Stormy Weather (36 page)

“I couldn’t pawn it,” Snapper was saying. “Damn thing’s engraved, nobody’ll touch it.”

“What does it say?” Edie asked quietly. “On the ring.”

“Who cares.”

“Come on. What does it say?”

The woman in the back seat sat forward, also curious, as Snapper read the inscription aloud: “‘For My Cynthia. Always.’” He gave a scornful laugh and hung his bony arm out the window, preparing to toss the ring from the truck.

“Don’t do that,” Edie said, backing off the accelerator.

“The fuck not? If I can’t hock the goddamn thing, I’m gone dump it. Case we get pulled over.”

Edie Marsh said, “Just don’t, OK?”

“Oops. Too late.” He cocked his arm and threw the ring as far as he could. It plopped into a roadside canal, breaking the surface with concentric circles.

Edie saw everything from the corner of her eye. “You lousy prick.” Her voice was as hard as marble. The woman in the back seat felt the Jeep gain speed.

Defiantly Snapper waved the heavy black pistol. “Maybe you never heard of somethin’ called ‘possession of stolen property’—it’s a motherfuckin’ felony, case you didn’t know. Here’s another beauty: Vi-o-lay-shun o’ pro-bay-shun! Translated: My skinny white ass goes straight to Starke, I get caught. Do not pass Go, do not collect any hurricane money. So fuck the cop’s jewelry, unnerstand?”

Edie Marsh said nothing. She willed herself to concentrate on the slick two-lane blacktop, which intermittently was strewn with pine
boughs, palmetto fronds and loose sheets of plywood. A regular obstacle course. Edie checked the speedometer: ninety-two miles per hour. Not bad for a city girl.

Snapper, ordering her to slow down, couldn’t keep the raw nervousness out of his voice. Edie acted as if she didn’t hear a word.

The one who called himself Skink didn’t stir from his nap, trance, coma, whatever it was. Meanwhile the young newlywed (Edie noticed in the rearview) carefully removed her own wedding band from her finger.

The tollbooth was empty and the gate was up. Edie didn’t bother to slow down. Bonnie Lamb held her breath.

When they blew through the narrow lane, Snapper exclaimed, “Jesus!”

As the Jeep climbed the steep bridge, Skink raised his head. “This is the place.”

“Where you spent the storm?” Bonnie asked.

He nodded. “Glorious.”

Beneath them, broken sunlight painted Biscayne Bay in shifting stripes of copper and slate. Ahead, a bloom of lavender clouds dumped chutes of rain on the green mangrove shorelines of North Key Largo. As the truck crested the bridge, Skink pointed out a pod of bottle-nosed dolphins rolling along the edge of a choppy boat channel. From such a height the arched flanks of the creatures resembled glinting slivers of jet ceramic, covered and then uncovered by foamy waves.

“Just look,” said Bonnie Lamb. The governor was right—it was purely spectacular up here.

Even Edie Marsh was impressed. She curbed the Jeep on the downhill slope and turned off the key. She strained to keep the rollicking dolphins in view.

Snapper fumed impatiently. “What
is
this shit?” He jabbed Edie in the arm with the .357. “Hey you, drive.”

“Take it easy.”

“I said fucking
drive
.”

“And I said take it fucking easy.”

Edie was livid. The last time Snapper had seen that hateful glare was moments before she’d bludgeoned his leg with the crowbar. He cocked the revolver. “Don’t be a cunt.”

“Excuse me?” One eyebrow arched. “What’d you say?”

Bonnie Lamb feared that Edie was going to lose her mind and go for Snapper’s throat, at which point she certainly would be shot dead. Snapper jammed the gun flush against her right breast.

The governor was unaware. He had everted the upper half of his torso out the window to watch the dolphins make their way north, and also to enjoy a fresh sprinkle that had begun to fall. Bonnie tried to grab his hand, but it was too large. She settled for squeezing two of his fingers. Gradually Skink drew himself back into the Jeep and appraised the tense drama unfolding in the front seat.

“You heard me,” Snapper was saying.

“So that
was
you,” Edie said, “calling me a cunt.”

Violently Snapper twisted the gun barrel, bunching the fabric of Edie’s blouse and wringing the soft flesh beneath it. God, Bonnie thought, that’s got to hurt.

Edie Marsh didn’t let it show.

“Drive!” Snapper told her again.

“When I’m through watching Flipper.”

“Fuck Flipper.” Snapper raised the .357 and fired once through the top of the Jeep.

Bonnie Lamb cried out and covered her ears. Edie Marsh clutched the steering wheel to steady herself. The pain in her right breast made her wonder briefly if she was shot. She wasn’t.

