“Yo, Captain Cock!” Blister had sung out.
The huddler’s head had snapped around, the wary pale eyes sizing up this brazen intruder. There was no place to run. Nor was escape by water an option, because, as Blister well knew, Buck was a terrible swimmer. During one show he’d nearly drowned trying to spring a dead muskrat from a snare his brothers had submerged in the family bayou; Buddy Nance (or maybe it was Junior) had dived in and hauled Buck by the suspenders back to the pirogue.
On the southernmost seawall Blister Krill stepped up and introduced himself as Buck’s all-time number one fan in the world.
“I’m not Buck Nance,” the man had said.
“Are too. You shaved your face is all.”
“No, my name’s Romberg. Matt Romberg.”
“Now quit that,” Blister had said firmly. “With me there’s no cause to be skeert.”
Buck didn’t look bad without a beard, just thinner and older.
“Go away. Get lost,” he’d snapped, the melodic Cajun accent supplanted by a pinched flat cadence that hinted at a sinus infection. Blister figured this was part of Buck’s effort at self-disguise, in case factions of the angry Parched Pirate mob were still stalking him.
“I was there at the bar last night,” Blister had confided. “It was shameful how you’s mistreated. I thought your jokes was real funny and who cares what them fags say. Don’t worry, Buck, I won’t let nobody hurt ya.”
“I don’t know what the hell you’re talkin’ about,” Buck had insisted in a heated whisper. “Leave me be!”
All Blister had wanted was some one-on-one, yet Buck had remained standoffish and curt. So Blister had pressed a fishing knife to his ribs and led him down the waterfront to where the dinghy was tied. It had been a choppy white-knuckle ride out to the Wet Nurse, a patched-up old cabin cruiser that Blister had won in a dart game and kept secret from Mona, his common-law wife, who would have nagged him into selling it to pay off their bills.
As a captive Buck was slow to soften, refusing to drop the stupid Romberg routine. Until that happened, Blister warned, they could never be best friends. It was important that Buck Nance own his Buckness.
“But, dude, it’s just a fucking act!” Buck would plead.
“Really? So, you sayin’ it’s cool for two homos to marry?”
“No! No! Of course that ain’t natural. Same with whites and blacks hookin’ up. Sin is sin, okay? But the guy you see on the TV show, that’s not actually me. They were casting for a major hick, you understand, someone to eat grits and preach hellfire. Me and my brothers, we’re just musicians from Milwaukee.”
Blister said, “Nice try, Coon Ass.”
Buck remained cuffed to his bunk though well fed and sufficiently hydrated. Blister took away his Panama hat and later the Bum Farto tee-shirt. As a show of support he chopped his own beard and got an ornate rooster tattoo on his belly. Buck wasn’t as moved by those gestures as Blister had hoped, so Blister went the extra mile and had his back emblazoned with the words “Hail Captain Cock.”
Buck’s reaction: “You’re scaring me, man.”
Aboard the Wet Nurse Blister kept a small cedar box of trout flies made with feathers from the fancy fowl on the Nance farm. There were midges, woolly buggers, stimulators, caddises, parachute Adamses and even yellow humpies. Blister, who wasn’t a fisherman, had purchased the flies from a collector on eBay and memorized their names. He opened the box to show Buck, who said he didn’t care much for trout; pike and muskies were his favorites. He also let slip his hatred of chickens, which hurt Blister’s feelings in light of his new tummy tat.
Most days, after his cheeseburger run, Blister would spend time hanging with Buck on the boat. Occasionally he’d stay the night before returning to the apartment to deal with Mona and the unruly mongoose, which a crabber had falsely sold him as a prize mink. Mona was the only one who called it Clee Roy, a caustic dig at Blister’s obsession with the Nance brothers. The pungent critter would snooze on his lap while he watched his game shows or Maury. In the evenings Blister leaned toward Fox News, which was doing a thorough job of covering Buck’s disappearance. That was how Blister learned that the producers of Bayou Brethren were continuing to tape the series despite the absence of the venerable patriarch. When Blister excitedly tuned in to the first of the new episodes, he was dismayed to hear the other brothers (not to mention Krystal, Buck’s once-adoring wife) present a callous cover story saying Buck was in rehab, Buck was a mess. How could they talk that way about him?
