Star Island (25 page)

The bodyguard turned his attention to the paparazzo’s tangerine BlackBerry, which had been thrumming all night.

“This is Fremont Spores,” announced a scratchy voice on the other end.

“Yo,” Chemo said.

“They just nailed Larissa for a DUI on the Tuttle.”

“Who?”

“Larissa, man.”

“Oh. Right.” Chemo didn’t know who the fuck he was talking about.

“Just came over the scanner,” said the man named Fremont. “The Highway Patrol stopped her on the causeway and she blew point-one-nine on the Breathalyzer. They’re takin’ her out to county lockup right now.”

“Thanks,” Chemo said.

“This time it’s two hundred even. Because she’s an Idol and all.”

“That’ll work,” said the bodyguard. It wasn’t his money.

“You sound different, Claudius. You sick or what?”

“Pig flu,” Chemo said, and ended the call.

He dialed the photographer’s new cell and asked if he was ready to accept the offer of fifty grand in exchange for the safe return of the actress. Bang Abbott let out an odd laugh.

“Then ask for seventy-five. They’ll go for it,” Chemo said.

“Where have you been, bro? The deal’s done.”

“For how much?” Chemo wondered how he’d lost his role as the middleman. He had counted on raking a juicy commission from the ransom payoff.

Bang Abbott said, “It’s not a cash transaction.”

“Get outta here.”

“I’m serious. Straight trade—the look-alike in exchange for Cherry Pye.”

“And you get to keep her?”

“For one day,” the photographer said, “which is all I need.”

His smug tone set poorly with Chemo.

“You want your phone back? Now it’s gonna cost two grand.”

“Keep it,” said Bang Abbott.

“You lost me.”

“I don’t need the damn thing anymore. With Cherry I’m golden.”

The bodyguard didn’t like being cut out of the deal. He viewed it as an unforgivable shafting.

“You know some chick named Larissa?” he asked Bang Abbott.

“The
Larissa? From
Idol?”

“Whatever.”

“You watch the show, right? She’s the one wears those super-tight jeans that ride up her snatch.”

“If you say so,” said Chemo. “Some guy called your phone and said she got popped for a DUI.”

The paparazzo gave another strange cackle. “Ha! Was it Fremont you talked to?”

“Am I your goddamn secretary?”

“Guess what—I don’t care about Larissa anymore. I don’t care about any of ’em.”

“Too bad,” Chemo said. “The guy who called, you owe him two hundred for the tip.”

“You promised that rodent two hundred bucks?”

“But, hey, before you take care of Freeman—”

“It’s Fremont,” Bang Abbott said irritably.

“Yeah, before you take care of him, you better take care of me.”

This time the photographer wasn’t laughing. “I don’t get it. Take care of you because …?”

“Because now you’re golden,” Chemo said. “Remember?”

When Bang Abbott got off the phone, Ann DeLusia saw he was bothered.

“Is Larissa the one we were stalking at Ortho?” she asked.

He nodded. “She just got busted for drunk driving.”

“Bummer. She must’ve slipped out the back door.”

“No big deal.”

“Then why the gloomy face?” Ann asked.

“Cherry’s new bodyguard wants a payoff.”

“What for?”

Bang Abbott shook his head. “Unbelievable. I might have to shoot the fucker.”

“That’s a fine idea, Claude. Play to your strong suit.”

They’d just left a joint called Cheeseburger Baby, where the paparazzo had gorged himself in a premature celebration of the Cherry Pye coup. His fleshy cheeks glistened with french fry grease, and poppy seeds speckled his stained teeth.

Ann said, “On a happier note, when will I be a free woman?”

“Not sure. Probably Monday or Tuesday.”

“Then I’ll need fresh clothes.”

“Here we go,” Bang Abbott grumbled.

Returning to the Marriott, they saw three Miami Beach police cars parked by the entrance. Bang Abbott drove to the other side of the building and hurriedly took Ann up a stairwell to their room. After handcuffing her to the bathroom plumbing, he stuffed his Colt pistol under one of the mattresses and went downstairs to investigate.

