Skinny Dip - Страница 22

Joey's smile evaporated. "You'd never understand."

"It's also none of my business, I admit."

"No, I'll tell you why. Because three guys in a row had dumped me for somebody else, okay? Because Chaz sent a single long-stemmed pink rose to my house every day for two weeks after our first date. Because he wrote me mushy notes and called me when he promised and took me out for romantic dinners. I was lonely, and obviously he was a pro at that sort of thing," Joey said. "And I said yes the second time he asked me to marry him, because honestly I didn't want to get dumped again. By the way, this is an unbelievably humiliating subject."

Stranahan said, "For God's sake, you're not the first woman to get conned. But then once you realized it was a mistake-"

"Why did I stay married to him? Mick, it was only two years," she said, "and not all of it was horrible. Let me try to explain this without sounding like a bubblehead-Chaz was good in bed, and I confess there were times when that canceled out his less admirable qualities."

"I understand perfectly," Stranahan said. "Hell, that's the story of my life." He stacked three waffles on her plate. "Several of my worst marriages were based on dumb lust and not much else. You hungry?"

Joey nodded.

"Me, too," Stranahan said. "Maple syrup, butter, or both?"

"The works."

"Thattagirl."

They were interrupted by Strom yelping in pain. Stranahan ran outside, with Joey close behind. The dog lay at the end of the dock, pawing at an angry knot on his snout. Joey sat down and pulled the whimpering animal onto her lap.

In the water, no more than a hundred feet away, was the boat with the snapper fishermen; four of them, chuckling as they pretended to tend their baits. Stranahan spotted an egg-shaped piece of lead on the dock, and slowly he bent to pick it up.

"What's that?" Joey said.

"Two-ounce sinker."

"Oh no."

Stranahan called out to the men in the boat. "Did you guys throw this at my dog?"

The fishermen glanced over, murmuring among themselves, until finally the largest one piped up: "Damn thing wouldn't shut up, bro."

Bro? Stranahan thought. So that's what I'm dealing with. "Come over here," he said. "We need to talk."

"Go fuck yourself!" shouted another of the fishermen, a smaller version of the first. "And your puta girlfriend too." Defiantly he swung back his fishing rod and cast a heavy yellow jig at the dock. It landed short, making a hollow plonk in the water.

Stranahan said to Joey: "Please take Strom inside the house."

"Why? What're you going to do?"

"Go."

"No way am I leaving you alone out here with those morons."

"I won't be alone," he said.

Stranahan counted three separate breaches of etiquette for which the fishermen deserved rebuke. The first was the casual manner in which they'd violated his privacy by coming so close to the island. The second was their contemptible assault on a rather dull-witted beast that was merely doing its job. The third was the coarse insult directed at Joey Perrone, who had done nothing to provoke it.

From the kitchen window, Joey could see the boat motoring toward the dock, all four of the fishermen now standing in anticipation of a fight. Stranahan disappeared briefly inside the shed. He emerged with what he later would identify as a Ruger Mini-14, a semi-automatic rifle of formidable caliber.

The intruders' boat was equipped with a ninety-horsepower Mer-

cury outboard, into which Stranahan methodically fired three rounds. The men could be seen throwing their arms high in frantic gestures of surrender, and their fearful pleas were audible to Joey even through the closed windows. She couldn't make out Stranahan's precise instructions, but the fishermen dropped to their knees, leaned over the gunwales and began paddling with their arms. The visual effect was that of an addled centipede in a toilet bowl.

Joey tied Strom's leash to a leg of the kitchen table and hurried outside. Stranahan stood with the rifle on one shoulder as he watched the boat laboring crazily toward the mainland.

"So, that's your gun," Joey said.

"Yes, ma'am."

"I'm impressed."

"They were, too."

"What you did just now, was it legal?"

Mick Stranahan turned to look at her. "Please don't ask me that question again."

Eleven

Tool twisted the AC knob to maximum high and it still felt like a hundred damn degrees inside the minivan. American-made, too, which he thought was disgraceful. Florida, of all places, you don't rent out vehicles with cheap-ass air conditioners.

