Yet what could Mr. Yancy accomplish tonight, all by himself, with a damn hurricane coming? Was his intention to go arrest Christopher? Egg would beat him senseless first, maybe even kill him.
So Neville put on his clothes and took Yancy’s fly rod and left Joyous’s place through the back door. He borrowed her daughter’s bike and pumped as fast as he could toward Bannister Point. Soon headlights appeared in front of him—a car weaving recklessly, forcing Neville to veer off the road.
It was Christopher’s yellow Jeep. In the driver’s seat sat Egg; one massive hand was holding the steering wheel while the other gripped the hair of a frightened dark-haired woman. Neville thought she looked Cuban or maybe from Puerto Rico.
By the time he reached Christopher’s place, Neville was wind-beaten and drenched to the skin. Silvery needles of rain cut sideways through the broad wash of floodlights. The coconut palms heaved and shook like wild-maned giants. To Neville these visions appeared otherworldly though not hellish, for he’d been through hurricanes before. Drawing closer he heard back-and-forth shouts and he darted forward, careful to remain in the shadow lines.
At the north corner of the house stood three figures holding a triangular formation while the weather raged around them. One was Mr. Yancy; he was facing the others. The second person was a woman, Christopher’s woman, clutching a piglet or some sort of small critter. The man with his back to Neville was large enough to be Egg but he had too much hair. It had to be Christopher, and the thing he was pointing at Yancy had to be a gun.
Unfolding in a slice of light, the scene confirmed to Neville the ruthless criminality of Christopher and also the importance of the American. Christopher wouldn’t go to the trouble of shooting a man unless he posed a serious threat.
Neville had no time to search for a heavy rock or a limb. He snapped Yancy’s fly rod over one knee, rushed up behind Christopher and stabbed him hard with the broken stub. The impact splintered the rod’s graphite tubing down to the cork grip and unseated the reel, which fell into a puddle.
Neville wasn’t a young fellow, but his arms were strong from years of conching and boat work. And while the fly rod was designed to wiggle at the tip, the butt segment was stiff and inflexible. Christopher Grunion dropped face-forward with the smallest of cries, the shotgun pinned beneath him. His woman began to caw and hop about on her knees.
Neville grabbed Yancy by the arm and said, “Come along, mon.”
“I can’t.”
“Run!” Neville was now pushing the American ahead of him, through the hedges and trees, away from the floodlit house, down the road into the teeth of the wind.
After a hundred yards Yancy halted abruptly and bent at the waist.
“Rosa,” he gasped.
“Who’s dot?”
“My girlfriend. She’s still back there.”
“No, she ain’t,” Neville said.
Yancy straightened. “But she’s alive?”
“Yeah, mon, I seen her.”
“Okay. Okay.” The cop was still panting, fists on his hips. In the sky lightning flared, giving Neville a metallic glimpse of the American’s face, exactly what he was thinking.
“Tell me where she is, Mr. Stafford.”
“I tink I know,” said Neville, waiting for more thunder.
Twenty-three
Driggs was a white-faced capuchin born into a show-business clan. His father had worked for a few seasons on a popular television comedy called Friends, and an older female cousin had appeared with several look-alikes in Ace Ventura: Pet Detective, a high-grossing feature film starring Jim Carrey. Swinging deeper into the family tree, a great-great-grandmother of Driggs’s had played the organ grinder’s sidekick in an edgy Parisian musical about the Nazi occupation, the cross-dressed primate sporting hand-polished jackboots and a Hitler-style mustache clipped from Belgian broom bristles.
Born Baby Tom, Driggs was reared among other domestic capuchins on a ranch outside Santa Barbara. He showed none of his forebears’ gifts for acting—his disposition was prickly, his attention span fluttering. Unlike his camp mates, he failed to outgrow an adolescent preoccupation with his own genitalia, and this too hampered his career.
A scrotum-grooming reverie, broadcast live on the stadium Jumbotron, brought an end to a short-lived stint as the official “Rally Monkey” of the Los Angeles Angels. The next morning, his team of exasperated trainers sold Driggs to a freelance animal wrangler named Martell, who hoped to cash in on the monkey boom that was sweeping through cinema and television.
