Skinny Dip - Страница 36

"What?" Gallo pressed. "And don't tell me it's another job offer."

The detective continued reading, turning the pages. "I'll be damned," he murmured to himself.

Gallo exhaled impatiently. "Karl, don't make me pull rank. What the hell is it?"

Rolvaag glanced up with bemusement. "The last will and testament of Joey Perrone," he said, "leaving thirteen million dollars to her loving, devoted husband."

Seventeen

A tow truck dragging a rust-pocked Cordoba nearly clipped Karl Rolvaag's unmarked sedan as he turned into West Boca Dunes Phase II. The detective noticed the battered old car on the hook, figuring that kids from across the tracks must have stolen the thing and ditched it in Charles Perrone's neighborhood. Nobody who lived there would be caught dead driving a heap like that.

Rolvaag parked next to Perrone's yellow Humvee, its leering chrome grille speckled with bug splats. Parked crookedly in the swale was a second car, a spotless new Grand Marquis. The bar-code sticker on a side window pegged it as a rental. Rolvaag touched the hood, which was cold. He heard someone hammering behind the house and walked around to the backyard, where a man he recognized as Earl Edward O'Toole was pounding a white wooden cross into the lawn.

The detective set down his briefcase and identified himself. He said, "Were you a friend of Mrs. Perrone's?"

Earl Edward O'Toole seemed thrown by the question. He shook his head negatively and went on hammering.

"Is the cross for her?" Rolvaag asked.

Earl Edward O'Toole mumbled something indecipherable. Rolvaag stepped closer in order to read the hand-lettered inscription on the cross:

Randolph Claude Gunther Born 2-24-57

Returned to the Forgiving Arms of

Our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ on 8-17-02

Please Don't Drink and Drive!

"Friend of yours?" Rolvaag asked.

"My dog," said Earl Edward O'Toole, avoiding eye contact.

"That's quite a name for a dog. Randolph Claude Gunther."

"We called him 'Rex' for short."

"I never heard of one living forty-five years," the detective remarked. "Parrots can. Tortoises, too. But I'm not so sure about dogs."

Earl Edward O'Toole took another hard swing with the hammer. "Well, he come from good stock."

"What's that on your back?" Rolvaag said. "Those stickers."

Earl Edward O'Toole hesitated. "Medicine," he replied guardedly.

"For what?"

"I get seasick."

The detective counted five patches and whistled.

Earl Edward O'Toole said, "I'm takin' a sea cruise."

"Yeah? Whereabouts?"

Again Earl Edward O'Toole paused. "Haiti," he said after a moment. "Me and my ma."

"That's a fine idea. Take your mind off poor old Randolph." Rolvaag was enjoying himself. Interludes with such entertaining freaks would be rare once he got back to Minnesota.

"Can I ask why you're planting the cross here? I don't see a grave."

" 'Cause he… he died in a plane crash," Earl Edward O'Toole said, "and there wasn't nuthin' left to bury."

"But it says 'don't drink and drive.' "

"On account of the pilot was trashed at the time."

"Ah. And these other crosses?" The detective pointed toward three more, stacked flat on the grass. "Who are they for, Earl?"

"Rex's puppies. They was all on the same plane," Earl Edward O'Toole answered peevishly. "How the hell'd you know my name anyway?"

"Nice chatting with you." Rolvaag picked up his briefcase and headed toward the house, where Charles Regis Perrone was waiting cheerlessly at the back door.

The white crosses had been erected along Glades Road, west of the turnpike; four of them in a cluster, memorializing a terrible head-on. With numb resignation Chaz had watched Red Hammernut's goon uprooting the crosses, until a car screeched to a halt on the shoulder of the highway. Two young men identifying themselves as brothers of the late Randolph Claude Gunther had leapt out of the car and angrily confronted Tool about stealing the markers. The men had brought fresh-cut sunflowers to hang on their brother's cross, and a volume of Bible verses from which to read. With Tool ignoring their remonstra-tions, the men had begun preaching loudly at him, invoking Satan and other Biblical scoundrels. Tool had responded by heaving the two brothers into a roadside canal, shredding their book of verses and eating the flowers. Chaz had looked on with the shivers.

Tool had returned to the Hummer, carrying the four crosses on his shoulders, saying brightly, "I got a whole field of these suckers at home."

"Hmmm," Chaz had managed.

"They look real nice in the ground, plus you don't gotta prune 'em like you do trees and shrubs."

"Excellent point," Chaz had said, making a mental note to call Red Hammernut first thing in the morning to plead for a new bodyguard.

