Under Cover of Daylight (31 page)

He walked toward the house, his eyes swiveling, his tread lightening. Drifting into the quickened senses of bonefish stalking. He came right up to the front door, then melted off to the right, crouching as he went, choosing a route through the dense trees and vines.

The gumbo-limbo he’d taken a sighting on was about a hundred feet behind the house. So Thorn swung wide and started a slow trajectory back to where Irving David McMann waited. Get behind him. Watch him watching. Hook him in the face or eye with Crazy Billy, and then, while he was fighting with the hook and pain, subdue him. Thorn’s chance to bring his man in alive this time. His moment come ’round again.

He seemed to be making too much noise. Poling across the flats was one thing. Slipping the pole in, not stirring the marl, drawing it out without a wake or a flutter of water. But this was a harder thing. Every cobweb seemed hooked to a rattling seedpod; every bed of decaying leaves hid the crunch of a stick.

Thorn brushed mosquitoes from his face. He had already inhaled a bitter insect, lodged now like an aspirin in his throat. His dark green T-shirt damp with sweat.

He felt his pulse ticking in his chest.

Twenty yards into the jungle, Thorn caught himself mid-step. Drew back. A voice was speaking just five, six yards to his right. Beneath a young banyan tree. Closer to the house than he’d estimated. He was speaking to himself, as if he were trying different voices, or different intonations, saying the same thing:

“Milburn, I know it’s you, man. Milburn. I
know
it’s you, man.
Milburn,
I know. It’s you.”

Thorn had to step a foot closer to get a clear path to McMann. He was standing there in black pajamas, holding an Uzi in his right hand, peeking out from behind the banyan, looking toward the house. From his position the guy had a view of the driveway, but it seemed to Thorn that his view of the dock was obstructed by the house. Thorn wasn’t sure, but it might be that Irving David hadn’t seen them arrive.

Thorn opened the bailer on the reel, held the line with his finger. He edged forward, blocked from Irving’s peripheral vision by a stand of buttonwood saplings. Irving chattered on, washing away the mosquitoes in front of his face.

Thorn stepped into a strong cobweb, the fine wire gluing to his cheek. He felt the spider scuttling down the back of his T-shirt. He held still while it fled.

One more step forward, and Thorn was standing in an aisle that led through the brush to Irv’s encampment. At Thorn’s feet there was a sudden flurry in the weeds. He stiffened and drew back. Fewer than ten thousand of them left on earth and he had crushed a nursery of woodrats.

He watched two of the adolescents burrow under a pile of sticks and leaves nearby. And he stepped forward into that lane again, avoiding the nest this time, took quick aim, and cast his lure at Irving David McMann.

The lure ticked against one of the stringy roots hanging down from the banyan branches and fell to the ground. Thorn reeled it back carefully. The treble hooks caught in a pile of sticks. Thorn paused, took a new grip on the rod, and flicked the line up to shake it free.

“Milburn!” Irving hissed. “Milburn! Show your fat ass.”

Thorn traced the path he wanted and then cast again, underhanded this time to get it beneath those dangling roots. As the line played out, Irving stooped over, began searching through the rest of his supplies. The Uzi still in one hand.

Crazy Billy caught on Irving’s ear. Thorn hauled back on the rod with both hands, raising the tip then, and cranking hard.

Irv howled and came up firing the Uzi. Spraying the tops of the trees as if he were trying to bring down a sniper. Thorn gave the rod another ripping jerk. The treble hooks tore loose.

Irv kept screaming and spun around, firing rounds from the Uzi till it was empty; then, still screaming, he bent down, scrabbled through his pack, and came up with a grenade. He was crying when he pulled the pin and lobbed the thing toward a tree twenty yards to the left of Thorn. Thorn flopped flat, the blast sending whistles past his head.

He listened to Irving crashing through the brush toward the highway. Thorn stayed down, the trunk of an ironwood tree between him and where the grenade had hit. It was all right. Let him run. Thorn knew where he lived.

Sarah’s voice came from the house, calling for him. He heard a motorcycle rev up, rev way, way up, missing first gear, revving probably past red line, catching the gear; then off it went.

When Thorn emerged at the edge of the clearing. Amos Clay was standing beside Sarah, aiming his shotgun at him. Sarah with her hand inside her purse.

“It’s Thorn,” Sarah said to Amos. “Thorn.”

