Tracking Yancy to his house would have been easy for Eve, who already knew he lived somewhere on Big Pine. An online check of property records would have produced the address. Google would have given her a flawless road map and, as a bonus, the news stories about Yancy’s recent departure from the sheriff’s office. From Eve’s point of view, a disgraced ex-cop wasn’t such a risky target for killing. After all, she and the boyfriend had made her husband’s murder look like an accident; why not the same fate for Yancy?
“Call Sonny,” Burton implored again.
“Sonny does not want to know about this.”
“You’re putting me in a helluva shitty position.”
“What position? You just stopped over for a beer. Big deal.” By now Yancy was shining from the ointment. He looked like an abused gummy bear.
“The widow’s boyfriend jacked my shotgun last night,” he informed Burton. “Oh, and here’s a clever touch: He left an empty booze bottle and one of my spinning rods down by the water, so everybody would think I got drunk and fell in, whatever.”
“Works for me.” Burton had begun to pace. “Phinney’s girlfriend is missing.”
“She left town.”
“Man, could you please put on some clothes?”
“I’m too sticky,” Yancy said. “Hey, Rog, if I slipped you the tail numbers off a seaplane, could you find out who chartered it? I mean without sending up a goddamn flare. I’ll give you the name of the leasing company.”
Burton said, “I’ve got my job to think about, Andrew. A wife plus two kids that might want to get off the rock and go to college someday. Why do I want to get dragged into a mess like this? Look at your victims and tell me who gives a shit. Let’s see—there’s a low-life Medicare scammer, a dock rat and a crooked doctor with a dope habit. Before you come close to making a case, Stripling’s wife and the poncho dude will be long gone. Disappearing is no problem in the Bahamas, mon. You know how it goes.”
“I know that anybody can be found.”
“And who’s gonna pay for your hotels and plane tickets, Andrew? The health department? Are they doing extraditions now, too?” Burton raised his hands. “What’s the fucking point?”
“Catching a couple of murderers, that’s the point,” Yancy said. “Hell, it’s something to do in my spare time. The tarpon run is over.” He grabbed a towel from the bathroom and wrapped it around his waist. “Did I mention that Eve gave the dead husband’s fancy watch to her boyfriend? He was wearing it last night when he clocked me.”
Burton said, “What if Stripling was killed in Miami? You think the homicide guys up there will give you credit for solving the case? Never in a jillion years. Your name won’t even be in the reports, Andrew, unless you change it to C. Informant.”
“Do me a favor,” Yancy said. “Next time you come over, just bring chicken soup.”
“For Christ’s sake, I’ll check on the seaplane.”
After Burton was gone, Yancy realized he should have asked to borrow a gun. Eve would be scouring the Citizen’s website for news of Yancy’s tragic drowning. When she didn’t find the story, she’d probably send the boyfriend back to Big Pine to try again. Yancy called Rosa Campesino at the morgue to tell her about his action-packed evening, but the secretary said Rosa was in the middle of an autopsy. Next Yancy tried Caitlin Cox and left a message on her voice mail.
Hearing a knock, he peeked through a window and saw a sallow, thickset fellow who was dressed like a plainclothes cop, which he was.
“John Wesley Weiderman,” the man said after Yancy let him in. “Oklahoma Bureau of Investigation.”
“You’re shitting me.”
“Can I have a glass of ice water?”
“Did you fly into Miami International?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Then hard liquor is in order.”
“Tap water’s fine, thanks.” John Wesley Weiderman opened a briefcase and took out a years-old mug shot of Plover Chase, a.k.a. Bonnie Witt. “Do you know this woman? Her husband said we might find her down here.”
Yancy sat down across from the investigator. “I haven’t seen her in a while. Can I assume she’s in trouble?” He was wondering why Clifford had ratted out his beloved Bonnie.
“Ms. Chase is a convicted sex offender. For years she’s been a fugitive.”
“Well, we did have an affair, a romance, a fling, whatever you call it back home. But in no manner did she victimize me, John—may I call you John? I was a willing participant. Recklessly enthusiastic, to be truthful. But I’m sure Dr. Witt filled you in. Here in the Keys she called herself Bonnie, not Plover. I’d never sleep with a woman named Plover.”
