The paramedic said okay, though he was unnerved. Yancy put an arm around his shoulder saying, “We’re good here. Enjoy the rest of the day with your family.”
“But, dude, he’s really fucked up,” the man said, watching Blister wheeze and thrash on the pavement.
“There’s an ambulance on the way. After that he’s going to County.”
As soon as the paramedic left, Yancy dialed Rogelio Burton’s number. He was leaving a colorfully detailed message when he heard Merry honking the horn.
Blister was back on his feet, barreling toward the van.
Yancy thought: Not that fucking gun again.
But that’s what Blister went looking for—and found. He flew out of the Sprinter clutching the pistol with both hands and steaming headlong toward Yancy, who could already hear Rosa’s heartsick I-told-you-so.
The two frayed Californians, Amp and Coolman, turned and ran. Yancy didn’t blame them. He shouted for Merry to get down as he positioned himself between Blister and the Chrysler. The vision of a deranged dumbass waving a firearm scattered the gawking crowd of non-heroes that had been drawn to the crash site.
Yancy widened his stance and braced for a bullet. The prospect of being killed in such a public place was depressing—all these goddamn tourists, posting snapshots and videos. What a lousy way to go viral.
Maybe the gun will jam, he thought, like in the movies.
The gun didn’t jam. It fired one last shot, which missed its target and lodged in a clown-themed SnoCone truck across the street.
This happened at the instant when Buck Nance, of all people, jumped Blister from behind and snapped his neck, like he was a damn chicken.
TWENTY-SEVEN
Playa Ramera was a well-known place for foreigners to connect with prostitutes until the Castro regime cracked down. These days the beach was quiet, one of the loveliest in the Caribbean. On maps the government had optimistically changed the name to Playa de Amor. All the sex cabanas were torn down.
The honeymooning Tumbrells—Daniel and Melodie—walked holding hands along the dreamlike shore. They were excited to be together, far from their families and the gray Canadian winter. Neither of them had ever been to the tropics, so they took pictures of practically everything, even their own footprints in the sand.
Daniel was thirty-two, Melodie twenty-nine. They’d met in the beer line at a Blue Jays game and wed six months later. As a gift Daniel’s mother offered them first-class tickets to the sunniest destination they could think of. The newlyweds chose Havana over Miami because they’d heard the crime rate in dictatorships was much lower. Melodie aimed to get pregnant on the honeymoon, a family tradition. Daniel hadn’t yet told her about his privately schooled child from a previous relationship, and this would be the focus of many future quarrels.
For now, though, the Tumbrells were close and carefree.
“Is this amazing or what?” Melodie said, skipping clear of an incoming wavelet.
Daniel kicked at the water shouting, “Let’s not ever go home! Adiós, Toronto!”
Farther up the beach Melodie spotted a half-buried seashell that looked even pinker than the sand. She bent to pick it up, but it wouldn’t budge. Daniel came over to help. They noticed two dark circles on the pink shell’s surface.
Melodie said, “Look, Danny, somebody drew on it. Are those smiley faces?”
The shell felt tough and rubbery when Daniel tried to pry it loose. He wondered if it was some exotic species of barnacle.
“Maybe it’s attached to something under the sand,” his bride said. “Leave it there, honey, we’ll go find another one.”
“No way.” Daniel stoutly dropped to his knees. “I’m going to dig this sucker up!”
The policemen who arrived later were as shocked as the Tumbrells, for tourist murders are extremely rare in Cuba. The pantless victim, who’d been strangled and buried, carried a U.S. passport and two soggy Cohiba knockoffs in the breast pocket of his linen suit jacket. The youngest of the Cuban police officers identified the artwork on the dead American’s scrotum as emoji characters.
The following day, on a different beach 257 nautical miles away, a man walking an unruly Irish setter received a phone call informing him that the body of Martin Trebeaux had been found.
“That was quick,” said Dominick “Big Noogie” Aeola.
He was annoyed though not surprised to learn that Trebeaux had lied about having a high-ranking connection inside the Cuban government, that there was no secret source of sand that could be barged back to Florida for lucrative re-sale.
