Nature Girl

by Carl Hiaasen

  Dealey chuckled. “No, ma’am. But remember I took a bullet for the cause.”

  Lily hit the play button. “I do like the music,” she remarked.

  “Ravel’s Bolero. It’s pretty standard.” He’d dubbed it himself, to erase the conversation between Eugenie Fonda and the boy in the football helmet.

  Lily went on: “I’m not fond of creepy critters, but these slinky little rascals are cute, I’ve gotta admit. And definitely hot for each other.”

  “I’m told they’re chameleons,” Dealey said. “Green is their happy color.”

  Lily was impressed by the male’s lithe piggybacking. It couldn’t have been easy maneuvering around his mate’s tail to achieve the glandular docking.

  “You still there?” Dealey asked.

  “I’ll give you ten grand, but that’s it.”

  “Sounds fair.”

  “To help with your out-of-pocket medical.”

  “Much appreciated,” said the private investigator. He could hear Bolero rising in the background, along with Mrs. Shreave’s breathing.

  She said, “FYI, I’m filing the divorce papers next week.”

  “Should be a breeze.” Dealey figured that she’d finally closed the deal on her pizza joints.

  “Just out of curiosity, where exactly is my husband?” she asked.

  “I have no earthly idea.”

  “Then I’ll assume he ran off with his six-foot bimbo.”

  Dealey didn’t say a word.

  Lily wasn’t finished. “By the way, the Coast Guard said they rescued two women from the same island.”

  “Campers,” he said. “They were lost, too.”

  “Serves ’em right. It sounds like a perfectly awful place.”

  “Good-bye, Mrs. Shreave.”

  Dealey hung up smiling. When Eugenie Fonda asked him what was so funny, he told her about the ten grand.

  She whistled and said, “What’d I tell ya? The woman’s seriously gettin’ off on those reptiles.”

  “Nice job with the camera. Helluva job, actually.” Dealey’s shoulder, bolted together with three titanium pins, was throbbing. He hunted through the desk for some Advils.

  “You got any normal clients?” Eugenie asked.

  “A few. You’ll see.”

  “So, what’s the dress code around here?”

  “Surprise me,” Dealey said.

  Eugenie had strolled into his office two days earlier offering a deal: She would return the two Halliburton cases containing the costly surveillance equipment if he promised to deliver the chameleon sex tape to Boyd Shreave’s wife. During that conversation it had occurred to Dealey that Eugenie, with her vast and intimate knowledge of human frailty, could be a valuable addition to his staff.

  “Does this mean you’re taking the job?” he asked.

  “Just don’t try to get in my pants. You’ve got no chance whatsoever.”

  “Understood,” Dealey said.

  “And if you set me up with any of your loser buddies, I’ll personally break your other arm. Think compound fracture.”

  “Right.” He was almost certain that she could, and would, do it.

  “One other thing—those tapes and pictures you took of me and Boyd. Did you make copies?”

  Dealey frowned and shifted in the chair.

  “Burn ’em,” Eugenie said.

  He thought ruefully of his masterpiece, the delicatessen blow job. “They’re in a safe box at the bank. Nobody but me has a key.”

  “I said burn ’em.” Eugenie leaned forward, tapping her fingernails on the desk. “Did I or did I not just make you ten thousand ridiculous dollars?”

  The investigator slouched in resignation. “But I thought you wanted to see ’em—the videos and prints.”

  Eugenie said no, she’d changed her mind. “It’s ancient history.”

  “You looked pretty damn fine, for what it’s worth.”

  “Don’t make me tell you what it’s worth, Mr. Dealey.”

  He uncapped a pen to write down her Social. “When can you start?”

  “Hang on. I’m not done,” she said. “Did you make those calls for our friend?”

  She was talking about Gillian, the spacey college kid with whom Dealey had been forced to share a sleeping bag. It was not an entirely unpleasant memory.

  He said, “Nobody at the Indian reservation would tell me a damn thing. They acted like they’d never heard of Mr. Tigertooth.”

  “Tigertail.”

  “Whatever. Guy could be anywheres by now.”

  “Gillian’s determined to find him.”

  “I don’t get the attraction.”

  “If you’ve gotta ask,” Eugenie said, “then you definitely need my help around here.”

