Next he told the one about four black guys in an Escalade arriving at the gates of Heaven, and this time not a living soul chuckled, not even the Caucasian drunks in sandals. A couple of heavyset individuals in the back of the room called Buck a racist asshole and began a sharp-elbowed charge toward the stage. Buck was unaccustomed to such naked hostility, and he’d prepared no clever comeback lines like real stand-up comedians do.
“Just chill out, sports fans,” was what he said, desperately scanning the crowd for Lane’s face. Where the fuck was he?
Soon enough it was explained to Buck Nance that Key West was a bad location to be making fun of homosexuals and also African Americans. This bulletin was delivered by a 275-pound biker who happened to be both gay and black, and owned a right hand that fit easily around Buck Nance’s stringy hirsute neck.
Bouncers pulled the aggrieved patron away before the strangulation was complete, and Buck revived coughing and beet-faced. Angrily he began spewing down-home expletives that included the n-word, igniting a melee between a few diehard fans and the rest of the audience. Buck got walloped by flying fists and Budweiser bottles, and at one point a man costumed as Lady Gaga attempted to rip the beard from his chin. The man was surprisingly strong and wore just enough jasmine perfume to be distracting.
With the bar manager’s assistance Buck shook loose and fled through a back door. In no particular direction he ran through the alleys of old Cayo Hueso fearing, not irrationally, that he was in mortal danger.
—
Yancy was bummed because Rosa couldn’t drive down from Miami for the weekend. She had the night shift in the E.R. at Baptist. Selfishly he sometimes wished she still worked at the morgue; the hours were better because no urgent care was required.
He finished his glass of rum, grabbed his only sweater and went outside to stare at the stars. After a few chilly minutes he wished he’d put on some shoes and long pants. Somebody with a flashlight was walking back and forth in the vacant lot next door. The lot was blooming with weeds, and still littered with charred rubble from the arson that had leveled the previous owner’s unfinished villa. Yancy hadn’t set the fire though he bore indirect responsibility, and no remorse. Afterward the property had been surrendered in savage divorce litigation to the owner’s wife, who’d recently sold it.
Yancy stepped down from his backyard deck, gingerly climbed the chain-link fence and made his way toward the stranger carrying the flashlight. It was a woman, and he startled her.
She aimed the bright beam at his eyeballs saying, “Hey, just back off!”
“Relax. I live in that house.” Yancy reached out and repositioned her flashlight. “What are you looking for?” he asked.
“A ring.”
“What kind of ring?”
“None of your business. I must’ve dropped it this morning.”
“When you were here doing what exactly?” In the darkness Yancy couldn’t see the angles of her face, but her skin looked glossy and her hair was light-colored. She sounded younger than he was.
“I was with our landscape architect,” the woman said with a ludicrous air of importance. “And my fiancé.”
“So it was your engagement ring you lost. That sucks.”
“Hey, do you mind?”
It was an odd place to drop an expensive piece of jewelry. Obviously the woman hadn’t told her future hubby; otherwise he would have been out there helping her search for it.
She said, “If you don’t go away right now, I’m calling the cops.”
Yancy tipped an imaginary cap. “At your service.”
In the not-so-distant past he had been a real detective. Now he was stuck on the roach patrol, scouring local restaurants for threats to public hygiene. “My name’s Andrew Yancy,” he said.
“Let’s see your badge.”
“I’m in my boxer shorts, and crushed that you didn’t notice. My badge is back at the house. You want some coffee? It’s freezing out here.”
“What I’d like is for you to leave me alone,” the woman said, “unless you’re planning to arrest me for something.”
“How many karats?”
“What?”
“Your missing ring,” Yancy said. “Karats as in diamonds, not bunny food.”
“That’s such a rude question.”
“My specialty. Is your rock bigger than, say, a pistachio? I’ve got a cordless spotlight is the reason I ask. You want some help?”
“No,” the woman replied. “I do not.”
Yancy walked back to his place thinking she didn’t believe he was a cop, or else she would have been more respectful. On the other hand, his nocturnal approach in underwear and bare feet might have made a sketchy first impression.
