Razor Girl (21 page)

Once he was on-scene in Florida, Amp planned to elbow Coolman offstage and take charge. Buck Nance would be steered aside and given a bracing dose of straight talk. The man calling himself Spiro would be humored and led to believe that prime-time glory awaited. Amp also aimed to uncover Spiro's real name and feed it to a private investigator for a criminal background check that promised to be bountiful.

“The maniac walks around with a gun in his pants,” Cree Windsor reminded Amp.

“So do half the crappy actors in Hollywood.”

For a lunch break Amp met Rachel Coolman at the Wilshire, where he was crushed to hear that for once she wanted only lunch. Room service delivered two coho salmon Caesars and a bottle of white wine. Amp and Rachel sat on the edge of the king-sized bed in front of the food cart, which was draped with a linen tablecloth. Rachel kept most of her clothes on and out of nowhere began to complain that Amp appeared to be taking Lane's side in the divorce. She implored him to make Lane return to Los Angeles, so that court proceedings could resume.

To salvage his chances for a quickie, Amp assured Rachel he would speak with her husband as soon as he got to Key West.

“And you'll tell him to do the right thing? Promise?” She unfolded her legs.

“Baby, I will
order
him to be on the next flight home,” Amp said.

Rachel smiled and took a pursed nibble of salmon. “Nobody wants a long, drawn-out trial. Be sure and tell him that, too, okay? Hurry back to L.A. and let's get this thing settled, then both of us can go our separate ways.”

“That makes total sense.” Amp assumed the judge had refused to issue a contempt order against Lane, forcing Rachel to try a new strategy.

“A trial would be completely exhausting,” she went on. “I wouldn't have the energy for anything else, I'd be so burned out.”

Amp got the message, and accepted his role in the Coolmans' court fight. He didn't want to give up his lunchtimes with Rachel. She was so damn hot.

“Going to trial would be crazy,” he agreed. “A total nightmare for everyone except the goddamn attorneys. I'll get Lane on board, don't worry.”

“I knew you'd understand.” Rachel put down her fork and with her bare heels pushed the food cart away from the bed. “How about some dessert? You still look hungry.”

After Blister shot the mailbox they sped back to the house on Fleming Street and turned off the lights. The next morning Lane Coolman ordered a different limo. When a white super-stretch arrived, he sent it away. “We're not going to a prom,” he said to a downcast Blister. “Let's get something shorter than a city block.”

They ended up in a standard black Yukon with non-pimp rims. The new driver was another Cuban, which elicited from Blister a vile monologue on America's self-destructive immigration policies. He got bummed when Buck wouldn't chime in.

Eventually the driver had enough, and spoke up: “Sir, I was born in New Jersey. I'm a U.S. citizen just like you.”

Blister hurled himself halfway over the front seat snarling, “Hey, Pablo, you ain't just like me! And your people sure as hell ain't like my people. Tell him, Buck!”

“Quiet,” said Captain Cock.

“What?”

“Just shut up.”

Blister sat back fuming and confused.

Buck was no fan of Hispanics, but he couldn't bear listening to Blister berate the driver. When Buck was a boy he'd overheard his father speak to a Puerto Rican auto mechanic the same way, and he remembered feeling uneasy and possibly ashamed. True, he and his brothers had grown up to be racist dickheads like their old man, but they weren't in-your-face racist dickheads. Had Buck not been so flustered that night onstage at the Parched Pirate, he would never have blurted those crude jokes, not with muscular gays and Negroes in attendance.

“What'd you say your real name was?” Blister asked him gruffly.

“Matt Romberg.”

“Is that Jewish? You a Jew?”

“German Lutheran,” Buck replied.

“Sure about that?”

Buck wondered how Blister Krill had survived to middle age in a place as ethnically diverse and gun-crazy as Florida. He was confronted with the possibility that Blister had been a different person before becoming obsessed with
Bayou Brethren.
It was one thing to market a television program to attract low-class shitkickers; it was another thing to
create
them. Buck surmised that the pirated outtakes of his sermons were an inflammatory factor, and he felt fairly shitty about whatever Blister did to the Muslim on the Conch Train. It was no better than murder. According to the newspaper, the victim had a thriving business and loving family back in New York. That didn't prove he wasn't a closet jihadist, but the article said he was carrying souvenirs at the time he was attacked. There was no mention of the police finding any weapons, a suicide vest, or even one crummy ISIS recruiting flyer.