  Dealey’s inquiries to Collier County had not been altogether fruitless. From a newspaper reporter he’d learned that Louis Piejack, the freak who had kidnapped him, was missing in the Ten Thousand Islands. Having no wish to be subpoenaed to that dreadful part of the planet, Dealey had elected not to enlighten the authorities about Piejack’s many crimes.

  “What about Boyd?” Eugenie Fonda asked.

  Dealey flexed his hands and shrugged. “No John Does at the local morgue. He probably got off the island and hauled ass. Were you expecting him to call?”

  “Oh, I’d be very surprised,” Eugenie said. She had changed her phone number the day after arriving back in Fort Worth. It was the first call she’d made after quitting her job at Relentless.

  “Now let’s talk salary,” she said to Dealey.

  “Fire away.”

  With the exception of Sister Shirelle, the moaners had become disillusioned with the one who called himself Boyd. For a savior he seemed whiny and graceless.

  One afternoon, Brother Manuel took him aside and said, “You blew it, dog.”

  Boyd Shreave bridled. “Bite your heathen tongue!”

  “They took a vote. Gimme the damn robe.”

  “No way.” Shreave locked his arms across the sash.

  “You had a sweet gig here,” said Brother Manuel. “Why couldn’t you just smile and look wise and keep your trap shut?”

  “But I read somewhere that Jesus was like a rock idol.”

  “Charismatic is the word, but that ain’t you, man. You’re just another loudmouthed schmuck.”

  “Okay, fine. I’ll tone it down.”

  “Too late,” the chief moaner said curtly.

  The moment reminded Shreave of his many past failures in sales. Over the phone he could be a master of persuasion; in person he seemed doomed to rankle. This he blamed not on multiple character defects but rather on miscalculating his target demographic. From now on he would upwardly skew his efforts toward a more cosmopolitan market, with needs yet unrevealed.

  Brother Manuel went on: “Fact is, you’re way too obnoxious to be the Son of God. I can’t cover for you anymore.”

  “Was it unanimous?”

  “Everybody except Shirelle, and she’d go down on Judas Iscariot if he was a hottie. Now hand over the robe.”

  “I don’t think so,” Shreave said.

  Brother Manuel calmly punched him in the gut and he doubled over. The glorious Four Seasons vestment was peeled off his shoulders like a snakeskin.

  “We’re headin’ back to the mainland tomorrow,” said Brother Manuel. “The girls are gonna leave you two loaves of sourdough and a jug of Tang. If you’re ever passin’ through Zolfo Springs, stop by the AAMCO and I’ll cut you a break on a pan gasket.”

  Shreave was wheezing. “This is a joke, right?”

  “No, friend, this is adieu.”

  “You can’t leave me out here! Even on Survivor the losers get to go home.”

  Brother Manuel said, “We’ll call the Park Service on our way out of town.”

  “But you don’t even know the name of this friggin’ island! How’re they supposed to find me?”

  “Worse comes to worst, you’ve always got the canoe.”

  “But I’ll die o
ut here! I’ve got a heavy-duty disease and I need my medicine,” Shreave said. “Aphenphosmphobia!”

  Brother Manuel snorted. “That’s not a disease, it’s a disorder. And if you were truly afflicted, brother, you wouldn’t have asked Sister Shirelle to rub your feet last night.”

  Boyd Shreave wilted.

  “My cousin’s an aphenphosmphobic,” Brother Manuel added in a frosty tone. “That’s how I know.”

  There was nothing left for Shreave to do but beg. “Christ, please take me with you.”

  “If He were here, perhaps He would. However, it’s my boat and it’s my call.” Brother Manuel slung the white robe over one arm and turned away.

  “Gimme another chance!” Shreave called out, but the preacher kept walking.

  That night Shreave built a feeble fire on the dune, using a book of matches that Sister Shirelle had tucked in his Speedos shortly before the moaners cast off. For tinder he sacrificed his ragged copy of Storm Ghoul, rendering to ashes the only keepsake of his fizzled affair with Eugenie Fonda.

