Carl Hiaasen (36 page)

It was Chub’s misfortune to have arrived at Pearl Key after an exceptionally generous rainy season, when the island was lush
and teeming. Scarcely two months later the flats would be as murky as chocolate milk, the game fish and wading birds would have fled, and in the water would swim few creatures of serious concern to a glue-sniffing kidnapper, passed out with one hand dangling.

His wounded hand, as it happened; swollen and gray, still adorned with a severed crab claw.

As fishermen know, the scent of bait is diffused swiftly and efficiently in saltwater, attracting scavengers of all sizes. Chub knew this, too, although the information currently was stored beyond his grasp. Not even a doctorate in marine biology would’ve mitigated the stupefying volume of polyurethane fumes he’d inhaled from the tube of boat glue. He was completely unaware that his wounded mitt hung so tantalizingly in the water, just as he was unaware of the cannabilistic proclivities of
Callinectes sapidus
, the common blue crab.

In fact, Chub was so blitzed that the sensation of extreme pain—which ordinarily would have reached his brain stem in a nanosecond—instead meandered from one befogged synapse to another. By the time his subconscious registered the feeling, something horrible was well under way.

His screams ruined an otherwise golden morning.

The other three had been awake for hours. Bodean Gazzer was patrolling the woods not far from the campsite. Amber was attempting to revise Shiner’s tattoo, using a honed fishhook and a dollop of violet mascara. Before starting she’d numbed his upper arm with ice, but the pricking still stung like hell. Shiner hoped the procedure would be brief, since only two of the three initials required altering. Amber warned him it wasn’t an easy job, changing the letters from
W.R.B
. to
W.C.A
.

“The
B
won’t be bad. I’ll just add legs to make it look like a
capital
A
. But the
R
is tricky,” she said, frowning. “I can’t promise it’ll ever pass for a C.”

Shiner, through clenched teeth: “Do your best, ’Kay?”

He turned away, so he wouldn’t see the punctures. Occasionally he’d let out a grunt, which was Amber’s cue to apply more ice. Despite the discomfort, Shiner found himself enjoying being the focus of her concentration. He liked the way she’d rolled up the sleeves of the camouflage jumpsuit and pinned her hair in a ponytail; all business. And her touch—clinical as it was—sent a pleasurable tickle all the way to his groin.

“I had a friend,” she was saying, “he was paranoid about dying in a plane crash. So he got his initials tattooed on his arms and his legs, his shoulders, the soles of his feet, both cheeks of his butt. See, because he’d read where that’s one way they can identify the body parts, if there’s tattoos.”

Shiner said, “That’s pretty smart.”

“Yeah, but it didn’t help. He was, like, a smuggler.”

“Oh.”

“His plane went down off the Bahamas. Sharks got him.”

“There wasn’t nothin’ left?”

“One of his Reeboks is all they found,” Amber said. “Inside was something that looked like a toe. Of course, it wasn’t tattooed.”

“Damn.”

To Shiner’s surprise, Amber began to sing as she went at him with the fishhook:

Shiner said, “You got a nice voice.”

“White Rebel Brotherhood,” said Amber, “the song I told
you about. It’s killer.” As she worked on the tattoo, her face was so close he could feel the soft breath on his skin.

He said, “Maybe I’ll check out the CD.”

“They do it more hip-hop.”

“Yeah, I figgered.”

“Am I hurting you?”

“Naw,” Shiner lied. “Matter a fact, I was wonderin’ if mebbe you could add somethin’ extry. Under the eagle.”

“Such as?”

“A swatch ticker,” said Shiner.

“A what?”

“You know—a swatch ticker. Like the Nazis had.”

Amber glanced up sharply. “Swastika, you mean.”

“Yeah.” He practiced the proper pronunciation. “That’d be cool, don’tcha think?”

“I don’t know how to draw one. Sorry.”

Shiner mulled it over, wincing every so often at the stabs of the fishhook. “I seen some good ones at the colonel’s place,” he said eventually, “if I can only ’member how they went. Look here….”

He cleared a place in the sand and, using a forefinger, drew his version of the infamous German cross.

Amber shook her head. “That’s not right.”

“You sure?”

“You made it look like … like something from the Chinese alphabet.”

“Now hold on,” said Shiner, but he was stumped. Just then Bodean Gazzer came stomping out of the mangroves. He sat near the fire and began wiping dew from his rifle. Shiner called him over.