The investigator said, “What’s the matter with you?”
“In general? I don’t know where to start.” Yancy readjusted his towel, which kept slipping off his hips due to the medicinal sheen on his skin.
“Were you in a fight?”
“There’s a pack of mad dogs in the neighborhood, I’m sorry to say.”
“Those don’t look like dog bites.”
Yancy shed the towel, spun around and bent over to display the tooth wounds inflicted by the mixed-breed fiend that lived next door to Eve Stripling. The investigator from Oklahoma took a slight step back.
“And what happened to your head?”
“I took a tumble,” Yancy said, “while running for my life.” He refilled John Wesley Weiderman’s glass with water. “Are you folks really going to prosecute Bonnie after all this time? Hell, the bail bondsman’s probably dead from old age.”
“Dr. Witt said you used to be a detective.”
“Tell me something—when you spoke with Clifford, did you happen to notice any rope burns on his neck? Because he likes to choke himself while he whacks off. Not that I’m passing judgment, but it’s important for you to know that your complainant has oxygen-deprivation issues.”
John Wesley Weiderman said, “Hey, I’m just doing my job.”
Although Yancy had never been to Tulsa, he imagined any civil servant there would jump at the offer of a trip to Florida, even in the dead of summer. The investigator gave Yancy a business card, but not before asking point-blank if Plover-slash-Bonnie was the person who assaulted him.
“John, get serious.”
“But it wasn’t really wild dogs, was it?”
“What did she do to piss Clifford off? Or, should I say, who did she do?”
“Please call me if she shows up. To us, this isn’t a joke.”
Yancy began pawing through the open Neosporin containers on the table. “Man, the last thing I need in my life right now is a fucking staph infection.” He found a tube that wasn’t empty and said, “Would you excuse me for a minute?”
“Actually, I’ve got an appointment in Key West.” John Wesley Weiderman stood up. “Can you recommend a place for lunch? The guy at Hertz said Stoney’s was real good.”
Yancy smiled in resignation. “So I hear.”
Widowhood was a grind.
Eve Stripling thought she’d prepared herself, but there was much more paperwork than she’d expected. Also, the endless condolences—her friends, Nicky’s friends, random clergy, relatives she didn’t know existed. Except for Caitlin they all meant well, although Eve was ready to strangle the next person who brought her a damn casserole.
The problem was she had limited grieving experience to draw from. On numerous occasions she sensed crying was expected of her, yet the only way to make it happen was by remembering a pet turtle she’d owned when she was nine. Flash was the turtle’s name; he was the size of a silver dollar. One day he trundled out of the house and her mother backed over him with the Delta 88. Eve was bereft for a week. She accused her mom of squashing Flash on purpose, the so-called accident occurring soon after a tense family conversation about bacteria on pet-store reptiles. A burial was held under a lime tree in the backyard, Eve bearing the compressed remains of her companion upon a Teflon spatula.
Years later, at Nick’s funeral, all
the time Eve stood sobbing by the coffin she was actually thinking of poor little Flash, whom her parents had coldly refused to replace. Every tear she shed that day was for her lost turtle, not for her husband.
Her most important task, besides mourning, was to persuade a Miami judge to declare Nicky dead. It should have been a routine order, the severed arm being more than ample evidence of his tragic demise. The hurdle was Nick’s daughter, who’d been spreading a vicious whisper that Eve had murdered him and chopped off his left arm to fit a bogus story about a boating accident.
Hiring a lawyer to threaten Caitlin Cox with a slander suit might have been sound strategy for an innocent widow, a woman with nothing to hide. For Eve Stripling, the wiser course was to reach out with a peace offering—or a piece offering, as it happened. From past experience she knew Caitlin’s hostility could be dissolved by a gush of money. At first Eve couldn’t bring herself to make the phone call, but soon it became clear there was no other choice. Her nightmare scenario was Caitlin showing up at the court hearing, telling the judge that her rotten stepmother had bumped off her beloved father.
