Bad Monkey (4 page)

“Just sit down and take some deep breaths.”

“I need a lawyer, not a goddamn Lamaze class.”

Montenegro smiled and popped a Diet Coke. He was unflappable and beyond the reach of insults, as the job of a public defender
required. Although he won his share of trials, few were the days when he didn’t have to deliver unwelcome, life-changing tidings to some hapless shitbird. Occasionally he had the pleasure of counseling an innocent client, although Yancy didn’t quite fall into that category.

“The good news, Andrew, is that you won’t have a felony on your record. Billy Dickinson’s agreed to drop the assault charge to misdemeanor battery. Six months’ probation, court costs and of course you’ll reimburse Dr. Witt for his out-of-pocket medical.” Montenegro always looked drawn and pasty. His head was as slick as an eggshell, and he peered at the world beneath veined saggy eyelids.

But the sonofabitch was sharp.

Yancy said, “Okay, get to the bad news.”

“Not so fast,” the lawyer said. “In addition to reducing the charges, the state agrees not to object if you continue working as a pensioned employee.”

“Fan-fucking-tastic!” Yancy sat forward to give Montenegro a high-five, which was returned with a mild pat.

“However—”

“Here we go,” said Yancy.

“—Dr. Witt, the victim, strongly feels that you’re unfit to be a police officer.” Montenegro paused for a slurp of cola. “I don’t happen to agree, but I’m not the one who had a suctorial attachment inserted up his rectum.”

Yancy slumped in the chair.

Montenegro went on: “Dr. Witt consented to this plea deal under two strict conditions. First, you stay away from his wife. Second, you resign from the sheriff’s office. I advise you to do both.”

“Let me tell you something disturbing about Mrs. Witt, something I just found out.”

“Doesn’t matter, Andrew. Sonny’s made up his mind. He wants this mess over and done and out of the media.”

Yancy said, “No, Monty. Let’s go to trial.”

“You’ll lose,” Montenegro said mildly. “You’ll be mauled. Slaughtered. Eviscerated. The jury will despise you. And guess what? They won’t need testimony from a naughty spouse. They’ve got the injured victim and, literally, a boatload of eyewitnesses. You’ve seen those videos taken by the cruise-ship passengers, right? Dude, you’re toast.”

The fact couldn’t be disputed. Yancy said, “Forget what I said about Bonnie.”

“Forgotten. But I’m not done with the good news.”

“Your words, not mine.”

“You’ve still got a job, Andrew, at almost the same salary.” Montenegro lowered his voice. “Sonny arranged it. Be sure to thank him.”

“A job doing what?”

“This is where I’m counting on you to keep an open mind.”

“Oh boy,” said Yancy, laughing softly in despair.

It had not been his finest moment. He’d found a shaded parking spot under a banyan tree on Front Street, where he’d spent an hour tidying up the Crown Vic. The vacuum device at issue wasn’t a Hoover, as incorrectly reported by the newspapers, but rather a 14.4-volt Black & Decker cordless model with a rotating nozzle and superior suction.

Nor had the assault been premeditated. Yancy, having spotted Bonnie and her husband walking down the sidewalk, hunkered low in the front seat to avoid being seen. As they passed, he overheard arguing. In a reedy voice Dr. Clifford Witt called his wife either a tramp or a whore, at which point Yancy was certain Bonnie let out a wounded sob. She later would dispute the reason for her tears, blaming a dubiously documented allergy to night-blooming jasmine.

In any event, a misplaced sense of chivalry launched Yancy from the car and—with the vacuum in hand—he followed the quarreling couple to Mallory Square, where they began shouting at each other. Yancy later insisted that Clifford Witt had raised a fist toward his wife although Bonnie, somewhat unhelpfully, denied it.

The attack was swift and Witt was caught flat-footed. Being younger and stronger, Yancy easily pinned the doctor and yanked down his linen trousers. Tourists from the cruise liners assumed the two men were rowdy buskers, for which the city docks are famous, and whipped out cell phones to record the amusing playlet. Despite the authenticity of Witt’s screams, nobody moved to disarm Yancy. The Black & Decker snorkeled mercilessly until its batteries petered out.

As officers led him away, Yancy watched Bonnie tend to her fallen husband. A local juggler offered a festive beach umbrella, which was
positioned modestly over the appliance sprouting from Clifford Witt’s marbled buttocks. Afterward Yancy felt truly awful.

