Deb’s eyes flared and she looked away. Her fiancé frowned.
Yancy slipped another pill under his tongue. “Unless you come to your senses, prepare for a future of restlessness, disappointment and betrayal. One morning you wake up praying you’re alone in bed, except you’re not. Lying beside you is someone with whom you’ve exhausted all avenues of conversation.”
The couple stood mute and rigid.
“Now’s the time to reevaluate your commitment, before it’s too late,” Yancy continued. “Besides ritually overspending on jewelry and clothes, what do you lovebirds really have in common? This ridiculous villa you want to build, it’s only a diversion from the brewing domestic shit storm. Clearly neither of you is enthralled by the other, or by this particular way of life. Brock thinks of the house as a foolproof real-estate investment. Deb, you think of it as a place to get away from Brock. Meanwhile the incompatibility question hangs—does it not?—like a toxic fog. My advice is to separate on good terms and bolt for the exit.”
Deb was seething. “Don’t you take this shit from him!” she cried at her fiancé, who wheeled on Yancy and said:
“Two-seventy-five is my final number. That’s all cash, brother.”
Yancy said, “It’s not for sale, you poor doomed fuckwit.”
“Hit him or something!” Deb whinnied.
The lawyer squared up and shook a finger in Yancy’s face. “My friends from up North will be paying you another visit.”
“They definitely aren’t your friends,” Yancy said. “Hey, can you guys help me haul this sofa to the road?”
Another unmannered departure followed, capped by a cliché of squealing rubber. Deb and her man were plainly a poor fit, although Yancy’s interest in enlightening them was purely selfish. Once they broke up, the mansion-building project would be scotched and the lot would go back on the market. Yancy’s transcendental sunset view would be preserved, at least for a while. With any luck, the next buyer would have a soul.
Yancy took his laptop out to the deck. There, hanging on a rail peg, was the pitted life buoy that Merry had swiped from Blister’s yard. The Wet Nurse remained a mystery. In Florida, boat registrations list the owner but not the name of the vessel. According to the databases, no motorized watercrafts belonged to anybody named Benjamin Krill—hardly a shocker, given Blister’s disdain for legalities. Yancy poked around the Internet long enough to find pictures of nine different boats named the Wet Nurse, at which point he gave up.
Merry returned wearing a white lab coat she said she bought at a thrift shop, to help put her in a nursing groove. The rest of her medical uniform was panties and sandals. As she tended Yancy’s stitches one of her earrings dropped to the floor. When she bent to retrieve it, a bright little bumblebee peeked briefly from under her coat.
Yancy said, “You went back to Wikky? Please tell me that’s just henna.”
“No, it’s real, because that’s how I roll.” Merry turned around to show off the tattoo, mid-slope on a heartbreaking butt cheek. “Am I the first girl to do this for you, Andrew?”
“Permanently scar themselves on a whim? Yes, I believe so.”
“It’s not a scar, buddy. It’s a commitment.”
“That would explain the ‘A.Y.’ ”
“Know why I put your initials down there? So I’ll never forget what a pain in the ass you were.”
The sight of the bumblebee gave Yancy an erection that Merry taunted as proof of his lust-crazed intent. He shuffled to the kitchen on an imaginary errand. The point, as it were, couldn’t be argued—he had begun to fantasize about diving under the sheets with his houseguest. Yancy worried that pain was all that stood between him and a fateful lapse of judgment. Thank God for the knife wound.
Merry drove him to the docks at Garrison Bight where he finally made headway. Captain Keith Fitzpatrick, a friend who ran deep-sea fishing charters, told Yancy he’d seen a cabin cruiser called the Wet Nurse anchored near Sunset Key. Fitzpatrick guessed the boat’s length at thirty-one feet and described it as a crumbling mess, possibly abandoned.
“Can you take us to see it?” Yancy asked.
Fitzpatrick had to say no. He was up to his bloody elbows in a forty-pound cobia that he was filleting for his two clients, who hovered rapturously. Composite-flooring distributors from Chapel Hill, the men had invited Fitzpatrick to the Turtle Kraals for beers in hopes he would forgive them for arriving hungover that morning, vomiting into the bait tank and dozing through the only strike of the day. It was the captain himself who’d reeled in the fish with which the flooring executives had victoriously posed, the photos instantly zapped to their Anglergram pages. Fitzpatrick would have preferred the company of Yancy and his sweet-smelling companion, but he perceived that the defective Carolinians were withholding his tip until he showed up at the bar.
