Stormy Weather (8 page)

Tony said sure, if they only had some gasoline.

Snapper tapped his wristwatch and said, “Sally Jessy comes on in twenty minutes. Men who seduce their daughter-in-law’s mother-in-law.”

“No shit? We could siphon your car.” Tony pointed at the rubble of his garage. “There’s a hose in there someplace.”

Snapper went to find it. Edie Marsh said it was a lousy idea to siphon fuel from the car, since they might be needing speedy transportation. Snapper winked and told her not to worry. Off he went, ambling down the street, the garden hose coiled on his left shoulder.

Edie expropriated the pool chair. Tony Torres perked up. “Scoot closer, darling.”

“Wonderful,” she said, under her breath.

The salesman fanned himself with the Miami
Herald
sports pages. He said, “It just now hit me: Men who steal their daughter-in-law’s mother-in-law. That’s pretty funny! He don’t look like a comedian, your partner, but that’s a good one.”

“Oh, he’s full of surprises.” Edie leaned back and closed her eyes. The sunshine felt good on her face.

The hurricane had transformed the trailer court into a sprawling aluminum junkyard. Ira Jackson found Lot 17 because of the bright yellow
tape that pol ice had roped around the remains of the double-wide mobile home where his mother, Beatrice, had died. After identifying her body at the morgue, Ira Jackson had driven directly to Suncoast Leisure Village, to see for himself.

Not one trailer had made it through the storm.

From the debris, Ira Jackson pulled his mother’s Craftmatic adjustable bed. The mattress was curled up like a giant taco shell. Ira Jackson crawled inside and lay down.

He recalled, as if it were yesterday, the morning he and his mother met with the salesman to close the deal. The man’s name was Tony. Tony Torres. He was fat, gassy and balding, yet extremely self-assured. Beatrice Jackson had been impressed with his pitch.

“Mister Torres says it’s built to go through a hurricane.”

“I find that hard to believe, Momma.”

“Oh yes, Mister Jackson, your mother’s right. Our prefabricated homes are made to withstand gusts up to one hundred twenty miles per hour. That’s a U.S. government regulation. Otherwise we couldn’t sell ’em!”

Ira Jackson was in Chicago, beating up some scabs for a Teamsters local, when he’d heard about the hurricane headed for South Florida. He’d phoned his mother and urged her to move to a Red Cross shelter. She said it was out of the question.

“I can’t leave Donald and Marla,” she told her son.

Donald and Marla were Mrs. Jackson’s beloved miniature dachshunds. The hurricane shelter wouldn’t allow pets.

So Ira’s mother had stayed home out of loyalty to her dogs and a misplaced confidence that the mobile-home salesman had told the truth about how safe it was. Donald and Marla survived the hurricane by squeezing under an oak credenza and sharing a rawhide chew toy to pass the long night. A neighbor had rescued them the next morning and taken them to a vet.

Beatrice Jackson was not so lucky. Moments after the hurricane stripped the north wall off her double-wide, she was killed by a flying barbecue that belonged to one of her neighbors. The imprint of the grill remained visible on her face, peaceful as it was, lying in the Dade County morgue.

Beatrice’s death had no effect whatsoever on the mood of her dachshunds, but her son was inconsolable. Ira Jackson raged at himself for letting his mother buy the trailer. It had been his idea for her to move to Florida—but that’s what guys in his line of work did for
their widowed mothers; got them out of the cold weather and into the sunshine.

God help me, Ira Jackson thought, tossing restively on the mechanical mattress. I should’ve held off another year. Waited till I could afford to put her in a condo.

That cocksucker Torres.
A-hundred-twenty-mile-per-hour gusts
. What kind of scum would lie to a widow?

“Excuse me!”

Ira Jackson bolted upright to see a gray-haired man in a white undershirt and baggy pants. Skin and bones. Wire-rimmed eyeglasses that made him look like a heron. In one arm he carried a brown shopping bag.

“Have you seen an urn?” he asked.

“Jesus, what?”

“A blue urn. My wife’s ashes. It’s like a bottle.”

Ira Jackson shook his head. “No, I haven’t seen it.” He rose to his feet. He noticed that the old man was shaking.

“I’m going to kill him,” he said angrily.

Ira Jackson said, “Who?”

“That lying sonofabitch who sold me the double-wide. I saw him here after the hurricane, but he took off.”

“Torres?”

