Star Island (34 page)

The twins made eye contact with each other, as they often did before dispensing advice. “What’s your comfort level?” Lucy asked Cherry’s parents.

Again Ned Bunterman said, “Let’s talk to Maury.”

It made sense to him that the promoter should pony up the hush money. No one other than the Buntermans had more to lose than Maury Lykes if the new album flopped and the tour bombed, which was a real possibility if Ann popped up and started giving interviews about Cherry’s dope binges and lip-synching lessons.

Janet Bunterman said, “If I could see her again one-on-one, even for just a few minutes, I could straighten this whole thing out. Annie’s a decent soul. She
likes
me.”

The Larks, who had no patience for mawkish nonsense, stood up and excused themselves from the garden party. “Call us when you hear from her,” said Lila.

“But what if we don’t?” asked Cherry’s father.

“Then we move ahead. Stick to the plan, eyes wide open.” This was Lucy. “When can we see the new photographs?”

“Tonight.” Janet Bunterman said Chemo would be returning to the Stefano not only with Abbott’s cameras but also with a signed release for all the pictures of Cherry.

“And the faux junkie shots of Ann? The toilet-bowl sequence?”

“Deleted. Chemo promised to supervise personally.” Cherry’s mother didn’t know what methods the bodyguard would use to secure the paparazzo’s cooperation, but she assumed that the weed whacker would come into play. She found it reassuring that Chemo had displayed no concern whatsoever about Abbott’s handgun.

“We’ll be waiting at the hotel. Try the spa first,” said Lila Lark, and walked off side by side with her sister. To Ned Bunterman there was something paramilitary about their stride and bearing, and he couldn’t for a moment imagine sleeping with either (or both) of them, despite their finely crafted features.

He walked down to Julio’s dock to have a look at the water, which was milky but nonetheless lulling. Soon his wife joined him, shielding her extravagantly shaded eyes against the morning glare.

“Wonder how it’s going over there,” Janet Bunterman said, looking off toward the big Spanish-style house where their daughter was posing for a creep, thinking she would be gracing the cover of
Vanity Fair
.

“Janet, how the hell did it come to this?” Her husband wasn’t talking about the marriage; he was talking about the business.

“Cherry’s a free spirit, Ned.”

“No, she’s a dolt. Harsh but true, and we both know it. What in the world are we gonna do if this doesn’t work?”

His wife said, “That’s the difference between you and me. I’m all about positive energy.”

They were interrupted by a burst of sharp pops coming from the direction of Tanner Dane Keefe’s rented mansion.

Cherry’s mother flinched and moved behind her husband. “Firecrackers?”

“Gunshots,” Ned Bunterman said. “You want positive, Janet? I’m fucking positive that was a gun.”

Blondell Wayne Tatum, also known as Chemo, knew something about dysfunctional families. His own parents had been members of a radical sect that renounced red meat, monogamy and income taxes, and they died in an inept shoot-out with federal agents outside a North Dakota post office. Young Blondell, only six at the time, went to live with an aunt and uncle who were themselves fugitives from felony mail-fraud charges, and had been masquerading with moderate success as Amish wheat farmers. It was no surprise that, in the absence of upright role models, Chemo had turned early to the criminal way.

Having seen the Buntermans up close, the bodyguard wasn’t entirely unsympathetic to their famous daughter. With Ned and Janet at the wheel, Cherry never had a chance. While Chemo was pleased by how quickly she’d tidied her speech patterns under the cattle proddings, he planned no further outreach. He wasn’t in the bimbo-salvaging business; his charity extended to not murdering Cherry, nothing more.

Her singing, however, stirred the homicidal impulse.

It was a caterwaul, off-key and glottal.

Chemo stepped up to Cherry Pye and said, “Shut it down.”

Bang Abbott sidled around him, continuing to snap photos. “You kiddin’ me? That’s a great cut.”

“It’s the new single,” Cherry said to Chemo. “God, what’s your problem?”

