Stormy Weather Read online

  Flat on his back, the insurance man turned his head away. Edie Marsh slapped his legs apart and knelt between them. "Don't you quit on me," she scolded. "Pay attention, sweetie. Come on." Firmly she took hold of him.

  "Could you just-?"

  "No." It was always bad form to giggle in the middle of a blow job, and Fred Dove was the sort who'd never recover, emotionally. "Focus," she instructed him. "Remember how good it was last night."

  Edie had gotten the condom partially deployed when she heard the electric generator cut off. Out of fuel, she figured. It could wait; Fred Jr was showing signs of life.

  She heard a soft click, and suddenly the insurance man's festively crowned penis was illuminated in a circle of bright light. Edie Marsh let go and sat upright. Fred Dove, his eyes shut tightly in concentration, said, "Don't stop now."

  In the front doorway stood a man with a powerful flashlight.

  "Candles," he said. "That's real fuckin' cozy."

  Fred Dove's chest stopped moving, and one hand fumbled for his eyeglasses. Edie Marsh got up and folded her arms across her breasts. She said, "Thanks for knocking, asshole."

  "I came back for my car." Snapper played the light up and down her body.

  "It's in the driveway, right where you left it."

  "What's the hurry," said Snapper, stepping into the house.

  Bonnie Lamb went to Augustine's room at one-thirty in the morning. She climbed under the sheets without brushing against him even slightly. It wasn't easy, in a twin bed.

  She whispered, "Are you sleeping?"

  "Like a log."

  "Sorry."

  He rolled over to face her. "You need a pillow?"

  "I need a hug."

  "Bad idea."

  "Why?"

  "I'm slightly on the naked side. I wasn't expecting company."

  "Apology number two," she said.

  "Close your eyes, Mrs. Lamb." He got up and pulled on a pair of loose khakis. No shirt, she observed, unalarmed. He slipped under the covers and held her.

  His skin was warm and smooth against her cheek, and when he moved she felt a taut, shifting wedge of muscle. Max's physical topography was entirely different, but Bonnie pushed the thought from her mind. It wasn't fair to compare hugging prowess. Not now.

  She asked Augustine if he'd ever been married. He said no.

  "Engaged?"

  "Three times."

  Bonnie raised her head. "You're kidding."

  "Unfortunately not." In the artificial twilight, Augustine saw she was smiling. "This amuses you?"

  "Intrigues me," she said. "Three times?"

  "They all came to their senses."

  "We're talking about three different women. No repeats?"

  "Correct," said Augustine.

  "I've got to ask what happened. You don't have to answer, but I've got to ask."

  "Well, the first one married a successful personal-injury lawyer-he's doing class-action breast-implant litigation; the second one started an architecture firm and is currently a mistress to a Venezuelan cabinet minister; and the third one is starring on a popular Cuban soap opera-she plays Miriam, the jealous schizophrenic. So I would say," Augustine concluded, "that each of them made a wise decision by ending our relationship."

  Bonnie Lamb said, "I bet you let them keep the engagement rings."

  "Hey, it's only money."

  "And you still watch the soap opera, don't you?"

  "She's quite good in it. Very convincing."

  Bonnie said, "What an unusual guy."

  "You feeling better? My personal problems always seem to cheer people up."

  She put her head down. "I'm worried about tomorrow, about seeing Max again."

  Augustine told her it was normal to be nervous. "I'm a little antsy myself."

  "Will you bring the gun?"

  "Let's play it by ear." He seriously doubted if the governor would appear, much less deliver Bonnie's husband.

  "Are you scared?" When she spoke, he could feel her soft breath on his chest.

  "Restless," he said, "not scared."

  "Hey."

  "Hey what?"

  "You getting excited?"

  Augustine shifted in embarrassment. What did she expect? He said, "My turn to apologize."

  But she didn't move. So he took a slow quiet breath and tried to focus on something else ... say, Uncle Felix's fugitive monkeys. How far had they scattered? How were they coping with freedom?

  Augustine's self-imposed pondering was interrupted when Bonnie Lamb said: "What if Max is different now? Maybe something's happened to him."

  Augustine thought: Something's happened, all right. You can damn sure bet on it.

  But what he told Bonnie was: "Your husband's hanging in there. You wait and see."

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  Skink said, "Care for some toad?"

  The shock collar had done its job; Max Lamb was unconditionally conditioned. If the captain wanted him to smoke toad, he would smoke toad.

  "It's an offer, not a command," Skink said, by way of clarification.

  "Then no, thanks."

  Max Lamb squinted into the warm salty night. Somewhere out there, Bonnie was searching. Max was neither as anxious nor as hopeful as he should have been, and he wondered why; his reaction to practically every circumstance was muted, as if key brain synapses had been cauterized by the ordeal of the kidnapping. For instance, he had failed to raise even a meek objection at the Key Biscayne golf course, where they'd stopped to free the Asian scorpion. Skink had tenderly deposited the venomous bug in the cup on the eighteenth green. "The mayor's favorite course," he'd explained. "Call me an optimist." Max had stood by wordlessly.

