He looked up at the shuddering rafters. Then he turned back to address the monkey: “You con stay wit me like before, but tings got to change. No more smokin’ and nonsense.”
Coquina rolled her eyes and told Neville he was a fool.
Driggs blinked impassively and sucked an orange rind. It felt good to be out of the storm.
Yancy held Rosa close and said, “Baby, I’m so sorry.”
“Totally my fault. Rule number one: Never conspire under the influence of tequila.”
“Did they hurt you?”
“Not really, but it was definitely on the agenda,” Rosa said. “Crazy old bat, first thing she did? Tore off my bra and poured Bacardi in the cups. The bald dude, he was just laughing and playing with himself.”
“What the hell happened before that, at Stripling’s house?”
“Oh, great meeting. She and the boyfriend knew we weren’t for real—they’ve got a woman on the payroll at Immigration in Nassau. They knew ‘Andrew Gates’ was really you, they knew I wasn’t really your wife—and they knew we were trying to set ’em up.”
Yancy sat her on the bed. He kept apologizing until she told him to hush.
“Eve’s boyfriend isn’t a boyfriend,” he said.
“I never saw him—he was in another room. The bald guy’s the one who grabbed me. He’s not a gentleman, either, Andrew. God bless that nasty little monkey for showing up when he did.”
“What I’m trying to tell you,” said Yancy, “is that the boyfriend is really the husband. Nick Stripling’s alive.”
Rosa flopped back on the covers. “Okay. What?”
“He had his own arm sawed off to make everybody think he was dead. It was Dr. O’Peele who did the wet work, right after Nick and Eve sank the boat.”
“While Immigration has her in Nassau.”
“Right. That’s the beauty of the seaplane.”
“They used the condo on Duck Key for the surgery, which explains the bone chips.”
“Right,” said Yancy. “Then, after they get some shark bites on the arm, Eve drives it down to Key West for the switcheroo on the Misty Momma.”
“Wow. Talk about a plan.”
The wind against the ceiling beams sounded like a downhill locomotive. Yancy could feel the pressure in his eardrums.
“After the surgery,” he said, “Nick came to hide out on Andros. He and Eve had already rented the house and started their big real estate project. They bought that sweet stretch of beach, probably using what Nick stole from Medicare. But he wasn’t through with Florida. He snuck back to take care of Phinney and then O’Peele, and then me. Nick’s the dude in the orange poncho, Rosa. He wears it to hide his stump.”
Rosa ran her hands through her hair. Yancy noticed raw scrapes on both knuckles, from fighting the two freaks in the shack.
She said, “The man had his own arm amputated, Andrew. That’s impressive.”
“I’ve heard of doing a finger before.”
“Oh, sure. The old Wendy’s scam.”
“I thought it was Burger King,” Yancy said.
“Whatever. Customer starts gagging and there’s a big scene. Somebody calls the local TV station. But you know it’s a setup because what turns up in the cheeseburger is always a pinkie. That’s the one you don’t really use. An actual meat-rending accident, it’s the thumb or forefinger that gets severed because those are working fingers.”
“Sure, the ones nearest the blades and grinders.”
“Exactly,” Rosa said. “But pinkie cases are automatically suspicious. Somebody claims they found one in a bun, always check the hands of their friends and family. It’s amazing how many dirtbags will chop off a pinkie just to get a piece of a lawsuit.”
“You’ve got to admire the commitment.”
“Because these fast-food companies, they’ll settle almost every time. They don’t want to go to a jury,” she said. “Even if they know they’re getting hustled, they can’t take a chance.”
“Not in South Florida, no way.”
“Even a little finger, Andrew, that’s pretty hard-core. But to give up your whole arm—that’s a new one.”
“We’re blessed to live in such times,” Yancy said.
“You think Caitlin knows?”
“Nope. Only Eve.”
“And where is the fearless Mr. Stripling?”
“Not sure if he’s dead or alive. He was about to shoot me when my new hero Neville stabbed him with my six-hundred-dollar bonefish rod.”
“It just gets better and better,” Rosa said. “And now we’re in a hurricane!”
