by Carl Hiaasen
Claspers didn’t come back. The following day, the Striplings enlisted another pilot to fly them out of Andros—a local guy with a dubiously maintained twin Beech, but Nick said go for it. The new pilot advised them to be ready at noon.
Cell service on the island was working again, so Eve phoned British Air in Nassau and booked two business-class seats to London. Her next call was to a spinal surgeon on Devonshire Street whose patients had awarded him four and a half stars on the Internet, which was insufficiently stellar for Nick but Eve made an appointment anyway.
While she was repacking for a longer, possibly permanent stay, Egg showed up. He was haggard and limping; Nick chewed him a new one anyway. The goon offered no apology for disappearing the night of the storm. He said he’d had a medical problem, so he’d brought back the Jeep and walked to the trailer at Curly Tail Lane. He didn’t say what had been done with Yancy’s girlfriend, and the Striplings didn’t ask.
Eve told Egg to look at the Super Rollie, which had been malfunctioning since Nick crashed it into the wall. Egg said the automatic steering was fucked up. Nick started hollering and cussing again because how else was he supposed to get through Heathrow if he couldn’t walk. Eve said all airports offered wheelchairs.
“Not with motors!” her husband railed. “Not with a goddamn iPod dock!”
He was in ragged shape despite the painkillers. Eve told Egg to roll him outside while she finished filling the suitcases. In the hurricane’s aftermath Bannister Point was an obstacle course—branches and coconuts and two-by-fours all over the place. Egg in his hobbled condition did a poor job of dodging the rubble, and even the Rollie’s pneumatic suspension couldn’t spare Nick from the bumps. Between groans he rehashed for Egg the saga of his ambush.
Then he asked: “It wasn’t you who tried to kill me, was it?”
“No, mon. Why I do sum ting like dot?”
“You’d have to be brain-dead,” Stripling agreed. “But who could it be? I don’t have any enemies on this fuckin’ island. I don’t know anybody on this fuckin’ island.”
Egg reminded him about the vandal who’d peed on the backhoes at the construction site.
“I thought you took care of that sonofabitch,” Nick snapped.
“Yah, I hoyt ’im putty bod but he ain’t dead. I saw ’im utter night.”
Stripling wondered aloud if the stealth urinator was the same man he’d caught snooping outside the house, the old beach nigger he’d run off with the shotgun. Which, who’d be crazy enough to come back after somebody fired a twelve-gauge over your head?
Egg made no response. It wasn’t a daily occurrence that a sober white person used the n-word in his presence, but the boss man seemed clueless.
“You gotta find out who crippled me,” Nick went on. “That’s your number one job.”
Egg said he’d ask around town.
“Yeah, right. Be careful not to work up a goddamn sweat.” Nothing annoyed Stripling as much as lack of initiative. “Maybe your woman can help,” he needled Egg. “Do some of her voodoo shit and pull a name out of some dead chicken’s asshole.”
“Dot ain’t funny.”
“What’s with the limp?” Nick could see that the brute was hurting.
“Monkey fucked me up bod.”
“No shit?” It was Stripling’s first laugh in days.
Eve caught up with them on the road. When her husband saw she was out of breath, he asked what was wrong.
“You-know-who at Immigration just called,” she said. “Honey, it’s already in the computer—somebody in Miami flagged your passport!”
Stripling deflated in the scooter chair. “That fuckin’ Yancy got to the feds.”
Eve was jumpy and distraught. “So what now, Nicky? You-know-who said they won’t let you out of the country, and there’s nothing she can do. She said don’t go near the Nassau airport.”
“So screw Nassau. We’ll stay right here until I line up another way out. The Bahamians can’t arrest us till they get a warrant from the States, and that could take weeks. Months even. Meantime Mr. Ecclestone’ll keep an eye on Moxey’s for us, right? In case a chopper full of uniforms shows up.”
Egg sniffed noncommittally.
Eve said, “Arrest us? My passport’s clean. You’re the one with the fake.”
Sometimes she could be so thick it drove Nick nuts. “Yes, baby, ‘us’ as in Mr. and Mrs. Stripling, co-conspirators. You think Yancy left you out of the story? Like maybe he didn’t hear you telling me to go ahead and blow his brains out? Or maybe the Cuban babe forgot you were the one told Egg to put a gag in her mouth and get rid of her?”
