Avila wasn’t sure the ceremony would work. He was relatively new to the study of santería and, characteristically, hadn’t bothered to research it thoroughly. Avila had begun dabbling in the blood practices when he first learned the authorities were investigating him for bribery; several cocaine dealers of his acquaintance swore that santería worship had kept them out of jail, so Avila figured there was nothing to lose by trying. In Hialeah he conferred with a genuine santero priest, who offered to teach him the secrets of the religion, rooted in ancient Afro-Cuban customs. The history was infinitely too deep and mystical for Avila, and soon he grew impatient with the lessons.
All he really wanted, he explained to the santero, was the ability to put curses on his enemies. Lethal curses.
The priest wailed and told him to get lost. But Avila went home convinced that, from the mumbo jumbo he’d seen, he could teach himself the basics of hexing. For his deity Avila picked the saint Chango, because he liked the macho name. For his first target he chose the county prosecutor leading the investigation against corrupt building inspectors.
Pennies were easy to come by, as were old animal bones; Avila’s grandmother lived four blocks from a pet cemetery in Medley. Obtaining blood was the biggest obstacle for Avila, who had no zeal for performing live sacrifices. The first few times, he tried pleasing Chango by sprinkling the coins and bones with steak juices and homemade bouillon. Nothing happened. Evidently the santería saints preferred the fresh stuff.
One rainy Sunday afternoon, Avila bought himself a live chicken. His wife was cooking a big dinner for the cousins, so she banished Avila from the kitchen. He put a Ginsu knife in his back pocket and smuggled the victim to the garage. As soon as Avila began spreading newspapers on the floor, the chicken sensed trouble. Avila was astounded that a puny five-pound bird could make such a racket or put up such spirited resistance. The crudely staged sacrifice eventually was completed, but Avila emerged scratched, pecked and smeared with bloody feathers. So was his wife’s cream-colored Buick Electra. Her ear-splitting tirade caused the cousins to forgo dessert and head home early.
Two days later, the magic happened. The prosecutor targeted by Avila’s chicken curse fell and dislocated a shoulder in the shower. At the time, he was in the company of an athletic prostitute named Kandi, who was thoughtful enough not only to call 911 but to make herself available for numerous press interviews. Given the media uproar, the State Attorney suggested that the fallen prosecutor take an indefinite leave of absence.
The corruption investigation wasn’t derailed, merely reassigned. Nevertheless, Avila was convinced that the santería spell was a success. Later attempts to replicate the results proved fruitless (and messy), but Avila blamed his own inexperience, plus a lack of suitable facilities. Perhaps, during the sacrifices, he was chanting the wrong phrases, or chanting the right phrases in the wrong order. Perhaps he was performing the ceremonies at a bad time of day for the mercurial Chango. Or perhaps Avila was simply using inferior poultry.
While he ended up plea-bargaining with the replacement prosecutor, Avila’s faith in the witchcraft of bones and blood remained unshaken. He decided Snapper’s transgression was heinous enough to merit the offering of two chickens instead of one. If that didn’t work, he’d invest in a billy goat.
The roosters did not succumb quietly, the clamor awakening Avila’s wife, aunt and mother. The women burst into the garage to find Avila singing Spanish gibberish to his cherished ceramic statue. Avila’s wife instantly spied red droplets and a waxen fragment of chicken beak on the left front fender of her Electra, and savagely took to striking her husband with a garden rake.
On the other side of Dade County, Snapper dozed peacefully in a dead man’s Naugahyde recliner. He felt no pain from the supernatural hand of Chango, nor did he feel the hateful glare of Edie Marsh, who was stretched out on the mildewed carpet and trussed to a naked insurance man.
CHAPTER
14
As the candles melted to lumps, Snapper’s shadow flickered and shrunk on the pale bare walls. His profile reminded Edie Marsh of a miniature tyrannosaurus.
For laughs, he refused to let Fred Dove remove the red condom.
“That’s mean,” Edie said.
“Well, I’m one mean motherfucker,” Snapper proclaimed. “You don’t believe me, there’s a lady cop in the hospital you should see.”