“Named Françoise, for Christ’s sake.”
“Don’t spoil it, Andrew. Take off your pants.”
The eye of the storm stayed out in the Tongue of the Ocean, feeding on the warm waters. Still there was substantial damage and disruption across Andros as it passed to the east. The winds on Lizard Cay reached seventy-one miles per hour, gusting to ninety.
Yancy found himself struggling to focus on what would have been, under calm heavens, an act of carefree and delicious reflex. The din from even a small hurricane is nerve-racking, and Yancy was additionally distracted by thoughts of the evening’s frenetic events. Rosa told him to relax; Neville and his girlfriend wouldn’t be able to hear them from the other side of the door, which Yancy had locked in case Neville’s monkey got nosy.
It was during light-spirited foreplay when Rosa confided that she’d been reading a smutty novel in which an inexperienced woman becomes enthralled by a lover who bosses her around the bedroom with the same tone one might hear from the nail-gun operator at a slaughterhouse. The woman sportingly signs an enslavement contract, after which the fellow forces her to put on Day-Glo wetsuits and perform contortions that would daunt Olga Korbut.
Rosa said she was sort of enjoying the book. Yancy tried to act intrigued though he’d never been good at fantasy sex; it was difficult to stay in character and not make smart-ass remarks. One time Bonnie made him play the shiftless hitchhiker while she was the naïve Mary Kay associate who got lost in her imaginary pink Lexus. Yancy couldn’t keep a straight face, or anything else, and Bonnie ended up steaming mad.
Adopting the role of ruthless dominator in Rosa’s daydream would require some stagecraft, and in Yancy’s experience there was a hazy line between daring and disgusting. Usually when making love he strived for a purely sensory, uncomplicated experience. Incorporating a game or a skit seemed too much like a class assignment.
For Rosa, however, he’d try anything—first in a morgue and now in a hurricane, the whole damn house heaving on its foundation. Fine.
“Thad always speaks to Juliette like a Russian,” she was saying, referring to the characters in the novel.
“I can’t do a Russian.”
“Any Eastern bloc nation should work.”
“Bad Irish is all I’ve got,” said Yancy.
Rosa kissed him and said, “All right, let’s hear it.” In the lantern’s light she looked lovely, but this wide-eyed Juliette thing she could never pull off, not with her butterscotch skin and those South Beach bikini stripes.
She said, “Ready? Now call me a mean name and order me to put my feet behind my head.”
“You can actually do that?”
“Come on!”
“Kay, ye wortless bitch, do wutcher told or I’ll spank yer arse with a boogie whip.”
She broke up, giggling and kicking at the air. “It’s like screwing Shrek!”
“Did I not warn you about the accent?”
“Give me some Daniel Craig.”
Yancy slid over and pinned her arms. “Don’t move,” he rumbled.
“Oooh, baby, that’s pretty good!”
It took a little time but Yancy’s mind began to untorque, despite his almost having been shot point-blank and then escaping through a tropical gale to rescue his date from a voodoo den. All the heavy stuff faded as he rolled around with Rosa and finally let go. The storm made the intimacy more exotic—they wer
e trapped but also tucked safe. When the lantern died they found their way by touch, and the knocking from a loose porch plank became their rhythm.
Later, when they had time to think about it, their recollections differed as to exactly when the top of Coquina’s house blew off. Yancy thought it had happened a few moments before they finished, as Rosa’s fingertips began to dig into his arms. But she said no, it was the precise instant she came that the roof had peeled away, the nails popping like firecrackers.
Yancy had known without turning what the loud noise meant. Suddenly he could see Rosa beneath him and she could see the clouds, because even at night a hurricane brings its own particular light. The wind came wailing into the open room yet the rain flew dead sideways over the gap where the boards had been, and not a drop fell upon the bed.
Rosa had laughed deeply, shaking Yancy by the shoulders and saying, “That is what I’m talkin’ about, mister!”
Which is the part they both would remember the same way.
