Stormy Weather

  “Tell me,” he said to Max Lamb, “the most breathtaking place you’ve ever seen.”

  “Yellowstone Park. We took a bus tour.”

  “Good God.”

  “So what?”

  “Outside Yellowstone they’ve got a grizzly bear theme park. Did you go? I mean, some truly sad cases—no claws, no testicles. They’re about as wild as goddamn hamsters, but tourists line up to see ’em. Deballed grizzly bears!”

  Rapidly Skink shook his head back and forth, as if trying to roust a bumblebee from his ear. Max Lamb wasn’t sure how the conversation had gone so far astray. He did not share the madman’s compassion for the altered grizzly bears; removing the claws seemed an entirely sensible procedure, liability-wise, for a public amusement park. But Max knew there was no percentage in arguing. He remained quiet as Skink withdrew into a heap on the planks of the spavined deck. The kidnapper trembled and heaved and cried out names that Max Lamb didn’t recognize. A half hour later he was up, scouting the starlit horizons.

  “You all right?” Max asked.

  Skink nodded soberly. “The down side of toad. I do apologize.”

  “Are you sure Bonnie can find us out here?”

  “Why in the name of God would you marry a woman who can’t follow simple directions.”

  “But it’s so dark—”

  The trip to Stiltsville had frightened Max Lamb beyond exclamation—full throttle, no running lights, a wet nasty chop in an open skiff. Infinitely more harrowing than the airboat. The hurricane had turned the bay into a spectral gauntlet of sunken yachts, trawlers, cabin cruisers and runabouts. On the way out, Skink had removed his glass eye and pressed it, for safekeeping, into the palm of Max’s right hand. Max had clenched it as if it were the Hope diamond.

  “Your wife,” Skink was saying, “will surely hook up with somebody who knows the way.”

  “I could use a cigaret. Please, captain.”

  Skink groped in his coat until he came up with a fresh pack. He tossed it, along with a lighter, to his captive.

  Max Lamb was embarrassed that he’d so quickly become hooked on the infamously harsh Broncos. Around the agency they were jokingly known as Bronchials, such was their killer reputation with anti-smoking zealots. Max attributed his hazardous new habit to severe stress, not a weakness of character. In the advertising business it was essential to remain immune from the base appetites that tyrannized the average consumer.

  Skink said: “What else have you to show for yourself?”

  “I’m not sure what you mean.”

  “Slogans, tiger. Besides the Plum Crispies.”

  “Crunchies,” said Max, tightly.

  The dock shimmied as Skink rose to his feet. Max braced himself against a half-rotted beam. There was nowhere to go; the old man who ferried them across the bay had snatched Skink’s fifty dollars and hastily aimed the skiff back toward the mainland.

  Skink swung the lantern around and around his head. Caught in the erratic strobe, Max said, “All right, captain, here’s one: ‘That fresh good-morning feeling, all day long.’”

  “Product name?”

  “Intimate Mist.”

  “No!” The lantern hissed as Skink put it down.

  Max tried not to sound defensive. “It’s a feminine hygiene item. Very popular.”

  “The raspberry rinse! Sweet Jesus, I thought you were joking. This is the sum of your life achievements—douche jingles?”

  “No,” Max snapped. “Soft drinks, gasoline additives, laser copiers—I’ve worked on plenty of accounts.” He wondered what had impelled him to mention the Intimate Mist campaign. Was it an unconscious act of masochism, or carelessness caused by fatigue?

  Skink sat heavily on the porch, which was canted at an alarming angle toward the bay. “I do hear a boat,” he said.

  Max stared curiously across the water. He heard nothing but the slap of waves and the scattered piping of seagulls. He asked, “What happens now?”

  There was no reply. Max Lamb saw, in the yellow flicker of the lantern, a smile cross the crazy man’s face.

  “You seriously don’t want any ransom?”

  “I didn’t say that. Money is what I don’t want.”

  “Then what?” Max flicked his cigaret into the water. “Tell me what the hell it’s all about. I’m sick of this game, I really am!”

  Skink was amused by the display of anger. Maybe there was hope for the precious little bastard. “What I want,” he said to Max Lamb, “is to spend some time with your wife. She intrigues me.”

  “In what way?”

