Stormy Weather (22 page)

Bonnie Lamb got up and went to the guest room. The governor was sitting upright in bed, but his eyes were half shut. His ragged beard was finely crusted with ocean salt. Jim Tile, his Stetson tucked under one arm, stood near the window.

Bonnie poured each of them another cup of coffee. “How’s he feeling?” she whispered.

Skink’s good eye blinked open. “Better,” he said, thickly.

She set the coffeepot on the bedstand. “It was monkey tranquilizer,” she explained.

“Never to be combined with psychoactive drugs,” said Skink, “particularly toad sweat.”

Bonnie looked at Jim Tile, who said, “I asked him.”

“Asked me what?” Skink rasped.

“About the dead guy in the TV dish,” the trooper said. Then, to Bonnie: “He didn’t do it.”

“Though I do admire the style,” said Skink.

Bonnie Lamb did a poor job of masking her doubt. Skink peered sternly. “I didn’t kill that fellow, Mrs. Lamb. But I damn sure wouldn’t tell you if I had.”

“I believe you. I do.”

The governor finished the coffee and asked for another cup. He told Bonnie it was the best he’d ever tasted. “And I like your boy,” he said, gesturing toward the wall of skulls. “I like what’s he done with the place.”

Bonnie said: “He’s not my boy. Just a friend.”

Skink nodded. “We all need one of those.” With difficulty he rolled out of bed and began stripping off his wet clothes. Jim Tile led him to the shower and started the water. When the trooper returned, carrying the governor’s plastic cap, he asked Bonnie Lamb what her husband intended to do.

“He wants to prosecute.” She sat on the edge of the bed, listening to the shower run.

Augustine came into the room and said, “Well?”

“I can arrest him tonight,” Jim Tile told Bonnie, “if your husband comes to the substation and files charges. What happens then is up to the State Attorney.”

“You’d do that—arrest your own friend?”

“Better me than a stranger,” the trooper said. “Don’t feel bad about this, Mrs. Lamb. Your husband’s got every right.”

“Yes, I know.” Prosecuting the governor was the right thing—a person couldn’t be allowed to run around kidnapping tourists, no matter how offensively they behaved. Yet Bonnie was saddened by the idea of Skink’s going to jail. It was naive, she knew, but that’s how she felt.

Jim Tile was questioning Augustine about the skulls on the wall. “Cuban voodoo?”

“No, nothing like that.”

“Nineteen is what I count,” the trooper said. “I won’t ask where you got ’em. They’re too clean for homicides.”

Bonnie Lamb said, “They’re medical specimens.”

“Whatever you say.” After twenty years of attending head-on collisions, Jim Tile had a well-earned aversion to human body parts. “Specimens it is,” he said.

Augustine removed five of the skulls from the shelves and lined them up on the hardwood floor, at his feet. Then he picked up three and began to juggle.

The trooper said, “I’ll be damned.”

As he juggled, Augustine thought about the drunken young fool who tried to shoot his uncle’s Cape buffalo. What a sad, dumb way to die. Fluidly he snatched a fourth skull off the floor and put it in rotation; then the fifth.

Bonnie Lamb found herself smiling at the performance in spite of its creepiness. The governor emerged from the shower in a cloud of steam, naked except for a sky-blue towel around his neck. His thick silver hair sent snaky tails of water down his chest. He used a corner of the towel to dab the condensation off his glass eye. He beamed when he saw Augustine’s juggling.

Jim Tile felt dizzy, watching the skulls fly. Max Lamb appeared in the doorway. His expression instantly changed from curiosity to revulsion, as if a switch had been flipped inside his head. Bonnie knew what he was going to say before the words left his lips: “You think
this
is funny?”

Augustine continued juggling. It was unclear whether he, or the governor’s nudity, was the object of Max Lamb’s disapproval.

The trooper said, “It’s been a long night, man.”

“Bonnie, we’re leaving.” Max’s tone was patronizing and snarky. “Did you hear me? Playtime is over.”

She was infuriated that her husband would speak to her that way in front of strangers. She stormed from the room.

“Oh, Max?” Skink, wearing a sly smile, touched a finger to his own throat. Max Lamb’s neck tingled the old Tri-Tronics tingle. He jumped reflexively, banging against the door.

From the backpack Skink retrieved Max’s billfold and the keys to the rental car. He dropped them in Max’s hand. Max mumbled a thank-you and went after Bonnie.

