Native Tongue (33 page)

“Now stop.” Carrie clutched the back of his head. “I’ve forgotten the rest of the words.”

Still gnawing, Winder said, “I feel like a shark.”

“You do indeed.” She pulled him even closer. “I know a little boy who forgot to shave this morning, didn’t he?”

“I was busy writing.” A muffled voice rising out of her cleavage.

Carrie smiled. “I know you were writing, and I’m proud of you. What’s the big news at the Kingdom tomorrow—typhoid? Trichinosis?”

He lifted his head. “No more diseases. From now on, it’s the heavy artillery.”

She kissed him on the nose. “You’re a very sick man. Why do I like you so much?”

“Because I’m full of surprises.”

“Oh, like this?” Carrie grabbed him and gave a little tug. “Is this for me?”

“If you’re not careful.”

“Hold still,” she told him.

“Aren’t you going to take off that outfit?”

“What for? Look at all these convenient holes. We’ve just got to get you lined up.”

“It’s a good thing,” Joe Winder said, “it doesn’t have gills.”

He held his breath as Carrie Lanier worked on the delicate alignment. Then she adjusted the Naugahyde sofa cushion behind his head, and braced her hands on the windowsill. The lights from the highway skipped in her eyes, until she closed them. Slowly she started rocking and said, “Tonight we’re shooting for four big ones.”

“Excuse me?”

“I told you, Joe, I’m a very goal-oriented person.”

“I think I’m tangled.”

“You’re doing fine,” she said.

He was still hanging on, minutes later, when Carrie stopped moving.

“What is it?”

“Joe, did you go back to the apartment tonight?” She was whispering.

“Just for a minute. I needed some clothes.”

“Oh boy.”

“What’s the matter?”

Carrie said, “Somebody’s watching us. Somebody followed you here.” She lowered herself until she was flat against him, so she couldn’t be seen from the window. “It’s a man,” she said. “He’s just standing out there.”

“What’s he look like?”

“Very large.”

“Guess I’d better do something.”

“Such as?”

“I’m not exactly sure,” Joe Winder said. “I need to refocus here.”

“In other words, you want me to climb off.”

“Well, I think the mood has been broken.”

“The thing is—”

“I know. We’ll need a scissors.” His fingers, his chin, everything was tangled in the netting.

Outside the trailer, something moved. A shadow flickering across the windowpane. Footsteps crunching on the gravel. Then a hand on the doorknob, testing the lock.

Carrie’s muscles tightened. She put her lips to his ear. “Joe, are we going to die like this?”

“There are worse ways,” he said.

And then the door buckled.

Skink said he was sorry, and turned away. Joe Winder and Carrie Lanier scrambled to disengage, tearing the fishnet suit to strings.

“I heard noises,” said Skink. “Thought there might be trouble.”

The adrenaline ebbed in a cold tingle from Winder’s veins. Breathlessly he said, “How’d you know I was here?”

“Followed you from the apartment.”

“In what—the bookmobile?”

“I’ve got friends,” Skink said.

While Joe Winder fastened his trousers, Carrie Lanier dived into a University of Miami football jersey. Skink turned to face them, and Carrie gamely shook his hand. She said, “I didn’t catch your name.”

“Jim Morrison,” said Skink.
“The
Jim Morrison.”

“No, he’s not,” Winder said irritably.

Carrie smiled. “Nice to meet you, Mr. Morrison.” Winder considered her cordiality amazing in view of Skink’s menacing appearance.

Skink said, “I suppose he told you all about me.”

“No,” Carrie replied. “He didn’t say a word.”

Skink seemed impressed by Joe Winder’s discretion. To Carrie he said: “Feel free to stare.”

“I am staring, Mr. Morrison. Is that a snake you’re eating?”

“A mud snake, yes. Medium-rare.” He took a crackling bite and moved through the trailer, turning off the television and all the lights. “A precaution,” he explained, peeking out a window.

In the darkness Carrie found Joe Winder’s hand and squeezed it. Winder said, “This is the man who saved my life a couple weeks ago—the night I got beaten up, and you gave me a lift.”

“I live in the hammocks,” Skink interjected. “The heavy rains have brought out the snakes.”

Winder wondered when he would get to the point.

Carrie said, “Can I ask about the red collar? Is it some sort of neck brace?”

“No, it isn’t.” Skink crouched on his haunches in front of them, beneath the open window. The highway lights twinkled in his sunglasses.

