“The human bloodhound is what they call me.”
“A pain in the sphincter is what they call you. Please don’t screw up my case.”
Yancy stepped out of the car at the corner. “You’ll be the first to know when I track down this character,” he said to Burton. “Keep your ringer on, amigo.”
—
Winchell wasn’t working at the Bull that night, but the barmaid gave Yancy an address in Bahama Village. It was Winchell’s wife who answered the door. In a clamorous scrum behind her Yancy counted four small kids. Winchell emerged from a back room wearing a towel and a frown. He looked much older than his wife and stood at least six-two, though his arms were thin and his gut was flabby.
“Who are you, man? Get outta my house.”
“Police business,” said Yancy, which was true enough. It was police business to which he was contributing his expertise, solicited or not. “Put on some clothes and let’s take a walk.”
Winchell did what he was told and never asked to see a badge, so convincing was Yancy’s cop-like comportment. Nor did Mrs. Winchell raise a challenge as her husband was led out the door, instead scalding him with a glare that made clear she presumed him guilty of any and all accusations.
Yancy waited until they were a block from the house before asking Winchell about the money clip he gave to Giselle.
“I didn’t give her nuthin’. She took it.”
“Where’d you get it from?”
“That bitch say I stole it? She be a damn liar!” Winchell wanted Yancy to understand how insulted he felt.
“She didn’t say you stole it, Winchell.”
“Well, she still be a damn bitch for takin’ it away from me.”
“Is your wife aware you slept with a prostitute?”
Winchell looked away muttering.
Yancy said, “Forget Giselle. Tell me about the silver clip.”
“Nuthin’ to tell. I found it.”
“Where? Show me.”
They turned and walked north along Whitehead. Winchell stopped beneath an immense banyan tree as old as the pirate town. The tree’s peripatetic roots had tunneled a hump in the sidewalk and disfigured a nearby brick wall.
Winchell pointed to a spot on the ground and said, “Right here.”
“You just happened to look down and there it was? Lucky you.”
“I was just chillin’ in the shade, man, havin’ a smoke.”
For some reason Yancy believed him. On the tree were fresh bark scrapes that could have been made by the toe of a heavy shoe. It was possible that Buck scrambled up the banyan to hide, causing the money clip to fall out of his pocket. It was also possible that Winchell had mugged him, although a forty-five-year-old busboy was not your prototypical Key West street predator.
Yancy asked Winchell how much cash he’d found in the clip.
Again he puffed up, indignant. “Man, there wasn’t no cash! What’re you sayin’?”
“I don’t give a damn whether you kept it or not. I just want to know how much was there.”
“Do I gotta give it back? ’Cause we been havin’ some expenses.”
“You don’t have to give back any of it.”
“All right, then. I counted six hundred even,” Winchell said.
Yancy felt confident doubling the sum in his head. “Any credit cards? ATMs?”
“Naw.”
“I knew you were too smart for that rookie shit,” Yancy said. “Stolen plastic leaves a trail. Plus every time you swipe it through a machine there’s a camera snapping your picture.”
Winchell managed a nod, though his face was clouding with unease.
“Did you see anybody else around?” Yancy asked. “Someone sleeping on the sidewalk, or maybe passed out in the bushes?” He took out the artist’s drawing of the shaved Buck Nance and a photo of the bearded version. Winchell said neither face looked familiar. Yancy thanked him and told him he could go.
“I ’preciate that,” said Winchell. “But listen here, my wife…she don’t know ’bout the cash money I found and so forth.”
“What’d you spend it on?”
“They’s a poker game over on Seminary.”
“Let me guess how that worked out,” Yancy said.
“Man, you can’t never win if you don’t take a chance. Even the Good Book says so.”
“I’m pretty sure it doesn’t.”
The breeze brought a jumble of music and cheers from Mallory Square, where the crowd was assembling for sunset.
Winchell was in no rush to go home. He said, “Yo, the man lost that money clip—he must be hung like a horse they be callin’ him ‘Captain Cock.’ ”
“He got that name because he’s in the rooster business.”
