After dabbing sunblock on her nose, she stretched out on a plastic lounge chair that must’ve cost Yancy all of eleven dollars. To Evan Shook she seemed extremely laid-back for a would-be arsonist.
“Hi, there! I remember you!” Now she gave him a full-on wave.
Evan Shook tucked away the phone and Agent Weiderman’s card as he approached the fence. Conscious of his shortness, he stood straight as an aspen. The heel lifts in his loafers helped.
“Where’s your boyfriend?” he asked.
“We broke up,” she said, “but thanks for the motel room.”
“No problem.”
“I didn’t break into this place, don’t worry. I’ve got a key.” Her lips were a faint shade of pink but her toenails were the color of tangerines.
“Have you seen Andrew?” she asked.
“Not for a few days. Maybe he’s out of town.”
“I’m a friend of his. Really I am.”
“Then he’s a lucky guy. What’s your name, friend of Andrew?”
“Bonnie,” she said. “I tried his cell but he didn’t call back. Usually he’s good about returning his messages.”
“My name’s Evan. You want some water or a soda? It’s hot as blazes out here.”
“No, thanks. There’s beer in the fridge.”
Plover Chase had a nice figure and her legs looked naturally tanned, a feature Evan Shook appreciated. His wife got herself sprayed twice a month at a salon in downtown Syracuse, and she came out looking vinyl. Also, the stuff tasted like insecticide.
“Andrew’s the one who told us it was okay to crash at your house,” the fugitive confided. “Sorry about that.”
“I think he likes to play practical jokes.”
“Have you met his new girlfriend? The surgeon?”
Evan Shook heard himself say, “Yes, she’s down here a lot.”
Which was untrue.
“What’s she look like?” Plover Chase asked. “Good. She looks good.” Evan Shook had never set eyes on the woman, but he said it anyway. “She’s got long brown hair.”
“Scale of one to ten?”
“Eleven.”
“Whoa, daddy.”
“They seem pretty serious,” Evan Shook added.
The fugitive was looking at him over the tops of her sunglasses. “Like, how do you mean? Move-in-together serious, or get-married serious?”
“Well, you know Andrew.”
“Yes, I certainly do know Andrew,” she said.
Behind them, the construction site was a cacophony of hammers and table saws and sanders—even a boom box playing salsa music from Miami, heavy on the horns.
“Where you from, Emmett?”
“It’s Evan.” He spelled it. “I live in New York State.”
“So you’re down here really just to get that house built,” Plover Chase said. “All by your lonesome.”
“My family’s up north, that’s right. I fly back and forth most weekends.”
Yancy’s stalker crossed her killer legs, and Evan Shook found himself sidetracked by unwholesome fantasies.
“So this mansion you’re putting up, Evan, it’s basically a real estate investment?”
“When I’m here, I stay at the Casa Marina. That’s down in Key West.”
“And that’s where you go at night,” she said, smiling, “after a long hard day at the job site.”
“They have a nice bar. Cool and private.” He pointed. “Watch out, there’s a horsefly on … well, right there.”
“That would be my décolletage.” She flicked the insect away, and with a knuckle wiped the blood dot. “How old do you think Andrew’s girlfriend is?”
“I don’t know. Young for a doctor,” Evan Shook said. “Want to come by the Casa later for a drink? They’ve got a country band that’s not bad.”
Plover Chase sat up and swung her lovely feet to the deck. “Andrew’s somewhat famous around Key West. But you probably know that already. Infamous, I should say.”
“For what?”
“You don’t read the papers when you’re in town? Shame on you.”
“There’s a place on Duval where I buy the Times. But, really, I don’t pay much attention to the local news,” Evan Shook said. “So tell me what Andrew did to get his name in the headlines.”
The woman laughed and said never mind, it’s water under the bridge. Then she said good-bye and picked up her beach dress and disappeared into Yancy’s house.
Evan Shook walked back to the Suburban thinking about the justice system. The prisons of America had become so overcrowded that hard-core cutthroats were being turned loose daily, only to strike again. Where was the logic of locking up a hot-looking babe like Plover Chase for a crime of “exploitation,” whatever that might be?