“I admit it—I went totally batshit,” he said to Sonny Summers. “It’ll never happen again.”

“Dr. Witt thought a trial would be embarrassing for everybody—him, his wife, you and the sheriff’s department. He did us all a huge favor by going along with this plea.”

“Except I lose my badge.”

“But not your freedom. You should be celebrating. Monty told you to take the deal, right?”

“Please don’t fire me, Sonny.”

“What you did to Dr. Witt—I’m sorry, but that’s totally unacceptable behavior for a detective, especially in a public venue,” the sheriff said. “Did you see the editorial in the
Citizen
? They’d rip me to shreds if I cut you a break.”

“But you owe me one, remember? For taking that rotting arm all the way to Miami, just ’cause you didn’t want to deal with the case.”

“I appreciate that, too. Which is why I made sure you have another job.”

“So I lost my mind for five lousy minutes. You’ve seen what Bonnie Witt looks like? Now imagine her dancing around your kitchen wearing nothing but dive booties. Sonny, I was possessed!”

The sheriff shrugged one shoulder. “Her husband’s connected, Andrew. He’s biopsied half the county commissioners. You were lucky Dickinson didn’t charge you with sodomy.”

“What if I told you the On switch got stuck.”

“It took us a month before YouTube agreed to pull those nasty clips.”

“Fine, I get it.” Yancy surrendered to the inevitable. “So, what’s my new gig?”

“A good one, under the radar.”

“But just until things cool off, right?”

“Sure, Andrew.”

Yancy surveyed the items on the sheriff’s desk: a glass leaping-dolphin paperweight from the Kiwanis Club, an oversized Rubik’s
Cube, a MacBook, a coffee mug from
America’s Most Wanted
and a half dozen photographs featuring Mrs. Summers and their three children, the youngest of whom wore in every frame the hollow stare of a future serial killer.

“Do you enjoy a good meal?” Sonny Summers said. “The reason I ask is you’re pretty thin. Unlike some of us, right?” He patted his gut and chuckled.

“I like to eat, sure.”

“But you probably go out a lot, being single and all. You know where I’m headed with this?”

“No fucking clue, Sonny.”

“Your new job—it’s an enforcement position.”

“But not
law
enforcement.”

“Next best thing,” the sheriff said.

Yancy said, “I’m begging you.”

Sonny Summers winked. “Restaurant inspector—it’s like a paid vacation, Andrew.”

Yancy’s jaw made a popping sound. “Roach patrol?”

“They had an opening, so I made a call. The other fella, he got sick and quit.”

“He died, Sonny.”

“Okay, he died. But first he got sick.”

Yancy rose slowly. “I really don’t know what to say.”

“Thanks is enough. By the way, we’ll need your Glock and the keys to the Crown Vic.”

Because Sonny Summers technically was no longer his boss, Yancy thought it might be entertaining to tell him the truth about the severed arm—that the Miami medical examiner had rejected custody and now it reposed back in Sonny’s jurisdiction, among the Popsicles and grouper fillets in Yancy’s kitchen freezer.

Instead, all Yancy said was: “When do I start?”

He was born in South Miami and raised in Homestead. His father was a ranger at Everglades National Park and his mother worked in the dock store at Flamingo. Yancy grew up on the water and dreamed of becoming a backcountry charter guide until he realized it would
require almost daily contact with tourists. When Yancy was eighteen, his dad put in for a transfer to Yellowstone and Yancy chose to stay behind. The young man was anchored to Florida, for better or worse. A passion for tarpon fishing prolonged his education but eventually he earned a degree in criminal justice and wound up with the Miami Police Department. His marriage to a robbery detective named Celia expired when she accepted a job in Ann Arbor and again Yancy refused to move. They had no children, only a hyperactive border collie that had failed to bond with Yancy despite his earnest efforts. Usually dogs adored him so he was glad to see this one go, though not so much his wife.

For consolation he bought a secondhand Hell’s Bay skiff with a ninety-horse outboard. He still had it, and after his dispiriting sit-down with the sheriff he spent the afternoon poling down the oceanside flats. The tide was all wrong but Yancy didn’t care. A light sea breeze nudged the boat across crystal shallows, past eagle rays and lemon sharks and an ancient loggerhead turtle, half-blind and thorned with barnacles. It was a perfect afternoon, though he didn’t cast at a single fish.

When Yancy returned home he saw a cream-colored Suburban parked in front of the soon-to-be mansion next door. A well-dressed man, stumpy in stature, stood in the future portico. He was slapping at bugs and speaking with agitation into a cell phone. Yancy recognized him as the owner.