She was straddling the back of the chair, and still wearing Ann’s little black dress. Her thong panties were the same color.

“The video seriously kills,” she said, and defiantly resumed the song. Chemo clamped his hand over her mouth.

The paparazzo set down his camera and from his dingy pants pulled the Colt .38. Chemo saw rounds in the cylinder and he wondered when the sneaky shit had reloaded.

“Let go of her,” Bang Abbott said with a twitch. His middle finger, not the bandaged one, was inchworming toward the trigger.

“Sure,” Chemo said. As he backed away from Cherry, he pivoted and with the shoulder of his truncated left arm swung the weed whacker in the upward trajectory of a fungo bat. Although the golf-bag cover offered a bit of padding at impact, Bang Abbott nevertheless took a painful blow to the gourd. He toppled, snorting like a dazed warthog.

Chemo picked up the .38 from the polished maple floor and emptied all but one round into the watercolor of a circus clown that hung over the useless fireplace. He knew the clown painting couldn’t be very valuable if the owner of the house had left it up on the wall, especially after renting to an actor. It would be worth even less with bullet holes.

“You killed Claude, you fucker!” Cherry bayed at Chemo.

“Claude should know better than to play with guns.”

The photographer hauled himself to his feet, steadying himself against the mantel. Seconds later, the Buntermans burst into the room, Cherry’s father armed with a Swiffer sweeper that he’d grabbed from the kitchen. It was no match for a motorized shrub shredder; Chemo had to smile.

“What happened here?” cried Janet Bunterman, rushing to her daughter’s side. “Are you all right?”

“I hate him! He hurt Claude!”

“What for?” asked Cherry’s father, hovering at what he perceived to be a safe distance.

“Fuckhead pointed a loaded weapon at me. Not acceptable,” Chemo explained.

Ned Bunterman was proud of himself for having properly identified the loud noises as gunfire. If his wife was impressed, she didn’t let on. Chemo handed her the Colt and told her to put it away before somebody got killed. Nervously she crammed it barrel-first into her purse.

Bang Abbott was fingering a pink knot on the side of his head. His crimped baseball cap was deftly Swiffered off the floor and returned to him by Cherry’s father.

“I got some really good stuff. She’s doing great,” the paparazzo said.

“He’s right, Mom, I look so freaking awe—” Cherry halted herself, remembering Chemo’s forbidden-word list, and shot the bodyguard a septic glare. “Amazing. Super-amazing. Claude showed me the pictures.”

Janet Bunterman said, “I told you, sweetie, he’s an artist.”

“I already know which one I want for the cover!”

His ears still ringing, Bang Abbott picked up a Nikon and fiddled with the f-stop. “Hell, we’re just gettin’ started,” he said. “Aren’t we, Cherish?”

Janet Bunterman told her husband to fetch some ice for Mr. Abbott’s lump.

“No, no, I’m good,” said the paparazzo, who’d been somewhat anesthetized by the intensity of his fixation.

Cherry’s father asked, “Can we sneak a peek at the pics?”

“Maybe. After I’m done.” Bang Abbott raised his head and peered up at the wall. “Jesus, I just got a smokin’ hot idea. You folks can go now—everything’s under control.”

He took down the painting and placed it on the floor in front of the chair. He told Cherry to insert her fingers through the bullet holes in the clown’s eyes, then wiggle the tips provocatively for the camera.

“Killer,” she said. “I love it.”

Chemo escorted the Buntermans to the foyer. He told them to hang around out front for a little while, in case the neighbors had called the cops about the gunshots.

“We’ll tell them it was fireworks,” Janet Bunterman suggested daringly.

“Brilliant.”

Ned Bunterman propped the sweeper in a corner. “What do we do with the gun, Mr. Chemo? I mean, good Lord, this is out of our bailiwick.”

“Leave it under the Denali.”

“Is that safe?”

Chemo said, “Sure. There’s no crime on Star Island.” He smiled tightly as he let the Buntermans out.

