Razor Girl (20 page)

“Seems that way.”

“So you think this lawyer hired those two fuckwits who broke in tonight.”

“They didn't deny it. I intend to press charges, too.”

“That would make my year,” Burton said.

“I sure don't want a guy like Richardson living next to me.”

“You don't want anybody living next to you, Andrew, except lizards and land crabs.”

“I like the deer on the island.”

Merry said, “That's true. He's very fond of the deer.”

Burton opened the beer. “Did you rip your stitches whaling on those bozos?”

Yancy pointed at his shirt. “You see any blood? I'm doing just fine.”

Burton turned to Merry. “It's probably good that you're here.”

“Well, I'm leaving tomorrow. Andrew won't sleep with me.”

“He's not being noble. That's just an act.”

“About tonight,” Yancy said to Burton, “what do you plan to tell our excitable sheriff?”

“As little as possible. He's got a big fundraiser tomorrow at the San Carlos.”

“Put me down for a dollar.”

After Burton left, Yancy hitched the boat trailer to his car. When he handed Merry's fleece to her, she said, “Wait. We're seriously going fishing in the dark?”

“Not fishing.”

Yancy drove to the Old Wooden Bridge lodge and put the skiff in the water. He'd brought the handheld spotlight though he didn't need it; a bright half-moon hung in a clear deep sky. He steered with one hand and rested the other on the throttle. Merry's hair was flying everywhere so she pulled it into a ponytail. It occurred to Yancy that, in the time they'd known each other, he hadn't once seen her look at her cell phone. She never texted, tweeted, Facebooked, Instagrammed, or posted a single picture when they were together. He found this behavior alluring.

The breeze was light but cool, the tide rising. No other boat was in sight. After a short ride he staked the skiff in the shallows at Porpoise Key, a place he'd never taken Rosa. A honey glaze from the sodium lights of Miami rimmed the northern horizon.

Merry said the sky was amazing. “Where are we, Andrew?”

“Church. That's how it feels to me.”

“Then we need music.” Finally she appraised her phone, scrolling through the playlists. “I vote for Charlie Parker.”

“You're unbelievable,” Yancy said. “Come sit here.”

“What, you don't like Bird?”

“Bird's the best. Come here, please.”

Merry settled beside him on the poling platform. Due east a stream of cars and trucks flickered on the long bridge at Bahia Honda. When Yancy was buzzed, the headlights looked like regimental fireflies, but tonight he was dead sober, adrenalized from his run-in with the bouncers.

“You miss Rosa. That's allowed,” Merry said.

“Yet here I am alone with you.”

“Hey, I've been missed by guys, too. Trust me—I've broken the hardest of hearts, dudes way tougher and hotter than you. Though I will say this: You're a good kisser even when you're not cooperating.”

“Tell me why you got that tattoo.”

“The ‘A.Y.' is what's got you worried, I bet. Well, guess what. It doesn't really stand for Andrew Yancy. It stands for ‘All Yours.' For when I meet the right man.”

She stood up to take off the fleece. Next to vanish was her blouse and then the cutoffs. Yancy found himself eye-to-eye with the perky bumblebee.

“Hello cutie,” he said.

She turned and lowered gently onto his lap until their faces were inches apart, and she slipped both arms around him. “How's the boo-boo on your tummy?”

“Cured. This is better than a trip to Lourdes.”

“Wait, I don't want to poke you.” She unfastened some sort of ring from one of her nipples and flicked it overboard.

Yancy said, “This is the first time those pelicans ever heard a jazz saxophone.” He recognized the tune as “Dexterity,” manic and carefree.

“What pelicans, Andrew?”

“They're roosting up in the mangroves. I can show you with the spotlight.”

“No, let 'em sleep. Tell me what's on your mind.”

“Nothing. Except I haven't heard a word from her in four days.”

“I know,” said Merry. “I go through your phone at night while you're in the shower.”

Yancy was annoyed at himself for not being more annoyed. He realized he was about to do the very thing that Merry had been predicting since the day she'd turned up at his house. It was tempting to blame Charlie Parker and the starry moment, but Yancy couldn't cut himself any slack. The romantic boat ride had been his idea, not Merry's. Nor could he pretend to be shocked that she'd wiggled out of her clothes. In his love life Yancy specialized in devising scenarios that could lead only to unwise decisions.