When he yawned, the misaligned mandible waggled horizontally, then appeared to disengage altogether from his face. He looked like a snake trying to swallow an egg.
Edie said, “What is it you want?”
“You know damn well.” Snapper held the flashlight on Fred Dove’s retreating cock. “Where’d you find a red rubber?” he asked. “Mail order, I bet. Looks like a Santy Claus hat.”
From the floor, the insurance man gave a disconsolate whimper. Edie leaned her head against the small of his back. Snapper had positioned them butt-to-butt, binding their hands with a curtain sash. In Fred Dove’s briefcase Snapper found the business cards and policy folders from Midwest Casualty. From that it was easy to figure out—Edie on her knees, and so on. Snapper marveled at the exquisite timing of his entrance.
He said, “Fair is fair. A three-way split.”
“But you took off!” Edie objected. “You left me here with that asshole Tony.”
Snapper shrugged. “I changed my mind. I’m allowed. So how much money we talkin’ about?”
“Fuck you,” said Edie Marsh.
Without leaving the recliner, Snapper cocked one leg and kicked her in the side of the head. The sound of the blow was sickening. Edie moaned but didn’t cry.
“For God’s sake.” Fred Dove’s voice cracked, as if he were the one who’d been clobbered.
Snapper said, “Then tell me how much.”
“Don’t you dare.” Edie was woozy, but sharply she dug both elbows into Fred Dove’s ribs.
“I’m waiting,” said Snapper.
Edie felt the insurance man stiffen against the ropes. Then she heard him say: “A hundred forty-one thousand dollars.”
“Moron!” Edie hissed.
“But you won’t get a dime,” Fred Dove warned Snapper, “without me and Edie.”
“That a fact?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Not a goddamn cent,” Edie agreed, “because guess who’s getting the settlement check. Missus Neria Torres. Me.”
Snapper aimed the flashlight on Edie’s face, which bore a puffy salmon imprint of his shoe. “Sweetie,” he said, “it’s hard to sign a check if you’re in a body cast. Understand?”
She turned away from the harsh light and silently cursed her lousy taste in convicts.
Fred Dove said to Snapper: “You ought to untie us.”
“Well, listen to Santy Claus!”
Edie’s pulse jackhammered in her temples. “You know what it is, Fred? Snapper’s jealous. See, it’s not about the insurance money. It’s that I was going to make love to you—”
“Haw!” Snapper exclaimed.
“—and he knows,” Edie went on, “he knows I wouldn’t do it with him for all the money in Fort Knox!”
Snapper laughed. Nudging Fred Dove with a toe, he said, “Don’t kid yourself, bubba. She’d fuck a syphilitic porky-pine, she thought there was a dollar in it.”
“Nice talk,” Edie said. God Almighty, her head hurt.
The insurance man fought to steady his nerves. He was flabbergasted to find himself in the middle of something so ugly, complicated and dangerous. Only hours ago the arrangement seemed foolproof and exciting: a modestly fraudulent claim, a beautiful and uninhibited co-conspirator, a wild fling in an abandoned hurricane house.
A bright-red condom seemed appropriate.
Then out of nowhere appeared this Snapper person, a hard-looking sort and an authentic criminal, judging by what Fred Dove had seen and heard. The insurance man didn’t want such a violent character for a third partner. On the other hand, he didn’t want to die or be harmed seriously eno
ugh to require hospitalization. Blue Cross would demand facts, as would Fred Dove’s wife.
So he offered Snapper forty-seven thousand dollars. “That’s how it splits three ways.”
Snapper swung the flashlight to Fred Dove’s face. He said, “You figured that up in your head? No pencil and paper, that’s pretty good.”
Yeah, thought Edie Marsh. Thank you, Dr. Einstein.
Fred Dove said to Snapper: “Do we have a deal?”
“Fair is fair.” He rose from the BarcaLounger and made his way to the garage. Within moments the portable generator belched to life. Snapper returned to the living room and turned on the solitary lightbulb. Then, kneeling beside Fred Dove and Edie Marsh, he cut the curtain sash off their wrists.
“Let’s go eat,” he said. “I’m fuckin’ starved.”
Fred Dove rose shakily. He modestly locked his hands in front of his crotch. “I’m taking this thing off,” he declared.
