For privacy he locked himself in a bathroom and unsuccessfully tried to FaceTime Rosa. Next he attempted regular dialing, with the same result.
Merry tapped sympathetically on the door. “Let me talk to her,” she said.
“Thanks, but I got this.” Yancy wasn’t even sure where Rosa was. Text after text traveled nowhere, undelivered.
The door handle turned and in walked Merry, having picked the lock with a fondue fork that was a relic from Yancy’s first and only marriage. He reported to Merry that Dr. Rosa Campesino wasn’t taking his calls.
“She’s still pissed because I answered your phone,” Merry said. “Give her some time, Andrew. Meanwhile try not to think about you and me in the shower together, all slick and soapy. Not that I’d ever let that happen, but just try not to think about it.”
“Let’s take another ride,” he said.
Half an hour later they were parked down the street from Blister’s place. Merry said it was her first stakeout in a 1993 Subaru. She was less fidgety since Yancy had imposed a cutoff on the energy drinks. Two per day was the new limit, which she honored mainly because the rhubarb-flavored mix (her favorite) was staining her teeth. She appraised her smile in the side mirror while arranging herself cross-legged on the seat.
“Why are you so quiet, Andrew? What’s on your mind? Like I don’t know.”
“That mongoose is what’s on my mind. The woman called it Clee Roy.” Yancy was aggravated because he hadn’t picked up on it at the time. “I think Buck Nance has a brother with that name.”
Merry said that wasn’t something a normal person, much less a detective, would forget. “No wonder the sheriff canned your ass.”
Yancy tinkered with his phone until he pulled up the Bayou Brethren web page, confirming the connection. He couldn’t have been expected to memorize all of Buck’s TV kinfolk, but a Dogpatch moniker such as Clee Roy should have stuck in his head. Merry was right: He was off his game. Lax and distracted.
Obviously the Nance family had an extreme fan in Mr. Benjamin Krill. That would explain the Clee Roy tribute and both of his recent tats.
“What do we do when this freak shows up?” Merry asked.
“Let’s see what happens.”
“Ha! And I thought you weren’t the spontaneous type.”
A car rolled down Petronia and parked at the opposite end. It was a charcoal Taurus, a model used by plainclothes city detectives. Yancy could only assume that Rogelio Burton, despite his purported skepticism, had passed along the tip about Blister.
“Traitor,” Yancy mumbled.
If Krill appeared now, the cops would snatch him like a bug off the sidewalk. By dinnertime they’d have a signed confession—and Yancy would get no credit for cracking the Conch Train case, no redemptive brownie points with the sheriff. Yancy wasn’t proud of his selfishness, yet he couldn’t change how he felt. The roach patrol was sapping his spirits, one wriggling baggie at a time. He had to fight his way out.
Merry said she had an idea. It wasn’t terrible. At least no razor-play was involved.
“What the hell. Give it a shot,” Yancy said.
She got out and headed toward the unmarked cop car. Her stylish walk warmed Yancy with an impure fantasy. It evaporated when he received a lengthy text from Rosa abroad. “This has nothing to do with you,” she began, and went on to say that working in morgues and emergency rooms had wrecked her in ways she’d never realized until spending time in civilized places where children never, ever die from gunfire. “Andrew, I’m not sure I can come back to Miami,” she wrote.
“Then don’t,” he texted back. “Move down to the Keys and live with me. You can open a boutique practice! I’d break my own leg just to be your first patient.”
No immediate response from Dr. Campesino. Yancy understood too well what she was experiencing. He remembered how good it felt to be liberated from that city. The berserk-o side of the place was basically all you saw, if you were a cop or a coroner.
Down the street, Merry Mansfield was chatting up the detectives in the Taurus. Her jeans weren’t too tight and her sweater wasn’t cut too low, but her hair was killer. She would be telling them that a sketchy-bearded dude with “Hail Captain Cock” inked on his back had nearly knocked her down on a bicycle moments earlier. She’d be telling them that the tattooed man said something obscene as he flew past, and that he looked crazed in the eyes. When the detectives asked which way the man had been riding, she would point toward downtown.
Yancy grinned at the sight of the Taurus peeling out. Merry returned and sat down beside him giving a cheeky toss of her head.
