Skinny Dip (5 page)

“Because it’s wet and it tickles.”

“What tickles?”

“Mick, please tell me it’s the dog.”

Stranahan peeked under the table. “Strom, you’re a very bad boy,” he said, reaching for the Doberman’s collar.

“Guess he likes me,” Joey said with an acid chuckle. “But they all act that way, at first.”

Detective Karl Rolvaag belonged in the Midwest. This he knew in his heart, and he was reminded of it every day when he went to work.

Practically anywhere in the upper Midwest would have been fine; Michigan, Wisconsin, Minnesota or even the Dakotas. There the crimes were typically forthright and obvious, ignited by common greed, lust or alcohol. Florida was more complicated and extreme, and nothing could be assumed. Every scheming shitwad in America turned up here sooner or later, such were the opportunities for predation.

“I don’t care much for Mr. Perrone,” Rolvaag remarked to his captain.

“Already?”

The captain’s name was Gallo. He was fond of Rolvaag because Rolvaag made him look good by closing many difficult cases, though socially the detective wasn’t exactly a barrel of laughs.

“You think he pushed her?” Gallo asked. “Not like we could ever prove it if he did.”

Rolvaag shrugged. “I just don’t care for him is all.”

They were having coffee at a truck-stop diner on Road 84. It was nearly midnight and Rolvaag was in a hurry to go deal with the rats that might or might not be scampering loose inside his car.

“The dead wife,” Gallo said, “tell me again how much she’s worth?”

“Thirteen million, give or take. The trust officers are working up some numbers.”

“But hubby’s not in line for a penny, right? Not even life insurance?” asked Gallo.

“Not that I can find, but it’s still early in the game.”

“Be awful dumb for him to lie about something like that.”

“I agree.” Rolvaag snuck a glance at his wristwatch. It had been six hours since he’d left the pet store. He hoped the rats hadn’t nibbled a hole in the shoe box.

“What’s the next of kin say about young Chaz?” Gallo asked.

“Mrs. Perrone’s parents are deceased and her only brother lives on a sheep farm in New Zealand.”

Gallo frowned. “Christ, that’s an expensive phone call. Try to keep it short and sweet.”

“You betcha.” Rolvaag sometimes lapsed into Fargo-speak when Gallo nagged him about something stupid. The detective had moved to Fort Lauderdale from St. Paul because his wife had inexplicably yearned to experience humidity. A decade later she was back in the Twin Cities and Rolvaag was still in Florida, divorced and sweating like a hog for eleven and a half months of the year.

However, tucked in his briefcase was salvation in the form of a letter from the police chief in Edina, Minnesota, a pleasantly civilized suburb of Minneapolis. The police chief had offered Rolvaag a job working major crimes, of which there were few. Rolvaag intended to give his notice to Captain Gallo as soon as an opening in the conversation presented itself.

“And I suppose nobody on the cruise ship saw or heard a damn thing,” Gallo was saying. “Pretty girl goes over the side and everybody’s snoozin’.”

Without a trace of sarcasm Rolvaag explained that he hadn’t had time to interview all 2,048 other passengers, or the crew. “But nobody’s come forward, either,” he added.

Gallo twirled a set of car keys on the pinkie finger of his right hand. “And the Coast Guard, they’re done?”

“As of tomorrow noon, yeah. They’ll keep one chopper up until sunset, but that’s mainly for show,” Rolvaag said.

“Is hubby real upset or what?”

“He says all the right things, but it’s like he memorized a script.”

Gallo smiled crookedly. “Karl, even if she floats up somewhere—”

“Yeah, I know.”

“—unless her neck’s been wrung or he capped her in the noodle—”

“Right. We can’t prove a thing.”

“He got a babe stashed somewhere?”

“I’m checking on that.”

“But let’s say he does—”

“I know. It doesn’t automatically mean he killed the wife.” Rolvaag was aware that Gallo, having several girlfriends himself, could be somewhat defensive on the subject of adulterers.

