Skinny Dip (32 page)

Problem was, he really did not feel so great.

After a while he became aware of a motorized humming noise. Most likely it was the ceiling fan, but Chaz, cracking his eyelids, couldn’t see much in the darkness. Amplified by an excess of alcohol, the fan’s humming put Chaz in mind of a helicopter rotor, whirling perilously close to his bare head. He felt a cold prickle of dread and burrowed like a dung beetle under Rose’s pillows. In his padded refuge he couldn’t hear the jangle of her car keys, or the back door closing behind her.

After Rose drove away, Mick Stranahan turned to Joey.

“Ready?”

“It’s now or never.”

“Remember the rules.”

“No punching. No kicking. No sharp instruments. What else?” Joey said.

“No tears.”

“Are you kidding?” she said, and together they entered the house. Joey paused outside the bedroom to dab Chanel behind her ears.

Stranahan whispered, “I’ll be right here if you need me.”

She went inside, quietly closing the door behind her. There was a slight rustling in the dark, then a muffled voice from the bedcovers: “Rose?”

Joey sat on the corner of the bed.

“Rosie, honey. Come here,” Chaz said.

Joey lay down rigidly beside her husband. He nosed his way out of the pillows and blindly beached his head on her right shoulder.

“You smell terrific. That perfume you’re wearing, it’s my favorite.”

“Hmmm,” Joey said. Chaz reeked of alcohol and garlic. She felt something blunt and familiar nudging her thigh, and thought: This is what they mean by the term dickbrain.

Chaz said, “I might be drunk.”

Stoned, too, mused Joey. Rose had slipped ten milligrams of diazepam into his wine.

Chaz groped somewhat imprecisely for her breasts, and she brushed his hand away.

“Stop it,” she whispered.

“Your heart’s going so fast. What does that mean, Rose?”

If you only knew.

He pressed himself harder against her.

“No.”

“Please. I miss her so much,” Chaz said.

Joey’s eyes gradually adjusted to the dimness of the room. Chaz was lethargic and half-asleep, but she remained on guard.

“Please, Rose. Help me make the pain go away,” he said. “Just for tonight.”

Without warning Joey started to sob. She couldn’t believe it. Sobbing like a baby!

Chaz seemed invigorated by her breakdown, which he no doubt perceived as vulnerability.

“Come on, Rose,” he implored, reaching down to tug off his pants, “it’ll be healthy for both of us.”

“For heaven’s sake, how?”

“By getting lost in each other.”

That’s a new one, Joey thought. Wonder where he stole it. She took a slow, deliberate breath, then sniffed away the tears.

“These are very normal feelings at a time like this,” Chaz was saying. “Joey loved us both. She’d understand completely.”

“No, Chaz, Joey would not understand.”

She said this aloud in her regular voice. He stopped wriggling and raised up slightly, trying to see her face. She heard a dry swallow.

“I assure you,” she said, “that she definitely doesn’t understand how you could try to fuck her best friend the night after her funeral service.

Chaz seemed paralyzed with confusion. Joey reached into his boxers and twisted a pinch of his scrotum between her thumbnail and forefinger.

“Let go! Oh God,” he wailed. “Oh Christ, oh Jesus, please, Joey, let go!”

At the silent count often, she did. “Now don’t move, Charles.”

She turned on the lamp and saw that he was rolled up like a large pale hedgehog, cupping his groin.

“You’re not real.” Her husband squinted at her suspiciously. “You can’t be real.” He bared his teeth and gave off a strange, dissonant laugh. “Lemme see your fingernails.”

“Exactly how much have you had to drink?” she asked.

“You’re dead, Joey. I killed you myself.” Chaz continued to grin like a chimp. “It’s all on video!”

She said, “You need to buckle down here, mister. I want some answers.”

His head began lolling from side to side, as if his neck had gone to rubber. When he blinked, it looked like hard work.

Joey said, “Don’t you dare fall asleep.”

“I knew it. I got the West Nile.” He cackled harshly. “That’s why you’re here—the disease makes victims hallucinate.”

Rose might have gone overboard with the Valium, Joey thought. The creep was fading fast.

“Chaz, are you listening?”

He nodded. “Loud’n clear.”

“Why did you try to kill me?”

“Aw, come on,” he snorted.

Joey snatched a shock of his hair and yanked his head upright.

“Answer me!”

“I guarantee you I wasn’t the only guy on that cruise who thought about shovin’ his old lady overboard. Wives, they think about that shit, too. Every married person now and then thinks, Oh what the fuck. I did it, is the only difference. Me! I went ahead and did it.”

