Stormy Weather Read online

  Stormy Weather

  Carl Hiassen

  Carl Hiassen

  Stormy Weather

  CHAPTER ONE

  On August 23, the day before the hurricane struck, Max and Bonnie Lamb awoke early, made love twice and rode the shuttle bus to Disney World. That evening they returned to the Peabody Hotel, showered separately, switched on the cable news and saw that the storm was heading directly for the southeastern tip of Florida. The TV weatherman warned that it was the fiercest in many years.

  Max Lamb sat at the foot of the bed and gazed at the color radar image-a ragged flame-colored sphere, spinning counterclockwise toward the coast. He said, "Jesus, look at that."

  A hurricane, Bonnie Lamb thought, on our honeymoon! As she slipped under the sheets, she heard the rain beating on the rental cars in the parking lot outside. "Is this part of it?" she asked. "All this weather?"

  Her husband nodded. "We're on the edge of the edge."

  Max Lamb seemed excited in a way that Bonnie found unsettling. She knew better than to suggest a sensible change of plans, such as hopping a plane back to La Guardia. Her new husband was no quitter; the reservations said five nights and six days, and by God that's how long they would stay. It was a special package rate; no refunds.

  She said, "They'll probably close the park."

  "Disney?" Max Lamb smiled. "Disney never closes. Not for plagues, famines, or even hurricanes." He rose to adjust the volume on the television. "Besides, the darn thing's three hundred miles away. The most we'll see up here is more rain."

  Bonnie Lamb detected disappointment in her husband's tone. Hands on his hips, he stood nude in front of the TV screen; his pale shoulder blades and buttocks were streaked crimson from a day on the water flumes. Max was no athlete, but he'd done fine on the river slide. Bonnie wondered if it had gone to his head, for tonight he affected the square-shouldered posture of a college jock. She caught him glancing in the mirror, flexing his stringy biceps and sizing up his own nakedness. Maybe it was just a honeymoon thing.

  The cable news was showing live video of elderly residents being evacuated from condominiums and apartment buildings on Miami Beach. Many of the old folks carried cats or poodles in their arms.

  "So," said Bonnie Lamb, "we're still doing Epcot tomorrow?"

  Her husband didn't answer.

  "Honey?" she said. "Epcot?"

  Max Lamb's attention was rooted to the hurricane news. "Oh sure," he said absently.

  "You remembered the umbrellas?"

  "Yes, Bonnie, in the car."

  She asked him to turn off the television and come to bed. When he got beneath the covers, she moved closer, nipped his earlobes, played her fingers through the silky sprout of hair on his bony chest.

  "Guess what I'm not wearing," she whispered.

  "Ssshhh," said Max Lamb. "Listen to that rain."

  Edie Marsh headed to Dade County from Palm Beach, where she'd spent six months trying to sleep with a Kennedy. She'd had the plan all worked out, how she'd seduce a young Kennedy and then threaten to run to the 'cops with a lurid tale of perversion, rape and torture. She'd hatched the scheme while watching the William Kennedy Smith trial on Court TV and noticing the breathless relief with which the famous clan had received the acquittal; all of them with those fantastic teeth, beaming at the cameras but wearing an expression that Edie Marsh had seen more than a few times in her twenty-nine action-packed years-the look of those who'd dodged a bullet. They'd have no stomach for another scandal, not right away. Next time there'd be a mad stampede for the Kennedy family checkbook, in order to make the problem go away. Edie had it all figured out.

