Bad Monkey

  He was a pathologically impatient driver, and sucking on iced treats seemed to settle him. Bonnie had started Yancy on the Popsicle habit because she’d found it terrifying to ride with him on Highway 1. Mango was Yancy’s favorite flavor beside Bonnie herself. These were the sorts of sidecar thoughts with which he tormented himself.

  The drive to downtown Miami usually took ninety minutes, but Yancy had stopped along Card Sound Road to purchase blue crabs, as there was still room in the cooler.

  “Is this your idea of wit?” asked the assistant medical examiner, a serious brown-eyed woman whose name tag identified her as Dr. Rosa Campesino.

  “Help yourself to a Popsicle,” Yancy told her. “However, the crabs are off-limits.”

  He summarized Rawlings’s findings while Dr. Campesino removed the arm from the ice and carefully unwrapped it. She placed it on a bare autopsy table without commenting on the vertical middle digit.

  “I suppose you’ve seen some winners,” Yancy said.

  “And you brought this all the way from Key West because …?”

  “The sheriff thought it might belong to one of your victims.”

  Dr. Campesino said, “You could’ve e-mailed some photos and saved yourself a tank of gas.”

  “Want to grab lunch?”

  Finally, a smile. “I’ll be back in a minute,” she said.

  Yancy ate another Popsicle. Unless you happened to be deceased, there were worse places to hang out than a morgue in the summertime. The thermostat was turned down to about sixty-three degrees. Very pleasant.

  Dr. Campesino returned with a printout of the county’s current inventory of body parts, listed by race, gender and approximate age—three partial torsos, two left legs, a pelvis, three ears, seven assorted toes and one bashed skull. None of the items belonged to a chunky, hirsute white male in his forties.

  “I knew it,” said Yancy.

  “Maybe next time.”

  “Are you hungry?”

  “My husband’s a sniper on the SWAT team.”

  “Say no more.”

  “Did you notice this?” Dr. Campesino pointed the eraser end of a pencil at a well-delineated band of pale flesh on the wrist of the darkened arm. “His watch is gone,” she said.

  “It probably fell off the poor fucker while the shark was mangling him.”

  Dr. Campesino gave a slight shake of her head. “Often in upper-arm amputations the victim’s wristwatch remains attached. Not so much in homicides. The bad guys either steal it to pawn, or they remove it to make the ID more difficult.”

  Yancy was certain that Sheriff Sonny Summers wouldn’t want to hear the word homicide. “Then why wouldn’t they swipe the wedding ring, too?” he asked.

  “You’re right. It looks expensive.”

  “I’m betting platinum. The guy’s wife would be sure to recognize it.”

  Dr. Campesino leaned closer to study the damaged stump of the limb.

  “What now?” Yancy said.

  “The end of the humerus is hacked up pretty bad.”

  “Maybe he fell into the boat’s propeller.”

  “That would be a different style of wound.”

  Yancy said, “You’re killing me.”

  From a tray of instruments the pathologist selected a pair of hemostats, with which she extracted a pointed tooth from one of several puncture holes in the upper biceps. She dropped the smallish gray fang into Yancy’s palm.

  “I’m no shark expert,” said Dr. Campesino. “Some marine biologist could tell you what species this came from.”

  Yancy pocketed the tooth. He asked how long the arm had been in the ocean.

  “Five to seven days. Maybe longer.” The young pathologist took some photographs which she promised to upload in case another part of the same corpse turned up in her jurisdiction.

  “Can’t you keep the damn thing here?” Yancy asked. “Honestly, it would save me all kinds of grief.”

  “Sorry. Not our case.” Dr. Campesino was mindful of the blue crabs when she returned the orphaned arm to the cooler. “I’ll call you if we get something that looks like a match.”

  Yancy was aware that the Miami-Dade medical examiner’s office sometimes assisted other jurisdictions in difficult cases. He was also aware that his boss hadn’t sent him to Miami to initiate a murder investigation.

  “Can we call it an accident? I mean, if you had to guess.”

  “Not without a more thorough exam,” said Dr. Campesino, peeling off her latex gloves, “which I’d be happy to do if we had an official request from Monroe County.”

  “Which you won’t get.”

  “Can I ask why?”

