Skinny Dip - Страница 33

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"Late wife," Chaz amended hastily.

"How come you never mentioned you were married?"

Joey found herself rooting for Medea. Tell her the truth, you coward.

"It's a very painful memory," he said.

"When did she pass away, Chaz?"

A different sort of silence followed, as uncomfortable as the first. Joey longed to see his expression.

He said, "I'd rather not get into it. Too depressing."

"Obviously not that depressing," Medea remarked caustically. "I see you're still ready for action."

"Yeah, well, he's got a mind of his own."

Medea sounded unamused. "Like I said, I don't wear perfume. Whatever you're smelling is in your imagination."

It's Chanel, Joey almost whispered.

Before leaving the island, she had innocently dabbed a fleck behind each ear. It was significant that Chaz had sniffed out her scent amid the putridly sweet fumes from Medea's traveling head shop.

"Look, I gotta go," Medea said abruptly.

"No, let's try again."

"I'm not liking the vibes here, Chaz."

"Wait a sec. Now hold on. Please?"

The despair in Chaz's tone was genuine. Hearing him get shut out was almost as good as a wedding-ring ambush, which Joey decided to postpone out of sympathy for Medea.

Who was now out of bed, briskly gathering up her candles and oils.

"You can't go. You can't," Chaz was saying. "Just look at me!"

"Very impressive. You should get it bronzed."

"You want to take a bath? We could try it in the bath." He blocked her into a corner, his toes nearly touching hers.

"Chaz, I said no."

"Hey, come on. Don't be like this."

Joey heard a guttural exclamation that elongated into a slow plea-sureless moan.

"Stop!" Chaz blurted finally.

"You sure don't listen very good," Medea said.

"You're-really-hurting-me!"

"In reflexology school they gave us special exercises to make our hands strong. Can you tell?"

"Oh my God," said Chaz.

"I bet I could snap it like a bread stick."

"I'm sorry I didn't tell you about my wife. I'm sorry for everything."

"Now, don't get all mushy on me," Medea said.

"You gotta stop. Those fingernails…"

"They've gotten long, haven't they?"

"I'm begging you. I'm begging,'" Chaz said.

Joey was enjoying herself. She liked the girl's style.

"I'll let go now," Medea was saying, "but if you so much as wiggle that thing in my direction before I get out the door, I'll damage you so badly that you'll never have a sexual experience again. Not even with yourself. Understand?"

"Yes. Ouch! Yes!"

They dressed wordlessly. Joey could envision the dazed, whipped-puppy look in her husband's eyes; she had seen it herself, that time she'd decked him for calling her a crude name.

"Well, good-bye," Medea said, poised at the doorway. Joey noticed that she was wearing hemp flip-flops.

"Sorry about tonight. Honestly," Chaz said. "Can I call you again?"

"Are you fucking serious?"

It was then the floor quaked beneath Joey, as if a refrigerator had been dropped from the roof. A wail of inhuman duration swelled up from elsewhere in the house.

"Oh Christ," Chaz said weakly. "What now?"

Medea was already running by the time Chaz found whatever he was fumbling for in the drawer of the nightstand. Joey Perrone waited to hear him jog down the hall before she scooted from beneath the bed and peeked around the corner. The steak knife felt flimsy and ridiculous in her hand, but she didn't dare put it down.

The shades were drawn on all but one of the bedroom windows.

Mick Stranahan looked inside the house and was discouraged by what he saw: a prodigiously heavyset man, stark naked and swilling from a jumbo bottle of Mountain Dew. Initially, Stranahan thought the man was wearing a tatty sweater, but on closer scrutiny it appeared to be an astounding cultivation of upper body hair. The man sat alone, watching country-music videos on television; no sign of Charles Perrone, the frizzy-haired woman or Joey. Stranahan ducked below the window and pondered his bleak options. A confrontation with the mountainous stranger seemed unavoidable if Stranahan intended to search the house.

Joey had left the spare key inserted in the back door, so Stranahan simply turned the knob and walked in. Cautiously he moved through the empty kitchen, heading toward the darkened hallway. He paused to listen by the guest room, then stepped inside.

The ape man squinted up at him in bafflement, runnels of lime-green soda streaming down his jowls.

Stranahan turned off the television. "I need to look around the house," he whispered. "Are you going to give me any trouble?"

"What a dumbass question. You bet I am."

Muffled pounding and a creepy, disharmonious mewl came from the direction of Chaz's bedroom.