“Events are moving haphazardly,” he said, gnawing a piece of the cooked reptile. “There needs to be a meeting. A confluence, if you will.”

“Of whom?” Winder asked.

“There are others,” Skink said. “They don’t know about you, and you don’t know about them.” He paused, cocking an ear toward the ceiling. “Hear that? It’s the plane. They’ve been tracking me all damn day.”

Carrie gave Joe Winder a puzzled look. He said, “The rangers from Game and Fish—it’s a long story.”

“Government,” Skink said. “A belated pang of conscience, at taxpayer expense. But Nature won’t be fooled, the damage is already done.”

Sensing trouble, Winder lurched in to change the subject. “So who are these mysterious others?”

“Remember that afternoon at the Amazing Kingdom, when a stranger gave you something?”

“Yeah, some old lady at the Rare Animal Pavilion. She handed me a note and then I got my lights punched out.”

Skink said, “That was me who slugged you.”

“What an odd relationship,” Carrie remarked.

“My specialty,” Joe Winder said. Then to Skink: “Can I ask why you knocked the door down tonight? Your timing stinks, by the way.”

Skink was at the window again, lurking on the edge of the shadow. “Do you know anyone who drives a blue Saab?”

“No—”

“Because he was waiting at your apartment this morning. Big Cuban meathead who works at the park. He saw you arrive.” Skink dropped down again. He said to Winder, “You were driving the young lady’s car, right?”

“She loaned it to me. So what?”

“So it’s got a parking sticker on the rear bumper.”

“Oh shit, you’re right.” Joe Winder had completely forgotten: employees of the Amazing Kingdom were issued Petey Possum parking permits. Each decal bore an identification number. It was a simple matter to trace the car to Carrie Lanier.

“I need to go to fugitive school,” Winder said. “This was really stupid.”

Carrie asked Skink about the man in the blue Saab. “Did he follow Joe, too? Is he out there now?”

“He was diverted,” Skink said, “but I’m sure he’ll be here eventually. That’s why we’re leaving.”

“No,” Winder said, “I can’t.”

Skink asked Carrie Lanier for a paper napkin. Carefully he wrapped the uneaten segment of mud snake and placed it in a pocket of his blaze rainsuit.

He said, “There’ll be trouble if we stay.”

“I can’t go,” Winder insisted. “Look, the fax lines are already set up. Everything’s in place right here.”

“So you’ve got something more in mind?”

“You know I do. In fact, you’ve given me a splendid inspiration.”

“All right, we’ll wait until daybreak. Can you type in the dark?”

“It’s been a while, but sure.” Back in the glory days, Winder had once written forty inches in the blackness of a Gulfport motel bathroom—a Royal manual typewriter balanced on his lap. This was during Hurricane Frederic.

Skink said, “Get busy, genius. I’ll watch the window.”

“What can I do to help?” Carrie asked.

“Put on some Stones,” said Skink.

“And some panties,” Winder whispered.

She told him to hush and quit acting like an old prude.

While the tow truck hooked up the Saab, Pedro Luz forced himself to reflect on events.

There he was, waiting for Winder to come out of the apartment when here comes this big spade highway patrolman knocking on the window of the car.

“Hey, there,” he says from behind those damn reflector shades.

“Hey,” says Pedro Luz, giving him the slight macho nod that says, I’m one of you, brother.

But the spade doesn’t go for it. Asks for Pedro’s driver’s license and also for the registration of the Saab. Looks over the papers and says, “So who’s Ramex Global?”

“Oh, you know,” Pedro says, flashing his old Miami PD badge.

Trooper goes “Hmmm.” Just plain “Hmmm.” And then the fucker jots down the badge number, like he’s going to check it out!

Pedro resists the urge to reach under the seat for his gun. Instead he says, “Man, you’re burning me. I’m sitting on a dude out here.”

“Yeah? What’s his name?”

Pedro Luz says, “Smith. José Smith.” It’s the best he can do on short notice, with his brain twitching all crazy inside his skull. “Man, you and that marked unit are burning me bad.”

Trooper doesn’t act too damn concerned. “So you’re a police officer, is that right?”

“Hell,” Pedro says, “you saw the badge.”

“Yes, I sure did. You’re a long way from the city.”

“Hey,
chico
, we’re in a war, remember.”

“Narcotics?” The trooper sounds positively intrigued. “This man Smith, he’s some big-time dope smuggler, eh?”

“Was,” Pedro says. “He sees your car sitting out here, he’s back in wholesale footwear.”