Owning no vehicle, not even a bike, Blister traveled back and forth from his apartment to the harbor by jumping the last car of the Conch Train. The day after getting his Captain Cock tattoo he spied an obvious Muslim sitting alone, pretending to be a harmless tourist. As a disciple of Buck’s YouTube diatribes, Blister felt intellectually equipped to confront the dark-skinned passenger, who tried to act peace-loving and puzzled by the intrusion. Blister wasn’t fooled. All those bastards had jihad in their bones, like Buck said.
So Blister got up in the little Muslim’s face and began unloading some major white Christian truths, when all of a sudden the dude spun around and leaped off the tram. His face hit the street so hard that it sounded like brick on brick. Blister ran away knowing the man was hurt, though he didn’t learn he was dead until later. The story came on the Channel 10 news while he and Mona ate supper. Blister freaked and ran straight to the toilet, where he barfed up his Hot Pockets.
Cop cars were still blocking the intersection when Blister crept back to the scene. It was there he spotted Lane Coolman, Buck’s manager, whom he’d seen interviewed on either TMZ or E! Blister waited until Coolman was alone on a side street before rushing him from the shadows, brandishing the knife.
Later, after delivering his new captive by dinghy to the Wet Nurse, Blister felt as though he’d fallen short again. Buck was the polar opposite of joyful upon seeing his friend and career advisor. He ripped angrily into Coolman, calling him—among other things—a useless Hollywood shitstick.
“This is all your fault!” Buck yelled. “You’re the dumbass who booked a stand-up in Key fucking West—and then you bailed on me!”
The shouting hurt Blister’s eardrums, so he slapped strips of duct tape across each of his prisoners’ mouths. To Buck he said, “You won’t believe what happened, brother. I think I kilt me a ISIS!”
Buck’s pupils widened, and his head shook back and forth so violently as to launch the Panama hat, which Blister had removed from his own head and placed at a festive slant upon Buck’s.
“Ain’t no lie,” Blister said, trying to sound cold. “Man was sittin’ in broad daylight on the damn Conch Train. I ’spect he was gonna blow the motherfucker up. But not now he ain’t! Now he gone to meet all them horny virgins.”
A low moan escaped from beneath the tape on Buck’s lips. He looked at Coolman, who gravely lowered his head.
In the following days Blister came to regard Buck’s manager as clutter, a piece of unused furniture that kept getting in the way. Aboard the Wet Nurse Blister focused on bonding with Buck, and there were moments when he seemed to be gaining headway. Other times Buck was sulky and peevish.
Blister would be rambling on about which of all the Brethren shows were his favorites, about Krystal’s new Miranda Lambert haircut or Junior’s drunken ATV rollover or Clee Roy’s lame moonshine or Buddy’s secret recipe for sautéed gator jowls when suddenly Buck would start thrashing in his handcuffs and burst out:
“But I’m just a Romberg, don’t you get it? Swear to God I’m just a Romberg from Wisconsin!”
Blister was in no mood for Buck’s outbursts when he returned to the cabin cruiser after stabbing the stranger in his apartment. He jumped bare-chested off the dinghy and stomped down to the bottom deck and threw the crumpled Bum Farto tee-shirt at Buck’s feet.
“Please tell me that’s barbecue sauce on it,” Coolman said, craning forward on his bunk.
Blister shook his head. “That be blood, M
r. Hollywood Boy.”
“Are you hurt?”
“Hell, do I look hurt?” He thumped his bony chest and pointed down at the tattoo rooster, whose luminous navel-eye seemed fixed on Buck’s forehead.
“Then whose blood’s that?” Buck asked.
Blister was pleased that his hero was finally showing some interest. He said, “I just put a knife in a cop.”
“You did not.”
“Yessir. And it’s for you I done it.”
Buck said, “Have you lost your goddamn mind?”
“Did he die?” Coolman interrupted in a trembling voice.
“That I can’t say. Some chick dragged him off, left a spatter trail like a gut-shot hog so maybe yeah he’s dead. Leakin’ real bad if he ain’t.” Blister sat down on the end of Buck’s mattress and licked the salty rime from his lips. He felt tired, jumbled. “Point is,” he said, “I can’t wear that damn shirt no more ’cause they both seen it on me.”
