Bad Monkey (36 page)

“The uvula,” Yancy said. “She got a fish hook stuck in her uvula. I’m betting she ordered the Cuban yellowtail.”

“Man, that’s amazing. How’d you know?”

“Brennan doesn’t check the gut for hooks when he cooks a fish whole.”

“How come?”

“Because he’s a bumblefuck.”

“I need you pronto back in the saddle, Andrew. This one made the
Citizen
. The widow lady, she’s got an in with the governor.”

“Let’s have lunch later in the week. Pick a place that won’t poison us.”

Rosa got home from the office at five-thirty. They didn’t go out for dinner and they didn’t make love. The autopsy she’d completed was that of a girl who had died on her birthday. Only eight years old and the parents had left her alone while they went to play the slots at the Miccosukee casino, way out on Krome Avenue. The girl was doing laps in the backyard pool when her appendix ruptured, no one there to hear the cries for help. She made it back to the shallow end but the pain doubled her up, and that’s where they’d found her—the parents, so shitfaced they couldn’t remember where they’d left their car keys.

Yancy spent the night holding Rosa on the bed. She cried and said not every day at her job was so awful, and all he could say was close your eyes. At dawn she was sleeping when he kissed the top of her head and slipped out the door.

First he drove to Johnny Mendez’s residence and placed the crooked ex-sergeant’s gold badge inside the mailbox. The Siamese was licking
its paws on the hood of the Lexus, while the gargoyle visage of Mrs. Johnny Mendez watched him from the porch. She wore inappropriate heels and a sheer morning robe that revealed a gruesome topography of misspent liposuctions. Yancy felt a prick of sympathy for Mendez; embezzling from Crime Stoppers might have been the only way to pay for his wife’s cosmetic overhauls. Yancy honked once and sped away.

In Homestead he steered off the turnpike at the speedway exit and drove to the apartment building where his grandmother had lived. From the road he could see the window the burglars had broken on the day of her funeral. Whoever lived in the unit now had a small child; a tricycle stood on the walkway by the front door. Yancy called his father in Montana and left a message asking how the fishing was. He didn’t mention where he was calling from.

On the drive to the Keys he kept the radio off. His thoughts tumbled in the quiet, and the miles slipped away. A fender bender on the Snake Creek drawbridge had backed up traffic, so Yancy stopped for a grouper sandwich at a café he knew to be clean. His muted phone showed two more calls from Tommy Lombardo, though nothing from Neville Stafford on Lizard Cay.

As soon as the highway cleared Yancy was back in the car, still thinking of Neville and the incident at Bannister Point. Yancy worried that Eve Stripling might have recognized the old man from Rocky Town, and that her husband would send Egg to murder him. Yancy wondered how long it would take the FBI to make a move.

His backup choice was Sonny Summers, despite the sheriff’s fear of the severed-arm case. Yancy thought Sonny might be persuaded to speak with the Bahamian authorities if he saw a chance for down-range glory—assisting the capture of a runaway murderer.

Halfway across the Seven Mile Bridge Yancy heard a siren. A ladder truck loomed in the rearview, and he slowed to let it pass. Fires were so infrequent in the Keys that Yancy assumed the emergency was another head-on.

He was coming over the pass at Bahia Honda, leaving a second voice message for the sheriff, when he saw a churning spire of black smoke. It was rising on the Gulf side of Big Pine, far from the highway, which meant it wasn’t a car crash. Some poor bastard’s home was ablaze.

Yancy wondered if it was somebody he knew.

Twenty-six

Dear Diary
,

All these years I’ve been wondering what ever happened to her, and tonight she walked into the Olive Garden and re-stole my heart. She said, “Cody, you can do better than this.” I said, “You look awesome, Ms. Chase.”

And she did look awesome, even hotter than I remembered from school. I’m pretty sure she got her boobs done
.

“Can we go somewhere private to talk?” she asked
.

