Bad Monkey (28 page)

The agent asked Cody if Plover Chase had abducted him against his will. Cody said, “She’s got something way more lethal than a gun. You know what they say—pussy is undefeated. That’s from Merle Haggard himself.”

“So she didn’t threaten or physically harm you.”

“Stompin’ my heart to pieces, doesn’t that count?”

“It was her English class where you first met, right? Back in the day.”

“Not regular English but AP English,” Cody said. “That means, like, super advanced.”

“Got it.” John Wesley Weiderman didn’t have a sarcastic bone in his body.

“I love her the same now as I did back then. It’s like nothing ever changed, time standing still, whatever.”

“Why do you think she left you this time?”

“Dude, come on. Why do they do
anything
they do? Yesterday she shows up in a green convertible, packs her shit and off she goes up the highway. Monster hormone attack is my theory.”

The agent didn’t doubt that Plover Chase was gone; there were
no women’s clothes in the closet, no lipstick tubes or makeup items in the bathroom. On the unmade queen-sized bed lay a sad stack of men’s magazines, raw jerk-off material that even a loser like Cody would have concealed had a female been in the vicinity.

“Any idea where she went?”

“Not really,” said Cody. “Home maybe?”

“Was your family aware that you two re-connected?”

“Dad passed six years ago and Mom’s in assisted living, thinks she’s Shirley MacLaine. And guess what, bro, I’m thirty years old and I can bone whoever I want, long as she’s legal age and says yes. And Ms. Chase, she said yes, yes, yes, and
more
yes, please, Cody baby! Bottom line, I didn’t break any laws.”

John Wesley Weiderman pointed out that it was illegal to aid and abet a wanted criminal.

“Only thing I abetted was rockin’ her world. They gonna send me to the penitentiary for that?” Cody was striving to appear indignant.

“A jury might see it your way,” said the OSBI agent, “but good lawyers cost money. Maybe by then you’ll be rich from selling your journal, right?”

Cody Baby didn’t appear to be emotionally pulverized by his lover’s abandonment. He was, however, troubled by the possibility of being prosecuted.

“Listen, I just remembered,” he said. “There’s a guy lives on Big Pine Key, Ms. Chase had a thing with him for a while.”

“I spoke with the gentleman. He used to be a police detective.” John Wesley Weiderman wouldn’t soon forget Andrew Yancy baring his ass to present his alleged wild-dog bites.

“Well, that’s where she might be,” Cody said without rancor. “With
him
.”

“He told me their affair was over.”

“Maybe he’s not the one calling the shots. Obviously you never met Ms. Chase.”

“Someday,” said the agent.

“She wasn’t too jazzed about the dude gettin’ another girlfriend, okay? She acted all like isn’t-that-nice, but I could tell she was seriously frosted.”

“So you think she went to win him back.”

“You know how whacked chicks can get. The guy’s new girl is a doctor, ’kay? Ms. Chase couldn’t deal with that, is my theory. It’s all in the diary. I do a hundred words every night, not longhand but on my iPad. That still counts, right?”

“For sure.”

Agent John Wesley Weiderman fully realized that pursuing Plover Chase was an unfair burden on the taxpayers of Oklahoma. Her capture would not make the state a safer place. It would instead make a tabloid celebrity of the ex-schoolteacher, and possibly a best-selling author of her now-grown-up victim, whom John Wesley Weiderman perceived as a grubby oversexed slacker. What a circus that would be, Plover Chase returning to Tulsa in handcuffs. Plus the waste of a perfectly good jail cell.

But Agent Weiderman was a follower of orders, and there were worse places to be sent than the Florida Keys. He’d diligently scouted the health department’s website and located a relatively clean seafood joint, where for lunch he had eaten grilled mahi served with Cuban plantains and black beans. It was maybe the best meal he’d ever eaten that wasn’t a rib eye.

“What about those jerry cans?” he asked Cody Parish.

Parish gave a loose-jointed shrug.

“On the Visa bill were four six-gallon gasoline containers from Ace Hardware.”

“Weird.” Cody said Ms. Chase must have purchased the items on a day she went out alone.

“Have you ever known her to be violent?”

“No way,” Cody said. “But, like I told you, we were in major love.”

“Maybe she feels different about Mr. Yancy.”

“There’s a wild streak, for sure. It’s all in my diary.”

“We’ll be in touch about that,” the agent said. He headed toward the door.

“You catch her, don’t let on it was me that told you where to look.”