“The rubber?” Snapper gave him a thumbs-up. “You do that.” He glanced at Edie, who made no effort to cover her breasts or anything else. She eyed Snapper in a dark poisonous way.
He said, “That’s how you goin’ to Denny’s? Fine by me. Maybe we’ll get a free pie.”
Wordlessly Edie walked behind the Naugahyde recliner, picked up the crowbar she’d left there, took two steps toward Snapper, and swung at him with all her strength. He went down squalling.
Weapon in hand, Edie Marsh straddled him. Her damp and tangled hair had fallen to cover the bruised half of her face. To Fred Dove, she looked untamed and dazzling and alarmingly capable of homicide. He feared he was about to witness his first.
Edie inserted the sharp end of the crowbar between Snapper’s deviated jawbones, pinning his bloodless tongue to his teeth.
“Kick me again,” she said, “and I’ll have your balls in a blender.”
Fred Dove snatched his pants and his briefcase, and ran.
• • •
They returned the borrowed speedboat to the marina and went back to Coral Gables. With great effort they carried the man known as Skink into Augustine’s house.
Max Lamb was unnerved by the wall of grinning skulls, but said nothing as he made his way down the hall to the shower. Augustine got on the telephone to sort out what had happened with his dead uncle’s Cape buffalo. Bonnie fixed a pot of coffee and took it to the guest room, where the governor was recovering from the animal dart. He and Jim Tile were talking when Bonnie walked in. She wanted to stay and listen to this improbable stranger, but she felt she was intruding. The men’s conversation was serious, held in low tones. She heard Skink say:
“Brenda’s a strong one. She’ll make it.”
Then, Jim Tile: “I’ve tried every prayer I know.”
As Bonnie slipped out the door, she encountered Max, sucking on a cigaret as he emerged from the bathroom. She resolved to be forbearing about her husband’s odious new habit, which he blamed on the battlefield stress of the abduction.
She followed him to the living room and sat beside him on the sofa. There, in sensational detail, he described the torture he’d received at the hands of the one-eyed misfit.
“The dog collar,” Bonnie Lamb said.
“That’s right. Look at my neck.” Max opened the top buttons of his shirt, which he’d borrowed from Augustine. “See the burns? See?”
Bonnie didn’t notice any marks, but nodded sympathetically. “So you definitely want to prosecute.”
“Absolutely!” Max Lamb detected doubt in his wife’s voice. “Christ, Bonnie, he could’ve murdered me.”
She squeezed his hand. “I still don’t understand why—why he did it in the first place.”
“With a fruitcake like that, who knows.” Max Lamb purposely didn’t mention Skink’s disgust with the hurricane videos; he remembered that Bonnie felt the same way.
She said, “I think he needs professional help.”
“No, sweetheart, he needs a professional jail.” Max lifted his chin and blew smoke at the ceiling.
“Honey, let’s think about this—”
But he pulled away from her, bolting for the phone, which Augustine had just hung up. “I’d better call Pete Archibald,” Max Lamb said over his shoulder, “let everyone at Rodale know I’m OK.”
Bonnie Lamb got up and went to the guest room. The governor was sitting upright in bed, but his eyes were half shut. His ragged beard was finely crusted with ocean salt. Jim Tile, his Stetson tucked under one arm, stood near the window.
Bonnie poured each of them another cup of coffee. “How’s he feeling?” she whispered.
Skink’s good eye blinked open. “Better,” he said, thickly.
She set the coffeepot on the bedstand. “It was monkey tranquilizer,” she explained.
“Never to be combined with psychoactive drugs,” said Skink, “particularly toad sweat.”
Bonnie looked at Jim Tile, who said, “I asked him.”
“Asked me what?” Skink rasped.
“About the dead guy in the TV dish,” the trooper said. Then, to Bonnie: “He didn’t do it.”
“Though I do admire the style,” said Skink.
Bonnie Lamb did a poor job of masking her doubt. Skink peered sternly. “I didn’t kill that fellow, Mrs. Lamb. But I damn sure wouldn’t tell you if I had.”
“I believe you. I do.”