I told Arnelle the hostess I was taking a ten-minute break, but there was no way. Ms. Chase grabbed my hand and led me to her car. We drove to the Bank of America near Oral Roberts, and I got the most epic BJ of all time. She parked in the tellers’ drive-through so nobody could see us, and I swear I almost kicked out the windshield
.

After zipping me up she told me how she’d walked out on her husband and drove all the way from Florida just to find me. She said she couldn’t stay long in Tulsa because there’s still a warrant left over from what happened all those years ago between me and her
.

She said, “I’m a big-time fugitive, Cody.”

Right away I started getting hard again, but she acted like she didn’t notice
.

I told her I had a girlfriend but it wasn’t serious. “She’s a teacher, too. AP English, same as you. Only it’s a charter school.”

Ms. Chase smiled and gave me a long kiss. I had a joint so we smoked it. The car smelled like McDonald’s fries because that’s all she ate the whole way from Sarasota. She said she didn’t waste time in sit-down restaurants—she wanted to get to Oklahoma as fast as possible and track me down
.

Her hair looked different because she got platinum highlights so nobody would recognize her from the Wanted poster, which I’d never seen but then I hardly ever get to the post office
.

“There’s a big wild world out there, Cody. Are you ready to take the ride?”

“See, they just promoted me to assistant manager.”

“Congratulations.”

“But the boss, he’s a major dickbrain.”

She said, “Life is but the blink of an eye. This is what you’ll learn.”

I apologized for how the trial went down, what I said about her on the witness stand. Ms. Chase said she understood and forgave me totally. I was under major pressure at the time—it was my parents who made me testify and turn over all the stuff I wrote about our love affair. My mom read every page of the diary but she didn’t get most of it, thank God. She literally asked me what a “back-door job” was. I made up something about sneaking into a club
.

Ms. Chase wanted to know if I’d ever got married, and my answer was almost but not quite. She told me her husband’s a retired doctor with gobs of money. He knew she was running from the law but he proposed to her anyway, which I totally understand. She said he’s much older than her and also he’s kind of a perv. He likes to beat off while he’s got a belt or electric cord around his neck, which I’ve heard of but sure never tried
.

“Who are you reading these days?” she asked
.

I told her I’ve sort of gotten away from books and more into Xbox
.

“Oh, Cody,” she said, and I took it as a cut
.

She told me it was time to start thinking big, so I pointed at my all-world woody and asked, “You mean big like this?” She laughed and gave it a squeeze, which got my hopes flying, but then she started talking about inner journeys and the hand of fate
.

I kept trying to pull off her skinny jeans but she wouldn’t go for it. She did unbutton her top, which was pretty sweet. There were more freckles than I remembered but who cares
.

“Don’t you have any big dreams?” she asked, but offhand I couldn’t come up with any
.

“Well, you should, Cody. You’re a sharp young man, an A student back in the day.”

It’s not easy to have a seriously deep conversation when you’ve got a purple hard-on that could cut a diamond. I told Ms. Chase there was a new Chipotle’s opening up on North Utica and I was thinking about putting in for day manager
.

“No,” she said. “You’re coming with me.”

And that’s what I did
.

Yancy handed the transcript back to Montenegro, who said the sheriff’s office was holding the iPad on which the diary was stored. One of the road deputies had confiscated it from the rental car.

“I knew that fuckwit was keeping a journal,” Yancy said. “Should I go see Bonnie?”

The lawyer said he didn’t care. “Bonnie’s not her name, dude.”

“Well, ‘Plover’ is unacceptable. I can’t bring myself to say it.”

“And you had no knowledge of her true identity while you were balling her?”

“The last time we were together is the first time she told me.”

“And of course you felt no obligation to notify the police—or your long-suffering counsel.” Montenegro rubbed both hands on his shaven orb. He was more expansive than usual but no less jaundiced. “I probably could get her six months and probation for the arson, if she wasn’t already on the lam for a sex felony. Oklahoma hasn’t decided whether to extradite, but I spoke to an Agent Weiderman—”

“Yes, we’ve met,” Yancy said.