  She cleaned out her boyfriend's bank account and grabbed the Amtrak to West Palm, where she found a cheap duplex apartment. She spent her days sleeping, shoplifting cocktail dresses and painting her nails. Each night she'd cross the bridge to the rich island, where she assiduously loitered at Au Bar and the other trendy clubs. She overtipped bartenders and waitresses, with the understanding that they would instantly alert her when a Kennedy, any Kennedy, arrived. In this fashion she had quickly met two Shrivers and a distant Lawford, but to Edie they would have been borderline fucks. She was saving her charms for a direct heir, a pipeline to old Joe Kennedy's mother lode. One of the weekly tabloids had published a diagram of the family tree, which Edie Marsh had taped to the wall of the kitchen, next to a Far Side calendar. Right away Edie had ruled out screwing any Kennedys-by-marriage; the serious money followed the straightest lines of genealogy, as did the scandal hunters. Statistically it appeared her best target would be one of Ethel and Bobby's sons, since they'd had so many. Not that Edie wouldn't have crawled nude across broken glass for a whack at John Jr., but the odds of him strolling unescorted into a Palm Beach fern bar were laughable.

  Besides, Edie Marsh was nothing if not a realist. John Kennedy Jr. had movie-star girlfriends, and Edie knew she was no movie star. Pretty, sure. Sexy in a low-cut Versace, you bet. But John-John probably wouldn't glance twice. Some of those cousins, though, Bobby's boys-Edie was sure she could do some damage there. Suck 'em cross-eyed, then phone the lawyers.

  Unfortunately, six grueling months of barhopping produced only two encounters with Kennedy Kennedys. Neither tried to sleep with Edie; she couldn't believe it. One of the young men even took her on an actual date, but when they returned to her place he didn't so much as grope her boobs. Just pecked her good night and said thanks for a nice time. The perfect goddamn gentleman, she'd thought. Just my luck. Edie had tried valiantly to change his mind, practically pinned him to the hood of his car, kissed and rubbed and grabbed him. Nothing! Humiliating is what it was. After the young Kennedy departed, Edie Marsh had stalked to the bathroom and studied herself in the mirror. Maybe there was wax in her ears or spinach in her teeth, something gross to put the guy off. But no, she looked fine. Furiously she peeled off her stolen dress, appraised her figure and thought: Did the little snot think he's too good for this? What a joke, that Kennedy charm. The kid had all the charisma of oatmeal. He'd bored her to death long before the lobster entree arrived. She'd felt like hopping on the tabletop and shrieking at the top of her lungs: Who gives a shit about illiteracy in South Boston? Tell me about Jackie and the Greek!

  That dismal evening, it turned out, was Edie's last shot. The summer went dead in Palm Beach, and all the fuckable Kennedys traveled up to Hyannis. Edie was too broke to give chase.

  The hurricane on the TV radar had given her a new idea. The storm was eight hundred miles away, churning up the Caribbean, when she phoned a man named Snapper, who was coming off a short hitch for manslaughter. Snapper got his nickname because of a crooked jaw, which had been made that way by a game warden and healed poorly. Edie Marsh arranged to meet him at a sports bar on the beach. Snapper listened to her plan and said it was the nuttiest fucking thing he'd ever heard because (a) the hurricane probably won't hit here and (b) somebody could get busted for heavy time.

  Three days later, with the storm bearing down on Miami, Snapper called Edie Marsh and said what the hell, let's check it out. I got a guy, Snapper said, he knows about these things.

  The guy's name was Avila, and formerly he had worked as a building inspector for Metropolitan Dade County. Snapper and Edie met him at a convenience store on Dixie Highway in South Miami. The rain was deceptively light, given the proximity of the hurricane, but the clouds hung ominously low, an eerie yellow gauze.

  They went in Avila's car, Snapper sitting next to Avila up front and Edie by herself in the back. They were going to a subdivision called Sugar Palm Hammocks: one hundred and sixty-four single-family homes platted sadistically on only forty acres of land. Without comment, Avila drove slowly through the streets. Many residents were outside, frantically nailing plywood to the
windows of their homes.

  "There's no yards," Snapper remarked.

  Avila said, "Zero-lot lines is what we call it."

  "How cozy," Edie Marsh said from the back seat. "What we need is a house that'll go to pieces in the storm."

  Avila nodded confidently. "Take your pick. They're all coming down."

  "No shit?"

  "Yeah, honey, no shit."