It was hard to picture an even-keeled relationship with a person who took her last name from a dead movie star and crashed automobiles half-naked for a living. Yancy himself was no paragon of dependability, as he was keenly aware. Ninety-six hours of radio silence from a faraway girlfriend wasn't a green light to stray, yet his hands felt perfectly at home cupping another woman's bare ass. He couldn't rule out the possibility that he was a hopelessly shallow horndog.

Merry said, “I predict Rosa calls tomorrow. She's probably just skiing—the cell service is suck-y in the mountains.”

“You've been to Norway, have you?”

“Sugarbush. Same difference.” She shifted in a significant way on his lap.

“That feels nice,” he said.

“No, a puppy licking your toes feels ‘nice.' What you're experiencing, mister, is transcendental contact.”

A goner, he kissed her on the mouth. “Now you can say you told me so.”

Merry laughed softly. “Men. I swear.”

“You want me to stop?”

“What do
you
want to do, Andrew?”

“Rock the boat.”

“Then hang on,” she said.

T
he sex lasted a long time.

Forty-three minutes, according to Deb's Fitbit. Forty-three minutes and 167 calories.

Afterward she hit the nail salon, Starbucks and Whole Foods. When she returned home, she was surprised to see Brock Richardson's newest Carerra still parked in the driveway. He was supposed to be at the office taping a new Pitrolux litigation commercial.

Deb carried the grocery bags into the kitchen, where she found him wearing a long-sleeved shirt, cross-striped necktie and no pants. With clenched buttocks he stood in front of a blood-pressure monitor, the portable type sold at drugstores. He had placed his cock inside the compression cuff, which was emitting a deep hum.

“Wow,” said Deb, “this is new.”

“Something's wrong down there. It's still hard as a rock and I can't make it go away.”

“So, you aren't actually boning the…”

“God, no! I just want to make sure I'm not having a damn heart attack.” He showed her the flashing numerals on the machine. “One-thirty over eighty. That means everything's okay.”

“Listen to me, Brock. If you're taking your blood pressure with your wiener, you are the opposite of okay.”

He unfastened the Velcro strap and carefully withdrew from the inflated sleeve. Deb put him under a cold shower for ten minutes, yet his erection failed to flag. Next she made him dunk his junk in a bucket of ice cubes, with the same result.

She said, “For God's sake, how much of that crap did you use?”

“Same as always.” Richardson's teeth were chattering.

“Tell the truth.”

“It's all for you, babe. I did it for you.”

Deb refilled her e-cig with nicotine syrup and took a drag. After the humiliating accident she'd switched to a brand of vaporizer that was advertised as fireproof. Meanwhile Richardson had contacted a lawyer pal and gotten her name added to a brewing class-action against the manufacturer of the first device. As a gesture of devotion he'd offered to waive his usual percentage of the settlement.

“You're not going to the office with a stiffy,” Deb said. She suspected he was cheating on her with one and probably both of his brunette assistants.

“I'll wear bicycle shorts under my pants. Maybe it'll all fit.”

“Don't be gross.” She grabbed a bath towel and tossed it across his groin, where it waggled like a crippled kite. She proposed a trip to the emergency room.

“Has it been four hours?” Richardson checked his watch. “Four hours is when they say to panic.”

“Then we'll wait here together.” Deb opened a book and vaped on her plastic ciggie. If not for her own clandestine escapades—the kayak instructor, the Tantric landscaper, her stepsister's podiatrist, and so on—she would have pressed more aggressively the issue of her fiancé's infidelity.

“Swear to Christ, I'm gonna quit cold turkey,” Richardson vowed, referring to the Pitrolux. “This is getting freaky.”

Getting?
Deb thought.

She had mixed feelings about the potent gel. It was indisputably harmful, as evidenced by the weird baby schlongs sprouting in her lover's armpits. On the positive side, his performance in bed had become so stellar that it served to counterbalance the repellent facets of his personality. She could envision a medium-length marriage—say five to seven years—based solely on the attractions of sex and money. She feared the future might not be so tolerable if Brock kicked the Pitrolux habit. He had spoiled her.

“You want to do it again?” she asked. “Just for fifteen, twenty minutes?”

“I'm in. Never waste good wood!”

At that moment his phone rang. He answered it and soon started pacing, still comically engorged. By the time the conversation ended he was storming through the kitchen shouting, “Shitheads! I'm dealing with useless, worthless, brainless shitheads!”

Deb closed her book and waited.

“Those two clowns I sent down to Big Pine,” Richardson said, “the whole thing went to hell.”

“What happened now?”

