Razor Girl (3 page)

But Rosa was a city girl.

“I miss your legs,” Yancy said.

“Are you behaving?”

“Some moron dumped like a kilo of dirty hair in the kitchen at Clippy's.”

“Thanks for the visual,” Rosa said.

“He used the steel bowl as a mirror while he gave himself a trim. Hey, you need some herb scissors?”

“Night, Andrew.”

He fell asleep while writing his report. He dreamed of tarpon rolling in Pearl Basin until he was awakened by a knock. It was a harsh intrusion, so soon after sunrise. He stalked cursing to the front door and flung it open.

The woman who'd lost her diamond engagement ring was standing there. Her eyes crawled up and down Yancy, who was nude except for his reading glasses.

“I'll take that cup of coffee now,” she said.

It was assumed by locals that Buck Nance had made his way to the airport, hopped a chartered jet and fled the island. Everybody figured that, like all celebrities, he employed savvy handlers to whisk him away whenever a crisis occurred.

The incident at the Parched Pirate didn't make the morning print edition of the Key West
Citizen,
but a headline was bannered on the newspaper's website along with two videos of Buck's brief performance, provided by disgruntled bikers with iPhones. Soon the whole Internet was crackling. What Buck had considered harmless saloon jokes were now being denounced as racial and homophobic slurs. The network vice president in charge of
Bayou Brethren
told the vice president in charge of corporate relations to release a statement expressing dismay at Buck's crude remarks. An overcooked apology was made to gays, African Americans, women and anyone else who might have been offended.

Meanwhile, the show's prime-time advertisers were under attack in the blogosphere, and by midday the ACLU had called for a boycott of all fishing flies tied with rooster feathers from the Nance farm. Word of the backlash sent the network vice president in charge of
Bayou Brethren
lunging for a pre-lunch Xanax. He couldn't fathom why neither Buck nor his manager, Lane Coolman, would answer their cell phones.

The whereabouts of the other Nance brothers—Clee Roy, Buddy and Junior—had been ascertained. They were chilling at the forty-acre Pensacola estate leased by the network and used as an outdoor set for the fractious family barbecue scenes that closed each episode. Down the road a stretch was the rooster farm, which the clan avoided except during taping days because of the stench. The writers had decided that Buck Nance's brothers should refer to him as “Captain Cock” when quarreling on the show, and inevitably the sleeveless tee-shirt bearing that nickname became the top seller of all
Bayou Brethren
merchandise.

Buck had been wearing one onstage at the Parched Pirate, but now the shirt was in a dumpster on Whitehead Street and the remains of his famous beard were in a bowl of ricey gunk at some restaurant he'd ducked into while fleeing the imaginary lynch mob. The puny kitchen scissors had left him with nappy bristles exposing a weak jawline that he hadn't seen in years. His bare face looked pasty and shrunken, and in no way resembled the imposing Moses-like visage on his TV show.

Which was good, in a way. Buck Nance feared that if he were recognized on the streets of Key West, he would be set upon and sodomized by militant homos, Negroes and other socialist-leaning minorities, a rioting of godless heathens.

His survival plan was to blend with the common civilians until he could be safely extricated by Lane. The night was spent in a banyan tree listening to stray cats scrap and screw. Buck didn't sleep a wink. At dawn he climbed down shivering and walked to Mallory Square, where he dozed off on a public bench. Soon he was jarred awake by the horn of an arriving cruise ship. The sun felt warm on his shoulders, promising a better day.

Having lost his phone in the fray at the Parched Pirate, Buck entered a shop on Duval Street to purchase a disposable. There he learned that, despite the island's laid-back reputation, shirtless men with fresh scrapes and bruises aren't welcome in all establishments. He also discovered that his engraved sterling money clip had apparently fallen from his trousers when he scrambled up the banyan tree, meaning he had no cash or even credit cards, which he always tucked between the hundred-dollar bills.

Somewhere on Simonton he shoplifted a random tee-shirt that bore a nonsense caption:
WHERE IS BUM FARTO
? He darted into a bougainvillea-fringed courtyard to put on the shirt, and out of habit he tore off the sleeves. An artist sitting languidly before an easel offered Buck fifty bucks to pose nude, and Buck's response was to punch a fist through the blank canvas and stomp off. The artist considered calling the police but decided on a nap instead.

