Max turned.
“To the house,” the agent said.
“No, sir. The sliding door was open.”
“So you just walked in. He doesn’t know you’re here?”
“Well…” It hadn’t occurred to Max Lamb that he was breaking the law. For one infuriating moment, he thought the FBI man was preparing to arrest him.
But the agent said: “That’s a swell way to get your head shot off—being in somebody’s house without them knowing. Especially here in Miami.”
Max, grinding his teeth, realized the impossibly upside-down nature of the situation. He was wasting his breath. A state trooper is friends with the kidnapper, an FBI man is friends with the skull collector.
“You know what I really want?” Max drained his beer with a flourish, set the bottle down hard on the counter. “All I want is to find my wife, put her on a plane and go home to New York. Forget about this fucked-up place, forget about this hurricane.”
The agent said, “That’s a damn good plan, Mister Lamb.”
CHAPTER
26
Snapper made Edie Marsh pull over at a liquor store in Islamorada.
“Not now,” she said.
“I got to.”
“We’re almost there.”
A rumble from the back seat: “Let the man have a drink.”
She parked behind the store, away from the road. Jim Tile didn’t see the black Cherokee as he sped past. Neither did Avila, ten minutes later.
Snapper wouldn’t be talked out of his craving, and Edie was worried. She knew firsthand the folly of mixing booze with Midols. Double dosed, Snapper might hibernate for a month.
The woman named Bonnie asked for a cold Coke. “I’m burning up.”
“Welcome to Florida,” said Edie.
Snapper tossed three ten-dollar bills on her lap. “Johnnie Red,” he said.
“Bad idea when you’re full of codeines.”
“Shit, I’ve handled ten times worse. Besides, it don’t feel like codeine you gave me.”
Edie said, “Your knee quit hurting, right? The bottle said ‘codeine.’”
Snapper switched the .357 to his left hand. With his right hand he twisted Edie’s hair, as if he were uprooting a clump of weeds. When she cried out, he said: “I don’t give a fuck if the medicine bottle said turpentine. Go get my Johnnie Walker.”
Edie pulled free and jumped out of the Jeep. She flipped him the finger as she went through the door of the liquor store. Snapper said, “Stubborn bitch.”
“Feisty,” Skink agreed.
Bonnie Lamb felt like her skin was sizzling. She thought it would be glorious to bury herself in fresh snow. “Honest to God, it’s so hot. I feel like taking off my clothes.”
She couldn’t believe she’d said it aloud.
Snapper was startled, and too confused for lust. “Jesus Christ, what’s a matter with you people.”
Bonnie said, “I’m smothering.”
His eyes wandered to the young woman’s chest. Nothing like a pair of tits to fuck up the balance of power. He knew that if she flashed those babies, his position instantly would be weakened, his authority diminished. It was a lost advantage that even the .357 could not restore.
“Keep your goddamn shirt on,” he told her.
“Don’t worry.” Bonnie fanned herself in nervous embarrassment. In the back of the Jeep, Levon Stichler mewled inquiringly, trussed in his cocoon of moldy carpet. Skink figured the old man must have been listening, wondering if he was missing something.
Edie Marsh returned from the store. Her hair sparkled with tiny raindrops. She handed Bonnie a can of Dr Pepper. “The Cokes weren’t cold. Here, asshole.” She shoved a brown paper bag at Snapper. He took out the Johnnie Walker bottle and opened it with one hand. He threw back his head and chugged, as if from a canteen.
“Take it easy,” Edie admonished.
Contemptuously he smacked his lips. “I bet you’d look good completely bald,” he said to her. “That guy on the new Star Trek, Gene Luke—you and him could pass for twins.”
Edie said, “Touch my hair again. Just try.”
He swung the .357 until the barrel came to rest on the tip of Edie’s nose. He cocked the hammer and said: “Come on. Somebody talk me out of it.”
Bonnie thought: Oh God, please don’t. She shivered in sweat.
Snapper took another sloppy swig of whiskey. The one-eyed man reminded him of the ammunition shortage. “Shoot her, that’d leave only one bullet for the rest of us.”
“There’s other ways besides the gun.”
Skink let loose an avalanche of laughter. “Son, I’m fairly immune to blunt objects and sharp instruments.”