“Of course not. We protect our sources.” Which is what John Wesley Weiderman was trained to say, and almost always they bought it.

Flip-flops slapping on the floor, Cody Parish trailed the agent to the stairway. “Twenty gallons’ worth of gas cans, what do you figure that’s all about?”

“Twenty-four.”

Cody’s spotty lips moved as he redid the math in his head, six times four. “Maybe she’s just stocking up for the drive home. Doesn’t wanna waste time stopping at service stations.”

John Wesley Weiderman said, “I didn’t think of that.”

Because only a chowderhead would think of that. People used jerry cans for fueling lawn mowers or ATVs, but there was no good reason to carry four of them unless you had a bigger job in mind.

Rosa Campesino seldom thought about Daniel, her ex-husband. What brought him to mind now, while she sipped wine with Eve Stripling on the porch of an Andros Island beach house, was a whiff of syrupy men’s cologne.

Beast Down it was called, Daniel’s favorite. She’d never met another man who wore the stuff. However, Rosa knew it wasn’t Daniel talking on the phone in the next room because Daniel was dead, having witlessly steered his two-thousand-dollar mountain bike over a cliff. The autopsy had been performed with competence in Bozeman, Montana. As a professional courtesy the report had been faxed to Rosa, who’d made copies for the paddleboard instructor and each of the three other women Daniel had been fucking during the marrriage, the lubricious details unearthed by Rosa’s divorce attorney.

“I really like those shoes,” Eve Stripling said.

“Thank you. They’re seriously comfy.”

“What happens when all that shiny red color comes off the bottoms? Do you have to, like, get ’em spray-painted?” Rosa said, “That’s a darn good question.”

This was when light chatter filled the air, before things fell apart. Eve was holding a tiny cinnamon-colored dog, probably the same runny-eyed furball that Andrew had saved from drowning.

“How much longer will Mr. Grunion be on the phone?” Rosa asked.

“He’s tied up on a business call,” said Eve. “How about some more wine?”

Rosa said sure. She looked at her watch—still plenty of time.

“Maybe you could tell me how the units at Curly Tail Lane are
priced, pre-construction. My husband and I are interested in a couple of two-bedrooms facing the water. We’d pay cash at closing.”

“No financing?” Eve looked more amused than excited.

“We’ll have to do the deal back in Florida,” Rosa continued, “at the office of Andrew’s trust managers. They’re the ones who move the money around.”

“I don’t think so.”

“Oh, we can Skype your people in from Nassau.”

“That’s not what I meant,” said Eve. “I don’t think we’re interested.”

Rosa held steady. “Not interested in an all-cash deal? Seriously?”

“Honey, there’s nothing serious about any of this, and we both know it.”

The dog jumped down and curled up in a corner. Eve opened another bottle of merlot. Waves rumbled out across the reef line, the wind thrashed the palms and Rosa tapped the toe of one of her French sandals.

She said, “My mistake, Eve. I thought you and your husband were in the business of selling condos.”

“Thing about this place, it’s easy to make friends if you treat the right people right. I’ll give you a for-instance. We made a good Bahamian friend at the Immigration office, and guess what? She says nobody named Rosa Gates cleared through Nassau the last few days. Not Fresh Creek or Congo Town either. There
was
a Rosa Campesino—”

“I kept my maiden name,” Rosa interjected, although she knew it was over.

“Did your ‘husband’ keep his maiden name, too? Because there’s no Andrew Gates on the entry list, either.” Eve with her stretched white jeans and tanned feet was rocking on a wooden swing, not in a lazing tempo.

She said, “Guy named Andrew Yancy came through Nassau on his way here to Lizard Cay. He used to be a cop down in the Keys. I’ve met the man, so just cut the bullshit.”

Rosa set down her wine glass. “Tell Mr. Grunion I’m sorry to have wasted your evening. Clearly there’s been a misunderstanding.”

“Oh, give it up.”

Calmly Rosa reached for her handbag and rose. “Too bad,” she said.

Eve Stripling cocked her head. “Honey, you’re not goin’ anywhere.”

At that moment a door to the house flung open, uncorking a fresh gust of Beast Down mixed with sweat. The smell was so strong that Rosa feared she might gag.

Against the wind he ran; uphill, downhill. Yancy was no athlete, not anymore. His lungs heaved, his legs cramped. The pocked pavement was strewn with sharp pebbles that gouged his feet.