Yancy, who understood the grueling politesse of charter fishing, was sympathetic. Farther along the dock he and Merry approached a long-haired, part-time guide who for fifty bucks agreed to take them to Sunset Key. His nickname was Gack and he ran a 23-foot bay boat called Marley’s Ghost in tribute to Bob, not Dickens. The clues were the knit Rasta cap and a scorched glass pipe on the console.
As they skimmed through a bracing chop past Trumbo Point, Merry slid closer to Yancy. For him there was nothing better than crossing open water with a woman at your side, and he was reminded of the warmth of Rosa’s body on their morning rides in the skiff. He wondered again how she could trade such times for a butcher’s block in Scandinavia.
The run to Sunset Key was short, and they found the Wet Nurse anchored exactly where Keith Fitzpatrick had seen it. The cabin cruiser indeed was in lousy shape, a faded, flaking live-aboard. Yancy asked Gack to circle slowly. They watched for movement but saw nothing but a lone seagull on the bow.
“She’s too low in the water,” Gack observed.
He was right. The Wet Nurse was squatting and stern-heavy.
Yancy said, “Let’s go check it out.”
“I can’t put you on board, mister.”
“Why’s that?” asked Merry.
“ ’Cause it’s not your damn boat. I won’t abet an act of piracy.”
Yancy was touched by the stoner’s respect for maritime code. “Just get us a little closer, okay?”
Gack pulled parallel to the cabin cruiser but maintained a gap, in case Yancy was plotting to leap to the other boat. Merry had the same worry and tightened her hold on Yancy’s arm. They called out several times but nobody stirred on the Wet Nurse. Rime on the hull’s windows made it impossible to see inside, where the bunks would be located. Above deck there were no fishing rods, dive gear, not even a mop. A sloshing was audible as the boat rocked on its frayed anchor rope.
Merry asked, “Is that thing sinking, Andrew?”
“So it appears.”
Gack stood up balancing on his seat, to gain a better view of the other boat’s interior deck. He said, “Damn, there’s a foot of water aft.”
“What do we do?” Merry asked.
“Call the Coast Guard, then go home. Ain’t nobody on that boat.”
“You don’t know for sure,” said Yancy. “Let me jump aboard.”
“Stay where you are.” Gack hopped down and reached for his handheld radio. “We’ll give this another five minutes.”
It didn’t take that long. Before their eyes the Wet Nurse disappeared in a hushed blue-green swirl. The bird on the sinking bow didn’t bother to fly. It waited for the sea to rise beneath it and then floated off, a whitish puff riding the wave crests.
When the roiling went calm, Gack said, “That was fucking impressive.”
Merry could hardly believe it. The water wasn’t deep, but the surface was choppy and churned. She couldn’t see the shipwreck on the bottom, only formless dark patches. Gack was already on the phone with the Coast Guard providing GPS numbers and a description of the lost boat. Soon random items began floating up—Styrofoam fast-food containers, plastic cups, beer cans, seat
cushions, moldy life preservers, a fire extinguisher.
“I need that,” Yancy said, pointing at a smaller object, tan in color and crowned in shape.
Gack grunted. “What the hell for? You can buy a new one in town for like ten bucks.”
“I don’t want a new one.”
Merry hung on to Yancy’s belt loops while he painfully stretched over the gunwale to pick up what he’d spied amid the debris from the Wet Nurse. It was a banded Panama hat like the one reported stolen the day after Buck Nance went missing. Yancy placed the dripping hat in the front hatch of Gack’s boat.
“You ain’t even gonna put it on?” Gack said.
“It’s evidence.”
“Get out.”
Merry said, “For real. He’s a police inspector.”
“Shhhh!” Yancy made a cutting gesture across his throat, as if it was supposed to be a secret. Merry acted mortified and said never mind.
