Stormy Weather (21 page)

Avila said: “Seven thousand? Mister Whitmark, I swear to God I don’t know nothing about this.”

“Suit yourself—”

“Wait, now hold on.…” Avila sat upright in bed. “Tell me supposedly what happened, OK?”

“There is no fucking ‘supposedly.’” Gar Whitmark related his wife’s pitiable tale.

“And the truck was ours, you’re sure?”

“I’m holding the receipt, dipshit. ‘Fortress Roofing’ is what it says.”

Avila grimaced. “Who signed it?”

Gar Whitmark said the signature was illegible. “My wife said the guy had a fucked-up jaw made him look like a moray eel. Plus he wore a bad suit.”

“Shit,” Avila said. Exactly what he’d feared.

“Is this ringing a bell?” Gar Whitmark’s sarcasm was heavy and ominous.

Avila sagged against the headboard of his bed. “Sir, you’ll get your money back first thing.”

“Damn straight. And a new roof as well.”

“What?”

“You heard me, noodle dick. The seven grand your people stole, plus you’re picking up the bill when my new roof gets done. By
real
roofers.”

Avila’s stomach pitched. Gar Whitmark probably lived in a goddamn ranch house way down south, with all the other millionaires. Avila figured he’d be looking at twenty thousand, easy, for a new roof job. He said, “That ain’t really fair.”

“You’d rather do dinner with Chef Pick-Percy?”

“Aw, Christ, Mister Whitmark.”

“I didn’t think so.”

Avila got out of bed and went to the backyard to round up two roosters, which he took to the garage for beheading. He hoped the sacrifice would be favorably received. After a short scuffle, the deed was done. Avila dripped the warm blood into a plastic pail filled with pennies, bleached cat bones and turtle shells. The pail was placed at the feet of a ceramic statue of Chango, the saint of lightning and fire. The child-sized statue wore a robe, colored beads and a gold-plated crown. Kneeling in beseechment, Avila raised his blood-flecked arms toward the heavens and asked Chango to please strike Snapper dead as a fucking doornail for screwing up the roofer scam.

Avila wasn’t sure the ceremony would work. He was relatively new to the study of
santería
and, characteristically, hadn’t bothered to research it thoroughly. Avila had begun dabbling in the blood practices when he first learned the authorities were investigating him for bribery; several cocaine dealers of his acquaintance swore that
santería
worship had kept them out of jail, so Avila figured there was nothing to lose by trying. In Hialeah he conferred with a genuine
santero
priest, who offered to teach him the secrets of the religion, rooted in ancient Afro-Cuban customs. The history was infinitely too deep and mystical for Avila, and soon he grew impatient with the lessons.

All he really wanted, he explained to the
santero
, was the ability to put curses on his enemies. Lethal curses.

The priest wailed and told him to get lost. But Avila went home convinced that, from the mumbo jumbo he’d seen, he could teach himself the basics of hexing. For his deity Avila picked the saint Chango, because he liked the macho name. For his first target he chose the county prosecutor leading the investigation against corrupt building inspectors.

Pennies were easy to come by, as were old animal bones; Avila’s grandmother lived four blocks from a pet cemetery in Medley. Obtaining blood was the biggest obstacle for Avila, who had no zeal for performing live sacrifices. The first few times, he tried pleasing Chango by sprinkling the coins and bones with steak juices and homemade bouillon. Nothing happened. Evidently the
santería
saints preferred the fresh stuff.

One rainy Sunday afternoon, Avila bought himself a live chicken. His wife was cooking a big dinner for the cousins, so she banished Avila from the kitchen. He put a Ginsu knife in his back pocket and smuggled the victim to the garage. As soon as Avila began spreading newspapers on the floor, the chicken sensed trouble. Avila was astounded that a puny five-pound bird could make such a racket or put up such spirited resistance. The crudely staged sacrifice eventually was completed, but Avila emerged scratched, pecked and smeared with bloody feathers. So was his wife’s cream-colored Buick Electra. Her ear-splitting tirade caused the cousins to forgo dessert and head home early.

Two days later, the magic happened. The prosecutor targeted by Avila’s chicken curse fell and dislocated a shoulder in the shower. At the time, he was in the company of an athletic prostitute named Kandi, who was thoughtful enough not only to call 911 but to make herself available for numerous press interviews. Given the media uproar, the State Attorney suggested that the fallen prosecutor take an indefinite leave of absence.