After they'd returned to Chaz's house, Tool had borrowed a hammer and announced that he was planting the traffic crosses temporarily in the backyard. Chaz would have objected more strenuously if he'd known that Karl Rolvaag would be dropping by.

"How do you know Mr. O'Toole?" the detective asked at the door.

It was the first time Chaz had heard the thug's actual name.

"He's just a friend of a friend."

"The friend being Samuel Johnson Hammernut?" Rolvaag said.

"Yes, well, actually he was an acquaintance of my wife's. I barely know the guy."

"Mr. O'Toole or Mr. Hammernut?"

"Neither of them," Chaz said innocently.

The detective rubbed his chin. "That's sort of strange."

"What do you mean? 'Strange' how?" asked Chaz, on the verge of a blowup. The cop was toying with him, like a cat batting around a ball of yarn.

"Your Humvee-one of Mr. Hammernut's companies purchased it for you," Rolvaag said, "according to the records at the dealership."

Oh shit, Chaz thought.

"You hardly know the man and he's buying you a sixty-thousand-

dollar sport-utility vehicle?" Rolvaag now actually scratching his head, just like that flaky Columbo character on television. Chaz was seething on the inside but he managed to look calm.

"Let me explain," he said to the detective. "The Hummer was a birthday present from Joey. Red knew-Mr. Hammernut-he knew the salesman personally, so he got a really sweet deal. Joey paid him back later."

"With a check, or a wire transfer? Actually, it doesn't matter. Either way, the bank should have a record."

Chaz Perrone shrugged. "I don't know how she handled it. It was her money."

Now they were sitting in the kitchen; Chaz with an untouched beer, the cop with his usual Sprite. During lulls in the conversation, sizzles and pops could be heard from a frying pan on the stove.

Chaz leaned forward and lowered his voice. "Can we please cut all this ridiculous bullshit? Just tell me how much you want."

Rolvaag seemed genuinely baffled.

"Oh, come on," Chaz said. "Save me that god-awful trip to Flamingo." - "You're losing me."

Not wishing to spook the crooked detective, Chaz didn't want to come right out with the word blackmail.

Rolvaag said, "You should be aware that I've already spoken to Mr. Hammernut in LaBelle. He described Mr. O'Toole as a former employee, not a friend. Said he hardly remembered him."

Chaz sat back and crossed his arms. "Fine. We'll play it your way."

Like I've got a choice, he thought.

Glossy with perspiration, Tool lumbered into the kitchen to check on the entree. "Three more minutes," he announced, and walked out.

"He's staying here with you?" Rolvaag asked.

"Yeah. While his double-wide gets fumigated."

"What's with the highway crosses?"

"I'm not sure," Chaz Perrone said, "but it might have something to do with him being a deranged, half-witted sociopath."

"Right."

"He claims to be carrying a bullet slug in the crack of his butt."

"Everybody's got problems," Rolvaag said.

"Is there, like, a particular reason you're here?" Chaz inquired. Besides the sheer sadistic joy you obviously get from busting my balls.

"Yes, of course," said the detective.

"Then can we get to it, please? I've got a three-hour drive to the middle of nowhere, thanks to you."

Rolvaag reached for his briefcase, but then Tool reappeared, briskly toweling his sweaty torso. With uncharacteristic buoyancy he asked if anybody was hungry.

"Because I could eat a bus," he said, forking crispy hunks of alligator tail from the frying pan onto a platter.

Apparently, Rolvaag will be staying for supper, Chaz thought, and I'm helpless to stop it. He hoped that Tool had efficiently disposed of the illegal reptile carcass.

"I hope you like chicken," Chaz said to the detective.

Tool let out a cackle. "We're talkin' major chicken. Serious fuckin' swamp chicken."

"Smells delicious," Rolvaag said, "but no thanks. I've got a lasagna waiting at home."

"And my stomach is acting up again," Chaz chimed in, with barely masked relief. Gnawing on the deep-fried ass of a prehistoric lizard was not his notion of a gourmet experience. In fact, only imminent starvation could have induced him to consume anything from the sullied waters of Hammernut Farms.

"Then I'll eat the whole fucker m'self," Tool said eagerly.

So barbaric was the gustatory spectacle that Chaz Perrone and Karl Rolvaag retreated to the living room, the detective pausing to admire the re-stocked aquarium.

"Those little blue-striped fellows-are they wrasses?"

"Your guess is as good as mine." Chaz thinking: Do I look like frigging Jacques Cousteau?