“But you don’t believe Perrone, I can tell,” Gallo said.

“I don’t believe we’re getting the whole story about his marriage, no.”

Gallo laughed. “Karl, you ain’t never gonna get that. Not from any husband, including yours truly.”

“But your wife isn’t missing at sea.”

“This one’s buggin’ you, isn’t it? I know ‘cause you got that Norwegian prince-of-gloom look on your face.”

Rolvaag forced a smile. “It’s just another case,” he said, which was not really how he felt about it.

“You still got all those giant snakes?” the captain asked.

“Just the two, yeah. They’re only seven-footers.”

“And you still feed ‘em those fucking rats?”

“They won’t eat stir-fry, unfortunately.”

“I can’t believe the condo commandos haven’t evicted you yet.”

“They keep trying,” Rolvaag said.

Most of his neighbors in the building owned small dogs and were terrified at the possibility of Rolvaag’s pythons escaping. His legal costs already had surpassed six thousand dollars.

“Christ, Karl, they’re fucking reptiles. Why don’t you just get rid of the damn things?”

“I like them.”

“More important, do they like you?”

“We get along fine. In return for food and shelter, they give me unconditional indifference.”

Gallo said he knew a topless dancer in Oakland Park who would be thrilled to have the snakes for her stage act. “She’d give ‘em a good home, too. The kind we all dream about.”

“Thanks anyway.” Rolvaag stood up. “I’d better get going before those damn rodents hot-wire my car.”

“You’re one bent penny,” Gallo said, not unkindly. “Let’s wrap up Mrs. Perrone by Friday, okay?”

“Friday?”

“Hey, they can’t all be winners, Karl. Some cases, there’s only so much you can do.”

Especially in six days, Rolvaag thought irritably. He said, “One thing her husband told me, she was a star swimmer back in college.”

“Yeah, well, I seriously doubt she practiced diving off ocean liners or swimming with sharks. Give it till Friday, Karl. You can keep the file open, but let’s slide it to the bottom of the pile.”

“You betcha.”

Later, driving home with the box of rats, Rolvaag remembered the letter in his briefcase. He was miffed at himself for not mentioning it to Gallo, so that the captain could begin processing the paperwork for Rolvaag’s resignation.

First thing Monday, the detective vowed. He was looking forward to getting out of this steaming sump and moving back to Minnesota. He truly was.

Five

Charles Regis Perrone was a biologist by default.

Medical school had been his first goal—specifically, a leisurely career in radiology. The promise of wealth had attracted him to health care, but as a devoted hypochondriac he was repelled by the idea of interacting with actual sick people. Perusing X rays in the relatively hygienic seclusion of a laboratory had seemed an appealing option, one that would leave plenty of time for recreation.

Chaz’s master plan was derailed by his own lubricious appetites. During those pre-med years he spent more time in condoms than he did in the stacks, and consequently meandered through the University of Florida with a less than dazzling 2.1 GPA. Not many medical schools avidly pursue C students, but Chaz wasn’t crushed. He’d already decided that being a doctor would cut too onerously into his social schedule, and that he would devise another way to get rich.

In the meantime he sailed forth into the world armed with his Ken-doll good looks, his priapic affability and a bachelor’s degree in a subject he loathed—biology. Three months after graduation he reluctantly moved back home with his mother, whose new husband, an addled ex-RAF pilot named Roger, delighted in tormenting Chaz with odd pranks. Whenever he snuck into a bathroom to whack off, which was several times a day, Roger would turn up the Irish Rovers full blast, rap on the doorjamb and chant, “Bad monkey! Bad monkey!” in an eerie falsetto.

Chaz suffered under his mother’s roof, but without a job there seemed no escape. Only one prospective employer had displayed a glint of interest in his college credentials—the Bay County Humane Society, which was looking for just the right person to hose down the kennels twice a day.