Florida's beaches erode pitilessly, the unstoppable rise of sea level presenting a nightmare scenario for waterfront hotels, coastal developers and real-estate agents. Once upon a time you could get away with selling submerged land to faraway rubes, but those days were over. Now buyers wanted to visit the property first, and not by paddleboard. Likewise, high-end vacationers to the Sunshine State derived no tropical enchantment from the sight of waves crashing through their hotel's lobby.

Climate change created a boom for a hurricane-spawned industry known as “beach renourishment,” a process by which thousands of tons of sand are dredged from the sea shallows and dumped onshore to replace the acreage washed away by nature. The enterprise is as costly as it is futile, though for a few glorious months the shoreline appears authentic if not pristine. This fluffing of public beaches is funded by helpless taxpayers, while privately held oceanfront is often augmented at the expense of the property owners. Either way, beach-renourishment deals are fabulously profitable for the contractors because the job never expires—every grain of sand you dump gets washed away.

Martin Trebeaux had purchased a fleet of marine barges using the proceeds from a poshly falsified BP oil-spill claim. He named the new dredge company Sedimental Journeys, and before long he'd locked up the replenishment rights for eroding beachfront in five Florida counties, ninety-seven miles in all. Flagrantly generous to local politicians at election time, Trebeaux was repaid by the hundredfold when the bids fell his way.

As a cutter of corners he soon got in trouble for dredging too near the shore. The bulky equipment and piping were unsightly, and the pumping method churned the surf to a murky hue that offended tourists, who came to Florida expecting the Atlantic Ocean to be somewhat blue. Trebeaux's heedless bottom-sucking technique also killed catfish, littering the newly buffed beach with bloated whiskered corpses that deterred all but the hardiest of sunbathers.

Over time, companies such as Sedimental Journeys vacuumed so much sand from Florida's coastal seabeds that Trebeaux and his competitors were forced to search elsewhere for product. The Bahamas seemed the obvious choice because the sand there was of superb quality, and the barge trip across the Gulf Stream was short.

Trebeaux rented a plane and scouted digging locations along the Bahama Banks, less than eighty nautical miles from fast-sinking Palm Beach. A lawyer in Freeport obtained the necessary permits in exchange for a modest commission based on the tonnage shipped.

Everybody involved was rolling in dough until the commonwealth abruptly terminated its arrangement with Sedimental Journeys. An international enviro group had produced a scientific study showing that the sand collection operation had silted the reefs, suffocating the coral and dispersing the tropical marine life that tourists paid so dearly to see. Disheartening underwater footage was provided to all major media outlets, including the BBC. The Bahamian government, which is sensitive to negative publicity in the same way kittens are sensitive to firecrackers, immediately shut down Trebeaux's dredging rigs.

With orders backing up, he turned to a Miami rock-mining proprietor who assured him that a credible approximation of telegenic beach sand was abundant in a borrow pit being excavated on the eastern edge of the Everglades. This claim turned out to be spurious. The texture of the load delivered to Trebeaux more closely resembled shrapnel than sugar granules. He spread it anyway.

Among his disgruntled clients were the municipality of Boynton Beach and the Royal Pyrenees Hotel and Resort, whose guests in unmanageable numbers were complaining of lacerated feet and—among small children making sand castles—shredded fingers. Martin Trebeaux could safely ignore the half-assed threat of litigation from the city's attorney, but he was foolhardy to brush off the outcry from the proprietors of the Royal Pyrenees.

The hotel had been built with union pension funds controlled by the Calzone crime family, which continued to manage the property and take an avid interest in the cash flow. Viral videos of bloodied tourists with their wailing toddlers were bad for business, and the Calzone organization believed that Martin Trebeaux was obligated to replace the defective beach behind the Royal Pyrenees immediately. This view hardened after a geologist hired by the hotel reported that the newly deposited sand was actually a slapdash mixture of crushed limestone, recycled asphalt fragments and broken glass. The whitish gleam of the grit was attributed to industrial bleaching.

While the mobsters appreciated a novel fraud when they saw one, they did not enjoy being its victims. A
capo
named Dominick “Big Noogie” Aeola left a message on Martin Trebeaux's phone instructing him to appear at the Royal Pyrenees on a certain morning at ten sharp. Trebeaux, who was partying on South Beach with a decertified yoga instructor, listened to the voicemail but opted not to call back. Instead he sent a text saying he had to leave town on a family emergency.

Big Noogie was doubtful, and an experienced stakeout man was dispatched to Trebeaux's condominium building on Collins Avenue. Once Trebeaux's lie was verified, a plan was devised to snatch his ass and reorder his priorities. For a sawbuck the doorman at the high-rise offered up the information that Trebeaux would be departing the next day for Key West in a rented silver Buick, due to the fact that his Lexus coupe was in the shop.