“Scum of the scum,” Big Noogie said. He hung up thinking: At least the jackoff fixed my beach.
The Royal Pyrenees Hotel and Resort was rebounding toward a banner season. Big Noogie surveyed the cheerful crowds at the water’s edge and wiggled his hairy toes in the sugary lushness of Trebeaux’s final delivery. Nearby, a bunch of kids scrambled to build a sand castle, racing the tide.
A man war-painted with zinc sunblock ambled up to the mobster and asked, “What’s your dog’s name?”
“John,” Big Noogie said. “Just plain John.”
“He must be smart. Where’d you get him trained?”
“Harvard.”
“No, really.”
“He’s dumb as a turd,” said Big Noogie, “really.”
Farther down the beach lay Juveline on a garish floral print towel. She was rocking to Flo Rida and catching some rays. When Big Noogie sat down beside her, she plucked out her earbuds and said, “Don’t stay mad, okay? Marty didn’t mean shit to me, Noog. I just wanted to see Cuba.”
“Next time call a travel agent. Don’t bang a stranger.”
“Jesus, I said I was sorry like a thousand fuckin’ times.”
“Shut up, I gotta make a call. Then we’ll grab some lunch.”
Brock Richardson was home, watching Deb pack her bags, when his phone rang. He assured Big Noogie that everything had been taken care of.
“Also, your friend Angelo has been added to our plaintiff list,” he said.
“I was just about to ask.”
“Dominick, when is your son’s wedding? I’d like to send a gift.”
“Not necessary,” Big Noogie said. “We’re all square. His girl’s still creamin’ over that diamond.”
“I’m sure she is. It’s a beauty.”
Richardson said goodbye to Big Noogie and went outside for Deb’s grand departure. She was taking one of his Porsches, so her bags didn’t fit. A limo service had sent a Suburban to serve as the cargo escort.
Deb had on the same hot Jimmy Choos that she’d worn to Yancy’s house the day the mutant rats scared her off. Yancy had mailed the shoes back with a note saying: “You’ll need these in your next life.”
To Brock, standing expressionless in the driveway, Deb said, “I’m sorry about this, but I really need some time alone to think.”
She wasn’t dressed for thinking. She was dressed for cocktails at the Delano.
Richardson kissed her goodbye saying, “I understand completely.”
She was in a sulk because he hadn’t dashed out and bought her a new engagement ring. It wasn’t that he refused to do it; he just wasn’t in a hurry.
Her face was unstreaked by tears as she got in the Porsche and sped away, trailed by her luggage courier. Richardson went back inside and flopped onto the bed. The voice coming from the television was his own, cool and persuasive, cataloging the many gruesome side effects of Pitrolux armpit gel.
“And remember,” the voice said, “I’m not just your lawyer, I’m a fellow victim!”
“Fucking A!” Brock Richardson cheered.
On the nightstand was the portable, battery-powered blood pressure cuff. With a hungry grin he reached for it.
His housekeeper found him five hours later. He should have quit after four.
—
They named their new agency Ampergrodt Coolman Legends, ACL for short. The square footage of the two side-by-side offices was ident
ical, as was the window space. It was a starter suite on the third floor, overlooking a drab stretch of Beverly Drive. Each of the partners had hot Asian assistants with marketing degrees from Southern Cal and no patience for grab-ass.
ACL lost its marquee client the very first week, when Buck Nance announced he was quitting television. Lane Coolman and Jon David Ampergrodt begged him to reconsider. The network even offered to rip up his hefty new Bayou Brethren contract and double the money. Inconceivably, Buck said no.
By killing his armed stalker—a violent street felon known as Benny the Blister—the Nance patriarch had been transformed in the public’s eye from a rehabbing racist to a selfless civic hero. The media was delighted to forget about his repugnant performance at the Parched Pirate and the toxic YouTube diatribes. Buck was suddenly, according to People magazine, the most-admired man in America. He had courageously attacked and overpowered a trigger-happy maniac, saving the lives of God knows how many innocent bystanders—bystanders of all races, creeds and sexual inclinations. A New York publisher offered him two million dollars to do a book about what had happened in Key West.