He said, “Yeah, I know. Us men—we’re pitiful.”
“Totally, Andrew.”
“They ask for your number?”
“Of course,” Merry said. “Luckily, I got a hundred of ’em.”
Minutes later a person who could only be Benny the Blister materialized in the neighborhood. Barefoot and solo, he wore a dirty tee-shirt, reflector shades and a scarlet biker bandanna. Each sunburned arm lugged a grocery sack.
Yancy waited until he entered the apartment building before easing out of the car. “Stay right here,” he said to Merry.
“Not this time, sugar.”
Quietly she trailed Yancy up the stairs. The door to unit 277 was cracked open, and they could hear a man and woman arguing. The background track was a TV game show—somebody had just won three days in Tahoe. When Yancy slipped inside the apartment, the first weird thing he saw was Clee Roy the mongoose buttoned in a plum tunic. The animal stood on the kitchen table holding a chicken drumstick.
The next thing Yancy noticed was the printing on Benny Krill’s grubby sleeveless shirt: WHERE IS BUM FARTO?
Benny the Blister squared off, both hands jammed in his cutoffs. He glowered at Yancy, snapping, “Who the fuck are you?”
“He’s the law, dumbass,” said Blister’s wife, rooting like a half-starved bear through the grocery bags. “Goddammit, you forgot my fuckin’ Tostitos again!”
Yancy never had time to take out his roach-patrol ID.
“Benny, where’d you get that shirt?” he managed to say, and two seconds later he was bleeding all over his shoes.
FOURTEEN
Merry made it to the hospital in six minutes flat. She was sharp behind the wheel, the best Yancy had ever seen.
He told the E.R. nurses he’d fallen on a rake. If he’d given the truth, the police would have been called, and a report would have landed on the desk of Sonny Summers, who didn’t want Yancy near the Conch Train case, the Buck Nance case, or any other case that was making news. The sheriff wanted Yancy offstage, counting cockroaches.
Merry said, “What a whack job. I didn’t see the knife until too late.”
“This is all on me.”
Benny Krill had made one spazzy swing with the blade and sliced Yancy’s belly.
“How are you feeling?” Merry asked.
“Stupid and mortal.”
No vital organs nicked, but nineteen stitches. The doctor wanted Yancy to remain in the hospital for a few days. He promptly bolted. Merry took him back to Big Pine and helped him into the house. Collapsing on the sofa he tore off the paper gown to examine his bandages.
“Blood is seriously not my thing,” Merry said, losing color.
“You’ve done more than enough for me. I’ll call you a cab.”
“I don’t want to go. I mean I do, but I don’t. You’re in rough shape, Andrew.”
“Mainly my ego.”
“Full disclosure: I suck at the nurturing thing. One summer I worked at a nursing home and it was a disaster.”
Queasily she untied his bloody sneakers and tossed them in the trash can. Through the window she saw a small shiny sedan idling on the street.
“Doesn’t look like a cop car,” she said.
Yancy swallowed two Percocets. “Whoever it is, we’re not in the mood for company.”
“Then I’ll let them know.”
She was out
the door before Yancy could object. He tried to rise, but his roaring skull weighed him down. The numerals on his phone were shimmying beneath his fingertips. He detected a fresh text from Tommy Lombardo, something about Clippy’s, but the words smeared together on the screen. Yancy lay shaky and exhausted. He eyed the Remington, which he was too weak to reach. After a few moments he floated free, forgetting about the raw wound in his gut and the strange car parked in front of his house. When he opened his eyes, Merry Mansfield was gazing down at him.
“I figured out who you remind me of,” he said. “Susan Sarandon. I’ve had a crush on her since Thelma & Louise.”
“That’s the nicest thing you ever said. Must be the hair.”
“Also the laugh. I’m a sucker for throaty laughs.”
Merry stroked his cheek and said, “Can you sit up? These gentlemen want to talk to you.”
“Guess what. I think Blister snatched Buck Nance!” Some people got plastered on heavy painkillers but Yancy found himself cogitating with marvelous clarity. “Two birds with one stone! Let’s go get ’em!” he burbled.
“Andrew, listen to me,” said Merry.