“What happened is they fucked up and got thrown in jail, but that's not the worst part,” he railed. “Your engagement ring? That asshole Yancy had it all along. The mob guys took it from him, the guys Trebeaux sent. Martin told me they didn't find it, but Rick says that's not true.”

“Rick is…?”

“One of
my
guys.”

“Who's now locked up? Classic,” Deb said.

“Point is, those Mafia goons grabbed the ring at Yancy's house and kept it.”

“Speaking of the house—he's going to sell to us, right? They smacked some sense into him?”

“Are you even listening? Those goddamn guineas stole my two-hundred-thousand-dollar diamond!”

“You mean
my
diamond,” said Deb.

News of the six-figure ripoff had done what frosty testicles couldn't do—deflated Brock's boner. He stuffed himself into a pair of boxer shorts saying, “Don't worry, I'm gonna get that fucking rock back.”

“We're talking about the same Mafia, right? The one that kills people and hangs them on meat hooks.”

Brock put on some slacks, tucked in his shirt and fixed his tie. “Trust me, baby, I know how to deal with these mopes. I can totally get down and talk their language.”

“Okay then,” she said, thinking:
I'm engaged to a dead man.

In an interview with a Brooklyn newspaper, the widow of Abdul-Halim Shamoon said the authorities in Key West weren't trying hard enough to find the tattooed white man who had fatally assaulted her husband on the Conch Train. Mrs. Shamoon implied that institutional prejudice against Muslims was to blame for the lack of urgency. The article was reprinted in the Key West
Citizen
and brought to the attention of Sheriff Sonny Summers, who regarded any controversy as a threat to his re-election. Nobody on his staff seemed to know how many Muslims were registered to vote in Monroe County, but Sonny Summers didn't wish to alienate a single one. Regardless of his or her religious leanings, any deceased tourist was bad for tourism, and anything that was bad for tourism was also bad for incumbents.

The sheriff summoned Rogelio Burton, his top detective, for an update on the Shamoon investigation. Burton reported that the main suspect, Benjamin “Blister” Krill, was still at large and possibly traveling with Buck Nance, the wayward television star. The men were said to have left the island on a private jet the night before, a report that turned out to be false. The aircraft in question had carried only one passenger, Mr. Credence Windsor of Los Angeles.

“So Krill's still in town? Then get busy and catch the bastard,” Sonny Summers said. “We'll push the Conch Train thing as a hate crime. You deal with the media.”

Burton wasn't optimistic. “It's not a slam-dunk case. The eyewitness accounts from the scene are inconsistent, to put it kindly. Not one of 'em could positively ID Benny Krill from his last mug shot. The only thing they agreed on is the tattoo across his back.”

“Hell, that's almost as good as a fingerprint.”

“We checked the social media—Facebook, Instagram, Twitter. There are at least thirteen other white males in the country with Captain Cock tats.”

The sheriff said, “You're shitting me.”

“It's a very popular TV show.”

“So we'll have to prove all thirteen of these numbnuts weren't in Key West on the afternoon Mr. Shabeeb was killed.”

“His name's Shamoon,” Burton said. “But, you're right, we'd have to nail down thirteen different alibis. Major project.”

“And flying them all in for the trial—that'll cost a damn fortune,” Sonny Summers muttered, “even if we put them at the Best Western.” He picked up a sterling silver letter opener that had been given to him for no reason by the governor. Idly he tested the sharpness of the point on his thumb. “Rog, did you talk to Dickinson? What's his mindset?”

“We might get Krill on a manslaughter,” said Burton, “if we're lucky.”

State Attorney Billy Dickinson shared the sheriff's allergy to negative headlines. Losing a high-profile homicide trial wasn't on Dickinson's bucket list.

“He says the Captain Cock tat might be enough to convict,” Burton said, “unless Krill gets a halfway competent lawyer. Billy's afraid the other train passengers will get shredded on cross-exam. Tourists, as you know, make terrible witnesses.”

Sonny Summers tapped the silver letter opener on a corner of his desk to see if it sounded like a tuning fork. It didn't.

“Rog, someone should speak to the dead man's family. Make sure they know we're busting our balls to catch this guy. Or whatever the Islamic word for balls is.”

“I'll make the call, no problem. They're American, by the way.”

“Meanwhile explain to me why Buck Nance, a TV star, would be hanging out with a third-rate scumsucker like Benny the Blister. Where did you hear that, anyway? I thought Nance was gone from the Keys, rehabbing at a desert spa somewhere. That's what he told me when he called.”

Burton said, “An informant says otherwise.”

“Well, fuckeroo.”