“Colonel, can you do a swatch ticker?”

“No problem.” Bode saw an opportunity to impress Amber at the kid’s expense. He put down the gun and joined them
under the tarp. With a sweep of a hand he erased Shiner’s chicken-scratch swastika. In broad, sure strokes he sketched his own.

Amber briefly scrutinized the design before declaring it had “too many thingies.” She was referring to the tiny stems that Bode had drawn on the ends of the secondary legs.

“You’re wrong, sweetheart,” he told her. “That’s exactly how the Nasties done it.”

Amber didn’t argue, but she thought: Any serious white supremacist and Jew-hater would know how to make a swastika. Bode and Shiner’s confusion on the topic reaffirmed her suspicions that the White Clarion Aryans were a pretty lame operation.

“OK, you’re the expert,” she said to Bode, and began reheating the point of the fishhook with a cigaret lighter.

Shiner felt his stomach jump. He had a hunch Amber was right—the colonel’s swastika was odd-looking; too many angles, and the lines seemed to point in the wrong direction. The damn thing was either upside down or inside out, Shiner couldn’t tell which.

“Where you gone put it?” Bode asked.

“Under the bird.” Amber tapped the designated location on Shiner’s left biceps.

Bode said, “Perfect.”

Shiner didn’t know what to do. He didn’t want to offend his commanding officer but he sure as hell didn’t want another defective tattoo. And a fucked-up swastika would be difficult to fix, Shiner knew; difficult and painful.

Amber pressed a fresh batch of ice cubes against his arm. “Let me know when you can’t feel the cold.”

Bode Gazzer edged closer. “I wanna watch.”

Shiner fixed his gaze on the blackened barb of the fishhook and instantly became dizzy.

“Ready?” asked Amber.

Shiner sucked in a deep breath—he’d made up his mind. He’d do it for the brotherhood.

“Anytime,” he said thickly, and locked his eyes shut.

At first he believed the screams he heard were his own. Then, as the animal howling tapered to a stream of profanity, Shiner recognized the timbre of Chub’s voice.

Then Amber saying: “Oh my God.”

And Bodean Gazzer: “What the hell!”

Shiner looked up to see Chub, nude except for Amber’s orange shorts, which he wore up on his head. The shorts were pulled down as snugly as a skullcap, fitted at an angle to hide Chub’s eye patch.

But that’s not what made the others stare.

It was fastened to the end of Chub’s right arm, which hung limp and heavy at his side. where once there was only a pair of dead crab pincers there was now a complete live crab; one of the largest crabs Amber had ever seen, outside the Seaquarium.

“What do I do?” Chub pleaded. “Jesus Willy, what the fuck do I do?” Gummy-eyed from either sleep or glue, he displayed his other hand—his functional hand—for them to see. The knuckles were bloody knobs, from beating on the crustacean.

Amber cast her eyes at Shiner, who had not much experience with marine life and, thus, no counterstrategy. Despite his white brother’s awful predicament, he couldn’t help feeling a sense of reprieve. While the others stood transfixed by the sight of Chub, Shiner discreetly scuffed his feet across the dirt until he’d obscured Bode Gazzer’s dubious swastika sketch.

“The crab!” Chub was bellowing. “The crab, it’s after that g-g-god-damn claw!”

Gravely Bode surmised: “It’s either trying to eat it or fuck it.”

In its bloated and discolored state, Chub’s hand could have been mistaken by a farsighted crab for another member of its
species; that was Bode’s hypothesis. Amber had nothing more plausible to offer.

Shiner asked, “How come he got your pants on his head?”

“God only knows,” she said with a sigh.

Chub bolted toward the water. When the others caught up, they found him madly slinging his lifeless crab arm against the stump of an ancient buttonwood.

Shiner stepped forward. “I’ll take care a that goddamn thing.”

Bode was alarmed to see the Beretta glinting in the kid’s paw. “Oh, no you don’t,” he said, snatching it away. “I’ll do the honors, son.”

“Do what?” Amber asked.

She felt Shiner’s hand on her shoulder. “Better stand back,” he advised.

Although he was unaware of it, Bodean Gazzer almost hadn’t made it back to camp. Tom Krome and JoLayne Lucks almost caught him alone.

