Razor Girl (22 page)

Yancy drove to the Stock Island jail to chat with the two South Beach bouncers, but they'd already made bail. He swung by Blister's duplex and wasn't surprised not to see the black Yukon. His final stop was a drop-in at Stoney's Crab Palace, where a wake of sorts was being held for a local biker who'd bought the farm at Mile Marker 19. Yancy wasn't cold-hearted enough to disrupt the ceremony with a kitchen inspection. He went back to town and left the car on Front Street.

The original Iguana Man had died years earlier, but there was always at least one crusty imitator on the scene. He was easy to find, not only because he was cloaked with green lizards but also because he was flocked by tourists who perceived the scaly creatures as exotic. In reality, South Florida was so overrun with the damn things that homeowners used high-powered pellet rifles to thin the herd. The local unpopularity of the reptiles was due to their appetite for delicate garden flowers and also their habit of prodigiously shitting in swimming pools.

Yancy tracked down the Iguana Man
du jour
and scanned the selfie-snapping throng for Merry's face. Something poked him bluntly below the waist, and he looked down. An Irish setter was sociably nosing his crotch. When Yancy reached for its leash, the animal bolted with an air of goofy elation toward Whitehead, and heavy traffic. Heedless of his stitches, Yancy ran after the dog. When he was a boy, he'd owned a golden retriever named Bowie that got run over by a delivery truck. Yancy still choked up whenever he thought about it. He sprinted as hard as he could after the footloose setter, which zigzagged crazily between honking taxis and tour buses. The chase went on until the fugitive veered down a dead-end alley, where Yancy was able to corner and calm the animal. He beheld a pleasing vision of himself strolling through Mallory Square with a red-haired dog and a red-haired woman.

But when he returned, there was no sign of Merry in the Iguana Man's crowd. Yancy called her phone but she didn't answer. From behind him rose a cement-mixer voice: “Yo, that's my fuckin' mutt.”

Yancy turned and saw a burly neckless figure carrying a suede shoulder bag. The man wore a new pastel fishing shirt and khaki hiking shorts that displayed to no one's benefit a bowed pair of pallid, hairy legs.

Yancy handed over the leash. “That's a good-looking dog. What's his name?”

“John.”

“Just plain old John?”

“I didn't fuckin' come up with it. That's what he answers to.” The man sounded weary of defending his pet's bland name. “He must've took off while I was in the toilet. Thanks.”

Yancy said, “No problem. I needed the exercise.”

The man had a New York accent. He said he was visiting Key West on business. “This park is where everybody comes, right? To see the freaks and the sunset.”

“You're in the right place.”

“My girlfriend's floatin' around here somewheres.”

“Mine, too,” said Yancy, adding: “A girl who's a friend.”

“They got phones, they know how to find us. You look like you could use a cold one.”

Yancy was glad to leave the square, which had filled with meandering cruise-ship googans. He told the man there was a pet-friendly bar on Simonton.

“Fuck that. John goes where I go.” The man opened his shoulder bag and removed a blaze-orange vest emblazoned with the words
WORKING SERVICE ANIMAL
. He snapped the garment on the Irish setter and said, “Now you're legal, dumbass.”

Yancy started laughing. “I thought those dogs were trained not to run away.”

“John's got what you call impulse issues. Thank God I ain't blind, he'd drag my ass in front of a train.”

Yancy took the man with the dog to the top of the La Concha. Merry still wasn't picking up her phone. After a couple of Heinekens the man with the dog told Yancy that his name was Dominick, and that he owned a document-shredding business in Miami. It might have been true, though Yancy was doubtful. He told the man he was a health inspector. The rest was more small talk, two guys killing time. Despite the meatiness of his fingers, Dominick showed himself to be a nimble texter. He was visibly irritated because his girlfriend wasn't responding. Yancy changed the subject by inquiring if Dominick's family was involved in the shredding business. Dominick said only his son, Dom Jr., had shown any interest.

“He's gettin' married in a few months in Staten Island,” Dominick said. “Great girl. He lucked out big-time.”

