Skinny Dip - Страница 64

Stranahan emptied the chamber, popped out the clip and handed the empty gun to Tool, who flung it off the dock.

"Thing's waterlogged," he said. "Hey, you see him out there anywheres?"

Joey shook her head. Her fists were on her hips as she stared hard into the opaque gloom. The lightning had temporarily stopped, making it impossible to spot a small boat in the distance.

She said, "Mick, you'd better be right about this."

"Stop worrying. He's history."

Tool labored to his feet. "You take me back to dry land, we'll call it even for what happened at the doc's house-you sluggin' me in the damn throat'n all."

"It's the least I can do," Stranahan agreed.

He and Corbett helped Earl Edward O'Toole get in the skiff, which heeled precariously under the load. Joey was hesitant to join them, but there was no other way out of Stiltsville.

Corbett handed out life jackets. Tool couldn't fit into his.

"I gotta lay off them Pringles," he said.

Even in the night shadows Joey could see a thin dark stream running from under his arm. When she advised him to go straight to a hospital, he laughed harshly.

The skiff was wallowing so badly that one rogue wave could have swamped it. Nobody moved from their places as Stranahan motored tediously toward the western shoreline of Key Biscayne. The ride was wet and squirrelly, but it smoothed out when they reached the Pines Canal. They dropped Tool off in some millionaire's backyard, walking distance from Crandon Boulevard.

"Go take care of that bullet," Corbett said.

Tool smiled ruefully, as if enjoying some private joke. "I still don't unnerstand what the hell you people wanted," he said, "what you hoped to get from this whole fucked-up deal."

"Ask them." Corbett pointed to his sister and her accomplice.

"Accountability," Mick Stranahan said.

"An ending," said Joey. "Maybe some peace of mind."

Tool flapped his dripping arms in exasperation. "But come on! Life don't work like that!"

"Oh, sometimes it does," Stranahan said.

Thirty

Charles Perrone slept in his own bed, spooning the suitcase. He awoke before dawn, chewed up five cherry Maalox tablets, tossed a toothbrush and three pairs of clean underwear into a grocery bag, then sat down to write out a suicide note.

"To all my friends and loved ones," he began without irony.

Life alone is unbearable. lam reminded of my precious Joey with every sunrise. Although I've tried to stay strong, I'm afraid it's impossible. I clung to hope as long as possible, but now it's time to face the awful truth. She is never coming back and it's all my fault-how could I let her out of my sight that rainy night at sea?

I pray that all of you can forgive me. I only wish I could forgive myself. Tonight I shall reunite with my beloved, so that we may embrace each other on our journey to a dear and better place.

Get my swan costume ready!

Yours in sorrow, Dr. Charles Perrone Chaz foresaw that his integrity would be called into question once Joey surfaced and went to the police. It was his vainglorious hope that a heart-wrenching farewell message might cast enough doubt upon his wife's lurid story to gain him some getaway time. The salient phrases he had, of course, purloined from an Internet site devoted to memorable suicide notes and famous last words. Chaz was especially fond of the final sentence, supposedly uttered in 1931 by ballerina Anna Pavlova as she exited the mortal stage.

After taping the note to the refrigerator, he manually shredded the paper contents of his backpack. Special attention was given to the handwritten tables denoting minimal levels of phosphorus in the waste from Red Hammernut's farms. The dweebs at the water district would have been vexed to see that Chaz's charts had been completed and signed well in advance of upcoming sampling dates. Chaz had considered saving the forged documents in case he ever needed to blackmail Red, or testify against him. Now, thanks to Chaz's half-million-dollar windfall, his most promising option was to disappear without a trace. He would miss his yellow Hummer, but only until he bought a new one.

Assuming there was a dealership in Costa Rica.

He was waiting on hold with the cab dispatcher when the doorbell rang. Quietly he hung up the phone and padded to Tool's room, where he found a rusty revolver in a moldy gym bag. As he hurried back to the front of the house, the bell rang again. Chaz remained silent until the pounding started, as if someone was attacking the door with a croquet mallet.

"Yo, knock it off! Who's there?"

"The cleaning lady."

"Ricca?" he said incredulously.

"Open up or I'll scream bloody murder."

"Don't do that." Her yowls could shatter crystal, as Chaz well remembered from their lovemaking.

Ricca said, "What'd you think the cops are gonna do with a guy who tries to rape a cripple?"

