Skinny Dip - Страница 67

"Because you're a man." Joey blew bubbles as she laughed.

"Fine," he said, "then you owe me two weeks' room and board!"

"Gotta catch me first."

She lowered her head and lengthened her strokes, knifing across the foamy crests of the waves. She could barely hear him shouting, "Hey, Joey, slow down! I love you!"

Geezer, she thought.

Happily she kicked toward the seawall where Strom paced, yapping and wagging his silly stump of a tail.

Red Hammernut licked at the corners of his lips. He'd been spitting and swearing so much that his tongue had gone to chalk. For about the sixth time he proclaimed, "That was the worst job a shootin' I ever saw from a man with two good eyes."

Earl Edward O'Toole kept his two good eyes on the levee road and said nothing. Evidently he was done apologizing.

Red was nearly apopletic about Chaz Perrone's escape. Tool had told him to quit worrying; said the guy was a hopeless pussy who'd never get out of the 'glades alive.

Only what if he does? Red thought.

"That boy can flat-out ruin me," he said somberly.

Tool chuckled. "He ain't gone ruin nobody, chief. He's gone run till he drops."

"You know sumpin' I don't?"

"Just that he's got plenty to be a-scared of," Tool said, "he ever comes out."

"And what if somebody else catches him first? Ever thought about that? Boy's lookin' at Death Row, he'd be tickled to rat out yours truly for a plea bargain."

Tool said, "Don't getcha self all worked up."

On the chance that Chaz might backtrack, they had waited a long time in the darkness on the levee-listening, watching for a shadow to move-until Red could no longer endure the bugs. They left Perrone's Hummer but took the keys, in the event that the sonofabitch was waiting in the weeds nearby. His maudlin suicide note lay prominently displayed on the dashboard-"in case he's polite enough to float up dead," Red had explained.

Now, riding next to Tool in the dusty pickup, Red couldn't stop stewing about all that had happened since the screwball biologist had gotten rid of his wife. It was uncanny how things had unraveled, how swiftly order and reason had spun into mayhem. Red Hammernut was not a complicated or ruminative person; he was a pragmatist and a fixer and a kicker of asses. He didn't believe in fate or karma or the fortuitous alignment of the constellations. If a tide of bad shit was rolling his way, it meant that somebody down the line had fucked up.

Normally Red Hammernut had no difficulty identifying the source of the problem and fixing it-a payoff, a beating or a plane ticket usually did the trick-but the Perrone situation was unlike any he'd ever come up against. All of Red's clout and political connections would be useless if Chaz resurfaced and started blabbing about the Everglades scam. Red now regretted destroying the two videotapes of Joey Perrone's murder, which in retrospect would have been useful in turning the tables on Chaz.

That back-stabbing lowlife.

Oh well, Red thought, at least I got my money back. The Samsonite was sliding noisily around the bed of the pickup as they jounced along the berm, heading out of the Loxahatchee preserve.

"Why you goin' so damn slow?" he griped at Tool. "Because I gotta keep the headlights off." "And why exactly do you gotta do that?"

" 'Cause they's park rangers and game wardens out here," Tool explained. "It ain't like back home, Red. This is a federal deal." "They can kiss my ass, them feds." "Plus your boy only left us 'bout a quarter tank of gas."

"Well, that figgers."

By choice Red Hammernut hadn't spent much time in what little remained of the original, untouched Everglades. He preferred the parts that had been drained, plowed or paved-such as the vegetable fields he patrolled by Cadillac or helicopter; flat and orderly rectangles, neatly delineated by ditches and shorn of unruly tree cover. Sometimes you might run across a feral pig or a stray coon, but wildlife was generally sparse on the farm.

Red was not afraid of the wilderness but he wasn't truly comfortable there, especially at night; especially with a shotgun that was empty.

"Those fuckin' feds," he said contemptuously, "and the state of Florida, too, they're gonna bust my hump about dumpin' shit in this water. You wait and see, son. A damn travesty is what it is!"

"Yessir," said Tool, with not as much empathy as his boss would have liked.

"Take them bull gators we heard tearin' it up out there tonight," Red went on. "They been around-what, a hundred trillion years? You think a little fertilizer's gonna bother 'em? Fungicides? Pesticides? Hell, those badass fuckers could eat their weight in DDT and not get sick enough to fart. They're dinosaurs, for Christ's sake. They don't need the damn U.S. guv'ment to watch out for 'em."

Tool fixed his gaze straight ahead. "But didn't all the other dinosaurs get extincted?"