  “Clinically. Anthropologically. What in the world does she see in you? How do you two fit?” Skink gave a mischievous wink. “I like mysteries.”

  “If you touch her—”

  “What a brave young stud!”

  Max Lamb took two steps toward the madman, but froze when Skink raised a hand to his own throat. The collar! Max felt a hot sizzle shoot from his scalp down the length of his spine. Instantly he foresaw himself hopping like a puppet. Had he known that the battery in the Tri-Tronics remote control had been dead for the past six hours, it wouldn’t have softened his reaction. He was a slave to his subconscious. He had come to understand that the anticipation of pain was more immobilizing than the pain itself—though the knowledge didn’t help him.

  When Max settled down, Skink assured him he had no carnal interest in his wife. “Christ, I’m not trying to get laid; I’m trying to figure out man’s place in the food chain.” His long arms swept an arc across the stars. “A riddle of the times, Tourist Boy. Five thousand years ago we’re doodling on the walls of caves. Today we’re writing odes to fruit-flavored douche.”

  “It’s a job,” Max Lamb replied petulantly. “Get over it.”

  Skink yawned like a gorged hyena. “That’s a damn big engine coming. I hope your Bonnie wasn’t foolish enough to call the police.”

  “I warned her not to.”

  Skink went on: “My opinion about your wife will be shaped by how she handles this situation. Whom she brings. Her attitude. Her composure.”

  Max Lamb asked Skink if he had a gun. Skink clicked his tongue against his front teeth. “See the running lights?”

  “No.”

  “Toward Key Biscayne. Over there.”

  “Oh, yeah.”

  “Two engines, it sounds like. I’m guessing twin Mercs.”

  Somebody aboard the boat had a powerful spotlight. It swept back and forth across the flats of Stiltsville. As the craft drew nearer, the white light settled on the porch of the stilt house. Skink seemed unconcerned.

  He began to remove toads from his pockets; gray, jowly, scowling, lump-covered toads, some as large as Idaho potatoes. Max Lamb counted eleven. Skink lined them up side by side at his feet. Max had nothing to add to the scenario; perhaps it was all a dream, beginning with the mangy hurricane monkey, and soon he’d awaken in bed with Bonnie.…

  The pudgy Bufo toads began to squirm and huff and pee. Skink rebuked them with a murmur. When the beam of the speedboat’s spotlight hit them, the toads blinked their moist globular eyes and jumped toward it. One by one they leaped off the dock and plopped into the water. Skink hooted mirthfully. “South, boys! To Havana, San Juan, wherever the hell you came from!”

  Max watched the toads disappear; some kicked for the depths, others bobbed on the foamy crests of waves. Max didn’t know what would happen to them, nor did he care. They were just ugly toads, and barracudas could devour them, as far as he was concerned. His only interest was in drawing a lesson from the episode, one that might be employed to handle the cyclopean kidnapper.

  But Skink already seemed to have forgotten about the Bufos. Once more he was rhapsodizing about the hurricane. “Look at Cape Florida, every last tree flattened—forest to moonscape in thirty blessed minutes!”

  “The boat—”

  “You ponder that.”

  “It’s flashing a light at us—”

  “The gorgeous fury inside that storm. A
nd you with your video camera.” Skink sighed disappointedly. “‘Sin is a thing that writes itself across a man’s face.’ Oscar Wilde. I don’t expect you’ve read him.”

  Max’s silence affirmed it.

  “Well, I’ve been waiting,” said Skink, “to see it written across your face. Sin.”

  “What I did was harmless, OK? Maybe a bit insensitive, but harmless. You’ve made your point, captain. Let me go now.”

  The speedboat was close enough to see it was metallic blue with a white jagged stripe, like a lightning bolt, along the hull. Two figures were visible at the console.

  “There she is,” said Max.

  “And no cops.” Skink waved the boat in.

  One of the figures moved to the bow and tossed a rope. Skink caught it and tied off. As soon as the rope came tight, the twin out-boards went quiet. The current nudged the stern of the boat against the pilings, into the lantern’s penumbra.

  Max Lamb saw that it was Bonnie on the bow. When he called her name, she stepped to the dock and hugged him in a nurselike fashion, consoling him as if he were a toddler with a skinned knee. Max received the attention with manly reserve; he was conscious of being watched not only by his captor but by Bonnie’s male escort.