Augustine stopped juggling, catching the skulls one by one. Carefully he returned them to their place on the wall.

The governor tugged the towel from his neck and began drying his arms and legs. “I like that girl,” he said to Augustine. “How about you?”

“What’s not to like.”

“You’ve got a big decision to make.”

“That’s very funny. She’s married.”

“Love is just a kiss away. So the song says.” Playfully Skink seized Jim Tile by the elbows. “Tell me, Officer. Am I arrested or not?”

“That’s up to Mister Max Lamb.”

“I need to know.”

“They’re talking it over,” Jim Tile said.

“Because if I’m not bound for jail, I’d dearly love to go find the bastard who beat up your Brenda.”

For a moment the trooper seemed to sag under the weight of his grief. His eyes welled up, but he kept himself from breaking down.

Skink said, “Jim, please. I live for opportunities like this.”

“You’ve had enough excitement. We all have.”

“You, son!” the governor barked at Augustine. “You had enough excitement?”

“Well, they just shot my water buffalo at a supermarket—”

“Ho!” Skink exclaimed.

“—but I’d be honored to help.” The skull juggling had left Augustine energetic and primed. He was in the mood for a new project, now that Bonnie’s husband was safe.

“You think about what I said,” Skink told Jim Tile. “In the meantime, I’m damn near hungry enough to eat processed food. How about you guys?”

He charged toward the door, but the trooper blocked his path. “Put on your pants, captain. Please.”

•  •  •

The corpse of Tony Torres lay unclaimed and unidentified in the morgue. Each morning Ira Jackson checked the
Herald
, but in the reams of hurricane news there was no mention of a crucified mobile-home salesman. Ira Jackson took this as affirmation of Tony Torres’s worthlessness and insignificance; his death didn’t rate one lousy paragraph in the newspaper.

Ira Jackson turned his vengeful attentions toward Avila, the inspector who had corruptly rubber-stamped the permits for the late Beatrice Jackson’s trailer home. Ira Jackson believed Avila was as culpable as Tony Torres for the tragedy that had claimed the life of his trusting mother.

Early on the morning of August 28, Ira Jackson drove to the address he’d pried from the reluctant clerk at the Metro building department. A woman with a heavy accent answered the front door. Ira Jackson asked to speak to Señor Avila.

“He bissy eng de grotch.”

“Please tell him it’s important.”

“Hokay, but he berry bissy.”

“I’ll wait,” said Ira Jackson.

Avila was scrubbing rooster blood off the whitewalls of his wife’s Buick when his mother announced he had a visitor. Avila swore and kicked at the bucket of soap. It had to be Gar Whitmark, harassing him for the seven grand. What did he expect Avila to do—rob a fucking bank!

But it wasn’t Whitmark at the door. It was a stocky middle-aged stranger with a chopped haircut, a gold chain around his neck and a smudge of white powder on his upper lip. Avila recognized the powder as doughnut dust. He wondered if the guy was a cop.

“My name is Rick,” said Ira Jackson, extending a pudgy scarred hand. “Rick Reynolds.” When the man smiled, a smear of grape jelly was visible on his bottom row of teeth.

Avila said, “I’m kinda busy right now.”

“I was driving by and saw the truck.” Ira Jackson pointed. “Fortress Roofing—that’s you, right?”

Avila didn’t answer yes or no. His eyes flicked to his truck at the curb, and the Cadillac parked behind it. The man wasn’t a cop, not with a flashy car like that.

“The storm tore off my roof. I need a new one ASAP.”

Avila said, “We’re booked solid. I’m really sorry.”

He hated to turn down a willing sucker, but it would be suicidal to run a scam on someone who knew where he lived. Especially someone with forearms the size of fence posts.

Avila made a mental note to move the roofing truck off the street, to a place where passersby couldn’t see it.

Ira Jackson licked the doughnut sugar from his lip. “I’ll make it worth your while,” he said.

“Wish I could help.”

“How’s ten thousand sound? On top of your regular price.”

Try as he might, Avila couldn’t conceal his interest. The guy had a New York accent; they did things in a big way up there.

“That’s ten thousand cash,” Ira Jackson added. “See, it’s my grandmother, she lives with us. Ninety years old and suddenly it’s raining buckets on her head. The roof’s flat-out gone.”

Avila feigned compassion. “Ninety years old? Bless her heart.” He stepped outside and closed the door behind him. “Problem is, I’ve got a dozen other jobs waiting.”