Buck was the big story. Buck was the bomb.
And Buck was done.
Hundreds of thousands of anguished fans circulated a “Come Home, Captain Cock!” petition on social media, yet he remained unswayed. In an interview with Polka Radar Online, he disclosed that he was moving to Milwaukee and opening a music shop. He said his dream was to introduce young people to the joys of the accordion.
To his credit, Buck never ratted out his brothers as Rombergs. Buddy and Clee Roy inked new management deals with Amp. Junior and Miracle talked at length with ICM and CAA, but they ended up signing with Lane Coolman. Krystal Nance spent a week meditating under hot stones at Canyon Ranch before declaring that she, too, was quitting the show. Her replacement would be the crusty common-law widow of Buck Nance’s psycho-peckerhead stalker.
Signing Mona Krill was Coolman’s brainstorm, though he hadn’t been able to track her down and get the deal nailed. For help Coolman reached out to Andrew Yancy thinking their mutual life-threatening adventures with Benny the Blister had forged some sort of man-bond. He was mistaken.
“Why won’t you help me find her? Come on, bro,” he pleaded.
“I’m a busy guy,” Yancy said.
“Busy with what?”
“Busting a sushi bar that’s serving salmonella rolls, for starters. Then tomorrow it’s a bagel joint where the sourdough smells like mangrove mud. This happens to be my job.” Yancy spoke with no rancor.
Coolman said, “Did I forget to mention we intend to pay you?”
“In that case, I’ll do it—for twenty-five hundred bucks.”
“Whoa.”
“That’s my freelance fee these days.”
“And you seriously won’t cut me a break?”
“Twenty-five is what I need,” Yancy said. “Yes or no, bro?”
“Fine, whatever. Lock it in.”
“One more thing. My friend Miso—you promised to find her some work.”
“She didn’t tell you? I got her in that new Seth Rogen movie, the one they’re shooting in Lauderdale,” Coolman said. “She even has a line.”
“Let’s hear it.”
“ ‘What’s your problem, asshole?’ And then she slaps Seth’s face. Only it’s more like, ‘What’s your problem, asshole?’ Seth says she totally kills it.’ ’
“I’d be stunned if she didn’t.”
“And FYI, it’s not ‘Miso’ anymore. It’s Jane.”
Yancy laughed and said, “A perfectly lovely name.”
Mona had quit Stoney’s and was tending bar on Big Coppitt. Every so often Yancy saw her riding that droopy little bicycle along the highway. He drove down to the island at midnight and caught her at the end of her shift.
As he anticipated, the news of Coolman’s offer unofficially ended Mona’s mourning period for Benny Krill. There was a bayfront condo waiting in Pensacola, and premium roosters to be groomed. “Sign my cracker ass up!” she said.
The following afternoon Yancy dropped her at Miami International and texted Coolman, who didn’t respond immediately because he was at Square One in East Hollywood, having a civilized breakfast with his future ex-wife. He and Rachel had actually settled on a digestible number for the divorce payout. Their lawyers would pitch a hissy, but screw ’em. The informal negotiation was made possible because Rachel had landed a rich new boyfriend—an actor, not an agent, Coolman was relieved to learn. She promised him that she was done with payback nooners at the Wilshire, and he apologized for being a lousy unfaithful husband.
Later, watching his future ex-wife slide into a yellow Lambo driven by an impossibly buff young airhead, Coolman could only marvel at the durability of stereotypes. On the way back to the office he called Yancy to thank him for locating Mona Krill, who with so many rough edges seemed destined for glory on Bayou Brethren.
Yancy said, “I’m thrilled for all of you. Now please send me my money.”
He wanted to pay back Merry Mansfield, who’d loaned him the cash to close on Brock Richardson’s lot. Yancy planned to re-title the property with a conservation easement so that nobody could build anything on it, not even a tiki hut, for all eternity.
Rogelio Burton had told him that he was crazy, that he could resell the land for at least a hundred grand.
“Sell it to who—another shitweasel like Richardson?” Yancy said. “I’d rather just plant some buttonwoods and watch ’em grow.”