The corruption investigation wasn’t derailed, merely reassigned. Nevertheless, Avila was convinced that the
santería
spell was a success. Later attempts to replicate the results proved fruitless (and messy), but Avila blamed his own inexperience, plus a lack of suitable facilities. Perhaps, during the sacrifices, he was chanting the wrong phrases, or chanting the right phrases in the wrong order. Perhaps he was performing the ceremonies at a bad time of day for the mercurial Chango. Or perhaps Avila was simply using inferior poultry.

While he ended up plea-bargaining with the replacement prosecutor, Avila’s faith in the witchcraft of bones and blood remained unshaken. He decided Snapper’s transgression was heinous enough to merit the offering of two chickens instead of one. If that didn’t work, he’d invest in a billy goat.

The roosters did not succumb quietly, the clamor awakening Avila’s wife, aunt and mother. The women burst into the garage to find Avila singing Spanish gibberish to his cherished ceramic statue. Avila’s wife instantly spied red droplets and a waxen fragment of chicken beak on the left front fender of her Electra, and savagely took to striking her husband with a garden rake.

On the other side of Dade County, Snapper dozed peacefully in a dead man’s Naugahyde recliner. He felt no pain from the supernatural hand of Chango, nor did he feel the hateful glare of Edie Marsh, who was stretched out on the mildewed carpet and trussed to a naked insurance man.

As the candles melted to lumps, Snapper’s shadow flickered and shrunk on the pale bare walls. His profile reminded Edie Marsh of a miniature tyrannosaurus.

For laughs, he refused to let Fred Dove remove the red condom.

“That’s mean,” Edie said.

“Well, I’m one mean motherfucker,” Snapper proclaimed. “You don’t believe me, there’s a lady cop in the hospital you should see.”

When he yawned, the misaligned mandible waggled horizontally, then appeared to disengage altogether from his face. He looked like a snake trying to swallow an egg.

Edie said, “What is it you want?”

“You know damn well.” Snapper held the flashlight on Fred Dove’s retreating cock. “Where’d you find a red rubber?” he asked. “Mail order, I bet. Looks like a Santy Claus hat.”

From the floor, the insurance man gave a disconsolate whimper. Edie leaned her head against the small of his back. Snapper had positioned them butt-to-butt, binding their hands with a curtain sash. In Fred Dove’s briefcase Snapper found the business cards and policy folders from Midwest Casualty. From that it was easy to figure out—Edie on her knees, and so on. Snapper marveled at the exquisite timing of his entrance.

He said, “Fair is fair. A three-way split.”

“But you took off!” Edie objected. “You left me here with that asshole Tony.”

Snapper shrugged. “I changed my mind. I’m allowed. So how much money we talkin’ about?”

“Fuck you,” said Edie Marsh.

Without leaving the recliner, Snapper cocked one leg and kicked her in the side of the head. The sound of the blow was sickening. Edie moaned but didn’t cry.

“For God’s sake.” Fred Dove’s voice cracked, as if he were the one who’d been clobbered.

Snapper said, “Then tell me how much.”

“Don’t you dare.” Edie was woozy, but sharply she dug both elbows into Fred Dove’s ribs.

“I’m waiting,” said Snapper.

Edie felt the insurance man stiffen against the ropes. Then she heard him say: “A hundred forty-one thousand dollars.”

“Moron!” Edie hissed.

“But you won’t get a dime,” Fred Dove warned Snapper, “without me and Edie.”

“That a fact?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Not a goddamn cent,” Edie agreed, “because guess who’s getting the settlement check.
Missus
Neria Torres. Me.”

Snapper aimed the flashlight on Edie’s face, which bore a puffy salmon imprint of his shoe. “Sweetie,” he said, “it’s hard to sign a check if you’re in a body cast. Understand?”

She turned away from the harsh light and silently cursed her lousy taste in convicts.

Fred Dove said to Snapper: “You ought to untie us.”

“Well, listen to Santy Claus!”

Edie’s pulse jackhammered in her temples. “You know what it is, Fred? Snapper’s jealous. See, it’s not about the insurance money. It’s that I was going to make love to you—”

“Haw!” Snapper exclaimed.

“—and he knows,” Edie went on, “he knows I wouldn’t do it with him for all the money in Fort Knox!”

Snapper laughed. Nudging Fred Dove with a toe, he said, “Don’t kid yourself, bubba. She’d fuck a syphilitic porky-pine, she thought there was a dollar in it.”

“Nice talk,” Edie said. God Almighty, her head hurt.

