Stormy Weather

  He shrugged unhappily. “You got any more them Darvons? My fucking leg’s on fire.”

  “Honey, I sure don’t—”

  “Shit!” With his good leg he kicked Levon Stichler in the ribs, for no reason except that the old man was a convenient target. Edie pulled Snapper aside and told him to get a grip, for Christ’s sake.

  Under her breath: “It’s all working out, OK? Reedy signed off on the settlement. All that’s left is to wait for the money. Kill this geezer, you’ll screw up everything.”

  Snapper worked his jaw like a steam shovel. His eyes were shot with pain and hangover. “Well, I can’t think of nothin’ else to do.”

  Edie said: “Listen. We put old Levon in the car and haul him out to the boonies. We tell him to take his sweet time walking back, otherwise we’ll track down each of his grandchildren and … oh, I don’t know—”

  “Skin ’em like pigs?”

  “Fine. Whatever. The point is to scare the hell out of him, and he’ll forget about everything. All he wants to do is live.”

  Snapper said, “My goddamn leg’s near to bust open.”

  “Go watch TV. I’ll look for some pills.”

  Edie searched the medicine cabinets to see if any useful pharmaceuticals had survived the hurricane. The best she could do was an unopened bottle of Midols. She told Snapper it was generic codeine, and pressed five tablets into his hand. He washed them down with a slug of warm Budweiser.

  Edie said, “Is there gas in the Jeep?”

  “Yeah. After Sally Jessy we’ll go.”

  “And what is today’s topic?”

  “Boob jobs gone bad.”

  “How cheery,” said Edie. She went outside to walk Donald and Marla.

  After days in a morphine fog, Trooper Brenda Rourke finally felt better. The plastic surgeon promised to get her on the operating-room schedule by the end of the week.

  Through the bandages she told Jim Tile: “You look whipped, big guy.”

  “We’re still on double shifts. It’s like Daytona out there.”

  Brenda asked if he’d heard what happened. “Some pawnshop off Kendall—the creep tried to hock my mom’s ring.”

  “Same guy?”

  “Sounds like it. The clerk was impressed by the face.”

  Jim Tile said, “Well, it’s a start.”

  But the news worried him. He had unleashed the governor to deal with Brenda’s attacker on the assumption that the governor would move faster than police. However, the pawnshop incident freshened the trail. Now it was possible that Skink’s pursuit of the man in the black Cherokee would put him on a collision course with detectives. It was not a happy scenario to contemplate.

  “I must look like hell,” Brenda said, “because I’ve never seen you so gloomy.”

  Of course he’d let it get to him—Brenda lying pale and shattered in the hospital. In his work Jim Tile had seen plenty of blood, pain and heartache, yet he’d never felt such blinding anger as he had that first day at Brenda’s bedside. Trusting the justice system to deal with her attacker had struck the trooper as laughably naive, certainly futile. This was a special monster. It was evident by what he’d done to her. The guy hated either women, cops or both. In any case, he was a menace. He needed to be cut from the herd.

  Now, upon reflection, Jim Tile wished he’d let his inner rage subside before he’d made the move. When Brenda remembered the tag number off the Cherokee, he should’ve sent it up the chain of command; played it by the book. Turning the governor loose was a rash, foolhardy impulse; vigilante madness. Brenda would recover from the beating, but now Jim Tile had put his dear old friend at dire risk. It would be damn near impossible to call him off.

  “I need to ask you something,” Brenda said.

  “Sure.”

  “A detective from Metro Robbery came by today. Also a woman from the State Attorney. They didn’t know about the black Jeep.”

  “Hmmm.”

  “About the license plate—I figured you’d given them the numbers.”

  “I made a mistake, Bren.”

  “You forgot?”

  “No, I didn’t forget. I made a mistake.”

  Jim Tile sat on the edge of the bed and told her what he’d done. Afterwards she remained quiet, except to make small talk when a nurse came to dress her wounds.

  Later, when she and Jim Tile were alone again, Brenda said, “So you found your crazy friend. How?”

  “Doesn’t matter.”

  “And he was right here, in this room, and you didn’t introduce me?”

  Jim Tile chuckled. “You were zonked, darling.”

  Brenda stroked his hand. He could tell she was still thinking about it. Finally she said, “Boy, you must really love me, to do something like this.”

