Star Island

  "Did he say anything when he grabbed her dog?" the officer asked.

  "Just that he was hungry," the desk clerk reported.

  Bang Abbott had heard enough; the police activity had nothing to do with his captive. So far, no one seemed to be looking for the missing so-called actress.

  Stepping back into the elevator, he spotted a small green cylinder on the floor and picked it up. Ann noticed the item in Bang Abbott's hand after he came in the door and started telling her about the weird scene in the lobby.

  "Can I see that thing?" she asked.

  He tossed the plastic cylinder to her and told her where he'd found it.

  "Just now?" Ann said.

  This was after he'd unlocked her from the toilet pipes and re-cuffed her to one of the beds.

  He said, "It's a damn shotgun shell."

  "I know, Claude."

  "With the brass cap punched out. What's that all about?"

  Ann peered through the little green tube at Bang Abbott. "You could always string it on a braid," she said, smiling.

  The one-eyed homeless dude from Key Largo had found her, just as he'd promised. Finally Ann had met a man who kept his word, only now she didn't need him. She wondered how he would take the news.

  18

  The name of the loud woman in the lobby was Marian DeGregorio. Her Maltese was Bubba, not Barbara. They had flown down to Miami nonstop from White Plains; Bubba got his own seat and one-third of an Ambien, to shut him up. Marian DeGregorio was on a mission to scatter the ashes of her late husband, Victor, in the Atlantic Ocean. Victor had been dead going on seven years and Marian DeGregorio's boyfriend was sick of looking at the urn, which was kept in the same kitchen cupboard with the Sanka.

  Victor DeGregorio had spent nearly seven months dying, during which time he repeatedly made his wife swear on her communion Bible that she would scatter his ashes off the coast of southern Florida. It was there, aboard a charter boat called the Happy Hooker IX, that Victor DeGregorio had once reeled in a hammerhead shark. He considered this the foremost masculine achievement of his life, and kept a jar filled with the shark's pointy teeth on his desk at the John Deere outlet where he worked as an inventory manager. Sometimes Victor DeGregorio would present one of the teeth to a customer or a visiting big shot from Deere headquarters, and the recipients were always impressed. Also on display was a framed nine-by-twelve of Victor posing on a dock beside the gaping stiff behemoth, which had been chained up by its tail and chalked with the number 193 to proclaim the weight. Victor's friends eventually forbade him from mentioning the hammerhead--even toward the end--because he'd told the goddamn story about a thousand times.

  Marian DeGregorio had been retelling the story herself, to a desk clerk, when the trouble erupted. She'd just gotten to the part where Victor and his fishing buddies set upon the gaffed shark with aluminum ball bats to--in the widow's words--"finish off the vicious bastard," when she was overheard by a tall, scruffy man coming off the elevator. He interrupted to express his disgust, and in a harsh tone went on at length about the imminent collapse of world shark populations. Except for his flawless dentition, the man looked like a street person, so Marian DeGregorio somewhat caustically challenged his expertise on the topic of marine ecosystems. At that point he seized her soft-sided suitcase, sprung the locks and set the contents ablaze with a can of paint thinner he'd swiped from the vacation home of D. T. Maltby, his former running mate. As soon as the Marriott's fire alarm went off, he snatched Marian DeGregorio's dog and fled to the streets, leaving the widow honking and flapping like an addled goose in the smoky lobby.

  Skink jogged to the beach and lay down beneath the stars and thought about Annie the actress. He had prowled every floor of the hotel, listening at the doors, but he'd made no formal inquiries due to the lateness of the hour and his disordered appearance. Based on Jim Tile's information, he was certain that Annie was being held in one of the rooms. Later he would try again to find her.

  Meanwhile the Maltese was fidgeting and snuffling in his grasp. Skink did not respond solicitously. Occasionally he'd dined on the pets of intolerable people, but he preferred roadkill. Bubba didn't look particularly tasty and the overgroomed pelt would be useless except as a shammy cloth for the shotgun. Moreover, Skink suspected that barbecuing a purebred would attract unwanted attention even on South Beach.

