Carl Hiaasen (10 page)

“People often ask how Dismal Key got its lugubrious name. I wish I knew,” Seely wrote in his journal, discovered years after he vacated the island. “But since I haven’t as yet turned up even a clue, I suggest that they visit me during July or August when the heat, the mosquitoes, and the sand flies are at their rip-roaring best and they will at least discover why it’s not called Paradise Key.”

On the January morning when Sammy Tigertail beached his stolen canoe on Dismal Key, the temperature was sixty-nine degrees, the wind was northerly at thirteen knots and insects were not a factor. Gillian was, however.

“I’m starving,” she announced.

Sammy Tigertail tossed her a granola bar and hurriedly began unpacking.

“Is this supposed to be breakfast?” she asked.

“And lunch,” he said. “For dinner I’ll catch some fish.” He worked fast, expecting at any moment to hear the ranger helicopter that patrolled Everglades National Park. That he was two miles outside the park boundary would have been pleasing news to Sammy Tigertail, who knew neither the name of the island nor the route that had led him there.

Gillian gobbled down the granola bar and complained of a killer hangover. “You got any Tylenols?”

“Sleep it off,” the Seminole advised unsympathetically.

He hauled the canoe into the mangroves and carefully covered it with loose debris from what appeared to be a rotted dock. Using the paddle as a machete, he began hacking his way uphill through a thicket of formidable cactus plants. Gillian followed, toting the guitar case. Jagged shells crunched under their feet.

Beneath a vast and ancient royal poinciana was a half-sunken concrete structure that Sammy Tigertail recognized as a cistern. It had a blistered tin roof that seemed intact, promising not only shade but concealment. The Indian was relieved that he wouldn’t need to construct a lean-to, a wilderness task he had never before attempted.

Farther along they came to a rubble of sun-bleached boards, cinder block, trusses and window frames—the remains of Al Seely’s homestead. In a nearby ravine lay hundreds of empty Busch cans older than Gillian, who picked one up and studied it as if it were an archaeological treasure.

Sammy Tigertail walked back to the shoreline to retrieve the rest of the gear. He returned to see Gillian slashing at a cactus with the end of the paddle.

“I heard they use ’em for food in the desert. I heard they taste pretty good,” she said.

“This ain’t the Sahara, girl.”

“Fine. You’re the Indian,” she said. “Tell me what’s safe to eat around here.”

Sammy Tigertail didn’t have a clue. Since returning to the reservation from the white man’s world, he’d been unable to shake a fondness for cheeseburgers, rib eyes and pasta. Because of modern commerce coming to the Big Cypress, there had been no need to familiarize himself with the food-gathering skills of his ancestors, who’d farmed sweet potatoes and made bread flour from coontie. Sammy Tigertail wouldn’t have recognized a coontie root if he tripped over it.

“Later I’ll go catch some fish,” he said again.

“I hate fish,” Gillian stated. “One time when I was only four, my dad brought home a salmon he caught on Lake Erie and we all got really, really sick. Our cat, Mr. Tom-Tom, he took two bites and dropped dead on the kitchen floor. Me and my sister threw up for about five days straight, and swear to God the puke was, like, radioactive. I mean, it practically
glowed.
”

Sammy Tigertail said, “You’re so full of crap.”

“No way! It really happened,” Gillian said, “and ever since then I can’t eat fish.”

“You will now. You’re on the South Beach hostage diet.”

The cistern was littered with leaves and animal scat. It looked like a solid place to hide, because there was no sign that it had held water in many years. Sammy Tigertail squeezed through an opening under the roof, chased off a wood mouse and announced: “We picked the right island.”

Unfazed by the scrambling rodent, Gillian said, “Are we up on a hill? I didn’t think they had hills around here.”

“It’s made of oyster shells. The whole thing.” Sammy Tigertail stripped off his shirt.

“Made by who?” she asked.

“Native Americans—but not my people. Hand me the rifle, please.” He tied his shirt around the barrel and methodically went through the cistern taking down spiderwebs.