Not even nine in the morning and already Tool was sweating off the fentanyl patches. To cool down, he removed his boots and overalls, then chugged a liter of Mountain Dew that he'd picked up at the Circle K on Powerline. Fiddling with the radio, he miraculously located a decent country station. Shania Twain was singing about how much fun it was to be a woman, though Tool couldn't see how that could be true. Just about every female he'd ever known, starting with his mother, seemed perpetually pissed off at the human race. Or could be it was just me in particular, Tool thought.

At half-past nine, the man he was bodyguarding emerged from the house and hurried up the street toward the minivan. Up close he looked shiny and clean-cut-awful damn young to be a widower, Tool mused. You couldn't help but wonder what had happened to the guy's old lady.

Charles Perrone motioned him to roll down the window. "Have you seen anybody strange hanging around?"

"Whole goddamn place is strange, you want my opinion," Tool said. "But no, I ain't seen nobody ain't supposed to be here."

"You sure? Because I think they got into my house again."

"Not while I was here they didn't."

The man looked as if he hadn't slept all night. "Somebody mutilated one of my favorite pictures," he said.

Tool was skeptical. "You want, I'll follow you to work and hang close today. Just in case."

Charles Perrone said he wasn't going to work. "How come you're not wearing any clothes?" he asked Tool.

" 'Cause inside this van it's hotter'n a elephant fart. Hey, Red says you're a doctor."

Charles Perrone seemed pleased. "That's right."

Tool pivoted his immense mass to display the two remaining patches on his back. "Can you get me some more a these?" he asked.

The doctor seemed put off by the damp wall of flesh before him.

"Stick-ons," Tool said. "They's medicine."

"I know, but-"

"Duragesic's the brand name. Can you write me a scrip?"

"No, I'm afraid not," Charles Perrone said.

"It's for super bad pain," Tool explained. "See, there's this bullet slug up the crack a my ass-I'm dead serious."

Charles Perrone blanched and stepped back from the minivan. "Sorry. I don't do prescriptions."

"Now hold on a second."

"I'm not that kind of doctor." He spun around and strode back to his house at an accelerated pace.

Tool grunted. That's one lame-ass quack, he can't even write scrips.

Two doors down, a middle-aged woman in a yellow linen robe came outside, leading two small animals on leashes. Tool guessed that they were dogs, although they resembled none he'd ever seen. Their roundish wrinkled faces were flattened, as if they'd run full bore into a cement truck. The woman herself had a fairly spooky mug, all slick and stretched out like a Halloween mask that was too small for her head. Tool was treated to a close-up view as she walked the strange pinch-faced dogs down the sidewalk. The woman must not have spotted him inside the minivan, for she nonchalantly allowed her critters to pee all over the right front tire.

Tool's instant response was to punch out the passenger window, raining glass upon the woman's sandaled feet. She bleated in fear as he stuck his head out the window and instructed her in the crudest terms to clean up the damn mess.

"What!" She yanked the dogs away from the van and gathered them into her arms. "Just who do you think you are, mister?"

"I'm the sumbitch gonna butt-fuck those puppies, you don't clean the piss off my tar."

He cracked the door enough for the woman to see all she needed. In a heartbeat she was on her knees, furiously dabbing at the wet tire with a wad of pink tissue while her pets whined and scrapped nearby.

When she was finished, Tool said, "I didn't hear no 'pology."

The woman made a spiteful sound and her cheeks turned red, yet her expression never changed. The skin from her forehead to her chin was so tight and glossy that Tool wondered if she might split open like a bad mango.

"Beat it," he said, and she did, sandals slapping in retreat. The accordion-faced dogs could barely keep up.

Minutes later, the doctor reappeared.

"What did you do to Mrs. Raguso?" he demanded.

"She let her damn mutts take a leak on my tar!" Tool protested. "I thought this was 'posed to be a class neighborhood, what they call 'upscale.' Hell, I live in a trailer and I wouldn't let my dogs pee on summon else's personal vee-hicle."

Charles Perrone said, "You'd better get out of here. Carmen Raguso is probably calling the police right this minute."

"What for? She's the one started it."

"You flashed her! I was watching from the living room." Charles Perrone had got himself quite worked up. "I don't want to deal with any more cops, you understand? Now hurry up, before she gets your license tag."

"But who's gonna watch your house?"

"Just keep driving," Charles Perrone said, "until you hear from Mr. Hammernut. He'll tell you what to do next."