  As the sun leaked over the horizon, he was approached by two disheveled but attractive women who were strolling shoeless and hungover. One was twirling a wine-stained bra and the other carried a crumpled pack of French cigarettes. The women cooed and clucked and commented upon Bubba's cuteness, which was not evident to Skink. After removing the tags and rhinestone collar, he gave them the dog and said its previous owner had been tragically beheaded on the teacup ride at Disney World, which the women seemed eager to believe. They promised that the adorable pup would have a fantastic new life in Cedar Rapids, where they would be returning that afternoon.

  When the governor walked back to the Marriott, he was irked to see a police car and a bright red van from the arson unit of the Miami Beach Fire Department. He went another few blocks until he found a taxi idling illegally beside a hydrant. He got in and directed the driver to take him to the Bath Club, saying he was being interviewed for a membership. The taxi driver chose not to question the absurd yarn, and for that mistake he wound up bound and gagged in a cabana strewn with moldy flip-flops.

  Skink took the man's cab and made his way back to the hotel, where he circled the block until a parking space on Washington became available. His thoughts turned for no reason to an old Scottish poem by Robert Burns called "Ode to a Haggis," which he recited several times aloud, experimenting with inflections. He remembered that Mr. Burns died at the preposterous age of thirty-seven, on the very same day Mrs. Burns gave birth to their last child.

  Such depressing trivia served to fortify Skink's view that irony was overrated. He slid down low in the seat, waiting for Annie and her captor to emerge from the Marriott.

  "You still haven't caught that crazy fucker?" Jackie Sebago asked.

  "Not yet," said Detective Reilly. He had never before interviewed a man with a nut sack the size of a rugby ball.

  "Unfuckingbelievable," Jackie Sebago muttered.

  "We found a suspicious campsite. He wasn't there."

  Sunday was Reilly's weekend day off, but his fiancee had gone shopping in Miami and it was too windy for offshore fishing. On an impulse he'd called Jackie Sebago, who was still in Key Largo recuperating from the assault by the bus hijacker.

  "Why can't you guys find him? I don't get it." Jackie Sebago spread his bare legs and, with a groan, adjusted the ice pack.

  Reilly turned away. It was his opinion that forcibly attaching a sea urchin to another person's scrotum was a serious crime, not a fraternity prank, and that the vagrant should be prosecuted to the full measure of the law.

  "Tell me again why this man singled you out," the detective said.

  "Because of the town houses, is what he said. Obviously he's some kind of enviro-nut."

  "It's your project?"

  "Absolutely. That's why it's called Sebago Isle."

  "I figured," said Reilly.

  "Hey, you were on-site. You know what I'm talkin' about," Jackie Sebago said. "It's gonna be phenomenal. It's gonna be paradise."

  "Great location," the detective agreed.

  "This guy, he was a big mother, had these funky braids made from shotgun shells. He yelled and cussed and called me names. Said I was killing the mangrove trees, raping the islands, whatever," Jackie Sebago recounted. "How does a whack job like that get his hands on a gun?"

  "Are you kidding?"

  Cops in Florida were trained to assume that everyone, crazy or not, carried a firearm. Reilly was more concerned about the suspect's sadistic tendencies and radical political agenda. No cash, credit cards or valuables (except for cell phones) had been taken from the bus passengers, and nobody besides Jackie Sebago had been harmed.
r />   "It's definitely a buyer's market," the developer was saying. "Our units start in the mid six hundreds--those are the two-bedrooms, of course, and that's a pre-construction quote."

  Reilly smiled politely. "Still too rich for my blood."

  "Man, it's a steal. Trust me."

  The young detective, whose entire annual salary wouldn't cover the down payment, remained determined to treat Jackie Sebago the same as any innocent victim of violence. It wasn't going to be easy.

  "Did the attacker say anything about himself?" Reilly asked. "Did he give any clues about who he was, or where he came from?"

  "No, but he sang a song. I forgot to tell you that."

  "A made-up song or a real song?"

  Jackie Sebago said he hadn't recognized the number, although some of the other passengers told him it was a well-known hit by the Allman Brothers.

  "Something about a whipping post," he said.

  Reilly jotted down the information, which was probably useless. "What about the young woman who flagged down the bus--you think she was in on it?"

