Bad Monkey (32 page)

The few covered hiding places he found also attracted humans; trusting no upright species, Driggs loped on. By nightfall he was tired and famished, and he’d lost his cherished pipe during a dustup with a white man. The road was mostly empty but Driggs came upon a van that stood idling while one of the occupants urinated in the bushes. Silently the monkey climbed to the top and rode the luggage rack through buffeting gusts back to the outskirts of Rocky Town, where he hopped off and made a downcast return to the shack of the Dragon Queen.

Squeezing through a loosely hinged shutter, he entered the candlelit hovel squinting. He was surprised to see, in addition to the witch and her boyfriend, a stranger—a younger, long-haired woman, trussed with belts to a chair. The man called Egg scowled at Driggs, but from her scooter the Dragon Queen sang out his name and joyfully welcomed him. With equine snorts she nuzzled the soggy capuchin while steering the wheelchair in gay loops until it hummed to a stop. Egg said the battery ran out and the old lady ordered him to put in another one, which he refused to do.

Driggs vaulted from the stalled scooter to the lap of the younger woman, who was unable to speak due to a gag made from one of the
voodoo hag’s bright scarves. The new woman’s clean odor was pleasing, and Driggs pressed his face to her bosom and inhaled deep monkey breaths as a respite from the rankness in the room. Casually he foraged inside the woman’s blouse for M&M’s or other hidden treats. Seeing fright in her eyes, he began combing his doll-like fingers through her soft shiny hair.

An outcry rose from the Dragon Queen: “Get ’way from dot whore, my lil’ prince!”

Driggs clung to the newcomer’s clothing, but Egg seized his tail and yanked him away. The monkey landed on the table, where he spied another pipe and snuck a hit that made his teeth freeze. He peered into the pipe bowl and saw a foreign paste of white crystals, which confused him. The Dragon Queen rose from the scooter chair and began flapping her skirt at the tied-down woman, who looked away. Egg came around from behind and turned the woman’s head with a hard slap, further upsetting Driggs.

Egg wore no clothes, the long brown thing between his legs reminding the monkey of his own. The Dragon Queen started to bob and clap while her naked boyfriend, shining with sweat, circled their prisoner. A frightened cry came from the bound woman.

Driggs heard himself chitter in agitation, meaning now he didn’t want to be there, didn’t want to see whatever was about to happen. The animal felt panicky and cornered. Yet outside the wind was roaring, the trees kept snapping—where could he run?

The Dragon Queen snatched him from the tabletop and buttoned him into a tiny tuxedo vest stained with coffee. She held him by the collar while shouting encouragement to Egg, who hurried to loosen the belts from the chair holding the younger woman.

“Do it! Gon now!” the hag crowed.

Once their captive was untied, Egg turned back to the Dragon Queen and struck a vulgar pose, flexing his arms. The Dragon Queen moaned theatrically and with her free hand fanned herself. When Egg took hold of the younger woman, still gagged, she began punching at his wide chest. The Dragon Queen chortled though the scene had an opposite effect upon the capuchin, who broke from the voodoo witch’s grasp and launched himself in authentic jungle fury at her boyfriend.

A scream shot out from Egg—a high, full-throated scream that
overrode the low drone of the storm. The door of the shack flew open but it wasn’t the wind. Standing there was a white man Driggs recognized from previous altercations.

But behind the white man, looking over his shoulder, was … Neville!

Driggs would have grinned had his incisors not been so deeply implanted in Egg’s fleshy thing, to which the monkey clung as if it were the bough of a mahogany tree.

Yancy needed a moment to absorb the scene.

“Jesus,” he said. “The man’s got a monkey on his dick.”

Neville was thunderstruck. “Dot’s Driggs,” was all he could muster.

Egg cast Rosa aside and feverishly commenced slapping at the capuchin, causing him to chomp down harder. Blood was dripping all over the thug’s feet. He stopped flailing to appraise his tormentor, seven fuzzy pounds that might as well have been cast-iron tonnage.

The Dragon Queen railed at Driggs and hawked rheumy gobs at the intruders. Yancy shoved her backward into the seat of the Rollie scooter; then he pulled off Rosa’s gag and firmly guided her toward the doorway. Neville refused to depart without his pet, who remained tenaciously attached to Egg.

From the goon came a seething croak: “Git dot fucker offa my cock or you dead mon.” He was holding motionless under the most delicate of circumstances.

