Stormy Weather (17 page)

“I said I was sorry.”

“—you, Max, arrive with a video camera.”

Max Lamb lit a cigaret. The governor had been in a rotten mood all day. First his favorite Stones tape broke, then the batteries crapped out in his Walkman.

Skink said, “The people who gave this soup, they went through Camille. Please assure me you know about Camille.”

“Another hurricane?”

“A magnificent shitkicker of a hurricane. Max, I believe you’re making progress.”

The advertising man sucked apprehensively on the Bronco. He said, “You were talking about getting a boat.”

Skink said, “Everyone ought to have a legacy. Something to be remembered for. Let’s hear some of your slogans.”

“Not right now.”

“I never see TV anymore, but some commercials I remember.” The kidnapper pointed at the canyon of red-and-white soup cans. “‘M’m, m’m good!’ That was a classic, no?”

Unabashedly Max Lamb said, “You ever hear of Plum Crunchies? It was a breakfast cereal.”

“A cereal,” said Skink.

“‘You’ll go plum loco for Plum Crunchies!’”

The kidnapper frowned. From his camo trousers he produced a small felt box of the type used by jewelry stores. He opened it and removed a scorpion, which he placed on his bare brown wrist. The scorpion raised its fat claws, pinching the air in confusion. Max stared incredulously. The skin on his neck heated beneath the shock collar. He drew up his legs, preparing to spring from the truck if Skink tossed the awful creature at him.

“This little sucker,” Skink said, “is from Southeast Asia. Recognized him right away.” With a pinkie finger, he stroked the scorpion until it arched its venomous stinger.

Max Lamb asked how a Vietnamese scorpion got all the way to Florida. Skink said it was probably smuggled by importers. “Then, when the hurricane struck, Mortimer here made a dash for it. I found him in the horse barn. Remember Larks? ‘Show us your Larks!’”

“Barely.” Max was a kid when the Lark campaign hit TV.

Skink said: “That’s what I mean by legacy. Does anyone remember who thought up Larks? But the Marlboro man, Christ, that’s the most successful ad campaign in history.”

It was a fact. Max Lamb wondered how Skink knew. He noticed that the scorpion had become tangled in the gray-blond hair on the captain’s arm.

“What are you going to do with it?” Max asked.

No answer. He tried another strategy. “Bonnie is deathly afraid of insects.”

Skink scooped the scorpion into the palm of one hand. “This ain’t no insect, Max. It’s an arachnid.”

“Bugs is what I meant, captain. She’s terrified of all bugs.” Max was speaking for himself. Icy needles of anxiety pricked at his arms and legs. He struggled to connect the kidnapper’s scorpion sympathies with his views of the Marlboro man. What was the psychopath trying to say?

“Can she swim, your Bonnie? Then she’ll be fine.” The governor popped the scorpion in his cheek and swallowed with an audible gulp.

“Oh Jesus,” said Max.

After a suitable pause, Skink opened his mouth. The scorpion was curled placidly on his tongue, its pincers at rest.

Max Lamb stubbed out the Bronco and urgently lit another. He leaned his head against a crate of soup cans and said a silent prayer: Dear God, don’t let Bonnie say anything to piss this guy off.

Avila’s career as a county inspector was unremarkable except for the six months when he was the target of a police investigation. The cops had infiltrated the building department with an undercover man posing as a supervisor. The undercover man noticed, among a multitude of irregularities, that Avila was inspecting new roofs at a superhuman rate of about sixty a day, without benefit of a ladder. A surveillance team was put in place and observed that Avila never bothered to climb the roofs he was assigned to inspect. In fact, he seldom left his vehicle except for a regular two-hour buffet lunch at a nudie bar in Hialeah. It was noted that Avila drove past construction sites at such an impractical speed that contractors frequently had to jog after his truck in order to deliver their illicit gratuities. The transactions were captured with crystal clarity on videotape.

When the police investigation became public, a grand jury convened to ponder the filing of felony indictments. To give the appearance of concern, the building-and-zoning department reassigned Avila and several of his crooked colleagues to duties that were considered low-profile and menial, a status confirmed by the relatively puny size of the bribes. In Avila’s case, he was relegated to inspecting mobile homes. It was a job for which he had no qualifications or enthusiasm. Trailers were trailers; to Avila, nothing but glorified sardine cans. The notion of “code enforcement” at a trailer park was oxymoronic; none of them, Avila knew, would survive the feeblest of hurricanes. Why go to the trouble of tying the damn things down?