Snapper cheerlessly eyed the hole in the roof of the truck; the acrid whiff of cordite made him sneeze. “God bless me,” he said, with a dark chuckle.

A door opened. Skink got out of the Jeep to stretch. “Don’t you love this place!” He unfolded his long arms toward the clouds. “Don’t it bring out the beast in your soul!”

Glorious, Bonnie agreed silently. That’s the word for it.

“Get back in the car,” Snapper barked.

Skink obliged, shaking the raindrops from his hair like a sheep dog. Without a word, Edie Marsh started the engine and drove on.

“What do you mean, no roosters?”

The owner of the
botánica
apologized. It had been a busy week for fowl. He offered Avila a sacrificial billy goat instead.

Avila said, “No way, José.” The sutures from his goring itched constantly. “I never heard anyone running outta roosters. What else you got?”

“Turtles.”

“I don’t got time to do turtles,” Avila said. Removing the shells was a messy chore. “You got any pigeons?”

“Sorry, meng.”

“Lambs?”

“Tomorrow morning.”

“How about cats?”

“No, meng, hiss no legal.”

“Yeah, like you give a shit.” Avila checked his wristwatch; he had to hurry, do this thing then get on the road to the Keys. “OK, señor, what
do
you got?”

The shop owner led him to a small storage room and pointed at a wooden crate. Inside, Avila could make out a furry brown animal the size of a beagle. It had shoe-button eyes, an anteater nose, and a long slender tail circled with black rings.

Avila said, “What, some kinda raccoon?”

“Coatimundi. From South America.”

The animal chittered inquisitively and poked its velvety nostrils through the slats of the crate. It was one of the oddest creatures Avila had ever seen.

“Big medicine,” promised the shop owner.

“I need something for Chango.”

“Oh, Chango would love heem.” The shop owner had astutely pegged Avila for a rank amateur who knew next to nothing about
santería
. The shop owner said, “
Sí, es muy bueno por Chango
.”

Avila said, “Will it bite?”

“No, my freng. See?” The
botánica
man tickled the coati’s moist nose. “Like a puppy dog.”

“OK, how much?”

“Seventy-five.”

“Here’s sixty,
chico
. Help me carry it to the car.”

As he drove up to the house, Avila saw the Buick backing out of the driveway; his wife and her mother, undoubtedly off to Indian bingo. He waved. They waved.

Avila gloated. Perfect timing. For once I’ll have the place to myself. Quickly he dragged the wooden crate into the garage and lowered the electric door. The coati huffed in objection. From a cane-wicker chest Avila hastily removed the implements of sacrifice—tarnished pennies, coconut husks, the bleached ribs of a cat, polished turtle shells, and an old pewter goblet. From a galvanized lockbox Avila took his newest, and potentially most powerful, artifact—the gnawed chip of bone belonging to the evil man who had tried to crucify him. Reverently, and with high hopes, Avila placed the bone in the pewter goblet, soon to be filled with animal blood.

For sustenance Chango was known to favor dry wine and candies; the best Avila could do, on short notice, was a pitcher of sangria and a roll of stale wintergreen Life Savers. He lighted three tall candles and arranged them triangularly on the cement floor of the garage. Inside the triangle, he began to set up the altar. The coatimundi had gone silent; Avila felt its stare from between the slats. Could it know? He whisked the thought from his mind.

The final item to be removed from the wicker chest was the most important: a ten-inch hunting knife, with a handle carved from genuine elk antler. The knife was an antique, made in Wyoming. Avila had received it as a bribe when he worked as a county building inspector—a Christmas offering from an unlicensed roofer hoping that Avila might overlook a seriously defective scissor truss. Somehow Avila had found it in his heart to do just that.

Vigorously he sharpened the hunting knife on a whetstone. The coati began to pace and snort. Avila discreetly concealed the gleaming blade from the doomed animal. Then he stepped inside the
triangle of candles and improvised a short prayer to Chango, who (Avila trusted) would understand that he was pressed for time.

Afterwards he took a pry bar and started peeling the wooden slats off the crate. The sacramental coati became highly agitated. Avila attempted to soothe it with soft words, but the beast wasn’t fooled. It shot from the crate and tore crazed circles throughout the garage, scattering cat bones and tipping two of the
santería
candles. Avila tried to subdue the coati by stunning it with the pry bar, but it was too swift and agile. Like a monkey, it vertically scampered up a wall of metal shelves and bounded onto the ceiling track of the electric door-opener. There it perched, using its remarkable tail for balance, squealing and baring sharp yellow teeth. Meanwhile one of the
santería
candles rolled beneath Avila’s lawn mower, igniting the gas tank. Cursing bitterly, Avila ran to the kitchen for the fire extinguisher. When he returned to the garage, he was confronted with fresh disaster.