Twenty-four
By dawn the weather had broken and the wind dropped to nine knots. Hurricane Françoise was gone. The landing strip at Lizard Cay was littered with trees, coconuts, plywood, two-by-fours and sheets of brittle plastic roofing from a nearby chicken farm.
Along with the other debris Claspers removed two dead roosters as he walked the runway with a couple of other pilots and some neighborhood kids. Three small planes had flipped during the heavy winds, but Claspers had done a good job securing the Caravan, anchoring the tie-down stakes in a rocky patch off the edge of the tarmac. The aircraft was untouched by Françoise except for a goatee of shredded palm fronds on the propeller.
By invitation the other pilots had spent the storm inside the well-built vacation homes of their wealthy clients, while Claspers in his underwear had huddled in the shower stall of a leaky motel room expecting the entire structure to implode. Although his gutsy aviating was extremely valuable to Christopher Grunion—who these days would fly a floatplane under the radar into South Florida?—Claspers never got the call from Bannister Point inviting him to come take shelter with Grunion and his girlfriend.
Assholes.
Like they don’t have a spare fucking bedroom.
Even when Claspers had delivered a potential customer for their unbuilt condos—that pretty Cuban woman, the doctor—he didn’t get past the front door. Grunion’s girlfriend had handed him a Heineken and said: “Here, K.J., take one for the road.”
Had the motel walls crumbled during the hurricane, good luck finding another pilot who would do for Grunion what Claspers did. For the risks he’d taken he could lose his certification, or even go to prison. And where was the appreciation for all those daring moves? Where was the respect?
Claspers didn’t know exactly what type of scam Grunion was running, but he knew enough to sink the man if it came to that. Like most good pilots Claspers kept a detailed log of his flights in and out, where and when—solid tracking information that could be handed over to authorities if ever he were questioned about his work for Grunion.
Because you don’t earn loyalty by treating your best people like peons, not the man who flies your motherfucking airplane.
So long, K. J., have a nice hurricane!
Well, screw you, thought Claspers.
His nerves were wrung from the storm. Even half-stoned he’d been terrified to hear the windows buckle and moan. Back home he would’ve swallowed some pills and gone to sleep, but back home there were custom-fitted aluminum shutters and impact-resistant glass and strapped trusses. The building code on Lizard Cay was more lax, which was to say it existed only on paper. Consequently, Claspers spent the night hugging the tiles in the shower. After Françoise passed he stumbled to his bed and found the mattress soaked, clammy rain dripping from a crooked seam in the plaster ceiling. At the first light of day Claspers was out the door.
Without electricity he was unable to recharge his cell phone, and at any minute he expected to see the yellow Jeep speeding up to the airstrip, Grunion primed to bitch him out for not taking his calls. The man would want to go to Miami until Andros Island was up and running, or maybe he’d just send Claspers back for groceries and DVDs. Grunion’s girlfriend was a major fan of Matt Damon and once directed Claspers to fly low over the actor’s house on Miami Beach so she might catch a glimpse. Claspers had no clue where the guy lived, so he’d randomly chosen a bayside spread with an infinity pool and buzzed the place at four hundred feet. Grunion’s girlfriend had been thrilled—she couldn’t wait to tell Grunion that she’d seen Matt Damon’s Irish setter taking a dump on the putting green.
As Claspers removed the straps from the Caravan he thought about quitting and finding another gig. In the old days even his hard-ass cartel bosses would ask him to swing by the finca for drinks. Great food, late-night guitars, good times—that’s how Claspers remembered it. That’s how he’d first met Donna, one of the wives. The Colombians treated Claspers like an important member of the enterprise, which he was, because bales need wings. Never would they have let him hunker alone in a crackerbox motel during a hurricane.
The only bad thing about dumping Grunion—that seaplane was really fun to fly. Claspers loved it.
“You fueled up?” somebody called.
Claspers turned and saw Andrew, the American trust-fund fisherman, walking with his handsome Latina wife across the tarmac. They were carrying their bags.
“How’d the real estate meeting go?” Claspers asked.
The wife said, “Not too good. We were hoping to hitch a ride home with you.”