  Now they were on a wooden stilt house in the middle of the bay. Skink dangled his long legs off the end of a dock, which was twisted and buckled like a Chinese parade dragon. The hurricane had sucked the wooden pilings from their holes. Most of the other stilt houses were shorn at the stems, but this one had outlasted the storm, though barely. It lurched and creaked in the thickish breeze; Max Lamb suspected it was sinking with the tide. Skink said the house belonged to a man who'd retired on disability from the State Attorney's Office. The man recently had married a beautiful twelve-string guitarist and moved to the island of Exuma.

  Under a swinging lantern, Skink lighted another exotic-smelling joint; marijuana and French onion soup, thought Max Lamb. Something strong and cheesy.

  "The toad itself is toxic," Skink explained. "Bufo marinus. A South American import-overran the local species. Sound familiar?" He took a long sibilant drag. "The glands of Sefior Bufo perspire a milky sap that can kill a full-grown Doberman in six minutes flat."

  To Max, it didn't sound like a substance that one should be inhaling.

  "There's a special process," Skink said, "of extraction." He took another huge hit.

  "What does it do, this toad sap?"

  "Nothing. Everything. What all good drugs do, I suppose. Psychoneurotic roulette." Skink's chin dropped to his chest. His good eye fluttered and closed. His breathing rose to a startling volume; the exhalations sounded like the brakes of a subway train. For fifteen minutes Max Lamb didn't make a move; the notion to escape never occurred to him, such was the Pavlovian influence of the collar.

  In the interval of enforced suspension, Max's thoughts drifted to Bill Knapp up at Rodale. The scheming viper undoubtedly had his sights on Max's corner office, with its partially obstructed but nonetheless energizing view of Madison Avenue. Each day lost to the ambivalent kidnapper was a potential day of advancement for Billy the Backstabber; Max Lamb was burning to return to the agency and crush the devious little fucker's ambitions. Brutal humiliation was called for, and Max hoped he was up to the task. Darkly he imagined Billy Knapp a jobless, wifeless, homeless, toothless wretch, hunched over a can of Sterno in a wintry alley, sucking on a moist spliff laced with poisonous toad sweat...

  When Skink snapped awake, he coughed hard and flipped the butt of the dead joint into the sto
rm-silted water. Not far from the house, the broken mast of a submerged sailboat protruded from the waves. Skink pointed at the ghostly wreck but said nothing. His leathery finger stayed in the air for an exceptionally long time.

  "Tell me," he said to Max Lamb, "the most breathtaking place you've ever seen."

  "Yellowstone Park. We took a bus tour."

  "Good God."

  "So what?"

  "Outside Yellowstone they've got a grizzly-bear theme park. Did you go? I mean, some truly sad cases– no claws, no testicles. They're about as wild as goddamn hamsters, but tourists line up to see 'em. Deballed grizzly bears!"

  Rapidly Skink shook his head back and forth, as if trying to roust a bumblebee from his ear. Max Lamb wasn't sure how the conversation had gone so far astray. He did not share the madman's compassion for the altered grizzly bears; removing the claws seemed an entirely sensible procedure, liability-wise, for a public amusement park. But Max knew there was no percentage in arguing. He remained quiet as Skink withdrew into a heap on the planks of the spavined deck. The kidnapper trembled and heaved and cried out names that Max Lamb didn't recognize. A half hour later he was up, scouting the starlit horizons.

  "You all right?" Max asked.

  Skink nodded soberly. "The down side of toad. I do apologize."

  "Are you sure Bonnie can find us out here?"

  "Why in the name of God would you marry a woman who can't follow simple directions?"

  "But it's so dark—"

  The trip to Stiltsville had frightened Max Lamb beyond exclamation-full throttle, no running lights, a wet nasty chop in an open skiff. Infinitely more harrowing than the airboat. The hurricane had turned the bay into a spectral gauntlet of sunken yachts, trawlers, cabin cruisers and runabouts. On the way out, Skink had removed his glass eye and pressed it, for safekeeping, into the palm of Max's right hand. Max had clenched it as if it were the Hope diamond.

  "Your wife," Skink was saying, "will surely hook up with somebody who knows the way."

  "I could use a cigaret. Please, captain."

  Skink groped in his coat until he came up with a fresh pack. He tossed it, along with a lighter, to his captive.

  Max Lamb was embarrassed that he'd so quickly become hooked on the infamously harsh Broncos. Around the agency they were jokingly known as Bron-chials, such was their killer reputation with anti-smoking zealots. Max attributed his hazardous new habit to severe stress, not a weakness of character. In the advertising business it was essential to remain immune from the base appetites that tyrannized the average consumer.

  Skink said: "What else have you to show for yourself?"

  "I'm not sure what you mean."

  "Slogans, tiger. Besides the Plum Crispies."

  "Crunchies," said Max, tightly.

  The dock shimmied as Skink rose to his feet. Max braced himself against a half-rotted beam. There was nowhere to go; the old man who ferried them across the bay had snatched Skink's fifty dollars and hastily aimed the skiff back toward the mainland.