“Yeah, but, Nicky—”
“Just shut up.”
Worse came to worse, he and Eve could escape by water. The new Contender would be arriving soon—the boat was a damn rocketship is what it was. He could run it straight down to Grand Turk.
Nick commanded Egg to take him back to the house. Eve walked on ahead. She didn’t speak again until they were alone and the new pilot had been dismissed and the bags were unpacked.
“We could fly a spine doctor over from Miami or Palm Beach,” she said.
“Really. And he’ll bring his own MRI and a CT scanner? Hell, all we gotta do is lease a 747 and he can haul the whole friggin’ OR. That’s genius, Eve.” Stripling chuckled mordantly. “It’s like you forget I was in the business.”
“Quit being an asshole, Nicky. You weren’t in the medical-care business, you were in the stealing business.”
Which, he would have run over her ungrateful ass with the Rollie except the motor didn’t work because Egg had removed the battery to lighten the vehicle for pushing. After Eve stormed upstairs Stripling stewed in the scooter chair for a long time. The ice melted and turned lukewarm in the towel she’d placed upon his puncture wound. The liquid sensation caused him to squirm.
Egg had slipped away again and Eve wasn’t responding to Nick’s yells, so he pitched forward out of the Rollie and worm-crawled to the nearest bathroom, where he struggled to seat himself. He noticed that his pee stream grew weaker whenever the pain got worse, which, according to MyBedsideMD.com, could be a troublesome indication. Unfortunately, his wife was in possession of the codeine Tylenols, meaning Nick would have to suck it up and apologize or spend the remainder of the day in deepening misery.
He swung open the bathroom door and called out, “Eve, I’m sorry! Come downstairs!”
No reply.
“Eve, baby, please! I said I was sorry.”
An astringent dispatch from the second floor: “Go blow yourself, Nicky.”
Damn, he thought. She’s really hacked off.
One benefit of working in a violent metropolis such as Greater Miami was superior crime-lab technology, which had advanced by leaps and bounds during decades of extreme homicidal misbehavior. The .357 Smith & Wesson found by Gomez O’Peele’s body was tested, at Dr. Rosa Campesino’s request, for the presence of a cornstarch mixture commonly used on the inside of powdered latex medical gloves. Sometimes, when fitting a nervous hand into such a glove, a criminal might externally disperse microscopic particles of the cornstarch formula. That’s what turned up on both the handle and the trigger of the weapon that killed Dr. O’Peele.
It was a significant finding because a person who purposely shoots himself typically doesn’t worry about fingerprints, and therefore doesn’t don gloves before putting the gun barrel to his temple. In any event, the hands of Gomez O’Peele were bare when his body was discovered, and the only latents on the .357 came from two of the doctor’s right-hand fingers, which was instructive because his sisters reported he was left-handed.
Cumulatively the evidence was more than enough for Dr. Rosa Campesino to classify O’Peele’s death as a homicide, and she signed her name on the certificate. To surprised North Miami Beach detectives she conveyed her opinion that the doctor had been shot by a person other than himself who’d staged the crime as a suicide and had worn hand protection available at any medica
l-supply outlet. Rosa didn’t identify Nicholas Stripling as the likely killer because it would have jeopardized both her job and the case; the Bahamas excursion ranged far outside the accepted investigatory parameters of an assistant medical examiner. Yancy had to be the one to provide Stripling’s name.
Rosa’s ruling on O’Peele’s nonsuicide was an untidy development for the Key West Police Department, which had named the dead doctor as Charles Phinney’s killer since the same pistol was used in both shootings. The Citizen had already run a story saying the Phinney case was being closed due to the prime suspect’s self-inflicted demise. Now a new story had to be written announcing that the murder of the young fishing mate remained unsolved.
Rosa e-mailed her summary of O’Peele’s autopsy to numerous interested parties, including at Yancy’s suggestion Agents Liske and Strumberg at the Federal Bureau of Investigation. Afterward, while Rosa was eating a tomato salad at her desk, a hearse arrived at the morgue to pick up the body of Lindy Schultz, age eight, who’d died of drowning after her appendix ruptured in the family swimming pool. Nothing complicated about the postmortem, but Rosa was having difficulty writing the report.
