“Body parts?”
“Not fresh ones—artifacts. Believe it or not, a good skull is hard to come by.”
That was the line that usually sent them bolting for the door. Bonnie didn’t move.
“Can I look?”
Augustine took one from a shelf. She inspected it casually, as if it were a cantaloupe in a grocery store. Augustine smiled; he liked this lady.
“Male or female?” Bonnie turned the skull in her hands.
“Male, late twenties, early thirties. Guyanese, circa 1940. Came from a medical school in Texas.”
Bonnie asked why the lower jaw was missing. Augustine explained that it fell off when the facial muscles decayed. Most old skulls were found without the mandible.
Lifting it by the eye sockets, Bonnie returned the spooky relic to its place on the wall. “How many have you got up there?”
“Nineteen.”
She whistled. “And how many are women?”
“None,” said Augustine. “They’re all young males. So you’ve got nothing to worry your pretty head about.”
She rolled her eyes at the joke, then asked: “Why all males?”
“To remind me of my own mortality.”
Bonnie groaned. “You’re one of those.”
“Other times,” Augustine said, “when I’m sure my life has gone to hell, I come in here and think about what happened to these poor bastards. It improves my outlook considerably.”
She said, “Well, that makes about as much sense as everything else. Can I take a shower?”
Later, over coffee, he told her what the FBI man had said. “They’ll treat your husband’s disappearance as a kidnapping when there’s a credible ransom demand. And he stressed the word ‘credible.’”
“But what about the message on the machine? That other man’s voice cutting in?”
“Of course they’ll listen to it. But I’ve got to warn you, they’re shorthanded right now. Lots of agents got hit hard by the storm, so they’re out on personal leave.”
Bonnie was exasperated by the lack of interest in Max’s plight. Augustine explained that restless husbands often used natural disasters as a cover to flee their wives. Precious manpower and resources were wasted tracking them to the apartments, condominiums and houseboats of their respective mistresses. Consequently, post-hurricane reports of missing spouses were now received with chilly skepticism.
Bonnie Lamb said, “For God’s sake, we just got married. Max wouldn’t take off on a stunt like that.”
Augustine shrugged. “People get cold feet.”
She leaned across the kitchen table and took a swing at him. Augustine blocked the punch with a forearm. He told Mrs. Lamb to settle down. Her cheeks were flushed and her eyes shone.
Augustine said, “I meant we can’t rule out anything.”
“But you heard that man on the answering machine!”
“Yeah, and I’m wondering why a serious kidnapper would be such a smartass. ‘Don’t flatter yourself, Max.’ And then the guy gets on the line and says, ‘I love you, Bonnie.’ Just to needle your husband, see? Make him feel like shit.” Augustine poured more coffee for both of them. He said, “There’s something damn strange about it. That’s all I’m saying.”
Bonnie Lamb had to agree. “To leave his voice all over a telephone tape—”
“Exactly. The guy’s either incredibly stupid, or he’s got brass balls—”
“Or he just doesn’t care,” Bonnie said.
“You picked up on that, too.”
“It’s scary.”
Augustine said, “I’m not so sure.”
“Don’t start again. Max is not faking this!”
“That stuff about having you call Pete at Rodale, the Bronco billboard—was he talking in code or what? Because some maniac kidnaps me, the last thing I’m worried about is keeping up with my ad accounts. What I’m worried about is saving my hide.”
Bonnie looked away. “You don’t know Max, what a workaholic he is.”
Augustine pushed back from the table. Normally he wasn’t wild about women who punched for no good reason.
“What do we do now?” She held the cup with both hands, shaking slightly. “You heard the man’s tone.”
“Yeah, I did.”
“Let’s agree he’s not your average kidnapper. What is he?”
Augustine shook his head. “How would I know, Mrs. Lamb?”
“It’s Bonnie.” She stood up, perfectly calm now, tightening the sash on the robe he’d loaned her. “Maybe together we can figure him out.”
Augustine emptied his coffee in the sink. “I think we both need some sleep.”
On the way back to Tony Torres’s house, Edie Marsh asked Snapper if he had a stopwatch.
“Why?”