Simple pain he could take; blood, too. It was the fucking up that was unbearable to contemplate, his own potentially disastrous failure to see the obvious.

An approaching vehicle turned out to be Philip’s taxi heading back toward town, reggae thumping from the open windows. The van was dark except for the glow of a joint that Claspers the pilot was smoking in the front next to Philip. Yancy waved both arms but he was too gassed to shout. As the taxi sped past, Yancy noticed a hunched dark shape on the roof—Mr. Stafford’s monkey, clinging grimly to the luggage rack.

Yancy ran on until he spotted a kid’s bicycle lying beside a chicken pen in front of a cinder-block house. The windows of the place had been boarded for the storm, and through a crack Yancy saw light and heard voices. Uprighting the bike, he pedaled away on half-flat tires, his knees bumping the handlebars.

Egg loomed as a foremost concern when Yancy approached Bannister Point. Yancy reviewed his own rudimentary disabling skills, cop skills, understanding that he’d never fought a man of Egg’s size whose reflexes hadn’t been slowed by drugs or booze. Tonight Egg would be on full alert and sober as a hangman, not easy to surprise and bring down. In consideration of the goon’s recent dental woes, Yancy planned to aim first for the jawbone.

A lead pipe or a marlin gaff would have been helpful, but he settled for a hefty pine bough that he found where he ditched the bicycle, a quarter mile from the house. Under low purple clouds he walked the rest of the way. The property was lit up like a used-car lot; Yancy heard the rumble of a gasoline-powered generator, a luxury in the out-islands. It meant that one could spend the duration of a major hurricane
in air-conditioned comfort listening to Puccini or Van Halen, as long as the walls didn’t blow down.

Yancy scouted swiftly, his footfalls muted by the noise from the shuddering trees. Egg wasn’t lurking out front; the backyard looked clear, too. Eve Stripling could be seen alone on the porch, untangling some wind chimes. Yancy snuck along the perimeter of the house peering in windows; no sign of Rosa, no sign of anyone. He felt a hot coal in his gut.

Then Eve’s mutt started barking madly, and he thought:
Oh, what the hell
.

He opened the front door and walked inside.

Standing in the foyer clutching a broken tree branch, expecting the absurd little canine to come lunging for his ankles, a creature that would have drowned or gotten gobbled by sharks if he hadn’t rescued it …

This is what I get for one minor act of decency
.

The yapping stopped.

Yancy took a couple of steps. Paused to listen.

Peeked around a hallway corner—nothing.

A voice said, “Up here, asshole.”

Yancy climbed the stairs and there the man sat on a slick burgundy Super Rollie scooter, Yancy’s 12-gauge Beretta angled across his lap. Hanging from a brass hat rack in a corner, next to a full-sized print of the famous Audubon spoonbill, was a dirty blaze-orange poncho and a couple of camo sun masks. Outside, a broken shutter banged and banged.

“Where’s Rosa?” Yancy said.

“Sit down.” He motioned toward a straight-backed chair.

“Where is she?”

“I’ve got a shotgun and you’ve got what—a piece of fuckin’ firewood?”

“Nick, I asked you a question.”

“Eve said you’d figure it out right away. I said you’re not that bright.”

“And I say you’re bright enough not to shoot a cop.” With his free hand Yancy took out the police badge on loan from Johnny Mendez. “See? I’m back on the force.”

“First place,” Nicholas Stripling said, “there’s no law says a man can’t cut off his own arm.”

“Maybe not.”

“I know for a goddamn fact.”

“There’s a law against murder,” Yancy said. “You killed Charlie Phinney and Dr. O’Peele, and you tried to kill me.”

“Ha, try to prove
any
of that shit.”

“I will. In the meantime let’s start with the Medicare rip-off,” Yancy said. “Hey, guess what happens when the feds find out you’re still alive.”

“Who’s gonna tell ’em? Not you, because you’ll be disappeared.”

Stripling wore a vented tan fishing shirt that was missing the left sleeve. The opening had been sewn shut to cover his empty shoulder socket. One of his ears was bandaged where it had been snagged by a bonefish fly, although Stripling obviously didn’t know that the angler who’d wounded him was Yancy.

The air in the den was rank with cologne that smelled like apricots and linoleum wax.

“I remember the
Herald
didn’t run a photo with your obituary,” Yancy said.

“That’s because we didn’t give ’em one.”

“Good call. They see the paper in Nassau, you’re toast.”