“Not a bad guy. We discussed the problems with the Tulsa case, now that Mr. Parish intends to become a published author. This new diary of escapades won’t be helpful to the prosecution.”

“Listen, should I go see her or not?”

“You’re not as pissed as I thought you’d be.”

“I am highly pissed. Supremely pissed.”

“She’s determined to plead insanity,” Montenegro said. “Says she
torched the house only because she was deranged by her passion for you. Another celestial mystery, but there you fucking have it.”

“For Christ’s sake, Monty, she’s not insane.”

“How would
you
know? I mean, of all people.” The lawyer yawned. “See what you set in motion, Andrew, by sleeping with this unreliable person. The dominoes continue to fall—on my desk, unfortunately.”

“Have you talked to Bonnie’s husband?”

“The board-certified physician you assaulted at Mallory Square? Seems like eons ago. No, I haven’t spoken to Dr. Witt because he’s presently in ICU at Sarasota Memorial Hospital exhibiting the cognitive capacity of an artichoke. He was found nude from the waist down, hanging from a peewee basketball hoop at the local Kiwanis park. This was four-thirty a.m., some rookie cop called it in as a suicide attempt, which it wasn’t. The bottle of virgin olive oil being a key clue. Also, the cashmere choke collar.”

“Is he going to die?” Yancy asked.

“The family says the doctor’s chances for recovery are about the same as the chances of him paying for his estranged wife’s legal defense, which is to say remote. Go see her if you want but, here, read this first.”

It was more lovesick rubbish from Cody Parish.

Dear Diary
,

Ms. Chase is gone! She left the Best Western to take a walk, and came back in a rental car. I begged her to stay but I could only watch helplessly as she packed her bag
.

“Don’t you love me anymore?” I cried
.

She touched my cheek and said, “Darling, where’s my shampoo and conditioner?”

“Darling”? Seriously?

My whole world was crashing down. How could she take my heart in her hands and choke it like a baby bunny rabbit?

The last time we made love I knew something wasn’t right because she didn’t make a sound. Also, she didn’t move her butt very much, which isn’t like her. I asked what’s wrong, princess, and she said nothing’s wrong, everything’s beautiful
.

But that night in bed I had a horrible feeling she was thinking about someone else. It had to be Andrew, the man she was with before she came back to Tulsa and took me away. He’s got some hot new girlfriend now and I think Ms. Chase is jealous. Supposedly the girlfriend is a doctor, like Ms. Chase’s husband, and maybe that screwed with her head, too
.

Or maybe it’s something else. Maybe she just went batshit crazy which can happen when the monthly hormones take over. I’ve seen it before, and watch out!

All I know is I’ve lost my true soul mate. Yes, she was an outlaw and a schizo but I loved her anyway—and I would have stayed glued by her side until the law hunted us down. Every day on the road with Ms. Chase was wild lust and adventure, and I don’t regret one single moment
.

If she showed up on my doorstep tomorrow I’d take her back in a heartbeat, and no man alive would blame me. I’d go through the fires of Hell and follow her anywhere, except back to Tulsa because I am seriously done with the Olive Garden
.

Like the book says, you can’t go homeward angel. And by God I’m not
.

Yancy drove out to the detention center on Stock Island, a place where as a detective he’d interviewed numerous inmates though never a former lover. He was friends with the duty officer, so he and Bonnie had a room to themselves. She was excited to see him and disappointed by his chilly reponse.

“Andrew, why are you looking at me like that? It’s just a fire. Nobody died.”

“You’re right. It’s not like you burned down an orphanage.”

“Please, there’s no cause for sarcasm.”

Her county jumpsuit was the same blaze orange as Nick Stripling’s poncho. She wore the braided pigtails but the jailers had taken away her lip gloss.