like I said, the dogs won’t let me out of the truck anyway. I’m parked a hundred yards down the road.”

“So what’s the plan?” Lily said.

“The plan is for me to drive back to civilization and get an air-conditioned hotel room with a king-sized bed, order up a sirloin steak and watch the fights on HBO. Then, tomorrow, I wake up and catch the first flight back to Dallas. That’s the plan, Mrs. Shreave.”

She sensed that Dealey wasn’t keen on the great outdoors. “You can’t bail on me now. Give it one more day.”

“Sorry. This is above and beyond.”

“How bad can it be? It’s Florida, for God’s sake.”

Dealey snorted. “Right, maybe I’m at Disney World and I just don’t know it. Maybe it’s a fun ride—Trailer Trash of the Caribbean.”

Lily couldn’t imagine why her husband had dragged his mistress to such a place, but she was intrigued. Perhaps it was some grungy swingers’ club he’d dredged up on the Internet.

“You
cannot
leave yet,” she told Dealey.

“Yeah? Watch me.”

“Suppose I bump the fee to twenty-five.” The moment Lily said it, she knew she’d gone over the edge. This wasn’t about humiliating a wayward husband; this was about getting off.

“What?” Dealey said.

“Twenty-five grand.”

“You’re a sick woman—no offense.”

“I’ll take that as a yes.” Lily could hear the pit bulls barking in the background. “Boyd and his bimbo have gotta come out of that trailer eventually,” she said to Dealey. “I bet they’ll do it on the beach at sunrise. Throw down a blanket and go at it like animals—that sounds like her, doesn’t it?”

“I’m not sure there
is
a beach, Mrs. Shreave.”

“Don’t be ridiculous. Florida is one big beach.”

Dealey said, “Twenty-four hours. Then I’m outta here.”

“Fair enough. But trust me on the sunrise thing.”

“I’ll be sure to set my alarm,” the investigator said. “You’re not bullshitting about the twenty-five large?”

Lily Shreave smiled on the other end. “The pizza business is good, Mr. Dealey.”

Boyd Shreave wasn’t nearly as slick as Honey Santana had anticipated.

“Would you and Mrs. Shreave care for some fresh-squeezed orange juice?” she asked.

The woman accompanying Boyd Shreave started to say something but he cut her off. “Orange juice would be fine,” he said, “wouldn’t it, Genie?”

Honey knew from her Googling expedition that Shreave’s wife was named Lily. Days earlier, when he’d faxed her the information for the airline reservations, Shreave had listed his wife as Eugenie Fonda, parenthetically explaining that she preferred to use her maiden name. The slithering lie did not surprise Honey. That Shreave would bring a girlfriend only ratified her initial harsh appraisal of his character.

“So, this is the ‘lodge’?” He scanned the interior of the double-wide. “We were expecting something different,” he said.

“Temporary quarters until the new facility is finished,” Honey fibbed sunnily. “We’re building it way up in the treetops, just like they do in Costa Rica.”

Shreave was skeptical. “People give away a free trip to paradise, they don’t usually put you up at a trailer court. Am I right, or what?”

“Well, I think you’ll be pleased.” Honey was stung that neither Shreave nor his companion had commented upon her tropical mural on the outer wall.

“So, when do we hear the big pitch?” he asked.

“Excuse me?”

“For the swamp land you’re supposed to sell us. Royal Gulf Hammocks, remember?” Shreave chuckled sardonically. “This is some four-star operation you’re running.”

“Yes—the Hammocks. Of course,” Honey Santana said. “We’ll talk about all that later.” She’d almost forgotten that she was supposed to be working a land-sales scam.

The woman named Genie spoke up. “Isn’t there a beach around here someplace? Or at least a damn tiki bar?”

“Where we’re going is better than the beach—tomorrow morning we leave for the islands.” Honey smiled. “Excuse me, would you?”

The trailer being trailer-sized, Honey could hear the couple arguing in low tones while she was in the kitchen. She was relieved that Shreave hadn’t pegged her as the voice of Pia Frampton, the fictitious telemarketer who’d offered him the trip. Her Laura Bush drawl seemed to have done the trick.

Although Honey owned an electric juicer, she chose to squeeze the fruit by hand. The exercise was therapeutic, keeping at bay temporarily the two tunes—“Smoke on the Water” and “Rainy Days and Mondays”—that had been colliding unbearably inside her head following the unwise visit to Louis Piejack. Earlier in the evening, before the Texans had arrived, Honey had thought she’d spotted Louis in a dark-colored pickup cruising her street. She wasn’t a hundred percent sure; half the guys in town owned trucks like that.