The insurance man fought to steady his nerves. He was flabbergasted to find himself in the middle of something so ugly, complicated and dangerous. Only hours ago the arrangement seemed foolproof and exciting: a modestly fraudulent claim, a beautiful and
uninhibited co-conspirator, a wild fling in an abandoned hurricane house.

A bright-red condom seemed appropriate.

Then out of nowhere appeared this Snapper person, a hard-looking sort and an authentic criminal, judging by what Fred Dove had seen and heard. The insurance man didn’t want such a violent character for a third partner. On the other hand, he didn’t want to die or be harmed seriously enough to require hospitalization. Blue Cross would demand facts, as would Fred Dove’s wife.

So he offered Snapper forty-seven thousand dollars. “That’s how it splits three ways.”

Snapper swung the flashlight to Fred Dove’s face. He said, “You figured that up in your head? No pencil and paper, that’s pretty good.”

Yeah, thought Edie Marsh. Thank you, Dr. Einstein.

Fred Dove said to Snapper: “Do we have a deal?”

“Fair is fair.” He rose from the BarcaLounger and made his way to the garage. Within moments the portable generator belched to life. Snapper returned to the living room and turned on the solitary lightbulb. Then, kneeling beside Fred Dove and Edie Marsh, he cut the curtain sash off their wrists.

“Let’s go eat,” he said. “I’m fuckin’ starved.”

Fred Dove rose shakily. He modestly locked his hands in front of his crotch. “I’m taking this thing off,” he declared.

“The rubber?” Snapper gave him a thumbs-up. “You do that.” He glanced at Edie, who made no effort to cover her breasts or anything else. She eyed Snapper in a dark poisonous way.

He said, “That’s how you goin’ to Denny’s? Fine by me. Maybe we’ll get a free pie.”

Wordlessly Edie walked behind the Naugahyde recliner, picked up the crowbar she’d left there, took two steps toward Snapper, and swung at him with all her strength. He went down squalling.

Weapon in hand, Edie Marsh straddled him. Her damp and tangled hair had fallen to cover the bruised half of her face. To Fred Dove, she looked untamed and dazzling and alarmingly capable of homicide. He feared he was about to witness his first.

Edie inserted the sharp end of the crowbar between Snapper’s deviated jawbones, pinning his bloodless tongue to his teeth.

“Kick me again,” she said, “and I’ll have your balls in a blender.”

Fred Dove snatched his pants and his briefcase, and ran.

•  •  •

They returned the borrowed speedboat to the marina and went back to Coral Gables. With great effort they carried the man known as Skink into Augustine’s house.

Max Lamb was unnerved by the wall of grinning skulls, but said nothing as he made his way down the hall to the shower. Augustine got on the telephone to sort out what had happened with his dead uncle’s Cape buffalo. Bonnie fixed a pot of coffee and took it to the guest room, where the governor was recovering from the animal dart. He and Jim Tile were talking when Bonnie walked in. She wanted to stay and listen to this improbable stranger, but she felt she was intruding. The men’s conversation was serious, held in low tones. She heard Skink say:

“Brenda’s a strong one. She’ll make it.”

Then, Jim Tile: “I’ve tried every prayer I know.”

As Bonnie slipped out the door, she encountered Max, sucking on a cigaret as he emerged from the bathroom. She resolved to be forbearing about her husband’s odious new habit, which he blamed on the battlefield stress of the abduction.

She followed him to the living room and sat beside him on the sofa. There, in sensational detail, he described the torture he’d received at the hands of the one-eyed misfit.

“The dog collar,” Bonnie Lamb said.

“That’s right. Look at my neck.” Max opened the top buttons of his shirt, which he’d borrowed from Augustine. “See the burns? See?”

Bonnie didn’t notice any marks, but nodded sympathetically. “So you definitely want to prosecute.”

“Absolutely!” Max Lamb detected doubt in his wife’s voice. “Christ, Bonnie, he could’ve murdered me.”

She squeezed his hand. “I still don’t understand why—why he did it in the first place.”

“With a fruitcake like that, who knows.” Max Lamb purposely didn’t mention Skink’s disgust with the hurricane videos; he remembered that Bonnie felt the same way.

She said, “I think he needs professional help.”

“No, sweetheart, he needs a professional jail.” Max lifted his chin and blew smoke at the ceiling.

“Honey, let’s think about this—”

But he pulled away from her, bolting for the phone, which Augustine had just hung up. “I’d better call Pete Archibald,” Max Lamb said over his shoulder, “let everyone at Rodale know I’m OK.”