“If I got two open seats, no problem. All depends on who else is coming. And if it’s cool with the boss.”
“Nobody else is coming,” the fly fisherman said.
“Is that from Grunion direct?”
“We’d like to leave right now,” the wife said. “Basically as soon as you can pull those chocks.”
Claspers was amused by the couple’s boldness. Maybe they’d been rattled by the hurricane, or maybe they’d had a brush with that caveman Egg.
He said, “It ain’t my airplane, señora. Wish it was.”
The fisherman took out a gold police badge and held it in front of Claspers’s nose. “So you can appreciate the sense of urgency, Mr. Claspers. We’ll pay for your gas, but the earliest possible departure is what we need. Like in five minutes.”
“You’re a cop?”
“The clock is ticking. Seriously,” said the woman.
“You, too?”
“She’s a forensic specialist,” the fake fisherman explained. “We’re working two homicides in which your employer is suspect numero uno. Also an attempted homicide, I almost forgot. Plus there’s a pile of heavy federal charges that I can tell you about on the flight back. Unlike Mr. Grunion, the doctor and I don’t mind the lines at Customs and Immigration, so you can take us straight to Miami International.”
Claspers was feeling off balance. “I dunno what the hell you’re talking about.”
“It’s simple. You either get this fucking plane in the air right now, or your license gets yanked back in the States and you find another profession, like driving an ice-cream truck. That’s not too ambiguous, is it? Nothing fuzzy about the scenario I’m presenting. The man you call Grunion and his female companion? On several occasions you flew them nonstop from here to Monroe County, Florida—in this very same aircraft—without officially clearing at Tamiami or Key West. That’s a crime, and the look in your eyeballs tells me you’re aware of the possible shitstorm in your future. If you’ve never had the opportunity to interact with Homeland Security, you’re in for a treat. I’m Inspector Yancy, by the way, and this is Dr. Campesino.”
All the pilot could say was: “Grunion killed somebody?”
The pretty doctor patted his arm. “We really need to get moving.”
The hurricane stayed out over the Bahamas until meandering away. It rained heavily for a day in the Lower Keys but now the sun was shining and Evan Shook’s construc
tion crew had returned to the job site. He was parked in front of the spec house talking on the phone with Mrs. Lipscomb. The topic was crown moldings.
A green Sebring convertible driven by a blonde pulled up next door at Yancy’s place. Evan Shook told Jayne Lipscomb he’d call her back.
“Will you check those prices? Ford thinks we can do better.”
“Sure. Right away,” Evan Shook said absently.
From the glove compartment he removed a stun gun he’d purchased just in case Andrew Yancy hadn’t hallucinated the wild dogs. Agent John Wesley Weiderman had said the woman didn’t have a violent past, but Evan Shook pocketed his new Taser, just in case.
Before stepping from the Suburban he looked at the photo once more—there was no doubt it was the same person. She entered Yancy’s house and Evan Shook moved closer to the fence separating the properties. His phone was in one hand; in the other was Agent Weiderman’s card. Evan Shook knew he should make the call immediately; it would be the responsible thing to do.
Before Plover Chase burned his neighbor’s house to the ground.
What a sight that would be, he thought. A bona fide inferno.
The fugitive came out the back door and stood on Yancy’s deck. She noticed Evan Shook watching as she tied her hair in pigtails. He waved and she nodded back pleasantly. Evan Shook couldn’t help wondering what sort of elaborate sex crime she’d committed—ropes? whips? manacles?—and what man in his right mind would press charges.
Back home at his club, Evan Shook was dependably conservative during law-and-order discussions: Lock up the bastards and throw away the key! Don’t do the crime if you can’t do the time! One quick phone call and Miss Plover Chase would be prison-bound. Possibly there was a cash reward. Agent Weiderman would know.
Then again, it was difficult for Evan Shook to imagine how such a sunny-looking soul could be a menace to society. That was his dilemma as he tapped Agent Weiderman’s number into his smartphone. He was about to press Call when Plover Chase took off her cotton beach dress, under which was revealed a candy-striped two-piece swimsuit—not a bikini, yet still …