The woman named Genie materialized in the kitchen, offering to help with the tray. Honey said it wasn’t necessary.

“But thank you just the same, Mrs. Shreave.”

“I’m
not
Mrs. Shreave,” Genie whispered somewhat urgently.

Honey whispered back: “I know.”

“Really? What gave me away?”

“That pearl in your tongue, for starters.”

The woman nodded ruefully. “My name’s Eugenie Fonda. I think I’ve made a terrible mistake.”

“Oh, don’t worry,” Honey said. “I won’t try to sell you any real estate.”

“No, you don’t understand—”

Shreave called out Genie’s name, and Honey touched a finger to her lips. The two women returned to the living room, where Shreave had been nosily examining the contents of Honey’s bookcase, which she’d neglected to purge of personal memorabilia.

“Who’s the track star?” He pointed to a shelf of trophies.

“My son.”

“Yeah? He must be pretty fast.”

Honey wanted to change the subject. “Have some OJ, Mr. Shreave.”

“Yeah, it’s really good,” Eugenie Fonda said. She was clutching the glass as if it were the rip cord on a parachute. “Got any vodka to go with it?”

Shreave said, “I ran some seriously swift relays myself, back in the day.”

At first Honey thought he must be joking, but she was set straight by Eugenie’s scornful expression.

“Until I blew out my knees,” Shreave continued.

Soon the rising babel in Honey’s skull made it impossible to follow what he was saying. She considered the possibility that she, too, had made a large mistake. Boyd Shreave didn’t seem like a person who could be easily chastened, moved or transformed. He presented no convictions, or true sense of himself. He’d made the Everglades trip only to prove to his girlfriend that he wasn’t a wimp.

Honey prepared herself for three challenging days.

She said, “You folks
do
know how to kayak, right?”

Twelve

Gillian’s real last name was Tremaine but in college she’d changed it to St. Croix to piss off her parents. It was the same reason she was majoring in elementary education; her parents had wanted her to take a degree in finance and join them at the discount brokerage house in Clearwater. That’s what Gillian’s older sister had done, and her unhappiness was currently manifesting itself as sloppy promiscuity.

Although Gillian was theoretically committed to the idea of teaching school, it wasn’t a true calling; it was a job she thought she could stand until she experienced a cosmic awakening, or met the right poet-musician. She’d settled on the name of St. Croix after visiting the island with her then boyfriend, the self-perforated rock guitarist. The vacation itself was not especially magical but Gillian understood that she wasn’t easy to amuse. Boredom had always afflicted her like a wasting disease. Every skirt she picked out seemed drab the moment she got it home. Every CD she bought sounded old and trite the second time she listened to it. Every book she opened with high hopes turned into a slog through the mud by page one hundred. It was the same with relationships.

“I’m twenty years old and I’ve got nothing interesting in my life except you,” she informed Sammy Tigertail.

“That’s scary,” he said.

“Don’t worry. It won’t last.”

Wolves that they were, Len and Ginger Tremaine had followed southward the herd of retiring, fully pensioned midwesterners. Gillian was a teenager when the family moved from Ohio to Florida. On the first day of school her tenth-grade French teacher, Mr. Hodgman, told Gillian that she was too pretty for her own good, which inspired her to reach beneath her blouse and remove her bra in front of the class. She would become so well known for such high-spirited antics that her fellow students christened her “Psycho Babe,” not without affection. She graduated with good grades but also with enough disciplinary footnotes to kill her chances with Wharton and three other private colleges short-listed by her parents. They were aghast when she surprised them with an acceptance letter from Florida State, a notorious party school located in a notorious party town, Tallahassee, which also happened to be the state capital.

Soon after arriving in Florida, the Tremaines had read a scandalous story in the
St. Petersburg Times
about a powerful state legislator who’d put his favorite Hooters waitress on the state payroll. They feared that a similar tawdry fate awaited their youngest daughter, but they didn’t know Gillian very well. She wasn’t impressed by power, position or money; she was impressed by rebels.

“My cell phone finally died,” she told the Indian. “Ethan never called back.”

“Big surprise.”

“Which is fine with me.”

“How long you gonna stay up in the tree?” Sammy Tigertail asked.

“You know why I started dating him? One night he and some other guys drove down to the Keys and freed some dolphins from a marine park. Ethan said they put on scuba tanks and used wire cutters to make a hole in the fence around the lagoon,” Gillian said. “It made the front page of the Miami paper. He showed me the clippings. He was like a total outlaw.”

The Seminole was frying some fish that he’d caught. He told Gillian he was going to eat it all himself if she didn’t climb down soon from the poinciana tree.

