Stormy Weather

  It was an interesting twist, but Augustine doubted it would help him locate Bonnie and the governor. The key to the mystery was the creep with the crooked jaw. He’d be the one carrying Brenda Rourke’s service revolver. He’d be the one at the wheel of the Cherokee. Yet the house yielded no traceable signs.

  With every passing moment, the creep was getting farther away. Augustine experienced a flutter of panic, thinking of what might happen. It was inconceivable that the governor would be cooperative during an abduction. Resistance was in the man’s blood. A .357 aimed at his forehead would only enhance the challenge. And if he screwed up, Bonnie Lamb would be lost.

  Augustine ached with dread. His impulse was to get in the truck and start driving; desperate widening grids and circles, in a wild hope of spotting the Jeep. The creep had only a short head start, but also the considerable advantage of knowing which direction he was going.

  Then Augustine thought of Jim Tile, the state trooper. One shout on the police radio and every cop in South Florida would know to keep an eye open for the Cherokee. Augustine had made a point of memorizing the new tag: PPZ-350. Save the Manatee.

  He picked up the kitchen phone to get the number for the Highway Patrol. That’s when he noticed his old friend, the redial button.

  He’d learned the trick while keeping house with the demented surgical intern, the one who ultimately knifed him in the shower. Whenever he found her gone, Augustine would touch the redial button to determine if she’d been phoning around town to score more Dilaudid, or pawn items stolen from his house. Before long he was able to recognize the voices of her various dope dealers and fences, before hanging up. In that way, the redial button had been a valuable tool for predicting his girlfriend’s moods and tracing missing property.

  So he punched it now, to find out the last number dialed from 15600 Calusa before Skink and Bonnie disappeared. After three rings, a friendly female voice answered:

  “Paradise Palms. Can I help you?”

  Augustine hesitated. He knew of only one Paradise Palms, a seaside motel down in Islamorada. He gave it a shot. “My brother just called a little while ago. From Miami.”

  “Oh yes. Mister Horn’s friend.”

  “Pardon me?”

  “The owner. Mister Horn. Your brother’s name is Lester?”

  “Right,” said Augustine, flying blind.

  “He’s the only Miami booking we’ve had today. Did he want to cancel?”

  “Oh no,” Augustine said. “No, I just want to make sure the reservation is all set. See, we’re supposed to surprise him down there—it’s his birthday tomorrow. We’re going to take him deep-sea fishing.”

  The woman at the motel said the dolphin were hitting offshore, and advised him to try the docks at Bud ’n’ Mary’s to arrange a charter. “Would you like me to call over there?”

  “No, that’s all right.”

  “Does Mister Horn know?”

  “Know what?” said Augustine.

  “That it’s Lester’s birthday. He’ll be so sorry he missed it—he’s in Tampa on business.”

  “Oh, that’s too bad,” Augustine said. “I meant to ask—what time’s my brother getting in? So we can make sure everything’s arranged. You know, for the surprise party.”

  “Of course. He told us to expect him late this afternoon.”

  “That’s perfect.”

  “And don’t you worry. I won’t say a word to spoil it.”

  Augustine said, “Ma’am, I cannot thank you enough.”

  After a day of inept drinking and arduous self-pity, Max Lamb took a flight from Guadalajara to Miami. There he intended to quit smoking, reclaim his brainwashed spouse and reconstruct his life. Another honeymoon was essential—but, this time, someplace far from Florida.

  Hawaii, Max thought. Maybe even Australia.

  His head was a cinder block. The tequila hangover fueled vivid, horrific dreams on the plane. Once he awakened clawing at an invisible shock collar, his neck on fire. In the nightmare it was Bonnie and not the kidnapper wielding the Tri-Tronics remote control, diabolically pushing the buttons. An hour later came another dream; again his wife. This time they were making love on the deck of an airboat, skimming across the Everglades under a blue porcelain sky. Bonnie was on top of him with her eyes half open, the sawgrass whipping her cheeks. Clinging to her bare shoulder was a monkey—the same psoriatic pest that Max had videotaped after the hurricane! In the dream, Max couldn’t see the face of the airboat driver, but believed it was the quiet young man who juggled skulls. As Bonnie bucked her hips, the vile monkey hung on like a tiny wrangler. Suddenly it rose on its hind legs to display a miniature pink erection. That’s when Max screamed and woke up. He was wide-eyed but calmer by the time the plane landed.