Long before the Seminoles arrived, southwest Florida had been dominated by the Calusa tribe, which fought off the Spaniards but not the sicknesses they brought. The most striking remnants of the sophisticated Calusa civilization were their monumental oyster middens, engineered to protect the settlements from flooding and also to trap fish on high tides. Sammy Tigertail felt proud, and inspired, to be camping on an authentic Calusa shell mound. He hoped to be visited in his sleep by the spirits of their long-dead warriors—perhaps even the one whose well-aimed arrow had been fatal to the invader Ponce de León.

“They must’ve been the horniest Indians anywhere,” Gillian mused, “if all they ate was oysters.”

Sammy Tigertail stared at her. “What kind of grades do you get in college?”

“I made the dean’s list twice.”

“God help us.”

“Screw you, Tonto.”

Once they finished cleaning the cistern, they loaded in the gear. Gillian lay down on top of her sandy sleeping bag and said she was going to crash.

“What’s that music?” Sammy Tigertail asked. “You got an iPod or something?”

It sounded like the opening bars of “Dixie.”

Gillian rolled over and said, “Shit. My cell.” She took it out of her fanny pack and checked the caller ID. “Oh great, it’s Ethan.”

The Indian snatched the phone. “What’re you going to tell him?”

“That he’s an asshole. Seven hours later he calls to see if I’m alive!”

“Say one word about me, I’ll—”

“What—kill me? Rape me? Stake me to an anthill?”

The phone stopped ringing.

“Hey, where you goin’?” she asked.

“To make a call,” Sammy Tigertail said.

“Watch my battery. I didn’t bring a charger.”

He laughed. “I didn’t bring any electricity.”

He went outside and dialed his mother’s house at the reservation. Her machine answered, so he left a message saying that he was camping in the Fakahatchee, collecting tree snails.

Next he phoned his uncle Tommy, who answered on the tenth ring.

“Who’s Gillian St. Croix?” he said, reading from his caller ID, “and why are you calling from her number?”

“Long story. Is anybody hunting for me?”

“No, but they’ve been out to the reservation asking about a man from Milwaukee.”

Sammy Tigertail’s heart quickened as he thought of Wilson at the bottom of Lostmans River. “Do they know about the airboat ride?”

“My guess is no. But that drunken shithead ran the SunPass lane on Alligator Alley, so they got a photo of his car heading west. They figure he probably drove into the canal on his way to Big Cypress.”

“I like that theory.”

“We’re doing what we can.”

“What kind of questions are they asking?”

“Don’t sweat it,” Uncle Tommy said.

Sammy Tigertail was worried. What if the dead tourist had big-shot kin back in Wisconsin? The search might drag on for months.

“Where the hell
are
you?” asked his uncle.

“Some island near Everglades City. I don’t even know the name.”

“No problem. I’ll get the air force up and we’ll find you.”

Tommy Tigertail had been the financial architect of the tribe’s early bingo enterprises, which had made him a power player in the Seminole hierarchy. He was not a fan of white men, but he liked their toys. A Falcon jet and several luxury turboprops were available to him on an hour’s notice.

“You can stay at the town house on Grand Bahama until the heat’s off,” he told his nephew.

“Thanks, but I’m okay out here,” Sammy Tigertail said. “I’m learning the guitar.”

“Your brother told me. Is she with you—this Gillian girl?”

“Temporarily.”

“Don’t lose your senses, boy. White pussy is bad medicine.”

Sammy Tigertail chuckled. “Speaking of which, you seen Cindy?”

“Yeah. She says she’s finally off the crystal and dating a realestate man from Boca Grande. I told her she’ll be getting your remittance, and she said you’re a prince.”

“Hang on a second.” Sammy Tigertail flattened himself against the cistern wall and scanned the sky.

“She said she’s going to take the first check and buy herself some new boobs,” his uncle continued. “She wanted me to be sure and tell you thanks.”

Sammy Tigertail heard the thing clearly now, coming in fast from the south. “Uncle Tommy, I gotta go,” he said, and vaulted through the narrow opening.