Edie’s pitch was more blunt. “Pull the trigger,” she said to Snapper, “and kiss your hurricane money good-bye. Forty-seven grand goes out the window with my brains.”
Snapper’s bad mandible began to creak; a sign, Skink hoped, of possible cogitation. The moron was deciding between the long-term rewards from the money and the short-term satisfaction from shooting her. Apparently it wasn’t an easy choice.
Skink said, “Consider it an IQ test, chief.”
Impulsively Bonnie Lamb opened the cold Dr Pepper and poured it under her blouse; a fizzing caramel torrent from the cleft of her neck to her tummy.
“Stop!” Snapper yelled. “You stop that crazy shit!”
“I’m suffocating in here—”
“I don’t care! I don’t fucking care.”
Bonnie was so light-headed from the heat that Snapper’s fury didn’t register. “I’m sorry,” she said, “I’m really sorry, but it’s a hundred degrees in this stupid truck.”
The soda pop soaked through her top, so that Snapper could see the lacy outline of a bra and a pale damp oval of bare belly. Skink asked Edie Marsh to put on the air conditioner.
“I tried. It’s broken.” Edie’s voice was empty.
“Don’t even think about getting naked,” Snapper warned Bonnie, “or I’ll kill you.” His head jangled with loud voices, some his own. In exasperation he shouted: “You don’t think I’d shoot all you crazy shits? You don’t believe me? Check the fuckin’ hole in the roof a this Jeep!”
Yeah, Edie thought. Matches the one between your ears.
“Can we get on with this?” she said sourly. “It is awfully damn humid.”
As Bonnie’s skin cooled off, she heard herself apologizing repeatedly. Yet it was absurd to be ashamed. Why should she care what two common criminals thought of her?
But she did care. She couldn’t help herself. It was the way she’d been raised: A proper young woman did not douse herself with soda pop in front of total strangers, even felons.
“It’s all right,” Skink said. “You’re scared, that’s all.”
“I guess I am.”
Snapper heard her. With a vulgar chuckle, he said, “Good. Scared is damn well what you ought to be.” He was halfway to shitfaced.
Edie drove slowly, fretfully. The man was a keeling wreck. How could they possibly pull this off? She devised a fantasy scenario: If Snapper passed out drunk, she’d push him from the Jeep. Then she’d tell the eccentric couple in the back seat that she was very, very sorry—it was all a terrible misunderstanding. She’d promise them Snapper’s share of the Midwest Casualty settlement if they’d forget the whole dreadful evening. She would drive them back to Miami without delay and (to prove she was basically a decent person) offer to replace the gold ring stolen from the lady trooper. The unconscious Snapper would be run over on the highway by a passing shrimp truck and no longer pose a menace to society, or to Edie’s future.
Unfortunately, Snapper wasn’t nodding off. The Johnnie Walker bottle lay capped on the dashboard. Now he was playing with the gun, spinning the cylinder and humming mischievously.
Edie Marsh said, “Could you please not do that?”
Snapper gurgled crapulously, his jaw jutting like a window box. “You’re so hot and sweaty, Edie, you oughta do what she almos
t done. Take off your clothes.”
“You’d like that, wouldn’t you.”
“I would love it. Wouldn’t y’all?” He waggled the .357 at Skink and Bonnie Lamb. “Come on, wouldn’t ya like to see Edie’s tits? They’re cuties.”
Bonnie felt crummy that she’d given Snapper the idea.
Skink said, “Speaking for myself, yes, I’m sure they’re delightful. But some other time.”
Edie Marsh felt herself blush. Nobody spoke. Snapper began to hum again, accompanied by the metered squeak of the windshield wipers. Ahead, on the ocean side of the highway, Edie saw the electric-blue sign for the Paradise Palms Resort Motel.
Skink shook Levon Stichler out of the carpet, dumping him like a sack of flour on the terrazzo. Somebody yanked off the gag and the blindfold.
The old man’s eyes watered at the sudden brightness.
A woman’s voice: “You again.”
Levon blinked until a face came into focus—the redhead from the hurricane house at Turtle Meadow. The chiffon scarf, Levon’s blinder, dangled from her festively painted fingernails. Standing next to the redhead was a wild-looking blonde. She said, “What’s your name, sweetheart?”