The man, whose name was Evan Shook, soon came to the fence. “Excuse me,” he said.

Yancy was hosing the salt rime off his boat. He nodded in a false neighborly way.

“There’s a dead raccoon in my house,” Evan Shook reported with gravity.

“Not good,” Yancy said.

“It’s huge and it’s starting to rot.”

Yancy winced sympathetically.

“Could you help me dump it somewhere? I’ve got people on their way to look at the place. They flew all the way from Dallas.”

“Did you call Animal Control?” Yancy asked.

“Lazy pricks, they won’t come out here till tomorrow. I could seriously use a hand.”

Yancy shut off the hose. “Here’s the thing. It’s really bad luck to disturb a dead animal, and I can’t afford any more of that.”

Evan Shook frowned. “Bad luck? Come on.”

“Like a Gypsy curse, which is not what I need at the moment. But you can borrow my shovel.”

“The damn thing reeks to high hell!”

Yancy changed the subject. “That’s quite the Taj Mahal you’re building.”

“Seven thousand square feet. Tallest house on the island.”

“I can believe it.”

“You know anybody who might be looking to buy, now’s the time to go big!” Up close, Evan Shook’s cheekbones appeared to have been buffed with a shammy. When a black Town Car rolled up to the cul-de-sac, he said, “Oh shit.”

The driver opened the rear door and out came an older couple, ruddy and squinting. Evan Shook hurried to intercept them.

Yancy wiped down the skiff and went inside. The Barbancourt was gone so he poured himself a Captain and Coke. He wasn’t in the practice of collecting roadkill but he’d spotted the misfortunate raccoon that morning along Key Deer Boulevard. Why leave it for the birds?

From the refrigerator he took a package of hamburger patties and two ripe tomatoes, which he placed on the counter. He turned down the AC, cranked up Little Feat on the stereo and looked out the kitchen window.

Next door, Evan Shook was attempting to herd the perplexed Texans back to their Town Car. Apparently the tallest house on Big Pine was not being shown today.

Four

Yancy received his first bribe offer at a tin-roofed seafood joint on Stock Island called Stoney’s Crab Palace, where he had documented seventeen serious health violations, including mouse droppings, rat droppings, chicken droppings, a tick nursery, open vats of decomposing shrimp, lobsters dating back to the first Bush presidency and, on a tray of baked oysters, a soggy condom.

The owner’s name was Brennan. He was slicing plantains when Yancy delivered the feared verdict: “I’ve got to shut you down.”

“A hundred bucks says you won’t.”

“Jesus, is that blood on your knife?”

“Okay, two hundred bucks,” said Brennan.

“Why aren’t you wearing gloves?” Yancy asked.

Brennan continued slicing. “Nilsson never gave me no trouble. He ate here all the time.”

“And died of hepatitis.”

“He ate for free. That was our deal. Six years, never once did he step foot in my kitchen. Nilsson was a good man.”

“Nilsson was a lazy fuckwhistle,” Yancy said. “I’m writing you up.”

Working for the Division of Hotels and Restaurants was the worst job he’d ever had. His appetite had disappeared the first morning, and in three weeks he’d lost eleven pounds. It was traumatizing to see how many ways food could be defiled. His first sighting of maggots put him off rice pudding forever. The opening of lobster season brought no joy because Yancy couldn’t bring himself to order from a menu a crustacean
of unknown provenance; all he thought about, day and night, was salmonella.

The only reason Brennan wasn’t arrested for attempted bribery was that Yancy didn’t want to wait around for a deputy to show up. He couldn’t clear out of Stoney’s fast enough. For lunch he drove home and boiled a potato.

Rogelio Burton stopped by. He looked Yancy up and down and said, “God, what do you weigh?”

“I’m down to a buck sixty.”

“And you’re, what, six foot two? That ain’t healthy, bro.”

Yancy picked up a fork and went to work on the potato. “You want half?”

Burton pulled up a stool at the kitchen counter. “The reason I came, Sonny sent me. What’d you ever do with that … you know … arm?”

“I made it into a weathervane. It’s on top of my roof.”

“Andrew, this is for real.”

“I’ve still got the damn thing.”

“Good. That’s what I figured.”

“How is that good? I’m breaking about a half dozen laws.”

Burton said, “A woman came in the other day to report her husband missing in a boating accident. He fits the general description.”