Skinny Dip

  “All right then,” said Tool, and went out back to plant a new cross that he’d uprooted off Highway 27 during the drive back from LaBelle.

  Chaz fixed himself a cup of black coffee. By nature he was neither thorough nor introspective, but he reviewed with some attention to detail the events of recent days. That his stock had fallen with Red Hammernut was clear, and it caused Chaz to wonder if Red was now reconsidering his past commitments. In exchange for carrying out the Everglades scam, Chaz had been promised a plum position with Hammernut Farms—staff biologist, with a fat salary, big office, slutty blond secretary, whatever he wanted. That was the deal. They had drunk a toast and shaken hands on it.

  But now . . . now it seemed to Chaz as if Red was blaming him for the entire unfortunate shitstorm, from the jerkoff detective snooping around to the jerkoff blackmailer demanding half a million bucks. True, none of it would be happening had Chaz not chosen to push his perfectly innocent wife off the cruise liner—but how could he possibly have known that some conniving dirtbag was lurking in the shadows, watching the whole damn thing?

  It was unfair of Red Hammernut to lose faith so easily, to tie Chaz on a short leash and put him in the hands of a chowderhead like Tool. With a measure of bitterness Chaz concluded that Red was underestimating him, just as his mother had underestimated him not so many years ago. He believed that Red’s tepid assessment of his character might be different had he witnessed Chaz in action the night before at Loxahatchee; the smooth and unflinching way that Chaz had taken care of the Ricca problem. Red surely would have been impressed, he thought. Maybe even amazed.

  As he watched Tool plant yet another white cross in the yard, it began to gnaw at Dr. Charles Perrone that Red Hammernut was now treating him like a liability instead of an asset.

  And he knew what men like Red Hammernut did with their liabilities.

  Twenty-three

  Joey and Mick Stranahan were waiting when Corbett Wheeler’s chartered Falcon landed at Tamiami. He stepped out wearing a long black drover’s coat and, over an explosion of reddish-blond hair, a wide-brimmed leather hat. He sported a lushly ungroomed beard, and he carried a burl walking stick of the sort favored by fast-water trout fishermen. Two inches taller than Stranahan, Corbett Wheeler shook hands in a way that suggested the closure of a sensitive, high-stakes business deal. Then with one ropy arm he twirled his sister until she giggled. On the drive to Dinner Key he insisted on sharing Polaroids of a prize ewe named Celine, a Coopworth–East Friesian hybrid that had survived a nasty bout with foot rot to become Corbett’s most fertile breeder.

  “Isn’t she gorgeous?” he enthused.

  Mick and Joey chose to treat the question as rhetorical. To Stranahan, Corbett Wheeler confided: “These are the most peaceable creatures on God’s green earth. Strange as it seems, I vastly prefer their company to humans.”

  Stranahan said he understood completely.

  “There’s no sort of unnatural attraction, if that’s what you’re wondering,” Corbett added sternly. “Joey will back me up on that.”

  She said, “It’s true. Corbett is partial to women. He’s been engaged what—three or four times?”

  He nodded remorsefully. “I’m impossible to live with. I crave my solitude.”

  “Then you’ll approve of the island,” Stranahan said.

  “Yes, but first the ship!”

  “What a champ,” Joey said.

  Corbett Wheeler tipped his hat. “Anything for you, little sister.”

  Three hours later, after an arduous mission to the Gallería Mall, they were standing on the fantail of the M.V. Sun Duchess in Port Everglades, waiting for the sun to set. Joey’s brother was looking over the rail, pointing with his walking stick, saying, “Christ Almighty, I can’t believe you didn’t die in the fall.”

  “I turned it into a dive,” Joey explained. “That’s what saved me—four years on the college swim team.”

  Stranahan noticed her shying away from the side of the ship. When he asked if she felt all right, she said, “It’s just a little creepy out here, that’s all.”

  “We don’t have to go through with this,” he said.

  “Like hell we don’t.”

  Still gazing down at the water, Corbett Wheeler whistled. “It was me, I wouldn’t have made it.”

  “If it was you,” Joey said, “you wouldn’t have married someone who’d push you overboard.”

