For concealment he’d immersed her diamond ring in a bowl of fish dip. It was smoked king mackerel, Yancy being addicted to the stuff.
“Follow me,” he said, and headed for the kitchen.
The bride-to-be was standing at his side as he opened the refrigerator door. Before he could reach for the mackerel dip, she grabbed his arm and said, “What is that?”
“Oh. Human hair.” He held up one of the clear baggies.
“But…why?” Deb asked, backing up.
“Don’t you worry, it’s not mine.”
“I mean, Jesus, where did…I mean, who…?”
“Donor unknown,” Yancy said.
Out she ran, leaving the front door ajar. Her mode of departure was a loud red Porsche.
Yancy sat on the front stoop thinking he might as well hang on to the diamond for a while. He opened his laptop to check the tides. The sky was bright, the breeze was getting warmer. He felt like going fishing.
—
Merry Mansfield held the phone to Lane Coolman’s ear, because his hands were bound.
“Amp, it’s me,” he said.
“Where the fuck are you?”
Jon David Ampergrodt liked to be called Amp. He was the chairman-slash-director of Platinum Artists Management, the talent agency that employed Lane Coolman.
“Dude, I’ve been kidnapped!”
“Oh, that’s original.”
“I’m dead serious,” Coolman said. “They snatched me in Key West. Broad daylight!”
“Snatched, as in Taken?”
“Totally.”
“Jesus Christ, what about Buck? Did they hurt him? How much money do they want?”
“They don’t have Buck. Just me.”
Amp sighed irritably. “Then where the fuck is Buck?”
“They’re asking for five hundred grand cash,” said Coolman. “All fifties and twenties.”
“This is a joke, right? You’re pranking my ass.”
“Amp, they’re gonna kill me deader than the last Nic Cage movie they don’t get paid by sunset tomorrow. Understand? Five hundred grand in a gray Balenciaga—hang on a sec…”
“The new ostrich one,” Merry clarified.
“You heard that, right? The ostrich Balenciaga,” Coolman relayed to Amp. “They said to leave it on the third to the last car of the five p.m. Conch Train. Some corny tourist trolley—”
“Lane!”
“What?”
“One more time: Where the fuck is Buck Nance?”
“I don’t have a clue. I’ve been tied up, literally.”
“You weren’t with him?”
“No, I got taken hostage,” Coolman said. “I thought I mentioned that.”
“FYI, the gig was a motherfucking disaster. Buck got chased out of the bar,” Amp said. “It’s all over social media.”
“Well, I can’t go searching for him right this minute because, see, there’s a loaded gun aimed at my head.”
“That’s just great.”
“Can you get working on the ransom, ASAP?”
“We’ll talk later.”
Amp clicked off. Coolman stared at the phone.
“Doesn’t sound too promising,” Merry said.
Zeto shrugged. “He’s a douche, just like Marky Mark said. Nobody gives a shit if he gets whacked. Let’s go to the boat.”
The Tesla had no trunk, so Coolman was permitted to ride in the backseat. This slender bit of good fortune allowed him to press his case for mercy. Zeto remained cold to his pleas, but Merry seemed open to the idea of giving Coolman more time to raise some funds.
“Say nobody comes through. How much you got in the bank?” she said.
“It’s all frozen. I’m in the middle of a divorce.”
“Because you cheated on her, right?”
He said, “Listen, the agency will definitely pay the five hundred. I mean guaranteed. Amp’s got a lot on his plate right now but, once he focuses, it’s a done deal.”
Zeto, over his shoulder: “No, asswipe, you are the done deal.”
At the dock they hustled Coolman aboard an old lobster boat. Zeto ordered Merry to go back and wait in the Tesla while he took Coolman out to sea. Merry said she wanted to ride along, and lingered in the wheelhouse until Zeto ran her off.
What saved Coolman from ending up as shark bait was a damaged wire that made it impossible to start the boat’s engine. Zeto failed to diagnose the problem, and in any case possessed minimal skills with a toolbox. After half an hour he gave up in a funk that had been aggravated by Merry, repeatedly winking the high-beams of the Tesla to pester him.