Once more the Dragon Queen lunged to intervene, crooning more voodoo nonsense. This time it was Neville who pushed her back onto the wheelchair.

To Driggs he gently appealed, “C’mon, boy! Poppa got fritters bok home!”

These were irresistible words to the hungry vagabond. Driggs spat out Egg and jumped to the top of Neville’s head, his old riding perch. They hurried out the door behind Yancy and Rosa, chased by the fevered remonstrations of the voodoo woman.

By the time the hurricane struck, they were more or less safe—Yancy, Rosa, Neville and the monkey—inside a small house rented by another of Neville’s girlfriends. Coquina was her name, and Neville
fondly introduced her as half Cuban. She’d lighted two kerosene lanterns after the power went out; the windows she had boarded earlier that day with Neville’s help.

The house was near the shore, the waves breaking hard enough to interrupt conversation. Coquina handed out dry clothes and a small towel for Driggs, who had torn off the tuxedo vest and was stuffing himself with johnnycakes and orange slices.

Neville pulled Yancy to a corner and said, “You tink Mistuh Chrissofer be dead?”

“I don’t know. What’d you hit him with?”

“I didn’t hit ’im, mon. I stob ’im wit your fishin’ pole.”

Yancy said, “The fly rod?”

“Yah. In de bock.” Neville demonstrated how he’d broken it and used the point of the butt section as a lance. “Wot if I hoyt ’im bod? Maybe killed ’im.”

“I didn’t see a damn thing,” said Yancy.

“Wot ’bout his woman?”

“It was raining. It was dark. She was drunk.”

“She was?”

“If anybody asks me,” Yancy said. “You bet.”

Outside something heavy crashed to the ground. Across the room, Rosa and Coquina were feeding Ritz crackers to Driggs. They all looked up because of the noise. Coquina said it was probably a utility pole falling in the backyard.

Yancy told Neville he had done the right thing at Bannister Point. “The man’s a criminal, a murderer. All you did was save my life, Mr. Stafford.”

“Dot might be so.”

“His real name is Stripling. Can you remember that? It’ll be important if they come to ask you questions. The woman is his wife—did she get a look at your face?”

“No,” Neville said. “Who gonna come axing questions? You mean from Nassau or Miami?”

“Remember that name—Nicholas Stripling. He shot two men dead back in Florida.”

“Got-tam!” said Neville.

“Before he came here, he had a surgeon take off his left arm. That’s why he always wore the poncho. That’s why you found the cut sleeve in his garbage—his wife stitches up his shirts to fit the nub.”

Neville’s voice jumped two octaves. “Why a mon get his own arm cut off? ’E muss be stone crazy!”

“No, Mr. Stafford, he did it for money. This is one cold-blooded sonofabitch.”

Rosa walked over carrying a lantern. She and Yancy went into a bedroom and shut the door.

Neville sat down to think. Anyone who for pure greed would give up an arm … a true white devil, like the Dragon Queen said. Maybe her voodoo had worked, after all. What if she’d given Neville a role in the curse, and set the stabbing in motion?

He looked up at the shuddering rafters. Then he turned back to address the monkey: “You con stay wit me like before, but tings got to change. No more smokin’ and nonsense.”

Coquina rolled her eyes and told Neville he was a fool.

Driggs blinked impassively and sucked an orange rind. It felt good to be out of the storm.

Yancy held Rosa close and said, “Baby, I’m so sorry.”

“Totally my fault. Rule number one: Never conspire under the influence of tequila.”

“Did they hurt you?”

“Not really, but it was definitely on the agenda,” Rosa said. “Crazy old bat, first thing she did? Tore off my bra and poured Bacardi in the cups. The bald dude, he was just laughing and playing with himself.”

“What the hell happened before that, at Stripling’s house?”

“Oh, great meeting. She and the boyfriend knew we weren’t for real—they’ve got a woman on the payroll at Immigration in Nassau. They knew ‘Andrew Gates’ was really you, they knew I wasn’t really your wife—and they knew we were trying to set ’em up.”

Yancy sat her on the bed. He kept apologizing until she told him to hush.

“Eve’s boyfriend isn’t a boyfriend,” he said.

“I never saw him—he was in another room. The bald guy’s the one who grabbed me. He’s not a gentleman, either, Andrew. God bless that nasty little monkey for showing up when he did.”

“What I’m trying to tell you,” said Yancy, “is that the boyfriend is really the husband. Nick Stripling’s alive.”

