Carl Hiaasen (2 page)

It was true that strangers were often unnerved when Shreave opened his mouth, so mismatched was his voice—smooth, reassuring and affable—with his appearance. “You’re a natural,” Eugenie Fonda had told him on his first day at the call center. “You could sell dope to the Pope.”

Shreave didn’t set the world afire at Relentless, but for the first time in his life he could honestly claim to be semi-competent at his job. He was also restless and resentful. He disliked the late shift, the confined atmosphere and the mynah-bird repetition of the sales script.

The pay blew, too: minimum wage, plus four bucks for every lead he generated. Whenever Shreave got a hot one on the line—somebody who actually agreed to a callback or a mailout—he was required by company policy to punt the sucker’s name to a floor supervisor. Shreave would have gladly forgone the shitty four-dollar commission for a chance to close the deal, but no such responsibility was ever dealt to rookie callers.

A woman picked up on the fifth ring.

“Hello, is this Mrs. Santana?” Boyd Shreave asked.

“It’s
Ms.
”

“So sorry, Ms. Santana, this is Boyd Eisenhower calling—”

Eugenie Fonda had told Shreave not to use his real last name with customers, and coached him on selecting a telephone alias. She said research had proven that people were more likely to trust callers with the last names of U.S. presidents, which is why she’d chosen “Eugenie Roosevelt” for herself. Initially Shreave had selected the name “Boyd Nixon” and in four days failed to churn a single lead. Eugenie had gently advised him to try a different president, preferably one who had not bolted from the White House with prosecutors camping on the doorstep.

“Eisenhower, like Dwight?” asked the woman on the end of the line.

“Exactly,” Shreave said.

“And your first name again?”

“B-o-y-d,” said Shreave. “Now, Ms. Santana, the reason I’m calling this afternoon—”

“It’s not the afternoon, Mr. Eisenhower, that’s the problem. It’s the evening, and I’m sitting down to eat with my family.”

“I’m sorry, Mrs. Santana, this won’t take long. Or perhaps you’d like me to try back later.”

It was a line designed to keep the customer on the phone. Most people didn’t want a callback; they wanted to get it over with.

The woman’s voice began to rise. “Do you know how many telephone solicitations I get on this number? Do you know how aggravating it is to have your dinner interrupted by strangers every night?”

Boyd Shreave, unruffled, was already fingering down the call list. “Is Mr. Santana available?” he asked perfunctorily.

To his surprise, the woman replied, “As a matter of fact, he is. Hold on.”

Moments later, a new voice said, “Hullo?”

“Mr. Santana?” Shreave thought the person sounded too young, although there was always the possibility of a sinus infection.

“What’re you selling, mister?” the voice demanded.

Shreave let it fly.

“Mr. Santana, I’m calling about a unique real-estate opportunity that we’re presenting to specially selected candidates. For a limited time only, Suwannee Bend Properties is offering ten pristine wooded acres in north-central Florida for only $3,999 down—”

“But we already live in Florida,” the voice said squeakily.

“Yes, Mr. Santana, this valuable offering is being made exclusively to residents of the southwest coast.” Boyd Shreave glanced at his pitch sheet. “You live in the fastest-growing part of the United States, Mr. Santana, and in recent years many of your neighbors have gotten fed up with the traffic, high taxes, crime and big-city stress. A lucky few of them have relocated to beautiful Gilchrist County, the heart of traditional old Florida—a safe, peaceful and affordable place to raise a family. Instead of being packed like rats into a gridlocked suburb, you can relax on a lush, secluded ten-acre ranchette, not far from the historic Suwannee River. May I send you some printed information, or perhaps arrange for a qualified sales associate to call back at your convenience?”

The voice said, “A ranchette? Is that like a dinette?”

“No. It’s a real-estate term, Mr. Santana.”

“But we don’t live in a crowded suburb. We live in the Everglades,” the voice said. “There’s only five hundred and thirteen people in the whole town.”

By now, Shreave had figured out that he was speaking to a kid, and that his time was being wasted. He was itching to say something really snide, but he had to be cautious because Relentless randomly monitored outgoing floor calls for “quality control.”

“Mr. Santana,” he said with exaggerated politeness, “would you mind putting Mrs. Santana back on the line?”

“I’m right here,” the woman piped in, catching Shreave off guard. Obviously the bitch had been listening on another phone.

“Then I guess I don’t need to repeat our offer,” Shreave said thinly.