They’d spotted him from about a hundred yards, moving across a salt flat on the crown of the island. The flat was wide and oval-shaped, ringed by mangroves and hurricane deadfall. Normally it filled up as a lagoon during the big autumn tides, but two days of heavy winds had blown out much of the water. Assault rifle in hand, Bode had scattered groups of stilt-legged birds as he clomped through the custardlike marl.

JoLayne and Tom had emerged from the tree line no more than two minutes behind him. They couldn’t risk following the same path across the flat because there was no cover. So they kept low to the ground and skirted the fringe, picking their way through the stubborn mangroves. It was slow going. Tom leading the way, holding the springy branches until JoLayne could
squeeze past with the Remington. When they reached the place where the stumpy redneck had reentered the woods, they could make out his heavy-footed crackles and crunches ahead of them. They moved forward carefully, baby-stepping, so he wouldn’t hear.

Then the twig-snapping stopped. JoLayne tugged Tom’s sleeve and motioned him to be still. She came up beside him and whispered: “I smell wood smoke.”

The sound of conversation confirmed it. They were very near the robbers’ camp, possibly too near. Quietly JoLayne and Tom backed off, concealing themselves in a tangled canopy. All around them, the tree limbs were necklaced with freshly spun spiderwebs. Tom leaned back, dazzled.

“Golden-orbed weaver,” JoLayne said.

“It’s gorgeous.”

“Sure is.” She found it interesting that he was so calm, almost relaxed, as long as they were on the chase. It was doing nothing that seemed to unsettle him, the sitting and waiting.

When JoLayne mentioned it, Tom said, “That’s because I’d rather be the hunter than the hunted. Wouldn’t you?”

“Well, we got pretty close to the bastard.”

“Yeah. You’re good at this.”

“For a black girl, you mean?”

“JoLayne, don’t start with that.”

“Not all of us hang out on street corners. Some of us actually know our way around the woods … or maybe were you referring to women in general.”

“Actually, I was.” Tom decided it was better to be thought a chauvinist than a racist—assuming JoLayne was half serious.

She said, “Are you saying your wife never took you stalking?”

“Not that I can recall.”

“And none of your girlfriends?” Now JoLayne was smiling. Obviously she enjoyed giving him a start now and then.

Kissing his neck sweetly: “I’m sorry to be jerking your chain, but it’s more fun than I can stand. You don’t know how long it’s been since I’ve had a guilt-ridden white boy all to myself.”

“That’s me.”

“We should’ve made love again,” she said, suddenly pensive. “Last night—to hell with the rain and cold, we should’ve done it.”

Tom thought it an odd moment to raise the subject, what with a gang of heavily armed lunatics three hundred feet away.

“I decided a long time ago,” she said, “that if I knew exactly when I was going to die, I’d make a point of screwing my brains out the night before.”

“Good plan.”

“And we
could
die out here on this island. I mean, these are very bad guys we’re chasing.”

Tom said he preferred to think positive thoughts.

“But you do agree,” JoLayne said, “there’s a chance they’ll kill us.”

“Hell, yes, there’s a chance.”

“That’s all I’m saying. That’s why I wish we’d made love.”

“Oh, I think we’ll get another shot.” Tom, trying to stay upbeat.

JoLayne Lucks closed her eyes and rolled her head back.

“Mortal fear makes for great sex—I read that someplace.”

“Mortal fear.”

“It wasn’t
Cosmo
, either. I’m sorry for babbling, Tom, I’m just really—”

“Nervous. Me, too,” he said. “Let’s concentrate on what to do about these assholes who stole your lottery ticket.”

The dreamy expression passed from JoLayne’s face. “That wasn’t all they did.”

“I know.”

“But still I’m not sure if I can make myself pull the trigger.”

“Maybe it won’t come to that,” he said.

JoLayne pointed up in the mangrove branches. A tiny barrel-shaped beetle had become trapped in one of the gossamer webs. Slowly, almost casually, the spider was crossing the intricate net toward the struggling insect.

“That’s what we need. A web,” JoLayne said.

They watched the stalking until a drawn-out cry broke the stillness; not a woman’s cry, this time, but a man’s. It was no less harrowing.

JoLayne shuddered and rose to her knees. “Damn. What now?”

Tom Krome got up quickly. “Well, I’d rather have them screaming than singing campfire songs.” He held out his hand. “Come on. Let’s go see.”

Chub didn’t trust either Bode or Shiner to shoot the crab safely off his hand. He didn’t even trust himself.