  Skink smiled at the reunion scene, and slipped back into the shadows of the stilt house. The driver of the boat made no move to get out. He was young and broad-shouldered, and comfortable on the open water. He wore a pale-blue pullover, cutoffs and no shoes. He seemed unaffected by navigating a pitch-black bay mined with overturned hulls and floating timbers.

  From the darkness, Skink asked the young man for his name.

  “Augustine,” he answered.

  “You have the ransom?”

  “Sure do.”

  Bonnie Lamb said: “Don’t worry, he’s not the police.”

  “I can see that,” came Skink’s voice.

  The boat driver stepped to the gunwale. He handed Bonnie a shopping bag, which she gave to her husband, who handed it to the kidnapper in the shadows.

  Max Lamb said: “Bonnie, honey, the captain wants to talk to you. Then he’ll let me go.”

  “I’m considering it,” Skink said.

  “Talk to me about what?”

  The driver of the boat reached inside the console and came out with a can of beer. He took a swallow and leaned one hip against the steering wheel.

  Bonnie Lamb asked her husband: “What’s that on your neck?” It looked like some appalling implement of bondage; she’d seen similar items in the display windows of leather shops in Greenwich Village.

  Skink came into the light. “It’s a training device. Lie down, Max.”

  Bonnie Lamb studied the tall, disheveled stranger. He was all the state trooper had promised, and more. In size he appeared capable of anything, yet Bonnie felt in no way threatened.

  “Max, now!” the kidnapper said to her husband.

  Obediently Max Lamb lay prone on the wooden dock. When Skink told him to roll over, like a dog, he did.

  Bonnie was embarrassed for her husband. The kidnapper noticed, and apologized. He instructed Max to get up.

  The shopping bag contained everything Skink had demanded. Within moments the new batteries were inserted in the Walkman, and “Tumbling Dice” was spilling out of his earphones. He opened the jar of green olives and poured them into his gleaming bucket of a mouth.

  Bonnie Lamb asked Max what in God’s name was going on.

  “Later,” he whispered.

  “Tell me now!”

  “She deserves to know,” the kidnapper interjected, spraying olive juice. “She’s risking her life, being out here with a nutcase like me.”

  Bonnie Lamb had dressed for a boat ride—blue slicker, jeans and deck shoes. Good stuff but practical, Skink noticed, none of that catalog nonsense from California. He pulled off the earphones and complimented Bonnie for her common sense. Then he instructed her husband to remove the shock collar and toss it in the sea.

  Max’s hands quavered at his neck. Skink told him to go ahead, dammit, off with it! Max’s lips tightened in determination, but he couldn’t make himself touch it. Finally it was his wife who stepped forward, unhooked the clasp and removed the Tri-Tronics dog trainer. She examined it in the light of the lantern.

  “Sick,” she said to Skink, and set the collar on the dock.

  From his jacket he took a videotape cassette. He tossed it to Bonnie Lamb, who caught it with both hands. “Your hubbie’s home movies from the hurricane. Talk about sick.”

  Bonnie wheeled and threw the cassette into the bay.

  The girl had fire! Skink liked her already. Nervously Max lighted a cigaret.

  His wife wouldn’t have been more repulsed had he jabbed a hypodermic full of heroin in his arm. She said, “Since when do you smoke?”

  “If you put the collar back on him,” Skink volunteered helpfully, “I can teach him to quit.”

  Max Lamb told Skink to get on with it. “You said you wanted to talk to her, so talk.”

  “No, I said I wanted to spend time with her.”

  Bonnie turned toward the barefoot young man at the helm of the striped speedboat. He apparently had nothing to say. His demeanor was casual, almost bored.

  “Where,” Bonnie asked the kidnapper, “did you want to spend time? And doing what?”

  “Not what you think,” Max Lamb cut in.

  Skink put on his plastic shower cap. “The hurricane has set me on a new rhythm. I feel it ticking.”

  He put his hands on Bonnie’s shoulders, gently moving her to Max’s side. From the governor’s shadow she felt his stare. He was studying them, her and Max, like they were lab rats. Then she heard him mutter: “I still don’t see how.”

