Stormy Weather (32 page)

“Exactly.”

She stopped pacing and lowered her voice. “Snapper didn’t look at the new numbers.”

Fred Dove gave her a thumbs-up. “That was my next question.”

“I kept my hand over the papers so he wouldn’t see.”

“Good girl.”

“Can we get two checks instead of one?”

“I think so, Edie. Sure.”

“One for the dwelling, one for the contents.”

“That’s the idea,” the insurance man said. “An extra sixty for you and me. But don’t say a word about this.”

“No shit, Sherlock. He’s still got three bullets left, remember?” She pecked Fred Dove on the lips and aimed him out the back door.

Skink and Bonnie Lamb kept watch over the house on Calusa while Augustine returned to the pickup truck for the guns. He wasn’t in the mood to shoot at anybody, even with monkey tranquilizer. Making love to Bonnie had left him recklessly serene and sleepy-headed. He resolved to shake himself out of it.

First he attempted to depress himself with misgivings and high-minded reproach. The woman was married, newly married! She was confused, lonely, vulnerable—Augustine piled it on, struggling to feel like a worthless low-life piece of shit. But he was too happy. Bonnie dazzled him with her nerve. Augustine hadn’t ever been with a woman who would stoically snack on roadkill, or fail to complain about mosquitoes. Moreover, she seemed to understand the psychotherapeutic benefits of skull juggling. “Touching death,” she’d said, “or maybe teasing it.”

In the aftermath of passion, zipped naked into a sleeping bag, a lover’s groggiest murmurs can be mistaken for piercing insight. Augustine had cautioned himself against drawing too much from those tender exhausted moments with Bonnie Lamb. Yet here he was with a soaring heart and the hint of a goddamn spring in his step. Would he ever learn?

As much as he craved her company, Augustine was apprehensive about Bonnie’s joining Skink’s expedition. He feared that he’d worry about her to distraction, and he needed his brain to be clear, uncluttered. As long as the governor ran the show, trouble was positively guaranteed. Augustine was counting on it; he couldn’t wait. Finally he was on the verge of recapturing, at least temporarily, direction and purpose.

Bonnie was a complication. A week ago Augustine had nothing to
lose, and now he had something. Everything. Love’s lousy timing, he thought.

Secret moves would be easier with only the two of them, he and Skink. But Bonnie demanded to be in the middle, playing Etta to their Butch and Sundance. The governor didn’t seem to care; of course, he lived in a different universe. “‘Happiness is never grand,’” he’d whispered to Augustine. “Aldous Huxley. ‘Being contented has none of the glamour of a good fight against misfortune.’ You think about that.”

When Augustine got to the truck, he broke down the dart rifle and concealed the pieces in a gym bag. The .38 pistol he tucked in the gut of his jeans, beneath his shirt. He slung the gym bag over his shoulder and began hiking back toward Calusa, wondering if Huxley was right.

As soon as Dennis Reedy and Fred Dove drove away, Edie Marsh hauled Levon Stichler out of the closet. Snapper wasn’t much help. He claimed to be saving his energy.

Edie poked the old man with a bare toe. “So what are we going to do with him?” It was a question of paramount interest to Levon Stichler as well. His eyes widened in anticipation of Snapper’s answer, which was:

“Dump him.”

“Where?” asked Edie.

“Far away,” Snapper said. “Fucker meant to kill me.”

“It was a pitiful try, you’ve got to admit.”

“So? It’s the thought that counts.”

Edie said, “Look at him, Snapper. He’s not worth the bullet.”

Levon Stichler wasn’t the slightest bit insulted. Edie pulled the gag from his mouth, prompting the old man to spit repeatedly on the floor. The gag was a dust cloth that tasted pungently of furniture wax.

“Thank you,” he panted.

“Shut up, asshole,” said Snapper.

Edie Marsh said: “What’s your name, Grampy?”

Levon Stichler told him. He explained why he’d come to assassinate the mobile-home salesman.

“Well, somebody beat you to it.” Edie described the visit by the burly fellow with the two dachshunds. “He took your scumbag Tony away. I’m certain he won’t be back.”

“Oh,” said Levon Stichler. “Who are you?”

Snapper gave Edie a cranky look. “See? I told you we gotta kill the fucker.”

The old man immediately apologized for being so nosy. Snapper said it didn’t matter, they were going to dump him anyway.