Whom she hadn’t seen in years because she was a selfish, pouty, greedy—
Deep breath, Eve had said to herself before dialing Caitlin’s number.
Lunch is the way to go, someplace quiet where we can talk business, neither of us having to pretend we can stand the sight of the other.
Suck it up, Eve told herself, you’re the only one who can pull this off.
And she did.
They’d met at a small Brazilian restaurant in the Design District. Caitlin came right out and asked her if she’d killed Nick, or paid to have him killed. Eve swallowed hard, bowed her head and refocused her thoughts on Flash, her precious childhood buddy, stuck like a patty of brown chewing gum to the left rear tire of her mother’s Oldsmobile. It worked like magic—Eve quickly began to cry, blubbering that she’d loved Nick Stripling more than anyone, anything in the world. He was her world!
Caitlin was taken aback. “Then what about that boyfriend of yours in the Bahamas?”
At which point Eve could feel the color rush from her tear-streaked cheeks. Somehow she managed to keep it together, cooking up a story about an elderly uncle that seemed to temporarily appease Caitlin. Eve then steered the conversation to the less precarious topic of money, specifically the generous benefits of Nick’s life insurance policy, half of which he’d wanted his only daughter to have despite their heartbreaking estrangement.
In addition, Eve went on—Caitlin practically drooling in suspense—there was an offshore bank account that Nick Stripling had opened for the benefit of future grandchildren.
Caitlin, suddenly sentimental: “Simon and I are trying to get pregnant!”
So the deal got done. Eve ordered a bottle of white wine, which Caitlin depleted single-handedly before the food arrived.
“I didn’t kill your dad,” Eve said solemnly, reaching across to touch Caitlin’s hand. “He died when his boat sank, just like they said.”
“I know, shit, I know.” Caitlin had achieved that level of alcohol-induced volubility where no thought goes unspoken, no secret goes unshared.
And that had been when Eve Stripling learned her stepdaughter had been talking to Andrew Yancy.
Twelve
After Neville’s home on Green Beach was demolished, he went to stay in Rocky Town, where he alternated sleepovers with his girlfriends. The backhoe Neville had attempted to sabotage was running fine again, joined by a bulldozer that had arrived on a barge from a bankrupt development on Chub Cay.
To watch over the Curly Tail Lane construction site, the rich American called Christopher recruited some pinheaded brute from Nassau. The fellow had a high crinkled forehead and small malformed ears that looked like fetal fruit bats. People said he used to work at Fox Hill prison but got fired for brutalizing inmates with a marlin billy. Christopher put a rusty, camper-style trailer on the property, and that’s where the new man slept. Occasionally Neville spotted him in town, eating at the conch shack, but he never lingered.
On the same day Christopher’s new earth-chewing machine appeared, Neville went back to see the Dragon Queen. He presented to her a man’s black nylon sock that he’d snatched from the same garbage can as the shirt fragment, outside the house rented by Christopher and his woman. The Dragon Queen frowned when Neville handed her the sock, which had a hole in the heel.
“Dis all you got fuh me?”
“Please, madam. I dont have much time.”
“Look how big dis mon’s feet be! No wonder my udda coyse dint woyk.”
Something about the Dragon Queen seemed different, and at first Neville couldn’t figure it out. Then, when she reached over and deftly snatched a doctor fly from his arm, it struck him: The woman was dead sober. The hairs on Neville’s neck prickled when she plucked one wing off the fly and then watched it spin helplessly across the warped plank floor.
He said, “I kin go bok and look fuh sum ting more. Wot is it you want?”
The Dragon Queen grinned. She had perhaps seven teeth in her whole mouth. “Wot do I want? I want you, suh.”
It was a moment Neville had been fearing; the Dragon Queen’s rapacious appetite for men was legendary. Not wishing to become her next doomed lover, he’d prepared a defense.
“No, madam, I got de clap.”
“Lemme have a peek.” She rocked in her wicker chair and lit a cigar.
Neville shook his head. “Dot’s not proper.”