The lobby was in disarray. Clothing and toiletry items were strewn about, and a rectangular scorch mark was visible on the pale marble floor. The photographer positioned himself behind a cluster of other curious guests; some wore hotel bathrobes and were bleary-eyed, as if roused from sleep. From their conversations Bang Abbott learned that a man had walked out of the elevator and gone off on a woman who was checking into the hotel. He set fire to her suitcase, snatched a Maltese from her arms and then dashed out the front door. Nobody seemed to know what triggered the bizarre confrontation, or whether the man and woman knew each other. The missing dog’s name was either Bubba or Barbara.

Bang Abbott edged closer to eavesdrop on one of the cops, who was interviewing a lanky desk clerk with a peculiar accent. Evidently the assailant wasn’t staying at the hotel, because the clerk said nobody on the night shift remembered seeing him before. The cop wanted to know if the intruder appeared drunk or drugged-out, and the desk clerk said no, not really. It was his opinion that the woman must have done something to light the guy’s fuse.

“Did he say anything when he grabbed her dog?” the officer asked.

“Just that he was hungry,” the desk clerk reported.

Bang Abbott had heard enough; the police activity had nothing to do with his captive. So far, no one seemed to be looking for the missing so-called actress.

Stepping back into the elevator, he spotted a small green cylinder on the floor and picked it up. Ann noticed the item in Bang
Abbott’s hand after he came in the door and started telling her about the weird scene in the lobby.

“Can I see that thing?” she asked.

He tossed the plastic cylinder to her and told her where he’d found it.

“Just now?” Ann said.

This was after he’d unlocked her from the toilet pipes and re-cuffed her to one of the beds.

He said, “It’s a damn shotgun shell.”

“I know, Claude.”

“With the brass cap punched out. What’s
that
all about?”

Ann peered through the little green tube at Bang Abbott. “You could always string it on a braid,” she said, smiling.

The one-eyed homeless dude from Key Largo had found her, just as he’d promised. Finally Ann had met a man who kept his word, only now she didn’t need him. She wondered how he would take the news.

The name of the loud woman in the lobby was Marian DeGregorio. Her Maltese was Bubba, not Barbara. They had flown down to Miami nonstop from White Plains; Bubba got his own seat and one-third of an Ambien, to shut him up. Marian DeGregorio was on a mission to scatter the ashes of her late husband, Victor, in the Atlantic Ocean. Victor had been dead going on seven years and Marian DeGregorio’s boyfriend was sick of looking at the urn, which was kept in the same kitchen cupboard with the Sanka.

Victor DeGregorio had spent nearly seven months dying, during which time he repeatedly made his wife swear on her communion Bible that she would scatter his ashes off the coast of southern Florida. It was there, aboard a charter boat called the
Happy Hooker IX
, that Victor DeGregorio had once reeled in a hammerhead shark. He considered this the foremost masculine achievement of his life, and kept a jar filled with the shark’s pointy teeth on his desk at the John Deere outlet where he worked as an inventory manager. Sometimes Victor DeGregorio would present one of the teeth to a customer or a visiting big shot from Deere headquarters, and the recipients were always impressed. Also on display was a framed nine-by-twelve of Victor posing on a dock beside the gaping stiff behemoth, which had been chained up by its tail and chalked with the number 193 to proclaim the weight. Victor’s
friends eventually forbade him from mentioning the hammerhead—even toward the end—because he’d told the goddamn story about a thousand times.

Marian DeGregorio had been retelling the story herself, to a desk clerk, when the trouble erupted. She’d just gotten to the part where Victor and his fishing buddies set upon the gaffed shark with aluminum ball bats to—in the widow’s words—“finish off the vicious bastard,” when she was overheard by a tall, scruffy man coming off the elevator. He interrupted to express his disgust, and in a harsh tone went on at length about the imminent collapse of world shark populations. Except for his flawless dentition, the man looked like a street person, so Marian DeGregorio somewhat caustically challenged his expertise on the topic of marine ecosystems. At that point he seized her soft-sided suitcase, sprung the locks and set the contents ablaze with a can of paint thinner he’d swiped from the vacation home of D. T. Maltby, his former running mate. As soon as the Marriott’s fire alarm went off, he snatched Marian DeGregorio’s dog and fled to the streets, leaving the widow honking and flapping like an addled goose in the smoky lobby.