“No, you do not,” Mrs. Santana said. “We categorically have no interest in buying a ‘ranchette’ in Gilchrist County, wherever that might be.”

“Well, you
have
heard of the Suwannee River, right?”

“I’ve heard the song, Mr. Eisenhower. There’s no reason to be sarcastic.”

“That wasn’t my intention.” Shreave’s eyes drifted to the top of Eugenie’s head. He wondered if the fool listening on the end of her line would have ever imagined that she had a real pearl stud in her tongue.

Mrs. Santana went on: “The song’s actually called ‘Old Folks at Home’ and it was written by Stephen Foster, and you know what? He never floated way down upon the Suwannee, because he never set foot in ‘beautiful Gilchrist County’ or anywhere else in Florida. The man lived in Pennsylvania, and he got the name Suwannee River off a map and took out the
u
to make the syllables fit the music. By the way, Mr. Eisenhower, what is your supervisor’s name?”

“Miguel Truman,” Shreave said dully.

“And
his
supervisor’s name?”

“Shantilla Lincoln.”

“Because I intend to speak with them,” Mrs. Santana said. “You sound like such a nice, decent fellow—does your mother know what you do for a living, Mr. Eisenhower? Harassing strangers over the phone? Trying to talk folks on a fixed income into buying things they don’t need? Is this what she raised you to be, your mother? A professional pest?”

At that moment, Boyd Shreave should have calmly apologized for inconveniencing the Santanas, and then disconnected. That was the drill at Relentless: Never argue with people, never abuse them, never lose your cool. Do not under any circumstances give them a reason to complain to the feds.

Those on the receiving end of Boyd Shreave’s grating sales calls had at various times called him a deadbeat, a maggot, a polyp, a vulture, a douchebag, a cocksucker, a shitbird, a pussbucket and even a rectal ulcer. Never once had Shreave replied in kind.

And most likely he would have held his composure on this particular evening had Mrs. Santana not touched a sore spot by referring to his mother, who had in fact expressed bilious objections to his move to telemarketing; who herself had pelted him with unflattering names, each preceded by the word
lazy.

So, instead of hanging up and moving down the list to the next call, Shreave said to Mrs. Santana what he had longed to say to his mother, which was: “Go screw yourself, you dried-up old skank.”

This was articulated not in Shreave’s friendly-neighbor telephone voice but in a corrosive snarl, emitted so loudly that both Sacco and Eugenie Fonda sprang up in their cubicles and stared at Shreave over the padded partitions as if he’d wigged out.

On the other end, Mrs. Santana sounded more wounded than angry. “What an awful thing to say, Mr. Eisenhower,” she said quietly. “Please connect me with Mr. Truman or Miss Lincoln right this minute.”

Boyd Shreave chuckled acidly and plucked off his headset, thinking: No wonder they’re moving all the call centers to India—the poor saps there don’t know enough English to insult the customers.

Eugenie passed him a note that said “Are you fucking crazy?”

“Only for you,” Shreave scribbled back.

But as he sat there sipping his latte, he reflected upon the exchange with Mrs. Santana and conceded he had been harsh, considering that she hadn’t called him anything worse than a pest.

Maybe I
am
losing it, Shreave thought. Jesus, I need a vacation.

Honey Santana stared at the phone in her hand.

“What’d he say?” Fry asked.

Honey shook her head. “Never mind.”

“You know, there’s a do-not-call list. Why don’t you put our number on it? Then we won’t have to deal with these turds anymore.”

“Could you please not use that word?”

Honey already paid extra for a service that rejected calls from blocked phone numbers. To get around it, many telemarketing firms used rotating 800 exchanges, which is what Honey found when she pressed the caller ID button. She jotted the number down next to the name Boyd Eisenhower.

Fry said, “Thanks for the soup. It was good.”

“Welcome.”

“What are you doing now?”

“I’m calling the company to complain.”

“Like they care,” Fry said. “Mom, please, not tonight.”

The line was busy. Honey put down the phone and popped a Tic Tac. “I wouldn’t mind speaking to that guy again. He called me a truly awful name.”

“So, let’s hear it.”

“You’re only twelve and a half, Fry.”

“Hey, you let me watch
The Sopranos.
”

“Once,” Honey said ruefully. “I thought it was about opera, honest to God.”

“Was it b-i-t-c-h? That’s what he called you, right?”

Honey said no and dialed again. Still busy.

“You shouldn’t have brought up his mom,” Fry remarked.