“Get Amp on the phone right now,” Buck said to Coolman.

“We've been texting. He promises to come.”

Blister said, “Hold on. I wasn't done talkin' about the Jew thing.”

The stolen pistol came out, once again. Buck was over it.

“Shoot me or anybody else in this car,” he told Blister, “and you fail the world's easiest IQ test. Instead of a TV deal you get life in prison.”

Coolman said, “Come on, Spiro. Put the gun away.”

“Then stop messin' with me!”

The driver interrupted to ask if they wanted him to turn around and do it again. They'd been riding back and forth on the Seven Mile Bridge because Blister was entranced by the ocean hues. This would be their seventh crossing of the morning. Buck put a halt to it, saying he was starving. The driver pointedly took them to a Cuban joint for lunch. Blister didn't complain, because he was hungry, too. They stuffed themselves with
arroz con pollo
and
picadillo.
Coolman brought a sandwich to the driver in the parking lot.

On their way back, traffic on the famous bridge slowed to a halt when an Airstream coach blew a tire. Buck and Coolman remained pegged to the backseat while Blister got out of the Yukon and leaned over the bridge rail, trying to see if there were any hammerheads swimming around the pilings.

Stopped in the opposite direction, blocked from Blister's view by the broken-down Airstream, was a nondescript Subaru driven by a Sanitation and Safety Specialist for the state Division of Hotels and Restaurants. Andrew Yancy was on his way to Marathon for a walk-through of a Tuscan-style bistro that had a spotless inspection record, so he was in a good mood despite the delay. He turned up the radio and rolled down the windows to catch the gusts off the ocean.

A cop finally showed up and laid out a pylon path for the northerly traffic to squeeze past the disabled RV. Yancy was moving no more than ten miles an hour when he passed by Benny Krill, sprawled witlessly on the hood of a black southbound Yukon. In the backseat sat two figures that looked very much like Lane Coolman and Buck Nance.

There was nothing for Yancy to do but keep driving, for there was no place on the long bridge to turn around. He was basically stuck on a conveyor belt going the wrong way. He didn't grab his phone and call Detective Rogelio Burton, although at some point he would. Maybe. Yancy was irked that Burton hadn't told him that Blister and the others were not aboard the gray executive jet that had departed the night before; by now the detective surely had obtained the passenger manifest from the pretty silver-haired woman at the airport.

Yancy rushed through the bistro inspection (one rusty dumpster plug, one dead gecko on a windowsill) and headed home to Big Pine. He wasn't sure Merry Mansfield would still be there but she was, lying out in a killer chrome tank suit and a floppy hat.

“This is the stupidest thing a redhead can do, try for a tan,” she said when Yancy joined her. “It's your fault, Andrew. All that crazy boat sex scrambled my senses. Was it unforgettable? Possibly. Did it mean anything? Do
not
haunt yourself with that question.”

“Guess who's still in the Keys. The
tres
a-hole amigos we followed to the airport, they never got on that jet.”

“Tricksters, eh?” Merry said. “Here, Mr. Sensitivity, rub some of this age-defying potion on me. Clear zinc, a zillion SPF. Like it matters anymore.”

Yancy did her arms, neck and shoulders. He confided that he couldn't stop thinking about the man that Benny Krill scared off the Conch Train. “There was an interview with the widow in the paper. Jesus, it's so sad.”

“Let it go. The cops'll catch up with Blister.”

“But, see, I'd like to be the one. He put a knife in me, don't forget.”

Merry flicked him on the nose. “Here we go again, Andrew—this is where I remind you what Burton said, that the sheriff wants you out of the headlines. Unless deep down you don't really care if you get your badge back.”

Yancy was coming around to Rosa's view that Sonny Summers wasn't going to bring him back on the force, no matter what. “I should clean the twelve-gauge,” he said, “just in case.”

Merry tore off her hat and slapped him with it. “What is it with guys and their guns? No wonder your brainiac doctor girlfriend ran off to Norway.”

“Harsh,” Yancy sighed.

“I'll get dressed. Then we should go.”

The house on Fleming looked empty. Blister's common-law wife sat on the front step rolling a beer bottle in her palms. Her sad little bicycle lay in the front yard.

