by Carl Hiassen
Skink shook Levon Stichler out of the carpet, dumping him like a sack of flour on the terrazzo. Somebody yanked off the gag and the blindfold.
The old man's eyes watered at the sudden brightness.
A woman's voice: "You again."
Levon blinked until a face came into focus-the redhead from the hurricane house at Turtle Meadow. The chiffon scarf, Levon's blinder, dangled from her festively painted fingernails. Standing next to the redhead was a wild-looking blonde. She said, "What's your name, sweetheart?"
The redhead wore a diaphanous black bustier, fishnet stockings and stiletto heels. The blonde wore a silver lame teddy that made her shimmer like the hood ornament on a Silver Shadow. The air was sugary with perfume; pure heaven, after three hours of gagging on mildew and carpet fuzz. When Levon Stichler sat up, he found himself in the center of an attentive circle: the two prostitutes, the thug in the pinstriped suit, the pretty long-haired brunette, another young woman, with creamy skin and delicate features, and a large bearded man wearing a flowered shower cap. The bearded man was polishing a glass eye on the sleeve of his jacket.
They were gathered in a small motel room. Levon Stichler said: "What's this all about?" The prostitutes introduced themselves. Bridget and Jasmine.
Snapper dropped to a crouch. Roughly he pinched the back of the old man's neck. "You tried to kill me, 'member?"
"It was a mistake. I told you."
"Here's the deal: You're gone stay down here two, maybe three days with the girls. They're gone fuck ya and blow ya till you can't walk. Plus they gone take some pitchers."
Levon was skeptical. The man reeked of liquor and spoke as if he had a mouthful of marbles.
"Just shoot me and get it over with."
"We're not shooting anybody." It was the pretty brunette. "Honest," she said, "long as you behave."
Snapper said, "Maybe you're too old to get it up or maybe you like guys-I don't fuckin' care. Point is, you stay here with these girls till I call and say it's OK to leave. Then what you do, you take your sweet time gettin' back to Miami. By that I mean, stand on the highway with your thumb out. Unnerstand?"
Levon stammered and blinked. Snapper swatted him twice across the face.
Edie Marsh said: "I don't think Mister Stichler realizes the alternative. The alternative is we go to the cops and tell how you tried to murder Snapper and rape me with that trailer spike. Your family'll think you've gone senile. The photographs won't help-Grandpa doing pony rides with two call girls."
Levon glanced up at Bridget and Jasmine. They were large and scary. He could tell they'd worked together before.
"Think of it as a vacation," said Edie. "Hey, you're allowed to have fun,"
"I wish I could."
"Uh-oh." Bridget knelt beside him. "Prostate?"
The old man nodded somberly. "It was removed last year."
Jasmine told him to cheer up. "We'll think of something."
Skink, fitting his glass eye into its socket, advised Levon Stichler to do what he was told. "It's still better than getting shot."
Bridget said, "Gee, thanks."
Snapper paid the prostitutes from a wad of the stolen roofing money, which they counted, divided and put away. They turned their backs so he wouldn't peek inside their pocketbooks, which bulged with the other cash given to them ten minutes earlier by Avila, and ten minutes before that by the good-looking young man with the .38 Special.
"Is there ice in the bucket?" Bonnie Lamb asked. The hooker named Jasmine told her to help herself. Bonnie scooped two handfuls of cubes and pressed them to her cheeks.
The one-eyed man helped the prostitutes lift Levon Stichler to his feet. Snapper poked the old man's Adam's apple with the barrel of the gun. "Don't try nuthin' stupid," he said. "These young girls can crack coconuts in their legs. Killing a skinny old fart like you is no problem whassoever."
Levon Stichler didn't doubt it for a moment. "Don't worry, mister. I'm no hero."
The redhead pinched his butt playfully. "We'll see about that."