  Her brother shrugged. “Relationships are complicated. That’s why I’m partial to livestock.”

  Stranahan watched the meandering procession of tugs and freighters and fishing boats. The roiling cross-wakes would have made for an interesting ride in his skiff.

  “You rented this whole ship?” he asked Corbett Wheeler.

  “Just for the night.”

  Joey asked how much it cost, and Corbett told her to mind her own business. “One of the engines is down for servicing, so the cruise line was delighted with my offer. Tomorrow they’re leasing out the Commodore Deck for a bar mitzvah!”

  Joey had worn a baseball cap and sunglasses so that she wouldn’t be recognized by any of the crew. According to the newspapers, Chaz had provided a photograph that was copied and distributed to all hands after she went missing.

  She held up a pair of large shopping bags. “Mick, are you ready?”

  “How about a cocktail first?” Joey’s brother proposed merrily.

  “Amen,” said Mick Stranahan.

  Tool sat down next to Maureen’s bed and whispered, “Hey, there.”

  Her eyes opened halfway. When she smiled, Tool noticed that her lips were blotchy and dried out. For a moment he wondered if she’d gotten sick from the gator meat that he’d brought the other night.

  He said, “What’s all this?”

  An oxygen tube trailed to her nostrils. A plastic bag filled with fluid hung next to the bed rail on an intravenous rig, dripping into a hole in her right arm.

  “I took a turn,” she said weakly.

  Tool tried to swallow but found he couldn’t. He stared down at the aluminum tin on his lap. “I brung a piece a Key lime pie.”

  “Thank you, Earl. Maybe later.”

  “What happened?” He was worried and confused.

  “Nothing happened. This is just how it goes.”

  “What? How what goes?”

  Maureen said, “Up and down, Earl. Good days, bad days.”

  She reached over and smoothed the shiny hairs on his hand. He was gripping the bed rail so tightly that his knuckles had gone pale. “How’s the bodyguarding business?” she asked. “Tell me about your big meeting the other night.”

  Tool said, “You just rest. Don’t talk no more.”

  He placed the pie tin on the bed stand and grabbed the TV remote. He clicked through the channels until he found a nature show about white pelicans, which he thought might interest Maureen. He remembered her saying that she had been keen on bird-watching until she’d taken ill. He recalled her telling about the day that she’d spotted a red-cockaded woodpecker, which was sort of like a redheaded woodpecker except hardly any of them were left on the whole entire planet. So Tool figured he couldn’t go wrong with any TV program that had to do with birds.

  Sure enough, Maureen right away lifted her head and scooted higher on the pillow. She said, “Did you hear that, Earl? They migrate all the way from Canada to Florida Bay, the white pelicans do.”

  “Well, I’ll be damned,” said Tool.

  Maureen began coughing, a wet hack that he found alarming. He lifted her upright and whumped her between the shoulder blades, which only made her moan. Gently he set her back on the pillow. A nurse who’d heard Maureen making noises came into the room and demanded to know what Tool was doing.

  “It’s all right. He’s my nephew,” Maureen said, slowly catching her breath.

  The nurse was a small Hispanic woman who was struggling to reconcile Tool’s uncommon physical appearance with his white medical coat.

  “He’s a doctor,??
? Maureen added.

  “Oh, really?” said the nurse.

  “From the Netherlands.”

  When the nurse was gone, Maureen said, “Normally I don’t like to fib, but I believe she would have called Security.”

  Tool asked, “Where’s your kin? How come they don’t never visit?”

  “My daughters live in Coral Gables—it’s a long drive, and they’ve got the kids to worry about. I see them on holidays.”

  “Ain’t that far,” Tool said. “It’s a hop on the interstate is all. They could come weekends, at least.”

  “Did you need more medicine?”

  With some effort Maureen rolled herself toward the wall. Her gown was open in the back and her skin looked dull and waxy. Tool observed that all the fentanyl patches had been removed.

  She said, “Take what you need.”

  “They’s all gone.”