He landed hard on the bare cement floor, and lay there listening as a small plane passed very low over the island. A shadow moved to block the sunlight, and there was Gillian standing over him—pointing the rifle at his chest. Sammy Tigertail noticed that she’d removed his shirt from the point of the barrel, indicating a possible seriousness of purpose.

“Are you arresting me?” he asked.

Gillian sighed in exasperation. “Gimme the damn phone.”

Ten

Eugenie Fonda didn’t complain about flying coach, although she let it slip to Boyd Shreave that her book publisher had always sent her first-class.

“Book publisher?” he said.

“Didn’t I mention?” Eugenie thinking: Damn those Valiums.

“That you wrote a book? No, I definitely would’ve remembered,” said Shreave. “What was it, like a cookbook?”

“Not exactly, sugar.”

The plane was sitting on the runway at DFW, eleventh in line for takeoff. Eugenie would have killed for a pre-flight vodka tonic, but there was no prayer. Not in fucking coach.

“It was a few years back,” she said. “I was involved with a man who turned out to be a seriously bad guy. Later they asked me to do a book—wasn’t
my
idea.”

“What was it called? Maybe I read it,” he said.

Eugenie Fonda would not have been shocked to learn that Boyd Shreave hadn’t cracked a book since twelfth grade.

She said, “
Storm Ghoul.
How’s that for a title? Sounds like a Halloween movie.”

“You make some bread off it?”

“I did okay. It was on the best-seller list for a while.”

“Oh, really.” Shreave sagged into a pout. “I thought you and me weren’t going to have any secrets.”

“I don’t recall such an agreement, Boyd.”

“You wrote a best-seller! That’s huge, Genie. Why didn’t you tell me?”

“Because it was a long time ago and the money’s all gone.”

“Fine. Anything else I should know?”

“Yeah, there is,” she said. “I don’t date nine-year-olds, or guys who act like them. So sit up straight, paste a smile on your face and show everyone on the plane that you’re proud to be flying with a hot-looking lady like me.”

They didn’t speak again until they were somewhere over Louisiana, where Boyd Shreave screwed up the nerve to ask about the other man.

“Well, he turned out to be a killer,” Eugenie said, emptying the last droplet from the vodka miniature into her cup. “Bonneville was his name. The story was all over the media.”

“And you were married to this lunatic?”

“No, I was his girlfriend. He drowned his wife and blamed it on a hurricane.”

“Holy Christ. I
do
remember that one,” Shreave murmured. “It was on Court TV, right?”

Eugenie said, “Let’s talk about a happier subject—like famine, or polio.” She signaled a flight attendant for another drink.

They were passing over Panama City when Boyd leaned closer and whispered, “So, besides being totally beautiful and sexy, you’re also a famous writer. That’s pretty flippin’ cool.”

Out the window Eugenie could see the gleaming crescent shoreline of the Florida Panhandle. For one fine moment she was able to imagine that she was traveling alone.

She said, “I’m not a famous writer, Boyd, I’m a famous mistress. Big difference.”

He placed a hand on one of her legs. “But think about it, Genie. A man
killed
for you. How many girls can say that?”

“Somehow it didn’t seem all that flattering at the time.” She was irritated that he’d gotten aroused by the thought of her consorting with a homicidal nutball.

“It wasn’t exactly the high point of my life,” she added, thinking: But what if it was?

Boyd smooched her neck and simultaneously sent his fingers reconnoitering beneath her skirt. Eugenie Fonda clamped her knees so emphatically that he yipped and jerked away, drawing an amused glance from a young cowboy across the aisle.

“You behave,” Eugenie said to Boyd, who decamped into another slouch.

As she drained what she vowed would be her final cocktail of the flight, she observed through the clear bottom of the plastic cup that the young cowboy was smiling at her. She did not smile back, although her outlook vastly improved.