"Are you a friend of Mr. Perrone?" Stranahan asked the hairy stranger.

"I'm his bodyguard. And I been waitin' days for this."

The man got up and trailed Stranahan out of the room.

"Where do you think you're goin'?" he demanded. "What the hell're you lookin' for?"

Stranahan turned and said, "Friend of mine. A lady friend."

The man scratched thoughtfully at his crotch.

"Go ahead and knock me on my ass," Stranahan told him. "I'll probably holler like a baby, but at least it'll spook everybody out where I can see who's who."

The man said, "You nuts, or what?"

"It's not much of a plan," Stranahan conceded, "but it was the best I could do on short notice."

The goon seized him by the collar and began moving toward the back door. Stranahan used the man's own momentum to steer him into a corner, then drove an elbow into his Adam's apple. The man didn't pitch over right away, so Stranahan followed with a right hook to the base of the neck, throwing all his weight into the punch. The man toppled, swiping blindly as he fell. The house shuddered to its beams.

Stranahan ducked outside, circled to the front and crouched behind the Hummer in the driveway. Inside, the bodyguard erupted with a hellish howl as he regained respiratory function. The frizzy-haired woman was the first to bolt, her flip-flops spanking on the walkway as she galloped for her car. Stranahan waited two full minutes after she was gone. When no one else emerged, he retraced his path to the kitchen window. There he saw Chaz Perrone, standing naked in a posture of helplessness over the prone, flopping figure of the ape man. In profile a pistol was visible in Chaz's right hand; beneath that, a jutting manifestation of sexual readiness.

Stranahan heard the nearby slam of a heavy door and, moments later, an automotive ignition. His pulse was pounding as he hurdled a hedge of ixoras and ran toward the road. The Suburban was moving away slowly, lights off. Stranahan waved his arms as he ran after it, thinking: Surely she'll be checking the rearview, after what just happened. Any sane person would worry about being chased.

Finally, at the far end of the block, the brake lights flashed and the passenger door swung open. Mick Stranahan jumped inside and motioned for Joey to hit the accelerator.

Ten miles later, when he finished lecturing her about taking crazy chances, she said, "Nice haircut, sport."

"Hey, at least I don't smell like a Dumpster at Woodstock."

Joey smiled mischievously. "That's not what Chaz thought."

Sixteen

Tool was in a more talkative mood since they'd detoured to a convalescent center so he could "pop in" on somebody named Maureen. Obviously she was his hot new drug connection; probably a rogue nurse, Chaz Perrone had surmised while watching Tool configure an array of fresh fentanyl patches on his shaven shoulders.

"Tell me about your wife," Tool said on the long drive west.

Chaz was caught off guard. "What about her?"

"What was she like before she died?" Tool asked.

"Beautiful. Blond. Smart. Funny."

It was a part of Chaz's widower script that required no rehearsal, because it was the truth. Nonetheless, he found it disquieting to speak the words aloud, as if they reminded some weak and sentimental part of him what he'd lost. Disdainfully he appraised the stubborn, useless bulge in his trousers.

"So how come you ain't all sad and blue?" Tool asked.

"Who says I'm not."

Tool gave a salacious laugh. "It's only been-what, a week?-and already you're on pussy patrol."

"If you're talking about that woman who came over last night," Chaz said, "she was a professional masseuse."

"Yeah, and I'm a fuckin' astronaut. Come on, Doc, what happened 'tween you and your old lady?"

"None of your damn business."

"Aw, relax," Tool said.

Chaz was annoyed by Tool's prying, though he realized that interpersonal sensitivity was not a signature trait among crew bosses on vegetable farms. In fact, the question posed by Tool could just as easily have come from any of Chaz's golfing buddies, and the answer- although it could never be uttered-was simple: Joey knew too much. Or if she didn't know, she certainly suspected.

What other choice did Chaz have but to kill her? If the Everglades scam was exposed, the media would have crucified him; a bribe-taking biologist would be front-page news even in a sewer of corruption like South Florida. Chaz surely would have been sent to prison or whacked by Red Hammernut, or possibly both.

He found it ironic that, if the truth ever came out, Tool more than anybody would appreciate the cojones that it took to throw Joey off the cruise liner.

As they approached the pump station, Chaz stopped on the shoulder of the levee and kept the engine running. The marsh shimmered under azure skies that stretched as far as the horizon, but Chaz would have been infinitely more relaxed in the parking garage of a shopping mall. He dreaded having to forsake the steel embrace of his Humvee for the loathsome, predator-infested wilderness.