Joey found herself scanning the room for something jagged and, preferably, rusty. Then she recalled Mick’s warning: Don’t make it a crime scene.

She released Chaz’s hair and his chin dropped to his chest.

He said, “I thought you were gonna rat me out for faking the water tests.”

“But I didn’t even know what you were doing!”

“So maybe I overreacted.”

“Excuse me?” Joey said.

Chaz scratched absently at a dime-size scab on his neck. “You don’t understand. Red’s deadly serious when it conies to business.”

“It was our anniversary]”

“Oh yeah, I almost forgot.” Chaz looked up. “Thanks for the awesome golf-club covers. I found them later in my suitcase.”

“You really are a monster,” Joey said hoarsely.

“If you were real, I’d tell you I was sorry.”

“And I’d tell you to go straight to hell,” she said. “Why did you marry me in the first place?”

Chaz seemed truly surprised at the question. “Because you were hot. And we were so fantastic together.”

“Because I was hot’?” Joey eyed the lamp’s electrical cord and thought: No jury in the country would convict me.

Chaz said, “I’m getting really sleepy. Can you go back to heaven now? Or wherever you came from?”

“Didn’t you ever love me?” Joey switched off the light in case she started crying again. “Ever, Chaz?”

“Sure I did.”

“Then what happened?” she demanded. “First the whoring around, which was bad enough—”

A wary grunt from the shadows.

“—then you push me overboard on our anniversary cruise! I don’t get it,” Joey said. “If you wanted out so badly, all you had to do was ask. See, they’ve got this new thing called divorce.”

Now all she heard was the low scrape of heavy breathing. Five, ten, fifteen seconds went by.

“Chaz?”

Nothing.

She jerked the pillow from beneath his head and said, “Wake up, dammit! I’m not finished.”

A perturbed, groggy groan. Then: “You can’t hurt me, Joey. You’re already dead.”

Arduously he gathered himself and lunged for her, missing in the dark. She pounced on his back, pinning him to the mattress.

“Because I was ‘hot’? Are you serious?” Her mouth was inches from his ear.

“Hey, it’s a compliment,” Chaz said. “Now, can you please get off me? My hard-on’s gettin’ bent.”

“What a moving sentiment. Are you stealing from Neil Diamond again?”

The door opened, throwing a wedge of light on the bed.

“It’s okay. We’re fine,” Joey said over her shoulder.

“Who’s there?” Chaz asked, squirming.

The door closed.

“Rose?”

Joey said, “Relax, Romeo, you’re not getting any tonight.”

“Lemme up.”

“It’s still only me, Chaz. Your dearly departed wife.”

“Can’t be.”

“But I’m not deceased.”

“Are, too.”

Joey dug an elbow into his back. “Does that feel real?”

“Bad dream,” he groaned.

“Wanna bet?”

“Pinch me in the nuts again. Go ahead, see if I care.”

Joey said, “What went wrong with you, Chaz?”

His shoulders hitched. “People change, it’s nobody’s fault,” he said. “Lemme sleep, please?”

“No sir, not yet.”

“If you were real, Joey, you would’ve already killed me by now.” Then he sighed heavily and went slack beneath her.

She shook him by the collar, then she pressed so close that her lips brushed the fuzz on his earlobes. “Chaz!” she said sharply. “Chaz, you listen. I’m telling the cops everything. And it won’t just be my word against yours—they’ll have the new will, the videotape, all the Everglades stuff. Your friend Red, he’s toast, too. Wake up, Romeo, it’s over. Attempted murder, fraud, bribery. Even if you beat the rap, you’ll be broke and out of work and owing lawyers for the rest of your miserable life. Ruined, Chaz.”

From her husband, not a peep. He had passed out.

Joey climbed off and called for Mick. Together they jostled and prodded Chaz, but they were unable to rouse him.

She said, “Now what do we do? The asshole thinks he’s hallucinating. He thinks I’m not real.”

“You’re not,” Stranahan said fondly.

“I’m serious, Mick. Obviously he was bombed when he got here, then Rose doped him into oblivion.”

“Gosh. I sure hope he doesn’t get a boo-boo on the way home. Drive himself into a canal, or fall asleep on the train tracks.”

“Oh no you don’t.”

“Hey, stuff like that happens. You read about it all the time.”