Thanks to an improbable connection at Disney studios—Martell had succesfully housebroken a dwarf lemur belonging to the senior comptroller—Driggs was allowed to audition for a series of action movies based on a popular theme-park ride called Pirates of the Caribbean. The part naturally called for the garb of a pint-sized swashbuckler. Knowing Driggs was averse to costuming, Martell prepped his would-be star for the audition by spiking the animal’s noontime Snapple with a shot of Wild Turkey. No more relaxed performer ever set foot on the Disney lot. Two months later, he was in the Bahamas with Johnny Depp.
Driggs had been hired as a backup to another capuchin, Dolly, who was docile, obedient and attention-loving. Martell hoped she and Driggs might become off-camera playmates, and that Driggs would begin to chill in her company. It didn’t happen.
Because some of the film’s stunts were staged to occur on a ship’s rigging—no place for a drunken monkey—Martell had halted the palliative dispensation of bourbon. Predictably, Driggs reverted to the execrable antics that had cost him the Angels gig. From remote shooting locations on Great Exuma came reports of unprovoked biting, wanton vandalism, wardrobe destruction and of course feces throwing, the signature method of protest for unhappy simians. Depp was spared only because Driggs tolerated him, but several other actors and even one of the stuntmen refused to come on the set unless it was Dolly’s turn to work.
Her demure presence, far from calming Driggs, pitched him into a state of fiendish priapism that literally came to a head when an assistant director caught him jerking off on a rack of brunette wigs. Driggs and, by association, Martell were fired within the hour. The studio agreed to pay the trainer’s airfare back to Nassau though not the expensive connecting segments to Los Angeles. No return ticket was provided for Driggs, not even in cargo.
Worn out by his dissolute trainee, Martell unloaded Driggs for seventy-five Bahamian dollars to a sponge fisherman from Andros, who was bloodied and soiled by his new pet on their homeward passage. That winter, kind fate appeared as a casual game of dominoes in which the sponger happily took a flop in order to divest the horrid creature on a gullible fellow named Neville Stafford from Lizard Cay.
Neville was a gentle, patient man, and the capuchin did not despise him. The name change from Tom to Driggs was an easy adjustment, as was the dietary switch from healthy seedless fruits to batter-fried chicken, conch fritters and coconut cakes, which Driggs soon learned to crave. His skin grew scaly and then inflamed, and thereafter he began losing his fur in handfuls. The unattractive condition was worsened by the tropical heat, and by the nonstop feasting of doctor flies and mosquitoes. Wild capuchins smash millipedes and smear themselves with the guts as a natural insect repellent, but Driggs was too far removed from his Central American roots to innately know that trick. Consequently he remained wretched and welted during the summers, which possibly explained why Neville cut him so much slack.
Throughout Rocky Town the animal became notorious for his crudities and hotheadedness. The only people who thought he was cute were rum-dented tourists and of course the daffy Dragon Queen, who remained convinced he was an unusually small boy, not a monkey. No sooner had the strange old woman taken ownership of Driggs than he began to miss life with Neville. Unsentimental by nature, capuchins do possess keen memories—and Driggs was quite aware that his situation had taken a downward turn.
Never once had Neville teased or prodded Driggs the way the voodoo witch did. The animal hated
human diapers but at least Neville had been diligent about changing the dirty ones; the lazy Dragon Queen would let Driggs sit for a whole day in his own shit unless he caused a scene. She also dressed him in cheap doll clothes that made him snarl at his own reflection in the coffeepot. The shack in which she lived was smelly and vile even by monkey standards, whereas Neville had always kept his house tidy and open to the sea breezes.
Driggs did enjoy riding up and down the road on the old woman’s motorized scooter chair, though he disliked the capering dances that she made him perform; to defy her, however, meant there would be no fritters. And no pipe, either.
Smoking had been taught to him by the Dragon Queen as a comic stunt, diabolically reinforced with ladles of peanut M&M’s. The loopy witch never told him not to inhale, so in short order Driggs became addicted to the Dunhill blend provided by the hag’s companion, a hulking hairless figure whose jealousy of Driggs was as plain as the fungus beneath his toenails.