Zeto shoved Coolman into the forward cabin of the boat, taped his mouth, re-cinched the ropes and left him there. The cramped space reeked of sweat, black mold and decomposed shellfish, though Coolman wouldn’t have slept a wink on rose-scented linens at a Four Seasons. He remained shaken by his phone conversation with Amp, who either hadn’t grasped the gravity of Coolman’s situation or had decided he was dispensable.
That the agency’s most promising curator of talent had been kidnapped by murderous lowlifes should have upset Amp more than the fact that some redneck chicken-plucker had disappeared on a bender. For the moment Buck Nance was a mega-client—but Lane Coolman was the shining future of Platinum Artists. Amp himself had said so many times.
As he lay in the rank darkness contemplating the prospect of a watery death, Coolman found his thoughts inchworming toward Rachel, his future ex-wife. The cause of their pending disunion was, as Merry Mansfield had surmised, his own uncountable infidelities. These had sparked a series of retaliatory flings by Rachel. If she’d been doing only the Comcast guy, the marriage might have been saved. However, it was her vindictive nature to arrange indiscreet sex with Lane’s rival agents from CAA or ICM, and always at the Beverly Wilshire. Worse, she delighted in paying for the suite with his credit card. He recalled his outrage after one such tryst when the hotel billed him for a room-service delivery that included five cans of Reddi-wip, a single Maraschino cherry and a quad-pack of D batteries.
Rachel was the undisputed queen of the revenge fuck in a town with many contenders for the title. Another memorable hosing: Coolman had foolishly taken a late-ish Friday lunch with one of his hot girlfriends at the Ivy, where he was spotted by a junior turd fondler from William Morris Endeavor named Kane Drucker. Before Coolman had even touched his calamari app, Drucker was on the phone with Rachel. The two of them lay in a sweaty tangle by the time Coolman and his girlfriend had finished their huckleberry sorbets.
And now Rachel’s attorneys were doing to Lane in divorce court what she’d done to Drucker and all the others at the Wilshire. The judge had granted Coolman a living allowance (pitiable by Hollywood standards) while Rachel’s hawk-eyed forensic accountant pored through his bank records and brokerage statements. Such was the desolate state of Coolman’s liquidity that, by his own calculations, he had at most $21,300 to contribute to his own ransom.
“Let me call Amp again,” he begged Merry the next morning, after she peeled off the duct tape.
“You lucked out for now, Bob. The mechanic’s too stoned to fix the boat.”
She didn’t tell him that she was the one who’d mangled the ignition wire, foiling Zeto’s plan to kill him at sea.
“Where’s your psycho partner?” Coolman asked.
“Finding me a crash car. We’ve got a job this morning.” Merry was wearing a denim jacket and a long cotton skirt with an imitation Seminole bead pattern. Her hair was in a saucy ponytail. To Coolman, who’d spent the night huffing lobster fumes, she smelled heavenly.
She’d brought him a banana smoothie, put the straw to his lips.
“Suck,” she commanded.
After downing the whole cup, he told Merry he had to relieve himself.
“Do you see a restroom, Bob? This is not a fucking Carnival cruise.”
“Cut me a break, okay? I’ve been holding it all night.”
“Make it fast.” She stood him up, unz
ipped his pants and aimed his cock at a random bucket left by the lobster crew. “And if you get hard,” she warned, “I’ll push you overboard myself.”
Coolman was too unnerved by the grab to become aroused.
“I used to be a nurse,” said Merry.
“No, you didn’t.”
“Okay, I worked in a nursing home for a summer. Same deal. I had to handle lots of dicks.”
“Welcome to my world,” Coolman said.
While waiting for his bladder to unseize, he pitched an idea.
“Tell Zeto I got out of the ropes and overpowered you,” he said to Merry. “Knocked you down, jumped off the boat and ran away. What’s he gonna say? Tell him it’s all his fault because his lame knots came loose.”
“Would you pee already? We’ve got a big day.”
“You don’t want to go to prison for a murder. That would be insane.”
“Swear to God, you jiggle one drop on me, Bob—I just did my nails!”
Her watch said eight a.m. It was three hours earlier in Los Angeles, a bad time for engaging Amp.