  Slumped against the wooden cross, Shreave stared out across the Gulf of Mexico and assayed his prospects, which were not as gloomy as he’d initially believed. The running lights of several large vessels were visible offshore, so he knew it was only a matter of time before somebody spotted him. At that point a major life decision would be required. Shreave ruled out a return to Texas, having no desire to face Lily’s wrath and his mother’s scalding denigrations. It never occurred to him that neither woman was interested in his whereabouts or his intentions.

  Florida might be worth a shot, Shreave mused. Boca Raton supposedly had more telephone boiler rooms than Calcutta.

  He gnawed on a hunk of sourdough but nearly gagged on the lukewarm Tang. The waves whispered him to sleep, and he awoke at daybreak sucking on his NASCAR toothbrush. Glancing up, he was alarmed to see—preening on the crossbeam of the bogus cross—a large white-capped bird that he recognized from countless documentaries on the Discovery Channel as an American bald eagle.

  “Boo!” Shreave yelled hoarsely. “Beat it!”

  The eagle was old and hunched, yet its amber gaze was penetrating. The flexed talons were larger than Shreave’s hands, and he didn’t doubt for a second that the predator was capable of removing his face with one swipe.

  “Go away!” he brayed twice, whereupon the great bird hitched its chalky tail feathers, uncorked a prodigious bowel movement and flew away.

  With a woeful moan, Shreave rolled himself down the dune, over the cold fire pit and into the water. There he threshed in hysterics, trying to slosh off the pungent stickum of feathers, bones, fur, mullet scales, cartilage and less identifiable ingredients of the jumbo eagle dropping.

  It was in this frothing state of aggrievement that he was found by a passing park ranger, drawn to the scene by Shreave’s howls. After being hauled aboard the patrol boat, he was transported in his befouled Speedos to the public landing at Everglades City. There he was hosed off vigorously and examined by a paramedic wearing full biohazard gear.

  Later, sporting ghastly tartan shorts and a double-knit golf shirt donated by the local Red Cross, Boyd Shreave wandered alone to the Rod and Gun Club, where he slapped his wife’s MasterCard on the old mahogany bar. The bartender was the same one who’d provided directions on the night that he and Genie had arrived, but the man didn’t recognize him. Shreave’s bearing had been considerably diminished on Dismal Key by a deleterious combination of sun poisoning, wind chafing and general character abasement.

  After five Coronas, Shreave felt not nearly so adrift and out of sorts. A couple in their sixties, plainly from the Midwest, settled a few bar stools away and began rhapsodizing about their vacation to southwest Florida.

  “It was twelve degrees at O’Hare this morning!” the wife chortled.

  “Three below with the windchill,” said her husband.

  “I don’t want to go home, Ben. It’s so incredible here.”

  “McMullan called from the club—the lake on the seventeenth hole is froze solid. The kids are out there playing ice hockey with dog turds.”

  “Ben, did you hear what I said? I really do not wish to go back.”

  “You mean it?”

  Boyd Shreave picked up his beer bottle and moved closer.

  “We could get a place in Naples,” the wife was suggesting.

  “Or right here on the river,” said the husband. “Buy a boat and dock it behind the house.”

  The bartender had heard the same conversation maybe a thousand times, but to a defrocked telemarketer from Texas it was revelatory; a thunderbolt of inspiration.

  “It’s paradise here,” Shreave heard himself say. “Heaven on earth.”

  The husband turned on his bar stool. “Today I caught eight ladyfish, and a flounder as big as a hubcap. That’s no lie!”

  His wife said, “But what about the mosquitoes? I hear it’s torture in the summer.”

  Shreave smiled. “That’s what the locals tell all the Yankees. You folks seriously in the market?”

  “Aw, we’re just dreamin’ out loud,” the husband said.

  “No, we’re serious,” the woman spoke up. “I’m serious. Do you live here?”

  Shreave didn’t hesitate. “Just up the road,” he said.

  It had of course dawned on him that, being immune to the wonders of the place, he was ideally equipped to exploit it. Erik fucking Estrada, eat your heart out.

  The husband introduced himself. Shreave shook his hand and said, “I’m Boyd Eisenhower.”

  “Like the president?”

  “No relation, I’m afraid.”

  The wife asked, “Are you a broker?”

  “I handle a few select waterfront properties, yes.”