Levon said, “That’s really not necessary.” When he began to plead his case, Snapper decided to gag him again. The old man coughed out the dust rag, crying, “Please—I’ve got a heart condition!”

“Good.” Snapper ordered Edie Marsh to go fetch the auger spike. Levon Stichler got the message. He stopped talking and allowed his mouth to be muffled.

“Cover his eyes, too,” said Snapper.

Edie used a black chiffon scarf that she’d found in Neria Torres’s underwear drawer. It made for quite a classy blindfold.

“That too tight?” she asked.

Levon Stichler grunted meekly in the negative.

“Now what?” she said to Snapper.

He shrugged unhappily. “You got any more them Darvons? My fucking leg’s on fire.”

“Honey, I sure don’t—”

“Shit!” With his good leg he kicked Levon Stichler in the ribs, for no reason except that the old man was a convenient target. Edie pulled Snapper aside and told him to get a grip, for Christ’s sake.

Under her breath: “It’s all working out, OK? Reedy signed off on the settlement. All that’s left is to wait for the money. Kill this geezer, you’ll screw up everything.”

Snapper worked his jaw like a steam shovel. His eyes were shot with pain and hangover. “Well, I can’t think of nothin’ else to do.”

Edie said: “Listen. We put old Levon in the car and haul him out to the boonies. We tell him to take his sweet time walking back, otherwise we’ll track down each of his grandchildren and … oh, I don’t know—”

“Skin ’em like pigs?”

“Fine. Whatever. The point is to scare the hell out of him, and he’ll forget about everything. All he wants to do is live.”

Snapper said, “My goddamn leg’s near to bust open.”

“Go watch TV. I’ll look for some pills.”

Edie searched the medicine cabinets to see if any useful pharmaceuticals had survived the hurricane. The best she could do was an unopened bottle of Midols. She told Snapper it was generic codeine, and pressed five tablets into his hand. He washed them down with a slug of warm Budweiser.

Edie said, “Is there gas in the Jeep?”

“Yeah. After Sally Jessy we’ll go.”

“And what is today’s topic?”

“Boob jobs gone bad.”

“How cheery,” said Edie. She went outside to walk Donald and Marla.

After days in a morphine fog, Trooper Brenda Rourke finally felt better. The plastic surgeon promised to get her on the operating-room schedule by the end of the week.

Through the bandages she told Jim Tile: “You look whipped, big guy.”

“We’re still on double shifts. It’s like Daytona out there.”

Brenda asked if he’d heard what happened. “Some pawnshop off Kendall—the creep tried to hock my mom’s ring.”

“Same guy?”

“Sounds like it. The clerk was impressed by the face.”

Jim Tile said, “Well, it’s a start.”

But the news worried him. He had unleashed the governor to deal with Brenda’s attacker on the assumption that the governor would move faster than police. However, the pawnshop incident freshened the trail. Now it was possible that Skink’s pursuit of the man in the black Cherokee would put him on a collision course with detectives. It was not a happy scenario to contemplate.

“I must look like hell,” Brenda said, “because I’ve never seen you so gloomy.”

Of course he’d let it get to him—Brenda lying pale and shattered in the hospital. In his work Jim Tile had seen plenty of blood, pain and heartache, yet he’d never felt such blinding anger as he had that first day at Brenda’s bedside. Trusting the justice system to deal with her attacker had struck the trooper as laughably naive, certainly
futile. This was a special monster. It was evident by what he’d done to her. The guy hated either women, cops or both. In any case, he was a menace. He needed to be cut from the herd.

Now, upon reflection, Jim Tile wished he’d let his inner rage subside before he’d made the move. When Brenda remembered the tag number off the Cherokee, he should’ve sent it up the chain of command; played it by the book. Turning the governor loose was a rash, foolhardy impulse; vigilante madness. Brenda would recover from the beating, but now Jim Tile had put his dear old friend at dire risk. It would be damn near impossible to call him off.

“I need to ask you something,” Brenda said.

“Sure.”

“A detective from Metro Robbery came by today. Also a woman from the State Attorney. They didn’t know about the black Jeep.”

“Hmmm.”

“About the license plate—I figured you’d given them the numbers.”

“I made a mistake, Bren.”

“You forgot?”

“No, I didn’t forget. I made a mistake.”

Jim Tile sat on the edge of the bed and told her what he’d done. Afterwards she remained quiet, except to make small talk when a nurse came to dress her wounds.