“Why not?” Honey said. “You think she bled and suffered to bring him into this world, nursed him at her breast, bathed him when he was soiled, held him when he was sick—all so he could grow up and nag people in the middle of their suppers!” Honey shook a finger at her son. “You ever take a lame-ass job like that, I’m writing you out of my will.”

Fry glanced around the double-wide as if taking inventory. “There goes the trust fund,” he said.

Honey ignored him and dialed again. Another busy signal.

“Maybe his mom’s a pest, too. Ever thought of that?” Fry said. “Maybe he was raised by pests and he just can’t help the way he is.”

Honey slammed the phone on the kitchen table. “For your information, he called me a shriveled-up old skank.”

“Ha!” Fry said.

“That’s funny to you?”

“Sort of.” Fry had never mentioned that his friends considered her the hottest mom in town. He said, “Come on—you’re not old, and definitely not skank material.”

Honey Santana got up and started banging dishes around the sink. Fry wondered when she was going to wind down—sometimes it took hours.

“What is it with men?” she said. “First Mr. Piejack wants to jump my bones and now this person I don’t even know tells me to go screw myself. My day starts with dumb animal lust and ends with rabid hostility—and you wonder why I don’t date.”

Fry said, “Hey, did Aunt Rachel ever get another dog?”

“Don’t you dare change the subject.” Again, Honey snatched up the phone and started punching the buttons.

“Mom, you’re wasting your time. You’ll never get through to that creep.”

She winked at him. “I’m not calling the 800 number. I’m calling my brother to have him
trace
the 800 number.”

“Oh wonderful,” said Fry.

“And don’t roll your eyes at me, young man, because—oh, hello. Could you ring Richard Santana please?” Honey covered the mouthpiece. “I will most definitely find this person,” she whispered emphatically to her son, “one way or another.”

Fry asked, “And then what, Mom?”

She smiled. “And then I’ll sell him something he can’t afford. That’s what.”

Two

After nightfall Sammy Tigertail ditched the rented Chrysler in a canal along the Tamiami Trail. Then he hitchhiked to Naples and met his half brother Lee in the parking lot of an outlet mall.

“Come home. You’ll be safer on the reservation,” Lee said.

“No, this way is better for everyone. You bring the gear and the rifle?”

“Yep.”

“What about the guitar?”

Sammy Tigertail had only once set foot inside the tribe’s Hard Rock operation. The whole scene was gruesome, except for the rock-and-roll artifacts on display. Sammy Tigertail had zeroed in on a blond Gibson Super 400 that had once belonged to Mark Knopfler of Dire Straits, his late father’s favorite band.

“It’s in the truck,” Lee said, “and you owe me big-time, brother. They didn’t want to give it up.”

“Yeah, I bet.”

“But I got the big boss to make a call.”

“No shit?” Sammy Tigertail hadn’t known that Lee held any sway with the tribal chairman. “Let’s go,” he said.

His brother drove him to the Turner River, where together they dragged a small canoe from the bed of the pickup; not a native cypress dugout but a shiny blue aluminum model, manufactured at some factory in northern Michigan.

After they loaded in the gear, Lee said, “You see the Man coming, first thing to go overboard is the gun.”

“All depends,” said Sammy Tigertail.

They stood in a thickening darkness, silent but for the oscillating hum of insects.

Lee asked, “You didn’t kill that white man on purpose, did you?”

Sammy Tigertail took a heavy breath. “No, it wasn’t me.”

He told the story of the banded water snake, and Lee agreed that it was clearly a spirit at work. “What do you want me to do with your checks?” he asked.

Every month the tribe sent three thousand dollars to each Seminole, remittance from the gambling profits.

“Give it to Cindy.”

“Sammy, don’t be a fool—”

“Hey, it’s
my
goddamn money.”

“Okay,” Lee said. Cindy was Sammy Tigertail’s ex-girlfriend, and she had issues.

Lee put a hand on his brother’s shoulder and said good-bye. Sammy Tigertail got into the canoe and pushed it away from the bank.

“Hey, boy, since when do you play guitar?” Lee called out.

“I don’t.” Sammy Tigertail dipped the paddle and turned the bow downriver. “But I got all the time in the world to learn.”

“Sammy, wait. What do I tell Ma?”

“Tell her I’ll be back someday to play her a song.”

