Skinny Dip (34 page)

Just like in the movie, Chaz thought. Once I was the partner and now I’m the problem.

He understood that Red Hammernut was looking at the big picture. The blackmailer posed a threat to Red only as long as Chaz was alive. The Hummer was the most traceable connection between them, and Red could always blame that on Chaz. He could say the biologist had hit him up for a new set of wheels. As a matter of fact, Red could say that the whole Everglades scam, faking the pollution charts, had been Chaz’s idea; a shakedown from the beginning.

Once Chaz was gone, who could dispute it?

“I want you guys to get it over with, that’s the main thing,” Red Hammernut was saying. “Be done with it for good.”

Amen, thought Chaz. The time has come.

Twenty-nine

Joey and her brother carried the dinner scraps down to the seawall to feed the fish. Stranahan sat at the picnic table, cleaning his rifle. He was relieved to be home, distant from the lunacy of the mainland. Strom lay at his feet and refused to move, even for a flock of rowdy gulls. All afternoon the dog had stayed near his side, sensing that something was in the works. If only humans were that intuitive, Stranahan thought.

With Strom at his heels, he carried the Ruger to the boat. Joey watched him wrap the gun in an oilcloth and stow it in the bow hatch.

“Mick, get this,” she said. “My brother has the hots for my husband’s girlfriend.”

Corbett Wheeler waved an objection. “Hold on—all I said was, she didn’t seem like a bimbo.”

“That’s what happens when you live with cloven beasts. Your standards take a dive,” Joey said. “My advice is not to date anybody you meet at a funeral. Ask Chaz, if you don’t believe me.”

Stranahan sat down beside her on the seawall, the Doberman nosing between them. Joey clasped Stranahan’s hand, the sort of knuckle-busting squeeze that takes place at 35,000 feet during heavy turbulence. She was nervous about the blackmail meeting, as any sane person would be.

Corbett asked, “What’re the odds of actually collecting the dough?”

“Not too good,” Stranahan conceded.

He anticipated that Samuel Johnson Hammernut would provide all or part of the five hundred grand as bait. Chaz’s Neanderthal babysitter would guard the stash until they arrived at the drop site, where he’d open the suitcase and encourage Stranahan to count the bills. At the first opportunity he would then try to kill Stranahan. Later, probably on the boat trip back to the mainland, he’d do the same to Chaz Perrone.

There were a dozen unappealing variations of that scenario, and Stranahan had fretted through all of them. Initially he’d planned to make the pickup alone, but Joey and Corbett were adamant about joining him. Stranahan understood; for them it was personal. He also appreciated the tactical advantage in numbers—Hammernut’s hired gorilla surely would realize that he couldn’t take all three of them by surprise, and Stranahan was gambling that he wouldn’t try. The man was more brute than sharpshooter.

Joey said, “If they do give up the money, we’re donating it to one of the Everglades foundations.”

“Anonymously, I presume,” said her brother.

Stranahan felt like pouring a stiff drink but that was out of the question. There was a better-than-even chance he’d have to shoot somebody later.

Corbett Wheeler said, “I like your island very much, Mick, but it’s a bit too near the city lights for me.”

“Ssshh. I’m trying to persuade your little sister it’s paradise.”

“Little sister is already persuaded,” Joey said, wiggling her toes in the water.

Corbett made a wistful pitch for New Zealand. “Once you come, you’ll never want to leave.”

“If tonight goes badly, we might be visiting soon,” Stranahan said, “depending on the extradition policy.”

Joey jabbed him in the ribs. “Stop. Think positive thoughts.”

To the west, a palisade of violet clouds obscured the setting sun. The breeze died in wisps and the bay slicked off. Stranahan hurried to the boathouse and got out three suits of yellow foul-weather gear. Strom’s ears pricked at the faraway roll of thunder.

“Never a dull moment,” said Corbett.

Joey said, “The good news is, Chaz can’t stand the rain.”

Stranahan was more interested in the lightning. He could think of safer places to be than in an open skiff on a large body of water during an electrical storm. The sensible move was to call off the drop, but it was too late.

“Let’s go,” he said, “before the wind kicks up.”

Chaz Perrone locked himself in the bathroom with a stack of smutty magazines and the framed photograph of Joey that he’d lifted from the altar of St. Conan’s after the service. His habitual remedy for anxiety was to wank at himself with simian zest, but even the youthful picture of his late wife—centered beatifically amid the cheap porn—triggered only a transient tumescence. His fevered and doleful manipulations were interrupted by a heavy rap on the door.