“Yeah.” The old man’s cheeks colored. “I’d murder him, swear to God, if I could.”

Ira Jackson said, “You’d get a medal for it.” Humoring the guy, hoping he’d run out of steam and go away.

“Hell, you don’t believe me.”

“Sure I do.” He was tempted to tell the old man to quit worrying, Señor Tony Torres would be taken care of. Most definitely. But Ira Jackson knew it would be foolish to draw attention to himself.

The old man said: “My name’s Levon Stichler. I lived four lots over. Was it your mother that died here?”

Ira Jackson nodded.

Levon Stichler said, “I’m real sorry. I’m the one found her two dogs—they’re at Dr. Tyler’s in Naranja.”

“She’d appreciate that, my mother.” Ira Jackson made a mental note to pick up the dachshunds before the vet’s office closed.

The old man said, “My wife’s ashes blew away in the hurricane.”

“Yeah, well, if I come across a blue bottle—”

“What the hell could they do to me?” Levon Stichler wore a weird quavering smirk. “For killing him, what could they do? I’m seventy-one goddamn years old—what, life in prison? Big deal. I got nothing left anyhow.”

Ira Jackson said, “I was you, I’d put it out of my mind. Scum like Torres, they usually get what they deserve.”

“Not in my world,” said Levon Stichler. But the widow Jackson’s son had taken the wind out of his sails. “Hell, I don’t know how to find the sonofabitch anyhow. Do you?”

“Wouldn’t have a clue,” Ira Jackson said.

Levon Stichler shrugged in resignation, and returned to the heap that once was his home. Ira Jackson watched him poking through the rubble, stooping every so often to examine a scrap. All around the trailer court, other neighbors of the late Beatrice Jackson could be seen hunched and scavenging, picking up pieces.

Her son opened his wallet, which contained: six hundred dollars cash, a picture of his mother taken in Atlantic City, three fake driver’s licenses, a forged Social Security card, a stolen Delta Airlines frequent flyer card, and numerous scraps of paper with numerous phone numbers from the 718 area code. The wallet also held a few legitimate business cards, including one that said:

The trailer salesman had jotted his home number on the back of the business card. Ira Jackson kicked through his mother’s storm-soaked belongings until he found a Greater Miami telephone directory. The salesman’s home number matched the one belonging to an A. R. Torres at 15600 Calusa Drive. Ira Jackson tore the page from the phone book. Carefully he folded it to fit inside his wallet, with the other important numbers.

Then he drove his fraudulently registered Coupe de Ville to a convenience store, where he purchased a Rand McNally road map of Dade County.

The vagabond monkey chose to forgo the airboat experience. Max Lamb was given no choice. The one-eyed man strapped him to the passenger seat and off they went at fifty miles an hour, skimming the grass, cattails and lily pads. For a while they followed a canal that paralleled a two-lane highway; Max could make out the faces of motorists gaping at him in his underwear. It didn’t occur to him to signal for help; the electrified dog collar had conditioned total passivity.

Riding high in the driver’s perch, the man who called himself Skink sang at the top of his lungs. It sounded like “Desperado,” an old Eagles tune. The familiar melody surfed above the ear-splitting roar of the airboat’s engine; more than ever, Max Lamb believed he was in the grip of a madman.

Soon the airboat made a wide turn away from the road. It plowed a liquid trail through thickening marsh, the sawgrass hissing against the metal hull. The hurricane had bruised and gouged the swamp; smashed cypresses and pines littered the waters. Skink stopped singing and began to emit short honks and toots that Max Lamb assumed to be either wild bird calls or a fearsome attack of sinusitis. He was afraid to inquire.

At noon they stopped at a dry hammock, its once-lush branches now skeletal from the storm. Skink tied the airboat to a knuckled stand of roots. Evidence of previous campfires reassured Max Lamb that other humans had been there before. The kidnapper didn’t bother to tie him; there was no place to run. With Skink’s permission, Max put on his clothes to protect himself from the horseflies and mosquitoes. When he complained of being thirsty, Skink offered his own canteen. Max took a tentative swallow.

“Coconut milk?” he asked, hopefully.

“Something like that.”

Max suggested that wearing the shock collar was no longer necessary. Skink whipped out the remote control, pushed the red button and said: “If you’ve got to ask, then it’s still necessary.”

Max jerked wordlessly on the damp ground until the pain stopped. Skink caught a mud turtle and made soup for lunch. Tending the fire, he said, “Max, I’ll take three questions.”