  “Oh?” She rolled back and faced him. “I’m sorry, Earl. They must’ve peeled them off when they put me on the morphine.” Her eyes flicked to the IV bag. “They gave me a squeeze pump so I don’t have to bother the nurses—who, by the way, are just sitting on their flabby duffs doing nothing, complaining about their no-good husbands and reading the National Enquirer.”

  Tool said, “I don’t need no more stick-ems. I just come to say hi.” The truth was, he’d missed her company. It was the damnedest thing.

  “I think there’s one left in that drawer,” Maureen said. “Go on and take it.”

  The patch was still in its wrapper. What the hell, thought Tool. He slipped it in his breast pocket.

  “Earl?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Something’s bothering you. What is it?”

  “I’m fine,” Tool said.

  “You are not fine, young man. Talk to me.”

  Tool stood up. “Go on back to sleep.” He decided not to tell her about Perrone shooting that woman, and all the rest. Maureen wouldn’t understand, and besides, he didn’t want to upset her.

  Once more she reached for his hand. “It’s never too late for choosing a new direction—what they call a sea change. Promise me you’ll keep that in mind.”

  He said, “You’re gonna be okay. Them doctors, they’ll getcha some stronger dope. I’ll see to it.”

  Maureen closed her eyes. “Listen to me, Earl. It’s yourself you ought to be thinking about. Life goes by so darn fast, every wasted moment is a crime.” One blue eye opened and fixed on him. “And every crime is a wasted moment.”

  Tool assured her that he’d stay out of trouble. “This job’ll be done soon, then I can get on home.”

  “But I’ve got such a bad feeling,” she said.

  “Stop it, now. Don’t you worry.”

  He found it jarring to feel sad for this woman, who was practically a stranger. She in no way reminded him of his mother, who had been loud and short-tempered; a world-class blasphemer. Yet as Tool watched Maureen tugging the sheets up to her chin, he felt the same creeping helplessness, the same heavy premonition of loss as when his mother had taken sick.

  “You go see the surgeon yet?” Maureen asked.

  “No, ma’am. I been real busy.”

  With skeletal fingers she pinched a clump of his knuckle hair and twisted it until he let out a cry.

  “Earl, you can’t walk around with a lead slug up your bottom. It’s bound to affect your outlook.”

  Tool jerked his hand away. “I’ll get it took care of, I swear.”

  “It could well be the turning point in your life,” she said. “What they call an epiphany. Or at least a catharsis.”

  He assumed those to be the surgical terms for a bullet removal, and he promised Maureen he would schedule the operation as soon as he got a break in his bodyguarding schedule.

  “I’ll be back later in the week,” he promised.

  She looked up at him warmly. “Do you pray, Earl?”

  “Not in a while,” he admitted. Thirty years at least.

  “That’s all right.”

  “Well, I better go now.”

  “Every time my faith is shaken, I look up into the big blue sky and see God’s work practically everywhere. Just imagine a bird that flies all the way from Manitoba to Key West. Every single winter!”

  Tool found himself turning toward the TV screen. A large flock of snowy pelicans was taking flight, rising in a flurry from the rippled surface of a marsh. With a little imagination it looked like a long sugar-white beach breaking to pieces and blowing away in the wind.

  “I’d like to see that someday,” Tool said.

  Soon Maureen’s hand slipped from his, and Tool knew from the heaviness of her breathing that she’d fallen asleep. He watched the bird program until it was over, then switched off the television. As he was leaving the convalescent center, the Hispanic nurse got in step beside him and asked if he was really Maureen’s nephew.

  “I don’t see much resemblance,” the nurse remarked.

  “That’s ’cause I’m adopted,” Tool said.

  “Really. And back in the Netherlands you’re a physician?”

  “No, a doctor,” he said pointedly.

  “Ah.”

  Sneaky little bitch, Tool thought, squeezing himself into the Grand Marquis. Thought she could trick me!

  Fifteen miles away, in the Loxahatchee National Wildlife Refuge, a man with one eye was skinning a dead otter. The man was tall and his hands were large and his skin was as brown as an English saddle. He wore dungarees, military boots, an opaque shower cap and a threadbare T-shirt with a lewd lapping tongue silk-screened on the front. His beard was a spray of braided silvery tendrils, the tips of which were green and mossy with dried duckweed. The man looked ancient and mildly demented, although he moved with the fluid confidence of an athlete or a soldier, both of which he once was.