“Where’s that fuckin’ gun?” Tool demanded.

“I got rid of it,” Chaz lied, hastily tucking himself into his boxers.

“Lemme in.”

“I’m on the can!”

“No you ain’t.” Tool kicked the door open and stared with overt disgust at the photos spread across the bathroom floor.

“God-a-mighty,” he said.

Chaz snatched up the picture of Joey and wedged it under one arm. Then he dropped to his knees and started scooping up the magazines, saying, “You don’t understand, I’m a nervous wreck. I had to do something.”

Tool regarded him as if he were some sort of school-yard flasher.

“The gun, boy.”

Chaz said, “I told you. I threw it away.”

“Red said no funny bidness out on the water.”

“I heard him.”

“You done here?” Tool motioned snidely at the toilet. ” ‘Cause it’s time we should go.”

“Let me get dressed. I’ll meet you outside,” said Chaz.

The blue-plated .38 was hidden at the bottom of the laundry hamper. He slipped it with his cell phone into a zippered pocket of a Patagonia rain jacket, which he folded neatly and carried to the Hummer. Tool was enthroned behind the steering wheel, chewing a stick of beef jerky and tapping his stained fingers to a country song.

Chaz said, “What’re you doing?”

“What’s it look like?”

“You are not driving my truck.”

“Red said so. Hop in, Doc.”

Chaz was steamed. “What about the suitcase?”

He’d purchased a gray hard-shell Samsonite with retractable wheels.

Tool had packed the cash by himself, stack after stack of hundred-dollar bills. Although he’d refused to let Chaz anywhere near the money, the mere sight of it had been intoxicating.

Tool motioned with his thumb. “It’s in the back.”

Chaz climbed in on the passenger side. To remind Tool who owned the vehicle, he reached for the tuner knob on the stereo. Tool caught his hand and slammed it against the top of the dashboard. Chaz’s arm went numb.

“That’s Patsy Cline,” Tool said simply.

“Christ, I think you broke my wrist!”

“Don’t ever mess with the radio when Patsy Cline is on.”

Goddamn psycho, Chaz thought. He couldn’t feel any fractures, but something in his left hand was either sprained, torn or jammed.

Tool maintained a surly silence during the ride to Miami, though he turned out to be a decent driver. Chaz was holding himself together pretty well until he heard the first boom of thunder and eyeballed the blackening line of clouds ahead of them.

“What if they won’t rent us the boat in this weather?” he asked.

Tool seemed entertained by the question. “Don’t you worry, Red’s got it all took care of.”

Chaz opened the envelope and read over the blackmailer’s instructions again. “You sure you know how to use a GPS?” he asked.

Tool said it was easy. “One season I had some trouble over at Immokalee, so I went down to Ramrod Key and run a crawfish boat for a feller. He had a import bidness on the side, so we spent some time in the islands, off the books. Made the crossing back and forth from Cay Sal in all kinds a storms.”

“Worse than this?” Chaz said.

“On occasion, you bet.”

The rain was sheeting by the time they parked at the Bayside Marina and found the boat. It was a twenty-three-foot outboard with a Bimini top and a big four-stroke Yamaha. A Garmin GPS had been mounted on the console.

Tool set the heavy suitcase in the stern. Chaz bundled unhappily into his foul-weather jacket, the hammer of the pistol poking his ribs. He pulled up his hood and peered at the leaking leaden sky. His left wrist throbbed painfully.

Tool found a portable spotlight and plugged it into a battery jack. He seemed surprised that the device actually worked. Tool started the engine and cast off the ropes and motored slowly away from the docks. When they reached the open water, he told Chaz to sit his ass down and he threw the throttle forward. Simultaneously there was a clap of thunder that made Chaz duck. This is insane, he told himself.

What he had planned for tonight would have been difficult in clear, calm conditions; in a squall it could be suicide. He hunkered low, cringing at every glint of lightning. Tool seemed at ease—one hand on the wheel, the other working the spotlight—though his overalls were soaked and sagging. The rain had slicked down the dense black curls on his arms and shoulders, giving him a surreal lustrous sheen in the twilight.