Winchell seemed let down. “We got too many goddamn roosters, you ask me.”
Key West was overrun with chickens, an issue that had long divided the community. The birds were loud and messy, yet some locals thought they were cute. Winchell did not agree, nor did Yancy, who’d been dispatched to more than one outdoor café after patrons complained about the bold, loose-boweled fowl.
When Yancy asked him about Bayou Brethren, Winchell said he’d never watched the show, and complained that his wife maintained a Baptist’s iron fist on the TV remote.
“Listen, she’ll kill me she finds out I’s with another woman. I mean she’ll kill me, cut off my fuckin’ jewels and then kill me all over again. Understand what I’m sayin’?”
“Then you’d better pay Giselle what you owe. Otherwise she’ll be knockin’ at your front door.”
Winchell said, “I’ll pay up soon as I can. She knows I’m good for it.”
“Go tell your wife we’re cool. I’m not taking you to jail tonight.”
“I ’preciate that. I do.”
Yancy put a hand on his shoulder. “Now, here’s what happens next. I’m going to stroll very casually up the street, pretend I thought of one more question to ask, turn around and hurry back. But you’ll already be gone.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Then I’m going to stop at this very same spot under this very same tree, where I will unexpectedly see something important lying on the ground, something I missed the first time.”
“You just might,” Winchell said quietly.
“I thought so.”
SEVEN
“Bottom line, it wasn’t even your idea,” Lane Coolman said.
“It was my idea to do it on purpose, absolutely.” Merry Mansfield was explaining the inspiration for the razor scam. “I was up in Miami, doing these boring insurance crashes, when I read about a chick who rammed a carful of tourists while she was shaving her bikini area. That’s what the newspaper called it—‘her bikini area.’ She told the cops she was tidying up down there to meet a boyfriend and took her eyes off the road, which was too good not to be true. The accident was totally legit, but the visual is what got me thinking. The concept of staging it that way. I knew I could turn it into something that would pay way better than those scumbag claim runners.
“So a friend put me in touch with Zeto, who was doing routine bump-and-grabs for dopers and loan sharks. First he thought I was full of shit but then I rented a Caprice and set up a random crash, to prove my plan would work. My presentation, let’s say. I did the bump right on Biscayne and 36th at rush hour—some schoolteacher in a Saab older than my mom. He was so mad when he got out of his car! But then he saw me sittin’ there with a razor in my hand and my pink undies all bunched up, and swear to God he almost asked me to marry him. He ends up giving me five hundred cash to get my rental fixed—and the wreck was all my fault! I totally plowed into the dude at a stop light, okay? Men are so pitiful.”
Coolman said: “You need to lay off the energy drinks.”
“I know, right? Ever since I quit smokin’. They say coffee’s healthier but I hate the taste.”
“Why not just wear a super-short skirt for the crash? The snatch-shaving thing, that’s pretty twisted.”
&nbs
p; “These days you need more than a great pair of legs, Bob. You need to boggle their little minds. A performance artist is what I am, basically. Not just a stunt driver.”
“I’ve never heard of anyone running a game like this, not even in L.A.”
Merry said, “I could definitely rock it there. No doubt.”
“And everything else you told me about yourself…?”
“All lies. Pretty much, yeah.”
They were sitting at an umbrella table poolside at the Casa Marina, where Platinum Artists Management had booked a top-floor room for Coolman.
“Can I have my phone now?” he asked.
Merry took it from her purse. “Battery’s dead as a doornail.”
The charger was in his travel bag, which was still in the crumpled trunk of the Buick, locked in an impound lot somewhere on the island.
“Use mine,” Merry offered.
It was the same model iPhone as his. He got on YouTube and looked at the video clips from the Parched Pirate. Merry scooted her chair closer to watch.
“So that’s your man? The ‘talent’ you manage.”
“He had a bad night,” Coolman said tightly. What he saw and heard made him heartsick.