Eugenie Fonda had been briefly famous as a mistress in another relationship. In the summer of 1999 she had dallied with a man named Van Bonneville, a self-employed tree trimmer in Fernandina Beach. Soon after the affair had begun, a hurricane pushing thirteen feet of tidal surge struck the coast and smashed Van Bonneville’s house into toothpicks. He survived, but his wife was lost and presumed drowned.

Hurricanes being to tree cutters what Amway conventions are to hookers, Van Bonneville was an exceptionally busy fellow in the days following the tragedy. While neighbors were impressed by his stoicism, his in-laws were disturbed by what they considered an inadequate display of grief by the young widower.

Certain grisly suspicions were floated before the local police, but no one paid much attention until Mrs. Bonneville’s body was found in her Pontiac at the bottom of the St. Johns River. It was her husband’s contention that Mrs. Bonneville’s Bonneville had been swept away by the onrushing flood as she wheeled out of the driveway in a frantic quest for Marlboros. Doubt fell upon this story as soon as police divers revealed that Mrs. Bonneville had been snugly strapped into the driver’s seat. Well known among her friends was the fact that on principle Mrs. Bonneville never buckled her seat belt, even though it was required by state law; an ardent libertarian, she opposed government meddling in all matters of personal choice.

Another clue was her knockoff Seiko titanium, which, unlike the genuine item, was not even slightly water-resistant. The face of the wristwatch was frozen on a time and date that preceded by a full nine hours the hurricane’s landfall, suggesting that the Pontiac had gone into the river well in advance of the fierce weather, and that Mrs. Bonneville’s corpse had been strapped inside to keep her from surfacing prematurely.

In the end, her husband’s fate was sealed by the Duval County medical examiner, who retrieved from a blunt indentation on Mrs. Bonneville’s scalp several sticky ligneous flakes that were later identified as bark particles from a sawed-off mahogany branch. The branch segment measured three feet long and seven inches in circumference on the day it was confiscated from the bed of Van Bonneville’s obsidian-flecked Ford F-150 pickup.

The “Hurricane Homicide” trial was broadcast live on Court TV and later featured during prime time on
Dateline.
Prosecutors depicted Van Bonneville as a philandering shitweasel who had conspired to do away with his loving wife and blame it on the storm. The motives were laid out as greed (a $75,000 life-insurance policy) and lust, Van Bonneville having acquired a new girlfriend who then went by the name of Jean Leigh Hill. Tall and smoky-eyed, her long languorous walk to the witness stand was the undisputed highlight of the trial.

Eugenie testified that she’d taken up with Van Bonneville believing he was a widower, having fallen for his claim that his wife had perished in a freak tanning booth mishap. It wasn’t until three days after the hurricane that Eugenie had spotted a newspaper story about the missing Mrs. Bonneville. The enlightening article included several quotes from her “tearful and apprehensive husband.” Immediately Eugenie located the one and only love letter that Van Bonneville had scrawled to her, and marched to the police station.

Scandalous headlines were followed by the obligatory book deal. Soon a ghostwriter arrived from New York to help Ms. Hill organize her recollections of the romance, although there wasn’t much to recollect. Eugenie had known Van Bonneville all of eleven days before the crime. They’d gone on one lousy date, to play putt-putt golf, and afterward they’d had putt-putt sex in the cab of his pickup. That it was enough to leave Van Bonneville smitten and dreamy-eyed had been mildly depressing to Eugenie.

Initially she’d been drawn to his rugged looks, particularly his knuckles, which were intriguingly striped with scars. Eugenie had occasionally been a sucker for marred, rough men, but on that first and only night with Van Bonneville she would discover that his wounds were the results of frequent tree-trimming miscues, and that he was as clumsy at foreplay as he was with a pruning saw.

Fortunately for her publisher, Eugenie had a fertile imagination. The manuscript that she and the ghostwriter produced was thin but sufficiently tawdry in content to become an instant bestseller. For seven weeks
Storm Ghoul
ran neck and neck on the
New York Times
non-fiction list with a collection of Ann Coulter’s most venomous Al Gore columns. So torrid was Eugenie’s account of Van Bonneville’s sexual talents that he got swamped with marriage proposals from complete strangers. From Death Row he sent Eugenie a thank-you note and a Polaroid photograph of his hands.

Her share of the book advance was half a million dollars, a cheering sum. Eugenie’s new boyfriend, a stockbroker who’d seen her on
Oprah
and contacted her Web site, advised her to invest the windfall in a red-hot Texas outfit called Enron, the shares of which he was pleased to acquire for her at a discount fee. Within twenty-four months Eugenie was dead broke, alone again and working the phone bank at Relentless. By that time a barrage of anti-bimbo invectives had caused her to shut down the Web site and adopt the name of Fonda, a demented aunt having declared herself a third cousin to Peter and Jane.