So Evan Shook didn’t dial Agent Weiderman. He still had some mulling to do.
In the meantime he called Mrs. Lipscomb back at the Pier House. He told her that the price for the carved poplar moldings was as low as he could go, regretfully, without taking a loss on the order. She put her husband on the line, and Evan Shook listened to him whine and huff about switching to fiberboard before he eventually surrendered and said okay, what the hell.
“Give her what she wants,” Ford Lipscomb sighed.
“Sir, I feel your pain. But it’s gonna look special when we’re done.”
After hanging up, Evan Shook made a U-turn in the Suburban and drove past the house next door, where the pigtailed fugitive was unloading from her car’s trunk a set of red jerry cans that are normally used to transport gasoline.
Clearly she was struggling with the fact that Yancy had a brainy, beautiful new girlfriend.
Evan Shook pretended not to look at Plover Chase as he rolled by, goosing the accelerator. Sometimes it was best to let nature take its course.
Eve Stripling removed from her prone, moaning husband a broken piece of a composite-fiberglass rod blank manufactured by the Sage company. The jagged point had perforated the disc sac between the fifth lumbar vertebrae and first sacral vertebrae, at the base of Nick Stripling’s spine, leaving him in bald agony, unable to stand.
Eve rushed inside to fetch the Rollie scooter chair, into which Nick one-armedly hauled himself, spitting mud and cursing his wife for not letting him shoot Andrew Yancy in the den. She guided Nick into the house and spent an hour icing his wound, which failed to restore the functionality of his legs. There followed an animated discussion that ricocheted between the subjects of urgent medical care and Eve’s gross culpability for Stripling being ambushed.
Which, the guy who attacked him? Nick had no goddamn idea who it was. Never saw the man’s face. Eve insisted she didn’t get a good look, either.
Some black dude, is what she said—a gem of a clue, here in the Bahamas. Very fucking useful.
Eve told Nick to quit yelling and let’s figure out where to find a rock-star spinal surgeon, soon as we get off this stupid island. Miami was out of the question because Yancy might beat them there and tip the feds that Stripling wasn’t dead, triggering a full-on manhunt.
Yancy, who should have been safely out of the picture, a steaming pile of guts. Instead he was likely hunkered somewhere nearby on Lizard Cay, waiting for the weather to clear.
One thing Stripling had in his favor was a counterfeit U.S. passport bearing the name of Christopher Joseph Grunion. It was a superior counterfeit that had cost him nine grand—some wiseguy who ran a lunch truck in Little Haiti. The passport would remain usable for maybe three days max, depending on how long it took Homeland Security to process Yancy’s information and enter Stripling’s alias in the computer.
“We’re going to England,” Nick declared hoarsely to Eve.
“All right, honey. There’s a nonstop from Nassau.”
“They’ve got fantastic doctors. Good as New York.”
Eve agreed. “I’ll call British Air soon as we get cell service.”
This was during the heavy part of the storm, rain hammering the roof, the elect
ric generator grinding like a cement mixer.
To his wife Stripling said, “I better not be fuckin’ paralyzed. This is all on you.”
“Knock it off, Nicky.”
“You know I’m right.”
He couldn’t stop railing about what had happened. Which, what are the odds of getting randomly stabbed in your own yard during a hurricane?
While holding a loaded shotgun.
The pain was worse than anything Stripling had ever experienced, worse even than post-amputation. Breathing hurt. Blinking hurt. Talking hurt even more.
His suspicions turned to a certain sketchy freelance employee, Mr. Carter Ecclestone, otherwise known as Egg. The meathead was supposed to return to the house after taking care of Yancy’s girlfriend. However, Egg hadn’t been seen since before the hurricane struck. The Jeep, however, was back in the driveway …
Maybe Egg was here, Nick thought, only now he was working with somebody else. Like that nutty old crone he’d been balling—what if she’d talked him into killing Stripling and robbing the place? Maybe she put a voodoo spell on that pea-brained motherfucker.