The Dragon Queen was firm: No sex, no more voodoo curses on Christopher. Neville was angry but he held back. Instead he said, “De mon already rip down de house where my own fahdder was born. He toyn it into a heap a goddamn rocks.”
She spat and said, “White devil.”
“Den help me take ’im down.”
“You don’t got de clap. Drop off your pants, bey, so I kin see your ting.”
“Wot else you take fuh pay? All I got is foity dollahs.”
The Dragon Queen chuckled and shut her eyes and blew a wreath of smoke that smelled like rancid mulch. “Mistuh Neville, where’s dot little pink boy a yours?”
“He’s outside. Why you ask?” Neville had leashed Driggs to the handlebars of the bike.
“So, den, here’s wot we do.” The Dragon Queen cracked one eyelid. “You give dot boy to me, as my own, and I’ll pudda coyse on dis white devil Chrissofer make ’im dread sorry he ever set foot on dis island. Maybe even kill de mon, fuh true. Dot’s all I want from you. No money, no fucky, juss Driggs.”
“Madam, I tole you. Dot’s not a real boy.”
“So you say.”
“Why you want ’im fuh?”
“It’s lonely here on dis dusty hill. I gotta pull de wings off flies juss so dey stay ’round to keep me comp’ny. Dot ol’ Driggs, he could dance hoppy circles ’n’ make me lof all night long. Nodder ting, I kin teach ’im how to pour my rum drinks and rub my feets.”
“But—”
“Dot’s my final offer, suh. If you want sum bigass woo-doo, either gimme de boy or every fine inch a your manhood.” The Dragon Queen stubbed the cigar and dropped it inside the black sock that Neville had taken from Christopher’s trash.
“Madam, he’s not a very good monkey.”
“Oh, I know.”
Neville wasn’t sure why he cared about Driggs, who had a corrupt streak and no appreciation for Neville’s many acts of kindness. The animal was dexterous and conniving, but discipline was almost impossible because Driggs retaliated with filthy bites to soft-tissue targets such as calves and thighs. Even when unprovoked, the creature traveled with a septic disposition. On the streets he shrewdly singled out white tourists and approached them for handouts. Those who balked might be punished by a rabbit punch to the genitals, or the nasty twist of a nipple. On one occasion, a German teen who tried to snap a picture of the animal was flogged with her own bikini top.
Driggs’s noxious attitude baffled Neville, although he suspected a diet
ary deficiency. He’d become worried when his little sidekick started molting, yet all efforts to wean the monkey from conch fritters and johnnycakes were vehemently rebuffed. Neville’s girlfriends were scared of Driggs and demanded that the scabby demon remain tethered outdoors during Neville’s nocturnal visits. The monkey’s response was to dig both hands into his diaper and hurl handfuls of feces at the windows, a raucous spectacle that had pitched Neville’s love life into a stall.
“He smot. Dot I kin tell,” said the Dragon Queen. “I teach ’im some prime woo-doo moves.”
“Butchu ain’t gon hoyt de fella, right?”
“Wot!” Indignantly she flapped her hem up and down, Neville turning away.
“Hoyt dot little fella?” she cried. “Come back in a few days, see if you don’t find de hoppiest pink boy in all de world. Under my roof he gern live like de Prince a Wales!”
Neville said Driggs was worth eight hundred dollars, which was what he’d been told by the sponger who’d given him the monkey years earlier at the domino game.
“Eight hundred! Dot’s crazy talk,” said the Dragon Queen.
“He was in de movies wit Johnny Depp. It’s no lie.”
“Cap’n Jack Sparrow? You fulla crap. Your boy played de bod monkey?”
“Yes, madam, in all dose pirate movies. And he is a monkey,” Neville reiterated.
The Dragon Queen crowed uproariously. “You bring me dot boy Driggs fuh payment, I put a jumbo coyse on your white devil.”
Neville was torn. “Led me tink wot to do. I come right bok.”
Outside, Driggs squatted on rash-covered haunches beneath the gumbo-limbo tree where Neville had left him. It was a repugnant scene that would alter both of their lives. The Huggies diaper lay shredded on the ground, and Neville’s bicycle seat was slathered with fresh shit.