Stormy Weather (28 page)

Narcotic memories took Avila’s mind off the vigorous suturing that was being done on a freshly shaved triangle five inches due southwest of his navel. Then, giddily, it came to him from out of the clouds—one obvious way for Avila to track that cocksucker Snapper and recover the seven grand.

A lead, is what cops would call it.

Not exactly a red-hot lead, but better than nothing.

Another curious neighbor dropped by, asking about Tony. Edie Marsh used the same ludicrous story about being a distant Torres
cousin who was watching the place as a favor. She made no effort to explain Snapper, snoring in the recliner, a gun on his lap.

Fred Dove drove up a few minutes later, while Edie was walking Donald and Marla in the front yard. The insurance man looked more cheerless and pallid than ever. From the way he snatched the briefcase off the seat of the car, Edie sensed an urgency to his gloom.

“My supervisor,” he announced, “wants to see the house.”

“Is he suspicious?”

“No. Routine claims review.”

“Then what’s the problem, Fred? Show him the house.”

He gave a bitter laugh and spun away. Edie tied up the dogs and followed him inside.

“The problem is,” Fred Dove said, “Mister Reedy will want to chat with ‘Mister and Mrs. Torres.’” Loudly he dropped his briefcase on the kitchen counter, rousing Snapper.

Edie said, “Don’t panic. We can handle it.”

“Don’t panic? The company wants to know why I got kicked out of the motel. My wife wants to know where I’m staying, and with whom. Dennis Reedy will be here tomorrow to interview two claimants that I cannot produce. Personally, I think it’s an excellent time to panic.”

“Hey, Santy Claus!” It was Snapper, hollering from the living room. “You got the insurance check?”

Edie Marsh went to the doorway and said, “Not yet.”

“Then shut him up.”

Fred Dove dropped his voice. “I can’t stay here with that maniac. It’s impossible.”

“His leg hurts,” said Edie. She had given Snapper the last of her Darvons, which evidently were beginning to wear off. “Look, I’m not thrilled about the setup, either. But it’s this or go camp in the woods.”

The insurance man removed his glasses and pressed his thumbs against his temples. A mosquito landed on one of his eyelids. He shook his head like a spaniel until it floated away. “We can’t go through with this,” he said, dolorously.

“Yes we can, sweetie. I’ll be Mrs. Torres. Snapper is Tony.”

Fred Dove sagged. “You don’t exactly look Cuban. Neither of you, for God’s sake.” He punched a cabinet door and cried out, “What was I
thinking
!”

Snapper declared that Fred Dove was on the brink of dismemberment unless he immediately shut the fuck up. Edie Marsh led the
distraught insurance man into Neria’s bedroom closet. She shut the door and kissed him with expert tenderness. Simultaneously she unzipped his pants. Fred jumped at her touch, warm but unexpected. Edie squeezed gently, until he was calm and quite helpless.

“This Dennis Reedy,” she whispered, “what’s he like?”

Fred Dove squirmed pleasurably.

“Tough guy? Tightass? What’s his deal?”

“He seems all right,” the insurance man said. He’d dealt with Reedy only once, in a flooded subdivision outside Dallas. Reedy was gruff but fair. He had approved most of Fred Dove’s damage estimates, with only minor adjustments.

Edie’s free hand pulled down Fred’s pants. She said, “We’ll go over the claim papers tonight, in case he makes it a quiz.”

“What about Snapper?”

“Let me handle that. We’ll have a rehearsal.”

“What are you doing?” The insurance man nearly lost his balance.

“What does it look like, Fred. Will Mister Reedy have our check?”

In stuporous bliss, Fred Dove gazed at the top of Edie’s head. Fingers explored her silken hair; his own fingers, judging by the familiar gold wedding band and the University of Nebraska class ring. Fred Dove struggled for clarity. It was no time for an out-of-body experience; for this long-awaited moment, he wanted sensual acuity and superior muscle control.

The insurance man struggled to purge his mind of worry and guilt, to make way for oncoming ecstasy. He inhaled deeply. The closet smelled of old gardenias and mildew: Neria Torres’s pre-professor wardrobe, damp and musty from the storm. Fred Dove felt stifled, though a vital part of him was not.

Without using her hands, Edie Marsh leaned him against the wall for leverage. He released her hair and rapturously locked a monkey grip on the wooden dowel. His upturned face was obstructed by the silken armpit of somebody’s wedding gown.