Chaz hastily wedged the handgun into his waistband and let her in. She glared as she clomped past him. The door was scuffed and dented where she had bludgeoned it with her cast.

"How's the leg?" Chaz inquired tepidly.

"Fuck you."

"How'd you know I was home?"

"I tried calling all night long, and then it's six in the morning and your line's busy." Ricca skidding the plaster heel along the tile floor.

"I was on the computer. Have a seat," Chaz said.

With an impatient sigh she lowered herself onto the couch. "I've been thinking about my new car-forget the Mustang, I want a Thun-derbird convertible instead."

"Sweet," said Chaz. The timing of her visit could not have been worse.

"P.S., where's my money?"

"I'm working on it. Are you thirsty?"

"I don't suppose you've got whole milk," she said.

Chaz retreated to the kitchen and pretended to search the refrigerator, stalling while he improvised a new plan. When he stood up, Ricca was there-how she'd crept up so stealthily with a bum leg, Chaz couldn't imagine, but her expression was one of toxic contempt. While he had been rooting leisurely through the beer and Mountain Dew, she'd been perusing his suicide note.

"Clever boy," she said. "You're making a run for it."

"What if I told you I was actually going to kill myself. I'm serious, honey, I've been super-depressed."

"And you're packing a suitcase for the hereafter?" She pointed at the gray Samsonite, which sat upright in the hallway.

"Oh, that," Chaz said. "I can explain."

She'd left him no choice but to kill her, really kill her this time. He pulled out Tool's second gun.

"Not this again," Ricca sighed.

"Have you got a car?"

Chaz had taken a taxi home from Miami, since the Hummer was at the marina and the keys to the Hummer were in Tool's pocket and Tool was at the bottom of Biscayne Bay.

"Where we going this time?" Ricca asked.

Chaz herded her to the living room. He peeked through the shades and saw that she'd arrived in a generic white compact, an Alamo plate on the front bumper. The trunk appeared adequate for the Samsonite and possibly a carry-on, but not in addition to a corpse with one leg in a bulky cast.

No problem, Chaz told himself. I'll do it in the sticks somewhere, dump her body, then take her car to the airport. There was plenty of time-American had a 5:00 p.m. nonstop to San Jose.

"Your fish are starved." Ricca peered with maternal concern at the aquarium.

"Fuck 'em," Chaz said. Why was she reaching into the damn tank?

"Lookie here." She held up a small platinum wedding band. "It was hanging from the mast of that little pirate ship."

Struggling to remain calm, Chaz ordered her to put the ring back in the water. She recited the inscription aloud: " 'To Joey, the girl of my dreams. Love, CRP.' Aw, that's so romantic."

He indulged Ricca her sarcasm. Perhaps she already knew that his missing wife was alive and well and determined to ruin his life; that the wedding band obviously had been placed in the aquarium to infuriate him. Perhaps they were even co-conspirators in the plot, Ricca and Joey. Why not? Chaz thought. Nothing could shock him anymore.

Ricca was unable to fit the ring on the proper finger, so she slipped it on her pinkie. "What d'ya think?" she cooed theatrically.

Chaz resisted the urge to shoot her on the spot.

"Don't you move," he said, and for good measure swiped away the crutches and tossed them into the foyer.

"Why was your wife's wedding ring in with the fishes?" she asked, wiggling the platinum-adorned pinkie. "There must be a story."

Back in the kitchen, Chaz fitted the revolver into his battered left hand and hoped that Ricca wouldn't try anything nutty this time. He winced at the memory of her ballsy dash for freedom at Loxahatchee.

With his good hand Chaz rolled the Samsonite toward the door, marveling at the cumbersome weight of wet cash. He shoved the crutches at Ricca and snapped, "Come on, get your butt in gear."

"I dyed my pubes green for you, and this is the thanks I get?"

It was unnerving that she could crack jokes; that she wasn't shaking in fear and begging for her life. "Let's go for a ride," he said.

"How dumb do you think I am?"

"We can debate that later."

"I'm not going anyplace with you, thimbledick."

All that prevented him from shooting her was knowing that a woman's bloodstains on his wall would vastly complicate the suicidal-widower scenario that he had so artfully crafted. He'd invested too much effort in his farewell note to discard it.

"Get up, Ricca. Now."

"Nope. You'll have to carry me."