Augustine was hiding behind a Dumpster when the black Cherokee with the cheesy mud flaps arrived at the Paradise Palms. His spirits leaped when he saw Bonnie Lamb get out, followed by the governor. The driver was a brown-haired woman in a lavender top; probably the one from the driver's license photo, Edith Deborah Marsh, age twenty-nine. She was the next to get out of the Jeep. From the passenger side: a lanky sallow man in a rumpled suit, no necktie. He carried a gun and a bottle, and seemed unsteady. His crooked jaw was made conspicuous by a street light. Augustine had no doubt. It was him; the one who'd attacked Brenda Rourke, the one the prostitutes had told him about. Snapper in real life, "Lester Parsons" on the motel register.
The man opened the hatch of the Cherokee and barked something at Skink, who removed a long lumpy bundle and hoisted it across his back. Once the procession disappeared into the motel, Augustine ran to the Jeep, climbed in the cargo well and quietly closed the hatch. He flattened himself below the rear window, placing the .38 at his right side. With both hands he held the dart rifle across his chest.
This, he thought, would be something to tell the old man. Make those fat wormy veins in his temples pop up.
Dad wouldn't dream of risking his neck unless vast sums of money were at stake. Love, loyalty and honor weren't part of the dope smuggler's creed. Augustine could hear the incredulity: A.G., why the hell would you do such a crazy thing?
Because the man deserved it. He beat up a lady cop and stole her mother's wedding ring. He was scum.
Don't be an idiot. You could've been killed.
He kidnapped the woman I love.
I raised an idiot!
No you didn't. You didn't raise anybody.
Whenever Augustine wrote his father, he made a point of mentioning how much money he'd given away to ex-girlfriends, obscure charities and ultraliberal political causes. He imagined his father's face turning gray with dismay.
You disappoint me, A.G.
This from a dumb shit who ran aground at full throttle with thirty-three kilos in the bilge and the entire Bahamian National Defense Force in pursuit.
"You disappoint me."
Right. Augustine listened to the rain thrumming against the roof of the truck. It made him drowsy.
He hadn't expected to see his father waiting when he awoke from the coma, so he wasn't disappointed. Predominantly he was thrilled to be alive. The person at his bedside was a middle-aged Haitian nurse named Lucy. She told him about the plane crash, the months of slumber. Augustine hugged her tearfully. Lucy showed him a letter from his father, sent from the prison in Talladega; she'd read the letter aloud to Augustine when he was unconscious. She volunteered to read it again.
Son, I hope you are alive to read these words. I'm sorry the way things turned out. Dad should've signed off right there, but grace and decency were never his strong suits.
Everything I did was for you, he wrote. Every move I made, right or wrong.
Which was crap, an unnecessary lie. It mildly saddened Augustine but didn't embitter him. He was beyond all that. The airplane accident had pruned his emotions down to the roots. Nothing affected him the way it had before, which was fine. He decided everyone could benefit from a short coma. Wipe the slate clean.
So what if it took him years to come up with a new agenda? Here it was. Here she was.
Dad would not approve. Fortunately, Dad was not a factor.
Augustine heard the closing of a door, footsteps slapping in the puddles, voices advancing across the motel parking lot. He took three deep breaths. Checked the safety on the dart rifle.
He was glad for the weather, which misted the Jeep's windows and made him invisible from the outside. The voices grew sharper-two men arguing. Augustine didn't recognize them. Perhaps Snapper and somebody else, but who?
Loud words broke through the whisper of the rain. Augustine decided not to give himself away unless Bonnie Lamb was in trouble. The argument moved closer. Then came a deep huff,
the sounds of a clumsy struggle; a bottle shattering on the pavement.
One of the men blurted: "Hold the damn gun while I strangle this fucker."
Snapper's consternation about the two remaining bullets in the .357 was well founded. A crack marksman he was not.