  Then, at the Miami airport, his tequila phantasms were reignited by a newspaper headline:

  Remains in Fox Hollow Identified as Mob Figure;

  Believed Mauled, Devoured by Escaped Cat

  Max bought the paper and read the story in horror. A gangster named Ira Jackson had been gobbled by a wild lion that broke out of a wildlife farm during the storm. The gruesome details heightened the urgency of Max’s mission.

  He arrived at Augustine’s home with a prepared speech and, if necessary, a legal threat. The lights were off. Nobody answered the door. In the absence of confrontation, Max was emboldened to slip around to the backyard.

  The sliding glass door on the porch was unlocked. Inside the house, it was stuffy and warm. Max started the air conditioner and turned on every lamp he could find. He wanted to advertise his presence; he didn’t want to be found creeping through the halls in darkness, like a common burglar.

  Thrilled by his own daring, Max combed the place for signs of his wife. Hanging in a closet was the outfit she’d worn on the day he was kidnapped. Since the rental car had been looted of their belongings, Max reasoned that Bonnie must now be wearing somebody else’s clothes, or her folks had wired some cash—or perhaps Augustine had bought her an expensive new wardrobe. Wasn’t that what wife-stealers did?

  Max Lamb forced himself to enter the guest room. He purposely avoided the wall of skulls, but shuddered anyway under the dissipated stares. He was pleased to find the bed linens rumpled exclusively on the left side—Bonnie’s favorite. A depression in the lone pillow seemed, upon inspection, to match the shape of a young woman’s head. The bed showed no manifest evidence of male visitation.

  An oak dresser yielded an assortment of female clothing, from bras to blue jeans, in an intriguing range of sizes. Relics of Augustine’s ex-girlfriends, Max assumed. One of them must have stood six feet two, judging by the Amazonian cut of her black exercise leggings. Max located several petite items that would have fit his wife, including a pair of powder-blue sweat socks in a tidy mound on the hardwood floor. His outlook improved; at least she was wearing borrowed clothes.

  He steeled himself for the next survey: Augustine’s room.

  The man’s bed looked like a grenade had been set off under the sheets. Max Lamb thought: He’s either having fantastic sex or horrible nightmares. The disarray made it impossible to determine if two persons had shared the mattress; the cast of A Chorus Line could have slept there, for all Max could tell.

  Uncertainty nibbled at his ego. He got an idea—distasteful but effective. He bent over Augustine’s bed and put his nose to the linens, whiffing for a trace of Bonnie’s perfume. Uncharacteristically, Max Lamb couldn’t recall the brand name of the fragrance, but he’d never forget its orchard scent.

  He sniffed in imaginary grids, starting at the headboard and working his way down the mattress. An explosive sneeze announced his findings: Paco Rabanne for men. Max recognized the scent because he wore it himself (in spite of a near-incapacitating allergy) every Monday, for the sixth-floor meetings at Rodale.

  Paco and laundry bleach, that’s all Max detected on Augustine’s sheets.

  One more place to check: the wastebasket in the bathroom. Grimly Max pawed throu
gh the litter: no used condoms, thank God.

  Later, stretched out on Augustine’s sofa, Max realized that Bonnie’s faithfulness, or possible lack thereof, wasn’t the most pressing issue. It was her sanity. Somehow they’d snowed her, those madmen. Like some weird cult—one eats road pizza, the other fondles human skulls.

  How could such a bright girl let herself be brainwashed by such freaks!

  Max Lamb decided on a bold move. He composed a script for himself and rehearsed it for an hour before picking up the phone. Then he dialed the apartment in New York and left the message for his wandering wife. The ultimatum.

  Afterwards Max called back to hear how it sounded on the answering machine. His voice was so steely that he scarcely recognized himself.