On his phone Dominick proudly scrolled up a photograph of the couple, young Dom a wide-bodied spitting image of his old man. The raven-haired bride-to-be was all bosom and teeth, impossibly happy.

“Check out the rock on her finger,” said Dominick, enlarging the screen image with his salami thumbs.

Yancy looked closely at the engagement ring in the photo. He smiled and said, “I'll be damned.”

“I gave it to Dommie to give to her. Take a guess what that thing's worth.”

“Two hundred grand?” said Yancy.

The man named Dominick sat back, surprised. “Motherfucker, you're good.”

“Funny story about that diamond.” Yancy told Dominick how it had come to end up in his refrigerator on Big Pine.

Dominick slapped a hand on the bar and said, “Small fuckin' world!”

“Can I ask how you know that lawyer in Miami? Richardson.”

“Never met him. It was just a favor for a guy I'm sorta in business with.”

Yancy said, “Look, I don't want the ring back. It's not mine, anyway. But, can I say, the gentlemen you sent to my house really didn't have to kick me on their way out the door.”

“They told me you was a real smartass.”

“Man, I'd just gotten out of the hospital.” Yancy lifted his shirt to show Dominick his belly wound.

“Who the hell did that to you? Was it my guys?”

“No, not them.”

“They don't like the smartass routine, my guys. But, tell you what”—Dominick glanced crossly at the dog, farting in its sleep between the barstools—“you saved me some world-class poon by catchin' that runaway retard right there. My
goomah,
she'd never let me touch her again if I lost poor dumb adorable John. So I owe you one is what I'm sayin'.” He handed Yancy a business card for a company called Rocko Gibralter Document Disposal. “You ever need somethin', here's where to call.”

“Thanks for the beer,” Yancy said.

He felt better about the ring situation knowing that Brock Richardson's diamond was a source of romantic joy for Dom Jr.'s fiancée, more joy than it had brought to either of the lawyer's fiancées.

Yancy said goodbye to the mobster and walked to the elevator. When the doors opened, a woman who could only be Dominick's girlfriend emerged. Her lips were cardinal red, her bleached platinum hair was trimmed severely short, and the cheeks of her formidable ass appeared to have been shaped with a helium nozzle. Despite her forward presentation the woman seemed preoccupied as she brushed past Yancy on a high-heeled track to the bar. She was hurriedly repositioning a papaya scarf, though not before Yancy glimpsed upon her neck a florid mouth-shaped mark that was too fresh to have been made by Dominick.

Yancy stepped into the elevator and mashed the Lobby button half a dozen times. Back at Mallory Square he couldn't find Merry anywhere; her phone went straight to voicemail. On a whim he walked down to the treasure museum. She wasn't there.

At dark he drove back to Big Pine knowing what he'd find. Merry's clothes and sandals and travel bag were gone from the house. Same for her toothbrush and scrunchies and the one-piece chrome swimsuit that drove him wild. He checked the refrigerator and saw that she'd also cleaned out her stash of energy drinks.

Yancy felt worse about her leaving than he'd expected. He put on some Charlie Parker, smoked half a fattie and fell asleep on his new couch. Early the next morning he got up to go fishing, and that's when he found the square pink envelope she had placed on the casting deck of his boat.

The note inside said, “I'm going to miss you, A.Y. Now quit dicking around and call Rosa.”

M
artin Trebeaux, recklessly seeking to impress Big Noogie's girlfriend, bragged about his epic scheme to corner the market on Cuban beach sand. “They'll jump all over this deal,” he bubbled, sprawled on his bed at the La Concha. “They're going capitalist even faster than the damn Chinese!”

Juveline told him to lie still. She was using a black Sharpie on his nut sack. It felt like she was drawing little hearts.

“There's a big meeting down in Havana,” Trebeaux said.
“Muy importante!”

“Yeah? Take me with ya.”

Trebeaux thought she was joking.

“I never been to a real island,” she said. “I wanna go. Long Island doesn't count.”

Looking down, Trebeaux saw only the tinted crown of Juveline's noggin. He heard the felt tip of the Sharpie squeaking on his skin.