But he made a show of logging inspections, taking what modest graft the mobile-home dealers would toss his way—fifty bucks here and there, a bottle of Old Grand-dad, porno tapes, an eight-ball of coke. Avila wasn’t worried about police surveillance on his beat. Authorities were concerned with protecting the upwardly mobile middle-class home buyer; nobody gave a shit what happened to people who bought trailers.

Except men like Ira Jackson, whose mother lived in one.

With the exception of the bus depot in downtown Guatemala City, the Dade County building department was the most disorganized and institutionally indifferent place that Ira Jackson had ever
seen. It took ninety minutes to find a clerk who admitted to fluency in English, and another hour to get his hands on the documents for the Suncoast Leisure Village trailer park. Under the circumstances, Ira Jackson was mildly surprised that the file still existed. From what he saw, others were vanishing by the carload. Realizing the hurricane would bring scandal to the construction industry, developers, builders and compromised inspectors were taking bold steps to obscure their own roles in the crimes. As Ira Jackson elbowed his way to an empty chair, he recognized—amid the truly aggrieved—faces of the copiously guilty: brows damp, lips tight, eyes pinched and fretful. They were men who feared the prospect of public exposure, massive lawsuits or prison.

If only it were true, thought Ira Jackson. Experience had taught him otherwise. Bozos who rob liquor stores go to jail, not rich guys and bureaucrats and civil servants.

Ira Jackson thumbed through the trailer-court records until he found the name of the man who had botched the inspection of his mother’s double-wide. He fought his way to the file counter and cornered a harried-looking clerk, who informed him that Mr. Avila no longer was employed by Dade County.

Why not? Ira Jackson asked.

Because he quit, the clerk explained; started his own business. Since Ira Jackson was already agitated, the clerk saw no point in revealing that Avila’s resignation was part of a plea-bargain agreement with the State Attorney’s Office. That was a private matter that Mr. Avila himself should share with Mr. Jackson, if he so desired.

Ira Jackson said, “You got a current address, right?”

The clerk said it was beyond his authority to divulge that information. Ira Jackson reached across the counter and rested his hand, very lightly, on the young man’s shoulder. “Listen to me, Paco,” he said. “I’ll come to your home. I’ll harm your family. You understand? Even your pets.”

The clerk nodded. “Be right back,” he said.

Snapper was more annoyed than afraid when he saw the flashing blue lights in the rearview. He’d figured the Jeep Cherokee was already hot when he swiped it from the gangster rappers; he didn’t figure the cops would be looking for it so soon. Not with all the hurricane emergencies.

Pulling to the side of the road, he wondered if Baby Raper had blabbed when he got to the hospital. No doubt the kid was ticked when Snapper retrofitted that compact disc up his ass, like a big shiny suppository.

But why would the cops care about
that
? Snapper thought: Maybe it’s got nothing do with the gangster rapper or the stolen Jeep. Maybe it’s just my driving.

The cop who stopped him was a female Highway Patrol trooper. She had pleasant features and pretty pale-blue eyes that reminded Snapper of a girl he’d tried to date back in Atlanta, some sort of turbocharged Catholic. The lady trooper’s dark hair was pulled up under her hat, and she wore a gold wedding band that cried out for pawning. The holster appeared oversized and out of place on her hip. She shined a light in the Jeep and asked to see Snapper’s driver’s license.

“I left my wallet at home.”

“No identification?”

“’Fraid not.” For effect, he patted his pockets.

“What’s your name?”

“Boris,” said Snapper. He loved Boris and Natasha, from the old Rocky and Bullwinkle TV show.

“Boris what?” the trooper asked.

Snapper couldn’t spell the cartoon Boris’s last name, so he said, “Smith. Boris J. Smith.”

The trooper’s pale eyes seemed to darken, and the tone of her voice flattened. “Sir, I clocked you at seventy in a forty-five-mile-per-hour zone.”

“No kidding.” Snapper felt relieved. A stupid speeding ticket! Maybe she’d write him up without running the tag.

The trooper said: “It’s against the law to operate a motor vehicle in Florida without a valid license. You’re aware of that.”

OK, Snapper thought,
two
tickets. Big fucking deal. But he noticed she wasn’t calling him “Mister Smith.”