“Because I want to put a clock on this jerk,” she said, “see how long it takes before he tries to screw me.”
Snapper, who had daydreamed of doing the same thing, said: “I give him two days before he makes a move.”
“I give him two hours,” Edie said.
“So what’ll you do? Ten grand’s ten grand.”
Edie said, “You better be joking. I’d shove hot daggers in my eyes before I’d let that pig touch me.” It was a long bleak slide from dating a Kennedy to fucking a mobile-home salesman.
“What if he don’t let up?” asked Snapper.
“Then I walk.”
“Yeah, but—”
“Hey,” Edie said, “you want the money so bad, you fuck him, OK? I think the two of you’d make a very cute couple.”
Snapper didn’t press the issue. He’d already hatched a backup plan, in case the Torres deal fell apart. Avila was in a happy mood when he’d called the motel. Apparently the santería saints had informed him he could become very rich by starting his own roofing business. The saints had pointed out that the hurricane left two hundred thousand people without shelter, and that many of these poor folks were so desperate to get their houses repaired that they wouldn’t think of asking to see a valid contractor’s license, which of course Avila did not possess.
“But you’re afraid of heights,” Snapper had reminded him.
“That’s where you come in,” Avila had said. “I’m the boss, you’re the foreman. All we need is a crew.”
“Meaning you won’t be joining us up on the roof with the boiling tar in the hot sun.”
“Jesus, Snap, somebody’s got to handle the paperwork. Somebody’s got to write up the contracts.”
Snapper had inquired about the split. Avila said guys he knew were charging fifteen grand per roof, a third of it up front. He said some home owners were offering cash, to speed the job. Avila said there was enough work around to keep them busy for two years.
“Thanks to you,” Snapper had said.
Avila failed to see irony in the fact that corruptly incompetent building inspections were a chief reason that so many roofs had blown off in the storm, and that so much new business was now available for incompetent roofers.
“You guys plan it this way?” Snapper had asked.
“Plan what?”
Snapper didn’t trust Avila as far as he could spit, but the roofing option was something to consider if Torres went sour.
The trailer salesman also happened to be in sunny spirits when Snapper and Edie Marsh arrived. He was sprawled, shirtless, in a chaise on the front lawn. He wore Bermuda shorts and monogrammed socks pulled high on his hairy shins. The barrel of the shotgun poked out from a stack of newspapers on his lap. When Edie Marsh and Snapper got out of the car, Tony clapped his hands and exclaimed: “I knew you’d be back!”
“A regular Nostradamus,” said Edie. “Is the electricity up yet? We picked up some stuff for the refrigerator.”
Tony reported that the power remained off, and the portable generator had run out of gas overnight. He was storing food in two large Igloo coolers, packed with ice he’d purchased from gougers for twenty dollars a bag. The good news: Telephone service had been resto
red.
“And I got through immediately to Midwest Casualty,” Tony said. “They’re sending an adjuster today or tomorrow.”
Edie thought: Too good to be true. “So we wait?”
“We wait,” Tony said. “And remember, it’s Neria. N-e-r-i-a. Middle initial, Gas in Gómez. What’d you buy?”
“Tuna sandwiches,” Snapper replied, “cheese, eggs, ice cream, Diet Sprite and stale fucking Lorna Doones. There wasn’t much to choose from.” He iced the groceries, found a pool chair and took a position upwind of the sweaty Tony Torres. The sky had cleared and the summer sun blazed down, but it was pointless to look for shade. There wasn’t any; all the trees in Turtle Meadow were leveled.
Tony complimented Edie Marsh for costuming herself as an authentic housewife—jeans, white Keds, a baggy blouse with the sleeves turned up. His only complaint was the sea-green scarf in her hair. He said, “Silk is a little much, considering the circumstances.”
“Because it clashes with those gorgeous Bermudas of yours?” Edie glared at Tony Torres as if he were a maggot on a wedding cake. She was disinclined to remove the scarf, which was one of her favorites. She had boosted it from a Lord & Taylor’s in Palm Beach.
“Suit yourself,” said Tony. “Point is, details are damn important. It’s the little things people notice.”
