Stormy Weather Read online

  Snapper remarked that money was known to make a person drive faster than usual, or overcome a fear of flying. Tony said he wasn't worried. "The radio said State Farm and Allstate are writing settlements already. Midwest won't be far behind-see, no company wants to look stingy in a national disaster."

  Edie asked Tony Torres if he intended to hold them prisoner. He gave a great slobbering laugh and said hell, no, they could vamoose anytime they pleased. Edie stood and announced she was returning to the motel. Snapper rose warily, never taking his eyes off the shotgun.

  He said to Tony: "Why are you doing this? Lettin' us walk out of here."

  "Because you'll be back," the salesman said. "You most certainly will. I can see it in your eyes."

  "Really?" Edie said, tartly.

  "Really, darling. It's what I do for a living. Read people." The Naugahyde hissed as Tony Torres hoisted himself up from the BarcaLounger. "I need to take a leak," he declared. Then, with a hoot: "I'm sure you can find your way out!"

  On the slow drive back to Pembroke Pines, Edie Marsh and Snapper mulled the options. Both of them were broke. Both recognized the post-hurricane turmoil as a golden opportunity. Both agreed that ten thousand dollars was a good week's work.

  "Trouble is," Edie said, "I don't trust that asshole. What is it he sells?"

  "Trailer homes."

  "Good Lord."

  "Then let's walk away," Snapper said, without conviction. "Try the slip-and-fall on somebody else."

  Edie contemplated the ugly, self-inflicted scratch on her arm. Posing under a pile of lumber had been more uncomfortable than she'd anticipated. She wasn't eager to try it again.

  "I'll coast with this jerkoff a day or two," she told Snapper. "You do what you want."

  Snapper configured his crooked jaws into the semblance of a grin. "I know what you're thinkin'. I ain't no salesman, but I can read you just the same. You're thinkin' they's more than ten grand in this deal, you play it right. If we play it right."

  "Why not." Edie Marsh pressed her cheek against the cool glass of the car's window. "It's about time my luck should change."

  "Our luck," Snapper said, both hands tight on the wheel.

  Augustine helped Bonnie Lamb search for her husband until nightfall. They failed to locate Max, but along the way they came upon an escaped male rhesus. It was up in a grapefruit tree, hurling unripened fruit at passing humans. Augustine shot the animal with a tranquilizer dart, and it toppled like a marionette. Augustine was dismayed to discover, stapled in one of its ears, a tag identifying it as property of the University of Miami.

  He had captured somebody else's fugitive monkey.

  "What now?" asked Bonnie Lamb, reasonably. She reached out to pet the stunned animal, then changed her mind. The rhesus studied her through dopey, half-closed eyes.

  "You're a good shot," she said to Augustine.

  He wasn't listening. "This isn't right," he muttered. He carried the limp monkey to the grapefruit tree and propped it gently in the crook of two boughs. Then he took Bonnie back to his truck. "It'll be dark soon," he said. "I forgot to bring a flashlight."

  They drove through the subdivision for fifteen minutes until Bonnie Lamb spotted the rental car. Max wasn't there. Somebody had pried the trunk and stolen all the luggage, including Bonnie's purse.

  Damn kids, Augustine said. Bonnie was too tired to cry. Max had the car keys, the credit cards, the money, the plane tickets. "I need to find a phone," she said. Her folks would wire some money.

  Augustine drove to a police checkpoint, where Bonnie Lamb reported her husband missing. He was one of many, and not high on the list. Thousands who'd escaped their homes in the hurricane were being sought by worried relatives. For relief workers, reuniting local families was a priority; tracking wayward tourists was not.

  A bank of six phones had been set up near the checkpoint, but the lines were long. Bonnie found the shortest one and settled in for a wait. She thanked Augustine for his help.

  "What will you do tonight?" he asked.

  "I'll be OK."

  Bonnie was startled to hear him say: "No you won't."

