Stormy Weather

by Carl Hiassen

  As distracted as he was, Jim Tile also seemed visibly anxious about the boat trip. Even in the dark, the bay looked rough and tricky. Oddly, Bonnie Lamb wasn't worried. Maybe it was the way Augustine handled himself behind the wheel; steering casually with two fingers as he aimed, with his free hand, the spotlight.

  Smoothly he weaved around massive tree limbs and wind-split lumber and ghostly capsized hulls. The scary ride temporarily took Jim Tile's mind off the image of Brenda on an ambulance stretcher....

  Bonnie was anticipating her first sight of the man called Skink. She kept thinking about the bloodied corpse in the morgue-impaled on a TV dish, the trooper had said. Was Skink the killer? To hear the trooper tell it, the ex-governor was not a nut of the certifiable, Mansonesque strain. Rather, he was launched on a mission: a reckless doomed mission, boisterously outside the law. Bonnie was intrigued by bold eccentrics. She wasn't afraid of Skink, not with the trooper and Augustine at her side. In an odd way, although she'd never admit it, she looked forward to confronting the kidnapper almost as much as to reuniting with her husband....

  Now Jim Tile and Augustine were struggling to drag the unconscious man over the gunwale of the speedboat. His clothes were soaked, adding to his considerable bulk. Bonnie Lamb tried to help. Augustine got a silvery handful of the man's hair, the trooper had him by the belt loops, Bonnie dug her fingers in the tongues of his boots-and finally the kidnapper was on the deck, vomiting seawater.

  From the bow came a whine of disgust: Max Lamb, arms folded, face pinched, sucking a Bronco cigaret. Bonnie turned back to the tranquilized stranger. The trooper knelt beside him. With a handkerchief he cleaned the foul splatter off Skirik's face; "the glass eye needed special attention.

  Augustine said, "He's breathing."

  A volcanic cough, and then: "I saw lobsters big as Sonny Listen." Skink raised his head.

  Jim Tile said, "Be still now."

  "My Walkman!"

  "We'll get you a new one. Now lie still."

  Skink lowered his head with a sharp clunk. Humming, he shut both eyes.

  Bonnie Lamb asked, "What do we do with him?"

  Max laughed acidly. "He's going to jail, what'd you think?"

  Bonnie looked at Augustine, who said, "It's up to Jim. He's the law."

  The trooper had a thermos open, trying to get some hot coffee into his groggy friend. Bonnie put her hands under the kidnapper's head to help him drink. Augustine went to the console and started the boat. Over the noise of the engines, Bonnie asked Jim Tile if she should sit with the man during the ride back, in case he got ill again. The trooper leaned close and in a low voice said: "He's all right now. Go check on your husband."

  "OK," Bonnie said. She was glad for the darkness, so the trooper couldn't see her blush. Neither could Max.

  The conversation between Gar Whitmark and his wife was not a loving one. That she had handed seven thousand cash to a band of crooked roofers was infuriating enough; that she had failed to ask the name of the one taking the money was unforgivably stupid. The only clue in tracking the thieves was the piece of yellow paper that had been given by the phony roofing foreman to Mrs. Whitmark, the yellow paper intended to double as a receipt and an estimate, the yellow paper that Mrs. Whitmark had instantly misplaced.

  Gar Whitmark's anger had another facet. He was by trade a builder of residential subdivisions, and was therefore personally familiar with every honest, competent roofer in Dade County. The list was not voluminous, but from it Gar Whitmark had intended to select the crew that would rebuild the roof of his gutted home. He'd left messages with a half-dozen companies, and had explained (repeatedly) to his wife that it would take time to line up the job. The hurricane had launched a drooling Klondike stampede among roofers-the best ones were swamped with emergency work and likely would be engaged for months to come. Meanwhile out-of-towners were pouring into Miami by the truckload; some were capable and experienced, some were hapless and inept, and many were gypsy impostors. All arrived to find boundless opportunity.