Or maybe it was Eve who’d made Egg a better offer. Lately she’d been riding Nick’s case about how boring it was on Lizard Cay, how she’d go batshit crazy living here all the time with nothing to do. She’d gotten downright surly when Nick had told her to quit bitching and get a hobby, take up snorkeling or kiteboarding. He’d said the two of them were in this thing together, up to their shiny white asses, only maybe Eve was thinking: Not necessarily.
Except the Egg theory didn’t add up. He wouldn’t have tried to murder Nick with a spindly goddamn fishing rod. He would have disemboweled him with a knife, or cracked his skull with that fish billy, or snapped his neck with those gorilla paws.
Everything about the night ambush seemed unplanned and frantic. A total amateur, but who? Stripling had made a point not to know a soul on the island.
“Oh great,” he muttered. “Now I gotta take a leak.”
“You can still void?” Eve said buoyantly. “That’s a super healthy sign, Nicky. And I see your toes moving, too!”
“Yeah, that’s right, they’re dancing a tango. Now bring me something—a jar or a bowl, I don’t care.”
Eve went to the kitchen and came back with an empty wine bottle.
Stripling scowled. “Get serious. My dick won’t fit in there.”
“Sure it will.”
“It’s bigger than a goddamn cork!” Wretchedly he pounded on the armrests of the Rollie.
“Honey, chill. I didn’t mean anything,” his wife said.
“Gimme your glass before I wet my pants!”
She was holding a Waterford tumbler full of ice, peach vodka and soda. It came from a table set belonging to her maternal grandparents, now deceased. Nick could sense that Eve was reluctant to deploy the sentimental heirloom for urine collection.
Or possibly she just didn’t want to pour out her cocktail.
Stripling was better at forging orders for Rollies than he was at driving one. Impatiently he toggled the joystick until the motorized chair clicked and surged forward. As it passed by Eve he made a swipe at her precious tumbler but she pulled it away. The scooter thudded hard into a wall, jarring Nick’s damaged spine and also his distended bladder, which yielded a warm sour flood. With it came well-founded gloom.
Once the FBI learned he was alive, his days of freedom on Andros Island were numbered. The Curly Tail Lane project would be done, of course, as would Grunion Global Realty, Nick’s mishandled stab at legitimacy. Although he still had a few million liquid, he could easily waste every penny on lawyers and bribes trying to fight extradition to the United States.
Or he could pack up and run. Purchase a new identity, find another place to hide and start over as an international fugitive. Which, talk about exhausting. He didn’t want his face on the Interpol website. He wanted to stay dead.
It wasn’t impossible for a clever person to get lost and stay lost in the Bahamian out-islands—if you were blessed with a spouse who was content to sit around weaving straw handbags or painting kindergarten faces on coconut husks. Keeping Eve settled would require a locale that offered shoe shopping, Pilates, sushi bars, a hair salon and a dog groomer.
A city, in other words. And living in a city would be risky.
Plus, Stripling had already ordered another Contender to replace the one he sank in the Keys. The new boat was a thirty-six-footer, sky blue, with beast triple Mercs and a sixty-gallon bait well. Delivery was due any day. He was naming it Lefty’s Revenge, in honor of his lost arm. A goddamn fish-slaughtering machine is what it was—Nick would be able to run from the east side of Andros all the way to Cay Sal and back on a single tank.
But not if he was hiding out in Geneva or São Paulo.
He could think of just one major move that would solve everything and keep the status quo: Silence Andrew Yancy before he got to Florida and met with the feds.
It was the only way Stripling could stay officially deceased, safe on Lizard Cay. Yancy and his Cuban girlfriend, or whatever she was—they were the only ones besides Eve who knew enough to bring Nick down.
“We gotta find that cocksucker,” he said to his wife.
“You can’t even walk, Nicky. And, please, it’s a hurricane outside!”
“In the morning I’m talkin’ about. First thing.”
She said, “You’re hurt. We’ll need to get out of here.”
“Where the hell is Egg? That’s who we get on Yancy’s ass. Call Egg, okay?”
“He’s not answering the two-way. Here, let me find you some dry pants. Not even the radio’s working, honey. We should get some sleep and wait for the storm to blow through.”