It dawned on Chaz that he was doomed to minimum-wage hell unless he obtained a master’s degree, so he purchased one from a popular diploma mill in Colorado. The eight-week mail-order course guaranteed graduation (with honors) for a fee of $999, which Chaz remorselessly conned from his mother. Any topic vaguely related to biology was acceptable for a thesis paper, double-spacing being the only academic requirement. Chaz’s opus, researched one afternoon in the produce section of the local supermarket, was titled “A Comparative Analysis of Late-Season Oranges, Ruby Grapefruits and Tangelos.”

Ten days after mailing off the finished manuscript—a cashier’s check clipped to the cover page, as required—he received a certified letter stating that the school had been shut down, stripped of its accreditation and evicted from the strip mall where its “campus” had been headquartered.

Grudgingly, Chaz accepted the fact that he might have to physically attend classes in order to secure an advanced degree. His mother, having stumbled upon the more unsavory elements of his porn collection, expedited his departure by imposing on a cousin who taught at the University of Miami’s Rosenstiel School of Marine and Atmospheric Science. Although Chaz’s GRE scores were nearly as forgettable as his grades, the politesse of nepotism prevailed and he was admitted to the master’s program.

It was a buoyant and eager postgraduate who arrived at the Rosenstiel campus on Virginia Key, for he had grandly envisioned himself sailing the lazy tropics on a schooner, tracking pods of playful bottle-nosed dolphins. In this fantasy, Chaz held binoculars in one hand and a frosty margarita in the other.

Had he bothered to scan the curriculum in advance, he would not have been so poleaxed by the tedious reality of field biology. His first assignment was assisting a doctoral candidate in a study of coastal sea lice, an experience that reignited Chaz’s antipathy toward the great outdoors and all denizens great and small.

Among his chores was collecting gobs of algal weed that harbored the tiny granular organisms, which were not true lice but rather the larvae of Linuche unguiculata, the thimble jellyfish. Chaz’s initial aversion to his subject was justified on the second day, when the pests somehow burrowed beneath his wet suit and colonized his upper torso with an itchy pustular rash—a painful condition spectacularly exacerbated by an ill-advised choice of colognes. Before the first semester was half over, Chaz looked like he’d been dragged from a burning oil rig. He stiffly informed his faculty supervisor that the only sensible purpose for studying sea lice was to isolate a toxin that would wipe them off the face of the earth.

Clearly, Chaz had neither the hide nor the perspective required for scientific inquiry. Worse, he had no interest whatsoever in the lesser species. As an undergraduate he had muddled through classroom biology by memorizing just enough to pass the exams. In the field he couldn’t fake it so easily. The work was sweltering, repetitive and just plain hard. Every time Chaz asked if he could go play with dolphins, he was told to fetch another tub of kelp.

His family connection spared Chaz the ignominy of flunking out. Instead, he was steered along a path of study that minimized his exposure to nature—the breeding cycle of captive mosquito fish. After two years of sullenly tending aquariums, he emerged with a marginal M.A. in marine biology. At graduation the entire Rosenstiel faculty rose as one to cheer Chaz as he crossed the stage, so elated were they to see the last of him.

To his own surprise, he had no sooner laminated his diploma than he was offered a job. The company was a famous cosmetics manufacturer that conveniently had no use for the oceanic sciences and no concern about Chaz’s lackluster grades. The firm merely needed a presentable face on staff—what serious biologists scornfully refer to as a “biostitute”—who would dutifully attest that its perfume products contained only negligible levels of toxins, acetones and carcinogens. Recruiters for the cosmetics company were impressed by Chaz’s fastidious grooming and handsome features, which they felt would enhance his effectiveness as an expert witness, especially among female jurors.