She got home at six p.m. and took off her lab clothes and poured a glass of white wine. When Yancy called, she told him she’d gone ahead and closed O’Peele as a homicide. He was all gung ho, saying it cleared the way for murder charges against Nick Stripling—if the police could patch together a case.
Rosa was doubtful. Yancy had been the last person to see the doctor alive, a fact any semi-competent defense attorney would exploit to cast suspicion Yancy’s way. There were no known outside witnesses to O’Peele’s killing and probably no physical evidence placing Stripling at the doctor’s apartment. Unsurprisingly, the serial numbers had been scraped off the .357, making it impossible to trace a chain of ownership.
“And anybody can buy surgical gloves,” Rosa said.
“What gave you the idea to look for that powder?” Yancy asked.
She could tell he was impressed.
“Couple years ago I had a case where a urologist down on Brickell shot her boyfriend dead. Instead of using a regular medical glove to handle the weapon, she put on those latex finger cots—five of them—because she did a lot of prostate probing and that’s what she had at the office. It goes without saying she wasn’t the brightest bulb in the chandelier. The techs pulled a flawless palm print off the gun but also some cornstarch from the fingerlets. She wound up pleading to murder two.”
Most of the time Rosa enjoyed her work, although she was increasingly aware of the mental toll. She never watched CSI: Miami or any of the TV shows featuring buff forensic investigators; in fact, she didn’t look at much television except Morning Joe and the Tennis Channel. Her now-deceased former husband had been a decent mixed-doubles partner even with a spazzy backhand.
She asked Yancy if he was glad to be back in the Keys, and he said there was never a dull moment. “The westward view out my window has been dramatically enhanced. I can’t wait for you to see.”
“Oh shit. What did you do, Andrew?”
“Not a thing! However, I may have unwittingly inspired a bad deed. I’ll tell you all about it this weekend. You’re still coming down, right? If not I might get maundering drunk and take a spill on Duval Street.”
“I’ll be there as promised,” Rosa said. “Oh, major update on Stripling’s traveling arm: It’s been returned to the warm bosom of Mother Earth. The cemetery sent a man to fetch it this morning. He was dressed like a freaking Blues Brother, I swear. Said his boss sprung for a new coffin because the grave robbers ‘marred’ the other one. That’s the word he used.”
“But isn’t Eve required to sign a release?”
“They got verbal consent. He said the funeral director called her this morning.”
“In the Bahamas?”
“I’m not sure, Andrew.”
Yancy didn’t know it but Rosa was soaking in the tub. She’d been there for an hour, so the water was beginning to cool. She’d pinned up her hair and lit a candle that made the white wall tiles shine pink. It was a small candle, like the ones used for offerings in the back of the church except Rosa’s was huckleberry-scented.
Yancy said, “So, how are you doing? Tell the truth.”
“I’m okay, honest. But you know they’re going to get away, right? Both murder cases are impossible—O’Peele and your boy Phinney. Basically zero evidence, which leaves the Medicare fraud. It’ll take the feds forever to indict Stripling and get a fugitive warrant, and by then he and Eve could be in Marrakech. What the hell were we thinking, Andrew?”
Yancy said, “Look, you had a rough day.”
“I suppose you’ve already dreamed up another plan.”
“According to my new chums at the FBI, nobody calling himself Grunion has tried to leave Nassau. They believe Nick and Eve are still on Andros. And no, there isn’t a new plan. It’s the same ballsy, brilliant plan as before.”
“For God’s sake,” Rosa said.
“See? I made you laugh.”
“You most certainly did.” She poked one big toe out of the water and found herself picturing it with a tag.
Wow, she thought, that’s pretty fucked up. Definitely time for a career re-evaluation.
“Don’t forget,” Yancy was saying on the phone, “Stripling tried to kill me, too. As his only surviving victim, I intend to present myself to the county grand jury as a well-groomed, credible witness. Attempted murder is also an extraditable offense.”
Rosa didn’t want to derail Yancy’s enthusiasm, yet she feared that his value to prosecutors would be small given the messy circumstances leading to his demotion from the detective squad to roach patrol.
