Bad Monkey (22 page)

Christopher Grunion seldom spoke during these flights. Often he appeared to doze with his forehead pressed against the window, causing Claspers to wonder if he was loaded, drunk or possibly ill. The girlfriend, Eve, was a nervous chatterbox who spewed questions.
Are we still in the Bahamas? What’s that island down there? How fast are we going? Do we have enough fuel? What’re you gonna do if the Coast Guard spots us?
Her yammering made Claspers long for the days when he flew
the starry tropics in solitude, accompanied only by silent herbal tonnage and a terse Hispanic voice on the headset.

Bringing in the Caravan required a stretch of calm water, typically on the leeward side of an island. Daylight was also helpful, particularly during lobster season when the channels and bays of the Keys were clotted with small buoys that could tear up the floats and ruin a perfectly fine landing, even flip the aircraft. Once they safely touched down, Eve would call a taxi to come fetch her and Grunion. Then the two of them would inflate the rubber raft they always brought as cargo (along with a small outboard engine), and from the plane they would putt-putt to shore.

Claspers thought the well-fed couple might benefit from rowing, although Grunion would need to shed the orange weather poncho that he always wore. Surely he sweltered like a pig beneath the plastic pullover; Claspers figured he kept it on because of some weird phobia or unsightly medical disorder. A pilot friend of Claspers’s had been morbidly afraid of centipedes and refused to remove his heavy woolen socks, even while bathing. Eventually the poor bastard ended up on crutches, grounded. Later a photograph of his ravaged feet was featured in an illustrated atlas of fungal infections.

Claspers enjoyed sneaking in and out of the States, but much of his flying for Grunion was routine, Andros to Nassau and back. Grunion was breaking ground on an upscale tourist resort at Lizard Cay, so Claspers would bring in architects, designers, contractors, bulldozer mechanics and even the real estate agents to whom Grunion was pitching his project. About once a week Eve would ride the seaplane to Miami but there was no cowboy stuff—it was straight into Opa-locka or Tamiami, strictly legal, her passport open and ready for stamping. Claspers looked forward to those trips because he got some time to go home and chill. Nassau wasn’t hard duty, either, though he always blew too much cash at the clubs and casinos.

The toughest part of the Andros gig was cooling his heels for days at a time, waiting for Grunion or his girlfriend to call with a flight in mind. Rocky Town was the nearest settlement to the construction site, and there wasn’t much to do except eat conch, drink rum and ruminate about growing old with a prostate the size of a toadstool. Marley and the Wailers were all over the radio, yet even that got stale after a while.

Grunion and the woman were renting a house on the ocean but not once had they invited Claspers for lunch or even a cocktail. He would have hired one of the local kids to take him snorkeling or grouper fishing except that Grunion insisted he hang within fifteen minutes of the plane, which stayed chocked on the tarmac at what they called Moxey’s airfield.

That’s where Claspers was, drinking a flat Fresca, when the late afternoon flight from Nassau landed. Three Bahamian women got off lugging shopping bags and next came a rangy guy in his late thirties, early forties. He was carrying a duffel and a fly-rod tube. Claspers knew he was American because of his tan; the Brits and Canadians were white as milk when they stepped off the planes and pink as shrimp when they left. The American paused on the apron to look at the Caravan; then he ambled up to Claspers and asked, “Do you know who owns that seaplane?”

“Private charter.”

“Too bad,” the American said. “I want to fly down and wade the Water Cays. I was looking for someone to take me.”

Claspers told him not to get his hopes up, because there weren’t many floatplanes for charter. “Wish I could help, but I’m stuck here.”

“So you’re the pilot.”

“That’s me.”

The American held out his hand. “My name’s Andrew.”

“I’m K. J. Claspers.”

“You got time for a drink?”

Claspers said thanks anyway but he had to work. “I gotta do a run for the boss.”

A dented blue van pulled up and Grunion’s hired man got out. He was a dome-headed hulk with shriveled-looking ears. They called him Egg but the name on his papers was Ecclestone. He wore a bleached white T-shirt that by contrast made his skin shine like onyx.

“Let’s go, mon,” he said to Claspers.

“In a minute.” Claspers wasn’t afraid of Egg and he didn’t care much for him. The guy was your basic pea-brained muscle, straight from central casting. Claspers said, “I gotta take a leak. Go wait by the plane.”