  "Hard to say. She seemed awful damn calm about the whole thing."

  "The man did have a weapon."

  "Yeah, but still," said Jackie Sebago.

  From speaking to the investors who'd been on the hijacked bus, the detective knew they were unhappy with the slow progress of Sebago Isle, and also with Jackie Sebago's slippery account of the finances.

  "Is it possible somebody hired this individual just to frighten you?" Reilly asked.

  "No way," the developer said, though he privately wondered about Shea, the most vocal and disgruntled of the group.

  Would the hot-tempered hedge funder go to all the trouble of setting up an elaborate highway abduction? Jackie Sebago was doubtful. Likewise, arranging the exotic perforation of a business partner's privates seemed conceptually beyond the reach of Shea's imagination. He was more the type to sue.

  "A man in your position is bound to have enemies," the detective suggested carefully.

  Pointing at his swollen, pustular genitalia, Jackie Sebago declared, "Nobody hates me this bad."

  He would be reconsidering that possibility twenty-four hours later, after the Sebago Isle construction site was inexplicably red-tagged and D. T. Maltby refused to take his phone calls and Shea was texting hourly from Providence with ugly threats.

  Driving out of Ocean Reef, where Jackie Sebago lay convalescing in a borrowed villa, Reilly wondered if the elusive busjacker was truly a menace to the public, or just a cagey vigilante who was careful to select repugnant targets. Prosecutors would have a hard time finding a Florida jury that would be sympathetic to a real-estate viper like Sebago.

  Still, Reilly wasn't discouraged, and had no intention of backing off from the investigation. He was eager to track down the suspect and find out what made him tick.

  Tanner Dane Keefe was afraid of Cherry Pye's new bodyguard.

  "He's a stone psycho," the actor whispered. "What happened to his face?"

  "No duh," Cherry said.

  The two of them were lying in bed. He was using her bare bottom as a pillow.

  "The man flushed all my dope. You believe that?"

  "I asked for a black martial-arts dude," she said petulantly. "A big bald one."

  "So get the scar dude fired. Tell Maury he tried to pork you or somethin'."

  "Uh, I did. It totally didn't work."

  Tanner Dane Keefe shifted his head restlessly on her butt cheeks. "He's, like, a serial killer. Swear to God."

  She laughed. "Yeah, like freakin' Jason without the mask."

  The door opened and Chemo strolled in. The actor groped for the sheet to cover himself. Cherry raised up and said, "Can you, like, knock? What's your problem?"

  Chemo told Tanner Dane Keefe that it was time to leave. Cherry said she didn't want him to go.

  "That's okay. I got my lava-rock massage at eleven," the actor said.

  She grabbed for his arm. "Tanny, don't you dare move!"

  Chemo had no patience for fuckwits. "Make me ask twice," he said, "and I'll shave your ass to the bone." He raised the weed whacker to instill motivation.

  Tanner Dane Keefe managed a nod.

  "You A-hole!" Cherry cried at Chemo, and hurled a chrome vibrator that flew past his head and dinged the wall.

  The actor said, "Later, babe." He pecked Cherry on her Axl-zebra tatt and scrambled to collect his clothes. He was out the door in sixty seconds.

  Chemo ordered Cherry to get dressed. A person named Laurel was waiting.

  "Tell her to come back later." Cherry buried her face in the covers.

  "Maury says now."

  "I hate you!"

  Chemo winked. "My heart's in tatters. Now get out of bed."

  Laurel was the new lip-synching coach. She had downloaded Cherry's set list onto an MP3 player, which she plugged into a player dock in the sitting area of the suite. As a rehearsal aid she'd even brought a headset of the type Cherry would be wearing as a prop onstage.

  "I already know, like, every song by heart," Cherry insisted, although soon it became clear that she didn't.

  Chemo almost felt sorry for Laurel. The lyrics were brainless and repetitive yet Cherry kept getting lost, even on the refrains. Chemo made her chug a Red Bull, with no improvement. Eventually he had to leave the room. It was the most monotonous crap he'd ever heard, and he had once worked the door at a white rap club.