A police report dated July 7, 1989, showed that one Lester Maddox Parsons was arrested for shooting Theodore "Sunny" Shea outside the Satellite Grille in Dania, Florida. The victim was not just a garden-variety crack dealer, as Snapper claimed after the incident. In truth, Sunny Shea was his longtime business partner. The scope of their enterprises extended beyond drugs to stolen guns, jewelry, clothing, patio furniture, stereos, even a shipment of baby food on one occasion. Eventually Sunny Shea came to suspect Snapper of cheating him on the proceeds, and confronted him with the accusation one humid summer night in the doorway of the Satellite Grille, before sixteen eyewitnesses.
Snapper's indignant response was to display a 9mm Clock (swiped from the glove box of an unmarked Coral Springs police car) and attempt to empty said weapon into Sunny Shea. In all, Snapper fired eleven times from a distance of eight feet. Only six rounds struck Sunny Shea, and not one nicked a vital organ-quite a feat, considering that Sunny Shea weighed only one hundred thirty pounds and hadn't an ounce of fat on his body. The hapless shooting exhibition was even more remarkable because Snapper was stone sober at the time.
Sunny Shea never lost consciousness, and was extremely cooperative when police inquired about the identity of his assailant. The two detectives who hauled Lester Maddox Parsons to the Broward County Jail ridiculed him mercilessly about his lousy aim.
The next morning, when they came to his cell to inform him that the charge of attempted first-degree murder had been upgraded, Snapper glowed with vindication. Then he learned it wasn't one of his shots that had killed his scrawny, obnoxious partner-some bone-head in the emergency room had injected Theodore "Sunny" Shea with an antibiotic to which he was virulently, and fatally, allergic.
Snapper pleaded out to a chickenshit manslaughter and got easy time, but his confidence in the efficacy of handguns was ruined forever. Two bullets in a .357 was scarcely better than no bullets at all.
Which was why he didn't want to waste them on Avila, the whiny spic. He was the last guy on earth that Snapper expected to see at Paradise Palms. He'd materialized like a drowned ghost out of the rainstorm, bitching about the roofing deposit that Snapper had ripped off from Mrs. Whitmark.
"You know who she is? You know who she's married to?" Avila was screeching. Skink and the two women retreated to a dry vantage, under the eaves of the motel, while Avila chased Snapper around the parking lot like a terrier. Their conversation was difficult to follow, but Edie Marsh got the substance of it: Snapper had made a seven-thousand-dollar score.
Funny how he'd forgotten to tell her about it. Same as the wedding ring.
The pistol in Snapper's possession worried Avila but didn't deter him. For eighty miles he'd been praying for Change's protection, and felt moderately imbued. Snapper appeared frazzled and shaky, possibly visited by black spirits.
Avila said, "Gimme the money."
"Eat shit," Snapper growled.
When he turned away, Avila hopped on his back.
Snapper shook him off. Avila pounced again, ripping Snapper's suit and knocking the Johnnie Walker from his hand. The two men locked together, spinning in the mist. Ultimately Snapper backed into a sabal palm tree, slamming Avila against the trunk. He made a true squeak as he slid to the ground.
Snapper, panting, weaved toward Edie: "Hold the damn gun while I strangle this fucker."
Halfheartedly she took the pistol and held it on Bonnie and Skink. Snapper fell upon Avila and breathlessly beat him. Avila was surprised by the clarity of the pain. When his nose exploded under Snapper's fist, he realized he'd been foolhardy to count on beatific intervention. Evidently Chango hadn't forgiven him for the aborted coati sacrifice.
As Snapper's grimy fingernails closed upon his throat, Avila inventoried the multiple sources of his agony: the fractured nose, the sliver of broken whiskey bottle in his right thigh, the unhealed crucifixion hole in his left hand, the goat-related goring in his groin and, soon, a crushed larynx.
He thought: Forget the seven grand. Screw Gar Whit-mark. It's time to run.