He was annoyed at himself for not asking the woman what she and her fiancé were planning to build next door. Yancy treasured his sunset view on Big Pine Key, and he hoped the new couple would honor the height restrictions in the building code. Nothing less than Yancy’s own peace of mind was at stake. He didn’t want more trouble on the street, now that Rosa was spending more time here.
In the kitchen he put on some Jack Johnson, fired up a joint and texted Rosa a photo of the two fresh lobster tails he was about to grill. Nearby he heard a car door slam extremely hard, suggesting that the woman with the flashlight had not located her lost engagement ring and was giving up for the night. There was an angry-sounding yelp of tires as she sped away in what sounded to Yancy like a high-powered European sportster.
After dinner he slipped on some jeans and, to spare his feet from the concrete shards and splintered lumber, a pair of thick-soled Rockports. Then he took the Q-Beam from his skiff on the trailer in the driveway, and returned to the empty lot.
The spotlight had a powerful halogen bulb, three million candlepower. From a hundred feet away Yancy spotted the glimmer of the diamond in a clump of weeds. It was a very large stone, which likely meant that the woman and her fiancé intended to build a very large house.
“Shit,” said Yancy. He picked up the ring and shoved it into his pocket.
At half-past eleven he heard the phone chirping out on the couch, where he’d left it. He knew Rosa wasn’t calling, because she was still at work in the E.R.
“You sleeping?” asked Tommy Lombardo.
“Yes,” Yancy lied, “and I’ve got company.”
Lombardo was his supervisor, not a bad guy. Mostly he left Yancy alone.
“It’s an emergency, Andrew.”
An “emergency” on roach patrol was code for an active infestation.
“Where?” Yancy asked.
“Clippy’s.”
“No way.” Clippy’s was one of the cleanest joints in Monroe County. Yancy had never found as much as a dead housefly on the premises. “Tommy, what manner of pest are we talking about?”
“No varmints, no insects.”
“Screw it, then, I’m going back to bed.”
“They’re waiting for you, Andrew.”
“Who?”
“Clippy and his partner. You understand?”
Yancy did understand. “Tell me what we’re dealing with, Tommy. It’s almost midnight, for Christ’s sake.”
“You know this already from your cop days,” said Lombardo. “There’s some fucked-up people in the world. Is that front-page news? I don’t think so.”
TWO
The man with the long oily hair wasn’t named Rocky, and he wasn’t Merry Mansfield’s boyfriend. Zeto is what she called him. He and Merry had been hired to kidnap a swindler who’d pissed off a short-fused individual in the borough of Queens, New York. The swindler’s name was Martin Trebeaux, and he was driving from Miami to Key West in a late-model four-door Buick painted quicksilver metallic, a factory job virtually indistinguishable at dusk from champagne silver, another standard color in rental fleets.
“You hit the wrong fucking car,” Zeto informed Merry.
“Hey, you said silver Buick, did you not?”
“Wrong fucking car. Wron
g fucking guy.” Zeto halfheartedly kicked Lane Coolman, who lay hogtied on the floor.
“Maybe it’s him and he’s just carrying fake ID,” Merry said hopefully.
“No, this is definitely not Trebeaux.” Zeto had pawed through Coolman’s wallet. The photograph on the California driver’s license matched Coolman’s face, which did not match the pictures of Martin Trebeaux that had been texted to Zeto.
Trebeaux was sandy-haired, jowly, and had the pursed countenance of a feeding carp. Coolman’s features were more angular, and he owned standard hominid lips.
“You fucked up. End of story,” Zeto said to Merry.
“No, dear, we fucked up.”
From Coolman: “Just let me go and we’ll forget all about it.”
“Hush now, Bob,” said Merry.
Coolman didn’t believe the oily guy with the gun would actually kill him, reflecting an insufficient concern for his own well-being. That he was more worried about Buck Nance bombing at the Parched Pirate underscored Coolman’s laser focus on his career. Buck and his brothers were the agency’s hottest clients, a galactic media phenomenon, but they required round-the-clock supervision. Buck in particular could be a runaway train.