The governor finished the coffee and asked for another cup. He told Bonnie it was the best he’d ever tasted. “And I like your boy,” he said, gesturing toward the wall of skulls. “I like what’s he done with the place.”
Bonnie said: “He’s not my boy. Just a friend.”
Skink nodded. “We all need one of those.” With difficulty he rolled out of bed and began stripping off his wet clothes. Jim Tile led him to the shower and started the water. When the trooper returned, carrying the governor’s plastic cap, he asked Bonnie Lamb what her husband intended to do.
“He wants to prosecute.” She sat on the edge of the bed, listening to the shower run.
Augustine came into the room and said, “Well?”
“I can arrest him tonight,” Jim Tile told Bonnie, “if your husband comes to the substation and files charges. What happens then is up to the State Attorney.”
“You’d do that—arrest your own friend?”
“Better me than a stranger,” the trooper said. “Don’t feel bad about this, Mrs. Lamb. Your husband’s got every right.”
“Yes, I know.” Prosecuting the governor was the right thing—a person couldn’t be allowed to run around kidnapping tourists, no matter how offensively they behaved. Yet Bonnie was saddened by the idea of Skink’s going to jail. It was naive, she knew, but that’s how she felt.
Jim Tile was questioning Augustine about the skulls on the wall. “Cuban voodoo?”
“No, nothing like that.”
“Nineteen is what I count,” the trooper said. “I won’t ask where you got ’em. They’re too clean for homicides.”
Bonnie Lamb said, “They’re medical specimens.”
“Whatever you say.” After twenty years of attending head-on collisions, Jim Tile had a well-earned aversion to human body parts. “Specimens it is,” he said.
Augustine removed five of the skulls from the shelves and lined them up on the hardwood floor, at his feet. Then he picked up three and began to juggle.
The trooper said, “I’ll be damned.”
As he juggled, Augustine thought about the drunken young fool who tried to shoot his uncle’s Cape buffalo. What a sad, dumb way to die. Fluidly he snatched a fourth skull off the floor and put it in rotation; then the fifth.
Bonnie Lamb found herself smiling at the performance in spite of its creepiness. The governor emerged from the shower in a cloud of steam, naked except for a sky-blue towel around his neck. His thick silver hair sent snaky tails of water down his chest. He used a corner of the towel to dab the condensation off his glass eye. He beamed when he saw Augustine’s juggling.
Jim Tile felt
dizzy, watching the skulls fly. Max Lamb appeared in the doorway. His expression instantly changed from curiosity to revulsion, as if a switch had been flipped inside his head. Bonnie knew what he was going to say before the words left his lips: “You think this is funny?”
Augustine continued juggling. It was unclear whether he, or the governor’s nudity, was the object of Max Lamb’s disapproval.
The trooper said, “It’s been a long night, man.”
“Bonnie, we’re leaving.” Max’s tone was patronizing and snarky. “Did you hear me? Playtime is over.”
She was infuriated that her husband would speak to her that way in front of strangers. She stormed from the room.
“Oh, Max?” Skink, wearing a sly smile, touched a finger to his own throat. Max Lamb’s neck tingled the old Tri-Tronics tingle. He jumped reflexively, banging against the door.
From the backpack Skink retrieved Max’s billfold and the keys to the rental car. He dropped them in Max’s hand. Max mumbled a thank-you and went after Bonnie.
Augustine stopped juggling, catching the skulls one by one. Carefully he returned them to their place on the wall.
The governor tugged the towel from his neck and began drying his arms and legs. “I like that girl,” he said to Augustine. “How about you?”
“What’s not to like.”
“You’ve got a big decision to make.”
“That’s very funny. She’s married.”
“Love is just a kiss away. So the song says.” Playfully Skink seized Jim Tile by the elbows. “Tell me, Officer. Am I arrested or not?”
“That’s up to Mister Max Lamb.”
“I need to know.”
“They’re talking it over,” Jim Tile said.
“Because if I’m not bound for jail, I’d dearly love to go find the bastard who beat up your Brenda.”
For a moment the trooper seemed to sag under the weight of his grief. His eyes welled up, but he kept himself from breaking down.
Skink said, “Jim, please. I live for opportunities like this.”