by Carl Hiaasen
Maybe we were kidding ourselves, but that’s how Abbey and I had it figured.
So we both got excited when we noticed the workers dragging a long thick hose toward the stern of the Coral Queen. We were sure—I mean, one thousand percent certain—that they’d open the valve and drop the end of that hose into the water.
But they didn’t. They snaked it over to the dock and connected it to something that resembled a giant rust-freckled egg.
“Hey,” whispered Abbey, “that looks like a sewer tank.”
“Yeah, it does.” There was a knot in my stomach. I couldn’t believe what we were seeing.
“What if Dad made a mistake?” she asked gloomily. “What if Dusty’s totally legal? What if the pollution is coming from somewhere else?”
I had no answer. It had never occurred to me that my father might have blamed the wrong person.
“What do we do now?” Abbey said.
“I really don’t know.”
“Noah?”
“Abbey, I said I don’t know.”
“Noah!”
From the hitch in her voice, I sensed something was wrong. I turned and saw, in the pale glow of the marina lights, a thick greasy arm around my little sister’s neck.
SIX
When Abbey was a baby, she had a nasty habit that nearly drove us nuts. Even in the hottest part of summer we’d have to put on long clothes to protect our arms and legs—and forget about having company over. It was too dangerous.
My sister was a biter.
Not that she was a mean little kid; she just liked to chew. My dad called her a pit bull in diapers. In those days she’d gnaw on just about anything, and I don’t mean “nibble.” When Abbey chomped, she chomped hard. One time she crunched on a marble like it was a gumball.
So I had a hunch what was about to happen on the deep-sea boat when the bald crooked-nosed guy grabbed my sister around her neck. I could see her eyeing the meaty part of his forearm, and I thought: Whoever this goon is, some major pain is headed his way.
The instant Abbey clamped down, the stranger howled and let loose of her neck. Abbey herself didn’t let go so quickly. The stranger screamed and thrashed and flapped his arm until finally he shook free. He was rearing back to smack her when I socked him, a kidney shot to the lower back, and he dropped to one knee. I snatched my sister by the sleeve and together we jumped from the deck.
We hit the dock running and never looked back. The bald guy was swearing so loudly that it carried clear across the water into the mangroves. We grabbed our bikes from the woods, and I never pedaled so fast in my life. Abbey was close behind, spitting and spluttering to get the stranger’s germs out of her mouth.
When we got to our street, we had another scare. There was a light on in the house.
“Mom’s bedroom,” my sister said with a groan. “We’re toast.”
“Maybe not. Maybe she’s just reading a book.”
“Yeah, right,” Abbey said. “So what’s our story going to be?”
I knew we couldn’t come up with a clever excuse for slipping out so late—nothing that would fool my mother, that was for sure.
“No story,” I decided. “We’ll tell her the truth.”
“Great plan, Noah. Except, how about you tell her? I’ll be hiding in the closet, in case she goes ballistic.”
We walked our bikes to the house and propped them against the trunk of a gumbo-limbo. The back door was still unlocked, the way we’d left it, which was a good sign.
Abbey went inside first and I followed, half expecting to be ambushed. My father says Mom has eyes like a hawk and ears like a panther. The odds of sneaking by her twice in one night without getting nabbed were slim.
Yet there wasn’t a peep as we tiptoed past Mom and Dad’s room. I went straight to bed, while Abbey spent like ten minutes gargling and brushing her teeth. I couldn’t believe the racket she was making—she sounded like a duck swallowing a harmonica. Mom would’ve had to be in a coma not to hear it.
Still, her door never opened.
LOCAL CABBIE DEFENDS SINKING OF CASINO BOAT
That was the headline the next morning in the Island Examiner. The paper lay open on the breakfast table, and it was clear from my mother’s expression that she’d already read the story.
“How bad is it?” I asked.
“Well, you came off like a sensible young man,” she replied. “Your father, however, is now comparing himself to Nelson Mandela.”
“Uh-oh.”