Coolman said he’d need more than a new wardrobe if he really killed a policeman. “Like plastic surgery, a fake passport and a suitcase full of cash.”
Blister revised that part of the story. “He told Mona he’s a cop but I never saw no badge. He was trespassin’ on my homestead is my position as a citizen. And a man’s homestead is his righteous castle under the law. Ya said so y’self, Buck Nance. Season two, episode six.”
“Aw, come on.” Buck raised his arms, rattling the cuffs. “Man, what is it you want from me? If not cash money, then what?”
That’s when the idea struck Blister like a thunderbolt from the heavens.
“I want to be on your show,” he said to Buck Nance. “I want to be one of your brothers.”
FIFTEEN
“What parts did I leave out before, Andrew? Besides the best.”
Merry thought he was sleeping, so she opened up.
“I was a super-normal kid, believe it or not—an only child, B-plus student, girls’ softball. I played second and shortstop. This was suburban Orlando, my reality. Mom and Dad couldn’t stand each other, so after high school I married a guy to get out of the house. Paul was his name. Paul, the food-stamp scammer, I found out later. He was in prison when the divorce went through, and I took that a-hole for everything he had—$274 and a set of golf clubs. Then comes a gap, as they say, in the narrrative. Several years of me figuring out how the big bad world works.”
Yancy wasn’t asleep, just neutralized by pain pills. He kept his eyes shut so Merry would keep talking.
“Waiting tables, bartending, selling ladies’ shoes, even patio furniture,” said Merry. “One time—you’ll love this—I took a job at Disney as a backup Snow White. And guess what—the seven dwarves? They’re all chicks! After that, let’s see, TGI Friday’s, Ruby Tuesday, Red Lobster. I drew the line at Denny’s, though. Not a morning person.”
She was sitting beside him on the edge of the bed. Her hair was pinned up, and she was wearing her tube top and jeweled flips. She touched Yancy’s arm but he didn’t stir.
“Fast forward to South Beach and my life of crime,” she said. “His name was Chip. Said he was in the insurance business, and he sure looked like an insurance man. Of course I believed him. His name was fucking ‘Chip’! Turned out his real deal was ripping off insurance companies—crashing into cars on purpose, faking whiplash and then suing. It was a big operation. They had their own doctors, lawyers, chiropractors. I looked around and didn’t see any good guys. Chip was making decent money, so one day I said, hey, let me drive the bump car. And it was a major rush, Andrew, gotta be honest. The point of impact was, like, the best sex ever. Total control. Total power. And nobody ever got hurt, not even a bruise. So I was basically all in.”
Yancy opened his eyes. Merry said, “You little shit! You were faking it!”
“Why tell your life story to an unconscious person?”
“Because then technically it won’t be a lie when I say I’ve told you everything.”
That almost made sense. Yancy credited the pain meds. He asked Merry what had happened to good old Chip.
She said, “I caught him boning the Geico adjuster. A bottle redhead!”
“There was fallout, I assume.”
“Here’s what I’ve decided, Andrew. I’ll stay and take care of you until your precious Rosa comes back—but no rehab nookie.”
“There’s nineteen sutures in my gut,” he reminded her.
“That won’t stop you from trying. It’s only a matter of time. You could be in a body cast and I’d still make you pop a tent.”
Yancy squinted at his watch. “Oh no. I was supposed to be at Clippy’s an hour ago.”
Merry offered to drive. She grabbed her fleece, threw on some jeans, and helped him into the Subaru. The Percocets were wearing off. He put on his sunglasses and probed the cupholders in search of a joint, with no luck. As soon as they reached the main highway, Merry stomped on the gas pedal. She encouraged him to call Rosa and tell her he got stabbed. “I bet she’ll jump on the first plane home.”
“She’s started a new job in Oslo,” Yancy said. “I don’t want to wreck her plans.”
“Why not? Lovers wreck each other’s plans all the time.” Merry was flying past an eighteen-wheeler, Yancy digging his fingernails into the armrest. He refused to peek at the speedometer.
“Is it a legit doctor job she’s got,” Merry was asking, “or a bullshit job, just to jerk your chain?”
“Rosa’s not a chain jerker.”