“Three?”

“For now. Let’s see how it goes.”

Max warily eyed the remote. Skink promised there would be no electronic penalty for dumb queries. “So fire away.”

Max Lamb said, “All right. Who are you?”

“My name is Tyree. I served in the Vietnam conflict, and later as a governor of this fair state. I resigned because of disturbing moral and philosophical conflicts. The details would mean nothing to you.”

Max Lamb failed to mask his disbelief. “You were governor? Come off it.”

“Is that question number two?”

Impatiently, Max fingered the dog collar. “No, the second question is: Why me?”

“Because you made a splendid target of yourself. You with your video camera, desecrating the habitat.”

Max Lamb got defensive. “I wasn’t the only one taking pictures. I wasn’t the only tourist out there.”

“But you were the one I saw first.” Skink poured hot soup into a tin cup and handed it to his sulking prisoner. “A hurricane is a holy thing,” he said, “but you treated it as an amusement. Pissed me off, Max.”

Skink lifted the pot off the hot coals and tipped it to his lips. Steam wisped from his mouth, fogging his glass eye. He put the pot down and wiped the turtle drippings from his chin. “I was tied up on a bridge,” he said, “watching the storm roll out of the ocean. God, what a thing!”

He stepped toward Max Lamb and lifted him by the shirt, causing Max to drop the soup he had not touched.

Skink hoisted him to eye level and said: “Twenty years I waited for that storm. We were so close, so goddamn close. Two or three degrees to the north, and we’re in business.…”

Max Lamb dangled in the stranger’s iron clasp. Skink’s good eye glistened with a furious, dreamy passion. “You’re down to one question,” he said, returning Max to his feet.

After settling himself, Max asked: “What happens now?”

Skink’s stormy expression dissolved into a smile. “What happens now, Max, is that we travel together, sharing life’s lessons.”

“Oh.” Max’s eyes cut anxiously to the airboat.

The governor barked a laugh that scattered a flock of snowy egrets. He tousled his prisoner’s hair and said, “We go with the tides!”

But a despairing Max Lamb couldn’t face the prospect of true adventure. Now that it seemed he would not be murdered, he was burdened by another primal concern:
If I don’t get back to New York, I’m going to lose my job
.

Edie Marsh was daydreaming about teak sailboats and handsome young Kennedys when she felt the moist hand of Tony Torres settle on her left breast. She cracked an eyelid and sighed.

“Quit squeezing. It’s not a tomato.”

“Can I see?” Tony asked.

“Absolutely not.” But she heard the squeaky shift of weight as the salesman edged the chaise closer.

“Nobody’s around,” he said, fumbling with her buttons. Then an oily laugh: “I mean, you
are
my wife.”

“Jesus.” Edie felt the sun on her nipples and looked down. Well, there they were—the pig had undone her blouse. “Don’t you understand English?”

Tony Torres contentedly appraised her breasts. “Yeah, darling, but who’s got the shotgun.”

“That’s so romantic,” Edie Marsh said. “Threaten to shoot me—there’s no better way to put a girl in the mood. Fact, I’m all wet just thinking about it.” She pushed his hand away and rebuttoned her blouse. “Where’s my shades,” she muttered.

Tony cradled the Remington across his belly. Sweat puddled at his navel. He said, “You
will
think about it. They all do.”

“I think about cancer, too, but it doesn’t make me horny.” To Edie, the only attractive thing about Tony Torres was his gold Cartier wristwatch, which was probably engraved in such a gaudy way that it could not be prudently fenced.

He asked her: “Have you ever been with a bald man?”

“Nope. You ever seen venereal warts?”

The salesman snorted, turning away. “Somebody’s in a pissy mood.”

Edie Marsh dug the black Ray-Bans out of her purse and disappeared behind them. The shotgun made her nervous, but she resolved to stay cool. She tried to shut out the summer glare, the ceaseless drone of chain saws and dump trucks, and the rustle of Tony Torres reading the newspaper. The warmth of the sun made it easy for Edie Marsh to think of the duned shores at the Vineyard, or the private beaches of Manalapan.

Her reverie was interrupted by footsteps on the sidewalk across the street. She hoped it was Snapper, but it wasn’t. It was a man walking two small dachshunds.

Edie felt Tony’s hand on hers and heard him say, “Darling, would you squirt some Coppertone on my shoulders?”