She said, “Later he told me what happened. The dolphins swam out through the hole in the fence and then the very next morning they all came back, just in time for breakfast. And they never left again! They just hung around the lagoon, doin’ all those corny Flipper tricks and beggin’ for fish. Meantime the owners patched the fence and, like, that was the end of the big jailbreak. Of course Ethan didn’t clue me in until after I’d slept with him.”

Sammy Tigertail peered up at her. “You on dope?”

Gillian closed her eyes. “I wish I could spend the night up here. It’s so damn perfect.”

Sammy Tigertail said, “Come on down. You gotta eat.”

Gillian rose, balancing in bare feet on the long branch. “I’m really not so messed up. I’m just waiting for something phenomenally stupendous to happen to me.”

“On this island?”

“I don’t see why not.” She hopped down and joined him by the campfire and even ate some snook, which was sweeter than any fish she’d ever tasted.

The Indian told her she was being too hard on Ethan. “At least the guy tried. It’s not his fault the dolphins didn’t want to be free.”

“But he should’ve told me that part in the beginning,” Gillian said, “so I wouldn’t go around for weeks feeling great about somethin’ that didn’t really turn out that way.”

“Maybe he wanted you to be happy.”

“Sure, so I’d ball him.” She paused to pick a fish bone out of her front teeth. “Tell me about Cindy.”

“Nothing to tell. She’s a disaster.”

“All because she’s white?”

Sammy Tigertail said, “It was my mistake. I wasn’t strong.”

“So, what exactly are you lookin’ for out here?”

“I already told you. Peace.” He carefully poured the warm grease from the fry pan into a rusty beer can. “Not world peace. Just peace for me—I need to shut out all the craziness.”

“Bullshit. You’re hiding.”

“That’s right,” said the Seminole.

“The man who died on your boat—was it your fault?” Gillian asked.

“I didn’t kill him. He knows it, too. Told me in a dream.”

Gillian said, “It’s weird, but I don’t hardly dream at all.”

“You will if you stay here too long.”

“Is that, like, an Indian thing?”

She dropped the sensitive subject of the dead guy. Sammy Tigertail went to pick some cactus berries, which they ate for dessert. He said, “For fifteen hundred years this place was home of the Calusas. Spirits never go away.”

The oyster people, Gillian thought. She had never believed in afterlives but she was open to persuasion.

She said, “Doesn’t it ever rain here in the winter? Because I’m dyin’ for a drink of water.”

“We’ll go get some tonight, if the clouds give us a moon.”

“But where?” Gillian asked.

Sammy Tigertail said he didn’t know. “But if we can’t find our own, then we’ll steal it.”

Gillian thought of the loaded rifle and got worried. He didn’t seem like the type who’d shoot somebody for water, but what did she know about such men? Sometimes the Indian acted hard-core, sometimes just the opposite.

“No big deal. I’m really not that thirsty,” she told him.

“Well, I am,” he said.

The first time I laid eyes on Van Bonneville, he was cutting down a grapefruit tree in front of the Elks Lodge on Freeman Street. He wore a faded indigo bandanna and a silver Saint Christopher medal that the police would find after the big hurricane, in his dead wife’s sunken car.

As Van worked, sweat trickled down the cords of his neck and glistened on his bare chest. His arms were like ship cables and his shoulders looked as broad as a meat freezer. But it was his dark, weathered hands that intrigued me—they were covered with long, pale, delicate-looking scars. Van must have noticed me staring, because he smiled.

I’d been out walking my neighbor’s toy poodle, Tito, who was fourteen years old and suffered from bladder problems. He was valiantly trying to relieve himself on the Elks’ shrubbery (Van later told me it was a ficus hedge), and there I was, dragging him like a wagon along the sidewalk. The poor dog was yapping and hopping and struggling to keep one leg in the air, but I didn’t even notice. I couldn’t take my eyes off that gorgeous stranger with the chain saw.

Suddenly the tree toppled, and Van backed away in the nick of time. A flying grapefruit struck him on the temple, yet he just shrugged and put down the saw.

The first thing he said to me was: “Canker.”

“What?”

“Citrus canker,” he explained. “That’s why this old tree had to die.”

That night I touched those magnificent hands for the first time, and they touched me.