She was working in a butcher shop until she passed the Norwegian medical boards. First she had to learn the language, so she’d moved in with the butcher’s family.
Merry said, “And that’s it—you’re just letting her go? Don’t give me that look, Andrew. I know that look.”
“It’s just terror. Please keep your eyes on the road, I’m begging you.”
When they arrived at the restaurant, Merry said, “I’m snaggin’ that handicap spot, so be sure to limp when you get out of the car. Make it good.”
A buoyant Irv Clipowski was waiting in the dining room. “We nailed the last one!” he announced. “You ready for champagne?”
On rubbery legs Yancy followed him to the freezer, where the remains were sealed in Tupperware. Clippy said the sous chef had dropped a sack of basmati on the fleet intruder.
Yancy borrowed salad tongs to lift the corpse. His verdict: “It’s not a pouchie.”
“No way! Check out the balls on that mother.”
Merry, standing behind Yancy, said, “They’re whoppers, Andrew.”
“Sorry, but this isn’t a gambianus. Cheeks are too small. Tail’s not white. It’s just a standard, well-nourished rat.”
Clippy drooped. “Stomp on my heart while you’re at it.”
Yancy did a quick walk-through and found, besides three bottle-fly wings, only one reportable violation: spoiled meringue.
“Dump it,” he told Clippy, and “you’re back in business tonight.”
“I love, love, love you, Andrew!”
“But, listen, I can’t cut you another break if more pouchies show up. Not to mention you’ll get slaughtered on TripSwami.”
“Destroyed,” Clippy agreed. “Don’t worry, Neil and I won’t let that happen. Would you like a crabcake for the road?”
—
Martin Trebeaux remained in leisure mode. He’d heard nothing more from Detective Burton, which meant that the Case of the Two Crashed Buicks was no longer a priority.
The view from the La Concha’s rooftop had kindled Trebeaux’s daydream of movable Cuban beaches. It was a blustery afternoon, always good for business. High winds meant brutal erosion along Florida’s Atlantic coast, a godsend for companies like Sedimental Journeys. The unstoppable sea was once again inhaling priceless waterfront, and soon Sedimental’s phones would be chiming off the hook.
Trebeaux had first become intrigued with the possibilities of sand trafficking during the BP oil spill, when lush Gulf beaches were smeared by green-black tar and dot
ted with sick sea birds, flapping to exhaustion in the goo. Panic took hold in seaside communities, soiled beachfront and dying marine life being lethal to the tourist trade. Even the Spring Breakers, normally unfazed by stench, were fleeing the coast. The thought occurred to Trebeaux that all those beleaguered municipalities would pay outlandish sums to get their beaches restored, the gunk and gull corpses buried safely from view under tons of clean, white, blindingly photogenic sand.
At the time, however, Trebeaux had been unable to capitalize on the crisis. He was tied up on another lucrative project—filing false claims for massive financial losses that he never actually incurred due to the drilling accident. The businesses he owned were three virtual massage parlors, a unisex waxing salon and the obligatory strip joint. All were located in Kissimmee, Florida, ninety-seven miles inland from the Gulf of Mexico and therefore untouched by the oil spill. No one was more happily surprised than Trebeaux when a compensatory check for 1.6 million dollars arrived from BP. It was doubly satisfying because Trebeaux didn’t have to split his windfall with any lawyers, salivating hordes of whom had been trolling for fake victims up and down the Sunshine State. Instead of signing with a shyster firm, Trebeaux had hunkered alone in his condo and personally filled out every claim form, diligently documenting a non-existent plunge in tourist traffic at his Kissimmee establishments following the Deepwater Horizon blowout. His meticulous fraud paid off, the BP payout being large enough to seed his current sand-dredging enterprise.
The Pitrolux case he would leave to Brock Richardson. Trebeaux emailed photos of his unsightly though long-healed rash to the lawyer, then he returned his focus to the Cuba project. A political shift in Washington was panning out in his favor; soon he’d be able to travel to Havana with no troublesome scrutiny from the State Department. Because cultural visits were being encouraged, Trebeaux had decided to present himself as a sculptor. He was already busy composing phony letters of acclaim. There was no free time to pursue Pitrolux over its defective hard-on gel, so he welcomed Richardson’s offer to include him in the class-action gangbang.