  The Larks showed up and hovered curiously. Since leaving prison, Chemo had come to understand the power of his uncommon attraction; some women got turned on when they were creeped out. But his mind was strictly fixed on business; he was mulling what Abbott had told him about trading Cherry Pye for her double, wondering why the paparazzo had turned down a cash ransom. Obviously the douche bag was hot for Cherry, a condition that Chemo predicted would be cured after a short dose of her company.

  But there also had to be more money involved--big money, Chemo reasoned, for a snake like Abbott to risk his own neck. One way or another, Chemo intended to grab a piece of the action. He felt he'd earned it. Every minute with Cherry was like a month at Raiford.

  Lucy Lark said, "Tell her we're here. And we haven't got forever."

  "She's busy practicing," Chemo said.

  "In there? Practicing what?" Lila asked.

  "Moving her lips." Chemo steered the twins outside to the hall and demanded to know what in the name of Jesus Harvey Christ had happened with the kidnap negotiation.

  "When Janet and Maury get here," Lucy said, "they'll bring you up to speed."

  "So it's a done deal?"

  Lila nodded. "Ninety-nine-point-nine for certain."

  "Goddamn." He kicked over a potted palm, causing the Larks to back away and reconsider their interest in him.

  The elevator opened and out walked Maury Lykes and Janet Bunterman. At the same moment, angry shouts and yips erupted from the suite. Cherry's mother bolted inside to rescue Laurel. She was followed by the twins, who were heading for the balcony to check their text messages and sneak a smoke.

  Finding himself alone in the hallway with Maury Lykes, Chemo used the opportunity to jam the startled promoter against the wall and demand a full briefing.

  "So, how's this gonna go down?" he asked.

  Maury Lykes had difficulty responding because the bodyguard was compressing his larynx.

  "After he lets the girl go--the actress--then what?" Chemo said. "He just rides off into the sunset with your star client? I don't get it. You trust this jerkoff?"

  "Not for a minute," the promoter wheezed. "That's why you're goin' along on the shoot."

  Chemo released his grip. "Good call."

  "Oh, it gets better," said Maury Lykes, rubbing his neck.

  * * *

  Bang Abbott wanted to use Ann DeLusia as the intermediary but she'd copped a major attitude toward Janet Bunterman, so he was forced to pick up the phone himself. Back and forth it went--Cherry's old lady was obviously getting coached from the sideline
s--but eventually the rules of the photo shoot were hammered out.

  The session would go exactly six hours, including a lunch break, and take place at the big house being rented by Tanner Dane Keefe on Star Island. Cherry would be accompanied only by her bodyguard. If the goon laid a finger (or his hedge-trimming tool) on Bang Abbott, or if he interfered in any way with the photography, the deal was off and Cherry Pye as an entertainment franchise was history.

  Bang Abbott's leverage was the portfolio of crude needle shots featuring Ann, posed as Cherry, in the hotel bathroom. If the Star Island meeting went well, he would--in Chemo's presence--delete the shocking images from his cell phone. He wouldn't mention that he'd already sent a duplicate photo file marked "Toilet Art" to his desktop back in Los Angeles.

  And if either the singer or her cheese-faced security man started any hassles, Bang Abbott would touch a button on his cell that would e-mail the ruinous JPEGs to every tabloid in the United States and Europe, with captions in English, Spanish and French.

  "What about me?" Ann asked.

  "As soon as Cherry gets there, you slip out the kitchen door. A car will be waiting."

  "Because they still don't want her to know I exist. Nice."

  "Get over it." Bang Abbott said he'd promised Janet Bunterman that he wouldn't say a word to Cherry about her having a double, or about the trade.

  "What's she supposed to think when she shows up for the shoot?"

  "They're gonna tell her I'm working for Vanity Fair."

  Ann had to chuckle. "No offense, Claude, but Hustler would be a reach."

  He flipped her off and attacked his room-service pancakes.

  "Getting back to me," she said, "what happens if--"

  "Relax, for Christ's sake. You're the last person they want to piss off, okay, because you know everything." As he spoke, Bang Abbott spewed syrupy crumbs. "Cherry's people, if they've got half a brain, they're gonna take real good care of you when this is over."