The detective pressed his friend to explain why a savvy Miami attorney would unload a prime lot in the Florida Keys for a ludicrous fraction of its true value.
Yancy failed to exude innocence when he replied, “Panic sale, Rog.”
“And what would be the cause of Mr. Richardson’s panic?”
“Possibly the Calzone crime family. But that’s only a guess.”
Burton said, “Oh fuck. Forget I asked.”
“Specifically, a man named Dominick Aeola. His associates fondly call him Big Noogie. One day his service dog got loose at Mallory Square, and I brought it back to him. He seemed keen on repaying the favor.”
“Andrew, this subject is now closed forever. Don’t say one word about this to anybody, not a fuckin’ soul, unless you want to spend what’s left of your pitiful career scrapin’ dead roaches and mouse shit off your shoes.”
Yancy wanted Burton to know it was Dominick Aeola who’d set the property’s purchase price at the absurd figure of $2,500. “Hell, I would’ve jumped on it even at fair-market,” he said. “That’s the truth, Rog.”
“And paid for it how?”
“I don’t know. Sell my Picassos?”
“Sonny wants to see you for lunch. Try not to let it slip that your new BFF is a mafioso.”
The sheriff set the meeting at Stoney’s Crab Palace, of all places, which Yancy had shut down once again due to cavorting bacteria. Tommy Lombardo had overruled the closure, allowing Brennan to reopen the dining area on the condition that all tuna entrees were eighty-sixed until the lab reports came back from the CDC.
When Yancy arrived, Sonny Summers was at a two-top morosely scanning the menu.
“What looks good?” Yancy joked.
“The door.”
“This isn’t a restaurant, it’s a fungus factory. Why’d you pick this god-awful joint?”
“Because I knew there wouldn’t be a crowd,” answered the sheriff, who preferred not to be seen with Yancy.
Out of gastric caution they ordered bottled beer and scorched chicken. Yancy commended Sonny Summers for his poise at the press conference announcing that the Conch Train case had been solved, and that the assailant of Abdul-Halim Shamoon was the same dirtbag who died at the hands of Buck Nance in the melee on South Roosevelt.
“Strange,” the sheriff said to Yancy, “but I never got the whole story about that traffic accident.”
“Meaning how I happened to be driving the Sprinter? It was all in the
report—Benny Krill snatched me at gunpoint from outside the Pier House. Coolman, Ampergrodt, the bodyguard, they all back me up on that. Didn’t you read their statements?”
“Andrew, I honestly don’t want to know how you ended up in the middle of this particular goat fuck. All I care about is that your name was all over the goddamn media. Again.”
“I’m not getting my badge back, am I?”
“This can’t possibly come as a shock to you.”
The food arrived, and Sonny Summers tentatively bit into a drumstick.
Yancy flailed onward: “You had a dead tourist, tons of bad press and nobody in custody. Now the homicide’s solved, the bad guy’s deceased, and the victim’s family is sitting there with Matt Lauer thanking you, personally, for closure. Meanwhile your only opponent in the sheriff’s race dropped out, which means the election’s a done deal. Sonny, you’ve got the damn job locked for another four years! What do you have to lose by hiring me back on the force?”
The sheriff took a hasty slug of beer and swished it around his mouth.
Yancy waited until he was done. “Sonny, this case got closed because I found Benny Krill. It was me on his dumb redneck ass—not your guys.”
“But see, unfortunately, you ended up in the dumb redneck’s custody—not the other way around. If it wasn’t for Buck Nance, Krill would’ve shot you dead in the street.”
“Point is, I was ready to take a bullet from that shitbird.” The words came out with an edge of futility that Yancy had hoped to conceal.
Brennan slunk up to the table to ask if they were enjoying their meals. Yancy told him to go away.
The sheriff gave up on lunch saying, “This could be buzzard meat for all I know.”
“Be straight with me, Sonny. Is there something else in play here?”
“The woman driving the other car. The one who hit the Sprinter van.”
“I remember, sure. What about her?”
“The driver’s license she gave was a fake. We still don’t know her real name.”