“He’s even talking about a hunger strike.”
“No way.”
“Here. See for yourself.” Mom slid the newspaper across the table.
I forced myself to read the article from beginning to end. Miles Umlatt obviously thought my father was quite a character. He’d let Dad go on and on about greedy polluters, and he’d put in the stuff about what happened with Derek Mays and the Carmichaels. Miles Umlatt described my father as “passionate about the environment” but also “volatile and impulsive.” That part was pretty accurate, I had to admit.
The story included a couple of quotes from me—one was about Dad needing to work on his self-control, and the other was about how he wouldn’t hurt a flea. It was weird seeing my own words in print. They didn’t look the same in the newspaper as they’d sounded when I’d said them out loud into Miles Umlatt’s tape recorder.
Mom noticed I wasn’t overjoyed with how the article had turned out. “It’s all right, Noah,” she said. “You told the truth—your dad’s a peaceful, well-meaning guy who occasionally loses a wing nut. Anybody who reads that story can see how much you care.”
“It’s not just what I said, Mom. It’s all the other junk in there, too.” Above the article was my father’s mug shot from the day he was arrested, and also a picture of the Coral Queen after she had sunk.
“Half the article is Dusty Muleman saying Dad’s a liar and a crackpot,” I said.
“Dusty plays golf every Sunday with the newspaper’s publisher,” my mother said. “Besides, the man’s got a right to defend himself. Your father’s made some serious accusations.”
Accusations that might even be false, I thought, remembering what we’d seen at the dock the night before.
Mom poured me a bowl of cereal and a tall glass of milk, but I wasn’t very hungry. Abbey stumbled into the kitchen looking as if she’d gotten maybe two hours of sleep. She was rubbing her eyes with one hand and trying to get a snarl out of her hair with the other. Mom and I knew better than to start a conversation—even at her best, my sister wasn’t a bundle of cheer in the mornings.
She snatched up the Island Examiner and sped through Miles Umlatt’s article, grumbling the whole time.
“Hunger strike!” she huffed when she was done, slapping the newspaper on the table. “What’s wrong with him? Is he dense or what?”
“Abbey, don’t talk that way about your father,” Mom said, “and the word is ‘deluded,’ not ‘dense.’”
“But this is so embarrassing. Can’t he understand that?” She slumped into a chair and laid her head on her arms.
“How about some scrambled eggs?” my mother asked.
“Ack!” said Abbey.
I excused myself and hurried out the door.
The scene at the jail wasn’t as laid-back as before. At the door a deputy actually frisked me, like you see on TV. All I’d brought was a paperback book about chess—I figured my father ought to learn the game for real, before the lieutenant figured out he was faking it. The deputy examined the puny little chess book as if he was expecting to find a false compartment and a skeleton key. When he finally returned it to me, he announced that the visitation time had been cut to five minutes, on orders from the sheriff himself.
I waited a long while in the interview room. The big jowly deputy was there, too, but he stared right through me. When my father eventually came out, he was wearing a faded orange jumpsuit with the words MONROE COUNTY INMATE stamped on the back.
“Nice fit,”
I said.
“Oh, they’re just ticked off at me because of the newspaper story. Did you see it?” he asked.
“Oh yeah. So did Mom and Abbey.”
“And?”
“Nobody’s buying the hunger strike,” I told him, “and you definitely need to back off this Mandela thing.”
Dad seemed disappointed at the family’s reaction to the Island Examiner article, but I couldn’t lie to him.
“You need to come home. Seriously,” I said.
“Noah, please don’t start with that again.”
I gave him the chess book. He winked and said thanks.
“You seen Mom?” I asked.
“Not in a few days. I know she’s been real busy with work.” He shook off the question, like it was no big deal.
“Haven’t you talked to her on the phone?”
“I’ve tried to call, but the machine always picks up.”
I could see that my father was concerned, which was healthy. When it came to Mom, he needed to be. It’s pathetic for grown-ups to pretend everything’s okay when it’s not.