Joey stared at the reprehensible heap of snoring, drool-flecked flesh to which she was wed, and she felt only hollowness and exhaustion. How strange that she no longer wanted to punch him or choke him or kill him, or even just scream at him. All her rage and indignation was dried up, leaving only an aftertaste of disgust.

“You all right?” Stranahan asked.

“Peachy. I married a total piece of shit.”

“It’s not hard to do. You want to whale on the bastard, now’s your chance.”

Joey shook her head. “Honestly, Mick, I don’t care what happens to him anymore.”

“Well, I do,” Stranahan said, grabbing Charles Regis Perrone by the ankles.

Twenty-eight

Nellie Shulman cornered him in the elevator. Her housecoat smelled of mothballs and tuna fish.

“Why didn’t you tell me you’re moving out? What’s with all the sneaking around?”

Karl Rolvaag said, “I’m taking a job up north.”

“And renting your place out to Gypsies, no doubt. Deviates and loners like yourself.”

“I’ll be selling the condo, Nellie.”

She clacked her yellow dentures. “To another snake freak, right? Some psycho with spitting cobras, maybe.”

“Whoever can afford to buy it. That’s the law.”

The elevator door opened and the detective bolted, Nellie scuttling after him.

“Aren’t you the smug one?” she said. “Just because they found Rumsfeld, you think you can dance out of here with a clean conscience.”

Rumsfeld was the miniature poodle that had gone AWOL, the third pet missing from Sawgrass Grove. The detective was secretly happy to learn that the incontinent little hair ball had not been devoured by one of his wayfaring pythons.

“They found him behind the Albertsons’,” Mrs. Shulman reported somberly, “sleeping in a liquor box. Some bum was feeding him soda crackers.”

“What about Pinchot and whatsit, that Siamese?” Rolvaag asked. Poised at his front door, he groped through his pockets for the keys. Mrs. Shulman seemed committed to a full-blown confrontation.

She said, “Don’t play innocent with me. Her name was Pandora and you know damn well what happened—you sacrificed her to those vicious reptiles of yours! Same with poor old Pinchot. And my precious Petunia is probably next on the menu!”

“Those are serious accusations you’re making, Nellie, with no proof whatsoever.”

Mrs. Shulman grew defensive. “It’s not just me, everybody around here’s talking about it. ‘Why else would a grown man keep anacondas?’ they say. ‘What’s the matter with him?’ “

Rolvaag said, “They’re pythons, not anacondas. And they don’t eat house cats or Pomeranians.” He hoped his lack of conviction wasn’t apparent to the acting vice president of the Sawgrass Grove Condominium Association.

“Know what I think, Nellie? I think you’re disappointed that you won’t get to evict me. I think you’re bummed because I’m moving out on my own terms.” At last he found his key and speared it into the lock.

Mrs. Shulman’s arthritic talons clenched his arm. “Ha! I’m the only reason you’re leaving town!”

The detective smiled suggestively. “You’re going to miss me, aren’t you?”

“Agghh!” Mrs. Shulman stumbled out of her slippers as she backed off.

Rolvaag quickly entered his apartment and shut the door. He logged on to the computer and clicked open the weather page for the Twin Cities. It was sixty-two degrees and brightly sunny in St. Paul; the glory of a midwestern spring. He wondered if his ex-wife had planted a garden, a hobby she’d abandoned in the suffocating heat of South Florida.

The detective took a can of pop from the refrigerator, sat down in the kitchen and emptied his briefcase. On top of the pile was the rental agreement for the green Chevrolet Suburban. Initially the manager of the car-rental agency had refused to fax it to the Sheriff’s Office, but he’d changed his mind after Rolvaag offered to drive there personally and jump up on the counter and wave his gold badge for all the customers to see.

According to the contract, the Suburban had been rented on Joey Perrone’s credit card three days after she went overboard from the Sun Duchess. Rolvaag placed the rental agreement side by side with a Xeroxed sheet of canceled checks provided by Mrs. Perrone’s bank. The signature on the car contract and the signature on the old checks appeared strikingly similar. Next, the detective compared the handwriting on the car contract with that on the will delivered by Mrs. Perrone’s brother. Rolvaag studied the characteristics of the penmanship for a few minutes, then returned the documents to his briefcase. Telling Chaz Perrone would be a waste of time; the man was a goner, and there was nothing inside the law that Rolvaag could do to change that, even if he’d wanted to.

He phoned the Coast Guard station and tracked down Petty Officer Yancy. “You know that bale of Jamaican weed? The one we took the fingernails from?”