Skink--No Surrender

  Mom had bought me a set of second-hand clubs because she’d wanted me and Trent to bond, but golf is an impossible sport, and I didn’t enjoy much about it except watching the gators cruise the lakes. One day I counted five.

  For a while I went along with the great golfing project, and give my stepfather credit—he was incredibly patient. The man really tried. But I was hopeless with a seven-iron in my hands. A menace, if you want the truth.

  I’d been hoping Trent would give up on me, but it hadn’t happened yet.

  “Or we could do some fishing,” I suggested, watching Trent’s expression go blank.

  He wasn’t a good fisherman—restless, noisy, uncoordinated. I knew he’d rather be strapped in a dentist’s chair than stuck on a boat, trying to pinch a shrimp on a hook.

  When my father died, I’d inherited his fourteen-foot skiff. It was in almost-new condition because Dad hardly ever used it. Now a week didn’t go by when I wasn’t out on the river, sometimes with Malley or my friends but more often alone. Dad’s boat had a heavy fiberglass hull and a small motor—a twenty-horse outboard—so I never went too fast or too far. Usually I brought home a couple of sea trout or a redfish, which Mom would grill for dinner. Trent loved to eat seafood but he had no interest in the pursuit.

  “Cool. Whatever,” he said, for my mother’s benefit. “Richard and me’ll find something to keep us out of trouble.”

  Mom went to pack and I took a walk, mainly for a distraction. My cell phone, which for days had felt like a brick in my pocket, started making whale noises when I was halfway to the marina. I nearly tore a hole in my pants trying to get it out.

  The call was coming from a blocked number.

  “Yo, Richard.”

  “Yo, Mal.”

  “ ’Sup?”

  The hand that was holding the phone was actually shaking. Pitiful.

  My other hand was fumbling in another pocket for the notebook and pen that Detective Trujillo had given me.

  “You okay?” I asked.

  “Way better than okay. I am a totally happy camper.” She laughed, but it sounded a little tight. I assumed that the bogus Talbo Chock was sitting beside her, listening to every word.

  I said, “Where are you? You know I’ve got to ask.”

  “And you know I’ve got to say none a yore bidness, mister.”

  “Why aren’t you calling from your own phone?”

  “Battery died, Richard. Don’t be so paranoid.”

  In the background I heard a male voice say something about a drawbridge. A horn sounded twice—some type of boat. I also picked out the cries of terns and gulls. Sea birds, but that didn’t automatically mean Malley was near the ocean. Gulls are like flying garbage rats. They love dumps and landfills.

  “Just so you don’t think I’m a coldhearted bee-atch,” my cousin said, “I spoke to Mom and Dad and let ’em know I was okay.”

  “When? You serious?”

  “A few minutes ago, right before I called you. They’ve been spazzing, which I totally understand. But I only did what I had to do, Richard. I couldn’t make official contact till T.C. and I got to our destination.”

  “And you’re there now.”

  “We are most definitely here. Oh my God, it’s like a postcard.”

  “Is that good?”

  “Gee, I don’t know. Is paradise good? It’s freaking gorgeous, dude.”

  Malley didn’t sound even slightly mad at me. I should have been relieved, but instead I was worried. She acted like she didn’t know the police were searching for her. Was it possible she hadn’t heard about the Amber Alert? Only if she and her mystery friend had traveled to someplace remote, where her face wasn’t on highway billboards or the TV news.

  “What did your parents say?” I was trying to keep her talking.

  “What do you think they said? ‘Come home, sweetie. We miss you so much.’ I only stayed on the line for a minute. Mom started bawling. Dad just kept asking where I was, over and over.”

  “Do you have money?” I asked.

  “Oh, quit worrying.”

  I had the notebook flipped open, and I was trying to jot down everything she said. The phone was pinned between my ear and my shoulder.

  “Malley, this is a really big deal.”

  “The Twigg Academy was not happening. You know me better than that.”

  “At least tell me how old he is.”

  “What difference does it make if he’s sixteen or sixty?” she said. “You should be happy for me.”