“Listen, Dad, there’s something you need to know.” I lowered my voice, as if it mattered. The room was so tiny that the deputy could hear me blink.
“We snuck down to the dock last night after the Coral Queen closed,” I said. “We hid aboard one of the charter boats.”
“Who hid—not you and Abbey?”
“Yes, me and Abbey.”
I didn’t dare tell Dad about the stranger grabbing my sister, because I knew he’d bail himself out of jail in a flash and go hunting for the guy. In no time he’d be back in the slammer, for doing something even worse.
“Guess what?” I said. “Dusty’s crew didn’t pump the wastewater into the basin. They hooked up to a sewer tank onshore.”
At first Dad was stunned. “You sure?”
“We saw it with our own eyes,” I said.
My father rubbed his jaw and made a faint clicking sound with his teeth. “You know what it is? Dusty’s freaking out because of all the publicity about me sinking his stupid boat. He’s going to lay low and act like a model citizen, in case the Coast Guard comes snooping around.”
It was possible, for sure. But if Dusty Muleman was starting to obey the law, I thought, how would we ever prove that Dad’s accusations were right?
As if reading my thoughts, he said, “Lice Peeking knows the truth about the Coral Queen. What’d he say about my skiff? Will he take it or not?”
“He’s picking it up at noon.”
“Excellent!”
“And he promised to sign a statement, like you wanted.”
“Noah, that’s super!”
Dad slapped me a high five. I didn’t want to spoil his mood by reminding him that Lice Peeking wasn’t the most reliable human being on the island. Obviously my father had let his hopes go sky-high, but since I wasn’t the one sitting in jail, I kept my mouth shut.
“Time’s up,” the jowly deputy said to me. He jerked his head toward the door.
“Everything’s gonna work out just dandy,” my father said. “You’re doing a great job, son, but no more sneaking around at night—especially with your sister. You hear me?”
He stood up and tucked the chess book under his arm. The orange jumpsuit had no pockets—I guess the sheriff didn’t want prisoners carrying anything that couldn’t be seen.
“Oh, I almost forgot,” Dad said. “Channel 10 is running my interview tonight on the five o’clock news! Be sure to tell your mom.”
“Cool,” I said, though I was seriously tempted to rush home and break the television.
After lunch I sat down under a tamarind tree and waited for Lice Peeking. I had a story ready for when Mom asked me why he was taking the skiff. I planned to tell her that Dad was loaning it out for a few weeks. The truth was more complicated, and Mom wouldn’t have approved.
After an hour or so I got restless. I walked around to the backyard and climbed up the trailer and sat down in the skiff. I started thinking about all the great times we’d had—Dad, Abbey, and me—on our sunset trips. My mother wasn’t keen on fishing, but she was always happy when we’d come back with a cooler full of snappers. Abbey said Mom was just relieved that we’d gotten home in one piece, but I think it was more than that. Mom really loved it when we were doing things together—she and Abbey fixing the salad and potatoes, Dad and me cleaning the fish.
Those nights are the best times ever. My mother’s always waiting on the front stoop when we pull into the driveway, and the first question she asks is: “Did you see the green flash?” Abbey says Mom’s only kidding, but I think she really believes in it.
And my father always gives her the same answer. “Maybe next time,” he says, “but it won’t happen, Donna, unless you come along.”
But she usually doesn’t. The skiff is kind of small for all four of us.
After a while Abbey came outside and hopped in the boat with me. I told her that Lice Peeking was late.
“Maybe he chickened out,” she said.
“For twelve thousand dollars? No way.”
“Maybe Dusty Muleman offered him more if he kept his mouth shut.”
Leave it to my sister to think of something like that. From what I’d seen of Lice Peeking, I didn’t think he’d sneak back to Dusty in hopes of a better deal. Lice had seemed perfectly satisfied with the idea of taking Dad’s boat and selling it.
“He’s probably still working on his statement,” I said.
“Or his hangover,” said Abbey.
“Maybe I’d better go check on him.”
“I’ll come with you.”