Merry cackled. “A bad night? The dude’s a total homophobe. Also, a bigot!”
“There’s a culture gap, that’s all.”
“No, it’s a decency gap, Bob. Your client’s a flaming a-hole. What’s the matter with you? I’m so disappointed.”
Coolman had received other morality lectures, though never from a professional criminal. Even more depressing than the bar videos were the comments flooding the Bayou Brethren’s Facebook fan page. The condemnations of Buck’s tasteless performance were to be expected, but the ranting responses of his defenders (including an unnervingly literate covey of white supremacists) were so loathsome that Coolman was taken aback. He hoped Amp was working to have the offending posts deleted.
“I need to call California. In private, if you don’t mind.”
“Ah. What’s her name?”
“No, it’s strictly business,” Coolman said.
“You’re such a dog, Bob. Wanna drink?” She didn’t wait for his answer and headed for the pool bar.
Lane Coolman was a dog. His gaze locked on Merry’s butt as he dialed Amp’s number. Would it be wrong to seduce your own kidnapper? Coolman wondered. Not after all the grief she’d caused him. She was probably a sociopath, but so were half the women he screwed in Hollywood. He wished she’d use his real name and stop calling him Bob.
When Amp finally got on the line they commiserated about the Internet mudfest, which Amp characterized as a “primitive character assassination” of Buck Nance.
“Has anybody heard from him yet?” Coolman asked.
“You mean like kinfolk? No, sir, not Krystal or the brothers.”
“What about the kids?”
“Negative.”
Buck and Krystal had two grown sons, both private equity managers, who declined to participate in Bayou Brethren and therefore went unmentioned on the show.
“You’re his go-to guy,” Amp said. “Manager, confidant, pimp, shepherd—you’re the one we assumed he’d be calling.”
“What about Miracle? He usually talks to her every day. He’s terrified not to.”
“Don’t mention that psychotic witch.” Amp told him about the twisted bin Laden photo prank. “She’s convinced Buck ran off with a groupie. He’s the only one that can calm her crazy ass down.”
“Amp, I don’t even know where to start looking.”
“The whole damn island of Key West is only four square miles.”
Then send SEAL Team 6, Coolman wanted to say. He was still smarting from his boss’s phlegmatic reaction to the six-figure ransom demand from Zeto and Merry. What other agent had come so close to sacrificing his life for Platinum Artists? Amp didn’t seem to care.
“What are the cops saying?” Coolman asked.
“We’re wiring some dough to the sheriff’s re-election, so he’s keepin’ me in the loop. They’ve got a few decent leads.”
“Like what?”
“Buck hacked off his beard,” Amp reported. “A food inspector’s got the remains, or whatever you call it. The DNA test came back positive.”
“A food inspector? Jesus Christ.”
“I know. If the cops find Buck before you do, they’ve promised to hold him in a safe place. By then the jet’ll be on the way.”
Coolman was trying to picture his famous client clean-shaven.
“How’s the family dynamic?” he asked Amp.
“I’ve been on the horn with the network all morning. They like Clee Roy’s idea of doing a show about Buck’s vanishing act, the whole clan gathered anxiously at the rooster farm waiting for news.”
“Rolling up on their Harleys, right?”
“Absolutely,” Amp said. “Product placement never sleeps.”
In their transformation from Rombergs to Cajuns, the brothers had been schooled in certain rural skills as prioritized by the program’s Manhattan-born set designer. At the top of the list was dipping tobacco, shooting firearms and mastering motorcycles. Buck had destroyed his first Harley within an hour of delivery, fracturing both ankles when he slid into the rear axle of a sod truck. While confined to a wheelchair he employed a shotgun to herd the roosters, a gruesome panorama that caused the Beretta Corporation to withdraw its sponsorship of the show. Buck was mended completely from his accident, but a stunt double now performed most of his motorcycle scenes, and Buck’s twenty-gauge was loaded only with rock salt.
“We’re taping a new episode tomorrow,” Amp said.