“Who are those guys?” he inquired, finally noticing the strangers.
“They said they’re looking for a diamond ring.”
Yancy sagged. “Not tonight, fellas. Go away.”
But they didn’t.
—
Big Noogie couldn’t care less that Martin Trebeaux’s new friend was having problems with his ex-cop neighbor. What spiked the capo’s interest was the missing two-hundred-thousand-dollar engagement ring. It was worth sending Jelly and Nick down to the Keys to poke around. Hell, the boys were due for a vacation.
Jelly and Nick worked in downtown Miami for a document-shredding service that Big Noogie had acquired by coercion and immediately converted to an identity-theft operation. The shredding machines were sold as scrap but not the company’s armored truck, which Jelly and Nick drove from one glass office tower to the next. Their corporate clients would scrupulously insert all sensitive papers into locked plastic tubs, which Nick and Jelly lugged down the service elevators and placed in their steel-plated vehicle. The tubs then were transported to a warehouse in Hialeah Gardens, to be opened with a master key. A team of recently paroled stockbrokers and accountants waited at folding card tables to sift through the tonnage, sniffing out payroll records, bank statements, credit-card summaries, 1099s, K-1s, transfer receipts, inventory reports and other promising material. Executives who used their firm’s shredding tub as a repository for intimate correspondence were at especially high risk, for Big Noogie encouraged freelance blackmail by team members.
Jelly and Nick were being sent to search the house of a man named Andrew Yancy. If they found a diamond ring they were supposed to hand-deliver it to Big Noogie so he could gift it to Dom Jr., his eldest son, who would soon propose marriage to an assistant deli manager from Staten Island. An ample brassy girl, full of life—Big Noogie was fond of her. She’d go nuts when she laid her big chocolate eyes on that rock.
Grateful for a break from the stuffy armored car, Nick and Jelly considered it an honor to be chosen by their boss for a personal mission. Nick was only twenty-five and since arriving in Miami had never been south of the landfill at Black Point. Jelly was a few years older and had twice gone to Key Largo stealing outboards. For the trip to Big Pine, Big Noogie had rented Jelly and Nick a plain Kia compact, which was all right. They didn’t require a full-sized sedan because they weren’t hulking, thick-necked men in the usual mold of mob legbreakers. Both were on the shorter side, with lean faces and narrow shoulders. Although capable of inflicting severe bodily harm, they preferred verbal intimidation and hair-raising gunplay.
Parked in wait outside Yancy’s house, Nick and Jelly had not expected to be approached by the curvy red-haired woman who’d come out the front door. Both men understood this would test their professionalism.
The redhead approached the Kia and nonchalantly addressed Nick, who was riding shotgun: “Are you two rascals here to see Andrew? Honestly, there’s no need for rough stuff—he got knifed this afternoon, so he won’t give you any trouble. My name’s Merry, by the way. Merry Mansfield, like the actress.”
“We gotta toss the place,” Jelly said. “Or, he can just tell us where he put the fuckin’ ring and save on the mess.”
“What ring?” asked Merry.
Nick was curious about the stabbing. “How come he ain’t at the hospital?”
“Because he’s a stubborn fool, that’s why. Come see for yourselves.”
Jelly pointed. “Zat his blood on your top?”
“Thanks for noticing. Follow me.”
Jelly and Nick wondered if it might be a trap. They drew their weapons as they got out of the Kia. The hottie named Merry smiled and said, “Fine. If that makes you feel better.”
They trailed her into the house and found Yancy sprawled on a frayed old couch, his midsection heavily taped with white gauze. He looked like hell. When the redhead informed him that the men were searching for a ring, Yancy’s head fell back and he said, “Not tonight, fellas.”
“Who stabbed you?” Jelly asked him. “Was it her?”
Referring to the woman, who zapped him with a glare.
Yancy said, “You came a long way for nothing. I don’t have the damn diamond.”
“Then I guess we gotta wreck your crib.” Jelly turned to Nick. “You heard the man. Time to remodel.”
Merry asked the legbreakers to please put away their guns. “Look at the poor bastard—he’s a mess.”
They agreed that Yancy posed no threat.
“Who sent you?” Yancy asked. “I bet I know—the dick lawyer that owns the lot next door, his fiancée is the one who lost the ring you’re looking for.”
