Nature Girl

  “Can I go now?” Dealey asked. “Take the damn camera, if you want it.”

  The man grinned. “Tell you what—I wouldn’t mind havin’ some private home movies of Miss Honey Santana.”

  “It’s all yours, Louis.”

  “But see, here’s the problem.” He raised his bandaged mitt. “I can’t work all them teensy video buttons with my hand wrapped up such as it is—the focus and zoom and whatnot. Shit, I can barely find the trigger on this damn thing.”

  He turned the shotgun away from Dealey and casually blew out the window on the driver’s side. Dealey screamed and clamped his hands over his ears.

  Piejack himself seemed stunned by the force of the blast. He cracked the passenger door to switch on the dome light, then sourly contemplated the broken glass.

  Dealey, who like many private investigators had developed a skill for lipreading, saw Piejack say, “Shit, I thought the fuckin’ window was down.”

  “Let me go!” Dealey pleaded. “Take the video camera, my credit cards, whatever the hell you want. Just let me walk.”

  “Not till you get me some sexy movies of Honey. Then you’re free to go,” Dealey observed the man saying. “But till then, Mr. Dealey, you work for me.”

  “Please don’t do this.”

  “Welcome aboard,” said Louis Piejack.

  Thirteen

  At dawn Fry got up to run. The weather was ideal, clear and cool. He went all the way to the caution light at the Tamiami Trail, where a family of tourists had piled out of an RV to snap pictures of a dead python on the road. Heading back toward town, Fry turned in to the trailer court where his mom lived. He passed two unchained pit bulls asleep near an empty black Escalade, and he thought it might be a good omen; usually the dogs were awake, waiting to chase him.

  When Fry reached his mother’s street, he sat down under a neighbor’s mango tree. From there he could see the painted trailer, and in the front yard three figures that had to be his mom and the couple who’d come to visit her. They were strapping the kayaks—or trying to—on top of her car.

  Fry considered going to help, but he decided to stay where he was. Once his mother saw him, she’d rush over and hug him and then start bragging to the visitors about his track trophies or whatever. Fry wasn’t up for that scene so early in the morning.

  It worried him to think of his mom leading an expedition into the Ten Thousand Islands. Any fool could mark a marine chart at the kitchen table, but once you were out there it was a jungled maze; even experienced boaters could get lost. Fry knew his mother hadn’t been kayaking for years, since before the divorce, although she claimed to have been practicing while he was at school. He hoped she wasn’t feeling too ambitious. A leisurely day trip around Chokoloskee Bay would be perfect—from there a blind goose could find its way back to the mainland.

  As he watched the visitors get in the car, Fry was nagged by the suspicion that they weren’t really old friends of his mother. She’d been too sketchy about the connection. He didn’t know why she would lie about who they were, but he felt almost certain that she was up to more mischief.

  After she drove away, Fry stepped from the shade of the mango tree and resumed his run, heading in the opposite direction. He made it as far as the corner when he was almost clipped by a pine-green pickup with two men in the cab. Fry darted off the road, but not before he caught a good look at the passenger.

  It was Mr. Piejack.

  Fry couldn’t imagine a single good reason for that perverted turd to be cruising his mother’s street. He watched the brake lights flicker as the truck slowed briefly in front of the painted trailer, then sped off.

  On an impulse Fry ran after the pickup. He kept running long after it was out of sight.

  Honey Santana had awakened to faraway harmonies. She’d filled the coffeemaker and gone to rouse the obnoxious telemarketer and his girlfriend.

  Twenty minutes later they’d all sat down for breakfast. Boyd Shreave said, with his cocky half-sneer, “Hope we didn’t keep you up last night. The walls in this tin can are pretty thin.”

  How very classy, Honey thought. With an innocent expression, she replied, “I did hear some banging, but it only lasted about two minutes.”

  Shreave reddened, while Eugenie Fonda stifled a chuckle.

  “Would either of you like an English muffin?” Honey asked.