Suddenly he had a humiliating flashback to what had happened the last time, when Snapper interrupted them on the floor of the living room. To prevent a recurrence, Fred groped for the doorknob and held it shut.

From below, Edie Marsh paused to inquire again: “Will Reedy have the settlement check?”

“N-no. The check always comes from Omaha.”

“Shit.”

Fred Dove wasn’t sure whether he heard her say it, or felt her say it. The important thing was, she didn’t stop.

When Augustine came out to the truck, Bonnie Lamb and the governor were gone. He found them a few blocks away, behind a deserted hurricane house. Skink was kneeling next to a swimming pool, scooping chubby brown toads out of the rancid water and slipping them into his pockets. Bonnie was busy fending off the mosquitoes that hovered in an inky cloud around her face.

Augustine related what he’d learned about the black Jeep Cherokee. Skink said, “Where’s Calusa Drive?”

“They drew me a map.”

“Are we going now?” Bonnie asked.

“Tomorrow,” Skink said. “We’ll need daylight.”

He and Augustine decided to spend the night nearby. They found an empty field and built a campfire from storm debris. Nearby another small fire glowed, flickering from the mouth of a fifty-five-gallon drum—itinerant laborers from Ohio. Two of them wandered over in search of crack. Augustine spooked them off with a casual display of the .38. Skink disappeared with the toads into a scrubby palmetto thicket.

Bonnie said, “What’s DMT?”

“A Wall Street drug,” Augustine replied. “Before our time.”

“He said he dries the toad poison and smokes it. He said it’s a chemical strain of DMT.”

“I believe I’ll stick to beer.” Augustine got two sleeping bags from the cab of the truck. He shook them out and spread them near the fire.

She said, “I’m sorry about last night.”

“Quit saying that.” Like it would have been the worst mistake of her entire life.

“I don’t know what’s wrong with me,” she said.

Augustine arranged some dead branches on the fire. “Nothing’s wrong with you, Bonnie. You’re so normal it’s scary.” He sat cross-legged on one of the sleeping bags.

“Come here,” he said. When he put his arms around her, she felt completely relaxed and secure. Then he said: “I can take you to the airport.”

“No!”

“Because after tonight, you’ll be in the thick of it.”

Bonnie Lamb said, “That’s what I want. Max got his adventure, I want mine.”

A reedy howl rose from the palmettos, diffusing into a creepy rumble of laughter.

Bufo madness, thought Augustine. Bonnie stiffened in his embrace. Firmly she said, “I’m not leaving now. No way.”

He lifted her chin. “This is not a well person. This is a man who put a shock collar on your husband, a man who gets high off frog slime. He’s done things you don’t want to know about, probably even killed people.”

“At least he believes in
some
thing.”

“Good Lord, Bonnie.”

“Then why are
you
here? If he’s so dangerous, if he’s so crazy—”

“Who said he was crazy.”

“Answer the question, Señor Herrera.”

Augustine blinked at the firelight. “I’m not so tightly wrapped myself. That should be obvious.”

Bonnie Lamb pressed closer. She wondered why she so enjoyed the fact that both of these new men were unpredictable and impulsive—opposites of the man she’d married. Max was exceptionally reliable, but he was neither deep nor enigmatic. Five minutes with Max and you had the whole menu.

She said, “I suppose I’m rebelling. Against what, I don’t know. It’s a first for me.”

Augustine rebuked himself for showing off with the skulls; what woman could resist such charm? Bonnie laughed softly.

“Seriously,” he said, “there’s a big difference between your situation and mine. You’ve got a husband and a life. I’ve got nothing else to do, and nothing to lose by not doing it.”

“Your uncle’s animals?”

“Long gone,” he said. “Anyway, there’s worse places than Miami to be for a monkey. They’ll make out fine.” After a rueful pause: “I do feel lousy about the water buffalo.”

Bonnie said there was no point trying to analyze motivation. Both of them were rational, mature, intelligent adults. Certainly they knew what they were doing, even if they didn’t know why.

From the thicket, another penetrating wail.

Bonnie stared toward the palmettos. “I get the feeling he could take us or leave us.”

“Exactly.” Augustine came right out and asked her if she truly loved her husband.

She answered unhesitantly: “I don’t know. So there.”