Rosa flopped back on the covers. “Okay. What?”

“He had his own arm sawed off to make everybody think he was dead. It was Dr. O’Peele who did the wet work, right after Nick and Eve sank the boat.”

“While Immigration has her in Nassau.”

“Right. That’s the beauty of the seaplane.”

“They used the condo on Duck Key for the surgery, which explains the bone chips.”

“Right,” said Yancy. “Then, after they get some shark bites on the arm, Eve drives it down to Key West for the switcheroo on the
Misty Momma
.”

“Wow. Talk about a plan.”

The wind against the ceiling beams sounded like a downhill locomotive. Yancy could feel the pressure in his eardrums.

“After the surgery,” he said, “Nick came to hide out on Andros. He and Eve had already rented the house and started their big real estate project. They bought that sweet stretch of beach, probably using what Nick stole from Medicare. But he wasn’t through with Florida. He snuck back to take care of Phinney and then O’Peele, and then me. Nick’s the dude in the orange poncho, Rosa. He wears it to hide his stump.”

Rosa ran her hands through her hair. Yancy noticed raw scrapes on both knuckles, from fighting the two freaks in the shack.

She said, “The man had his own arm amputated, Andrew. That’s impressive.”

“I’ve heard of doing a finger before.”

“Oh, sure. The old Wendy’s scam.”

“I thought it was Burger King,” Yancy said.

“Whatever. Customer starts gagging and there’s a big scene. Somebody calls the local TV station. But you know it’s a setup because what turns up in the cheeseburger is always a pinkie. That’s the one you
don’t really use. An actual meat-rending accident, it’s the thumb or forefinger that gets severed because those are working fingers.”

“Sure, the ones nearest the blades and grinders.”

“Exactly,” Rosa said. “But pinkie cases are automatically suspicious. Somebody claims they found one in a bun, always check the hands of their friends and family. It’s amazing how many dirtbags will chop off a pinkie just to get a piece of a lawsuit.”

“You’ve got to admire the commitment.”

“Because these fast-food companies, they’ll settle almost every time. They don’t want to go to a jury,” she said. “Even if they know they’re getting hustled, they can’t take a chance.”

“Not in South Florida, no way.”

“Even a little finger, Andrew, that’s pretty hard-core. But to give up your whole arm—that’s a new one.”

“We’re blessed to live in such times,” Yancy said.

“You think Caitlin knows?”

“Nope. Only Eve.”

“And where is the fearless Mr. Stripling?”

“Not sure if he’s dead or alive. He was about to shoot me when my new hero Neville stabbed him with my six-hundred-dollar bonefish rod.”

“It just gets better and better,” Rosa said. “And now we’re in a hurricane!”

“Named Françoise, for Christ’s sake.”

“Don’t spoil it, Andrew. Take off your pants.”

The eye of the storm stayed out in the Tongue of the Ocean, feeding on the warm waters. Still there was substantial damage and disruption across Andros as it passed to the east. The winds on Lizard Cay reached seventy-one miles per hour, gusting to ninety.

Yancy found himself struggling to focus on what would have been, under calm heavens, an act of carefree and delicious reflex. The din from even a small hurricane is nerve-racking, and Yancy was additionally distracted by thoughts of the evening’s frenetic events. Rosa told him to relax; Neville and his girlfriend wouldn’t be able to hear
them from the other side of the door, which Yancy had locked in case Neville’s monkey got nosy.

It was during light-spirited foreplay when Rosa confided that she’d been reading a smutty novel in which an inexperienced woman becomes enthralled by a lover who bosses her around the bedroom with the same tone one might hear from the nail-gun operator at a slaughterhouse. The woman sportingly signs an enslavement contract, after which the fellow forces her to put on Day-Glo wetsuits and perform contortions that would daunt Olga Korbut.

Rosa said she was sort of enjoying the book. Yancy tried to act intrigued though he’d never been good at fantasy sex; it was difficult to stay in character and not make smart-ass remarks. One time Bonnie made him play the shiftless hitchhiker while she was the naïve Mary Kay associate who got lost in her imaginary pink Lexus. Yancy couldn’t keep a straight face, or anything else, and Bonnie ended up steaming mad.

Adopting the role of ruthless dominator in Rosa’s daydream would require some stagecraft, and in Yancy’s experience there was a hazy line between daring and disgusting. Usually when making love he strived for a purely sensory, uncomplicated experience. Incorporating a game or a skit seemed too much like a class assignment.