Some nights, after the Dragon Queen passed out, the man called Egg would leer at Driggs and whisper harrowing taunts. The monkey would bare his teeth and squeal until the old woman stirred; once he even hurled an empty liquor bottle that Egg deflected with a forearm. The bottle shattered on the floor and roused the Dragon Queen, who punished Driggs by lashing him with his own leash, something that had never occurred during all his time with dull, reliable Neville.
That’s when Driggs began plotting an escape. An opportunity came the very next day when the old lady and her companion became tangled on the scooter chair during a braying act of human sex that the monkey mistook for a terrible fight. Swiftly Driggs made his move, snatching a pipe, lighter and tobacco stash before leaping from a window. Off he ran through a soaking rain that seemed different from other summer squalls, as did the galloping surge of the clouds.
A wild capuchin might have intuited a hurricane was coming; if not, he surely would have been alerted by senior members of his troop, who would have organized a collective refuge in heavy limbs below the forest canopy. Driggs, however, was a city monkey by birth and upbringing. He understood only that he preferred to be dry, cozy and shielded from the quaking thunder, which literally scared him shitless.
The few covered hiding places he found also attracted humans; trusting no upright species, Driggs loped on. By nightfall he was tired and famished, and he’d lost his cherished pipe during a dustup with a white man. The road was mostly empty but Driggs came upon a van that stood idling while one of the occupants urinated in the bushes. Silently the monkey climbed to the top and rode the luggage rack through buffeting gusts back to the outskirts of Rocky Town, where he hopped off and made a downcast return to the shack of the Dragon Queen.
Squeezing through a loosely hinged shutter, he entered the candlelit hovel squinting. He was surprised to see, in addition to the witch and her boyfriend, a stranger—a younger, long-haired woman, trussed with belts to a chair. The man called Egg scowled at Driggs, but from her scooter the Dragon Queen sang out his name and joyfully welcomed him. With equine snorts she nuzzled the soggy capuchin while steering the wheelchair in gay loops until it hummed to a stop. Egg said the battery ran out and the old lady ordered him to put in another one, which he refused to do.
Driggs vaulted from the stalled scooter to the lap of the younger woman, who was unable to speak due to a gag made from one of the voodoo hag’s bright scarves. The new woman’s clean odor was pleasing, and Driggs pressed his face to her bosom and inhaled deep monkey breaths as a respite from the rankness in the room. Casually he foraged inside the woman’s blouse for M&M’s or other hidden treats. Seeing fright in her eyes, he began combing his doll-like fingers through her soft shiny hair.
An outcry rose from the Dragon Queen: “Get ’way from dot whore, my lil’ prince!”
Driggs clung to the newcomer’s clothing, but Egg seized his tail and yanked him away. The monkey landed on the table, where he spied another pipe and snuck a hit that made his teeth freeze. He peered into the pipe bowl and saw a foreign paste of white crystals, which confused him. The Dragon Queen rose from the scooter chair and began flapping her skirt at the tied-down woman, who looked away. Egg came around from behind and turned the woman’s head with a hard slap, further upsetting Driggs.
Egg wore no clothes, the long brown thing between his legs reminding the monkey of his own. The Dragon Queen started to bob and clap while her naked boyfriend, shining with sweat, circled their prisoner. A frightened cry came from the bound woman.
Driggs heard himself chitter in agitation, meaning now he didn’t want to be there, didn’t want to see whatever was about to happen. The animal felt panicky and cornered. Yet outside the wind was roaring, the trees kept snapping—where could he run?
The Dragon Queen snatched him from the tabletop and buttoned him into a tiny tuxedo vest stained with coffee. She held him by the collar while shouting encouragement to Egg, who hurried to loosen the belts from the chair holding the younger woman.
“Do it! Gon now!” the hag crowed.
Once their captive was untied, Egg turned back to the Dragon Queen and struck a vulgar pose, flexing his arms. The Dragon Queen moaned theatrically and with her free hand fanned herself. When Egg took hold of the younger woman, still gagged, she began punching at his wide chest. The Dragon Queen chortled though the scene had an opposite effect upon the capuchin, who broke from the voodoo witch’s grasp and launched himself in authentic jungle fury at her boyfriend.
A scream shot out from Egg—a high, full-throated scream that overrode the low drone of the storm. The door of the shack flew open but it wasn’t the wind. Standing there was a white man Driggs recognized from previous altercations.