  “I screwed up bad. I’m sorry.”

  “Enough already. I’ve got one question.”

  “OK.”

  “What are the odds,” Brenda said, “that your friend will catch up with the asshole who got my mother’s ring?”

  “The odds are pretty good.”

  Brenda Rourke nodded and closed her eyes. Jim Tile waited until her breathing was strong and regular; waited until he was certain it was a deep healthy sleep, and not something else. Before leaving, he kissed her cheek, in a gap between bandages, and was comforted by the warmth of her skin. He felt pretty sure he saw the trace of a smile on her lips.

  Skink’s forehead was propped on the windowsill. He hadn’t made a sound in an hour, hadn’t stirred when Augustine left to get the guns. Bonnie Lamb didn’t know if he was dozing or ignoring her.

  “This was the baby’s room. Did you notice?” she said.

  Nothing.

  “Are you awake?”

  Still no response.

  A yellowjacket flew through the broken-out window and took an instant liking to Skink’s pungent mane. Bonnie shooed it away. From across the street, at 15600 Calusa, came the sound of dogs barking.

  Eventually the governor spoke. “Oh, they’ll be back.” He didn’t raise his head from the sill.

  “Who?”

  “Folks who own the baby.”

  “How can you be sure?”

  Silence.

  “Maybe the hurricane was all they could take.”

  “Optimist,” Skink grumbled.

  Glancing again at the drowned teddy bear, Bonnie thought that no family deserved to have their life shattered in such a harrowing way. The governor seemed to be reading her mind.

  He said, “I’m sorry it happened to them. I’m sorry they were here in the first place.”

  “And you’ll be even sorrier if they come back.”

  Skink looked up, blinking like a sleepy porch lizard. “It’s a hurricane zone,” he said simply.

  Bonnie thought he ought to hear an outsider’s point of view. “People come here because they think it’s better than where they were. They believe the postcards, and you know what? For lots of them, it is better than where they came from, whether it’s Long Island or Des Moines or Havana. Life is brighter, so it’s worth the risks. Maybe even hurricanes.”

  The governor used his functional eye to scan the baby’s room. He said, “Fuck with Mother Nature and she’ll fuck back.”

  “People have dreams, that’s all. Like the settlers of the old West.”

  “Oh, child.”

  “What?” Bonnie said, indignantly.

  “Tell me what’s left to settle.” Skink lowered his head again.

  She tugged on the sleeve of his camo shirt. “I want you to show me what you showed Max. The wildest part.”

  Skink clucked. “Why? Your husband certainly wasn’t impressed.”

  “I’m not like Max.”

  “Let us fervently hope not.”

  “Please. Will you show me?”

  Once more, no reply. Bonnie wished Augustine would hurry back. She returned her attention to the house where the black Cherokee was parked, and thought about what they’d witnessed during the long hot morning. br />
  A half hour after the old man had arrived, a taxi pulled up. Out the doorway of 15600 Calusa had scurried a redheaded woman in a tight shiny cocktail dress and formidable high heels. Augustine and Bonnie agreed she looked like a prostitute. As the woman had wriggled herself into the back of the cab, Skink remarked that her bold stockings would make a superb mullet seine.

  A short time later, a teal-blue Taurus had stopped in the driveway. The governor said it had to be a rental, because only rental companies bought teal-blue cars. Two men had gotten out of the Taurus; neither had a disfigured jaw. The younger one was a trim-looking blond who wore eyeglasses and carried a tan briefcase. The older, heavier one had cropped dark hair and carried a clipboard; his bearing was one of authority—probably ex-military, Skink guessed, a sergeant in his youth. The two men had stayed in the house for a long time. Finally the older one had come out alone. He’d sat in the driver’s side of the car, with the door open, and jotted notes. Soon the man with the briefcase had appeared around the corner of the house, from the backyard, and together they’d departed.

  While the visitors didn’t appear to be violent desperadoes, Skink said that one could never be certain in Miami. Augustine got the hint, and went to fetch the guns from the pickup truck.

  Now the governor had his forehead on the sill, and he’d begun to hum. Bonnie asked the name of the song.

  “‘Number Nine Dream,’” he said.

  “I don’t know that one.”