“You heard from Neville?” she asked.
“Not yet,” Yancy said. “I’m hoping he’s just laying low.”
“I feel terrible about Coquina’s house. The whole roof blowing off—that was insane.”
“It’s what hurricanes do.”
“It wasn’t the hurricane, Andrew. It was us.”
Rosa said good-bye and put down the phone and closed her eyes. She was smiling when the candle burned out.
Neville wasn’t worried for himself. It was Driggs who was in danger.
“Some bod mon lookin’ to kill you so do wot I say. Now get in!”
The monkey made a fuss but eventually he curled up inside the backpack, which Neville zipped up snug. He threaded his arms through the straps and rode his bicycle to the conch shack. Half the thatching was gone, so he sat on the shady side of the bar. A muffled chitter came from the backpack when Neville set it on the stool beside him.
Everybody in the place was talking about the storm, sharing damage reports, gossip, whose husband spent the night with who. Neville ordered fritters and out of guilt he slipped a small one to Driggs. The air was thick as glue, like always after a hurricane.
Egg came limping down the road, but Neville didn’t get up to leave. He was from Andros and Egg wasn’t. The others sitting at the conch shack were locals, too. If Egg got a notion in his fat skull to start trouble, he would be heavily outnumbered.
Like a half-wit he sat down squinting in the hottest patch of sun. When he finally spotted Neville he hitched around to the shade.
“Mon, I shoulda kill you down on de beach,” he said.
Neville stayed cool. He was still sore from the beating outside the trailer.
“Utter night at my old lady’s place, ’member dot? She say it was your fucking monkey did a number on my cock.”
“Wot! Ain’t my monkey, mon. I give ’im up as pay fuh summa her big woo-doo.” Neville snuck a glance at the backpack. He prayed Driggs would stay quiet.
To Egg he asserted, “Dot monkey belongs legal to her, not me.”
“When I find ’im I’m gon rip ’is head off.”
“No way! He wort good money. She dint tell you he was in de movies with Johnny Depp?”
Egg was conscious of his outsider status on the i
sland. He lowered his voice. “I seen dot wicked ape run off wit you. Don’t lie. Give ’im up and we be done wit dis foolishness.”
“Mon, wasn’t fuh me you’d still have his filty teet in you! Lucky f’you I walked in dot shack when I did.” Neville was startled by his own strong words. The plastic fork in his hand was shaking.
“Okay. I guess you wanna die,” Egg said.
“Dot’s you, mister! You beeda one must wants to die coz dot’s wot hoppen to men who lay in bed wit de Dragon Queen.”
“Oh bullshit.”
“Axe anybotty on Lizard Cay! Go on,” Neville said. “Lisbon Jones. Duncan Roxy. Lightbourne Carter, too. All strong young fellas come under her spell and now dey stone dead. Go look in de graveyard up Prince Hill, you dont believe me.”
“I ain’t under nobody’s spell,” said Egg, without much zip.
“Listen to some hard truth, mon.”
Egg said Neville was a lying sonofabitch, but he didn’t hit him. “Somebody stobbed my boss in de back and put ’im in a wheelchair. Wot you know ’bout dot?”
“Mr. Chrissofer got stobbed?” Neville acted shocked.
“And why you hongin’ wit dot white mon, anyhow?” Egg asked.
“Wot white mon?”
“One you was wit at de old lady’s place. One who took off yest’day in boss’s plane.”
From the corner of his eye Neville caught movement—Driggs fidgeting inside the zippered satchel. Egg didn’t notice.
“Who I choose to hong wit is my bidness,” Neville said.
“Had de hawt Cuban girlfriend.”
“Yah, I know who you mean. Dot white mon? He a cop from Florida.”
Egg frowned. “A cop? No way.” Sweat was beading on his prunish little ears.
“He gon put your boss mon in a U.S. prison,” Neville said ominously. “I was you, I’d get my ahss back to Nassau look f’nudder job.”
Egg gimped off at a brisk clip. Neville finished his fritters and paid the bill. On the bike ride to the dock he stopped to open the backpack. Out squirmed Driggs, funky-smelling and carping as he climbed to Neville’s shoulder. He was having a bad time kicking the nicotine.