He was assigned to the company’s Jacksonville plant, where he was given an office, a small laboratory and a starter batch of one hundred white mice. These he occasionally swabbed with Blue Passion, Shiver or whatever new fragrance was being test-marketed at the time. Every now and then a mouse would manifest a tumor the size of a kumquat, causing Chaz to snatch up the wretched critter with barbecue tongs and heave it into a culvert behind the building. The idea of scientifically documenting such malignancies was never contemplated—

Charles Regis Perrone would not be laying his immaculate fingertips on diseased vermin, not for a lousy thirty-eight grand a year.

Then one morning, while shredding newspapers for the rodent cages, he spotted a headline that would change his destiny: congress MULLS $8 BILLION PLAN FOR EVERGLADES RESTORATION.

Fortune appeared to Chaz in a mystical burst of green light. With a zeal that would have flabbergasted his former college professors, he embarked upon an ambitious research project that ultimately connected him with a person named Samuel Johnson Hammernut, known as “Red” to both friends and enemies. Hammernut’s name had become familiar to Chaz through archived newspaper articles that alleged recurring atrocities against his fellowmen—specifically, immigrant farmworkers—as well as the planet itself.

At first, Red Hammernut had been wary of Chaz’s audacious proposition, but soon he’d come around. It was he who was now phoning Chaz at three in the morning at the Marriott.

“What’s this I heard?” Red Hammernut barked from what sounded like a NASA wind tunnel.

Chaz peered at the digital clock. “Where are you?” he asked.

“Africa, ‘member?”

Red Hammernut, in quest of a world-record tarpon, was calling from a satellite phone aboard a mother ship somewhere off the coast of Gabon.

“So what’s this about Joey?” he said. “Is it true?”

Chaz sat up in bed, suddenly alert. “I’m afraid so, Red. We went on a cruise and she… well, she must’ve fallen off the ship. They can’t find her anywhere.”

“Damn.”

“How’d you know about it?”

“It was in the Fort Lauderdale papers. Lisbeth faxed me the story,” Red Hammernut said.

“But how’d you figure out where I was?”

“I called up that girl reporter and told her I was your uncle. Ha!”

“Oh.”

Chaz understood that this was not a sympathy call, such sentiment being alien to Red Hammernut’s character. The man wanted information, and he also wanted to remind Chaz of his larger responsibilities.

“I don’t know what happened,” Chaz said carefully, in case Detective Rolvaag was tapping the hotel line. “Joey went up on deck in the middle of the night and she didn’t come back. Nobody saw her go overboard, but that’s the assumption.”

“Why, sure. What the hell else could it be?” Red Hammernut’s voice whorled in the static. “What a tur’ble fucking thing, just tur’ble. Tell me, son, they still out searchin’ for her? The Coast Guard boys, I mean.”

“Until tomorrow at noon. Then they call it quits.”

“Well, I’ll be damned.”

Chaz could picture the stumpy little Cracker lounging in the cabin of the yacht, lapping at a tumbler of Jack Daniel’s. His freckled bowling-pin legs would be sunburned to a bright pink, and the sea breeze would have made a comedy of his sparse coppery comb-over. The round white circles around Red’s squinty eyes—caused by his absurdly oversized Polaroids—would present the visage of an irradiated lemur.

“You need anything, Chaz, anything at all,” Red Hammernut said. “I can have six private choppers in the air at dawn, that’s what you want. We’ll do our own goddamn search and rescue!”

Anxiously, Chaz wondered how many drinks Red had guzzled. “That’s very generous,” he told him, “but they’ve been up and down the coast a dozen times. They’d have found her by now, don’t you think? The water’s full of sharks.”

“Oh man,” Red Hammernut said. “You hear all that noise?”

“Sure do,” Chaz said.

“Rough as a cob out here. It’s gotta be blowin’ thirty knots.”

“You be careful.”

“Hell, son, ain’t you even gonna ask about the fishin’?”

“Right. How’s it going?” Chaz sensed it was time to wrap up the chat, before Red abandoned all pretense of genuine concern.