  The typical hurricane victim, frantic for shelter, was forced to trust his instincts when choosing a roof builder. Unfortunately, the instincts of the typical hurricane victim in such matters were not acute. Gar Whitmark, however, had the twin advantages of knowing the cast of characters and possessing the clout to divert the best of them to his own pressing needs. With little trouble he located a top-notch roofer who agreed to put all other contracts aside to tackle Gar Whitmark's roof (Whitmark being one of the most prolific home builders-and employers of roofing contractors-in all South Florida). However, the craftsman whom Whitmark selected first had to replace two other roofs: his own, and that of his wife's mother.

  Gar Whitmark gave the man seven days to patch up the family roofs. The delay proved unbearable for Mrs. Whitmark, whose roaring anxiety at the chance of more rain-stained Chippendales was no match for her customary palliative dosages of sedatives, muscle relaxants, sleep aids and mood elevators. To Mrs. Whitmark, the unexpected appearance of willing roofers at the door had been a godsend. She thought her husband would be grateful for her initiative-it would be one less problem for him to worry about, what with all the nasty threats of negligence suits from customers whose Whitmark Signature homes had disintegrated like soggy cardboard in the hurricane.

  Standing in the living room, the rain beating a tattoo on his blue-veined forehead, Gar Whitmark instructed his wife to immediately locate the goddamn receipt or estimate or whatever the goddamn so-called foreman had called it. After an hour's search, the crucial yellow paper turned up neatly folded in Mrs. Whitmark's high-school yearbook; Gar Whitmark couldn't imagine why his wife had put it there, or how she found it. Nor could she explain it herself-her brain was too jumbled by the hurricane.

  The receipt bore the name of "Fortress Roofing," which brought a bitter cackle from Gar Whitmark. At least the scammers had a sense of irony! Gar Whitmark dialed the number and got an answering machine. He hung up and called the director of the county building-and-zoning department, who owed his job to seven of the county commissioners, who owed their jobs to Gar Whitmark's generous campaign contributions. As Gar Whitmark anticipated, the building director expressed shock and alarm that a fraud was perpetrated on Gar Whitmark's wife, and promised a thorough criminal investigation.

  No, he hadn't ever heard of Fortress Roofing-but he'd damn sure find out who was behind it.

  Sooner the better, said Gar Whitmark, toweling the rainwater from his stinging scalp, which bristled with fifty pink-stemmed, freshly implanted hair plugs.

  Fifteen minutes later, the building director phoned back to report, mournfully, that Fortress Roofing had never obtained a valid Dade County contractor's license and was therefore an unknown outlaw entity.

  In a fury, Gar Whitmark began contacting roofers he knew-some honest, some not. The name Fortress struck a note with one or two, who said they'd recently lost crew to the new company. The sonofabitch owner, they said, was an ex-inspector named Avila. Dirty as they come, the roofers warned.

  Gar Whitmark knew Avila quite well, having successfully bribed him for many years. All those times Gar Whitmark's subcontractors had slipped booty to the greedy bastard! Cash, booze, porn-Avila had a taste for the hard stuff; girl-on-girl, if Gar Whitmark remembered correctly.

  He called his secretary, whose fingers swiftly punched up a highly confidential computer file of corrupt and/or corruptible officials in Dade, Broward, Palm Beach, Lee and Monroe Counties. It was a lengthy roster, alphabetized for convenience. Avila's name and unlisted home phone number winked fatefully at the bottom of the first screen.

  Gar Whitmark waited until three in the morning before phoning.

  "This is your old friend Gar Whitmark," he said. "Your crew of gypsy fakers hit my wife for seven grand. My wife is not well, Avila. If I don't see my money by tomorrow morning, you'll be in the county jail by tomorrow night. And I will arrange for you to share a cell with Paul Pick-Percy."

  The threat brutally jarred A
vila wide awake. Paul Pick-Percy was a notorious cannibal. Currently he awaited trial on charges of killing and eating his landlord, who had neglected to repair a leaky ball cock in Paul Pick-Percy's toilet tank. Recently Paul Pick-Percy had also been found guilty of killing and eating a tardy cable-TV repairman and a rude tollbooth attendant.

