Motor Mouth: A Barnaby Novel

  Twenty minutes later the SUV was parked in the lot by Monty’s, and I was shoulder to shoulder with Hooker, standing on the cement walkway that ran the length of South Beach Harbor.

  Hooker was grinning, looking down at me. “I thought you were going to wait in the car.”

  “Someone has to watch out for your sorry ass.”

  “I thought you didn’t care about my ass anymore.”

  I narrowed my eyes at him. “Don’t push it.”

  Hooker pulled me to him and kissed me. It wasn’t a sexy, passionate kiss. It was a smiling kiss. I’d made him happy. Hooker wasn’t a guy who hid thoughts and emotions. You always pretty much knew what was in Hooker’s head. And, I knew from experience, if I let the kiss linger it would turn sexy. What Hooker lacked in guile he made up for in testosterone.

  “Stop that,” I said, breaking from the kiss and jumping away.

  “You liked it.”

  “I didn’t!”

  “Okay,” Hooker said. “Let me try again. I can do better.”

  “No!” I turned and shaded my eyes with my hand, searching the harbor. “Which boat belongs to Huevo?”

  “It’s the big one at the end of the pier, one pier past the dockmaster’s office.”

  “The one with the triple deck?”

  “Yep.”

  “No helicopter,” I said. “Huevo cheaped out.”

  “It’s probably just not on deck. Huevo has a fleet of planes and helicopters.”

  “He also has security. Are you sure you don’t want to phone this in?”

  Hooker took my hand and pulled me forward. “Sweetie, I never phone it in.”

  I don’t know a lot about boats, so my opinion of Huevo’s yacht was that it was big and it was pretty. It was three decks of pristine white fiberglass with a single blue stripe running the length of the first deck, the windows all black glass. A ramp led from the boat to the dock and there was a uniformed crew member standing watch at the top of the ramp.

  I followed Hooker up the ramp and tried to look calm when he told the crew member we were there to see Ray Huevo. At the very least, I feared this would be mortally embarrassing. And at the most, I worried it would be fatally final.

  This morning, wearing the same clothes I’d slept in, I’d jumped out of bed and rushed to the car. I’d clamped a hat on my head and never given makeup a second thought. I don’t think I’m any more shallow than the next person, but I suspected I’d be feeling a lot braver right now if I was fresh out of the shower and wearing clean jeans.

  Ray had an office on the second deck. He was at his desk and glanced up when we entered. Didn’t seem surprised. Annoyed, maybe. Like Ricky Ricardo when Lucy did something stupid. In fact, he looked a lot like Ricky Ricardo. Same coloring. Thick, dark hair. Stocky build. Hard to judge his height. He motioned for us to sit, but Hooker and I remained standing.

  “I’m looking for my dog,” Hooker said. “Have you seen him?”

  “I’m looking for something, too,” Huevo said. “Perhaps it would be best if the young lady waited outside for a moment.”

  Hooker looked around at me and smiled. Pleasantly calm. No problemos. “Would you mind?”

  I left the office, shutting the door behind me, and I stood close on the other side, trying to listen but not hearing much. After a couple minutes, four large crew members marched past me and into the office. A moment later the crew members escorted Hooker out, lifted him off his feet, and pitched him over the side of the boat, into the water. He hit with a splash and disappeared below the surface.

  A hand clamped on to the back of my neck and squeezed. I yelped and was brought face-to-face with Horse. His eyes were narrowed, and his mouth was twisted into a scary, gap-toothed smile. He was in his late forties and he looked like he shopped in the Big and Tall store. He was thick-lipped and had close-set eyes. His dark hair was cut short. Because I’d seen him through binoculars at the track, I knew he had a tattoo on the back of his neck. It had looked like a snake, but it was hard to tell for sure at that distance.

  “Well, look who we have here,” he said. “I was supposed to go out and find you, but you came onboard with your boyfriend. The pretty little fly walked right into the spider’s web.”

  I tried backing away, and his hand tightened.

  “What’s the matter?” he asked. “Thinking about leaving? Don’t you like me? Maybe you just have to get to know me. Maybe we should go belowdecks and get acquainted.”