  The otter had been killed a few hours earlier by a poacher who hadn’t realized until too late that he himself was being stalked. The man with one eye had easily disarmed the outlaw, stripped off his clothes, bound his wrists and ankles with saw grass, then staked him on a hemp leash to an alligator nest.

  Ricca Spillman had witnessed it all.

  She was floating in a state of suspended awareness. Even after two days she wasn’t certain if the one-eyed man was real; if he was, however, he had saved her life.

  The man informed Ricca that they would eat the dead otter because that was better than leaving it to the buzzards. When she inquired about the fate of the poacher, the one-eyed man said, “If the gator doesn’t get him, I suppose I’ll cut him loose. All depends on his manners.”

  “What about me?”

  The man made no response, the blade flashing in his hand as he deftly peeled the flesh of the otter away from the damp thick fur. When he was done, he said, “Tell me again about your boyfriend.”

  Ricca repeated the story of Chaz Perrone while the man prepared a small fire. The otter meat smelled funky, but Ricca was so famished that she forced it down. The man devoured everything else in the fry pan, crunching noisily into the marrow of the animal’s bones. Afterward he kicked dirt over the flames, wiped his palms on the seat of his dungarees and lifted Ricca into his arms.

  “How’s the leg?” he asked, and began trudging through the scrub.

  “Much better today. Where are we going, Captain?”

  That was how the man in the shower cap had asked to be addressed.

  “There’s another camp not far.” He carried Ricca as lightly as if she were pillow fluff.

  She said, “How soon can I go home?”

  “You have a pleasing voice. It makes me want to sleep in your arms.”

  “Will you take me home? Please?”

  “Sorry,” the man replied, “but I can’t go near the highway. Please don’t ask—the traffic sets me off.”

  The next camp was a small clearing in a stand of palmettos. He set Ricca on the ground, lit another fire and heated a pot of coffee. From a canvas duffel marked u.s. postal service he took out a volume of po
etry.

  “Oliver Goldsmith,” he said.

  Ricca raised her eyebrows quizzically. The man opened the book to a dog-eared page and placed it on her lap. “Read that aloud, please.”

  “The whole thing?”

  “Just the first stanza.”

  Ricca, whose interest in poetry had peaked with “Green Eggs and Ham,” read it first to herself:

  When lovely woman stoops to folly,

  And finds too late that men betray,

  What charm can soothe her melancholy?

  What art can wash her guilt away?

  When she recited it out loud, the man in the shower cap smiled patiently.

  “You don’t much care for the poem. I can tell,” he said.

  “What ‘guilt’ is he talking about? I don’t feel guilty, I feel pissed off!”

  “Understandable. The sonofabitch shot you.”

  “And he lied, too. About everything!”

  The man took the volume of poetry from her hands and returned it to the duffel.

  Ricca said, “I’m dying to get even with the bastard. Will you help me?”

  The man popped the glass eye from its socket and cleaned it with the dingy tail of his T-shirt. He had heard the gunshots from half a mile away; slogged through the saw grass and muck and high water, half walking, half swimming. By the time he’d gotten there the shooter was already gone, a pair of red taillights shrinking down the levee. Ricca had desperately submerged herself in a clump of lily pads. The man with one eye had located her by following the intermittent gasps that she made when extending her lips and nose to the surface. Shaking and bleeding from a wound in the leg, she had nonetheless tried to fight him off, reasonably assuming from his appearance that he was some kind of dangerous swamp pervert.

  “I’m sorry, but I can’t help you. I’m going through a rough personal spell,” he told her now.

  “What do you mean?”

  “For starters, I’m hearing the same weird duet all day and all night in my head—‘Midnight Rambler’ as performed by Eydie Gorme and Cat Stevens. I’m sure they’re perfectly nice folks, but frankly I’m ready to shove a sawed-off down my throat. One blessed hour of silence,” the man said wistfully, “would be welcome.”