The electric door was open. In the driveway was his wife’s Buick, idling. Why she had come back, Avila didn’t know. Perhaps she’d decided to pilfer the buried Tupperware for extra bingo money. It truly didn’t matter.

Apparently her mother had emerged from the car first. The scene that greeted Avila was so stupefying that he temporarily forgot about the flaming lawn mower. For reasons beyond human comprehension, the overwrought coatimundi had jumped from its roost in the garage, dashed outdoors and scaled Avila’s mother-in-law. Now the creature was nesting in the woman’s coiffure, a brittle edifice of chromium orange. Avila had always believed that his wife’s mother wore wigs, but here was persuasive evidence that her fantastic mop was genuine. She shrieked and spun about the front yard, flailing spastically at the demon on her scalp. The jabbering coati dug in with all four claws. No hairpiece, Avila decided, could withstand such a test.

His wife bilingually shouted that he should do something, for God’s sake, don’t just stand there! The pry bar was out of the question; one misplaced blow and that would be the end of his mother-in-law. So Avila tried the fire extinguisher. He unloaded at point-blank range, soaping the stubborn animal with sodium bicarbonate. The coati snarled and snapped but, incredibly, refused to vacate the old woman’s hair. In the turmoil it was inevitable that some of the cold mist from the fire extinguisher would hit Avila’s mother-in-law, who
mashed her knuckles to her eyes and began a blind run. Avila gave chase for three-quarters of a block, periodically firing short bursts, but the old woman showed surprising speed.

Avila gave up and trotted home to extinguish the fire in the garage. Afterwards he rolled the charred lawn mower to the backyard and hosed it down. His distraught wife remained sprawled across the hood of the Buick, crying: “
Mam
í
, mam
í, luke what chew did to my
mamí
!”

Above her keening rose the unmistakable whine of sirens—someone on the block had probably called the fire department. Avila thought: Why can’t people mind their own goddamn business! He was steaming as he hurried to his car.

At the very moment he fit the key in the ignition, the passenger window exploded. Avila nearly wet himself in shock. There stood his wife, beet-faced and seething, holding the iron pry bar.

“Chew fucking bastard!” she cried.

Avila jammed his heel to the accelerator and sped away.

“O Chango, Chango,” he whispered, brushing chunks of glass from his lap. “I know I fucked up again, but don’t abandon me now. Not tonight.”

A peculiar trait of this hurricane, Jim Tile marveled on the drive along North Key Largo, was the dramatic definition of its swath. The eye had come ashore like a bullet, devastating a thin corridor but leaving virtually untouched the coastline to the immediate north and south. August hurricanes are seldom so courteous. Its bands had battered the vacation estates of ritzy Ocean Reef and stripped a long stretch of mangrove. Yet two miles down the shore, the mangroves flourished, leafy and lush, offering no clue that a killer storm had passed nearby. A ramshackle trailer park stood undamaged; not a window was broken, not a tree was uprooted.

Phenomenal, thought Jim Tile.

He goosed the Crown Victoria to an invigorating ninety-five; blue lights, no siren. At high speeds the big Ford whistled like a bottle rocket.

Paradise Palms was a lead but not a lock. Augustine had done his best in a tough situation; the trick with the redial button was slick. Maybe the guy who’d beaten up Brenda was in the black Jeep
Cherokee. Augustine didn’t know for sure. Maybe they were headed to the Keys, maybe not. Maybe they’d stay with the Jeep, or maybe they’d ditch it for another car.

The only certainty was that they were transporting Skink and the tourist woman, Augustine’s girlfriend. The circumstances of the abduction, and its purpose, remained a mystery. Augustine had promised to lie back and wait at Paradise Palms, and the trooper told him that was an excellent idea. One-man rescues only worked in the movies.

The old road from Ocean Reef rejoined Highway One below Jewfish Creek, where it split into four lanes. The traffic thickened, so Jim Tile slowed to seventy miles per hour, weaving deftly between the Winnebagos and rental cars. It was the time of late summer when the setting sun could torment inexperienced drivers, but there was no glare from the west tonight. A bruised wall of advancing weather shaded the horizon and cast sooty twilight over the islands and the water. Lightning strobed high in distant clouds over Florida Bay. Its exquisite sparking was wasted on Jim Tile, who dourly contemplated the prospect of hard rain. A chase was tricky enough when the roads were bone dry.