From a safe phone Big Noogie placed a call to a person known as Zeto, who agreed to arrange a bump-and-grab on the Overseas Highway. Zeto bragged that he used a chick driver who was the best in the business.

Yet somehow the job got screwed up, and the sand man remained at large. Big Noogie was irate. The county had roped off the beach behind the Royal Pyrenees as a public health menace, and droves of limping guests were checking out of the hotel. The bosses in New York demanded an explanation.

Meanwhile, Martin Trebeaux was lapping a Bloody Mary on the deck at Louie's Backyard in Key West, pondering his next move. From across the straits beckoned Havana, or rather a romanticized vision of Havana, for Trebeaux had never been there. He'd heard the music scene was sensational, the women heart-stoppingly beautiful. It was said that Cuba's beaches put all others in the Caribbean to shame, and Trebeaux didn't doubt that.

Perhaps the Castro brothers would sell him some of their sand.

T
he bride-to-be said her name was Deb. She wore pressed white slacks, designer sandals and a swipe of liver-colored lipstick that matched her toenails. She said she preferred her coffee with almond milk, which Yancy didn't stock, so she settled for cream. This was after he'd put on some clothes.

“You're definitely not a cop,” she said, eyeing a half-smoked joint on the kitchen counter.

“It's medicinal.”

“For what—sunburn?”

“Okay, it's evidence,” he said. “I was field-testing for purity.”

Deb pointed at the Remington twelve-gauge in the corner. “What do you need
that
for? Is it loaded?”

“Of course. You know what they call an
un
loaded shotgun?”

“What?”

“A stick,” he said.

“Are you the lunatic that killed the drone?”

“Was that yours?”

“Our realtor's,” Deb said. “He was making a video of the property and somebody shot his little toy out of the sky. Two grand, boom.”

“I've still got the pieces somewhere.”

The real-estate agent's drone had hovered too closely one afternoon while Rosa was sunbathing topless behind the house. With a single blast Yancy had demolished the craft and its tiny camera. It was way more fun than shooting clay pigeons. Afterward the realtor had hysterically called the sheriff's office, which determined Yancy had broken no laws.

“The point is you don't want me for a neighbor,” he said to Deb. “I'm a volatile individual.”

She set down the coffee cup. “Will you help me find my engagement ring, or not? My fiancé doesn't know I lost it, and I don't want him to find out.”

As she spoke she dragged theatrically on an electronic cigarette tipped with a neon-blue light. Yancy was aching to tell her how preposterous she looked.

He said, “So who's the lucky fellow? What's his story?”

“His name is Brock. We've been together almost a year. He's an attorney—product liability, pharmaceuticals mainly.”

“Where?”

“Miami.”

“Home sweet home,” Yancy said.

“He was engaged to someone else when we met.”

“Which explains why the rock fell off your finger.”

“Yeah, she was a chunk-muffin,” Deb said. “I was supposed to get the ring re-sized, but I've been too busy with the new-house stuff. Brock'll go ballistic if he finds out what happened. He told me the stone cost two hundred thousand—just the stone. I've looked all over the property and I can't find the damn thing anywhere. So,
officer,
can you please help me?”

Yancy said, “I offered last night and was coldly snubbed.”

“Well, yeah, you scared the hell out of me.”

“And what's changed? I answer the door naked and talk of firearms.”

“We can reach an arrangement you'll be comfortable with, definitely.”

“Like what?”

“Like the greatest blowjob you ever had,” she said, the e-cig bobbing at the corner of her smile. “Seriously, you'll be cross-eyed for a month.”

Yancy realized he'd fallen short of his objective, which was to exude menace, not sleaze.

“Don't take this personally,” he said to Deb, “but I've reached a spiritual plateau where random sex needs to mean something.”

“Are you some kind of freak?”

“Save your talents for Brett, I'll help you for free. But first tell me about the mansion you two are planning to build.”

“His name's
Brock,
” Deb snipped, exhaling whitish vapor. “Six thousand square feet under air. Two and a half floors, plus a Thai roof garden.”

Foreseeing the loss of his uncluttered sunset view, Yancy fought an upwelling of anger. “Are you guys planning to live there full-time? Is he moving his practice to the Keys?”

“I'll be here. He'll come down weekends.” Deb shrugged. “Summers we'll travel.”

And this, Yancy thought, is how cruel stereotypes come to be.