The redhead wore a diaphanous black bustier, fishnet stockings and stiletto heels. The blonde wore a silver lamé teddy that made her shimmer like the hood ornament on a Silver Shadow. The air was sugary with perfume; pure heaven, after three hours of gagging on mildew and carpet fuzz. When Levon Stichler sat up, he found himself in the center of an attentive circle: the two prostitutes, the thug in the pinstriped suit, the pretty long-haired brunette, another young woman, with creamy skin and delicate features, and a large bearded man wearing a flowered shower cap. The bearded man was polishing a glass eye on the sleeve of his jacket. They were gathered in a small motel room.
Levon Stichler said: “What’s this all about?”
The prostitutes introduced themselves. Bridget and Jasmine.
Snapper dropped to a crouch. Roughly he pinched the back of the old man’s neck. “You tried to kill me, ’member?”
“It was a mistake. I told you.”
“Here’s the deal: You’re gone stay down here two, maybe three days with the girls. They’re gone fuck ya and blow ya till you can’t walk. Plus they gone take some pitchers.”
Levon was skeptical. The man reeked of liquor and spoke as if he had a mouthful of marbles.
“Just shoot me and get it over with.”
“We’re not shooting anybody.” It was the pretty brunette. “Honest,” she said, “long as you behave.”
Snapper said, “Maybe you’re too old to get it up or maybe you like guys—I don’t fuckin’ care. Point is, you stay here with these girls till I call and say it’s OK to leave. Then what you do, you take your sweet time gettin’ back to Miami. By that I mean, stand on the highway with your thumb out. Unnerstand?”
Levon stammered and blinked. Snapper swatted him twice across the face.
Edie Marsh said: “I don’t think Mister Stichler realizes the alternative. The alternative is we go to the cops and tell how you tried to murder Snapper and rape me with that trailer spike. Your family’ll think you’ve gone senile. The photographs won’t help—Grandpa doing pony rides with two call girls.”
Levon glanced up at Bridget and Jasmine. They were large and scary. He could tell they’d worked together before.
“Think of it as a vacation,” said Edie. “Hey, you’re allowed to have fun.”
“I wish I could.”
“Uh-oh.” Bridget knelt beside him. “Prostate?”
The old man nodded somberly. “It was removed last year.”
Jasmine told him to cheer up. “We’ll think of something.”
Skink, fitting his glass eye into its socket, advised Levon Stichler to do what he was told. “It’s still better than getting shot.”
Bridget said, “Gee, thanks.”
Snapper paid the prostitutes from a wad of the stolen roofing money, which they counted, divided and put away. They turned their backs so he wouldn’t peek inside their pocketbooks, which bulged with the other cash given to them ten minutes earlier by Avila, and ten minutes before that by the good-looking young man with the .38 Special.
“Is there ice in the bucket?” Bonnie Lamb asked. The hooker named Jasmine told her to help herself. Bonnie scooped two handfuls of cubes and pressed them to her cheeks.
The one-eyed man helped the prostitutes lift Levon Stichler to his feet. Snapper poked the old man’s Adam’s apple with the barrel of the gun. “Don’t try nuthin’ stupid,” he said. “These young girls can crack coconuts in their legs. Killing a skinny old fart like you is no problem whassoever.”
Levon Stichler didn’t doubt it for a moment. “Don’t worry, mister. I’m no hero.”
The redhead pinched his butt playfully. “We’ll see about that.”
Augustine was hiding behind a Dumpster when the black Cherokee with the cheesy mud flaps arrived at the Paradise Palms. His spirits leaped when he saw Bonnie Lamb get out, followed by the governor. The driver was a brown-haired woman in a lavender top; probably the one from the driver’s license photo, Edith Deborah Marsh, age twenty-nine. She was the next to get out of the Jeep. From the passenger side: a lanky sallow man in a rumpled suit, no necktie. He carried a gun and a bottle, and seemed unsteady. His crooked jaw was made conspicuous by a street light. Augustine had no doubt. It was him; the one who’d attacked Brenda Rourke, the one the prostitutes told him about. Snapper in real life, “Lester Parsons” on the motel register.