“I’ll try and keep that in mind.”
Snapper said, “Hey, Mister Salesman of the Year, can we run the TV off that generator?”
Tony said sure, if they only had some gasoline.
Snapper tapped his wristwatch and said, “Sally Jessy comes on in twenty minutes. Men who seduce their daughter-in-law’s mother-in-law.”
“No shit? We could siphon your car.” Tony pointed at the rubble of his garage. “There’s a hose in there someplace.”
Snapper went to find it. Edie Marsh said it was a lousy idea to siphon fuel from the car, since they might be needing speedy transportation. Snapper winked and told her not to worry. Off he went, ambling down the street, the garden hose coiled on his left shoulder.
Edie expropriated the pool chair. Tony Torres perked up. “Scoot closer, darling.”
“Wonderful,” she said, under her breath.
The salesman fanned himself with the Miami Herald sports pages. He said, “It just now hit me: Men who steal their daughter-in-law’s mother-in-law. That’s pretty funny! He don’t look like a comedian, your partner, but that’s a good one.”
“Oh, he’s full of surprises.” Edie leaned back and closed her eyes. The sunshine felt good on her face.
The hurricane had transformed the trailer court into a sprawling aluminum junkyard. Ira Jackson found Lot 17 because of the bright yellow tape that pol ice had roped around the remains of the double-wide mobile home where his mother, Beatrice, had died. After identifying her body at the morgue, Ira Jackson had driven directly to Suncoast Leisure Village, to see for himself.
Not one trailer had made it through the storm.
From the debris, Ira Jackson pulled his mother’s Craftmatic adjustable bed. The mattress was curled up like a giant taco shell. Ira Jackson crawled inside and lay down.
He recalled, as if it were yesterday, the morning he and his mother met with the salesman to close the deal. The man’s name was Tony. Tony Torres. He was fat, gassy and balding, yet extremely self-assured. Beatrice Jackson had been impressed with his pitch.
“Mister Torres says it’s built to go through a hurricane.”
“I find that hard to believe, Momma.”
“Oh yes, Mister Jackson, your mother’s right. Our prefabricated homes are made to withstand gusts up to one hundred twenty miles per hour. That’s a U.S. government regulation. Otherwise we couldn’t sell ’em!”
Ira Jackson was in Chicago, beating up some scabs for a Teamsters local, when he’d heard about the hurricane headed for South Florida. He’d phoned his mother and urged her to move to a Red Cross shelter. She said it was out of the question.
“I can’t leave Donald and Marla,” she told her son.
Donald and Marla were Mrs. Jackson’s beloved miniature dachshunds. The hurricane shelter wouldn’t allow pets.
So Ira’s mother had stayed home out of loyalty to her dogs and a misplaced confidence that the mobile-home salesman had told the truth about how safe it was. Donald and Marla survived the hurricane by squeezing under an oak credenza and sharing a rawhide chew toy to pass the long night. A neighbor had rescued them the next morning and taken them to a vet.
Beatrice Jackson was not so lucky. Moments after the hurricane stripped the north wall off her double-wide, she was killed by a flying barbecue that belonged to one of her neighbors. The imprint of the grill remained visible on her face, peaceful as it was, lying in the Dade County morgue.
Beatrice’s death had no effect whatsoever on the mood of her dachshunds, but her son was inconsolable. Ira Jackson raged at himself for letting his mother buy the trailer. It had been his idea for her to move to Florida—but that’s what guys in his line of work did for their widowed mothers; got them out of the cold weather and into the sunshine.
God help me, Ira Jackson thought, tossing restively on the mechanical mattress. I should’ve held off another year. Waited till I could afford to put her in a condo.
That cocksucker Torres. A-hundred-twenty-mile-per-hour gusts. What kind of scum would lie to a widow?
“Excuse me!”
Ira Jackson bolted upright to see a gray-haired man in a white undershirt and baggy pants. Skin and bones. Wire-rimmed eyeglasses that made him look like a heron. In one arm he carried a brown shopping bag.
“Have you seen an urn?” he asked.
“Jesus, what?”