  She wanted so much to hear about his life. She wanted him to open up and tell the most thrilling and shocking of true stories.

  “Sing it for me,” she said.

  “Some other time.” Skink pointed across the street. A man and a woman were leaving the house.

  Bonnie Lamb stared. “What in the world are they doing?”

  The governor rose quickly. “Come, child,” he said.

  After the Sally Jessy show ended, Snapper made a couple of phone calls to set something up. Exactly what, Edie Marsh wasn’t sure. Evidently he’d gotten a brainstorm about what to do with the old man, short of murder.

  “Gimme hand,” he said to Edie, and began tearing the living-room drapes off the rods. The drapes were whorehouse pink, heavy and dank from rain. They spread the fabric in a crude square on the floor. Then they put Levon Stichler in the middle and rolled him up inside.

  To Edie, it resembled an enormous strawberry pastry. She said, “I hope he can breathe.”

  Snapper punched the pink bundle. “Hey, asshole. You got air?”

  The gagged old man responded with an expressive groan. Snapper said, “He’s OK. Let’s haul his ass out to the Jeep.”

  Levon Stichler wasn’t easy to carry. Snapper took the heavy end, but each step was agony to his shattered knee. They dropped the old man several times before they made it to the driveway. Each time it happened, Snapper swore vehemently and danced a tortured one-legged jig around the pink bundle. Edie Marsh opened the rear hatch of the Cherokee, and somehow they managed to fold Levon Stichler into the cargo well.

  Snapper was leaning against the bumper, waiting for the searing pain in his leg to ebb, when he spotted the tall stranger coming toward them from the abandoned house across the street. The man was dressed in army greens. His long wild hair looked like frosted hemp. At first Snapper thought he was a street person, maybe a Vietnam vet or one of those cracked-out losers who lived under the interstate. Except he was walking too fast and purposefully to be a bum. He was moving like he had food in his stomach, good hard muscles, and something serious on his mind. Ten yards behind, hurrying to catch up, was a respectable-looking young woman.

  Edie Marsh said, “Oh shit,” and slammed the hatch of the Jeep. She told Snapper not to say a damn word; she’d do the talking.

  As the stranger approached, Snapper straightened on both legs. The pain in his injured knee caused him to grind his mismatched molars. He slipped a hand inside his suit jacket.

  “Excuse us,” said the stranger. The woman, looking nervous, stood behind him.

  Edie Marsh said, helpfully, “Are you lost?”

  The stranger beamed—a striking smile, full of bright movie-star teeth. Snapper tensed; this was no interstate bum.

  “What a fine question!” the man said to Edie. Then he turned to Snapper. “Sir, you and I have something in common.”

  Snapper scowled. “The fuck you talkin’ about?”

  “See here.” The stranger calmly pried out one of his eyeballs and held it up, like a polished gemstone, for Snapper to examine. Snapper felt himself keeling, and steadied himself against the truck. The sight of the shrunken socket was more sickening than that of the glistening prosthesis.

  “It’s glass,” the man said. “A minor disability, just like your jaw. But we both struggle with the mirror, do we not?”

  “I got no problems in that department,” Snapper said, though he could not look the stranger in the face. “Are you some fuckin’ preacher or what?”

  Edie Marsh cut in: “Mister, I don’t mean to be rude, but we’ve got to be on our way. We’ve got an appointment downtown.”

  The stranger had a darkly elusive charm, a dangerous and disorganized intelligence that put Edie on edge. He appeared content at the prospect of physical confrontation. The pretty young woman, tame and fine-featured, seemed an unlikely partner; Edie wondered if she was a captive.

  The tall stranger cocked back his head and deftly reinserted the glass eye. Then, blinking for focus, he said, “OK, kids. Let’s have a peek in that snazzy Jeep.”

  Snapper whipped out the .357 and pointed it at a button in the center of the man’s broad chest. “Get in,” he snarled.

  Again the stranger grinned. “We thought you’d never ask!” The young woman clutched one of his arms and tried to suppress her trembling.

  Augustine noticed a young towheaded boy, rigid in a shredded patio chair outside a battered house. Most of the roof was gone, so a skin of cheap blue plastic had been stapled to the beams for shade and shelter. It puckered and flapped in the breeze.