  Snapper turned to Edie Marsh and said, "Avila ought to know. He's the one inspected the damn things."

  "Perfect," said Edie. She rolled down the window. "Then let's find something nice."

  On instructions from the authorities, tourists by the thousands were bailing out of the Florida Keys. Traffic on northbound U.S. 1 was a wretched crawl, winking brake lights as far as the eye could see. Jack Fleming and Webo Drake had run out of beer at Big Pine. Now they were stuck behind a Greyhound bus halfway across the Seven Mile Bridge. The bus had stalled with transmission trouble. Jack Fleming and Webo Drake got out of the car-Jack's father's car-and started throwing empty Coors cans off the bridge. The two young men were still slightly trashed from a night at the Turtle Kraals in Key West, where the idea of getting stranded in a Force Four hurricane had sounded downright adventurous, a nifty yarn to tell the guys back at the Kappa Alpha house. The problem was, Jack and Webo had awakened to find themselves out of money as well as beer, with Jack's father expecting his almost-new Lexus to be returned ... well, yesterday.

  So here they were, stuck on one of the longest bridges in the world, with a monster tropical cyclone only a few hours away. The wind hummed across the Atlantic at a pitch that Jack Fleming and Webo Drake had never before heard; it rocked them on their heels when they got out of the car. Webo lobbed an empty Coors can toward the concrete rail, but the wind whipped it back hard, like a line drive. Naturally it then became a contest to see who had the best arm. In high school Jack Fleming had been a star pitcher, mainly sidearm, so his throws were not as disturbed by the gusts as those of Webo Drake, who had merely played backup quarterback for the junior varsity. Jack was leading, eight beer cans to six off the bridge, when a hand-an enormous brown hand-appeared with a wet slap on the rail.

  Webo Drake glanced worriedly at his frat brother. Jack Fleming said, "Now what?"

  A bearded man pulled himself up from a piling beneath the bridge. He was tall, with coarse silvery hair that hung in matted tangles to his shoulders. His bare chest was striped with thin pink abrasions. The man carried several coils of dirty rope under one arm. He wore camouflage trousers and old brown military boots with no laces. In his right hand was a crushed Coors can and a dead squirrel.

  Jack Fleming said, "You a Cuban?"

  Webo Drake was horrified.

  Dropping his voice, Jack said: "No joke. I bet he's a rafter."

  It made sense. This was where the refugees usually landed, in the Keys. Jack spoke loudly to the man with the rope: "listed Cubano?"

  The man brandished the beer can and said: "Usted un asshole?"

  His voice was a rumble that fit his size. "Where do you dipshits get off," he said over the wind, "throwing your goddamn garbage in the water?" The man stepped forward and kicked out a rear passenger window of Jack's father's Lexus. He threw the empty beer can and the dead squirrel in the back seat. Then he grabbed Webo Drake by the belt of his jeans. "Your trousers dry?" the man asked.

  Passengers in the Greyhound bus pressed their faces to the glass to see what was happening. Behind the Lexus, a family in a rented minivan could be observed locking the doors, a speedy drill they had obviously practiced before leaving the Miami airport.

  Webo Drake said yes, his jeans were dry. The stranger said, "Then hold my eye." With an index finger he calmly removed a glass orb from his left socket and placed it carefully in one of Webo's pants pockets. "It loosed up on me," the stranger explained, "in all this spray."

  Failing to perceive the gravity of the moment, Jack Fleming pointed at the shattered window of his father's luxury sedan. "Why the hell'd you do that?"

  Webo, shaking: "Jack, it's all right."

  The one-eyed man turned toward Jack Fleming. "I count thirteen fucking beer cans in the water and only one hole in your car. I'd say you got off easy."

  "Forget about it," offered Webo Drake.

  The stranger said, "I'm giving you boys a break because you're exceptionally young and stupid."

  Ahead of them, the Greyhound bus wheezed, lurched and finally began to inch northward. The man with the rope opened the rear door of the Lexus and brushed the broken glass off the seat. "I need a lift up the road," he said.

