Carl Hiaasen (26 page)

Trish handed him a bouquet of paintbrushes. “What do you think about Holy Cooter T-shirts? And maybe key chains.”

Her husband looked up. “Yeah,” he said, with the first smile of the day.

When Tom Krome got his turn on the pay phone, he called his parents on Long Island to tell them not to believe what they saw in the papers.

“I’m alive.”

“As opposed to what?” his father asked.

Newsday
had run the story somewhere other than the sports section, so Krome’s old man had missed it.

Tom gave a sketchy explanation of the arson, instructed his folks on fielding future media inquiries, then called Katie. He was genuinely touched to hear she’d been crying.

“You should see the front page, Tommy!”

“Well, it’s wrong. I’m fine.”

“Thank God,” Katie sniffled. “Arthur also insists you’re dead. He even bought me a diamond solitaire.”

“For the funeral?”

“He thinks I think he had something to do with killing you—which I
did
think, until now.”

Krome said, “I’m assuming he’s the one who burned down my house.”

“Not personally.”

“You know what I mean. The dead body in the kitchen must have been his law clerk, faithful but careless.”

“Champ Powell. I guess so,” Katie said. “Tom, what’m I
going to do? I can’t stand the sight of Arthur but I honestly don’t believe he meant for anyone to get hurt….”

“Pack a bag and go to your mother’s.”

“And the diamond
is
beautiful. God knows what it cost. So, see, there’s a part of him that wants to be true—”

“Katie, I gotta go. Please don’t tell anyone you spoke with me, OK? Keep it a secret for now, it’s important.”

“I’m so glad you’re all right. I prayed so hard.”

“Don’t stop now,” Tom Krome said.

It was a bright and breezy fall morning. The sky was cloudless and full of gulls and terns. The marina stirred but didn’t bustle, typical of the dead season between Thanksgiving and New Year’s, when the tourists were still up North. For the locals it was a glorious and special time, despite the wane of revenues. Many charter captains didn’t even bother to go down to the docks, the chance of walk-ons was so remote.

JoLayne Lucks had dozed off in the car. Krome touched her arm and she opened her eyes. Her mouth was sour, her throat scratchy.

“Yekkk,” she said, yawning.

Krome handed her a cup of coffee. “Long night.”

“Where are our boys?”

“Still in the truck.”

JoLayne said, “What d’you think—they meeting somebody?”

“I don’t know. They’ve been up and down, scoping out the boats.”

Squinting at the windshield’s glare, JoLayne groped for her sunglasses. She saw the red Dodge pickup at the opposite end of the marina, parked by the front door of the tackle shop.

“Again with the wheelchair zone?”

“Yep.”

“Assholes.”

They’d decided that the man driving the truck must be
Bodean Gazzer, because that was the name on the registration, according to Tom’s source at the highway patrol. Bullet holes notwithstanding, the pristine condition of the vehicle suggested an owner who would not casually loan it to fleeing felons. Tom and JoLayne still had no name for Gazzer’s partner, the one with the ponytail and the bad eye.

And now a new mystery: a third man, who’d been abruptly put out along the road in the pitch dark of the night—JoLayne and Tom watching from the parking lot of a video store, where they’d pulled over to wait. Something in the bearing of the third man had looked familiar to JoLayne, but in the blue-gray darkness his facial features were indiscernible. The headlights of a passing car had revealed a chubby figure with a disconsolate trudge. Also: An Australian bush hat.

There was no sign of him in the morning, at the marina. Krome didn’t know what to make of it.

JoLayne asked if he’d phoned his folks.

“They didn’t even know I was dead. Now they’re really confused,” Krome said. “Whose turn on the radio?”

“Mine.” She reached for the dial.

During the long hours in the car, the two of them had encountered a potentially serious divergence of musical tastes. Tom believed that driving in South Florida required constant hard-rock accompaniment, while JoLayne favored songs that were breezy and soothing to the nerves. In the interest of fairness, they’d agreed to alternate control of the radio. If she lucked into a Sade, he got a Tom Petty. If he got the Kinks, she got an Annie Lennox. And so on. Occasionally they found common ground. Van Morrison. Dire Straits. “The Girl with the Faraway Eyes,” which they sang together as they rode through Florida City. There were even a few mutual abominations (a Paul McCartney-Michael Jackson duet, for instance) that propelled them to lunge simultaneously for the tuning button.