  I heard Hooker surface and flounder beside the boat. I turned my head to see him, and Horse fisted his hand in my hair and yanked my head back.

  “Pay attention when I’m talking to you,” he said. “Didn’t anyone ever teach you manners?”

  “Let go of me.”

  “Maybe I should be the one to teach you manners. It wouldn’t be the first time I had to teach a woman to pay attention. In fact, it’s one of my specialties. That’s why I got the job of talking to you. Everyone knows I have a way with women. I can make women beg. Of course, there’s some pain in the beginning. Do you like pain?”

  I opened my mouth to scream, and he yanked my head again.

  “Nobody’s gonna care if you scream,” he said. “There’s only crew on the boat right now. All the guests are off in the launch taking a harbor tour. So this is how it works. I’m gonna hurt you pretty bad, and you’re going to spill your guts to me. You’re going to tell me everything I need to know. And if you’re real nice to me after that, I’ll let you go when I’m done with you.”

  I broke into an instant violently-sick-stomach cold sweat, and I threw up on Horse. The only time in my life I’ve ever done projectile vomiting.

  “Oh shit,” I said. “I’m really sorry.”

  Horse jumped back and looked down at himself. “What the fuck is this?”

  “Cereal and bananas.”

  “Fucking bitch. You’re gonna pay for this.”

  My heart stuttered in my chest, and then terror-driven instinct took over, and without giving it a second thought, I turned, scrambled over the rail, and jumped. I went under and took in some water before I pushed myself to the surface and bobbed up next to Hooker.

  I was wearing jeans and sneakers and they were weighing me down. “Help!” I gasped, spitting out seawater. “Sinking!”

  Hooker grabbed me by the front of my shirt and towed me around the side of the boat. We struggled to get past the prow and latched on to the dock while we caught our breath. We went partway down the finger pier, until we came to a ladder and were able to climb out of the water.

  My hair and clothes were plastered to me. My sunglasses and hat were riding on the tide. My cell phone was still clipped to my belt and was oozing water.

  “I hated that,” I yelled at Hooker. “I don’t know why I went with you. I knew something like that was going to happen. I was almost tortured by the monster with the horse dick. My phone is ruined. And I lost my hat and my sunglasses. And my sneakers are soaked. And they were my favorite sneakers. It’s not like great sneakers grow on trees, you know. And I could have drowned.”

  Hooker was staring at my soaked T-shirt and smiling. “Nice,” he said.

  Life is simple when you’re a guy. All the world’s problems can be at least momentarily forgotten when in the presence of a wet T-shirt and cold nipples. I blew out a sigh and squished my way to the SUV. I stopped when I got to the car and stared into the empty back window, my teeth clamped into my bottom lip.

  Hooker put an arm around me and cuddled me against him. “I miss him, too,” Hooker said. He gave me a brotherly kiss on the top of my head. “Don’t worry. We’ll get him back.”

  “I didn’t actually like him all that much when he was around. But now I feel terrible.”

  “Sometimes you don’t know what you’ve got until you lose it,” Hooker said.

  Everyone in the Ibarra house was off working at the fruit stand, including Gobbles. Hooker and I were alone at the Ibarras’ kitchen table, eating leftovers from the night before.
I was showered and dressed in my only clean outfit: khaki shorts, a white T-shirt, and white sneakers.

  Hooker was in shorts, T-shirt, and borrowed flip-flops. “I didn’t count on wet shoes,” he said. “I need to stop someplace and get something to wear besides flip-flops. Hard to kick ass in flip-flops.”

  “You never told me what went on in Huevo’s office.”

  “He asked me why I stole his cars. I said I didn’t steal his cars. He asked me how my dog came to be in the lounge if I didn’t steal his cars. I said someone stole my dog and planted him in the lounge. He said he wanted his cars back. I said I wanted my dog back. He said if he didn’t get his cars back by the end of the day, he was going to cut off my balls and feed them to my dog. I said at least I had balls. And then he had me thrown overboard.”

  “Good thinking.”

  “When in doubt, deny everything.”

  I paused with my fork halfway to my mouth and stared at him.

  “I never denied sleeping with that salesclerk,” he said. “I just don’t remember it.”