“We don’t work for no lawyer,” said Jelly, and instructed Nick to begin with the sofa.
Nick got a steak knife from the kitchen and Jelly rolled Yancy onto the floor. While the two toughs gutted the cushions, Merry stood there shaking her head. “He’s not that dumb,” she said.
The stuffing yielded no ring. Nick said to Jelly: “It’ll take all fuckin’ night to toss the whole place. We should torch his boat and maybe then he’ll talk.”
“I dunno. Ain’t much of a boat.” Jelly was eyeing the skiff through the window.
“They still blow up good, bro. Drop a rag in the gas tank and touch it off—all that fuckin’ fiberglass, you kiddin’ me?”
Yancy was gray-faced, on his knees. “Don’t burn my boat,” he rasped. “Go look in the refrigerator.”
“We ain’t thirsty.” Jelly was screwing with him now.
“I hid the diamond in the hummus,” Yancy told them.
Nick grimaced. “That’s so fuckin’ gross. I’m glad you got stabbed.”
Both thugs refused to touch the hummus. They made the redhead scoop out the engagement ring and rinse it under the faucet.
Before leaving, Jelly approached Yancy, who was still on the floor. “Also, we’re supposed to tell you it’d be a real smart move to sell this fuckin’ house. Other words, someone makes an offer I’d jump on it.”
Nick said, “Yeah, like tomorrow.”
Yancy looked up and said, “Aren’t you guys late for the Jersey Boys audition?”
On the way out Jelly kicked him in the side. Nick kicked him in the ass. Afterward they drove to Key West, checked into the Reach and went looking for fresh stone crabs. Nick phoned Big Noogie from the restaurant to tell him the good news.
“So where’s the rock now?” Big Noogie asked.
“Jelly’s pocket.”
“I hope that’s a joke. Ha fuckin’ ha.”
“Whaddya mean?”
Big Noogie explained, “If the ring don’t make it back to Miami, you’re both dead. Just pick out a fuckin’ dumpster for me to throw your body parts.”
Nick and Jelly ran to the Kia and hightailed it back to their room, where they locked Big Noogie’s diamond in the safe
. Then they walked to a titty bar counting eleven roosters along the way, and also the biggest motherfucking rat they’d ever seen.
—
Benny the Blister’s fanatic passion for Bayou Brethren sprang from an induced sense of kinship with Buck and his rowdy family. The show’s producers had strategically cultivated a fandom with two distinct segments: those who were cynically amused by the boorish culture of the Nance clan, and those who identified with it. Each week the writers strived to portray the brothers on a social bandwidth halfway between harmless rednecks and odious white trash. It was a precarious tightwire.
From the very first episode Blister Krill could imagine the brothers’ severe opinions about homos, transgenders, blacks, Muslims, Hispanics and probably Jews. Although the show’s scripts steered away from touchy political messaging, Buck’s bootleg YouTube rants had convinced Blister that he and Buck were on the same righteous page, ideologically. (The patriarch’s tirades were mostly outtakes from the weekly TV tapings that had been leaked to the Internet by disgruntled crew members, much to the rapture of hardcore Brethren cultists.)
The abduction of Buck Nance had unfolded spontaneously, with no criminal intent. Of course Blister had been front and center at the Parched Pirate when Buck fled the angry mob. Blister had tried to catch up, running as fast as a nearsighted half-drunk imbecile could run, but Buck had vanished in the maze of fragrant alleys that crisscrossed Old Town.
All night Blister had stayed up searching, and he didn’t let up at daybreak. It was mid-afternoon when he’d spotted a haggard figure huddled by the seawall at the Southernmost Point. The man wore the standard Panama hat, board shorts and Bum Farto tee-shirt, yet his demeanor made him stand out from the other tourists who were posing for group selfies in front of the famous red-topped sea buoy.
Blister had sidled closer to study the loner, who paced restively and scratched at his pale bristled jaw. It was a testament to the depth of Blister’s worship that he recognized Buck without the hallmark beard. Perhaps the bow-legged gait and lopsided slope of the shoulders would have been recognizable to anyone who’d watched every Brethren episode no less than fifty times.