Avila brought his right knee hard to Snapper's crotch. Snapper's eyelids fluttered but he didn't release his grip on Avila's neck. Avila kneed him twice more, ultimately producing the desired result. Snapper moaned and rolled away. Avila struggled to his feet. He took three steps and slipped. When he got up again, he heard Snapper rising behind him. Frantically Avila bolted for the road.
The rain made it hard to discern the details of the two men running along Highway One. Neither was large enough to be the governor, or physically fit enough to be Augustine. From where his Highway Patrol car was parked, a hundred yards away, Jim Tile was unable to see if the tall man had a crooked jaw. He might have been any old Keys drunk in a soggy pinstriped suit.
The black Jeep was still parked at the Paradise Palms. The trooper decided to sit still and wait.
Avila made it half a mile before he ran out of strength. He stopped on the Tea-Table Bridge and doubled over, sucking air. He tried to flag passing motorists, but none found room in their icy hearts for a bedraggled, saliva-flecked, blood-spattered hitchhiker. Avila was further dejected to see, framed in the window of a speeding Airstream, a freckle-faced teenaged girl, snapping his photograph.
What a sick world, he thought, when an injured human being becomes a roadside amusement.
Meanwhile, out of the veil of rain came Snapper. He was shambling like a zombie across the bridge. For a weapon he'd selected a rusty axle from an abandoned Jet Ski trailer.
Avila raised both arms in supplication. "Let's forget the whole thing, OK?"
"Don't move." Snapper gripped the axle at one end and brought it high over his head, like a sledgehammer.
With a morose peep, Avila hurled himself sideways off the bridge. The drop was only fourteen feet, but given his dread of heights, it might as well have been fourteen stories. Avila was mildly amazed to survive the impact.
The water was warm and the tide was strong. He let it carry him out the channel toward the ocean, because he wasn't strong enough to swim against it. When the sodden weight of his clothing began to drag him under, he kicked off his shoes and pants, and stripped out of his shirt. Soon the lights from the Overseas Highway were absorbed by darkness and bad weather. Avila could see nothing but the occasional high-altitude flash of heat lightning. When a heavy object thumped him in the small of the back, he was sure it was the snout of a great white shark and that death was imminent.
But it was only a piece of plywood. Avila clung to it like a crippled frog. He thought of a sublime irony– what if the life-saving lumber had blown off one of the roofs that he'd been bribed not to inspect? Perhaps it was Change's idea of a practical joke.
All night long, adrift in the chop, Avila cursed the hurricane for bringing him such misery: the sadistic doughnut man, Whitmark and, of course, Snapper. The rainfall stopped at dawn but the sun never broke free of the clouds. It was midafternoon before Avila heard an engine. As he shouted for help, a tall white fishing boat idled within hailing distance. Avila waved. The skipper and his tropically garbed clients waved back.
"Hang in there, amigo," the skipper yelled, and trolled away.
Twenty minutes later, a Coast Guard boat arrived and took Avila aboard. The crew gave him dry clothes, hot coffee and homemade chili. He ate in appreciative silence. Afterwards he was led belowdeck to a small briefing room, where he was greeted by a man from the Immigration and Naturalization Service.
In halting Spanish, the immigration man asked Avila for the name of the Cuban port he had fled. Avila laughed and explained that he was from Miami.
"Then what're you doing out here in your underwear?"
Avila said a robber was chasing him down the road, so he jumped
off a bridge in Islamorada.
"Tell the truth," the immigration man said sternly. "Obviously you're a rafter. Now where did you come from-Havana? Mariel?"
Avila was about to argue when it dawned, on him that there was no faster way to shed his burdens. What could he look forward to in his current life but an unforgiving wife, a traumatized mother-in-law, personal bankruptcy, the wrath of Gar Whitmark and a possible criminal indictment?
He asked the immigration man: "What will happen to me if I confess?"
"Nothing. You'll be processed at Krome and most likely released."
"If I am a political refugee."
"That's the usual procedure."
"Si," Avila said. "Yo soy balsero." I am a rafter.