She looked up and said, “Not you people again.”

“Where are Benny and the boys?” Yancy asked.

“I'm sorry he stabbed you, but that don't mean I owe you a conversation.”

“Clee Roy ended up on Stoney's menu, just so you know.”

Mona held up her chubby arms, crosshatched with claw marks. “Take a good look and tell me why I should be all boo-hoo sad.”

Merry said, “Benny didn't tell you where he was going, did he? Now he won't even pick up his phone, I bet.”

“How'd you know?” Mona asked glumly.

“Been there, honey.”

To Yancy, Mona said, “I gotta ask you somethin'—is that the real Buck Nance my husband's hangin' out with? Without the beard it could be any damn jackoff.”

“No, that's Buck. The one and only.”

“Okay, but the fifty grand a week—that's total bullshit, right? Benny was lyin' 'bout that part, for sure.”

“Fifty grand a week for doing what?” Merry asked. She sat down beside Mona. “Hey, I like your flips.”

“Thanks,” said Mona. “You a cop, too?”

Merry patted her hand. Sheepishly Mona related Blister's wild yarn about joining the cast of
Bayou Brethren.

“He said they was gonna pay him fifty thousand for every show, and he was gonna be worldwide famous. I tole him he had shit up to his eyeballs, so then he says, ‘I can prove it, Baby Buns!' Few days later he calls to say his Hollywood ‘agent' rented a ‘bungalow' on Fleming, I gotta come right away. So I hump over here on my bike, and there's Benny and his so-called agent man and the dude they said was Buck Nance. And the three of 'em sit here all serious-faced givin' me a rundown on the big TV deal, how rich we're gonna be—and now, today, they're all gone.” She sucked a gloomy breath through the gaps in her teeth. “What's a normal woman s'posed to think?”

Merry said, “Benny's not going to be a television star. He's going to prison.”

“With ‘Captain Cock' wrote in giant ink all over his back. Dear God Almighty.”

“No kidding. You need to put that man in your rearview.”

“If only I could,” said Mona.

Yancy went through the house and saw that the men had cleared out. The kitchen trash revealed that Buck remained faithful to the faves on his Green Room rider—empty PBR cans, a Jack Daniel's bottle, crumpled Fritos bags, Reese's wrappers and handfuls upon handfuls of discarded non-green M & M's. The only sign of Blister was a grimy red bandanna on the floor.

“They've definitely vacated,” Yancy said to Mona when he emerged. “What are your plans?”

“
He
was my plan. Benny.”

Merry said, “He'll call eventually. There's no way he won't reach out to his Baby Buns.”

“Yeah, but then what?”

“Tell him the ride's over, honey. Tell him to give up.”

“Better yet,” said Yancy, “tell him to call me.”

Mona heaved the beer bottle into some shrubs, righted her bicycle and pedaled away. Merry drove Yancy to Mel Fisher's treasure museum, where she impressed him with her knowledge of shipwreck booty. She said she'd studied up on the Spanish fleets in preparation for a bogus artifacts hustle that she later scuttled: “It was a boyfriend's idea. Not Chip but a different one. I was on quite a streak for a while. The dude scored a bunch of fake doubloons online from China and sold them as the real deal at these ‘investment seminars' in West Palm. But his favorite target was old retired couples, so I bailed on the scam—and on him, too. I hear he's into reverse mortgages now.”

Yancy said, “You want to go make out somewhere?”

“Well, aren't you the frisky one.”

He found a secluded parking spot under some trees near the cemetery. The car's backseat wasn't spacious enough for a horizontal fit, and the result was Yancy kicking out an armrest during a strenuous sequence of moves. Merry said she'd take it as a compliment. Afterward they went to the Turtle Kraals for ceviche and boiled shrimp. Merry was in rare form, funny and flirty, keeping it light. To Yancy she seemed happy—but then so had Rosa.

Later, looking back on the afternoon, he couldn't think of anything he did or said that might have spooked Merry off. At the restaurant she laughed so hard at one of his raunchy cop stories that her eyes were streaming. And she was definitely still smiling when she kissed him and told him she was going for a walk on the waterfront. She promised to meet him in an hour at Mallory Square. She told him to look for the Iguana Man.