“Is there a Bank of America down here?” Coolman asked. “I’ve got like twenty-one grand in a checking account, plus the two in my wallet.”
“Oh, Zeto already took that.”
“Twenty-one isn’t so terrible, right? It’s all yours if you take me to the bank and let me go. Screw Zeto.”
Merry flicked Coolman’s penis back into his pants and dumped the bucket of piss overboard. “You’re losing traction with me,” she said.
As expected, Amp didn’t answer his phone. When Coolman blamed the time-zone difference, Merry just shrugged.
Zeto arrived, untied Coolman and led him to the Tesla. This time he let Merry take the wheel while he sat in the backseat pressing the gun to Coolman’s ribs.
“We’re going to Bob’s bank,” Merry announced.
Zeto scowled. “Says who?”
“God, everything’s a power play with you. Take a fucking chill pill. The man’s in the middle of a soul-crushing divorce, yet he’s generously offered to give us every dime he’s got left.”
“You’re shitting me, right?” Coolman said. Again he felt like a moron.
In the rearview he saw Merry wink at him.
“Damn, I just remembered,” she said. “The banks don’t open for an hour.”
“Forget it. We ain’t got an hour,” Zeto muttered. “Let’s go get the car.”
Merry wanted to stop at a CVS so she could wash her hands and buy a fresh razor. Zeto told her to use the one she had.
“The one I cut myself with yesterday? No thank you.”
Coolman became conscious of the fact that he was the only occupant of the vehicle who hadn’t showered the night before, one drawback of being a hostage. He braced for a low comment about his body odor.
“You don’t need a new razor,” Zeto carped at Merry.
“Now you’re an expert on grooming vaginas. Amazing,” she said, parking at a drugstore on Truman.
While she was inside, Coolman tried to talk some sense into Zeto, who shut him up with a sharp twist of the gun barrel. Up close Coolman noticed that Zeto had a thin pinkish scar circling his neck. He decided not to ask about it.
The new crash car was an ’05 four-door Honda Civic that Zeto had bought for nine hundred cash and stashed behind a Wendy’s. Merry gave the Civic a round-the-block spin and pronounced it a death trap.
“Like you got a choice,” Zeto said.
“The brakes are totally fried, dude.”
“Trebeaux’s staying at the Reach. I sent a chick to his room. She’s gonna make sure he’s outbound on Roosevelt at noon sharp.”
Merry said, “Men. I swear.”
“Past the stop light at Kennedy, that’s where you hit him. This time no cops—just stall him for a minute till I get there.”
“Dazzle him, you mean.”
Zeto said, “Don’t fuck it up again.”
They went to scout the intersection, the Tesla following the Honda. Merry pulled off at a strip mall and Zeto turned in beside her, steering with his gun hand free. She got out and walked up to his window.
“I see no problems. This’ll be short and sweet,” she said.
“Fifteen minutes he’ll be coming by with the girl. Meanwhile, this sorry fucker”—referring to Coolman—“is stinkin’ up my interior.”
“Then let him ride with me.”
“For the bump?” Zeto snickered.
“Why not?” Merry said. “The kiddie-proof locks on that junker still work.”
Coolman spoke up. “Seriously, guys? I don’t want to be involved in this.”
“Go,” Zeto said. “Make one wrong move, say one wrong word, I’ll shoot your phony California ass. Just sit still with your mouth shut and let the lady do the talkin’.”
Merry practically skipped around the car to open Coolman’s door, saying, “Come on, Bob. It’ll be something different!”
—
Sheriff Sonny Summers had never watched Bayou Brethren, but he knew who Buck Nance was, and of course he’d already heard about the incident at the Parched Pirate. Now some fast-talking shaker named Jon David Ampergrodt was on the phone explaining that his company—make that his “agency”—represented Mr. Nance.
“We haven’t heard from him, and frankly we’re concerned for his safety,” Ampergrodt said.
The sheriff said the protocol on missing persons required at least twenty-four hours without contact before a report could be filed.
“The last thing we want is a missing person’s report, okay? Not happening. Nothing in writing.”
“But that’s the only way we can start looking for him—after somebody makes a report.”
“Oh, come on, sheriff.”