  Tersely Bonnie said, “Just tell us what you want.”

  “Watch it,” Max advised. “He’s been smoking dope.”

  Skink looked away, toward the ocean. “No offense, Mrs. Lamb, but your husband has put me sorely off the human race. A feminine counterpoint would be nice.”

  Bonnie was surprised by a pleasurable shiver, gooseflesh rising on her neck. The stranger’s voice was soothing and hypnotic, a wild broad river; she could have listened to him all night. Mad is what he was, demonstrably mad. But his story fascinated her. Once a governor, the trooper had said. Bonnie longed to know more.

  Yet here was her husband, exhausted, sunburned, emotionally sapped. She ought to tend to him. Poor Max had been through hell.

  “I only want to talk,” the kidnapper said.

  “All right,” Bonnie told him, “but just for a little while.”

  He cupped a hand to his mouth. “You, Augustine! Take Mister Lamb to safety. He needs a shower and a shave and possibly a stool softener. Return at dawn for his wife.”

  Skink grabbed Max under the arms and lowered him to the speedboat. He cut the line with a pocketknife, pushing the bow away from the sagging stilt house. He flung one arm around Bonnie and with the other began to wave. As the boat drifted out of the lantern’s glow, Skink saw a third figure rise in the stern of the boat—where had he been hiding? Then the young man at the wheel brought a rifle to his shoulder.

  “Damn,” said Skink, pushing Bonnie Lamb from the line of fire.

  Something stung him fiercely, spinning him clockwise and down. He was still spinning when he hit the warm water, and wondering why his arms and legs weren’t working, wondering why he hadn’t heard a shot or seen a muzzle flash, wondering if perhaps he was already dead.

  CHAPTER

  13

  Late on the night of August 27, with a warm breeze at his back and nine cold Budweisers in his belly, Keith Higstrom decided to go hunting. His friends declined to accompany him, as Keith was as clumsy and unreliable a shooter as he was a drunk.

  Truthfully there wasn’t much to hunt in South Florida, the wild game having long ago fled or died. However, the hurricane had dispersed throughout the suburbs an exotic new quarry: livestock. Mile upon mile of ranch posts in rural Dade County had b
een uprooted, freeing herds of cattle and horses to explore vistas beyond their mucky flooded pastures. Motivated more by dull hunger than by native inquisitiveness, the animals began appearing in places where they were not customarily encountered. One such place was Keith Higstrom’s neighborhood, a subdivision of indistinguishable clam-colored houses, stacked twenty deep and twenty-five across and bordered on every side by bankrupt strip shopping malls.

  It was here Keith Higstrom had spent his childhood. His father’s family had moved to Miami from northern Minnesota in the early 1940s, bringing an affinity for long guns and an appetite for the great outdoors. An impressionable boy, Keith had listened to hunting yarns his entire life—timber wolves and trophy black bears in the north woods, white-tailed deer and wild turkeys in the Florida scrub. The head of an eight-point buck, stoic but marble-eyed, hung over the Higstrom dinner table; the tawny pelt of a prized panther was tacked spread-eagle on the west wall of the den. At age five, Keith began collecting in leatherbound volumes each edition of Outdoor Life, Field & Stream and Sports Afield. His most treasured possession was an autographed photo of the famous Joe Foss, standing over a dead grizzly. At age six, young Keith got a Daisy popgun, a BB pistol at age nine, a pellet rifle at age eleven, and his first .22 at thirteen.

  Yet… even plinking beer cans at the local rock pit, the boy displayed an unfailing lack of proficiency with firearms. His father was more than slightly disappointed. Young Keith was a pure menace with a gun. Practice brought no improvement, nor did experimenting with different styles of weapons. Scopes didn’t help. Tripods didn’t help. Recoil cushions didn’t help. Even goddamn breathing exercises didn’t help.

  Often these father-son target practices disintegrated into sulking and tears until the elder Higstrom relented, allowing young Keith to fire a few rounds with a twelve-gauge Mossberg, just so he could have the experience of hitting something. Clearly the family lineage of crack dead-eye shots had come to a sorry end. Keith’s father returned from these outings looking pale and shaken, although he said nothing to Keith’s mother about what he’d witnessed at the rock pit.