  Avila said: "Seven thousand? Mister Whitmark, I swear to God I don't know nothing about this."

  "Suit yourself—"

  "Wait, now hold on...." Avila sat upright in bed. "Tell me supposedly what happened, OK?"

  "There is no fucking 'supposedly.'" Gar Whitmark related his wife's pitiable tale.

  "And the truck was ours, you're sure?"

  "I'm holding the receipt, dipshit. 'Fortress Roofing' is what it says."

  Avila grimaced. "Who signed it?"

  Gar Whitmark said the signature was illegible. "My wife said the guy had a fucked-up jaw made him look like a moray eel. Plus he wore a bad suit."

  "Shit," Avila said. Exactly what he'd feared.

  "Is this ringing a bell?" Gar Whitmark's sarcasm was heavy and ominous.

  Avila sagged against the headboard of his bed. "Sir, you'll get your money back first thing."

  "Damn straight. And a new roof as well."

  "What?"

  "You heard me, noodle dick. The seven grand your people stole, plus you're picking up the bill when my new roof gets done. By real roofers."

  Avila's stomach pitched. Gar Whitmark probably lived in a goddamn ranch house way down south, with all the other millionaires. Avila figured he'd be looking at twenty thousand, easy, for a new roof job. He said, "That ain't really fair."

  "You'd rather do dinner with Chef Pick-Percy?"

  "Aw, Christ, Mister Whitmark."

  "I didn't think so."

  Avila got out of bed and went to the backyard to round up two roosters, which he took to the garage for beheading. He hoped the sacrifice would be favorably received. After a short scuffle, the deed was done. Avila dripped the warm blood into a plastic pail filled with pennies, bleached cat bones and turtle shells. The pail was placed at the feet of a ceramic statue of Change, the saint of lightning and fire. The child-sized statue wore a robe, colored beads and a gold-plated crown. Kneeling in beseechment, Avila raised his blood-flecked arms toward the heavens and asked Change to please strike Snapper dead as a fucking doornail for screwing up the roofer scam.

  Avila wasn't sure the ceremony would work. He was relatively new to the study of santeria and, characteristically, hadn't bothered to research it thoroughly. Avila had begun dabbling in the blood practices when he first learned the authorities were investigating him for bribery; several cocaine dealers of his acquaintance swore that santeria worship had kept them out of jail, so Avila figured there was nothing to lose by trying. In Hialeah he conferred with a genuine santero priest, who' offered to teach him the secrets of the religion, rooted in ancient Afro-Cuban customs. The history was infinitely too deep and mystical for Avila, and soon he grew impatient with the lessons.

  All he really wanted, he explained to the santero, was the ability to put curses on his enemies. Lethal curses.

  The priest wailed and told him to get lost. But Avila went home convinced that, from the mumbo jumbo he'd seen, he could teach himself the basics of hexing. For his deity Avila picked the saint Change, because he liked the macho name. For his first target he chose the county prosecutor leading the investigation against corrupt building inspectors.

  Pennies were easy to come by, as were old animal bones; Avila's grandmother lived four blocks from a pet cemetery in Medley. Obtaining blood was the biggest obstacle for Avila, who had no zeal for performing live sacrifices. The first few times, he tried pleasing Chango by sprinkling the coins and bones with steak juices and .. homemade bouillon. Nothing happened. Evidently the santeria saints preferred the fresh stuff.

  One rainy Sunday afternoon, Avila bought himself a live chicken. His wife was cooking a big dinner for the cousins, so she banished Avila from the kitchen. He put a Ginsu knife in his back pocket and smuggled the victim to the garage. As soon as Avila began spreading newspapers on the floor, the chicken sensed trouble. Avila was astounded that a puny five-pound bird could make such a racket or put up such spirited resistance. The crudely staged sacrifice eventually was completed, but Avila emerged scratched, pecked and smeared with bloody feathers. So was his wife's cream-colored Buick Electra. Her ear-splitting tirade caused the cousins to forgo dessert and head home early.