Egg sneered and headed across the baking tarmac toward the Caravan.

The American said, “That’s some boss.”

Claspers snorted. “Not him, no way—he’s just the help. Poor baby’s got a toothache so I’ve gotta take him to a dentist in Nassau. Talk about the glamour life.”

The pilot went to the restroom and propped himself at the only urinal, where he spritzed and dribbled for what seemed like an eternity. A doctor back home had prescribed some heavy-duty pills but half the time Claspers forgot to take them. Maybe if that hot bartender at Marbles ever gave him a real shot, he’d get with the program and tend to his plumbing.

Claspers wanted to ask the man with the fly rod why he’d come to the island during the hottest, deadest time of summer, when the bonefish lodges were closed. It was rare to see tourist anglers so late in the season, and even more uncommon for one to arrive alone. Typically they fished in pairs to split the cost of chartering a skiff.

When Claspers emerged from the head, he tugged down the bill of his cap against the glare of the sun. He looked around and there was Egg, sitting truculently on one of the airplane’s pontoons.

The American was gone.

Sixteen

Evan Shook was surprised to see a muddy Toyota parked out front. The Oklahoma tag didn’t make sense; the Lipscombs had said they were from Virginia. Plus they weren’t supposed to arrive for another forty-five minutes.

Inside the house Evan Shook encountered two squatters, an attractive woman with frosted blond pigtails and a flabby guy who looked younger.

“Please don’t get mad,” the woman began.

“Clear out right now, before I call the cops.”

The man said, “Bro, we took a major hit. This is
not
where we want to be.”

It was the woman doing most of the talking, some hard-luck story about her purse being stolen, all their cash and credit cards. Evan Shook wasn’t even pretending to listen.

“And this was supposed to be our second honeymoon,” she concluded sadly.

That part Evan Shook heard, with vexation; the woman was way too hot to be sleeping with such a zero. Evan Shook was unaware that people said the same thing about his mistress. Recently she’d been harping at him to leave his wife, demands inflicted at the cruelest bedroom moments. He couldn’t afford a messy divorce, just as he couldn’t afford to diddle for another six months with the Big Pine spec house. Between the construction loan and the property mortgage, the bank had him by the short and curlies.

“We tried camping,” the male squatter piped up, “but, dude, the fuckin’ skeeters!”

Evan Shook checked around. Except for the strange couple’s tent, the place was in good shape for the Lipscombs. The menacing pentagram on the floor had been painted over by a select member of the construction crew, a Sikh carpenter who took no stock in silly Western superstitions. It was also he who’d disposed of the icky Santeria artifacts, lobbing the stiffened rooster into the canal and granulating the rodent skull with a belt sander.

The cute woman in pigtails said, “We weren’t trying to make trouble. We just needed somewhere dry and safe.”

“This’ll be a cool-ass crib when it’s done,” her companion added for ingratiation.

Evan Shook nodded brusquely. “Yup. A real cool-ass crib.”

Over the phone the Lipscombs had sounded like long shots. The guy claimed to be a retired hedge funder who was now raising trotters. He said he was driving all the way to Florida because the wife refused to fly ever since their Lear 45 had clipped a cow elk on the runway at Jackson Hole. He said they already owned a seaside spread at Hilton Head and a cottage up on the Boundary Waters. Evan Shook responded with cordiality but not gushing enthusiasm. It was his experience that people with serious money didn’t broadcast their real estate portfolios to strangers who were angling to peddle them another property.

But maybe the Lipscombs were real. Maybe his luck would change.

The woman said, “I’m begging you, don’t call the police. We have nowhere else to go.”

Evan Shook opened his billfold and peeled off two, three, four hundred dollars. “Pack up your stuff and go get a room.”

When the woman leaned forward to kiss his cheek, Evan Shook caught a heartbreaking glimpse down her blouse. “God bless you,” she said.

What God?
he thought.
In half an hour she’ll be balling this slob in a hotel I’m paying for
.

Her lump-faced boyfriend solemnly took his hand. “Thanks, dude. I mean, duuuuude.”

It’s so tragic
, thought Evan Shook.
So wrong
.

·  ·  ·

The phone number for Christopher Grunion obtained by Rosa—the last number dialed by Dr. Gomez O’Peele—was disconnected. Yancy had planned to call Grunion out of the blue, pretending to be an insurance broker or maybe a Republican pollster. He’d just wanted to hear what the prick who tried to kill him sounded like.