Gack fell for it. In a low voice he asked Yancy, “So what’s the deal? Are you, like, undercover?”
“Not anymore.” Yancy threw a reproachful look at Merry.
“Is it a coke thing, or what? I won’t tell anyone,” Gack said. “You think there’s a dead body on that fuckin’ boat?”
“We’re about to find out. You might want to hide that bong, captain.”
“Oh, shit.” Gack went into a scramble.
The flashing blue lights of a patrol vessel were approaching fast from the harbor. Gack pocketed the pipe, cinched his grotty hair into a ponytail and began tidying the deck. Merry asked him not to tell the Coast Guard officers that Yancy was a plainclothes detective.
“It’ll screw up our whole case,” she said.
“You a cop, too?” Gack whispered.
“Dude, I’m the informant. Without me, he’s got nothin’.”
Yancy couldn’t get over what a pro she was when it came to this stuff. Absolutely stellar. He would miss the fun, when she was gone.
The Coast Guard crew was impossibly young and efficient. Within minutes a diver was in the water marking the site with bright buoys. Yancy studied the pattern on Gack’s fish-finding sonar, which showed that the Wet Nurse had settled on its side, twenty-six feet down. The diver wasn’t gone long. He surfaced with an upright thumb, lifted his mask and said, “All clear.”
A petty officer told Gack that he and his passengers were free to go.
“Why’d she sink?” Yancy asked.
“Probably the bilge fittings went bad. Happens all the time.”
Yancy didn’t believe faulty bilge fittings sank the Wet Nurse. His doubts were confirmed when he overheard the Coast Guard diver telling the rest of the crew about the weird thing he’d seen on the sunken boat.
Two empty sets of handcuffs, locked to the bunks.
—
Jon David Ampergrodt gleefully thumbed a new sheaf of Nielsens showing that Bayou Brethren nailed a massive 23 percent share in its time slot. The show was hotter than ever. America did not miss Buck Nance.
More good news arrived via phone from Sheriff Sonny Summers in Key West: Buck was no longer a suspect in the Conch Train killing. Detectives had interviewed a local tattoo artist who’d recently inked “Hail Captain Cock” across the shoulders of a two-bit career criminal named Benjamin Krill. The sheriff said Krill had moved out of his apartment and was on the lam.
“In other words,” Amp said in a level tone, “your people aren’t out looking for Buck anymore.”
“They are not,” the sheriff confirmed. “We’ve got a tight budget down here, Mr. Ampergrodt. Very limited resources.”
“Yes, of course. I understand.” Amp kicked off his Ferragamos and danced a jig in front of the window, fist-pumping for the wretches stuck in traffic down on Santa Monica.
“We believe Mr. Nance has left Monroe County,” Sonny Summers continued, “and doesn’t want to be found.”
“It’s very possible.”
“You’re better off hiring a private investigator.”
“Already done,” Amp lied.
“Just so you know—Benny Krill, the man that we believe killed our Muslim tourist, he’s apparently a major fan of your TV show. That’s why he got the tattoo. It’ll all come out in the media once we catch him, which should be soon.”
“I appreciate the heads-up.”
“It’s the least I can do, considering your generous donations to my re-election committee.”
No shit, thought Amp. “Did you get the boxed set of the series I sent?”
Sonny Summers said, “Funny stuff. My wife thought so, too.”
“Are you a fisherman?” Amp asked. “I’ll FedEx some flies made with Buck’s premium rooster feathers.”
Sonny Summers said no thanks. “Blue water’s my thing.”
Amp had no clue what that meant. He said goodbye to the sheriff and took a call from the junior talent agent assigned to keep an eye on Buck’s hotheaded mistress. To make sure Miracle wouldn’t feel abandoned, the team at Platinum Artists had given her permission to seduce one of the other brothers. She selected Junior, who offered no resistance and was properly dazzled by her talents. As Amp had correctly calculated, allowing Buck’s girlfriend to switch Nances had caused combustible rancor on the set, further boosting the ratings. Although the brothers’ wives would never allow Miracle to appear on camera, she could still bloom into an important if unseen character—the ruthless mystery slut. Amp heard the new plot line was tracking strong in all market segments.