“Don't it tickle when I do this?” she asked.

“Sweetie, listen to me—Big Noogie will get suspicious if you're gone. This would never work. He'll kill the both of us.”

“You serious? I been on lotsa trips and the Noog don't care. Two, three days sometimes he don't even call. Hey, what's that weird mark down here? That little purple V.”

“Ouch! Hey, careful.”

“What is it, Marty? Tell me.”

“That's where the Noog pinched me with hemostats.”

“Hemo-what?”

“Pliers. The kind they use in surgery.”

“Holy shit, Marty. I bet that really hurt.”

“That's the whole point of torture. Ask your boyfriend.”

“Well,” Juveline said, “if this don't cheer ya up, nuthin' will.”

She stood Trebeaux in front of a full-length mirror and lifted his pecker to display her scrotal artwork.

“What exactly am I looking at?” the sand man asked.

“Emojis, ya big dork.”

“You mean like smiley faces?”

“One for each ball. See, they're blowin' kisses,” said Juveline. “Don't ya ever text with emojis?”

At that moment a more circumspect man might have paused to review the train of bad decisions that had brought him to such a precipice—screwing the girlfriend of a homicidal gangster while the gangster was out walking her dog. Trebeaux, however, wasn't one to beat himself up. He truly believed he was cunning enough to snake through any brand of trouble; regret was for suckers. Of course it was foolhardy to fall for the crude charms of a high-maintenance flake like Juveline. Yet now that the dangerous line had been crossed, Trebeaux was growing excited about the logistical challenges of long-term deceit. Dominick Aeola didn't seem like the brightest bulb in the chandelier.

If I want to,
thought the sand man,
I can pull this off.

A wolf began howling—Big Noogie's ring tone on Juveline's phone. He left another message saying he was waiting in the hotel bar. Juveline played it back while she hurriedly put her clothes on. When Trebeaux pointed out a florid hickey that he'd imprinted on her neck during lovemaking, she gave an airy shrug and reached for a scarf.

Trebeaux said, “Maybe you should cover that suck mark with makeup.”

“Do I look like the fuckin' Avon lady? All I got in my bag is lipstick.”

“You're right, you're right. The scarf works.”

Halfway out the door, Juveline turned and said, “Text me tomorrow about Cuba, Marty. I need to know what to wear.”

Trebeaux had booked a seat on a charter flight from Miami to Havana by presenting himself as a renowned sculptor whose medium was, naturally, sand. He stated his trip to the communist country would be strictly educational, and on his application he attached photographs of elaborate Gothic castles, languid mermaids and a medium-scale likeness of the space shuttle Atlantis. All these sand creations had been made one Saturday morning by fifth-graders competing in a “Floridays” contest on Cocoa Beach. Their proud schoolteacher had posted the photos online without the precaution of watermarking, which allowed Trebeaux to steal them and claim the sculptures as his own work. No one at the agency that booked his Cuba trip had displayed the slightest suspicion or, for that matter, interest.

He called the company and said he'd decided to bring an assistant—would that be possible? The assistant, he added, would be traveling on a different flight.

“But put her ticket on my credit card.”

“We'll have a taxi waiting for her at the airport, Mr. Trebeaux.”

“Very good. What's the best beach on the island? I mean
numero uno.
”

“Oh, they are all lovely,” replied the woman on the other end.

“Come on. There must be one special place that knocks your knickers off.”

She admitted there was. “Playa Ramera,” she said fondly.

“Never heard of it. What does that mean in English?”

“I'm not sure,” the woman at the agency lied. “It's just a local name. Would you like me to arrange a van to take you there from Havana? You and your assistant?”

“That would be fabulous,” Trebeaux said.

He looked forward to cavorting openly with Juveline in Cuba, which the Mafia had abandoned when Fidel seized power. The fact that Big Noogie had no eyes or ears there made it a safe zone of betrayal for both pleasure and business. Of the dual schemes that Trebeaux was hatching, the beach-sand project was less problematic because it was he who controlled all the key information. Big Noogie would have no choice but to take the sand man's word about his dealings with Cuban officials—and the monetary split.