“One other update. It's about your favorite restaurant inspector.”

The sheriff seemed to slump. “This campaign party at the San Carlos tonight—all these folks are bringin' their checkbooks and I need to charm the shit out of 'em, meaning I need to be at my personal best. Keep that in mind before you say another word.”

Burton assured him that the new Yancy situation was manageable. “A couple meatheads broke into his house. He put 'em in the hospital. The arrest report will call it a home-invasion robbery. Both suspects are in the medical wing at Stock Island.”

“Did Yancy do anything, you know,
weird
to them?” Sonny Summers asked. “If he did, the media will go apeshit.”

“No vacuum attachments this time. He clocked the intruders with a real-estate sign.”

“That makes it less of a story, right? Maybe no story.”

“Simple self-defense. Probably won't even make the papers.”

The sheriff sighed pensively. “Why would robbers target Yancy of all people? You're his friend, but you get what I mean. What has he got worth stealing? Hell, never mind. Can you please not tell me any more about this?”

“My pleasure,” said Burton.

“Be honest—what do you think of this suit for the party tonight? A hundred sixty-five bucks at Men's Wearhouse.”

“They say seersucker's making a comeback.”

“Don't bullshit me, Rog. I look like fucking Matlock,” the sheriff said. “You'll call the Muslims?”

“Right away.”

“Make sure they know this case is my
numero uno
priority, same as if poor Abdul was a Christian or a Buddhist. Tell 'em Key West is a place that loves everyone equal, and we want everyone to love Key West.”

Burton said, “Have fun at your fundraiser.”

“There's an open bar, thank God.”

Jon David Ampergrodt looked across his desk at the stylish though drained figure of Cree Windsor and said, “Summation?”

“It's a shit show, Amp.”

“Tell me something I don't know.”

“No, I mean literally a shit show. The man wiped himself with the deal papers.”

Amp leaned back studying his fingernails for nicks.
Bayou Brethren
was still doing spectacularly well without Buck Nance, the younger brothers having bloomed into fully realized redneck caricatures. Miracle's illicit affair with Junior had added a magic spark of toxicity. During the most recent taping, Buddy had thrown a Dewar's bottle at Junior while Clee Roy had stolen Junior's iPhone to leer at a picture of Miracle's bare ass that Junior had snapped in the outdoor shower. Meanwhile the Nance wives were in a frothing riot of jealousy and spite. It was magnificent television.

“We don't need another damn brother in the cast,” Amp said.

Cree Windsor agreed. “This whole thing was Lane's idea?”

“But we also don't need Buck Nance in the same time slot on another network, being represented by another agency.” Amp was thinking out loud.

“You're the only one this psycho ‘Spiro' wants to talk with,” Cree Windsor said.

“That's what Lane told me. Who, by the way, has not distinguished himself.”

“Rule Number One: Never lose control of your client.”

Amp looked up from his nails and nodded. “Or a shit show is what you get.”

“Spiro's a bad dude, and not in a good way. He's scary crazy.”

“You mean crazy scary.”

“Right,” said Cree Windsor. “You're seriously going down to Florida to meet him?”

Amp said it was the only way to get control of the situation. “Lane's working out the details.”

“Bring some security. The biggest dude we got.”

“Way ahead of you,” said Amp.

“Oh, and don't forget—your aunt just died. That's why you sent me down there the first time.”

“Right, right. What was her name? Did we even decide on one?”

“I don't know—Carol?” Cree Windsor said with a shrug.

“That works. Dear old Aunt Carol.”

Judging from Cree Windsor's description, the man who called himself Spiro Nance would be terrible on the show—dull-witted, mean and uncoachable. Amp's idea was to keep him around for a couple of episodes, expose him as a fraud and then fire him for breach of contract. The script would call for Buck to be shattered by the revelation that Spiro wasn't actually his long-lost twin; there would be tears and humiliation at the weekly barbecue, but the hardy patriarch would rally and move forward.

The network had reluctantly agreed to double Buck's salary, as Lane Coolman had demanded, but Amp foresaw a walkout by the other Nances if they didn't receive comparable pay hikes. In theory that could be a windfall for Platinum Artists, which represented all the family members individually. However, Amp expected the network to dig in its heels if the entire cast staged a mutiny over money. Television executives loved reality programming only because it was cheaper to produce than sitcoms and cop shows. If the
Brethren
payroll jumped too high, the network would simply let the Nances' contracts lapse and replace the whole greedy clan with a fresh collection of goobers.