“Here’s what I noticed,” said JoLayne, adjusting the volume.

“Who’s that?” Krome demanded.

“Cèline Dion.”

“Geez, it’s Saturday morning. Have some mercy.”

“You’ll get your turn.” JoLayne wore a shrewd, schoolteacher smile. “Now, Tom, here’s what I noticed: You don’t like many black musical artists.”

“Oh, bullshit.” He was truly stung.

“Name one.”

“Marvin Gaye, Jimi Hendrix—”

“A
live
one.”

“B.B. King, Al Green, Billy Preston. The Hootie guy, what’s his name—”

“You’re pushing it,” JoLayne said.

“Prince!”

“Oh, come on.”

Krome said, “Damn right. ‘Little Red Corvette.’”

“I guess it’s possible.”

“Christ, what if I said something like that to you?”

“You’re right,” said JoLayne. “I take it all back.”

“‘A live one.’ Gimme a break.”

She eyed him over the rims of her peach-tinted shades.

“You’re pretty touchy about this stuff, aren’t you? I suppose that’s the white man’s burden. At least the liberal white man.”

“Who said I was liberal.”

“You’re cute when you’re on the defensive. Want the rest of my coffee? I gotta pee.”

“Not now,” Tom Krome said. “Take off your hat and duck.”

The red pickup was rolling toward them, in reverse. The driver backed up to a slip where a twenty-foot boat was tied. It had twin outboards, a flecked blue-and-gray finish and a folding Bimini top. From the tackle shop you couldn’t have seen it, moored between a towering Hatteras and a boxy houseboat.

Peering over the dashboard, Krome watched a tall, unshaven passenger get out of the truck: the ponytailed man. He carried a bottle of beer and some tools—a screwdriver, a wire cutter, a socket wrench. The man climbed somewhat unsteadily into the boat and disappeared behind the steering console.

“What’s going on?” JoLayne, inching up in the seat.

Krome told her to stay down. He saw a puff of blue smoke, then heard the outboards start. The ponytailed man stood up and signaled laconically at the driver of the pickup truck. Then the ponytailed man untied the lines and with both hands pushed the boat away from the pilings.

“They’re stealing it,” Krome reported.

JoLayne said: “My neck hurts. May I sit up?”

“In a second.”

Barely fifty yards from the dock, the ponytailed man shoved forward the throttle of the stolen boat. Momentarily the bow rose upward like a gaily striped missile, then leveled off under a collar of foam as the boat took out across the shallows of Florida Bay. At the same instant, and with a sudden yelp of rubber, the red pickup truck shot toward the marina exit.

“Now?” asked JoLayne.

“All clear,” Krome told her.

She rose, glancing first at the departing truck and then at the receding gray speck on the water. “All right, smart guy. Which one’s got my ticket?”

“Beats me,” Krome said.

I
t was Shiner’s first kidnapping, and despite a shaky start it came off pretty well.

He had hitchhiked to the Grove, where he’d fallen asleep in Peacock Park. In midafternoon he’d awakened and wandered down Grand Avenue to buy a handgun. His street-corner inquiries had been so poorly received that he’d been chased from the neighborhood by a group of black and Hispanic teenagers. Naturally he’d lost his bush hat and the golf spikes, which were ill-suited for a footrace.

Armed only with a stubby Phillips-head screwdriver he’d found beneath a banyan tree, Shiner arrived at Hooters shortly before five o’clock. Remembering Chub’s instructions, he struck up a conversation with the bartender, who was glad to point out Amber among the servers. Shiner scoped her out—hot-looking, like Chub had said, but as a rule most waitresses were hot-looking to Shiner. And while Chub had made a great point of detailing Amber’s uncanny resemblance to Kim Basinger, the information was useless to Shiner. He didn’t know who Kim
Basinger was. While preparing for the crime, Shiner became apprehensive over the possibility of snatching the wrong girl. What if Hooters had more than one Amber? Chub would shoot him dead, that’s what.

Hours later, Shiner was crouched behind a hedgerow when the waitress identified by the bartender left work. She slipped behind the wheel of a giant Ford sedan, which momentarily rattled Shiner (who’d been expecting a sports car—in his mind, all hot-looking babes belonged in sports cars). He recovered his composure, flung himself in the passenger side and placed the tip of the screwdriver against Amber’s soft and flawless neck.

“Whoa,” she said.

Not a scream, but
whoa
.