For concealment he'd immersed her diamond ring in a bowl of fish dip. It was smoked king mackerel, Yancy being addicted to the stuff.

“Follow me,” he said, and headed for the kitchen.

The bride-to-be was standing at his side as he opened the refrigerator door. Before he could reach for the mackerel dip, she grabbed his arm and said, “What is
that
?”

“Oh. Human hair.” He held up one of the clear baggies.

“But…why?” Deb asked, backing up.

“Don't you worry, it's not mine.”

“I mean, Jesus, where did…I mean, who…?”

“Donor unknown,” Yancy said.

Out she ran, leaving the front door ajar. Her mode of departure was a loud red Porsche.

Yancy sat on the front stoop thinking he might as well hang on to the diamond for a while. He opened his laptop to check the tides. The sky was bright, the breeze was getting warmer. He felt like going fishing.

Merry Mansfield held the phone to Lane Coolman's ear, because his hands were bound.

“Amp, it's me,” he said.

“Where the fuck are you?”

Jon David Ampergrodt liked to be called Amp. He was the chairman-slash-director of Platinum Artists Management, the talent agency that employed Lane Coolman.

“Dude, I've been kidnapped!”

“Oh, that's original.”

“I'm dead serious,” Coolman said. “They snatched me in Key West. Broad daylight!”

“Snatched, as in
Taken
?”

“Totally.”

“Jesus Christ, what about Buck? Did they hurt him? How much money do they want?”

“They don't have Buck. Just me.”

Amp sighed irritably. “Then where the fuck is Buck?”

“They're asking for five hundred grand cash,” said Coolman. “All fifties and twenties.”

“This is a joke, right? You're pranking my ass.”

“Amp, they're gonna kill me deader than the last Nic Cage movie they don't get paid by sunset tomorrow. Understand? Five hundred grand in a gray Balenciaga—hang on a sec…”

“The new ostrich one,” Merry clarified.

“You heard that, right? The ostrich Balenciaga,” Coolman relayed to Amp. “They said to leave it on the third to the last car of the five p.m. Conch Train. Some corny tourist trolley—”

“Lane!”

“What?”

“One more time: Where the fuck is Buck Nance?”

“I don't have a clue. I've been tied up, literally.”

“You weren't with him?”

“No, I got taken hostage,” Coolman said. “I thought I mentioned that.”

“FYI, the gig was a motherfucking disaster. Buck got chased out of the bar,” Amp said. “It's all over social media.”

“Well, I can't go searching for him right this minute because, see, there's a loaded gun aimed at my head.”

“That's just great.”

“Can you get working on the ransom, ASAP?”

“We'll talk later.”

Amp clicked off. Coolman stared at the phone.

“Doesn't sound too promising,” Merry said.

Zeto shrugged. “He's a douche, just like Marky Mark said. Nobody gives a shit if he gets whacked. Let's go to the boat.”

The Tesla had no trunk, so Coolman was permitted to ride in the backseat. This slender bit of good fortune allowed him to press his case for mercy. Zeto remained cold to his pleas, but Merry seemed open to the idea of giving Coolman more time to raise some funds.

“Say nobody comes through. How much you got in the bank?” she said.

“It's all frozen. I'm in the middle of a divorce.”

“Because you cheated on her, right?”

He said, “Listen, the agency will definitely pay the five hundred. I mean guaranteed. Amp's got a lot on his plate right now but, once he focuses, it's a done deal.”

Zeto, over his shoulder: “No, asswipe,
you
are the done deal.”

At the dock they hustled Coolman aboard an old lobster boat. Zeto ordered Merry to go back and wait in the Tesla while he took Coolman out to sea. Merry said she wanted to ride along, and lingered in the wheelhouse until Zeto ran her off.

What saved Coolman from ending up as shark bait was a damaged wire that made it impossible to start the boat's engine. Zeto failed to diagnose the problem, and in any case possessed minimal skills with a toolbox. After half an hour he gave up in a funk that had been aggravated by Merry, repeatedly winking the high-beams of the Tesla to pester him.

Zeto shoved Coolman into the forward cabin of the boat, taped his mouth, re-cinched the ropes and left him there. The cramped space reeked of sweat, black mold and decomposed shellfish, though Coolman wouldn't have slept a wink on rose-scented linens at a Four Seasons. He remained shaken by his phone conversation with Amp, who either hadn't grasped the gravity of Coolman's situation or had decided he was dispensable.