  The towheaded boy looked only ten or eleven years old. He held a stainless-steel Ruger Mini-14, which he raised from his lap as Augustine passed on the sidewalk. In a thin high pitch, the boy yelled: “Looters will be shot!”

  The warning matched a message spray-painted in two-foot letters on the front wall: looters bewair!!

  Augustine turned to face the child. “I’m not a looter. Where’s your father?”

  “Out for lumber. He told me watch the place.”

  “You’re doing a good job.” Augustine stared at the powerful rifle. A bank robber had used the same model to shoot down five FBI agents in Suniland, a few years back.

  The boy explained: “We had looters, night after the hurry-cane. We were stayin’ with Uncle Rick, he lives somewheres called Dania. They came through while we’s gone.”

  Augustine slowly stepped forward for a closer look. The clip was fitted flush in the Ruger; all systems Go. The boy wore a severe expression, squinting at Augustine as if he stood a hundred yards away. The boy fidgeted in the flimsy chair. One side of his mouth wormed into a creepy lopsided frown. Augustine half expected to hear banjo music.

  The boy went on: “They got our TVs and CD player. My dad’s toolbox, too. I’m ’posed to shoot the bastards they come back.”

  “Did you ever fire that gun before?”

  “All the time.” The child’s hard gray-blue eyes flickered with the lie. The Mini-14 was heavy. His little arms were tired from holding it. “You better go on now,” he advised.

  Augustine nodded, backing away. “Just be careful, all right? You don’t want to hurt the wrong person.”

  “My dad said he’s gone booby-trap everything so’s next time they’ll be damn sorry. He went to the hardware store. My mom and Debbie are still up at Uncle Rick’s. Debbie’s my half-sister, she’s seven.”

  “Promise you’ll be careful with the gun.”

  “She stepped on a rusty nail and got infected.?
??

  “Promise me you’ll take it easy.”

  “OK,” said the boy. A droplet of sweat rolled down a pink, sunburned cheek. It surely tickled, but the boy never took a hand off the rifle.

  Augustine waved good-bye and went on up the road. When he arrived at the house where he’d left Bonnie Lamb and the governor, he found it empty. Across the street, at 15600 Calusa, the black Jeep Cherokee was gone from the driveway.

  CHAPTER

  22

  Augustine sprinted across the street. He pulled the pistol when he reached the doorway. There was no answer when he called Bonnie’s name. Cautiously he went through the house. It was empty of life. The air was stale; mildew and sweat, except for one of the bedrooms—strong perfume and sex. A hall closet was open, revealing nothing unusual. A plaque on the living-room wall indicated the house belonged to a salesman, Antonio Torres. The hurricane had done quite a number on the place. In the backyard Augustine saw two miniature dachshunds tied to a sprinkler. They barked excitedly when they spotted him.

  He sat down in a Naugahyde recliner and tried to reconstruct what could have happened in the twenty minutes he’d been gone. Obviously something had inspired the governor to make his move. Surely he’d ordered Bonnie to wait across the street, but she’d probably followed him just the same. Augustine had to assume they were now in the Jeep with the bad guy, headed for an unknown destination.

  Augustine tore through the house once more, searching for clues. In the rubble of the funky-smelling bedroom was an album of water-stained photographs: the salesman, his spouse, and a multitude of well-fed relatives. Brenda Rourke had not recalled her attacker as an overweight Hispanic male, and the pictures of Antonio Torres showed no obvious facial deformity. Augustine decided it couldn’t be the same man. He moved to the kitchen.

  Hidden in a large saucepan, in a cupboard over the double sink, was a woman’s leather purse. Inside was a wallet containing a Florida driver’s license for one Edith Deborah Marsh, white female. Date of birth: 5-7-63. The address was an apartment in West Palm Beach. The picture on the license was unusually revealing: a pretty young lady with smoky, predatory eyes. The photo tech at the driver’s bureau had outdone himself. Folded neatly in the woman’s purse were pink carbons of two insurance settlements from Midwest Casualty, one for $60,000 and one for $141,000. The claims were for hurricane damage to the house at 15600 Calusa, and bore signatures of Antonio and Neria Torres. Interestingly, the insurance papers were dated that very day. Augustine was intrigued that Ms. Edith Marsh would have these documents in her possession, and took the liberty of transferring them to his own pocket.