The tryst with Juveline would be trickier, Trebeaux knew, because he wouldn't be able to supervise her once she returned to Queens after their tropical adventure. One offhanded remark, one careless slipup—a matchbook from Hotel Nacional falling out of her handbag, for instance—could be fatal for both of them. Based on Juveline's nonchalant reaction to the swollen hickey, Trebeaux believed she needed more guidance in the art of discretion.

He was right.

Yancy dialed Rosa's number and she picked up on the first ring. She asked if he was finished with the case, really finished, and he said yes.

“Then you can come,” she told him. “Bring a parka.”

He didn't have a parka. He also didn't have enough money for a flight to Norway, but he had plastic.

The layover in Newark was murder; six hours and change. Yancy read a wild Harry Crews novel about a man who eats a car. After that he walked to a Hudson's, where he bought fishing magazines and the New York papers. The
Daily News
featured an update about the case of the Muslim tourist from Brooklyn who'd been killed in South Florida. The widow of Abdul-Halim Shamoon said police officials were now classifying her husband's death as a hate crime. A statement issued by Monroe County Sheriff Sonny Summers said that a “person of interest” had been identified, and that a joint city-county task force was combing the islands in search of the individual. The sheriff said he was confident the case would soon be solved.

As Yancy read the story he heard his jaws popping.

The
News
ran a picture of Abdul-Halim Shamoon and his family standing in front of an electronics shop. The caption said the store was in midtown Manhattan on Seventh Avenue. In the photo Shamoon was a smiling young man, unrecognizable from the bloodied corpse on Frances Street in Key West. Yancy counted five kids—three boys and two girls—posed on either side of their father. The children would all be grown now. Shamoon's wife wasn't in the photograph, probably because she was the one who took it. Yancy felt he knew what she looked like.

He put down the newspaper and jogged back to the main terminal, where he told a man at the SAS desk that he was canceling his Oslo trip due to a personal emergency. An hour later the airline brought him his luggage, which he rolled all the way to the Delta counter. There he purchased a ticket to Miami. After boarding the plane he called Rosa, not the warmest conversation they'd ever had. She made several strong points, the first being that nobody (including Sheriff Summers) wanted Yancy's assistance in pursuing Benny Krill. Secondly, Yancy's detective skills, superior as they might be, weren't needed on the Shamoon case because Krill plainly wasn't clever enough to elude the cops for long. Rosa's final point, even more emphatic than the others, was that Yancy seemed to be losing focus of the big picture, meaning their future together as a couple. Yancy pointed out that it was she who'd abruptly quit her job and flown off to Europe alone. Such a move was not, he asserted, an act of unshakable devotion. The discussion grew sharper until a flight attendant told Yancy to turn off his phone because they were third in line for takeoff. He bit off half of an Ambien yet didn't sleep a wink on the plane.

The next day was spent scouring Key West for Benny the Blister, Buck Nance and Lane Coolman. Yancy located only one black Yukon, occupied by a white Baptist rapper who was in town for a concert benefiting the Pre-Teen Pioneers for Abstinence. The listing agent for the conch house on Fleming said it had been rented by a talent agency called Platinum Artists, which had paid for a month in advance. The agent was surprised when Yancy informed her that the tenants had already moved out.

A text from Merry Mansfield sent him speeding up the Overseas Highway:

Saw blk Yukon on my way back to Miami. Parked at a bar at MM 82. But you're in Norway, so never mind.

Yancy drove like a berserk person and made it to Islamorada in less than two hours. The bar at Mile Marker 82 was in a sushi restaurant where his credentials actually carried some weight. The hostess remembered three customers arriving in a black SUV the night before. One of the men, skinny but rough-looking, became belligerent because the restaurant served only beer and wine. The hostess said the loudmouth got wasted on saki and started tossing spring rolls in the air, trying to catch them in his mouth. She said the two other men from the black SUV stuck with Kirin Light and more or less behaved themselves. Yancy asked to see the credit-card receipt for their meal. It was signed by Lane Coolman, Buck Nance's agent/manager/ass-wiper.