  Shreave was experimenting with a new, low-key style. The beers definitely helped. So far, the couple had not recoiled or grown even slightly leery in his presence; just the opposite. They were so eager to escape Chicago that they hadn’t noticed he was half-trashed.

  “And what would it cost,” the husband was saying, “for, oh, a three-two on the river? Hypothetically, I mean.”

  “Or a town house on Marco,” the woman added eagerly. “Do you have a card, Mr. Eisenhower?”

  “Not with me.” Boyd Shreave experienced a rush like no other. It was, he believed, his deliverance.

  “Let me take your number,” he said, reaching for a cocktail napkin.

  First thing in the morning, he would inquire about a real-estate license.

  I am home, he thought. At last.

  The eagle flew south and spent the night in the top of a dead black mangrove along the Lostmans River. Even from a distance Sammy Tigertail could see that the bird was ancient, and he wondered if it was the ghost spirit of Wiley, the demented white writer about whom his Uncle Tommy sometimes told stories.

  At dawn Sammy Tigertail motored the johnboat to the base of the mangrove tree and called up at the eagle, which responded by yakking up a fish head. The Indian waved respectfully and headed upriver to check the spot where he’d submerged the corpse of Louis Piejack. It was the same deep hole in which eleven days earlier he had anchored Jeter Wilson, the luckless dead tourist. Recently, Wilson’s rented car had been recovered from the murky Tamiami Trail canal, which was now being searched by snake-wary police divers. Sammy Tigertail wasn’t in any hurry to come out of hiding.

  No evidence of Wilson or Piejack had surfaced in Lostmans, so the Indian returned to his campsite near Toms Bight and carefully hid the johnboat. The day before, a chopper had passed overhead half a dozen times—it wasn’t the Coast Guard or the Park Service, but nonetheless Sammy Tigertail was on edge. He knew somebody was looking for something, although he wouldn’t have guessed that it was Gillian St. Croix looking for him, and that she was paying for the helicopter charters with a tuition refund from Florida State University. No longer was she a fighting Seminole.

  Concealed by a clumsily woven canopy of palm fronds, Sammy Tigertail spent the dayli
ght hours re-reading Rev. MacCauley’s journal and constructing a new guitar. From the shattered Gibson he had salvaged the neck, the tuning pegs and five strings; the body he was laboriously shaping with his Buck knife from a thick plank of teak that he’d gotten from a derelict sailboat. Sammy Tigertail was by no means an artisan yet it was satisfying work, and a task of which the inventive Calusas would have approved.

  A month’s worth of gasoline and provisions had been delivered by Sammy Tigertail’s half brother, Lee, whom Sammy had contacted with a cellular phone that he’d found in Piejack’s johnboat. It was Lee who had delivered the news about Wilson’s car, and he’d agreed it would be premature for Sammy to return to the reservation. During Lee’s visit they had selected future drop sites and a timetable. Aware that his half brother’s wilderness skills were not as advanced as those of a full-blooded Seminole, Lee had also provided a compass, a dive watch, a NOAA marine chart and a bag of flares.

  At night Sammy Tigertail was occasionally pestered in his sleep by the spirit of Wilson, who would complain sourly about sharing eternity at the bottom of a river with Louis Piejack.

  “I thought you’d like some company,” Sammy Tigertail said the first time the dead tourist appeared at the camp on Toms Bight.

  “The guy’s a total scumbag! Not even the damn crabs want a piece of him,” Wilson griped.

  He’d brought along Piejack’s ghost for dramatic impact, but the Indian was unswayed. The depraved fish peddler looked no worse in death than he had when he was alive; the river scavengers were avoiding him like a toxin. Wilson, meanwhile, was disappearing by the biteful.

  Sammy Tigertail said, “You told me you were lonely.”

  “Lonely, yeah—not desperate. The dude’s a major perv,” fumed the dead tourist. “I can’t believe you wasted a perfectly good guitar on this fuckwit!”

  His facial bones having been staved in by Perry Skinner’s lethal blow, Louis Piejack was unable to respond effectively in his own defense. It wouldn’t have mattered.

  “I wasn’t the one who killed him,” the Seminole said.

  “What happened to that guy you plugged?” Wilson inquired. “The porky one in the business suit. Hell, I’d rather hang out with him.”

  “He didn’t die,” Sammy Tigertail replied.