Five miles below, the green Gulf of Mexico licked at the coastline. Somewhere toward the east, nuzzled by the Suwannee River, was Gilchrist County, which in scraggly ten-acre parcels Eugenie Fonda and Boyd Shreave had hawked over the phone to all those innocent saps. From high up in the clouds it didn’t seem like such a bad deal.

Eugenie closed her eyes and sucked on the last ice cube, which clacked lightly against the pearl in her tongue.

Dealey was seated in first class, an expense he would fondly tack on to Lily Shreave’s invoice after the job was done. His camera gear was stowed in waterproof Halliburtons; his targets were sixteen rows back, in steerage.

He could have booked a different flight to Tampa but there was no point, since the lovebirds had no idea who he was or what he was doing. To them he would have looked like just another weary middle-aged suit, skimming the sports section of the
Star-Telegram
while the other passengers filed to their seats.

Penetration.

Lily Shreave was one twisted bird but she was right about one thing: If Dealey got what she wanted, he’d be a legend on the PI circuit.

Dutifully he had devoted an afternoon to surfing the voyeurcam porn sites, but he’d found nothing instructive. There was a tedious emphasis on up-skirt shots and toilet surveillance, neither of which required a particularly advanced level of cinematography. As for the couples videos, the sex scenes were plainly staged, the participants fully aware they were being taped. There was no other explanation for why, in the throes of lust, they unfailingly paused to reposition themselves at auspicious camera angles. It was practically comical.

Unfortunately, no one would be directing Boyd Shreave and Eugenie Fonda in bed, or lighting their crotches for sweaty closeups. Even if Dealey devised a way to conceal the taping equipment, he might end up with nothing more explicit than two grainy lumps heaving and moaning beneath the sheets.

If I live a hundred fucking years, he thought wistfully, I’ll never top that delicatessen blow job.

It was golden. A classic.

Dealey had blurred out the faces on the photograph and E-mailed it to an on-line trade magazine, which had posted it the next day. Kudos (and reprint requests) continued to pour in from all over the country. A few other PIs had sent surveillance pictures of husbands being fellated by girlfriends—but none in broad daylight at a bustling lunch joint.

Some wives would’ve paid a ten-grand bonus just for the deli shot, Dealey thought, but my client happens to be a total kink. She wants penetration.

For a closer look at his targets, Dealey waited until the rest room in first class was occupied. Then he stood up and made his way to the back of the plane. Eugenie Fonda and Boyd Shreave were sitting in one of the emergency-exit rows. She was staring out the window; he was thumbing through the in-flight magazine.

They don’t even look like a couple, Dealey noted with concern. They look like two total strangers.

Poised before the toilet in one of the aft rest rooms, the investigator pondered the dispiriting possibility that Boyd Shreave’s illicit romance was already cooling. If true, the sex in Florida would be infrequent, brief and subdued.

Which would make even more improbable Dealey’s quest for the coital grail.

Oh well, he thought, there are worse places to waste a few days in the wintertime. Hell, I could be flying to Little Rock instead of Tampa.

At that moment the plane hit turbulence, rocking the private investigator sideways and disrupting his otherwise-flawless trajectory.

“Goddammit,” Dealey muttered, snatching a handful of paper towels to mop the piss from his right pants leg. The stain, he observed bitterly, was the shape of Arkansas.

Stalking back to his seat, Dealey didn’t bother to look at Lily Shreave’s husband and Eugenie Fonda.

Who were now holding hands.

The island was quiet after the small plane passed.

Gillian shoved the rifle back to Sammy Tigertail and said, “Scared you, didn’t I, Thlocko?”

“Please go,” he said. “Take the damn canoe, I don’t care.” He wasn’t sure who was the actual hostage—the girl or him.

She punched a number on her cell phone.

“Ethan? Hey, it’s me. Alive and seriously pissed.”

Sammy Tigertail started to climb out of the cistern but Gillian motioned him to stay.

“Why’d you wait so long to call?” she said to Ethan. “Know what? You’re full of crap. I’ve got Verizon, too, and it’s workin’ loud and clear.”