  “Do you have any plans for keeping your anatomy intact?”

  “I’m not too worried. I figure he’ll beat the crap out of me, but he probably won’t cut my balls off, because then I’d most likely die and he’d never find his cars. He wants those cars back bad.”

  “Here’s a thought—why don’t you offer to pay Huevo for the cars in exchange for Beans?”

  “Yeah, that sounds fair. A million plus for a Saint Bernard whose only talent is drooling.”

  “It’s not his only talent. He says hello by knocking people down to the ground. And he can stand on three legs and scratch his ear with his foot. And he has pretty brown eyes.”

  “Like me,” Hooker said. “Except I can’t scratch my ear with my foot.”

  “Yep. You and Beans are the perfect pair.”

  Hooker grinned at me and reached for his cell phone. He went to punch in Huevo’s number and water leaked out. “It’s dead,” Hooker said. “Drowned.”

  “Can you get Huevo’s number off it?”

  “No, but I can probably get a number from Butch.”

  Ten minutes later, Hooker put the Ibarra phone back in its cradle on the kitchen counter.

  “Well?” I asked.

  “Huevo said he doesn’t want the money. He wants the cars.”

  “Maybe it’s the chip that he wants. Maybe you should call him back and offer him the chip.”

  Hooker was fidgeting with the gearshift knob we’d lifted off the 69 car. He was turning it upside down and right side up, examining it. “This is a work of art,” he said. “Huevo’s machine shop has designed this knob so it’s strong and comfortable in your hand with minimum weight.”

  He set it on the table with the threaded side down and there was a barely perceptible plink. He picked the knob up and a tiny metal disk was left lying on the table.

  I pushed the disk around with my finger. It was silver and slightly smaller than a contact lens.

  “It looks like a watch battery, but it doesn’t have any markings,” I said to Hooker. “And I don’t know what the heck it was doing inside the gearshift knob.”

  “Maybe this is the traction-control thingy.”

  “Impossible. It doesn’t connect to anything. I cut the shifter in half. No wires. The microprocessor has to send electricity to a mechanical part to get the engine to slow down. We only know two ways to send electricity. One is over a wire. The other is a lightning bolt.”

  “Then what is it?”

  I turned it over in the palm of my hand. “I don’t know. I’d like to see inside, but I’m afraid I’ll destroy it if I try to open it. It wouldn’t be a problem if we were in Concord.”

  “I don’t want to go to Concord. I think Beans is in Miami, and I’m not leaving until I get him back.”

  “Then let’s find a jeweler.”

  A half hour later, Hooker stood over a case filled with diamond bracelets. “Most women would forgive me if I bought them one of these bracelets.”

  “Don’t kid yourself. A woman might take the bracelet, but she wouldn’t forgive you.”

  “That explains a lot,” Hooker said.

  “Wasted your money on a bunch of diamond bracelets?”

  He smiled sheepishly. “I’ve bought a few.”

  I was with the jeweler who was laboring over the little metal button. He had it in a miniature vice, and he was trying a variety of things, none of which was working. Finally he took it out of the vice, put his tiny tools away, held the button between his thumb and forefinger and whacked it with a hammer. The metal shell cracked open and the inside of the button was exposed.

  We all stared down at it.

  “What is it?” Hooker asked.

  I borrowed the jeweler’s loop and examined the button. “It looks like a circuit board. And it’s welded onto something that might be a miniaturized battery.”

  “So, this could be it,” Hooker said. “Except it’s not attached to anything.”

  “Yeah. But maybe it talks to the chip that was stuck on the engine.”

  I pulled the plastic bag out of my pocket, put the damaged piece-of-something on the counter, and looked at it under the loop. It was for sure a chip. I could see the circuits.

  “It’s a chip,” I said to Hooker. “I don’t know why you would need two, though. I’d think the chip on the engine would do it all.”

  I put the two chips back into the plastic bag, slipped the bag into my pocket, and we left the jewelry store and walked out into the mall. We were at a touristy waterside section of Miami with shops and food courts opening to a marina. It was tropical and colorful and the stores featured ashtrays that were decorated with flamingos, rubber alligators made in China, beach towels, T-shirts, lamps shaped like palm trees, sunglasses, sunscreen, sun visors, and bags of shells that had probably been collected in China. We bypassed the trinket shops and bought new cell phones, running shoes for Hooker, and binoculars.