  “I’m happy as long as you’re safe. When are you coming home?”

  “Hey, I’m moving forward, okay? I’m not thinking about home, school, past lives, whatever.”

  I couldn’t write half as fast as my cousin was talking.

  “Malley, where’d he get the name ‘Talbo Chock’?”

  “That’s personal.”

  I didn’t press her on it, because Detective Trujillo had told me not to say anything that might upset her and cause her to hang up. The longer she stayed on the call, he said, the more information I could get.

  “You still in Florida?” I asked.

  Malley started to respond, but the male voice in the car said something sharp that I couldn’t make out. She told him to lighten up.

  “Hey, yo, Richard?” she said.

  “I’m here.”

  “Thanks for not telling anybody when you found out I was gone. You’re the coolest of the cool.”

  My mouth went dry as sawdust. Saying nothing was the same as a lie, and I couldn’t force it.

  “Mal, I did tell someone. My mom. And she told your mom and dad.”

  Another stiff laugh. “I already know, dummy. That was just a test. You’re welcome, by the way.”

  “For what?”

  “For me not blabbing to su madre about your little one-man crime spree in Saint Augustine.”

  “Thanks. Does that mean you aren’t mad?”

  “No, girlfriend, I’m on island time. Nobody ’round here gets mad about anything.”

  “Cool. What island?”

  “Hey, stop it!” she snapped at the other person in the car. “Don’t ever do that again.”

  “Stop what?” I asked. “Malley, you all right?”

  No reply.

  “Malley?”

  “It’s all good. Gotta go.”

  “Wait,” I said.

  But the line was dead.

  FIVE

  Right away I called Detective Trujillo to share my notes. Malley’s mention of a drawbridge was important, he said, although Florida has lots of drawbridges leading to lots of islands.

  “Did she sound okay?”

  “At first.”

  “Then what? She seem frightened?”

  I almost answered yes, because I was afraid that the police might ease off the search if they thought Malley wasn’t in serious danger, if they decided she was just another mixed-up runaway. But the truth was that my cousin hadn’t sounded frightened on the phone. Annoyed about something, for sure, at the end of the call. Maybe a little edgy.

  “She told whoever she’s with to stop something. After that she hung up. Or maybe they hung up.”

  “No ‘Goodbye, Richard’?” Trujillo asked.

  “ ‘Gotta go’ is all she said. Like she was ticked off.”

  “But not scared.”

  “I can’t say.” It was possible that the fake Talbo Chock had pinched or even hit Malley for saying too much to me. It was also possible that he’d just swiped some of her French fries or changed the radio station in the car, and that’s why she’d told him to stop and not ever do that again. Malley ruled over the radio, and she didn’t like anyone messing with her music.

  “You’ll hear from her again,” the detective predicted. “Meanwhile, I’ll call her parents and tell them she contacted you, too.”

  When I got home, Mom was waiting beside the car in our driveway. She said she’d only be gone a couple days. I told her to tell the surfer boys in Gainesville I
said hey.

  “Please let Trent know if you take the boat out,” she said.

  “He turns off his phone on the golf course.”

  “He won’t be playing golf, Richard; he’ll be working. He’s got a couple of showings.”

  “No kidding? That’s awesome.” I was trying to sound enthusiastic, because Trent hadn’t sold a house in eleven months. My mother had been paying all the bills, though she never made a big deal about it.

  “Here.” She handed me forty bucks. “Just in case.”

  “No, Mom, I’ve got some money.”

  “Now you’ve got more. I’ll call you tonight.”

  After she drove off I went to the marina and put twenty dollars’ worth of gas in the boat and headed out to Cutter Island. I caught a good redfish on a bucktail but I didn’t keep it. A school of jacks swarmed in from the inlet, ripping at the finger mullet, and I hooked five or six in a row. They’re tough fighters, pure sport. I chased the school around until it got too dark.

  After docking the boat, I called Trent, who was watching a show he’d recorded on TiVo—a mixed martial arts match featuring his favorite fighter, Lucifer Rex. The man’s real name was Maurice DePew, a factoid I’d dug up on Wikipedia and immediately laid on Trent, just to see his reaction. He’d refused to believe it, of course.