  Shreave didn’t say much after that. He inhaled a plate of scrambled eggs and went to the living room to reconnect with the television world. While Genie washed the dishes, Honey snuck outside and double-checked the gear: two pup tents, three sleeping bags, one waterproof box of matches, a first-aid kit, a fry pan, plastic forks and spoons, a short-handled ax, a dozen granola bars, six dehydrated Thai-style meals, two gallons of distilled water, a half-dozen packs of dried apples and figs, powdered Gatorade, insect repellent (a bottle of Cutter, spiced with garlic and cloves) and a jumbo Ziploc bag of Cheerios. All of it had to be fitted into two duffel bags, one for each kayak. The process of loading so much gear was further complicated by the fact that Boyd Shreave and his girlfriend didn’t know they’d be camping overnight, and Honey wanted to keep it a secret.

  As soon as she re-entered the trailer, she was drawn aside by Eugenie, who whispered, “There’s no beach around here, is there? Be honest.”

  Honey said, “It’s still beautiful. Trust me, you’ve never seen anything like it.”

  Shreave’s girlfriend looked downcast. She turned and said, “Boyd, can I talk to you for a second? Hey, Boyd!”

  He was gleefully enthralled by an infomercial that he’d come upon while surfing the channels. A fossilized TV actor named Erik Estrada was hawking lakefront real estate in a newly discovered “paradise” known as Arkansas.

  “Know what this proves? That absolutely anything is possible!” Shreave crowed. “This is the greatest damn country in the history of the world. I mean, Erik Estrada? Good God, Genie, come look at this!”

  She walked over and switched off the television and led Shreave down the hall. Even after the bedroom door closed, Honey could hear her saying: “I don’t want to stay here. I want to go to Sarasota and check into the Ritz-Carlton. I want a massage, Boyd. I want a sandy beach where I can wear my new thong. I want to go back to the room and order French wine and watch dirty movies on Payper-View.”

  Honey Santana hurried outside and started stuffing the gear into the duffel bags. Her whole plan would be doomed if Shreave caved in, which seemed highly probable. Were he able to resist the vision of Eugenie Fonda power-tanning in a bikini, he’d surely be won over by the promise of a candlelit pornfest.

  Honey feared she might crumble to pieces if Shreave bailed out now. Working late into the night, she’d fine-tuned her campfire lecture. A man such as he—a man who phoned people at the dinner hour and then insulted them coarsely when they objected—needed a lesson in manners and propriety. A few days in the wild would strip away all that smugness. A tour through the islands would expand his mind, open his eyes and deflate that superior attitude. Boyd Shreave would come back humbled and enriched. Of this Honey had convinced herself, and it was crushing to think that her mission would fizzle on the launchpad if his girlfriend bugged out.

  Then Boyd and Eugenie emerged from the trailer—he sporting a new Indiana Jones–style hat; she sullenly smearing sunblock in her cleavage. Honey was practically giddy with relief. Wordlessly the couple helped her hoist the kayaks onto the car and, after a struggle, cinch them down. Shreave displayed a striking ineptitude for tying knots, but Honey didn’t mind redoing the straps. She was astonished that Shreave had rejected the decadent Ritz-Carlton scenario in favor of blisters and bug bites, and she wondered if she had misjudged him. Time would tell.

  “That’s an awful lot of stuff for a day trip,” he remarked as they crammed the duffels into the backseat.

  “Always be prepared,” Honey said lightly.

  To her boyfriend, Eugenie muttered: “Now she sounds like you.”

  They launch
ed the kayaks next to the Rod and Gun Club. Eugenie graciously accepted Honey’s offer of a life vest but Shreave said he didn’t need one, citing several record-breaking performances on his high school swim team. Eugenie didn’t even pretend to believe the stories and Honey had trouble keeping a straight face, especially when Shreave lost his footing and sledded on his ass down the boat ramp. The fearful look in his eyes was not that of a man who was one with the water.

  With almost no arguing, he and his girlfriend chose the yellow kayak. Honey held it steady while they stork-stepped aboard. After a few dicey moments they finally got settled—Boyd in the stern, Eugenie in the bow—and Honey eased them into the current. Quickly she climbed into the other kayak and followed.

  The tide was falling hard, which was promising. A downstream paddle on a deep, wide river should have been effortless, even for amateurs. Yet right away the yellow kayak began zigzagging erratically. Before Honey could catch up, it plowed into a tangle of mangroves along the far shore. Shreave was cussing so loudly that he flushed a white heron and a flock of gray pelicans. Honey arrived on scene and saw Eugenie wildly swinging her paddle at spiderwebs, Shreave using his new hat to shield his face from the hail of broken twigs and leaves.