To Sammy Tigertail, she said, “He says he couldn’t get a signal. How lame is that?”

The Indian sat down heavily and tuned out Gillian’s telephone chatter. His head was beginning to ache. He rubbed his palms across the concrete floor and for a moment imagined it was Louisiana mud, like in the government prison cell where his great-great-great-grandfather might or might not have perished.

Although pained by his tribe’s blood-soaked history, Sammy Tigertail had never believed that all white people were evil; his own father had been an honest, good-hearted guy. During his childhood in the suburbs, Sammy Tigertail had made friends with lots of white kids, and observed several acts of decency and kindness by white grown-ups. It was also true that he’d encountered plenty of assholes, though to what degree their obnoxiousness could be blamed on race was debatable. Sammy suspected that some of them would have attained asshole status in any culture, on any continent.

His uncle Tommy had occasionally mentioned an unusual white man named Wiley, who’d written articles for a Miami newspaper. Sammy Tigertail’s uncle said that Wiley had wanted to save Florida as desperately as any Seminole, and that he’d gone mad trying. Sammy Tigertail had gotten the impression that his uncle Tommy and the crazed white writer were friends of a sort. When he’d asked what had happened to Wiley, his uncle said that the great Maker of Breath had given his spirit to an old bald eagle.

Sammy Tigertail remembered that story whenever he saw a wild eagle, which wasn’t often. He had yet to meet a white person like Wiley, and doubted he ever would. Gillian’s flitty spirit was more akin to that of a sparrow.

“Oh, just some guy I met,” she was saying to her boyfriend, giving him the needle. “You really want to know? Well, let’s see. He’s like six-one and real tan and he’s got these drop-dead blue eyes.”

Tan?
“God Almighty,” the Indian said.

“And I don’t even know his real name,” she went on, winking at Sammy Tigertail, “which makes things kinda interesting.”

The Seminole whispered for her to hang up. When he made a slashing motion across his throat, she smiled and shook her head.

“Ethan wants to know if you’re the same maniac who shot at them on the island. What should I tell him?”

“Tell him to lay off the weed. Nobody shot at anybody.”

Gillian said into the phone: “My new friend’s sorta shy.”

Sammy Tigertail thought he could actually feel his cranium cracking like an egg. He lay down, clutching the gun to his chest. He heard Gillian tell her boyfriend: “I don’t
know
when I’m comin’ back. Tallahassee is such a drag, y’know?”

The Indian closed his eyes yet there was no hope of sleep. When Gillian turned off the phone, she said, “You look awful.”

“Thanks for not giving me up.”

Gillian laughed. “How can I tell him your name when I can’t hardly pronounce it?”

“If they knew I was a Seminole, they’d come after me for sure.” Sammy Tigertail rose to his feet. He hoped the dizziness was from hunger and not white man’s brain fever.

“Ethan promised to have them call off the search, but I can tell he’s sulking. He refuses to believe I’d rather be with someone else,” Gillian said. “You boys and your egos.”

“Speaking of names, yours is really St. Croix?”

“Ever been there? The beaches are awesome—you should take your girlfriend, or whoever.”

“No, I won’t be leaving the Everglades,” the Indian said. “Never again.”

They went outside, where Gillian counted four kinds of butterflies. Sammy Tigertail could identify a zebra and a swallowtail, but not the others; Gillian was still impressed. She climbed halfway up the old poinciana and perched on the end of a trunk-like branch, high among the bright green leaves. “Hey, Thlocko,” she called out. “Why don’t I want to go home?”

Sammy Tigertail was secretly pleased that Gillian remembered his Seminole name, even though she’d left out the second
l.
Others had trouble with Thlocklo, too. At the Miami public library he’d once found a copy of a muster roll of “99 Florida Indians and Negroes” delivered to the U.S. Army barracks in New Orleans on January 7, 1843. Among those on the list was “the party of Indians with the chief Tiger Tail or Thlocko Tustenugee,” transported for involuntary relocation west of the Mississippi. The man was Sammy Tigertail’s great-great-great-grandfather.