Eugenie was still not entirely sure why she’d seduced Boyd Shreave, a charmless and dyspeptic presence in the adjacent cubicle. Perhaps it was because he had shown so little interest that she felt the tug of a sexual challenge. Or perhaps she’d sensed something in his glazed indifference that hinted at a secret wild side, a raw and reckless private life.

Yet, so far, Boyd Shreave had failed to deliver a single surprise. He was a man without mystery and, except for an odd stippling on his pubic region, also without scars. On the upside, he was decent-looking enough and fairly dependable in the sack. He kept assuring her that he was angling for a divorce, a blatant lie with which Eugenie gamely played along. Boyd’s wife had inherited a small chain of pizza joints, the profits from which provided the Shreaves with a comfortable existence in spite of Boyd’s serial failures as a salesman. It would have been idiotic for him to run out on his wife, much less snuff her in the manner of Van Bonneville, a fact in which Eugenie Fonda took comfort. She had no desire to reprise her role as the paramour of a murderer.

To Eugenie, Boyd Shreave was not a love interest so much as a timely distraction. Their relationship was the natural backwash of being stuck together in the most boring, brain-numbing job on the planet.

On the night Shreave had so loudly berated the customer on the phone, he arrived at Eugenie’s apartment carrying a six-pack of Corona, to which he clung even as he hugged her. “I got canned,” he announced.

“Oh no.” Eugenie, who in her heels stood four inches taller than Boyd, kissed his forehead. “Don’t tell me they were taping you!”

Shreave nodded bitterly. “Miguel and Shantilla called me in and played back the whole goddamn call. Then they sent some Mexican ape from Security to clean out my desk and hustle me out of the building.”

“What happened to probation?” Eugenie asked. “I thought they aren’t supposed to fire you the first time you lose it.”

“They will if they catch you tellin’ somebody to go screw themselves.”

“Jesus, Boyd,
screw
isn’t so bad. You hear it on TV all the time. If it was
fuck,
I could understand you gettin’ axed, but not
screw.
”

Shreave uncapped a beer and settled in on the couch. “Apparently
skank
is a no-no, too.”

Eugenie seated herself beside him. “I’m so sorry,” she said.

“Oh well. It sure felt good to say it at the time.”

“Have you told Lily?”

“Not yet,” Shreave muttered. Lily was his wife. “She’ll be pissed, but what else is new. It was a shit job, anyway,” he said. “No offense.”

Eugenie was wondering how best to inform Boyd that she wasn’t devoted to the idea of continuing their affair now that he was no longer employed at Relentless and they couldn’t pass horny notes to each other. It exhausted her to think about carrying on with him by telephone.

“The only good thing about that goddamn place,” he was saying, “was meeting you.”

Swell, thought Eugenie. “Boyd, that’s so sweet.”

Shreave began unbuttoning her blouse. “You wanna take a shower?” he asked. “I’ll be the Handsome Drifter and you can be the Hula-Hula Queen.”

“Sure, baby.” She didn’t have the heart to give him the bad news. Maybe tomorrow, she thought.

Honey Santana’s brother was busy on a story, but he promised to try to help. While waiting, Honey robotically kept dialing the 800 number. She was well aware that telemarketing companies deliberately rigged their outgoing phone banks to thwart incoming calls, yet she continued to punch the buttons. She felt more powerless than usual against this latest compulsion.

“It’s driving me up the wall, this guy was so awful,” she said to her brother when he finally got through. “And, the thing is, he had such a nice voice.”

“Yeah, so did Ted Bundy,” said Richard Santana. “Sis, what are you going to do with the name if I give it to you? Be honest.”

Richard Santana was a reporter in upstate New York. Among the many Internet databases available to his newspaper was a nifty reverse telephone directory. It had taken about six seconds to trace the 800 line for his sister.

“All I want to do is file a complaint,” she lied.

“With whom? The FTC?”

“Right, the FTC. So, you got the name?”

Richard Santana was aware that Honey sometimes reacted to ordinary situations in extreme ways. Having been burned before, he was now wary of all her inquiries. This time, however, he felt confident that the information he was providing could result in nothing worse than an angry letter, since the offending company was in Texas and his sister was far away in Florida.