Stripling said, “It’s all your fault, this whole clusterfuck. Now put down your drink and roll me to the damn bathroom.”
In the morning Nick felt even worse. The puncture in his lower back was oozing a fluid that didn’t resemble blood. So severe was the pain that his facial muscles had seized into a grimace. But the cell phones still weren’t working and there was no Internet connection, making it impossible to contact British Air. Eve proposed that Claspers should fly them to Nassau right away, so they’d be certain to get seats on the first flight to London.
But all Nick could talk about was hunting down Yancy before he escaped. Which, no way was that shithead going to sneak out of Andros today. Bahamasair was still grounded from the storm, and none of the local boats were crossing to Florida, not with the Gulf Stream running fourteen feet.
As long as Yancy was stuck on the island, Nick said, Egg would be able to track him down and kill him. Now just find Egg!
Eve said, “First things first, honey.”
She dosed her husband with Clorazepams and Tylenol 2s, left over from a knee operation, before assisting him from the Rollie to the Jeep. On the back seat sat a pair of Louis Vuitton suitcases and Tillie the dog, fussing inside her tartan travel case. During the ride to the airfield Stripling sustained a bitter monologue about people who said white-collar criminals were soft, pussies, when here he was an amputee, possibly crippled from the waist down, staring at life with no parole if he got busted.
Say the word “outlaw” and everyone thinks bank robber, but did John Dillinger cut off a limb to trick the FBI into thinking he was dead? No, sir, he went to the movies and got shot full of lead. Which, these days, any fuckwit with a ballpoint pen and a Halloween mask could rob a bank. The average take was a whopping four grand, less than Stripling spent every year on periodontics.
Despite the hordes of health-care scammers working in South Florida, Nick rated his felonious speciality as elite. Defrauding the United States government of millions of dollars was no job for morons, he said. The Medicare system was chaos times ten.
Faking all those claims required cunning and precision that was foreign to the thug world. Every patient name and Social Security number had to belong to some real person, which meant hacking a medical data bank or
paying off a clerk. Then the stolen names had to be transcribed correctly down to the middle initial, no typos! Same with the Socials, otherwise a government computer in Atlanta or Bethesda would spit the forms right back. Just the paperwork would make you nuts, sixteen fucking copies of everything—and, Jesus, you had to be sharp with the math.
Stripling, growing fuzzy from the pills, rambled on to Eve. Said he’d proved himself a heavy hitter. Reminded her that he wasn’t some gutless boiler-room hack who’d copped a plea, paid back the money and ratted out his brother scammers. No, he’d given up a healthy arm and committed two cold-blooded murders so he could keep his riches and stay clear of prison.
He was the real deal, an epic badass!
Yet when they pulled up to Moxey’s airstrip and he saw the white seaplane rolling toward a takeoff, Yancy blowing a kiss from behind a port window, Stripling pitched sideways out of the Jeep and began to jabber.
Twenty-five
When the roof blew off, Neville was in the bathtub with Coquina and Driggs, covered with sofa cushions. Coquina was crying while the monkey quivered and mewled. Neville wrapped his arms around them for two hours. He knew by the ebbing pitch of the wind that the hurricane was moving away, so he wasn’t afraid. Not of the storm.
But he couldn’t stop worrying about Christopher, wondering if he was dead or alive. Yancy had said Neville didn’t do anything wrong, but Neville was aware that the police paid more attention when the person who got killed was rich and white. On the other hand, if Yancy was right about Christopher being a dangerous murderer, a wanted man, things might turn out all right. Maybe Nassau would reward Neville for his bravery at Bannister Point by returning the family land at Green Beach.
Then he could rebuild his house, and go back to life the way it was.
At dawn they got busy—Neville and Coquina along with Yancy and Rosa. Together they packed up Coquina’s belongings and in the wilting heat carried them to her mother’s place down the road. The mother wanted nothing to do with Driggs, who two Saturdays earlier had snatched a silver bracelet from her ankle outside the straw market. Neville said the monkey’s manners were much improved. Coquina’s mother reluctantly agreed to let the creature stay while Neville borrowed her car to drive the two Americans to the airport.