Yancy figured that Krill, Nance and Coolman beelined from the sushi joint straight to Miami Beach, but out of diligence he inquired at the nearby Moorings, a secluded spread of resort cottages popular with fashion models, musicians and actors who don't mind not being recognized. A camera crew was set up on the beach taping a commercial for a brand of guava-infused vodka. Strung between palm trees was a mesh hammock upon which lay a young blond woman wearing sunglasses and a banana-colored bikini. She was clutching the fifth of vodka to her cleavage in such a manner that fake condensation—supplied by a crew member with an eyedropper—dripped from the bottom of the bottle onto her tummy, trickling down the spray-tanned slope into a flawless navel. The journey of each glistening droplet was tracked at gynecological range by a scruffy sweat-soaked cameraman kneeling in the sand with his Sony. Gawkers snapped pictures with their phones.

Unnoticed, Yancy made his way through the shaded property cottage-by-cottage. He rapped on the doors pretending to be looking for a guest named Rosa Campesino. The reactions were mostly genial until he approached a blue-trimmed villa where a croaky voice from inside told him to get lost. Yancy barged into the villa and right away noticed that Benny Krill had upgraded his weaponry.

“I thought you were a knife man, Blister.”

Krill raised the gun. “Name's Spiro.”

“That's a winner. I like it.”

“Close the goddamn door.”

Yancy said, “Tell me what happened on the Conch Train.”

“He freaked out is what happened. The little A-rab dude. I didn't lay a finger on him.”

“A couple witnesses say otherwise.”

“They's fulla shit.” Blister took a step back. He looked anxious. “All I did was tell the man he wasn't foolin' nobody, I know a damn sleeper cell when I see one. Then there was some Bible stuff I laid on him, all righteous and true. Next thing I know he jumps off the train car. Which is exactly what a damn suicide sleeper would do. What they call a ISIS synchronizer.”

“Sympathizer. And that's not what he was, Blister.”

“It's ‘Spiro' from now on. Close the fuckin' door.”

Yancy kicked it shut. “I hear you're going to be a TV star. That's truly…unimaginable.”

Benny the Blister beamed. “Done deal, man! Ain't you or nobody else gone screw it up.”

“And where's the famous Captain Cock?”

Blister's grin was a pageant of prison dentistry. “You mean my new brother Buck.”

“No shit?” Yancy said. “What a heartwarming turn of events.”

Brock Richardson had some time to kill before his flight to Key West, so he tried something he hadn't done in years: Read a legal document from beginning to end. It was fascinating—and harrowing.

The document was a deposition from a respected German endocrinologist named Harft, who'd recently completed a four-year study of a drug called testopheromenal, sold in nineteen countries under the trade name Pitrolux. The law firm of Truss, Hitch and Truss, to which Richardson referred many of his telephone clients, had hired Dr. Harft to review the frequency and severity of Pitrolux side effects. The findings rocked Richardson to his core. Being in theory a plaintiff's lawyer, he was accustomed to grotesquely creative exaggeration in product-liability cases. A tiny red bump on the skin became a “pernicious and disfiguring rash.” Sore joints were automatically presented as “excruciating and debilitative.” Every headache was a “blinding migraine,” every bout of constipation a “toxic gastrointestinal impactment.” And, regardless of anatomical location, each side effect was alleged in every lawsuit to cause “a loss of libido and a fear of intimacy” that shattered the victim's sexual relationships.

However, while studying Dr. Harft's neutral testimony, Richardson realized that for once there was no hype in the charges aimed at the drug's manufacturer. If anything, the printed warnings on the Pitrolux bottles underplayed the ghastly possibilities. The lawyer's bizarre experience with the substance wasn't an isolated incident; numerous male users had reported the appearance of strange skin growths in their armpits, groins, buttocks cracks and even between their toes. These soft stalks of flesh were typically described as “mushroom-like” or “penile-shaped.”