“No, a corkscrew.”
“My God.”
“What is it with women and scars?”
Bonnie said, “I knew it. You’ve been asked before.”
Was she flirting? Augustine wasn’t sure. He had no point of reference when it came to married women whose husbands recently had disappeared.
“How’s this,” he said. “You tell me all about your husband, and maybe I’ll show you the damn scar.”
“Deal,” said Bonnie Lamb, tugging the nightshirt down to cover her knees.
Max Lamb met and fell in love with Bonnie Brooks when she was an assistant publicist for Crespo Mills Internationale, a leading producer of snack and breakfast foods. Rodale & Burns had won the lucrative Crespo advertising account, and assigned Max Lamb to develop the print and radio campaign for a new cereal called Plum Crunchies. Bonnie Brooks flew in from Crespo’s Chicago headquarters to consult.
Basically, Plum Crunchies were ordinary sugar-coated cornflakes mixed with rock-hard fragments of dried plums—that is to say, prunes. The word “prune” was not to appear in any Plum Crunchies publicity or advertising, a corporate edict with which both Max Lamb and Bonnie Brooks wholeheartedly agreed. The target demographic was sweet-toothed youngsters aged fourteen and under, not constipated senior citizens.
On only their second date, at a Pakistani restaurant in Greenwich Village, Max sprung upon Bonnie his slogan for Crespo’s new cereal: You’ll go plum loco for Plum Crunchies!
“With p-l-u-m instead of p-l-u-m-b on the first reference,” he was quick to explain.
Though she personally avoided the use of lame homonyms, Bonnie told Max the slogan had possibilities. She was trying not to dampen his enthusiasm; besides, he was the expert, the creative talent. All she did was bang out press releases.
On a napkin Max Lamb crudely sketched a jaunty, cockeyed mynah bird that was to be the cereal-box mascot for Plum Crunchies. Max said the bird would be colored purple (“like a plum!”) and would be named Dinah the Mynah. Here Bonnie Brooks felt she should speak up, as a colleague, to remind Max Lamb of the many other cereals that already used bird logos (Froot Loops, Cocoa Puffs, Kellogg’s Corn Flakes, and so on). In addition, she gently questioned the wisdom of naming the mynah bird after an aging, though much-beloved, TV singer.
Bonnie: “Is the bird supposed to be a woman?”
Max: “The bird has no particular gender.”
Bonnie: “Well, do mynahs actually eat plums?”
Max: “You’re adorable, you know that?”
He was falling for her, and she was falling (though a bit less precipitously) for him. As it turned out, Max’s bosses at Rodale & Burns liked his slogan but hated the concept of Dinah the Mynah. The executives of Crespo Mills concurred. When the new cereal finally debuted, the box featured a likeness of basketball legend Patrick Ewing, slam-dunking a giddy cartoon plum. Surveys later revealed that many customers thought it was either an oversized grape or a prune. Plum Crunchies failed to capture a significant share of the fruited-bran-flake breakfast market and quietly disappeared forever from the shelves.
Bonnie and Max’s long-distance romance endured. She found herself carried along by his energy, determination and self-confidence, misplaced as it often was. While Bonnie was bothered by Max’s tendency to judge humankind strictly according to age, race, sex and median income, she attributed his cold eye to indoctrination by the advertising business. She herself had become cynical about the brain activity of the average consumer, given Crespo’s worldwide success with such dubious food products as salted doughballs, whipped olive spread and shrimp-flavored popcorn.
In the early months of courtship, Max invented a game intended to impress Bonnie Brooks. He bet that he could guess precisely what model of automobile a person owned, based on his or her demeanor, wardrobe and physical appearance. The skill was intuitive, Max told Bonnie; a gift. He said it’s what made him such a canny advertising pro. On dates, he’d sometimes follow strangers out of restaurants or movie theaters to see what they were driving. “Ha! A Lumina—what’d I tell ya? The guy had midsize written all over him!” Max would chirp when his guess was correct (which was, by Bonnie’s generous reckoning, about five percent of the time). Before long, the car game grew tiresome and Bonnie Brooks asked Max Lamb to stop. He didn’t take it personally; he was a hard man to insult. This, too, Bonnie attributed to the severe environment of Madison Avenue.