“There’s two grand cash in the wallet,” Coolman said to Merry. “Take it all and let me walk.”
“You told me your name was Bob. Don’t I deserve better than that?”
Here Zeto cut in: “He wanted to bang you is all.”
Coolman didn’t bother to deny it. “Don’t make this any worse than it already is. You got the wrong man, okay?”
Merry said, “Then prove it.”
“Give me back my phone and I will.”
Zeto said, “He’s not Trebeaux, so shut up and let me think.”
The floor was cold terrazzo. Merry unrolled a yoga mat and sat down beside Coolman. There was no furniture in the house; two bulbs in a recessed ceiling fixture provided the only light.
Zeto had forced Coolman at gunpoint through a back door after parking the Tesla in an alley. Now the gun peeked from a shoulder holster beneath Zeto’s leather jacket. Merry had offered to help tie up their prisoner but Zeto insisted on doing it himself, saying he didn’t trust Merry’s knots.
“I need to make a call,” he grumped.
“God, no kidding you do.” She rolled her eyes.
As soon as Zeto left the room, Coolman began lobbying Merry to be the reasonable one, the one wise enough to see that holding him captive would be a disastrous mistake. “You want to go to jail for the rest of your life,” he said, “because of that guy?”
“Are you really a talent manager, or is that more bullshit?”
“No, it’s the truth. Buck Nance is waiting for me right now at the gig.”
“We’ll see about that.”
Merry took Coolman’s cell phone out of her handbag where it had been tooting and humming every couple of minutes. This was pure torture for Coolman, who, like all agents, hated missing a call.
“What’s Mr. Buck Bayou’s number?” Merry asked.
“Jesus, I don’t remember off the top of my head. Speed-dial it from my Favorites.”
“Woo-hoo, look at this! Mark Wahlberg. Reese Witherspoon. Denzel—are you kidding me?”
“Scroll to the N’s,” said Coolman.
Merry found Buck Nance’s name and touched the number. A woman answered. Merry had difficulty hearing her because of a grinding roar on the other end. The woman said she was on the back of a motorcycle cruising Duval Street. Her boyfriend had found the phone on the floor of a bar—somebody had crunched it with a boot heel, but it still worked. The woman asked Merry to tell the owner of the phone to swing by Blue Heaven later and pick it up.
“Just keep it, honey,” Merry said, and hung up.
Coolman was unsettled by the news that Buck Nance had lost his phone. He pleaded with Merry to redial and find out if the woman had attended Buck’s show. Merry said, “What—now I’m your secretary? No, sir.”
She zipped the fleece up to her neck. “It’s cold in here, right? My nips are basically icicles.”
“I’m guessing you’re not really married,” Coolman said. “There are no Rockys in your life, right? And you know nothing about sunken treasure.”
“More than you do, I bet.”
“What’s your real name?”
She laughed. “Merry Mansfield!”
The ropes on Coolman’s wrists were strung so tight that he’d given up trying to squirm out of them. “Really, this is what you do for a living? Crash into strangers on the highway?”
“There’s a trick to it,” Merry said, “especially holding a razor.”
She had done fourteen solo bump jobs, eight hundred bucks each, never once injuring herself or the target. Her preferred speed at impact was six miles per hour faster than the car she was hitting. She’d learned the technique from a guy in South Beach, her boyfriend at the time, an insurance fraudster and confirmed shitweasel. Now Merry worked totally freelance off her reputation. The bikini-shave aspect of the scam was her signature, pure genius because the targets were always men. Often she wasn’t told who had ordered the crash, but the why never changed: Somebody was dodging a debt. The objective of the abduction was money, not murder. Merry viewed herself as an independent contractor in the collection process. Zeto provided the bump vehicles. Merry kept a brick of fake IDs for when the cops arrived to write up the “accident.”
This was the first time she’d taken down the wrong car, and she blamed Zeto for fuzzy intel. His text had said: “Southbound silver late-model Buick Lacrosse w/white male driving, early 30s.” No tag number, no specificity on the precise shade of silver—and, by the way, who could tell the freaking difference between quicksilver and champagne?