The young agent reported that Miracle was elated to be cheating on Buck, Junior was elated to have stolen his AWOL brother’s girlfriend, and Junior’s wife was threatening to put lighter fluid in his mouthwash.
“Would that kill him?” asked Jon David Ampergrodt.
“Not sure.”
“Do some research, please. We don’t need any more surprises.”
“I’m on it,” the agent said.
“And when you’re done, for God’s sake delete your search history.”
Amp drove to the Wilshire where he met Rachel Coolman in a fourth-floor suite. His phone started ringing while his face was buried between her legs. She grabbed for his ears but he’d already veered away to peek at his caller ID.
“No way,” he gasped.
“Get back down there.”
“It’s your husband calling.”
Rachel said, “Tell him you can’t talk now ’cause your mouth is full of me.”
Amp retreated into a closet. “My man! Where the fuck are you?”
“I’m with Buck,” Lane Coolman replied. “The where isn’t important.”
“So he’s alive! Fantastic!” Amp strived for an approximation of relief.
“Buck’s contract? Rip it up.”
“The one we’ve been working so hard on? Why?”
“He wants a better deal, Amp. You’ll need to take notes.”
The connection was lousy, but the voice on the other end definitely belonged to Coolman. However, his tone was unfamiliar—frosty, subdued, curt. Could he somehow know, Amp wondered, that I’m banging his future ex-wife?
“Put Buck on the line, would you?”
“In a minute,” was Lane’s sharp reply, no deference whatsoever. Amp sensed that a very good day would soon be turning to shit. He wasn’t wrong.
The deal presented by Lane was outrageous: Buck would return to Bayou Brethren at double his salary. He’d be bringing with him a long-lost twin named Spiro, for whom Buck had been searching far and wide. The stress from that heart-wrenching quest would be used to explain Buck’s breakdown at the Parched Pirate and brief absence from the show. Fortunately, Buck was whole again—his brother Spiro would move to the chicken farm and acquaint himself with the rest of the family. The newfound sibling would receive $50,000 per episode; for reruns, scale plus twenty percent. If the producers refused those terms, Buck would quit and jump networks taking Spiro with him. Their new show would be called Bayou Blood, and it would be aired head-to-head against Brethren.
&
nbsp; “And, oh, if that’s how it goes down? I’ll be moving to William Morris,” Coolman warned Amp. “Buck and Spiro, they’re coming with me.”
Amp’s brain was quaking. He had so hoped Buck would stay missing. The last thing the Nances needed was another brother, but the last thing the show needed was a competing spinoff.
“Lane, what is Spiro’s real name?”
“Can’t tell you.”
“Backstory?”
“Think Elvis and Jesse Presley—except little Spiro didn’t die at birth. He was kidnapped from the hospital nursery by Gypsies.”
“No Gypsies,” Amp said firmly.
“Then make it human traffickers. No, wait—a distraught woman who’d tragically lost her own child and was desperate to fill the void. That’ll work. But then she turned out to be an amazing mom who adored little Spiro and made him the center of her life. When she died in a freak accident, he was devastated. Quit his job and ended up on the streets of Key West. That’s where Buck finally tracked him down—homeless, grief-stricken and disoriented. That’s our pitch.”
“Okay. Tell me how the foster mother dies. What kind of accident?”
“She’s hit by a runaway ice-cream truck,” Coolman said.
“I like it. I really do.”
“On the steps of a church.”
“Too much,” said Amp, scrambling to keep up. “You say Spiro was so heartbroken that he quit his job and moved to Key West. Why there?”
“Because it’s the end of the great American highway, Amp. It’s where the pavement runs out.”
“Are you fucking with me? Because that’s like pure poetry, man. We all end up at the end of the road with nothing but our dreams. Beautiful! Though I’ve gotta say, this lost-twin thing has sort of been overdone—”
Rachel rapped on the closet door to announce she was going home. “Tell Lane I’ll see him in court. Tell him to lube up.”
“What?” Lane said, his voice rising. “Who’s that talking?”
“Just the waitress. I’m at Bouchon.”
“I swear it sounded like Rachel.”
Amp said, “Here’s a question: Do they even look alike? Buck and his ‘twin’?”