  “I’ll tell you over a strictly platonic lunch.”

  “Nope.”

  “Fine,” Yancy said. “So what would you do if you were me?”

  “I’d go back to Key West and advise Dr. Rawlings to pack the arm in his freezer. Then wait for someone to show up looking for a missing husband.”

  “And what if nobody does? It’s a cold business when true love goes south. Take my word.”

  “Can I ask you something? Did you bend his middle finger up?”

  “God, no! They found it that way!” Yancy moved the arm aside as he pawed through the cooler in search of another mango Popsicle. “Dear Rosa, what kind of sick bastard do you take me for?”

  The person responsible for Yancy leaving the Miami Police Department was a sergeant named Johnny Mendez, who at the time was working with the Crime Stoppers hotline. To augment his salary Mendez would recruit friends and relatives to call in with tips on crimes that had already been solved, providing detailed information that detectives already knew. Then Mendez would backdate the tip sheet and personally sign off on the reward money, half of which he took as a commission.

  Yancy had discovered the scam when he’d read a Herald story about a bus driver who’d received forty-five hundred dollars from Crime Stoppers for providing “crucial information” leading to the arrest of a man who stuck up a pedicure salon in Little Havana. Yancy himself had busted the robber, with no guidance whatsoever from the general public. The suspect had helpfully dropped his fishing license at the crime scene, and two days later Yancy jumped him while he was waxing the hull of his Boston Whaler.

  The bus driver who’d phoned in the bogus tip turned out to be a second cousin of Sergeant Mendez’s. One morning Yancy boarded the cousin’s bus and sat in the first row and opened a notebook. After thirty-three blocks the driver spilled the whole story. He said Sergeant Mendez was upset to have opened the newspaper and seen the item about the reward, and had punished him by pocketing all but a grand.

  That night, after too many rum and Cokes, Yancy decided it would be fabulously clever to dial the Crime Stoppers number and report Sergeant Mendez for grand theft and embezzlement. Mendez wasn’t a big fan of irony, and in any case he’d been busy covering his tracks. Yancy was eventually accused by Internal Review of making up lies about a fellow officer and of trying to extort money from Crime Stoppers. Yancy’s position was weakened by the transcript of his phone call to the tip line, in which he suggested that a reward of fifty thousand dollars would be appropriate for the “courageous and upright deed” of exposing a crooked cop.

  Yancy had delivered that line in a snarky and facetious tone, but the review board never got to hear the original tape, which had been mysteriously damaged by magnets while in Johnny Mendez’s possession. Suspended without pay, Yancy quickly ran out of money for his lawyer and had no choice but to resign from the department, in exchange for not being indicted. Sergeant Mendez denied all wrongdoing but was quietly reassigned to the K-9 division. Soon thereafter he was bitten in the groin by a Belgian shepherd trainee named Kong, and he required three operations, culminating in a scrotal graft from a Brahma steer.

  Mendez retired from the police force on full disability at age forty-four. He lived on Venetia Avenue in Coral Gables. Parked in the driveway was a silver Lexus coupe undoubtedly purchased with Crime Stoppers
proceeds. One solution to the severed-arm dilemma would be for Yancy to plant the limb in Mendez’s car, perhaps strung to the rosary that hung from the rearview mirror. Yancy discarded the idea—if by some chance Mendez overcame his panic and called the police, the arm would end up at the county morgue, where it inevitably would be traced back to Yancy based on information provided by the exquisite Dr. Campesino.

  Over the years Yancy had conjured many irrational revenge fantasies about Johnny Mendez. For a time he considered seducing Mendez’s wife until he realized he’d be doing Mendez a huge favor. Mrs. Mendez was an unbearable harridan. Her features were a riot of futile surgeries, and she laughed like a mandrill on PCP. Yancy once bought her a margarita at the InterContinental, and for two solid weeks he’d slept with the lights on.

  Now he was parked down the block from the Mendez marital nest. A fat Siamese was primping on the hood of the Lexus. Yancy assumed the animal belonged to Mendez, who seemed like a total cat person. The man’s inability to control K-9 candidates was further evidence.

  Before Yancy could make up his mind about snatching the Siamese, his cell rang. It was the sheriff, probably seeking confirmation that the severed-arm transfer was complete. Yancy let the call go to voice mail.