“You Amber?”

She nodded carefully.

“The one looks like the actor—Kim something?”

Amber said, “You’re the second guy this week who’s told me that.”

Shiner was flooded with relief. “All right. Now drive.”

“That a knife?”

Shiner pulled the screwdriver away from Amber’s neck. The grooved tip left a small, stellate impression in her skin; Shiner could see it in the green glow of the dashboard.

Hastily he slipped the tool in his pocket. “Yeah, it’s a knife. I got a damn gun, too.”

“I believe you,” Amber said.

After a few wrong turns, he got her pointed south. She didn’t ask where they were going, but Shiner was ready if she did.
Base camp
, would be his answer. Base camp of the White Clarion Aryans! That’d give her something to think about.

“This your car?” he asked.

“My dad gave it to me. Runs great,” Amber said.

Not the least bit shy. That’s cool, Shiner thought.

“My boyfriend has a Miata,” she added. “Well,
had
a Miata. Anyhow, I like this better. More legroom—I’ve got super-long legs.”

Shiner felt his cheeks flush. Up close, Amber was very beautiful. Whenever headlights passed in the other direction, he could see glimmers of gold in her long eyelashes. Plus she smelled absolutely fantastic for someone who worked with chicken wings and burgers, not to mention the onions. Shiner believed Amber smelled about a thousand times sweeter than the baskets of orange blossoms his mother would take to the Road-Stain Jesus. True, they were week-old orange blossoms (purchased in bulk from a turnpike gift shop) but still they held a fragrance.

Amber said, “What happened to your head?” She was talking about the crankcase scar.

“I got hurt.”

“Car accident?”

“Sort of.” Shiner was surprised she noticed it, since she’d barely taken her eyes off the road since he’d hopped in.

“How about buckling your seat belt,” she said.

“No way.” Shiner remembered what Bodean Gazzer had said about seat belts being part of the government’s secret plot to “neutralize the citizenry.” If you’re wearing seat belts, Bode had explained, it’ll be harder to jump out of the car and escape, once the NATO helicopters start landing on the highways. That’s the whole reason they made the seat-belt law, Bode had said, to make sure millions of Americans would be strapped down and helpless when the global attack was launched. As intriguing as Bode’s explanation was, Shiner decided the information was too sensitive to share with Amber.

“What’s that on your arm?” she asked. She turned on the dome light for a better look at Shiner’s tattoo.

“It’s a eagle,” he said, self-consciously.

“I meant the
W.R.B
. Is that for the White Rebel Brotherhood?”

Shiner said, “Man, it’s a long story.”

“I saw ’em in concert. They were killer.”

“Yeah?”

“The best is ‘Nut-Cutting Bitch.’ Ever heard it? You like hip-hop?”

“Metal.” Shiner gave his decorated biceps a subtle flex; it wasn’t often he had a pretty girl’s undivided attention.

She said, “Then what’s the deal with your W.R.B.? They are so
not
heavy metal.”

Shiner told Amber there’d been a mix-up on his tattoo. He was pleased to hear her say she could fix it.

“But only if you let me go,” she added.

“No way.”

“My best friend worked in a tattoo parlor for two summers. I hung out there, God, for hours. It’s not as hard as it looks.”

Shiner’s lips drew tight. Ruefully he said: “I can’t let you free. Not right away.”

“Oh.” Amber turned off the dome light. For a long time she didn’t speak to him. When two tank-topped frat boys in a Beemer convertible nearly sideswiped them, she said: “Fuck-heads.” But it was practically a whisper, not intended as conversation. Soon Shiner grew nervous again. He’d been doing fine while Amber was chatty, but now his feet were tapping with the jitters. Plus he felt like a dolt. He felt like he’d blown something.

Finally she said, “You’re going to rape me, aren’t you?”

“No way.”

“Don’t lie. It’s better if I know.”

“I ain’t lyin’!”

“Then what is all this?” Both hands were fixed on the wheel. Her thin arms were straight and stiff. “What’s going on?”

Shiner said, “It’s a favor for a friend.”

“I get it. Then
he’s
going to rape me.”

“Over my dead body!” Shiner was startled by his own vehemence.

It drew a hopeful glance from Amber. “You mean it?”

“Damn straight I do.”

“Thanks,” she said, turning her attention back to the traffic.

“You don’t really have a gun, do you?”

“Naw.”

“So, what’s your name?” Amber asked.