“No, Abbey, you need to stay here in case he shows up for the boat.” More important, I didn’t want her to see Lice Peeking passed out drunk in that smelly trailer, if that’s where he was.
“If you’re not back in an hour,” my sister said, “I’m either telling Mom or calling the cops.”
“Whatever,” I said. One was just as bad as the other.
I grabbed my bike and headed full speed down the old road. I’d had a bad feeling about Lice Peeking from the beginning, and now it looked like I might be right. If he was Dad’s best hope for a witness against Dusty Muleman, we might be in deep trouble.
Halfway to the trailer park it started pouring, and I was drenched by the time I got there. I knocked so hard that the door swung open.
Dripping like a dog, I stepped inside. The TV was blaring—some station that shows country-music videos all day long. I turned it off and called out, “Helloooo?”
Nothing.
“Anybody home? Mr. Peeking?”
From the rear of the trailer came a muffled thump-thump of footsteps, and I tensed up. I was ready to run if Lice came out bombed or acting crazy.
But it was Shelly who walked up the hall, all alone. She looked red in the cheeks and not very happy. She was wearing the top half of a blue bathing suit and a Hawaiian-style wraparound skirt. Her brassy blond hair was pinned in a bun, and she was limping. I noticed that her right foot was wrapped in tape, and I wondered if it had something to do with the baseball bat she was carrying.
“Sorry for barging in,” I said, taking a backward step toward the door. “I knocked for a long time but nobody heard me.”
“I was busy redecorating. What do you want?”
“Mr. Peeking was supposed to stop over today and look at my dad’s bonefish boat.”
“And he didn’t show up? My darlin’ Lice? What a surprise.” Shelly laughed in a cold way that made me shudder.
“Is he here?” I asked.
“Nope.”
“Do you know where I could reach him?”
“Nope.”
For several moments we stood there not saying anything, the rain drumming on the aluminum roof.
“What happened to your foot?” I heard myself ask.
“I believe I busted it,” Shelly replied.
“How?”
“Kicking the toilet to death.”
>
“Oh,” I said.
“I was pretending it was Lice’s butt. He’s gone, by the way, in case you hadn’t figured that out.”
“Gone where?”
“Wherever it is that gutless, lazy, lowlife boyfriends go,” she said. “Bolted last night while I was in the shower. Took my Jeep, too. The cops found it abandoned this morning up near the toll plaza at Cutler Ridge.”
I didn’t know what to say, but I had to be careful. Shelly looked like she was aching to use that baseball bat.
“But Mr. Peeking told me he doesn’t have a driver’s license,” I said.
“A minor technicality,” said Shelly, “for a weasel like him. Have a seat, Noah.”
“I really better be going.”
“I said have a seat.”
So I did.
“Some man came by to see Lice last night,” she said, “just before he ran off. A big bald-headed guy with a weird foreign accent—French or Russian or something.”
“He was bald?” I thought of the stranger who’d grabbed Abbey at the marina.
“Like a bowling ball,” Shelly said. “Plus, he looked like somebody gave him a nose job with a socket wrench. Lice went outside to talk, and he came back white as a ghost. Wouldn’t tell me anything, either. Waited until I was in the shower, then he took off. Did I mention he grabbed all the cash?”
“No, ma’am.”
“A hundred and eighty-six bucks. Everything I had.”
“That stinks.” I felt queasy, like somehow it was all my fault.
“Funny,” Shelly said, “but Lice didn’t say nothin’ about buyin’ your daddy’s boat.”
“I’ve really got to go now.”
“Remember what I told you about lying, Noah?”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“Besides, you can’t be out in this rain. You’ll catch strep.”
I was more than ready to risk it. “Please,” I said. “My mom’s gonna be worried.”
Shelly nodded toward the telephone. “Then give her a jingle.”
Of course, I didn’t move.
Shelly smiled. “Tell me about Lice and your daddy’s boat,” she said. “Tell me everything, okay? I’m sure it won’t take long.”