  Excellent, he thought. Just what Bonnie needs to hear.

  If only she calls.

  Avila’s wife snidely announced that his expensive santería goats were in the custody of Animal Control. One had been captured grazing along the shoulder of the Don Shula Expressway, while the other had turned up at a car wash, butting its horns through the grillwork of a leased Jaguar sedan. Avila’s wife said it made the Channel 7 news.

  “So? What do you want me to do?” Avila demanded.

  “Oh, forget about! Three hundred dollars, chew jess forget about!”

  “You want me to steal the goats back? OK, tonight I’ll drive to the animal shelter and break down the fence and kidnap the damn things. That make you happy? While I’m there I’ll grab you some kittens and puppies, too. Maybe a big fat guinea pig for your mother, no?”

  “I hate chew! I hate chew!”

  Avila shook his head. “Here we go again.”

  “Chew and Chango, your faggot orícha!”

  “Louder,” Avila said. “Maybe you can wake some of your dead relatives in Havana.”

  The phone rang. He picked it up and turned his back on his wife, who hurled a can of black beans and stormed from the kitchen in a gust of English expletives.

  It was Jasmine on the line. She asked, “What’s all that noise?”

  “Marriage,” Avila said.

  “Well, love, I’m sitting here with Bridget, and guess where we’re going tonight.”

  “To blow somebody?”

  “God, look who’s in a piss-poor mood.”

  “Sorry,” Avila said. “It’s been a shitty day.”

  “We’re driving to the Keys.”

  “Yeah?”

  “To meet your friend,” said Jasmine.

  “No shit? Where?”

  “Some motel on the ocean. Can you believe he’s payin’ the both of us to baby-sit some old-timer.”

  “Who?” Avila couldn’t imagine what new scam Snapper was running.

  Jasmine said, “Just some yutz, I don’t know. We’re supposed to keep him busy for a couple days, take some dirty pictures. Five hundred each is what your friend’s giving us.”

  “Geez, that sucks.”

  “Business is slow, sweetie. The hurricane turned all our regulars into decent, faithful, God-fearing family men.”

  Avila heard Bridget’s giggle in the background. Jasmine said, “So five hundred looks pretty sweet right about now.”

  “You can double it if you give up the name of the motel.”

  “Why do you think we called? Aren’t you proud of me?”

  Avila said, “You’re the best.”

  “But listen, honey, we need to know—”

  “Let me talk to Bridget.”

  “Nope, we want to know what you got in mind. Because both of us are on probation, as usual—”

  “Don’t worry,” Avila said.

  “—and we don’t need no more trouble, legally speaking.”

  “Relax, I said.”

  “You ain’t gonna kill this guy?”

  “Which guy—Snapper? Hell, no, he owes me money is all. What time are you meeting him?”

  Jasmine said, “Around eight.”

  Avila checked his wristwatch. “You girls ain’t gonna make Key West by eight o’clock unless you got a rocket car.”

  “Not Key West, honey. Islamorada.”

  It was seventy-five miles closer, but Avila still wasn’t certain he could get there in time. First he had to make an offering; such a momentous trip was unthinkable without an offering.

  He said, “Jasmine, what’s the name of the motel?”

  “Not till you promise me and Bridget won’t get in trouble.”

  “Jesus, I already told you.”

  She said, “Here’s the deal, so listen. You gotta wait till we get our money from your friend Snapper. Then you gotta promise not to shoot anybody in front of us, OK?”

  Avila said, “On my wife’s future grave.”

  “Also, you gotta promise to pay us what you said—five hundred each.”

  “Yep.”

  “Plus two stone crab dinners. That’s Bridget’s idea.”

  “No problem,” Avila said. Informing the prostitutes that stone crabs were out of season would only have muddled the negotiation.

  “The name,” Avila pressed.

  “Paradise Palms. I’ve never been there before. Bridget, neither, but Snapper promised it’s really nice.”

  “Compared to prison, I’m sure it’s the fucking Ritz. What’s the room number?”

  Jasmine asked Bridget. Bridget didn’t know.

  “Doesn’t matter,” Avila said. “I’ll track you down.”