That the agency's most promising curator of talent had been kidnapped by murderous lowlifes should have upset Amp more than the fact that some redneck chicken-plucker had disappeared on a bender. For the moment Buck Nance was a mega-client—but Lane Coolman was the shining future of Platinum Artists. Amp himself had said so many times.

As he lay in the rank darkness contemplating the prospect of a watery death, Coolman found his thoughts inchworming toward Rachel, his future ex-wife. The cause of their pending disunion was, as Merry Mansfield had surmised, his own uncountable infidelities. These had sparked a series of retaliatory flings by Rachel. If she'd been doing only the Comcast guy, the marriage might have been saved. However, it was her vindictive nature to arrange indiscreet sex with Lane's rival agents from CAA or ICM, and always at the Beverly Wilshire. Worse, she delighted in paying for the suite with his credit card. He recalled his outrage after one such tryst when the hotel billed him for a room-service delivery that included five cans of Reddi-wip, a single Maraschino cherry and a quad-pack of D batteries.

Rachel was the undisputed queen of the revenge fuck in a town with many contenders for the title. Another memorable hosing: Coolman had foolishly taken a late-ish Friday lunch with one of his hot girlfriends at the Ivy, where he was spotted by a junior turd fondler from William Morris Endeavor named Kane Drucker. Before Coolman had even touched his calamari app, Drucker was on the phone with Rachel. The two of them lay in a sweaty tangle by the time Coolman and his girlfriend had finished their huckleberry sorbets.

And now Rachel's attorneys were doing to Lane in divorce court what she'd done to Drucker and all the others at the Wilshire. The judge had granted Coolman a living allowance (pitiable by Hollywood standards) while Rachel's hawk-eyed forensic accountant pored through his bank records and brokerage statements. Such was the desolate state of Coolman's liquidity that, by his own calculations, he had at most $21,300 to contribute to his own ransom.

“Let me call Amp again,” he begged Merry the next morning, after she peeled off the duct tape.

“You lucked out for now, Bob. The mechanic's too stoned to fix the boat.”

She didn't tell him that she was the one who'd mangled the ignition wire, foiling Zeto's plan to kill him at sea.

“Where's your psycho partner?” Coolman asked.

“Finding me a crash car. We've got a job this morning.” Merry was wearing a denim jacket and a long cotton skirt with an imitation Seminole bead pattern. Her hair was in a saucy ponytail. To Coolman, who'd spent the night huffing lobster fumes, she smelled heavenly.

She'd brought him a banana smoothie, put the straw to his lips.

“Suck,” she commanded.

After downing the whole cup, he told Merry he had to relieve himself.

“Do you see a restroom, Bob? This is not a fucking Carnival cruise.”

“Cut me a break, okay? I've been holding it all night.”

“Make it fast.” She stood him up, unzipped his pants and aimed his cock at a random bucket left by the lobster crew. “And if you get hard,” she warned, “I'll push you overboard myself.”

Coolman was too unnerved by the grab to become aroused.

“I used to be a nurse,” said Merry.

“No, you didn't.”

“Okay, I worked in a nursing home for a summer. Same deal. I had to handle lots of dicks.”

“Welcome to my world,” Coolman said.

While waiting for his bladder to unseize, he pitched an idea.

“Tell Zeto I got out of the ropes and overpowered you,” he said to Merry. “Knocked you down, jumped off the boat and ran away. What's he gonna say? Tell him it's all his fault because his lame knots came loose.”

“Would you pee already? We've got a big day.”

“You don't want to go to prison for a murder. That would be insane.”

“Swear to God, you jiggle one drop on me, Bob—I just did my nails!”

Her watch said eight a.m. It was three hours earlier in Los Angeles, a bad time for engaging Amp.

“Is there a Bank of America down here?” Coolman asked. “I've got like twenty-one grand in a checking account, plus the two in my wallet.”

“Oh, Zeto already took that.”

“Twenty-one isn't so terrible, right? It's all yours if you take me to the bank and let me go. Screw Zeto.”

Merry flicked Coolman's penis back into his pants and dumped the bucket of piss overboard. “You're losing traction with me,” she said.

As expected, Amp didn't answer his phone. When Coolman blamed the time-zone difference, Merry just shrugged.

Zeto arrived, untied Coolman and led him to the Tesla. This time he let Merry take the wheel while he sat in the backseat pressing the gun to Coolman's ribs.

“We're going to Bob's bank,” Merry announced.

Zeto scowled. “Says who?”

“God, everything's a power play with you. Take a fucking chill pill. The man's in the middle of a soul-crushing divorce, yet he's generously offered to give us every dime he's got left.”