“A blue urn. My wife’s ashes. It’s like a bottle.”
Ira Jackson shook his head. “No, I haven’t seen it.” He rose to his feet. He noticed that the old man was shaking.
“I’m going to kill him,” he said angrily.
Ira Jackson said, “Who?”
“That lying sonofabitch who sold me the double-wide. I saw him here after the hurricane, but he took off.”
“Torres?”
“Yeah.” The old man’s cheeks colored. “I’d murder him, swear to God, if I could.”
Ira Jackson said, “You’d get a medal for it.” Humoring the guy, hoping he’d run out of steam and go away.
“Hell, you don’t believe me.”
“Sure I do.” He was tempted to tell the old man to quit worrying, Señor Tony Torres would be taken care of. Most definitely. But Ira Jackson knew it would be foolish to draw attention to himself.
The old man said: “My name’s Levon Stichler. I lived four lots over. Was it your mother that died here?”
Ira Jackson nodded.
Levon Stichler said, “I’m real sorry. I’m the one found her two dogs—they’re at Dr. Tyler’s in Naranja.”
“She’d appreciate that, my mother.” Ira Jackson made a mental note to pick up the dachshunds before the vet’s office closed.
The old man said, “My wife’s ashes blew away in the hurricane.”
“Yeah, well, if I come across a blue bottle—”
“What the hell could they do to me?” Levon Stichler wore a weird quavering smirk. “For killing him, what could they do? I’m seventy-one goddamn years old—what, life in prison? Big deal. I got nothing left anyhow.”
Ira Jackson said, “I was you, I’d put it out of my mind. Scum like Torres, they usually get what they deserve.”
“Not in my world,” said Levon Stichler. But the widow Jackson’s son had taken the wind out of his sails. “Hell, I don’t know how to find the sonofabitch anyhow. Do you?”
“Wouldn’t have a clue,” Ira Jackson said.
Levon Stichler shrugged in resignation, and returned to the heap that once was his home. Ira Jackson watched him poking through the rubble, stooping every so often to examine a scrap. All around the trailer court, other neighbors of the late Beatrice Jackson could be seen hunched and scavenging, pic
king up pieces.
Her son opened his wallet, which contained: six hundred dollars cash, a picture of his mother taken in Atlantic City, three fake driver’s licenses, a forged Social Security card, a stolen Delta Airlines frequent flyer card, and numerous scraps of paper with numerous phone numbers from the 718 area code. The wallet also held a few legitimate business cards, including one that said:
Antonio Torres
Senior Sales Associate
PreFab Luxury Homes
(305) 555-2200
The trailer salesman had jotted his home number on the back of the business card. Ira Jackson kicked through his mother’s storm-soaked belongings until he found a Greater Miami telephone directory. The salesman’s home number matched the one belonging to an A. R. Torres at 15600 Calusa Drive. Ira Jackson tore the page from the phone book. Carefully he folded it to fit inside his wallet, with the other important numbers.
Then he drove his fraudulently registered Coupe de Ville to a convenience store, where he purchased a Rand McNally road map of Dade County.
CHAPTER
6
The vagabond monkey chose to forgo the airboat experience. Max Lamb was given no choice. The one-eyed man strapped him to the passenger seat and off they went at fifty miles an hour, skimming the grass, cattails and lily pads. For a while they followed a canal that paralleled a two-lane highway; Max could make out the faces of motorists gaping at him in his underwear. It didn’t occur to him to signal for help; the electrified dog collar had conditioned total passivity.
Riding high in the driver’s perch, the man who called himself Skink sang at the top of his lungs. It sounded like “Desperado,” an old Eagles tune. The familiar melody surfed above the ear-splitting roar of the airboat’s engine; more than ever, Max Lamb believed he was in the grip of a madman.
Soon the airboat made a wide turn away from the road. It plowed a liquid trail through thickening marsh, the sawgrass hissing against the metal hull. The hurricane had bruised and gouged the swamp; smashed cypresses and pines littered the waters. Skink stopped singing and began to emit short honks and toots that Max Lamb assumed to be either wild bird calls or a fearsome attack of sinusitis. He was afraid to inquire.