  “I’ll be home in half an hour,” I said.

  “Mind getting your own dinner? I just ate and I’m kinda into this match.”

  Which he was watching for, like, the fourth time. A dedicated blob.

  “No problem,” I said.

  “Tomorrow night we’ll go grab some burgers.”

  “For sure.”

  I wasn’t waiting for tomorrow. On the way home from the marina I hit the McDonald’s and ordered a Quarter Pounder, which Mom calls a “cholesterol bomb.” I went easy on the fries, but still she wouldn’t have approved.

  My conversation with Malley spooled over and over, especially the words she’d spoken to the person beside her: Hey, stop it! Don’t ever do that again.

  It wasn’t unreasonable to assume that the person Malley had been speaking to was her traveling companion, the bogus Talbo. Whatever he’d done at that moment while she was on the phone, she hadn’t wanted to share the details with me.

  So deal with it, Richard, I told myself. Just be glad she called.

  Not wanting to go home and veg out with Trent, I hung around Mickey D’s for another hour. Talk about pathetic—who spends sixty brainless minutes in a fast-food joint? I knew Trent was so engrossed in the cage-fight replay that he wouldn’t notice I was late. He probably wouldn’t notice if the kitchen caught fire.

  I kept the cell phone faceup on the table in case my cousin called again. Mom texted to say that she’d gotten to Gainesville okay and was taking my brothers to dinner at some new Thai joint. I was in the middle of texting back, telling her about my fishing trip, when three Loggerhead police cars went flying past. They were heading toward the north beach. A minute later came an ambulance with its siren full blast.

  Yet it wasn’t until I saw the searchlight from the sheriff’s helicopter that I pocketed my phone and ran to see what was happening.

  It seems like destiny, how some people turn out the way they do.

  Certain kids at school, you just know they’re going to become surgeons or engineers or Internet zillionaires. Other kids are more likely to end up selling cars or hospital supplies or real estate (hopefully with more success than my stepfather).

  But a couple of my classmates, they’re definitely heading full speed for Loserville. That’s a harsh fact in every school in every town. Not everyone wants to work hard, and not everyone has a wonderful life ahead. Certain kids are going to flame out in the grownup world—either crash and burn or flop the old-fashioned, lazy way. Sad but true.

  A guy who graduated with my brother Kyle is doing eighteen months in state prison for breaking into a computer store and stealing a laser printer and a boxful of Homer Simpson zip drives. Mom knows his parents and says they’re solid people, so what happened? A perfectly sensible question. (My own past isn’t exactly spotless, but nothing my mother ever said or did can be blamed for Saint Augustine. That was all me.)

  Another dude who used to surf with my brother Robbie got busted for selling pain pills to an undercover policeman. The guy’s father is a minister and his mom teaches violin. Maybe they messed up when they were raising the kid, or maybe he was just determined to go down the wrong road, no matter what. It happens.

  I have no idea whether Dodge Olney had a rough childhood or came from a good, caring family and just turned out to be a thieving moron. But, seriously, what person with a brain larger than a marble would steal turtle eggs for a living?

  Truly a primitive life form, this guy.

  When I got to the beach, paramedics were strapping him onto a stretcher. His limp right wrist was attached to the rail by a plastic handcuff—basically, a zip tie. His other arm was in a soft cast. He was unconscious and heavily bandaged. I knew it had to be Olney when I saw the pillowcase full of small leathery orbs, which were being counted gingerly by a stone-faced officer from the wildlife commission.

  “Ninety-seven,” he said to no one in particular when he was done.

  I stepped closer and asked what was going to happen to the eggs. The officer said they would be reburied in a safe place on another beach.

  “So, they’re gonna hatch okay?” I said.

  “Sometimes they do. Sometimes they don’t. We’ll see.”