“Sucks doggie schlongs, that’s how it’s goin’. Four days and we haven’t jumped one tarpon over a hundred pounds,” Red Hammernut complained. “You’re the ace marine scientist, what’s the goddamn deal? Where’s my fish?”

Chaz had no idea. “Maybe they’re spawning,” he said lamely.

When Red Hammernut laughed, he sounded like a constipated mule. “Spawning, my ass! Don’t tell me you needed a Ph.D. to come up with that one? A Ph.D. that I fuckin’ paid for?”

“Well, that wasn’t my field of study.” Chaz strained to conceal his annoyance.

“What’s not your field?”

“Migratory game fish.”

Red Hammernut guffawed. “That’s too bad, ‘cause I could use some honest-to-God expertise right now. This little operation’s costin’ me about three grand a day.”

Then maybe you should’ve started with something small and dumb, Chaz felt like saying, like perch. Red Hammernut had taken up sportfishing only three months earlier.

“Maybe your luck’ll change tomorrow,” Chaz offered, but the crusty bastard couldn’t lay off.

“I trust you know more ‘bout sharks than you do ‘bout tarpon,” he said, “if you catch my drift.”

The guy’s unbelievable, Chaz thought, joking about what happened to Joey.

“I think we’re losing the signal!” Chaz shouted into the mouthpiece. “You take care of yourself, and we’ll talk when you get back.”

“For sure,” Red Hammernut said. “Hey, I’m real sorry about the missus. A damn shame is what it is.”

The little shitkicker was trying to sound sincere, but Chaz wasn’t fooled. The man had the heart of a scorpion.

“You be careful,” Red added in an unmistakable tone of warning. “You hear me? Be real damn careful. Am I comin’ through?”

“I hear you fine, Red.”

Joey Perrone awoke before sunrise and unwrapped the strip of towel from her head. Although her eyelids remained tender from the man o’war stings, her vision seemed clear. Quietly she made her way to the bathroom, where she tried to ignore the blotched and bleary woman in the mirror.

She had slept in an oversized Stanford jersey and a pair of white jogging shorts that had belonged to one of Mick Stranahan’s ex-wives, the television producer. When Joey had inquired how long that particular marriage had lasted, he’d said, “Depends who you ask.”

Gingerly she washed her face, then managed to gargle without making a peep. Afterward she hunted through the vanity and found a rubber band for her hair.

Stranahan was asleep, sprawled on a sofa in the living room. Joey tiptoed up to him and leaned as close as she dared. In the half-light she studied his features and smiled.

Not bad, she thought. I knew it.

She stopped in the kitchen to grab two apples and a ripe banana. Slipping out the back, she was careful to close the screen door softly. Strom lifted his head when she stepped barefoot onto the dock. Joey stroked his muzzle and whispered, “You’re a handsome fella. Maybe someday mean ol’ Mick will find you a girlfriend.”

As she climbed aboard the skiff, Joey was thinking: This is really rude. The least I could have done was leave him a note.

She untied the ropes and shoved off. As the boat slid lightly away, Joey sat down at the wheel, peeled the banana and waited. She didn’t want to crank up the engine too near the island and awaken Stranahan—she felt guilty enough about the way she was leaving.

Inside the steering console was Stranahan’s telephone, plugged in with a charger cord; that meant he’d have no way to call the authorities when he discovered his skiff was gone. Again Joey felt lousy, but keeping Mick incommunicado would give her some extra time to do what she had to.

As the boat drifted away, she finished the banana and placed the peel under the seat. In an aft hatch she located the fuel-primer bulb and squeezed until it was hard in her fist. She knew something about outboards—years earlier she had taught her first husband to water-ski, and together they’d bought an Aquasport powered with a i5o-horse Yamaha.

Stranahan’s boxy old Evinrude started on the third try. Joey nudged the throttle forward and checked over her shoulder. There was no sign of Mick, but the Doberman was watching her from the end of the dock, his ears pricked and his butt wiggling excitedly. She waved at the dog, then took off toward the Miami skyline.