“Hmmm,” the spade trooper says again. Meanwhile Pedro’s fantasizing about grabbing him around the middle and squeezing his guts out both ends, like a very large tube of licorice toothpaste.

“Don’t tell me you’re gonna run my tag,” Pedro says.

“Nah.” But the trooper’s still leaning his thick black arms against the door of the Saab, his face not a foot from Pedro’s, so that Pedro can see himself twice in the mirrored sunglasses. Now the trooper says: “What happened to your finger?”

“Cat bite.”

“Looks like it took the whole top joint.”

“That’s right,” says Pedro, aching all over, wishing he’d brought his intravenous bag of Winstrol-V. Talking high-octane. Same stuff they use on horses. One thousand dollars a vial, and worth every penny.

Trooper says, “Must’ve been some cat to give you a bite like that.”

“Yeah, I ought to put the damn thing to sleep.”

“Sounds like a smart idea,” says the trooper, “before he bites you someplace else.”

And then the sonofabitch touches the brim of his Stetson and says so long. Like John Fucking Wayne.

And here comes Winder, cruising out of the apartment with an armful of clothes. Gets in the car—not his car, somebody else’s; somebody with an employee sticker from the Kingdom—and drives off with the radio blasting.

Pedro Luz lays back cool and sly, maybe half a mile, waiting until the cocky bastard reaches that long empty stretch on Card Sound Road, south of the Carysfort Marina. That’s where Pedro aims to make the big move.

Until the Saab dies. Grinds to a miserable wheezing halt. A
Saab!

Pedro Luz is so pissed he yanks the steering wheel off its column and heaves it into a tamarind tree. Only afterwards does it dawn on him that Mr. X isn’t going to appreciate having a $35,000 automobile and no way to steer it.

An hour later, here comes Pascual’s Wrecker Service. Guy lifts the hood, can’t find a thing. Slides underneath, zero. Then he says maybe Pedro ran out of gas, and Pedro says don’t be an asshole. Guy pulls off the gas cap, closes one eye and looks inside, like he can actually
see
something.

Then he sniffs real hard, rubs his nose, sniffs again. Then he starts laughing like a fruit.

“Your friends fucked you up real good,” he says.

“What are you talking about?”

“Come here and take a whiff.”

“No thanks,” Pedro says.

Guy hoots. “Now I seen everything.”

Pedro’s trying to figure out when it happened. Figures somebody snuck up and did it while he was talking to that hardass trooper. Which means the trooper was in on it.

“Did a number on your engine,” says the tow-truck man, chuckling way too much.

Pedro Luz grabs him by the arm until his fingers lock on bone. He says, “So tell me. What exactly’s in the gas tank?”

“Jack Daniels,” the guy says. “I know that smell anywhere.”

So now Pedro’s watching him put the hook to Mr. Kingsbury’s Saab and wondering what else could go wrong. Thinking about the monkeys and shithead burglars and what happened to Churrito. Thinking about the black state trooper busting his balls for no reason, and how somebody managed to pour booze in the tank without Pedro even knowing it.

Pedro thinks he’d better shoot some horse juice in his arms as soon as possible, and get tight on Joe Winder’s ass.

In one of his pockets he finds the scrap of paper where he wrote the decal number off the car Winder was driving. It’s not much, but it’s the only thing he’s got to show for a long sorry morning.

So Pedro tells the tow-truck guy he’s going to ride in the busted Saab on the way to the shop. Use Kingsbury’s car phone to make a few calls.

Guy says no way, it’s against company policy. Gotta sit up front in the truck.

Which is not what Pedro wants to hear after such a shitty day. So he tackles the guy and yanks his arms out of the sockets one at a time, pop-pop. Leaves him thrashing in the grass by the side of the road.

Jumps in the tow truck and heads for the Amazing Kingdom of Thrills.

The Mothers of Wilderness listened solemnly as Molly McNamara recounted the brutal assault. They were gathered in the Florida room of Molly’s old house, where a potluck supper had been arranged on a calico tablecloth. Normally a hungry bunch, the Mothers scarcely touched the food; a huge bacon-cheese ball
lay undisturbed on a sterling silver platter—a sure sign that the group was distracted.

And no wonder: Molly’s story was appalling. No one dreamed that the battle against Falcon Trace would ever come to violence. That Molly had been attacked by thugs in her own apartment was horrifying; equally unsettling was her lurid description of the finger-biting episode. In disbelief, several of the older members fiddled frenetically with the controls to their hearing aids.