  Skink swung the lantern around and around his head. Caught in the erratic strobe, Max said, "All right, captain, here's one: 'That fresh good-morning feeling, all day long.'"

  "Product name?"

  "Intimate Mist."

  "No!" The lantern hissed as Skink put it down.

  Max tried not to sound defensive. "It's a feminine hygiene'item. Very popular."

  "The raspberry rinse! Sweet Jesus, I thought you were joking. This is the sum of your life achievements– douche jingles?"

  "No," Max snapped. "Soft drinks, gasoline additives, laser copiers-I've worked on plenty of accounts." He wondered what had impelled him to mention the Intimate Mist campaign. Was it an unconscious act of masochism, or carelessness caused by fatigue?

  Skink sat heavily on the porch, which was canted at an alarming angle toward the bay. "I do hear a boat," he said.

  Max stared curiously across the water. He heard nothing but the slap of waves and the scattered piping of seagulls. He asked, "What happens now?"

  There was no reply. Max Lamb saw, in the yellow flicker of the lantern, a smile cross the crazy man's face.

  "You seriously don't want any ransom?"

  "I didn't say that. Money is what I don't want."

  "Then what?" Max flicked his cigaret into the water. "Tell me what the hell it's all about. I'm sick of this game, I really am!"

  Skink was amused by the display of anger. Maybe there was hope for the precious little bastard. "What I want," he said to Max Lamb, "is to spend some time with your wife. She intrigues me."

  "In what Way?"

  "Clinically. Anthropologically. What in the world does she see in you? How do you two fit?" Skink gave a mischievous wink. "I like mysteries."

  "If you touch her—"

  "What a brave young stud!"

  Max Lamb took two steps toward the madman, but froze when Skink raised a hand to his own throat. The collar! Max felt a hot sizzle shoot from his scalp down the length of his spine. Instantly he foresaw himself hopping like a puppet. Had he known that the battery in the Tri-Tronics remote control had been dead for the past six hours, it wouldn't have softened his reaction. He was a slave to his subconscious. He had come to understand that the anticipation of pain was more immobilizing than the pain itself-though the knowledge didn't help him.

  When Max settled down, Skink assured him he had no carnal interest in his wife. "Christ, I'm not trying to get laid; I'm trying to figure out man's place in the food chain." His long arms swept an arc across the stars. "A riddle of the times, Tourist Boy. Five thousand years ago we're doodling on the walls of caves. Today we're writing odes to fruit-flavored douche."

  "It's a job," Max Lamb replied petulantly. "Get over it."

  Skink yawned like a gorged hyena. "That's a damn big engine coming. I hope your Bonnie wasn't foolish enough to call the police."

  "I warned her not to."

  Skink went on: "My opinion about your wife will be shaped by how she handles this situation. Whom she brings. Her attitude. Her composure."

  Max Lamb asked Skink if he had a gun. Skink clicked his tongue against his front teeth. "See the running lights?"

  "No."

  "Toward Key Biscayne. Over there."

  "Oh, yeah."

  "Two engines, it sounds like. I'm guessing twin Mercs."

  Somebody aboard the boat had a powerful spotlight. It swept back and forth across the flats of Stiltsville. As the craft drew nearer, the white light settled on the porch of the stilt house. Skink seemed unconcerned.

  He began to remove toads from his pockets; gray, jowly, scowling, lump-covered toads, some as large as Idaho potatoes. Max Lamb counted eleven. Skink lined them up side by side at his feet. Max had nothing to add to the scenario, perhaps it was all a dream, beginning with the mangy hurricane monkey, and soon he'd awaken in bed with Bonnie....

  The pudgy Bufo toads began to squirm and huff and pee. Skink rebuked them with a murmur. When the beam of the speedboat's spotlight hit them, the toads blinked their moist globular eyes and jumped toward it. One by one they leaped off the dock and plopped into the water. Skink hooted mirthfully. "South, boys! To Havana, San Juan, wherever the hell you came from!"

  Max watched the toads disappear; some kicked for the depths, others bobbed on the foamy crests of waves. Max didn't know what would happen to them, nor did he care. They were just ugly toads, and barracudas could devour them, as far as he was concerned. His only interest was in drawing a lesson from the episode, one that might be employed to handle the cyclopean kidnapper.

  But Skink already seemed to have forgotten about the Bufos. Once more he was rhapsodizing about the hurricane. "Look at Cape Florida, every last tree flattened– forest to moonscape in thirty blessed minutes!"

  "The boat—"

  "You ponder that."

  "It's flashing a light at us—"

  "The gorgeous fury inside that storm. And you with your video camera." Skink sighed disappointedly. "'Sin is a thing
that writes itself across a man's face.' Oscar Wilde. I don't expect you've read him."

  Max's silence affirmed it.

  "Well, I've been waiting," said Skink, "to see it written across your face. Sin."

  "What I did was harmless, OK? Maybe a bit insensitive, but harmless. You've made your point, captain. Let me go now."