“You’re also aware that it’s illegal to give false information to a law-enforcement officer?”

“Sure.” Snapper cursed to himself. The bitch wasn’t buying it.

“Stay in your vehicle, please.”

In the mirror, Snapper watched the flashlight bobbing as the trooper walked back to her car. Undoubtedly she intended to call in the license plate on the Cherokee. Snapper felt his shoulders tighten.
He had as much chance of explaining the stolen vehicle as he did explaining the seven thousand dollars in his suit.

He saw two choices. The first was to flee the scene, which was guaranteed to result in a chase, a messy crash and an arrest on numerous nonbondable felonies.

The second choice was to stop the lady trooper before she got on the radio. Which is what he did.

Some cons wouldn’t hit a woman, but Snapper was neutral on the issue. A cop was a cop. The trooper spotted him coming but, encumbered by the steering wheel, had difficulty pulling that enormous Smith & Wesson out of its holster. She managed to get the snap undone, but by then it was good-night-nurse.

He took the flashlight, the gun and the wedding band, and left the trooper lying unconscious by the side of the road. Speeding away, he noticed a smudge of color on one of his knuckles.

Makeup, it looked like.

He didn’t feel shame, regret or anything much at all.

Edie Marsh was beginning to appreciate the suffering of real hurricane victims. It rained three times during the day, leaving dirty puddles throughout the Torres house. The carpets squished underfoot, green frogs vaulted from wall to wall, and mosquitoes were hatching in one of the bathroom sinks. Even after the cloudbursts stopped, the exposed beams dripped for hours. Combined with the cacophony of neighborhood hammers and chain saws, the racket was driving Edie nuts. She walked outside and called halfheartedly for the missing dachshunds, an exercise that she abandoned swiftly after spying a fat brown snake. Edie’s scream attracted a neighbor, who took a broom and scared the snake away. Then he inquired about Tony and Neria.

They’re out of town, said Edie Marsh. They asked me to watch the place.

And you are …?

A cousin, Edie replied, knowing she looked about as Latin as Goldie Hawn.

As soon as the neighbor left, Edie hurried into the house and stationed herself in Tony’s recliner. She turned up the radio and laid the crowbar within arm’s reach. When darkness came, the hammering and sawing stopped, and the noises of the neighborhood changed to
bawling babies, scratchy radios and slamming doors. Edie began worrying about looters and rapists and the unknown predator that had slurped poor Donald and Marla like Tic Tacs. By the time Fred Dove showed up, she was a basket of nerves.

The insurance man brought a corsage of gardenias. Like he was picking her up for the prom!

Edie Marsh said, “You can’t be serious.”

“What’s wrong? I couldn’t find roses.”

“Fred, I can’t stay here anymore. Get me a room.”

“Everything’s going to be fine. Look, I brought wine.”

“Fred?”

“And scented candles.”

“Yo, Fred!”

“What?”

Edie steered him to a soggy sofa and sat him down. “Fred, this is business, not romance.”

He looked hurt.

“Sweetie,” she said, “we had sexual intercourse exactly one time. Don’t worry, there’s every chance in the world we’ll do it again. But it isn’t love and it isn’t passion. It’s a financial partnership.”

The insurance man said, “You seduced me.”

“Of course I did. And you were fantastic.”

As Fred Dove’s ego reinflated, his posture improved.

“But no more flowers,” Edie scolded, “and no more wine. Just get me a room at the damn Ramada, OK?”

The insurance man solemnly agreed. “First thing tomorrow.”

“Look at this place, honey. No roof. No glass in the windows. It’s not a house, it’s a damn cabana!”

“You’re right, Edie, you can’t stay here. I’ll rejigger the expense account.”

She rolled her eyes. “Fred, don’t be so anal. We’re about to rip off your employer for a hundred and forty-one thousand bucks, and you’re pitching a hissy fit over a sixty-dollar motel room. Think about it.”

“Please don’t get angry.”

“You’ve got the claim papers?”

“Right here.”

After scanning the figures, Edie Marsh felt better. She plucked the gardenias from the corsage and arranged them in a coffeepot, which was full of lukewarm rainwater. She opened the bottle of Chablis, and
they toasted to a successful venture. After four glasses, Edie felt comfortable enough to ask what the insurance man planned to do with his cut of the money.

“Buy a boat,” Fred Dove said, “and sail to Bimini.”