  On the drive back to the Keys he phoned Burton and gave him the bad news.

  “They didn’t want the damn thing. Now what do I do?”

  “Lose it somewhere,” Burton said. “That’s my advice.”

  “Listen to you.”

  “Seriously. Take 905 back through North Key Largo—there’s a dirt road about halfway that leads to an old cockfighting ring.”

  Yancy wasn’t sold on the plan. “My luck, some birder will find it.”

  “Not before the ants and vultures do.”

  “What the hell’s wrong with Sonny, anyway? This is no big deal.”

  Burton said the sheriff freaked when Channel 7 called. “Anyway, he already gave a press statement saying the case had been turned over to Miami-Dade.”

  “I warned him, Rog.”

  “Just ditch the fucking arm and come home.”

  “Let me think about this.”

  “I wish you wouldn’t.”

  Yancy boiled the blue crabs and served them on hearts of palm, sprinkled with lemon pepper and Tabasco. Bonnie brought a bottle of Bordeaux. The fine vintage was wasted on Yancy but the gesture seemed rich with promise. Still she said: “I shouldn’t have come.”

  They ate dinner on the back deck, where a world-class sunset was being ruined by the vulgar structure arising next door, spears of light slanting harshly through a checkerboard of window spaces and door frames.

  “Where’s the good doctor?” Yancy asked.

  “Lauderdale. He’s got a meeting tomorrow with our bankers.”

  “It must be nice to have bankers. As a couple, I mean. ‘Here’s our Christmas tree. Here’s our minivan. And, oh, last but not least, here are our bankers.’ ”

  “Shut up, Andrew,” Bonnie said. Her frosted hair was in pigtails, and a touch of pink gloss had been applied to her lips.

  “He’s sixty, you’re forty. I remain at a loss.” Yancy threw up his hands.

  “Don’t try to flatter me. I’m forty-two and you know it.”

  She kicked off her flip-flops and crossed her smooth tanned legs, which stirred in Yancy’s chest a longing that almost incapacitated him. He and Bonnie hadn’t slept together since the night before the vacuum-cleaner incident.

  Yancy said, “The sheriff would lift my suspension if you and Cliff agreed to drop the charges.”

  “So that’s why you invited me tonight.”

  “I ask you over three or four times a week, but you always say no.”

  “Cliff won’t budge,” Bonnie said. “He wants to see you punished.”

  Yancy pointed out that a trial would be humiliating for all parties. “Especially the alleged victim.”

  “Alleged? There were three hundred witnesses, including yours truly.”

  The assault had occurred at high noon at Mallory Square, which was packed with cruise-ship passengers. Fourteen amateur video clips of admissible clarity were in the hands of the prosecutor.

  “Nobody calls you a whore and gets away with it,” Yancy said.

  “Well, I was cheating on him, as you’ll recall. And I believe he used the term ‘tramp,’ not ‘whore.’ ” Bonnie balanced a plate of crabs on her lap. With a silver fork she probed for morsels amid the ceramic debris. “These are pretty darn tasty,” she said.

  “Talk to him, darling. Please. I need my badge back.”

  “Why didn’t you just punch him like a normal person? Why’d you have to go and sodomize him with a Hoover?”

  Yancy shrugged. “You always said he had a bee up his ass. I was only trying to help.”

  “Are you seeing anybody?” Bonnie had no talent for changing the subject. “I don’t think you’re ready yet. I think you’re still recovering.”

  “It’s true, I’m a portrait of frailty. Tell me again why Cliffy isn’t divorcing you.”

  “He adores me, Andrew.”

  “Even after catching us together.”

  “Yes,” said Bonnie impatiently.

  “On his own boat.”

  “We’ve been over this a hundred times.”

  “In the tuna tower, for Christ’s sake! His own wife and another man, lewdly entwined.” Yancy inserted a crab claw in his mouth and bit down violently. “We must’ve looked like the fucking Wallendas up there.”

  The boat was a seventy-two-foot Merritt with all the bells and whistles. Dr. Clifford Witt had recently retired from the practice of medicine, having invested in a chain of lucrative storefront pain clinics that dispensed Percocets and Vicodins by the bucket to a new wave of American redneck junkies.