Walking back to the photo set, he was thinking what a pain in the ass these people were, every damn one of them, and how he couldn’t wait to finish the job and split.

This time, Cherry stopped singing the moment he entered the room.

Jackie Sebago waddled to the bathroom and gingerly hoisted his bloated scrotum up on the vanity for self-inspection. He’d been reading all about spiny sea urchins on the Internet. The infection was being stubborn. Jackie couldn’t fit his junk into his Jockey shorts, much less a pair of pants, so he was basically trapped indoors.

Earlier in the morning, after receiving the call from the Monroe County Building Department, the developer had furiously thrown on a robe and set out toward the residence of D. T. Maltby
to ascertain why, after all the payoffs and chicanery, the Sebago Isle project had abruptly been red-tagged. Jackie’s labored stride and rumpled appearance attracted the attention of an Ocean Reef security guard, who placed the developer in a golf cart and drove him back to the borrowed condominium where he had been recuperating.

Being a mere guest and not a member, Jackie Sebago hadn’t fully familiarized himself with Ocean Reef’s dress code. At the very least, he should have cinched the bathrobe more snugly. His dour outlook did not improve when the security guard informed him that a chartered aircraft carrying Mr. Maltby had only minutes earlier departed from the club’s private runway, destination undisclosed.

Alone at the condo, Jackie sagged into a leather recliner and spread wide his spindly legs to ease the pressure. The obstetrical pose was all the more apt because his grotesquely engorged nut sack resembled nothing so much as the slimy, purple-veined crown of an emerging newborn. He fanned his crotch and seethed, thinking about the ranting one-eyed stranger who had victimized him so sadistically. The crime reaffirmed his generic contempt for environmentalists—such fucking drama over a few town houses! The greatest country in the world, he huffed to himself, the shining goddamn beacon of capitalism—yet a respectable entrepreneur such as himself could be ambushed, hog-tied and sexually disfigured by a deranged crackpot with a political agenda. It was an outrage.

His cell phone rang. Jackie Sebago recognized the 401 area code.

“Shit,” he murmured.

The caller was Shea, his least-favorite investor. Shea had learned about the red-tagging when he’d contacted the building department to find out if the plumbing permits had been pulled. The prick was always calling Key West behind Jackie’s back, just so he could bust his chops about one chickenshit thing or the other. Shea had texted a half dozen times within the hour, but Jackie hadn’t bothered to read any of them.

Now the guy was bellowing into the phone: “What the fuck, man? They shut down the project! What the fuck?”

“I’m on it,” said Jackie.

But he wasn’t on it, not really. The whole point of hiring a “consultant” such as D. T. Maltby was to remain safely above all the prosaic little acts of corruption. Being kept in the dark was part of Jackie’s system. He didn’t know who had been bribed, or how much they’d been paid—but he definitely wanted to know why they’d suddenly reneged.

“What the hell happened? What did you do?” Shea demanded. “Know what? Never mind. Just wire my money back. I’m done.”

“Slow down, Billy. I’ll have all this shit smoothed out by tomorrow. Wednesday at the latest.” There was little chance of that, Jackie knew, not with Maltby dodging him. “I gotta take care of some folks, that’s all,” he said to Shea. “You know, spread a little sunshine.”

“I thought you already did.”

“Me, too. But, hey, it’s Florida.”

“Guess what? You can have it,” Shea said. “I want my fucking money. Tomorrow, nine sharp, I’m calling my bank. It better be there, all eight fifty.”

Jackie Sebago couldn’t possibly return Billy Shea’s $850,000 investment because he’d already spent it on either a hydrofoil franchise in Crete or junk bonds. He couldn’t remember. After purchasing the lots for Sebago Isle, he’d still had five million bucks to play with. To Jackie it all sort of poured together, like a tropical waterfall.

In the interest of harmony, he had allowed Shea and the other investors to think their funds were safe in an escrow account. Jackie Sebago believed escrow was for pussies. He preferred a more dynamic wealth strategy.