While Bonnie’s father was amiably indifferent to Max, her mother was openly unfond of him. She felt he tried too hard, came on too strong; that he was trying to sell himself to Bonnie the same way he sold breakfast cereal and cigarets. It wasn’t that Bonnie’s mother thought Max Lamb was a phony; just the opposite. She believed he was exactly what he seemed to be—completely goal-driven, every waking moment. He was no different at home than he was at the office, no less consumed with attaining success. There was, said Bonnie’s mother, a sneaky arrogance in Max Lamb’s winning attitude. Bonnie thought it was an odd criticism, coming from a woman who had regarded Bonnie’s previous boyfriends as timid, unmotivated losers. Still, her mother had never used the term “asshole” to describe Bonnie’s other suitors. That she pinned it so quickly on Max Lamb nagged painfully at Bonnie until her wedding day.
Now, with Max apparently abducted by a raving madman, Bonnie fretted about something else her mother had often mentioned, a trait of Max’s so obvious that even Bonnie had acknowledged it. Augustine knew what she was talking about.
“Your husband thinks he can outsmart anybody.”
“Unfortunately,” Bonnie said.
“I can tell from the phone tapes.”
“Well,” she said, fishing for encouragement, “he’s managed to make it so far.”
“Maybe he’s learned when to keep his mouth shut.” Augustine stood up and stretched his arms. “I’m tired. Can we do the scar thing some other time?”
Bonnie Lamb laughed and said sure. She waited until she heard the bedroom door shut before she phoned Pete Archibald at his home in Connecticut.
“Did I wake you?” she asked.
“Heck, no. Max said you might be calling.”
Bonnie’s words stuck in her throat. “You—Pete, you talked to him?”
“For about an hour.”
“When?”
“Tonight. He’s all frantic that Bill Knapp’s gonna snake the Bronco cigaret account. I told him not to worry, Billy’s tied up with the smokeless division on some stupid rodeo tour—”
“Pete, never mind all that. Where did Max call from?”
“I don’t know, Bon. I assumed he’d spoken to you.”
Bonnie strained to keep the hurt from her voice. “Did he tell you what happened?”
On the other end, Pete Archibald clucked and ummmed nervously. “Not all the gory details, Bonnie. Everybody—least all the couples I know—go through the occasional bedroom drama. Fights and whatnot. I don’t blame you for not giving me the real story when you called before.”
Bonnie Lamb’s voice rose. “Peter, Max and I aren’t fighting. And I did tell you the real story.” She caught herself. “At least it was the story Max told me.”
After an uncomfortable pause, Pete Archibald said, “Bon, you guys work it out, OK? I don’t want to get in the middle.”
“You’re right, you’re absolutely right.” She noticed that her free hand was balled in a fist and she was rocking sideways in the chair. “Pete, I won’t keep you. But maybe you could tell me what else Max said.”
“Shop talk, Bonnie.”
“For a whole hour?”
“Well, you know your husband. He gets rolling, you know what he’s like.”
Maybe I don’t, Bonnie thought.
She said good-bye to Pete Archibald and hung up. Then she went to Augustine’s room and knocked on the door. When he didn’t answer, she slipped in and sat lightly on the corner of the bed. She thought he was asleep, until he rolled over and said: “Not a good night for the skull room, huh?”
Bonnie Lamb shook her head and began to cry.
Edie Marsh gave it her best shot. For a while, the plan went smoothly. The man from Midwest Casualty took meticulous notes as he followed her from room to room in the Torres house. Many of the couple’s belongings had been pulverized beyond recognition, so Edie began embellishing losses to inflate the claim. She lovingly described the splintered remains of a china cabinet as a priceless antique that Tony inherited from a great-grandmother in San Juan. Pausing before a bare bedroom wall, she pointed to the nails upon which once hung two original (and very expensive) watercolors by the legendary Jean-Claude Jarou, a martyred Haitian artist whom Edie invented off the top of her head. A splintered bedroom bureau became the hand-hewn mahogany vault that had yielded eight cashmere sweaters to the merciless winds of the hurricane.
“Eight sweaters,” said Fred Dove, glancing up from his clipboard. “In Miami?”
“The finest Scottish cashmeres—can you imagine? Ask your wife if it wouldn’t break her heart.”