But behind the white man, looking over his shoulder, was … Neville!
Driggs would have grinned had his incisors not been so deeply implanted in Egg’s fleshy thing, to which the monkey clung as if it were the bough of a mahogany tree.
Yancy needed a moment to absorb the scene.
“Jesus,” he said. “The man’s got a monkey on his dick.”
Neville was thunderstruck. “Dot’s Driggs,” was all he could muster.
Egg cast Rosa aside and feverishly commenced slapping at the capuchin, causing him to chomp down harder. Blood was dripping all over the thug’s feet. He stopped flailing to appraise his tormentor, seven fuzzy pounds that might as well have been cast-iron tonnage.
The Dragon Queen railed at Driggs and hawked rheumy gobs at the intruders. Yancy shoved her backward into the seat of the Rollie scooter; then he pulled off Rosa’s gag and firmly guided her toward the doorway. Neville refused to depart without his pet, who remained tenaciously attached to Egg.
From the goon came a seething croak: “Git dot fucker offa my cock or you dead mon.” He was holding motionless under the most delicate of circumstances.
Once more the Dragon Queen lunged to intervene, crooning more voodoo nonsense. This time it was Neville who pushed her back onto the wheelchair.
To Driggs he gently appealed, “C’mon, boy! Poppa got fritters bok home!”
These were irresistible words to the hungry vagabond. Driggs spat out Egg and jumped to the top of Neville’s head, his old riding perch. They hurried out the door behind Yancy and Rosa, chased by the fevered remonstrations of the voodoo woman.
By the time the hurricane struck, they were more or less safe—Yancy, Rosa, Neville and the monkey—inside a small house rented by another of Neville’s girlfriends. Coquina was her name, and Neville fondly introduced her as half Cuban. She’d lighted two kerosene lanterns after the power went out; the windows she had boarded earlier that day with Neville’s help.
The house was near the shore, the waves breaking hard enough to interrupt conversation. Coquina handed out dry clothes and a small towel for Driggs, who had torn off the tuxedo vest and was stuffing himself with johnnycakes and orange slices.
Neville pulled Yancy to a corner and said, “You tink Mistuh Chrissofer be dead?”
“I don’t
know. What’d you hit him with?”
“I didn’t hit ’im, mon. I stob ’im wit your fishin’ pole.”
Yancy said, “The fly rod?”
“Yah. In de bock.” Neville demonstrated how he’d broken it and used the point of the butt section as a lance. “Wot if I hoyt ’im bod? Maybe killed ’im.”
“I didn’t see a damn thing,” said Yancy.
“Wot ’bout his woman?”
“It was raining. It was dark. She was drunk.”
“She was?”
“If anybody asks me,” Yancy said. “You bet.”
Outside something heavy crashed to the ground. Across the room, Rosa and Coquina were feeding Ritz crackers to Driggs. They all looked up because of the noise. Coquina said it was probably a utility pole falling in the backyard.
Yancy told Neville he had done the right thing at Bannister Point. “The man’s a criminal, a murderer. All you did was save my life, Mr. Stafford.”
“Dot might be so.”
“His real name is Stripling. Can you remember that? It’ll be important if they come to ask you questions. The woman is his wife—did she get a look at your face?”
“No,” Neville said. “Who gonna come axing questions? You mean from Nassau or Miami?”
“Remember that name—Nicholas Stripling. He shot two men dead back in Florida.”
“Got-tam!” said Neville.
“Before he came here, he had a surgeon take off his left arm. That’s why he always wore the poncho. That’s why you found the cut sleeve in his garbage—his wife stitches up his shirts to fit the nub.”
Neville’s voice jumped two octaves. “Why a mon get his own arm cut off? ’E muss be stone crazy!”
“No, Mr. Stafford, he did it for money. This is one cold-blooded sonofabitch.”
Rosa walked over carrying a lantern. She and Yancy went into a bedroom and shut the door.
Neville sat down to think. Anyone who for pure greed would give up an arm … a true white devil, like the Dragon Queen said. Maybe her voodoo had worked, after all. What if she’d given Neville a role in the curse, and set the stabbing in motion?