“You’re joking.” Coolman sensed his influence was eroding in Buck’s absence. The other brothers previously had been lobbying for more face time on camera—Clee Roy, in particular, who was spurred by his wife, a shrill blond fireplug with a fondness for Bergdorf’s.
“No time to waste,” said Amp. “We expect Kardashian Nielsens.”
The tabloid shows and websites were hot on the story. In the hotel lobby Coolman and Merry had passed a crew from ET interviewing some sunburned goober who claimed to have seen Buck lighting out for the Marquesas on a lemon-yellow Jet Ski.
“On the show each of the other brothers will be given a theory to push,” Amp explained. “Did Buck have a mental breakdown? Was it foul play? Maybe he fell on his head while running from the bar, and now he’s got amnesia. It’s all good stuff. Krystal doesn’t cry easy but we’ve got somebody working with her.”
“And what if Buck shows up tomorrow?”
“Then he makes a grand entrance!” A laugh came from Amp’s end of the call. “We’ll rewrite on the fly.”
Merry had returned to Coolman’s table with two frosty rum drinks. She’d also changed into a sleek one-piece swimsuit that undoubtedly had been charged to his room, which was fine with him.
“We’re even doing a prayer vigil scene at the church,” Amp went on, recapturing Coolman’s attention.
The church was a creation of the Brethren writers. They called it the First Chickapaw Tabernacle of Hope and Holiness. Buck had demanded the title of deacon, while the other three brothers settled for being elders. A chapel-like structure was erected on the site of an old sawmill, four miles south of the cock farm. Several fevered worship scenes had been taped there, Buck sermonizing on the traditional Christian values of country life. The small congregation was comprised of community-theater actors and drama students bused from FSU; all were paid in cash and required to sign confidentiality agreements.
“You know Buck better than anyone outside the immediate gene pool,” Amp was saying to Coolman. “This is not a complicated organism we’re dealing with. Put yourself inside this fuckwhistle’s head. If you were him, where would you go to hide out?”
Not this town, Coolman said to himself.
Back in the hotel room he plugged his dead phone into Merry Mansfield’s charger while she took a bath with the door locked. When the ph
one’s touch screen finally flashed to life, he found no texts or voice messages from the missing Nance patriarch. It was beyond peculiar. Buck normally called when he was drunk, when he was high, when he was bored, when he was scared, when he was with a woman, when he didn’t know what he was with, or where he was. For almost two years Buck had reached out to his manager multiple times a day, at any hour and for the flimsiest of reasons. Now: nothing.
Coolman briefly considered—then chased from his thoughts—the crushing possibility that his most important client, his friend and meal ticket, the prime reason for his meteoric ascent at Platinum Artists, had dumped him for another agent.
A second scenario, not quite as unbearable as the first: Buck Nance was dead.
The third and most likely story line: He was lying low in a state of fear, exhaustion or petulance.
Merry emerged, wringing her hair with a towel.
“Cheer up, Bob,” she said. “I bet I can find that idiot.”
—
The next day Yancy called Burton to say he’d recovered Buck Nance’s credit cards—a gold Amex and a black Visa.
“Excellent. Where?”
“Under the same tree Winchell found the money clip.”
“Go figure.”
“Call it a pang of conscience,” Yancy said. “He’s already spent the cash.”
“This is good, though, finding the plastic. I’ll let Sonny know.”
“Be sure to tell him how I worked the old magic on my witness.”
“Small steps, Andrew.”
“Any news on your end?”
Burton disclosed that the hair in Clippy’s quinoa definitely came from Buck Nance’s beard. “The DNA matched a big gob of tobacco he’d hawked into one of his brothers’ golf bags. Episode Eighteen, case you missed it. ‘Road Trip to Augusta.’ Anyway, they overnighted the chaw to a lab in Miami, and bingo on the saliva.”
“No surprise there,” Yancy said.
“You know the wine shop where that model worked? The one who was in Sports Illustrated.”