Fred Dove took a small flashlight from his jacket and went outside to evaluate structural damage. Soon Edie heard barking from the backyard, followed by emphatic human profanities. By the time she got there, both dachshunds had gotten a piece of the insurance man. Edie led him inside, put him in the BarcaLounger, rolled up his cuffs and tended his bloody ankles with Evian and Ivory liquid, which she salvaged from the kitchen.
“I’m glad they’re not rottweilers,” said Fred Dove, soothed by Edie’s ministrations with a soft towel.
Repeatedly she apologized for the attack. “For what it’s worth, they’ve had all their shots,” she said, with no supporting evidence whatsoever.
She instructed Fred Dove to stay in the recliner and keep his feet elevated, to slow the bleeding. Leaning back, he spotted Tony Torres’s Salesman of the Year plaque on the wall. “Pretty impressive,” Fred Dove said.
“Yes, it was quite a big day for us.” Edie beamed, a game simulation of spousely pride.
“And where’s Mister Torres tonight?”
Out of town, Edie replied, at a mobile-home convention in Dallas. For the second time, Fred Dove looked doubtful.
“Even with the hurricane? Must be a pretty important convention.”
“It sure is,” said Edie Marsh. “He’s getting another award.”
“Ah.”
“So he had to go. I mean, it’d look bad if he didn’t show up. Like he wasn’t grateful or something.”
Fred Dove said, “I suppose so. When will Mister Torres be returning to Miami?”
Edie sighed theatrically. “I just don’t know. Soon, I hope.”
The insurance man attempted to lower the recliner, but it kept springing to the sleep position. Finally Edie Marsh sat on the footrest, enabling Fred Dove to climb out. He said he wanted to reinspect the damage to the master bedroom. Edie said that was fine.
She was rinsing the bloody towel in a sink when the insurance man called. She hurried to the bedroom, where Fred Dove held up a framed photograph that he’d dug from the storm rubble. It was a picture of Tony Torres with a large dead fish. The fish had a mouth the size of a garbage pail.
“That’s Tony on the left,” Edie said with a dry, edgy laugh.
“Nice grouper. Where’d he catch it?”
“The ocean.” Where else? thought Edie.
“And who’s this?” The insurance man retrieved another frame off the floor. The glass was cracked, and the picture was puckered from storm water. It was a color nine-by-twelve, mounted inside gold filigree: Tony Torres with his arm around the waist of a petite but heavy-breasted Latin woman. Both of them wore loopy champagne smiles.
“His sister Maria,” Edie blurted, sensing the game was about to end.
“She’s in a wedding gown,” Fred Dove remarked, with no trace of sarcasm. “And Mister Torres is wearing a black tuxedo and tails.”
Edie said, “He was the best man.”
“Really? His hand is on her bottom.”
“They’re very close,” said Edie, “for a brother and sister.” The words trailed off in defeat.
Fred Dove’s shoulders stiffened, and his tone chilled. “Do you happen to have some identification? A driver’s license would be good. Anything with a current photograph.”
Edie Marsh said nothing. She feared compounding one felony with another.
“Let me guess,” said the insurance man. “All your personal papers were lost in the hurricane.”
Edie bowed her head, thinking: This can’t be happening again. One of these days I’ve got to catch a break. She said, “Shit.”
“Pardon?”
“I said ‘shit.’ Meaning, I give up.” Edie couldn’t believe it—a fucking wedding picture! Tony and the unfaithful witch he planned to rip off for half the hurricane money. Too bad Snapper bolted, she thought, because this was ten times better than Sally Jessy.
“Who are you?” Fred Dove was stern and official.
“Look, what happens now?”
“I’ll tell you exactly what happens—”
At that moment, the electric generator ran out of gasoline, dying with a feeble series of burps. The lightbulb went dim and the television went black. The house at 15600 Calusa became suddenly as quiet as a chapel. The only sound was a faint jingle from the backyard, where the two dachshunds squirmed to pull free of their leashes.
In the darkness, Fred Dove reached for his flashlight. Edie Marsh intercepted his wrist and held on to it. She decided there was nothing to lose by trying.
“What are you doing?” the insurance man asked.
Edie brought his hand to her mouth. “What’s it worth to you?”
Fred Dove stood as still as a statue.