“Fifteen thousand,” Ira Jackson said, “if you move me to the top of the list.”

Avila rubbed his stubbled chin and eyed the visitor. How often, he thought, does fifteen grand come knocking at the door? A rip-off was out of the question, but another option loomed. Radical, to be sure, but do-able: Avila could build the man a legitimate, complete roof. Use the cash to settle up with Gar Whitmark. Naturally the crew would piss and moan, spoiled bastards. Properly installing a roof was a hard, hot, exhausting job. Perhaps desperate times called for honest work.

“I see,” remarked Ira Jackson, “your place came through the hurricane pretty good.”

“We were a long way from the eye, thank God.”

“Thank God is right.”

“Where exactly do you live, Mister Reynolds? Maybe I can squeeze you on the schedule.”

“Fantastic.”

“I’ll send a man out for an estimate,” Avila said. Then he remembered there was no man to send; the thieving Snapper had skipped.

Ira Jackson said, “I’d prefer it was you personally.”

“Sure, Mister Reynolds. How about tomorrow first thing?”

“How about right now? We can ride in my car.”

Avila couldn’t think of a single reason not to go, and fifteen thousand reasons why he should.

When Max Lamb put down the phone, his face was gray and his mouth was slack. He looked as if he’d been diagnosed with a terminal illness. The reality was no less grave, as far as the Rodale & Burns agency was concerned. On the other end of the line, easygoing Pete Archibald had sounded funereal and defeated. The news from New York was bad indeed.

The National Institutes of Health had scheduled a press conference to further enumerate the health hazards of cigaret smoking. Ordinarily the advertising world would scarcely take notice, so routine and predictable were these dire outcries. No matter how harrowing the medical revelations, the impact on retail cigaret sales seldom lasted more than a few weeks. This time, though, the government had used sophisticated technology to test specific brands for concentrations of tars, nicotine and other assorted carcinogens. Broncos rated first; Bronco Menthols rated second, Lady Broncos third. Epidemiologically, they were the most lethal products in the history of tobacco cultivation. Smoking a Bronco, in the lamentably quotable words of one wiseass NIH scientist, was “only slightly safer than sucking on the tailpipe of a Chevrolet Suburban.”

Details of the NIH bombshell had quickly leaked to Durham Gas Meat & Tobacco, manufacturer of Broncos and other fine products. The company’s knee-jerk response was a heated threat to cancel its advertising in all newspapers and magazines that intended to report the government’s findings. That bombastically idiotic maneuver, Max Lamb knew, would itself become front-page headlines if sane heads didn’t prevail. Max had to get back to New York as soon as possible.

When he told his wife, she said: “Right now?”

As if she didn’t understand the gravity of the crisis.

“In my business,” Max explained impatiently, “this is a flaming 747 full of orphans, plowing into a mountainside.”

“Is it true about Broncos?”

“Probably. That’s not the problem. They can’t start yanking their ads; there’s serious money at stake. Double-digit millions.”

“Max.”

“What?”

“Please put out that damn cigaret.”

“Jesus, Bonnie, listen to yourself!”

They were sitting in wicker chairs on Augustine’s patio. It was three or four in the morning. Inside the house, Neil Young played on the stereo. Through the French doors Bonnie Lamb saw Augustine in the kitchen. He noticed she was watching, and shot her a quick shy smile. The black trooper and the one-eyed governor were standing over the stove; it smelled like they were frying bacon and ham.

Max Lamb said, “We’ll catch the first plane.” He stubbed out his Bronco and flipped the butt into a birdbath.

“What about
him
?” Bonnie cut her eyes toward the kitchen window, where Skink could be seen breaking eggs at the sink. She said to Max, “You wanted to file charges, didn’t you? Put him in jail where he belongs.”

“Honey, there’s no time. After the NIH mess blows over, we’ll fly back and take care of that maniac. Don’t worry.”

Bonnie Lamb said, “If they let him go now …” She finished the sentence in her head.

If they let him go now, they’ll never find him again. He’ll vanish like a ghost in the swamp. And wouldn’t that be a darn shame.

Bonnie bewildered herself with such sentiment. What’s wrong with me? The man abducted and abused my husband. Why don’t I want to see him punished?

“You’re right,” she said to Max. “You should go back to New York as soon as you can.”

With a frown, he reached over and lightly smacked a mosquito on her arm. “What does that mean—you’re not coming?”

“Max, I’m not up for a plane trip this morning. My stomach’s in knots.”