Boyd Shreave closed the book and turned to gaze with a rush of desire at the author, who’d fallen into a deep snooze beside him. He wanted to awaken Eugenie Fonda and make crazed, howling, back-bending love to her. He wanted to shake the double-wide off its blocks. That’s what Van Bonneville would have done, or so Shreave believed after reading (and re-reading) Eugenie’s breathless opening passage. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d picked up a book without pictures, but none of the handful he’d actually read had affected him as powerfully as this one. He was half-hoping that Genie would open her eyes and see the copy of
Storm Ghoul
on the bed. He didn’t care how she reacted, as long as she did. Ever since they’d arrived at the cheesy eco-lodge, she’d been an icicle.

And now she began to snore, a moist warbling enhanced by the stud in her tongue. As Boyd Shreave reached for her, he despondently took notice of his own unmagnificent hands, which featured no masculine wounds or even a dime-sized callus. They were hands that had spent a lifetime in the safe fuzzy harbor of pockets. Shreave had only one genuine scar—the faint purple dotting of his pubic area, caused by that long-ago crash against the potted cactus—but so far Eugenie’s interest had seemed more clinical than erotic.

As he endeavored to tug her into his arms, she scowled through her sleep and pushed him away. A muscular woman, Shreave thought longingly. Having invested so much hope in their illicit Everglades jaunt, he could hardly bear the idea that Eugenie might be tiring of him already. She was his future; his freedom. For Shreave, returning to Fort Worth—specifically, to his wife—seemed out of the question. Lily wasn’t an idiot. She’d soon figure out that he’d lost his job at Relentless and that there was no prestigious clinic for aphenphosmphobics in South Florida, leaving Boyd’s trip exposed as the sneaky tryst it was. Lily would pauperize him in the ensuing divorce, while his mother would stomp on the remaining crumbs of his self-esteem. More tragically, being both broke and unemployed would reduce to nil his chances of finding another lover as tall, beautiful and exciting as Eugenie Fonda.

After dropping
Storm Ghoul
into his Orvis bag, Shreave got up to marvel at the hokey decor of the bedroom. Honey, their goofball tour guide, had redone it like the interior of a safari tent—billows of muslin bedsheets tacked to the ceiling, and a Coleman lantern glowing on a faux-cane nightstand. Incredibly, there was no television or even a CD player.

The Dancing Flamingo Lodge, Shreave mused acidly. Try the Fleabag Flamingo. It was plain to him that the Royal Gulf Hammocks promotion was doomed; only a certified retard would buy real estate from such a lame and bumbling outfit.

He took his NASCAR toothbrush and travel tube of Colgate into the bathroom and went to work on his smile. When he came out, Eugenie was upright in bed, shedding her clothes.

“I had a god-awful nightmare,” she said. “I’m at the call center and I’ve got Bill frigging Gates on the line, all hot to buy a timeshare at Port Aransas. But then that damn Sacco crawls under my desk and starts licking my knees—Boyd, what does that big number three on your toothbrush mean?”

Shreave said, “You’re kidding me, right?”

Eugenie kicked off her panties. “Okay. Never mind.”

“Come on. Number three was Dale Earnhardt’s number!”

“And he is…?”

“Genie, that’s not even funny,” Shreave said.

“Whatever. I gotta take off my makeup.”

Hope renewed, Shreave slapped some cologne on his neck and dimmed the lantern. Kneeling on the floor, he hastily fished through the Orvis bag for his box of condoms. A black object under the bed caught his eye—it looked like a gun.

Shreave was waving it around when Eugenie Fonda walked out of the bathroom. She stopped in her tracks. He was ready.

“What’s
that
for?” she asked.

“Just in case. They’ve got panthers down here, you know.”

“How’d you get it on the plane?”

Shreave said, “I didn’t. I bought it when we stopped at that mall.”

When Eugenie asked to hold it, he said, “No. It’s loaded.”

Sounding, he was sure, as calm and knowledgeable about firearms as Van Bonneville would have been.

She smiled. “I didn’t know you were a gun guy, Boyd.”

“It pays to be prepared.”

“What is it—a .38?”

“Good guess,” he said, having not a clue.

Had Boyd Shreave been a gun guy, he would have known that what he’d found beneath Honey Santana’s bed was actually a Taser, a handheld shocking device used by police to subdue drunks and meth freaks. Instead of bullets it fired fifty thousand volts.

Shreave coolly stashed it in his bag, under a stack of Tommy Bahama shorts.

“And that little thing’ll work on a big hungry panther?” Eugenie asked.

“Oh yeah.”

She climbed into bed and tugged the covers up to her breasts. “You tired, Boyd?”

“Not really.”

“Excellent. Get your ass over here.”

Dealey drove to a Winn-Dixie in Naples and bought two pounds of ground chuck, into which he inserted his last four Ambiens. The pit bulls were still loose when he returned to the trailer park, but they keeled soon after wolfing the bloody meat.