“Has it been twenty-four hours?”
“No, but Mr. Nance isn’t just some homeless tweaker. We’re talking about the most popular television personality in the whole damn country, and he’s disappeared in your little tourist town. Is that really the kind of publicity you want?”
Sonny Summers wasn’t the sharpest tack on the corkboard but he recognized a condescending asshole when he heard one. Still, Jon David what’s-his-face had a point. If Buck Nance came to a sordid end in Key West, the headlines might adversely affect the city’s latest multimillion-dollar advertising push to attract the elusive non-drunk segment of the tourist trade, specifically couples with children. The island was aggressively marketing itself as a safe and carefree family destination, and Sonny Summers well understood his role as a steward of that myth.
“Maybe Mr. Nance is just partying with some young lady he met,” the sheriff said. “It’s been known to happen down here.”
“He’s happily married for twenty-nine years!” exclaimed Jon David Shithead. “Don’t you follow the show? He’s a lay minister at his church, for fuck’s sake.”
Sonny Summers said he didn’t watch Bayou Brethren because it aired the same night he coached Little League, which was untrue.
“I’ll FedEx you a box set of the first season,” declared Mr. Nance’s obnoxious representative. “In the meantime, on behalf of the family, I’d like you to green-light a major manhunt. Discreetly, of course.”
“That would basically be impossible in a town this small. Everybody’ll know about it in five minutes.”
“Nothing’s impossible, sheriff. When are you up for re-election?”
“This year.”
“And I don’t suppose you could use a fifty-thousand-dollar campaign donation? No strings attached.”
Unlike some officeholders in South Florida, Sonny Summers owned a healthy fear of criminal indictment. “The limit on individual contributions is a thousand bucks,” he informed Jon David Douche Bag.
“You don’t think I’ve got fifty friends in Hollywood who can write a check that big? Make it fifty-one, including me. Do the math.”
Sonny Summers did the math, on his pocket calculator. Fifty-one grand worked out to roughly $1.33 for every re
gistered voter from Duval Street to Key Largo. It was enough money to buy truckloads of “Keep Sonny” yard signs and bumper stickers, money he’d no longer have to pry from local merchants, who in return often demanded favors such as free passes on future DUIs.
Except for the political demands of the job, Sonny Summers enjoyed being the sheriff of the Keys. He didn’t mind occasionally wearing a blazer or shaking hands at the Elks Lodge or flying off to law-enforcement conventions in Vegas. Physically he was far more active now than he’d been as a deputy, and as a bonus the pernicious hemorrhoids he’d acquired during all those nights on road patrol were finally deflating. Even at the height of the season, not much happened on the long chain of islands that required Sonny Summers’s undivided attention. He could count on one hand the number of press conferences he’d had. That was because serious crimes in Monroe County were usually overshadowed in the news cycle by some ghastly carnage up in Miami.
Colorful, hard-charging sheriffs historically end up squirming in front of grand juries, so civic leaders appreciated Sonny Summers’s low profile, aversion to bold ideas and instinct for ducking controversies. At his wife’s urging he’d once explored the notion of running for state attorney general, only to discover that a law degree was required. Sonny Summers was privately relieved by this deficiency on his résumé. He would have been content to remain sheriff forever.
Unfortunately, getting re-elected was expensive.
“Send the check to my campaign committee,” he said to Jon David Dickbrain. “My assistant will give you the address.”
“And you’ll get your best people out looking for Mr. Nance?”
“Right away.”
Sonny Summers felt sure the missing man would turn up soon in a stewed daze, as other wayward celebrities did, shambling with a venereal sting down Duval Street. His handlers would spirit him away, and that would be the end of his raunchy misadventure in Key West.
It was purely wishful thinking by the sheriff.
FOUR
“You seem a little nervous, Bob.”
“No shit,” said Coolman. “It’s my second car crash in two days.”
“Rule number one: Relax your body.” Merry Mansfield elevated her skirt as she settled behind the steering wheel. “Stay as limp as possible. That’s why so many drunk drivers walk away from bad wrecks, they’re like rag dolls. Tensing up is what causes your major neck and spine issues. Also, keep your seat belt snug.”