  Honey was embarrassed by their racket, which had sullied an otherwise-lovely morning. She tied the bow of the Texans’ kayak to the stern of hers, and with some effort towed them out of the clinging trees. It was only a hundred-odd yards farther to the mouth of the river, beyond which lay Chokoloskee Bay, as slick as a mirror.

  When they reached open water, Honey unhitched the other kayak and watched as it again started to vector wildly under Shreave’s rudder. She recalled from her trips with Perry Skinner that the weaker paddler should always take the bow, and therein lay the problem: Shreave’s girlfriend was clearly the stronger of the two. Knowing that he wasn’t nimble enough to switch places without capsizing the craft, Honey instead suggested that Eugenie Fonda lighten her stroke.

  Shreave piped: “Yeah, I tried to show her the right way to do it but she won’t listen.”

  “That’s because you’re a spaz,” Eugenie pointed out. She was still picking dewy filaments of spiderwebs from her hair. “My ninety-year-old grandma can paddle better than you, Boyd.”

  Honey Santana began hearing distant echoes, so she covered her ears and shut her eyes. Soon there was the dreaded music—it sounded like Celia Cruz, whom her parents adored, and possibly Nine Inch Nails in the background. Honey took deep breaths, as she’d been advised to do by many therapists. If only these two would stop fighting, she thought. They’re ruining everything.

  Boyd Shreave shouted: “What are you doing over there?”

  At first Honey didn’t realize he was addressing her.

  “Are you sick, or what? Don’t tell me you’re sick,” he said.

  She looked up, smiled lightheartedly and waved for the Texans to follow. Where, she wasn’t sure. The charts were stowed in one of the duffel bags, and she didn’t feel like stopping to dig them out. That she could do later, when they took a break for lunch.

  With clean brisk strokes she headed across the widest part of the bay, in a direction that she correctly estimated to be north-northwest. Not far ahead was a well-marked pass, she recalled, that would lead them toward the Gulf of Mexico.

  Which will be as calm as a birdbath this morning, Honey thought.

  In the other kayak, Eugenie Fonda could be heard saying, “Boyd, would you please find out where the hell this woman is taking us.”

  Followed in short order by Shreave hollering: “Hey, Nature Girl, where we goin’? I gotta stop and unload some a that coffee.”

  Honey picked up the pace. As she paddled harder, the songs in her head began to fade. “Stay close, and watch out for oyster bars,” she called over her shoulder. “We’ll be there soon.”

  Fry showered quickly and threw on some semi-fresh clothes, then grabbed his book bag and skateboarded to the crab docks. Perry Skinner was on one of his boats, taking the diesel apart. Fry climbed aboard and told him what he’d seen earlier at the trailer park.

  “I’ll check it out,” his father said, seemingly unconcerned. “You get along to school now, so you won’t be late.”

  “But what if Mr. Piejack is after Mom?”

  “Don’t worry about that asshole.”

  As soon as his son had gone, Skinner hopped down from the boat and drove home, where he removed a loaded .45-caliber semiautomatic from a floor safe in the laundry room. Even in Florida it’s against the law for convicted felons to have a gun, but as vice mayor of the town (and one who’d successfully petitioned to have his civil rights restored), Skinner had granted himself an ad hoc exemption. None of the police officers would dare arrest him, and he was on poker-playing terms with the local sheriff’s deputies. Only the federal park rangers posed a potential problem, but they mostly kept to themselves.

  Skinner got on his motorcycle and went searching for Louis Piejack. Nobody was hard to find in Everglades City, which was geographically as complicated as a postage stamp. Piejack’s green pickup was parked next to the boat ramp by the Rod and Gun Club. From a distance Skinner was unable to identify the two men sitting in the front seat, though he assumed one of them was Louis. There was no sign of Honey Santana or her guests. Skinner parked the motorcyle near the restaurant and strolled down to the seawall, where Piejack would be sure to notice him. The gun was tucked in the back of Skinner’s pants and concealed by the tail of his work shirt.