Soon they passed beneath the Rickenbacker Causeway Bridge, which Chaz had crossed often as a grad student on his way to the Rosenstiel School. The sight reminded him of his long-ago ordeal with sea lice, and he speculated that the hungry little bastards were floating all around them in avid anticipation, should Tool manage to capsize the boat. Also looming in Chaz’s imagination was the larger, more lethal menace of sharks. Such attacks were virtually unheard of on Biscayne Bay, one of many facts that Chaz had either forgotten or simply failed to register during his idle schooling in the marine sciences. The ravenous two-headed alligator starring in Chaz’s recent nightmares could just as easily have been a hammerhead, given his visceral dread—and lazy ignorance—of both species.

Blessedly the thunder quieted and the downpour faded to a drizzle, although they hit a chilly wall of wind, which buffeted them most of the way to Cape Florida. The ride was more than sufficient to reinforce Chaz’s loathing of the great outdoors. Clinging with his uninjured hand to the bench seat, he envisioned himself hurled to the deck with such force that the pistol in his jacket would discharge accidentally. If the shot didn’t kill him outright, the noise would probably give him a heart attack.

Navigating with the magic of global satellites, Tool located what was left of Stiltsville, an old community of wooden houses constructed on pilings in the shallow grass beds. Hurricane Andrew had practically leveled the place, and the few remaining structures had been taken over by the National Park Service. The empty, unlit homes looked skeletal beneath the hot-blue flickers of lightning.

Tool turned off the engine and let the boat ride the outgoing tide down the channel. He muttered under his breath, his scowl visible in the green glow of the GPS screen.

“What’s wrong?” Chaz asked.

“This is right where he told us to meet him,” Tool said, “but I don’t like it.”

As they came abreast of the last stilt house, Tool lumbered to the bow and heaved out an anchor. The rope went taut and the boat stopped dead, the bow dipping slightly under Tool’s bulk. He made his way back to the console and sat down with a grimace.

“Now we wait,” he said, rubbing his buttocks.

Chaz checked his watch—it was more than an hour until the meeting. He turned on his cell phone, as the blackmailer had instructed. From the mainland came another rumble and, high in the clouds, a jagged burst of bright light.

“That bunch is still a ways off,” Tool said. “If a-hole is on time, we’ll be long gone ‘fore it hits.”

At least one of us will, Chaz thought. He was sure that Red Hammernut had ordered Tool to kill him and make it look like a suicide— the grief-stricken widower, unable to cope with the loss of his wife, decides to join her at sea for eternity.

But Chaz Perrone had 13 million reasons to stay alive, and a plan of his own.

“Where’s the damn ice chest?” Tool asked. “I’m thirsty.”

“Guess I left it in the Hummer.”

“Tell me you ain’t serious.”

“Sorry.” With his good hand Chaz took the Colt from his jacket and pointed it at Tool’s massive silhouette.

Tool didn’t notice the gun until it was illuminated by a flash from the oncoming storm. Chaz couldn’t make out the goon’s expression, but he plainly heard the warning: “I wouldn’t do that, boy.”

“Sure you would,” Chaz said, and squeezed the trigger twice.

The first shot punched a hole in the canvas Bimini top. The second knocked Tool overboard, causing a splash that was more of a concussion, like a meat freezer being dropped into a swimming pool. Chaz emptied the .38 into the foamy crater and watched to see if the body would float up right away, like they did on TV cop shows. He’d expected Tool’s wintry coat of hair to provide extra buoyancy, yet there was no sign of the dead man bobbing to the surface.

As Chaz pocketed the revolver, his cell phone rang.

“What the hell’s going on?” The blackmailer sounded serious and alarmed; no Jerry Lewis impressions tonight.

“I was shooting at turtles,” Chaz said. “Where are you?”

Chaz had thought he’d have plenty of time, but the guy was early. He’d heard the gunshots and now he was spooked.

“Turtles?”he said.

Chaz laughed casually. “I was bored. Are you close by? Let’s get this done before that damn thunderstorm gets here.”

“Where’s the ape man?”

“Oh, he couldn’t make it.”

The blackmailer hung up.

“Shit,” Chaz said. He groped around the deck until he found the spotlight. He swept the beam slowly back and forth across the water; no other vessel was in sight.

Moments later, the phone rang again.

“Where are you?” Chaz demanded.

“Up here!” said a different voice.

A woman’s voice; one that made him stiffen.

“Get rid of the gun,” she said. “Over the side.”