  Jack Fleming and Webo Drake said certainly, sir, that would be no trouble at all. It took forty-five minutes on the highway before they summoned the nerve to ask the one-eyed man what he was doing under the Seven Mile Bridge.

  Waiting, the man replied.

  For what? Webo asked.

  Turn on the radio, the man said. If you don't mind.

  News of the hurricane was on every station. The latest forecast put the storm heading due west across the Bahamas, toward a landfall somewhere between Key Largo and Miami Beach.

  "Just as I thought," said the one-eyed man. "I was too far south. I could tell by the sky."

  He had covered his head with a flowered shower cap; Jack Fleming noticed it in the rearview mirror, but withheld comment. The young man was more concerned about what to tell his father regarding the busted window, and also about the stubborn stain a dead squirrel might leave on fine leather upholstery.

  Webo Drake asked the one-eyed man: "What's the rope for?"

  "Good question," he said, but gave no explanation.

  An hour later the road spread to four lanes and the traffic began to move at a better clip. Almost no cars were heading south. The highway split at North Key Largo, and the stranger instructed Jack Fleming to bear right on County Road 905.

  "It says there's a toll," Jack said.

  "Yeah?"

  "Look, we're out of money."

  A soggy ten-dollar bill landed on the front seat between Jack Fleming and Webo Drake. Again the earthquake voice: "Stop when we reach the bridge."

  Twenty minutes later they approached the Card Sound Bridge, which crosses from North Key Largo to the mainland. Jack Fleming tapped the brakes and steered to the shoulder. "Not here," said the stranger. "All the way to the top."

  "The top of the bridge?"

  "Are you deaf, junior?"

  Jack Fleming drove up the slope cautiously. The wind was ungodly, jostling the Lexus on its springs. At the crest of the span, Jack pulled over as far as he dared. The one-eyed man retrieved his glass eye from Webo Drake and got out of the car. He yanked the plastic cap off his head and jammed it into the waistband of his trousers.

  "Come here," the stranger told the two young men. "Tie me." He popped the eye into its socket and cleaned it in a polishing motion with the corner of a bandanna.

  Then he climbed over the rail and inserted his legs back under the gap, so he was kneeling on the precipice.

  Other hurricane evacuees slowed their cars to observe the lunatic scene, but none dared to stop; the man being lashed to the bridge looked wild enough to deserve it. Jack Fleming and Webo Drake worked as swiftly as possible, given the force of the gusts and the rapidity with which their Key West hangovers were advancing. The stranger gave explicit instructions about how he was to be trussed, and the fraternity boys did what they were told. They knotted one end of the rope around the man's thick ankles and ran the other end over the concrete rail. After looping it four times around his chest, they cinched until he grunted. Then they threaded the rope under the rail and back to the ankles for the final knotting.

  The product was a sturdy harness that allowed the stranger's arms to wave free. Webo Drake tested the knots and pronounced them tight. "Can we go now?" he asked the one-eyed man.

  "By all means."

  "What about the squirrel, sir?"

  "It's all yours," the stranger said. "Enjoy."

 
; Jack Fleming coasted the car downhill. At the foot of the bridge, he veered off the pavement to get clear of the traffic. Webo Drake found a rusty curtain rod in a pile of trash, and Jack used it to hoist the animal carcass out of his father's Lexus. Webo stood back, trying to light a cigaret.

  Back on the bridge, under a murderous dark sky, the kneeling stranger raised both arms to the pulsing gray clouds. Bursts of hot wind made the man's hair stand up like a halo of silver sparks.

  "Crazy fucker," Jack Fleming rasped. He stepped over the dead squirrel and threw the curtain rod into the mangroves. "You think he had a gun? Because that's what I'm telling my old man: Some nut with a gun kicked out the car window."

  Webo Drake pointed with the cigaret and said, "Jack, you know what he's waiting for? That crazy idiot, he's waiting on the hurricane."