Amos continued to show Thorn the dark double barrels. Thorn still listening to the whine of the distant cycle.

“What’re you doing shooting on my land, boy!”

Sarah asked him if he was hurt, coming across to him, between those barrels and him.

“I’m OK,” he said. He held up the pole for Amos to see. “You should’ve seen the size of the son of a bitch.”

Amos said, “First goddamn fish I ever heard of shooting back.”

They went inside the house. Amos still watching Thorn with a cagey eye. The shotgun in both hands, port arms.

When they were all seated in the living room, Thorn felt a rush of nausea rising inside him. He drew in a breath, held it. Both of them watching him. His ears alert to any noise outside.

Sarah said, “Amos has decided he wants two million dollars.”

“And I’m going to get it, too,” he said. He’d sat in a chair across from them, tilted by the sag in his floor. He still gripped the shotgun by the barrel, its stock on the dirty rug beside his chair.

“Says taxes will take half of it, so he needs two million to be a millionaire.”

“That makes sense,” said Thorn.

“Thorn,” Sarah said.

“No, I agree with you, Amos. Goddamn Uncle Sam’s gonna steal half of it to pay some idiot not to plant corn, or to pay some other idiot so he can lay around and watch TV all day. I don’t blame you at all.”

Amos shook his head at Sarah. See there, I told you.

“But you know, what it is, Amos, is that two million is all we brought with us, so if you start hanging on any other charges here, this whole deal is gonna fall through.”

“What were you doing out there, boy, shooting on my land?”

“I thought I saw something,” he said. “It wasn’t anything.”

“It sounded like the godblamed Second World War.”

“I got carried away, is all. But shit, Amos. You’re gonna be John D. Rockefeller. You should be thinking about that. What’re you going to do with all of it?”

“Buy a condo,” he said. “Up in Daytona Beach. I got a girl friend up there.”

Sarah had crossed her arms across her chest, her head down, not believing the bullshit she was hearing.

“Daytona’s nice,” Thorn said.

“Daytona’s the shittiest town I ever seen. It’s worse than Miami,” said Amos. “I’m not going there ’cause I like the place. I’m going there ’cause that’s where my girl friend’s at. And you can bet your ass I’m glad to be leaving this rock, too. I been here for forty years, getting sucked dry by the bugs and burned dry by the weather. If you keep this land like it is now, you’re the damnedest fool I ever heard about, and if you build some goddamn concrete hotel or whatnot here, I’ll come back down here and have your ass ground up for chum.”

Laying his shotgun down on the floor, Amos said, “Well, now, let’s see the color of this money.”

“You can’t do this, Thorn.”

“Can’t do what?”

“The contract won’t be—”

Thorn stood up, waving Sarah quiet. He brought the gym bags over to Amos and unzippered them.

“Hundreds,” Thorn said. “Thousands of hundreds.”

“I remember that trout you caught,” Amos said. “On a mirror lure at night. I never seen a mirror lure so mangled up in my life, and that sucker still caught fish.”

“Yeah, it was a miracle lure,” Thorn said, winking at Sarah.

“Daytona Beach,” Amos said. “What she said was she wouldn’t marry me less I was a millionaire.” The man smiled, his dentures stained, the sun rising behind his dull blue eyes.

Irv turned the bike around at the guardhouse at Coral Reef. He did a wheelie and roared back toward Amos Clay’s, flattening himself against the seat, out of the wind. His ear was leaking down his shirt, blood all over his hands now. His own fucking blood. Irving McMann’s fucking blood.

He was still shivering, but his brain had cleared. Milburn was dead. He’d shot him. Down in Key West. There wasn’t any Milburn, not back there in the woods, not anywhere. Irv couldn’t believe it, how he’d come unfastened like that. Started hearing things, and then the bat or owl or whatever the fuck it was that had clawed at his ear. He’d thought it was that fat sack Milburn, running a goof on him, like old times. A fat smartass ghost.

Now, there he was, a banshee on a Kawasaki, flat out in fifth gear, ninety-five on that empty narrow highway.

This time he didn’t go slinking into the woods, hiding like some Cong scum. He braked hard at Amos Clay’s drive, and then downshifted to second, revved up the drive, hitting the potholes, hammering his nuts, getting angrier with every hurt.