  Two days later, the magic happened. The prosecutor targeted by Avila's chicken curse fell and dislocated a shoulder in the shower. At the time, he was in the company of an athletic prostitute named Kandi, who was thoughtful enough not only to call 911 but to make herself available for numerous press interviews. Given the media uproar, the State Attorney suggested that the fallen prosecutor take an indefinite leave of absence.

  The corruption investigation wasn't derailed, merely reassigned. Nevertheless, Avila was convinced that the santeria spell was a success. Later attempts to replicate the results proved fruitless (and messy), but Avila blamed his own inexperience, plus a lack of suitable facilities. Perhaps, during the sacrifices, he was chanting the wrong phrases, or chanting the right phrases in the wrong order. Perhaps he was performing the ceremonies at a bad time of day for the mercurial Change. Or perhaps Avila was simply using inferior poultry.

  While he ended up plea-bargaining with the replacement prosecutor, Avila's faith in the witchcraft of bones and blood remained unshaken. He decided Snapper's transgression was heinous enough to merit the offering of two chickens instead of one. If that didn't work, he'd invest in a billy goat.

  The roosters did not succumb quietly, the clamor awakening Avila's wife, aunt and mother. The women burst, into the garage to find Avila singing Spanish gibberish to his cherished ceramic statue. Avila's wife instantly spied red droplets and a waxen fragment of chicken beak on the left front fender of her Electra, and savagely took to striking her husband with a garden rake.

  On the other side of Dade County, Snapper dozed peacefully in a dead man's Naugahyde recliner. He felt no pain from the supernatural hand of Chango, nor did he feel the hateful glare of Edie Marsh, who was stretched out on the mildewed carpet and trussed to a naked insurance man.

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  As the candles melted to lumps, Snapper's shadow flickered and shrunk on the pale bare walls. His profile reminded Edie Marsh of a miniature tyrannosaurus.

  For laughs, he refused to let Fred Dove remove the red condom.

  "That's mean," Edie said.

  "Well, I'm one mean motherfucker," Snapper proclaimed. "You don't believe me, there's a lady cop in the hospital you should see."

  When he yawned, the misaligned mandible waggled horizontally, then appeared to disengage altogether from his face. He looked like a snake trying to swallow an egg.

  Edie said, "What is it you want?"

  "You know damn well." Snapper held the flashlight on Fred Dove's retreating cock. "Where'd you find a red rubber?" he asked. "Mail order, I bet. Looks like a Santy Claushat."

  From the floor, the insurance man gave a disconsolate whimper. Edie leaned her head against the small of his back. Snapper had positioned them butt-to-butt, binding their hands with a curtain sash. In Fred Dove's briefcase Snapper found the business cards and policy folders from Midwest Casualty. From that it was easy to figure out-Edie on her knees, and so on. Snapper marveled at the exquisite timing of his entrance.

  He said, "Fair is fair. A three-way split."

  "But you took off!" Edie objected. "You left me here with that asshole Tony."

  Snapper shrugged. "I changed my mind. I'm allowed. So how much money we talkin' about?"

  "Fuck you," said Edie Marsh.

  Without leaving the recliner, Snapper cocked one leg and kicked her in the side of the head. The sound of the blow was sickening. Edie moaned but didn't cry.

  "For God's sake." Fred Dove's voice cracked, as if he were the one
who'd been clobbered.

  Snapper said, "Then tell me how much."

  "Don't you dare." Edie was woozy, but sharply she dug both elbows into Fred Dove's ribs.

  "I'm waiting," said Snapper.

  Edie felt the insurance man stiffen against the ropes. Then she heard him say: "A hundred forty-one thousand dollars."

  "Moron! "Edie hissed.

  "But you won't get a dime," Fred Dove warned Snapper, "without me and Edie."

  "That a fact?"

  "Yes, sir."

  "Not a goddamn cent," Edie agreed, "because guess who's getting the settlement check. Missus Neria Torres. Me."

  Snapper aimed the flashlight on Edie's face, which bore a puffy salmon imprint of his shoe. "Sweetie," he said, "it's hard to sign a check if you're in a body cast. Understand?"