“Trebeaux’s here in Key West,” Zeto announced upon his return.
“So the job’s still on? We can set up the crash on a side street, easy peasy,” said Merry.
Zeto snorted. “What makes you think we’d use you again?”
Merry let the insult pass because she needed the money. “So, meantime, what should we do with mister hot-shit talent manager?”
“Dump him in the ocean was my orders.”
“You mean kill him?” Merry said.
“You’re a quick one, babe.” Zeto took out his gun.
Coolman was thunderstruck.
“Don’t be a fucking idiot!” he bleated at Zeto. Then, less excitedly, to the redheaded woman: “This would be the all-time, worst-ever dumbest thing you could ever possibly do. They’ll lock you up for life.”
He thought the scared-straight approach would be more effective than weeping.
Zeto said, “Lock us up for what, dipshit? Your body won’t never be found. Twenty miles out at sea in the belly of a goddamn tiger shark is where you’ll be at. No victim, no crime scene, no evidence. Arrest us for what, Einstein?”
Merry gave Coolman’s head a commiserative pat. “His mind’s made up, Bob. Sorry.”
“No, wait, wait please,” said Coolman, and without further delay began to beg. “You want money? Because the people I work for will pay big bucks to get me back safe and sound.”
Zeto seemed mildly interested.
Merry said, “Define big bucks.” She dialed another number on Lane’s phone, and he heard her say, “Hello, is this Mr. Mark Wahlberg? You’re shitting me! Mark freaking Wahlberg?”
A shark attack might be less painful, Coolman thought despairingly.
“Sir, a speed-dial compadre of yours is in major trouble,” Merry went on. “Mr. Lane Coolman, okay? The talent agent. There’s bodily harm in his future unless somebody comes up with, I don’t know—half a million dollars by noon tomorrow? I see…well, yes…allrighty then. Sorry to trouble you, sir. By the way, you were amazing in Boogie Nights. That last scene at the mirror? Fucking awesome!”
Coolman’s chin was on his chest by the time Merry hung up. That was some heavy number—five hundred thousand—to pull out of her ass.
“I
t was really him?” Zeto asked. “The Marky Mark?”
“It was,” said Merry.
“So, what’s the story?”
“First he said, ‘Lane Coolman’s not my friend.’ ”
“Figures.” Zeto glared at his captive.
“He said Mr. Coolman is a worthless douche bag, his exact words,” Merry related, “and we’d be lucky to get five fucking cents for a ransom.”
Zeto cackled and put a round into the chamber. “This is from the movie star, right? Unbelievable. A worthless douche bag, he says.”
“Hold on, just wait! Please!” Coolman cried. “Scroll up to the A’s and I’ll tell you which name to call.”
Merry said, “Now we’re getting somewhere, sugar.”
—
Clippy was Irv Clipowski. His partner was Neil Gluckman, who happened to be the mayor. That’s why Lombardo had summoned Yancy so late at night—nothing turns you into a responsive civil servant faster than a phone call from the mayor. Hop in your car and go.
Neil and Clippy weren’t downhome island bubbas but rather New Yorkers who’d hit a home run on Wall Street and then semi-retired to Key West. At first they were distrusted because of their sobriety and competence, but in time the locals accepted them. Clippy was a long-distance runner who had a goatee that he dyed goose-white. Neil narrowly won the mayor’s race after his opponent got busted in the Marquesas cramming two thousand Mollies into a SCUBA tank.
The restaurant they owned was only a few blocks from the Hemingway House. Lunch and dinner were offered, brunch on Sundays. The designated cuisine was “heart healthy,” a menu gimmick designed to ward off the cruise-ship crowd. Clippy could be a snob at times.
He led Yancy to a stainless-steel vat in the back of the kitchen.
“That’s quinoa, Andrew. Please don’t tell me you’ve never had it.”
“I eat it twice a day, sprinkled with kale.” There must have been twenty-five pounds of the stuff, which to Yancy resembled bullfrog eggs.
“They call it a supergrain,” Clippy said dully. “It’s got lysine, B2 and manganese, the mortal enemy of free radicals. Not to mention it’s a natural laxative—”