  A crowd had gathered, mostly locals. Mixed in were a few crispy sunburned tourists. A policeman was interviewing a woman jogger who’d witnessed what had happened, so I sidled closer to eavesdrop. She gestured toward the motionless Olney and said she’d seen him digging up a turtle nest. Suddenly, she said, a big bearded man had burst howling out of the sand, and the egg thief began slashing at him with a stake he yanked from the nest site.

  “Describe the person who came out of the ground,” the officer said.

  “Tall and freaky-looking.” The woman spread her arms. “This wide.”

  “Anything else?”

  “He had things hanging off his face. Like bones or something.”

  “Did he say anything?”

  “No, but he was singing.”

  “While the poacher attacked him?”

  “ ‘You can’t always get what you want,’ ” the jogger said. “Those were the words he was singing. He grabbed the stake from the egg robber and threw it up in the dunes.”

  “Then he struck the poacher with his fist?”

  “Yes, sir,” the woman said. “Hard.”

  “How many times?”

  “I didn’t count. He was wearing, like, soldier clothes.”

  “Did you see which way he ran?”

  “Oh, he didn’t run. He walked.” The jogger pointed south. “Thataway.”

  The scenario was easy to imagine. Dodge Olney had been looting eggs from a real loggerhead nest before creeping down the beach and digging up the decoy nest constructed by former governor Clinton Tyree, now known as Skink.

  A greedy, very painful mistake by Mr. Olney.

  The ambulance hauled him away at high speed. If Mom had been home, my phone would have been ringing like crazy. Every time she hears a siren, she calls to make sure I’m all right. This started right after Dad’s accident.

  Overhead, the sheriff’s helicopter continued to circle, its spotlight slicing back and forth across the waterfront. A young policeman carrying a camera walked over to the fake turtle nest and began snapping photographs. I headed south, searching for boot prints in the sand, using the flashlight app on my cell.

  The beach was nearly empty because everyone had rushed to the scene of the fight, if you could call it a fight. Trent would have called it a beat-down. Dodge Olney couldn’t have been more than thirty-five years old, yet he’d gotten his butt whipped by an old fart twice his age. It didn’t bother me at all, to be truthful. Anybody who swipes turtle e
ggs to make money deserves whatever misery comes his way. I had a feeling Mr. Olney would be avoiding our beach for the rest of his days, even if he gave up poaching and turned his life around.

  Skink must have stayed close to the water’s edge for the first few hundred yards, because his tracks had washed away completely. Finally I found a set of fresh prints in the dry, softer sand—definitely boots, definitely jumbo-sized—and I followed them up through the dunes, erasing them behind me with a palm frond so that no one else could see which way he went.

  The boot prints ended at a boardwalk leading to a small gated neighborhood of large oceanfront homes. There were no lights on inside the houses because the rich people who owned them lived up north and came to Florida only in the winter. It was like a fancy little ghost town, and the empty streets sort of sketched me out.

  “Governor!” I called out. “It’s me—Richard!”

  Nothing. No sounds except for the breeze rustling the sea grapes.

  “Yo!” I shouted. Still no reply.

  I heard the whine of the sheriff’s helicopter and crouched in a thick hedge while it swooped over, lighting up the streets like a football stadium. As soon as the chopper was gone, I scrambled out of my hiding place and jogged back toward the beach.

  How the man caught up with me, I’ve got no clue. I never heard him coming, didn’t even know he was behind me until an ape-sized hand seized the back of my T-shirt and yanked me to a stop. I nearly peed my pants.

  “Stay cool, boy,” he whispered.

  “Okay. Okay.” My heart was pounding like a woofer.

  “I need a small favor.”

  “Sure,” I rasped. “Anything.”

  There was only a slice of moon, but it was bright enough for me to see that Skink wasn’t wearing his shower cap. His long damp hair was matted. He stood bare-chested in his boots and board shorts. His army jacket and camo trousers must have been stuffed inside his duffel bag.

  “I need you to be my dear, devoted grandson for a little while,” he said. “In case someone asks.”

  “No problem.”

  “A friend’s leaving a car for me at the corner of Askew and A1A.”

  I knew right where that was. We’d have to go back the same way we had come, possibly encountering police officers searching for the person who’d clobbered Dodge Olney.