His room on Lizard Cay was fine; the AC was anemic but he had a striking view of the white flats, veined with tidal channels shining sapphire and indigo. Offshore Yancy could see a slow-chugging mail boat; otherwise the horizon was empty. He heard the Caravan lift off from Moxey’s airstrip and pass over the motel on a slow turn toward Nassau. The pilot seemed like an okay guy although his bullet-headed passenger was bad news. Apparently the thug was connected to Grunion in a capacity of sufficient importance to warrant use of the seaplane for a dental crisis.

Yancy checked his phone and found a snide message from Caitlin Cox:

“Listen,
Inspector
, I think you oughta know what just happened. That judge in Miami declared my dad officially dead, whatever, so can you please leave us all alone and get back to your annoying life?”

The court’s decision didn’t surprise Yancy. Nick Stripling’s mangled arm was sufficient evidence of death. That it had been unearthed later from the grave and then ejected from a stolen vehicle would have no bearing on the judge’s ruling as to whether or not Stripling was in fact deceased. How he got that way—by mishap or homicide—was likewise irrelevant. Yancy wondered how long it would take Caitlin to get her slice of the insurance payoff, and whatever else Eve Stripling had promised.

He picked out a bicycle from the motel’s rusty selection and rode to Rocky Town. It was critical to avoid Eve and her boyfriend, either of whom might recognize Yancy even in yuppie fishing garb. Unfortunately, he was the only white man on the streets, and the only white man at the seafood shack where he stopped to eat. A woman dicing conch behind the bar was so friendly that Yancy took a chance and said he was looking for a fellow American named Christopher. She gave a
roll of the eyes and then one of those fabulous island laughs. Before long she was telling Yancy all about Grunion’s ambitious project, the Curly Tail Lane Resort.

“Yeah, mon, dey gon have a spa and clay tennis and a chef dot’s from some five-star hotel in Sowt Beach.”

“Sounds spectacular,” Yancy said.

“You friends with Mistuh Grunion back in Miami?”

“I am. Where does he usually hang out around here?”

“Ha, he dont hang no place. You see ’im drive sometime tru town but mostly he stay at Bannister Point. ’Im and his lady rent dot Gibson place. She come by every now ’n’ then to pick up some chowder. Wot’s your name, mon? Have another rum.”

Yancy ordered one more Barbancourt with his meal. He dealt with the conch salad painstakingly; each incoming bite was picked apart by fork and then scrutinized for insect pieces. The locals who were witnessing this dour procedure snickered among themselves, but Yancy carried on. It seemed unlikely that Rocky Town was large enough to have a full-time health inspector, if such a job even existed on Andros. The conch shack was just that, an open-air bar next to a hill of gutted mollusk shells. No government health certificate was posted on the plywood menu board, only the boozy jottings of sailboaters and tourists.

Still, the food was excellent. After he finished eating, Yancy climbed on the clattering bike and set off in the starless night for the motel. At the bottom of a hill his front tire caught a pothole and he spilled sideways, landing on his back. He was sitting on the broken pavement and swearing aloud when he heard a motor.

From the crest of the roadway a single white light descended slowly. It was too small to be the headlamp of a motorcycle. Yancy leaned his bike against a utility pole. The white light weaved on its approach, the hum of the squat vehicle growing louder. Yancy still wasn’t sure what he was looking at, though now he could hear a smoky voice, singing and laughing.

It was a woman piloting some sort of souped-up wheelchair, which she braked to a halt when its narrow beam fell upon Yancy. She was dressed flamboyantly and followed by heavy-lidded matrons who clapped softly and rolled their heads. On the steering bar of the motorized
scooter perched a monkey wearing a doll’s plastic tiara and an ill-fitted disposable diaper.

“You hoyt, suh?” the throned woman asked Yancy.

“I’m good. Took a tumble off the bike is all.”

“You a white fella? Don’t lie. Where you from?”

She looked bony and harmless, yet Yancy experienced a spidery chill. The woman wore a wrap of pink batik on her head and swigged from a tall glass that barely fit in the cup holder. Although it was too dark on the road for Yancy to see her features, the gleam of a gapped smile was unmistakable. Something about her pet monkey didn’t seem right.