  By the time we left the mall, it was late afternoon. Our plan was to park our butts on bar stools at Monty’s outdoor tiki bar and watch Huevo’s yacht. The bar was nice and public, and we thought chances were slim that Hooker’s gonads would get lopped off from the rest of his body while at Monty’s.

  We ordered nachos and beer and broke out the binoculars. We’d each gotten one of those mini things. Not as much power as what I was used to but easier to carry. We had a good view of the boat without the binoculars, but the binoculars would let us see faces better.

  “To Beans,” Hooker said. And we clinked our beer glasses together.

  I put my binoculars to my eyes for a test, focused on the pier leading to the Huevo boat, and then a woman walked into the picture. “Hello,” I said. “Who’s this?”

  The woman looked like Blond Bitch Bimbo. A platinum-haired Cruella DeVil. She was wearing four-inch heels and a designer suit that fit her like skin. She had enough diamonds on her watch and in her ears to give me cataracts from the sun reflection. Her hair was knotted at the nape of her neck and her face was frozen in a look of perpetual open-eyed awe. She had a long-legged, ass-swinging stride that carried her down the pier to the yacht gangplank. The uniformed guard onboard ship snapped to attention when he saw her and rushed forward to help her with her single bag, but she waved the help away. A small, tufted dog head popped out of the bag.

  I glanced at Hooker and found him readjusting his binoculars.

  “Focusing on her ass?” I asked.

  “It’s a pretty decent ass. Looks to me like a StairMaster ass. Man, her ass is so tight, you could bounce a quarter off it.”

  “You like that?”

  Hooker had his binoculars to his eyes. “I like any ass that…” He froze in midsentence. He was having a mental head-slap moment. A deer-in-headlights moment. He lowered the binoculars and looked at me. “I like your ass.”

  Okay, so he wasn’t perfect, but he was trying.

  I had my binoculars back up, watching the woman go int
o the main salon and disappear from sight. “Do you know who she is?”

  “Darlin’, that’s the newly widowed Mrs. Oscar Huevo.”

  “Zowie.”

  “Exactly. She’s wife numero uno, and she’s out for bear.”

  Ten minutes later numero uno marched out of the salon door, crossed the deck, and swung her ass down the gangplank. She adjusted her sunglasses, tucked her dog back into the bag, and power-walked the length of the pier.

  I dropped my binoculars into my new tote bag. “You stay here and watch the boat,” I said to Hooker. “I’m going to follow her, see where she goes.”

  Hooker handed me the keys to the SUV. “In a small, dark corner of my brain there’s a fear that once you’re out of my sight you’re going to get on a plane and go home without me,” he said.

  SIX

  I ran to the SUV and slid behind the wheel just as the widow Huevo strode into the parking lot and got into a waiting limo. I cranked the engine over and followed at a distance. The driver took Fifth Street and then went north on Collins. Several blocks later, the driver turned into the elaborate entrance to the Loews Miami Beach Hotel. Mrs. Huevo disembarked, still carrying her doggie bag. The limo trunk popped open and bellmen scrambled to unload luggage. The luggage was put on a cart and whisked away into the hotel, following the swinging ass of Mrs. Huevo.

  I had Hooker on the phone. “She’s checking into Loews, and she’s got a lot of luggage.”

  “She looks like she’d take three steamer trunks for an overnight.”

  “I’m going to hang out here for a while and see if anything interesting happens,” I told Hooker.

  “Ten-four.”

  Loews is a spectacular hotel with acres of marble, pretty couches, and potted palms. It has outdoor areas that look like a cross between a Fred Astaire movie and King Tut’s tomb. And it all leads to the glorious wide white sands of South Beach and the rolling Atlantic. I valet-parked the SUV and walked into the super-air-conditioned lobby. It was so cold my nipples got hard and my fingertips turned purple. I’m not one to make frivolous purchases, but in the interest of nipple well-being I forked over thirty dollars to the hotel gift shop and bought a sweatshirt.