  Looking downriver he caught sight of two kayaks, one red and one yellow, heading more or less toward Chokoloskee Bay. The woman in the red kayak looked from a distance like Honey, which meant it probably was. Nobody else in the whole county looked like Honey. In the second kayak was a man in a wide-brimmed hat and a woman in a papaya-colored halter. Their teamwork with the paddles was not exactly fluid.

  Skinner heard rubber peeling and glanced over his shoulder—Louis Piejack’s truck, speeding away. Skinner sat down and hung his legs over the seawall and watched the kayaks slowly shrink to bright specks crossing the water. He assured himself that he was doing this not because he still cared for his ex-wife, who was certifiably tilted, but because she was the mother of his one and only son and therefore worthy of concern.

  After taking the handgun home, he returned to the crab docks, where one of his young mechanics, Randy, was doing battle with the broken diesel. Skinner told him to move aside. At lunchtime a woman whom Skinner was dating stopped by with cold beer and Cuban sandwiches. Her name was Debbie but she preferred to be called Sienna. Skinner had once asked her why she’d named herself after a Crayola, and she’d gotten her feelings hurt. She was only twenty-six years old and drove a propane truck back and forth from Port Charlotte. Her brother was a tight end for the Jacksonville Jaguars, which at least gave her and Skinner something to talk about during football season. The rest of the year it was pretty slow going.

  “I’m so psyched about tonight,” Sienna said. “Aren’t you?”

  Skinner studied the bubbles in his beer. He was trying hard to recall what was on the agenda.

  “Green Day, remember?” she said. “God, Perry, don’t tell me.”

  “Sure, I remember. They’re playin’ in Fort Myers.”

  “You said you liked ’em.”

  “I meant it, too.” To Skinner’s knowledge, he’d never heard any of the band’s songs; he was country to the bone.

  Sienna said, “We don’t have to go if you don’t want. I could sell the stupid tickets on eBay in about thirty seconds.”

  “Please don’t pout. I already said we’re going.”

  “Twice I went with you to see Willie Nelson. Twice.”

  “Yes, you did.” Skinner wasn’t in the mood for a rock concert, but he figured the distraction would do him good.

  “Hank Jr., too,” Sienna went on, “or did you forget that one?”

  “No, I didn’t forget.” Skinner wanted lunch to be done. He wanted Sienna to go away before he
was obliged to heave her overboard.

  “Excuse me for a second,” he said, and stepped into the wheelhouse.

  Randy was thumbing through a MotoCross magazine, his rubber boots propped on the console. Skinner silently finished his beer and watched an old johnboat coming from upriver. In the bow was a paunchy, uncomfortable-looking man with a shiner over one eye. He was wearing a wrinkled gray business suit, unusual attire for a fishing trip, and on his lap he protectively embraced two metallic travel cases.

  In the back of the johnboat sat Louis Piejack, his undamaged hand holding the tiller stick of the engine. He never glanced once at the crab docks as he puttered past, so he was unaware that he was being watched. Otherwise, he might have made an effort to conceal the sawed-off shotgun, which lay in plain view on the deck of the boat, between his feet.

  “Goddammit,” Perry Skinner muttered.

  Randy glanced up from his magazine. “What’s up, boss?”

  There was no time to call the guys in Hialeah. Skinner would have to handle it himself, which was fine.

  “What’re you doin’ tonight, Randy?”

  “Not a fuckin’ thing, boss.”

  “You wanna go see Green Day with Sienna? It’s on me,” Skinner said.

  “Far fuckin’ out!”

  Dealey wasn’t a tough guy. He’d never been a cop or Feeb, unlike many other private investigators. Eighteen years Dealey had worked for an insurance company, knocking down phony disability claims, before going out on his own.

  And usually it wasn’t dangerous work, spying on unfaithful spouses. Dealey had only been injured once, by a flying vibrator. It had happened while he was surreptitiously photographing an acrobatic young couple in Candleridge. The woman, having spotted Dealey, had snatched the nine-inch missile from a nightstand and spiraled it with uncanny accuracy through the open ground-floor window of her apartment. Struck in the throat, the investigator had run for five blocks before collapsing in a cherry hedge. For three weeks afterward he’d been unable to speak or to take solid foods. The vibrator had tumbled into his camera bag, and Dealey kept the flesh-colored appliance in his desk as a sobering reminder of the perils of his trade. The batteries he’d tossed in the trash.