It didn’t matter to him now if there were five, ten, a whole army of them. He had the Uzi still on the shoulder strap across his back, and he’d just wade into them, get his money, and fly. It was his money. Maybe it hadn’t been at first, but after two weeks waiting in the woods, wiping his ass with his left hand, and all the rest of it, it was his money.

There was nobody outside the house. Nobody in the clearing. Irv didn’t bother with the kickstand, just let the bike fall, and swung the Uzi over his head, rammed in another magazine, and walked over to the door.

In the two weeks he’d been living in the woods, thinking of himself as a Zulu warrior, he’d wanted to scream a dozen times, and now, as he threw open that rickety door, a scalding howl came from his throat.

There was his money. All spread out over a long table, bundles of it held by rubber bands. And there was the old man Irv had been watching come and go all week. The old man was on the other side of the table, standing there, staring at Irv with his Uzi.

The old man reached out and picked up his dentures that lay next to a bundle of hundreds. He popped the choppers in his mouth.

Irv watched the old man shrink up, as he got the picture, his dentures probably coming loose. Irv screamed at the man. He waved the Uzi at the old fart, telling him to back away.

This was it. Not much of a goddamn audience, but what a fucking part. Playing Irv McMann, killer, millionaire. The million cash dollars lying there. Sunlight still coming strong, a warm breeze. Life was still good. Everything was going to be possible. Playing himself. His own fucking self. That’s all Jack did, after all. Why shouldn’t Irv get famous playing himself?

Irv aimed the Uzi now. The old man raised his hands, a feeble squint, a quiver in his face. Like he was bracing himself for the noise the Uzi was going to make.

Irv inched around the perimeter of the table. The old man turned to face him but didn’t back away. Irv didn’t like the way this old fart was standing there now, like he was sassing him, challenging him to go ahead and shoot.

“You know me?” Irv asked him. “You know who the fuck I am?”

“I been knowing you was coming,” said the old man. I been waiting all my life, knowing you was on your way.”

“Who am I!” Irv screamed at him. “Who am I, you dead fuck!”

“You ain’t getting me to say it. Not out loud I won’t.”

Irv let off a three-round burst and pinned the skinny old fart against the wall. Amos started to slide to the floor, but Irv stapled him with another burst and another one. Kept him up there, jerking against the rough wood wall. Twitching, bucking, like somebody had hold of his prostate.

Sugarman had found a good line. It didn’t have anything to do directly with Jeannie and the minister or marriage, but it scared the shit out of him and might just, in a general kind of way, make Jeannie see how serious things could get. In Jeremiah. Chapter 19, Verse 7, the Lord is talking, saying, “I will cause their people to fall by the sword before their enemies, and by the hand of those who seek their life. I will give their dead bodies for food to the birds of the air and to the beasts of the earth. And I will make this city a horror, a thing to be hissed at, every one who passes by it will be horrified and will hiss because of all its disasters. And I will make them eat the flesh of their sons and their daughters, and every one will eat the flesh of his neighbor in the siege and distress.”

He liked it because it was God-the-avenger. Not Jeannie’s picture of God, some sexy white guy with a beard who wanted everyone to screw and moan and have orgasms day after day. This God was one serious guy. When he says, “Honor thy husband,” he can back it up. A God using cannibalism to make his people mind him, this was a serious God.

The golf pro was whistling at him. Sugarman looked up and followed the pro’s pointing finger over to the condo. His man had arrived. Dressed like Hugh Hefner home from a night of mud wrestling. Carrying two gym bags. Was it enough probable cause that a guy was riding around on a motorcycle in his pajamas? Sugarman thought it probably was.

He watched the guy open the front door, go inside. He’d let Irving mix with his buddy in there for a while, let things coagulate; then he’d go over and see what was going down or what was coming up.

T
HROUGH THE BRIGHT
, hot noon Thorn steered the skiff the five miles up to Coral Reef Club. He wound through the network of creeks and canals and finally into the main channel. Past the marina full of yachts and schooners, their masts and rigging tinkling in the midday breeze, and into the residential canals. At no-wake speed he guided them past the private docks, most with their fifty-foot Hatterases, Bertrams, like glossy stallions dozing behind their masters’ condos.

Thorn was listening to the Evinrude burble, tuned a little rich maybe, but still, all in all, he’d done a damn good job getting that thing going. It was a goofy time to feel it, but Thorn, with Sarah on the seat before him, her head tipped up a bit to let the breeze run down her neck, and his motor behind him going fine, felt happy.