Later, when she and Jim Tile were alone again, Brenda said, “So you found your crazy friend. How?”

“Doesn’t matter.”

“And he was right here, in this room, and you didn’t introduce me?”

Jim Tile chuckled. “You were zonked, darling.”

Brenda stroked his hand. He could tell she was still thinking about it. Finally she said, “Boy, you must really love me, to do something like this.”

“I screwed up bad. I’m sorry.”

“Enough already. I’ve got one question.”

“OK.”

“What are the odds,” Brenda said, “that your friend will catch up with the asshole who got my mother’s ring?”

“The odds are pretty good.”

Brenda Rourke nodded and closed her eyes. Jim Tile waited until her breathing was strong and regular; waited until he was certain it was a deep healthy sleep, and not something else. Before leaving, he
kissed her cheek, in a gap between bandages, and was comforted by the warmth of her skin. He felt pretty sure he saw the trace of a smile on her lips.

Skink’s forehead was propped on the windowsill. He hadn’t made a sound in an hour, hadn’t stirred when Augustine left to get the guns. Bonnie Lamb didn’t know if he was dozing or ignoring her.

“This was the baby’s room. Did you notice?” she said.

Nothing.

“Are you awake?”

Still no response.

A yellowjacket flew through the broken-out window and took an instant liking to Skink’s pungent mane. Bonnie shooed it away. From across the street, at 15600 Calusa, came the sound of dogs barking.

Eventually the governor spoke. “Oh, they’ll be back.” He didn’t raise his head from the sill.

“Who?”

“Folks who own the baby.”

“How can you be sure?”

Silence.

“Maybe the hurricane was all they could take.”

“Optimist,” Skink grumbled.

Glancing again at the drowned teddy bear, Bonnie thought that no family deserved to have their life shattered in such a harrowing way. The governor seemed to be reading her mind.

He said, “I’m sorry it happened to them. I’m sorry they were here in the first place.”

“And you’ll be even sorrier if they come back.”

Skink looked up, blinking like a sleepy porch lizard. “It’s a hurricane zone,” he said simply.

Bonnie thought he ought to hear an outsider’s point of view. “People come here because they think it’s better than where they were. They believe the postcards, and you know what? For lots of them, it
is
better than where they came from, whether it’s Long Island or Des Moines or Havana. Life is brighter, so it’s worth the risks. Maybe even hurricanes.”

The governor used his functional eye to scan the baby’s room. He said, “Fuck with Mother Nature and she’ll fuck back.”

“People have dreams, that’s all. Like the settlers of the old West.”

“Oh, child.”

“What?” Bonnie said, indignantly.

“Tell me what’s left to settle.” Skink lowered his head again.

She tugged on the sleeve of his camo shirt. “I want you to show me what you showed Max. The wildest part.”

Skink clucked. “Why? Your husband certainly wasn’t impressed.”

“I’m not like Max.”

“Let us fervently hope not.”

“Please. Will you show me?”

Once more, no reply. Bonnie wished Augustine would hurry back. She returned her attention to the house where the black Cherokee was parked, and thought about what they’d witnessed during the long hot morning.

A half hour after the old man had arrived, a taxi pulled up. Out the doorway of 15600 Calusa had scurried a redheaded woman in a tight shiny cocktail dress and formidable high heels. Augustine and Bonnie agreed she looked like a prostitute. As the woman had wriggled herself into the back of the cab, Skink remarked that her bold stockings would make a superb mullet seine.

A short time later, a teal-blue Taurus had stopped in the driveway. The governor said it had to be a rental, because only rental companies bought teal-blue cars. Two men had gotten out of the Taurus; neither had a disfigured jaw. The younger one was a trim-looking blond who wore eyeglasses and carried a tan briefcase. The older, heavier one had cropped dark hair and carried a clipboard; his bearing was one of authority—probably ex-military, Skink guessed, a sergeant in his youth. The two men had stayed in the house for a long time. Finally the older one had come out alone. He’d sat in the driver’s side of the car, with the door open, and jotted notes. Soon the man with the briefcase had appeared around the corner of the house, from the backyard, and together they’d departed.

While the visitors didn’t appear to be violent desperadoes, Skink said that one could never be certain in Miami. Augustine got the hint, and went to fetch the guns from the pickup truck.

Now the governor had his forehead on the sill, and he’d begun to hum. Bonnie asked the name of the song.