The man opened the hatch of the Cherokee and barked something at Skink, who removed a long lumpy bundle and hoisted it across his back. Once the procession disappeared into the motel, Augustine ran to the Jeep, climbed in the cargo well and quietly closed the hatch. He flattened himself below the rear window, placing the .38 at his right side. With both hands he held the dart rifle across his chest.
This, he thought, would be something to tell the old man. Make those fat wormy veins in his temples pop up.
Dad wouldn’t dream of risking his neck unless vast sums of money were at stake. Love, loyalty and honor weren’t part of the dope smuggler’s creed. Augustine could hear the incredulity: A.G., Why the hell would you do such a crazy thing?
Because the man deserved it. He beat up a lady cop and stole her mother’s wedding ring. He was scum.
Don’t be an idiot. You could’ve been killed.
He kidnapped the woman I love.
I raised an idiot!
No you didn’t. You didn’t raise anybody.
Whenever Augustine wrote his father, he made a point of mentioning how much money he’d given away to ex-girlfriends, obscure charities and ultraliberal political causes. He imagined his father’s face turning gray with dismay.
You disappoint me, A.G.
This from a dumb shit who ran aground at full throttle with thirty-three kilos in the bilge and the entire Bahamian National Defense Force in pursuit.
“You disappoint me.”
Right. Augustine listened to the rain thrumming against the roof of the truck. It made him drowsy.
He hadn’t expected to see his father waiting when he awoke from the coma, so he wasn’t disappointed. Predominantly he was thrilled to be alive. The person at his bedside was a middle-aged Haitian nurse named Lucy. She told him about the plane crash, the months of slumber. Augustine hugged her tearfully. Lucy showed him a letter from his father, sent from the prison in Talladega; she’d read the letter aloud to Augustine when he was unconscious. She volunteered to read it again.
Son, I hope you are alive to read these words. I’m sorry the way things turned out. Dad should’ve signed off right there, but grace and decency were never his strong suits.
Everything I did was for you, he wrote. Every move I made, right or wrong.
Which was crap, an unnecessary lie. It mildly saddened Augustine but didn’t embitter him. He was beyond all that. The airplane accident had pruned his emotions down to the
roots. Nothing affected him the way it had before, which was fine. He decided everyone could benefit from a short coma. Wipe the slate clean.
So what if it took him years to come up with a new agenda? Here it was. Here she was.
Dad would not approve. Fortunately, Dad was not a factor.
Augustine heard the closing of a door, footsteps slapping in the puddles, voices advancing across the motel parking lot. He took three deep breaths. Checked the safety on the dart rifle.
He was glad for the weather, which misted the Jeep’s windows and made him invisible from the outside. The voices grew sharper—two men arguing. Augustine didn’t recognize them. Perhaps Snapper and somebody else, but who?
Loud words broke through the whisper of the rain. Augustine decided not to give himself away unless Bonnie Lamb was in trouble. The argument moved closer. Then came a deep huff, the sounds of a clumsy struggle; a bottle shattering on the pavement.
One of the men blurted: “Hold the damn gun while I strangle this fucker.”
Snapper’s consternation about the two remaining bullets in the .357 was well founded. A crack marksman he was not.
A police report dated July 7, 1989, showed that one Lester Maddox Parsons was arrested for shooting Theodore “Sunny” Shea outside the Satellite Grille in Dania, Florida. The victim was not just a garden-variety crack dealer, as Snapper claimed after the incident. In truth, Sunny Shea was his longtime business partner. The scope of their enterprises extended beyond drugs to stolen guns, jewelry, clothing, patio furniture, stereos, even a shipment of baby food on one occasion. Eventually Sunny Shea came to suspect Snapper of cheating him on the proceeds, and confronted him with the accusation one humid summer night in the doorway of the Satellite Grille, before sixteen eyewitnesses.
Snapper’s indignant response was to display a 9mm Glock (swiped from the glove box of an unmarked Coral Springs police car) and attempt to empty said weapon into Sunny Shea. In all, Snapper fired eleven times from a distance of eight feet. Only six rounds struck Sunny Shea, and not one nicked a vital organ—quite a feat, considering that Sunny Shea weighed only one hundred thirty pounds and hadn’t an ounce of fat on his body. The hapless shooting exhibition was even more remarkable because Snapper was stone sober at the time.