“Come on,” Edie said, her tongue brushing his knuckles, “what’s it worth?”
The insurance man, in a shaky whisper: “What’s what worth—not calling the police? Is that what you mean?”
Edie was smiling. Fred Dove could tell by the feel of her lips and teeth against his hand.
“What’s this house insured for?” she asked.
“Why?”
“One twenty? One thirty?”
“One forty-one,” said Fred Dove, thinking: Her breath is so unbelievably soft.
Edie switched to her sex-kitten voice, the one that had failed to galvanize the young Palm Beach Kennedy. “One forty-one? You sure, Mister Dove?”
“The structure, yes. Because of the swimming pool.”
“Of course.” She pressed closer, wishing she weren’t wearing a bra but suspecting it didn’t much matter. Poor Freddie’s brakes were already smoking. She feathered her eyelashes against his neck and felt him bury his face in her hair.
The insurance man labored to speak. “What is it you want?”
“A partner,” Edie Marsh replied, sealing the agreement with a long blind kiss.
Sergeant Cain Darby took his weekends with the National Guard as seriously as he took his regular job as a maximum-security-prison guard. Although he would have preferred to remain in Starke with the armed robbers and serial killers, duty called Cain Darby to South Florida on the day after the hurricane struck. Commanding Darby’s National Guard unit was the night manager of a Days Inn, who sternly instructed the troops not to fire their weapons unless fired upon themselves. From what Cain Darby knew of Miami, this scenario seemed not entirely improbable. Nonetheless, he understood that a Guardsman’s chief mission was to maintain order in the streets, assist needy civilians and prevent looting.
The unit’s first afternoon was spent erecting tents for the homeless and unloading heavy drums of fresh drinking water from the back of a Red Cross trailer. After supper, Cain Darby was posted to a curfew checkpoint on Quail Roost Drive, not far from the Florida Turnpike. Darby and another Guardsman, the foreman of a paper mill, took turns stopping the cars and trucks. Most drivers had good excuses for being on the road after curfew—some were searching for missing relatives, others were on their way to a hospital, and still other
s were simply lost in a place they no longer recognized. If questions arose about a driver’s alibi, the paper-mill foreman deferred judgment to Sergeant Darby, due to his law-enforcement experience. Common violators were TV crews, sightseers, and teenagers who had come to steal. These cars Cain Darby interdicted and sent away, to the Turnpike ramp.
At midnight the paper-mill foreman returned to camp, leaving Sergeant Darby alone at the barricade. He dozed for what must have been two hours, until he was startled awake by loud snorting. Blearily he saw the shape of a large bear no more than thirty yards away, at the edge of a pine glade. Or maybe it was just a freak shadow, for it looked nothing like the chubby black bears that Cain Darby routinely poached from the Ocala National Forest. The thing that he now thought he was seeing stood seven feet at the shoulders.
Cain Darby closed his eyes tightly to clear the sleep. Then he opened them again, very slowly. The huge shape was still there, a motionless phantasm. Common sense told him he was mistaken—they don’t grow thousand-pound bears in Florida! But that’s sure what it looked like.…
So he raised his rifle.
Then, from the corner of his eye, he spotted headlights barreling down Quail Roost Drive. He turned to see. Somebody was driving toward the roadblock like a bat out of hell. Judging by the rising chorus of sirens, half the Metro police force was on the chase.
When Cain Darby spun back toward the bear, or the shape that looked like a bear, it was gone. He lowered the gun and directed his attention to the maniac in the oncoming truck. Cain Darby struck an erect military pose in front of the candy-striped barricades—spine straight, legs apart, the rifle held at a ready angle across the chest.
A half mile behind the truck was a stream of flashing blue and red lights. The fugitive driver seemed undaunted. As the headlights drew closer, Sergeant Darby hurriedly weighed his options. The asshole wasn’t going to stop, that much was clear. By now the man had (unless he was blind, drunk or both) seen the soldier standing in his path.
Yet the vehicle was not decelerating. If anything, it was gaining speed. Cain Darby cursed as he dashed out of the way. If there was one thing he found intolerable, it was disrespect for a uniform, whether it belonged to the Department of Corrections or the National Guard. So he indignantly cranked off a few rounds as the idiot driver smashed through the barricade.