"What?" Red Hammernut couldn't believe what he was hearing. "Son, whose side are you on? I don't know what the hell happened to the other damn dinosaurs, and who gives two shits anyhow?"

Tool said, "I shot me a li'l gator just the other day. Wasn't but a four-footer, but still."

"Still what?"

Red simmered all the way out of Loxahatchee. He started feeling better only when the truck finally hit dry pavement and he could see the sodium lights of Palm Beach County glowing to the east. "We're gonna put a chopper up first thing tomorrow," he announced coolly. "I ain't worried. We'll track down that gutless bastard."

"If the dinosaurs don't get him first," said Tool, stone-faced.

"Son, you tryin' to bust my balls? Because I ain't in the mood, case you didn't notice."

"Yessir."

"Know what you could do tomorrow, Mr. O'Toole? You could take that twelve-gauge out to the range for target practice, so that maybe next time you'll be able to hit the side of a motherfuckin' barn."

Tool accepted the insult impassively, a silence that Red Hammer-nut misread as submission. He failed entirely to perceive the flimsiness of Tool's loyalty, or to sense the anger that had begun to simmer in the man's simple thinking.

"It's all 'cause of you he escaped!" Red fumed. "It's your damn fault and nobody else's!"

Tool gave a half shrug. "Try shootin' a shotgun with a slug in your armpit."

"Goddammit, just drive. Just get me home."

Closing his eyes, Red thought of the steaming Jacuzzi that awaited. He couldn't wait to scrub the sweat and sunscreen and dead bugs off his skin; sit down to a sixteen-ounce T-bone and a bottle of Jack Daniel's. He was jolted from this reverie when Tool braked the pickup to an abrupt halt on the grassy shoulder of the highway.

Red looked around. "Now what? We blow a tire?"

"Sit tight." Tool pushed himself out of the truck.

"Hey! Get back here," Red hollered. He hopped out and chased after him. "Where the hell you think you're goin'? I ain't got time tonight for this nonsense!"

Tool did not alter his pace. Red got up beside him and began calling him every name he could think of.

"You hush," Tool said, raising a brick-size hand. He stooped to study the small white cross, and removed a spray of shriveled lilies.

"Not now, son. You come back some other day and fetch it, but not tonight," Red admonished him. "Not on my time."

"It'll just take a second."

"You gone deaf? Deaf and dumb?"

The name on the homemade cross was visible in the wash from the truck's headlights:

Pablo Humberto Duarte

Loving Husband, Father, Son, and Brother

B. Sept. 3, 1959. D.March 21, 2003

Now He Rides with God Almighty

Remember: Seat Belts Save Lives!

"Just some damn beaner," Red Hammernut grumped. "Probably got trashed and drove hisself into the canal."

"You don't know that," said Tool.

"Just lookit the name. Pah-blow Humm-bear-toe-tell me that ain't a beaner name."

Tool sat on his haunches, elbows propped on his knees.

"Well, hurry it up, then," Red said crossly. "Pull the damn thing outta the ground and let's go. I need a drink and a steam."

Tool didn't budge. Red glowered at him.

"What the fuck, son?"

"I just been workin' the 'rithmetic in my head. This old boy was 'bout the same age as me," Tool said, "give or take."

"The beaner?"

"Mr. Doo-arty here. However you say it."

"Mercy." Red thinking: Lord, please don't let this moron go soft on me.

Tool gestured at the wooden cross. "Least he was a 'husband, father, son, brother'-I ain't none a those things, Red. I got no wife and no family… one lousy cousin, he's up at Starke for robbin' a goddamn laundry-mat."

That was the end of Red Hammernut's patience. In his judgment there was no good reason for a man of his stature to be standing on the side of State Road 441 on a Saturday night while some hairy half-wit with a bullet up his butt cheeks suddenly gets a middle-life crisis, all because some dead Meskin forgot to buckle his damn seat belt.

Without a thought, Red slapped Earl Edward O'Toole across the top of the head. It was a poor decision, conveying what Tool regarded as an intolerable lack of respect.

"Listen here, you doped-up dickhead of a gorilla," Red said. "There's half a million bucks of my money sittin' like a big hot buzzard turd in the back of that pickup, out in the wide-open spaces, where any damn crackhead in basketball shoes can rip it off and be gone in five seconds. Now, I don't honestly know what's got into you, son, but I'm gonna count to ten and you're gonna yank that stupid fuckin' cross outta the ground and we're gonna get the hell outta Dodge. You understand me?"