  “Remember what you promised!”

  “Yeah, I’ll try. It’s already been at least seven seconds.”

  “Well, sweetheart, we better cruise.”

  Avila was about to set the receiver on the cradle when he remembered something. “Hey! Jasmine, wait!”

  “Yeah, what.”

  “Did you tell her about me?”

  “Bridget? I didn’t tell her nuthin’.” Jasmine sounded puzzled. “What’s to tell?”

  “Nuthin’.”

  “Oh … you mean about—”

  “Don’t say it!”

  Jasmine said, “Honey, I would never. That was between you and me. Honest to God.”

  “’Cause the other night you said I was better.” How valiantly Avila had labored to stifle his vocalizing during the lovemaking! What few sounds he’d made were not, by any stretch of the imagination, squeaks.

  “The other night you were just great,” said Jasmine. “Fantastic, even. Better than I remembered.”

  Avila said, “Same goes for you, too.”

  Later, driving to Sweetwater for the chickens, he couldn’t stop thinking about the call girl’s sultry compliment. Whether she meant a word of it or not wasn’t worth speculating on; the concept of sincerity was so foreign to Avila’s own life that he felt unqualified to pass judgment on Jasmine. He was just glad she’d quit calling herself Morganna—what a clunker of a name to remember in the heat of passion!

  The combined effect of marijuana and methaqualone on Dr. Charles Gabler’s judgment was not salutary. Never was it more evident than late on the night of September 1, at a roadside motel off Interstate 10 near Bonifay, Florida. Overtaken with desire, the professor slipped out of the twin bed he shared with the sleeping Neria Torres, and slipped into the twin bed occupied by the wakeful young graduate student, Celeste. As he ardently attached himself to one of Celeste’s creamy breasts, Dr. Gabler was becalmed by a warm, harmonious confluence of physical and metaphysical currents. His timing couldn’t have been worse.

  Neria Torres had been reevaluating the parameters of her relationship with the professor ever since they’d pulled off a highway outside Jackson, Mississippi, so he could take a leak. Sitting in the driver’s seat, watching Dr. Gabler try to tinkle in some azaleas, Neria had thought: I don’t find this cute anymore.

  As the professor had tottered back toward the van, the beams of the headlights dramatically illuminated the ruby-colored crystals dangling from the lanyard around his neck.

  “Oh wow,” young Celeste had exclaimed, suffused with mystic awe and Hum
boldt County’s finest.

  That was the moment when Neria Torres had looked into her future and decided that the professor should share no large part of it; specifically, the insurance settlement from the hurricane. Neria envisioned a scenario in which Dr. Gabler might endeavor to sweet-talk her out of a portion of the money—he would probably call it a friendly loan—and then flee in the dead of night with his nubile protégée. After all, that’s pretty much what he’d done to his previous lover, a vendor of fine macramés, when Neria Torres entered his life.

  Even if the professor harbored no selfish designs on the hurricane booty, Neria had a pragmatic reason to dump him: His appearance in Miami would complicate the duel with her estranged husband over the insurance settlement. Considering the tainted circumstance of her departure from the household, Neria doubted that Tony would be in a mood to forgive and forget. Her inability to make contact in the days following the storm was foreboding—the vindictive bastard obviously intended to pocket her half of the windfall. If the battle went to court, Dr. Gabler’s bleary presence during the proceedings would not, Neria Torres knew, work in her favor.

  These were the thoughts she carried into sleep at the motel in Bonifay. Had it been a deeper sleep, or had the room’s Eisenhower-vintage cooling unit been a few decibels louder, Neria Torres might not have been awakened by the muffled suckling and amorous hmmm-hmmms from the nearby bed. But awakened she was.

  Except for cracking her eyelids, Neria didn’t move a muscle at first. Instead she lay listening in disgusted fascination, struggling to arrange her emotions. On the one hand, she was vastly relieved to have found a solid excuse for jettisoning the professor. On the other hand, she was furious that the sneaky little shit would be so crude and thoughtless. Over the years, Tony Torres undoubtedly had cheated on her now and again—but never while she was sleeping in the same room!