Skink jogged to the beach and lay down beneath the stars and thought about Annie the actress. He had prowled every floor of the hotel, listening at the doors, but he’d made no formal inquiries due to the lateness of the hour and his disordered appearance. Based on Jim Tile’s information, he was certain that Annie was being held in one of the rooms. Later he would try again to find her.

Meanwhile the Maltese was fidgeting and snuffling in his grasp. Skink did not respond solicitously. Occasionally he’d dined on the pets of intolerable people, but he preferred roadkill. Bubba didn’t look particularly tasty and the overgroomed pelt would be useless except as a shammy cloth for the shotgun. Moreover, Skink suspected that barbecuing a purebred would attract unwanted attention even on South Beach.

As the sun leaked over the horizon, he was approached by two disheveled but attractive women who were strolling shoeless and hungover. One was twirling a wine-stained bra and the other carried a crumpled pack of French cigarettes. The women cooed and
clucked and commented upon Bubba’s cuteness, which was not evident to Skink. After removing the tags and rhinestone collar, he gave them the dog and said its previous owner had been tragically beheaded on the teacup ride at Disney World, which the women seemed eager to believe. They promised that the adorable pup would have a fantastic new life in Cedar Rapids, where they would be returning that afternoon.

When the governor walked back to the Marriott, he was irked to see a police car and a bright red van from the arson unit of the Miami Beach Fire Department. He went another few blocks until he found a taxi idling illegally beside a hydrant. He got in and directed the driver to take him to the Bath Club, saying he was being interviewed for a membership. The taxi driver chose not to question the absurd yarn, and for that mistake he wound up bound and gagged in a cabana strewn with moldy flip-flops.

Skink took the man’s cab and made his way back to the hotel, where he circled the block until a parking space on Washington became available. His thoughts turned for no reason to an old Scottish poem by Robert Burns called “Ode to a Haggis,” which he recited several times aloud, experimenting with inflections. He remembered that Mr. Burns died at the preposterous age of thirty-seven, on the very same day Mrs. Burns gave birth to their last child.

Such depressing trivia served to fortify Skink’s view that irony was overrated. He slid down low in the seat, waiting for Annie and her captor to emerge from the Marriott.

“You still haven’t caught that crazy fucker?” Jackie Sebago asked.

“Not yet,” said Detective Reilly. He had never before interviewed a man with a nut sack the size of a rugby ball.

“Unfuckingbelievable,” Jackie Sebago muttered.

“We found a suspicious campsite. He wasn’t there.”

Sunday was Reilly’s weekend day off, but his fiancée had gone shopping in Miami and it was too windy for offshore fishing. On an impulse he’d called Jackie Sebago, who was still in Key Largo recuperating from the assault by the bus hijacker.

“Why can’t you guys find him? I don’t get it.” Jackie Sebago spread his bare legs and, with a groan, adjusted the ice pack.

Reilly turned away. It was his opinion that forcibly attaching a sea urchin to another person’s scrotum was a serious crime, not a fraternity prank, and that the vagrant should be prosecuted to the full measure of the law.

“Tell me again why this man singled you out,” the detective said.

“Because of the town houses, is what he said. Obviously he’s some kind of enviro-nut.”

“It’s your project?”

“Absolutely. That’s why it’s called Sebago Isle.”

“I figured,” said Reilly.

“Hey, you were on-site. You know what I’m talkin’ about,” Jackie Sebago said. “It’s gonna be phenomenal. It’s gonna be paradise.”

“Great location,” the detective agreed.

“This guy, he was a big mother, had these funky braids made from shotgun shells. He yelled and cussed and called me names. Said I was killing the mangrove trees, raping the islands, whatever,” Jackie Sebago recounted. “How does a whack job like that get his hands on a gun?”