  Bonnie said, “I wouldn’t be here tonight if I didn’t care.”

  “Yet still you intend to testify against me.”

  “I’ll take no joy from it, Andrew.” She looked down, tugging at a loose thread on her cutoffs. “Of course, you could cut a deal. Spare us all from the messiness of court.”

  Yancy frowned. “And lose my job? That’s automatic after a felony conviction.”

  “Suppose I got Cliff to go along with dropping the charge to a misdemeanor? Between you and me, Dickinson’s office would be thrilled.”

  Billy Dickinson was the local state attorney, and he had no appetite for ventilating scandals.

  “Sonny could still fire me,” Yancy said, “or bust me down to deputy.” Still, a misdemeanor wasn’t insurmountable, career-wise.

  “What do you think of the wine?”

  “Yeasty,” said Yancy, “yet playful.”

  Their affair had started on a Saturday afternoon in the produce section at Fausto’s, the two of them reaching simultaneously for the last ripe avocado. From there they beelined to Bonnie’s car and sped up the highway all the way to Bahia Honda, where they spent the night, hiding from the park rangers and humping madly on the beach, carving their own private dunes. For breakfast they split the avocado.

  Yancy had been aware of Bonnie’s marital status; Cliff Witt was his dermatologist at the time, always ready with a frigid zap of liquid nitrogen whenever Yancy burst into the office to present a new, ominous-looking freckle. Yancy appreciated Cliff Witt’s accessibility but knew of his reputation as a horndog perv and pill peddler.

  Still, guilt fissured Yancy’s conscience when he began undressing the man’s wife. It was his first encounter with a Brazilian wax job, and rapture soon blinded him to the manifest hurdles in his path. Usually he avoided married women.

  “I suppose I should go,” Bonnie said, rising. She had pale blue eyes and reddish lashes that looked gold-tipped in the light.

  Yancy suggested a detour to the bedroom, and she said no. “But I’m a little drunk. Maybe a shower would wake me up.”

  “There’s an idea.”

  It was just like old times, Bonnie’s bare bottom slapping against the wet tile wh
ile Yancy’s heels squeaked in joyous syncopation on the rubber bath mat. Somehow they broke the soap dish off the wall and also spilled a bottle of Prell, which played havoc with Yancy’s traction. Afterward they toweled each other dry and fell into bed, and there Bonnie made a peculiar revelation.

  “I am wanted in Oklahoma,” she said.

  “You’re wanted here even more.”

  “I’m serious. That’s why I married Cliff. I was a fugitive. Am a fugitive.”

  Yancy wasn’t always a good post-coital listener, but Bonnie had gotten his attention. She said, “My real name is Plover Chase.”

  “Ah.”

  “The Plover Chase?”

  “Okay,” Yancy said.

  “I can’t believe you don’t remember the case! Stay right here.”

  Naked she bounded from the sheets, returning with a French handbag that Yancy judged to be worth more than his car. From a jeweled change purse she removed a newspaper clipping that had been folded to the size of a credit card. As Yancy skimmed the article, he recalled the crime and also the steamy tabloid uproar.

  Plover Chase was a schoolteacher in Tulsa who’d been convicted of extorting sex from one of her students in exchange for giving him an A on his report card. The boy was fifteen at the time; she was twenty-seven. On the day of her sentencing she’d disappeared.

  “The judge was a shriveled old prick. I was looking at ten years,” Bonnie recapped. “So instead I hopped a plane to Lauderdale. Cliff’s medical office was advertising for a receptionist, and the rest is history.”

  “Does he know the truth?” Yancy asked.

  “Of course.” Which explained why Bonnie had stayed with him.

  Yancy eyed the headline on the article: WARRANT ISSUED FOR TEACHER CONVICTED IN SEX-FOR-GRADES SCHEME. He wasn’t sure whether he should act shocked or jealous. Certainly he had nothing as sensational in his own past.

  He said, “May I offer a couple of observations? One, you’re even more beautiful today than you were then.”

  “That’s a mug shot, Andrew. And, FYI, a dyke named Smitty had just given me a full-on cavity search, which is why my eyeballs are bulging in that photo.”