Without warning, the governor crashed shirtless out of the trees. He was feverish, drenched in sweat. His good eye was as bright as a radish; the glass one was turned askew, showing yellowed bone in the socket. Bonnie hurried to his side.

“Damn,” he wheezed, “was that some bad toad!”

Augustine doubted Skink’s technique for removing the toxin and processing it for inhalation. Based on the man’s present state, it seemed likely that he’d bungled the pharmacology.

“Sit here by the fire,” Bonnie told him.

He held out his hands, which were filled with leathery, lightly freckled eggs. Augustine counted twelve in all. Skink palmed them like golf balls.

“Supper!” he exulted.

“What are they?”

“Eggs, my boy!”

“Of what?”

“I don’t have a clue.” The governor stalked toward the laborers’ camp, returning five minutes later with a fry pan and a squeeze bottle of ketchup.

Regardless of species, the eggs tasted dandy scrambled. Augustine was impressed, watching Bonnie dig in.

When they finished eating, Skink said it was time to hit the rack. “Big day ahead. You take the sleeping bags, I’ll be in the scrub.” And he was gone.

Augustine returned the fry pan to the Ohio contingent, which was amiably drunk and nonthreatening. He and Bonnie stayed up watching the flames die, sitting close but saying little. At the first onslaught of mosquitoes, they dove into one of the sleeping bags and zipped it over their heads. Like two turtles, Bonnie said, sharing the same shell.

They hugged each other in the blackness, laughing uncontrollably. After Bonnie caught her breath, she said, “God, it’s hot in here.”

“August in Florida.”

“Well, I’m taking off my clothes.”

“You aren’t.”

“Oh yes. And you’re going to help.”

“Bonnie, we should get some sleep. Big day tomorrow.”

“I need a big night to take my mind off it.” She got tangled while wriggling out of her top. “Give me a hand, kind sir.”

Augustine did as he was told. They were, after all, rational, mature, intelligent adults.

The death of Tony Torres did not go unnoticed by homicide detectives, crucifixions being rare even in Miami. However, most murder investigations were stuck on hold in the frenetic days following the hurricane. With the roadways in disorder, the police department was precariously shorthanded; every available officer of every rank was put to work directing traffic, chasing looters or escorting relief convoys. In the case of Juan Doe #92-312 (the whimsical caption on Tony Torres’s homicide file), the lack of urgency to investigate was reinforced by the fact that no friends or relatives appeared to identify the corpse, which indicated to police that nobody was searching for him, which further suggested that nobody much cared he was dead.

Two days after the body was found, a fingerprint technician faxed the morgue to say that a proper name now could be attached to the crucified man: Antonio Rodrigo Guevara-Torres, age forty-five. The prints of the late Mr. Torres were on file because he had, during one rocky stretch of his adult life, written thirty-seven consecutive bum checks. Had one of those checks not been made out to the Police Benevolent Association, Tony Torres likely would have escaped prosecution. To avoid jail, he pleaded guilty and swore to make full restitution, a pledge quickly forgotten amid the pressure of his demanding new job as a junior sales associate at a trailer-home franchise called A-Plus Affordable Homes.

Because the arrest report was old, the home address and telephone number listed for Tony Torres were no good. The current yellow pages showed no listing for A-Plus Affordable. Three fruitless inquiries sufficiently discouraged the young detective to whom the case of the crucified check-kiter had been assigned. He was relieved when his lieutenant ordered him to put the homicide file aside and drive down to Cutler Ridge, where he parked squarely in the center
of the intersection of Eureka Drive and 117th Avenue in order to block traffic for the presidential motorcade.

The young detective didn’t think again of the murdered check-bouncing mobile-home salesman until two days later, when the police department got a call from an agitated woman claiming to be the victim’s wife.

Avila phoned the Gentlemen’s Choice escort service and asked for Morganna. She got on the line and said, “I haven’t used that name in six months. It’s Jasmine now.”

“OK. Jasmine.”

“Do I know you, honey?”

Avila reminded her of their torrid drunken night at the motel on West Flagler Street.

“Gee,” she said, “that narrows it down to about ninety guys.”

“You had a friend. Daphne, Diane, something like that. Redhead with a tattoo on her left tit.”

Jasmine said, “What kinda tattoo?”

“I think it was a balloon or something.”

“Don’t ring a bell.”

Avila said, “The guy you were with, you’d definitely remember. Scary dude with a seriously fucked-up face.”