  He took her by the hand and led her to the pickup. It occurred to Bonnie that she ought to be afraid, but she felt illogically safe with this total stranger. It also occurred to her that panic would be a normal reaction to a husband's disappearance, but instead she felt an inappropriate calmness and lucidity. Probably just exhaustion, she thought.

  Augustine drove back to the looted rental car. He scribbled a note and tucked it under one of the windshield wipers. "My phone number," he told Bonnie Lamb. "In case your husband shows up later tonight. This way he'll know where you are."

  "We're going to your place?"

  "Yes."

  In the darkness, she couldn't see Augustine's expression. "It's madness out here," he said. "These idiots shoot at anything that moves."

  Bonnie nodded. She'd been hearing distant gunfire from all directions. Dade County is an armed camp. That's what their travel agent had warned them. Death Wish Tours, he'd called it. Only a fool would set foot south of Orlando.

  Crazy Max, thought Bonnie. What had possessed him?

  "You know why my husband came down here?" she said. "Know what he was doing when he got lost? Taking video of the wrecked houses. And the people, too."

  "Why?" Augustine asked.

  "Home movies. To show his pals back North."

  "Jesus, that's—"

  "Sick," Bonnie Lamb said. " 'Sick' is the word for it."

  Augustine said nothing more. Slowly he worked his way toward the Turnpike. The futility of the monkey hunt was evident; Augustine realized that most of his dead uncle's wild animals were irretrievable. The larger mammals would inevitably make their presence known-the Cape buffalo, the bears, the cougars-and the results were bound to be unfortunate. Meanwhile the snakes and crocodiles probably were celebrating freedom by copulating merrily in the Everglades, ensuring for their species a solid foothold in a new tropical habitat. Augustine felt it was morally wrong to interfere. An escaped cobra had as much natural right to a life in Florida as did all those retired garment workers from Queens. Natural selection would occur. The test applied to Max Lamb as well, but Augustine felt sorry for his wife. He would set aside his principles and help find her missing husband.

  He drove using the high beams because there were no street lights, and the roads were a littered gauntlet of broken trees and utility poles, heaps of lumber and twisted metal, battered appliances and gutted sofas. They saw a Barbie dollhouse and a canopy bed and an antique china cabinet and a child's wheelchair and a typewriter and a tangle of golf clubs and a cedar hot tub, split in half like a coconut husk-Bonnie said it was as if a great supernatural fist had snatched up a hundred thousand lives and shaken the contents all over creation.

  Augustine was thinking more in terms of a B-52 raid.

  "Is this your first one?" Bonnie asked.

  "Technically, no." He braked to swerve around a dead cow, bloated on the center line. "I was conceived during Donna-least that's what my mother said. A hurricane baby. That was 1960. Betsy I can barely remember because I was only five. We lost a few lime trees, but the house held up fine."

  Bonnie said, "That's kind of romantic. Being conceived in the middle of a hurricane."

  "My mother said it made perfect sense, considering how I turned out."

  "And how did you turn out?" Bonnie asked.

  "Reports differ."

  Augustine edged the truck into a line of storm traffic crawling up the northbound ramp to the Turnpike. A rusty Ford with a crooked Georgia-license plate cut them off. The car was packed with itinerant construction workers who'd been on the road for several days straight, apparently drinking the whole time. The driver, a shaggy blond with greenish teeth, leered and yelled an obscenity up at Bonnie Lamb. With one hand Augustine reached behind his seat and got the small rifle. Bracing it against the doorpost, he fired a tranquilizer dart cleanly into the belly of the redneck drive
r, who yipped and pitched sideways into the lap of one of his pals.

  "Manners," said Augustine. He gunned the truck, nudging the stalled Ford off the pavement.

  Bonnie Lamb thought: God, what am I doing?

  They broke camp at midnight-Max Lamb, the rhesus monkey and the man who called himself Skink. Max was grateful that the man had allowed him to put on his shoes, because they walked for hours in pitch darkness through deep swamp and spiny thickets. Max's bare legs stung from the scratches and itched from the bug bites. He was terribly hungry but didn't complain, knowing the man had saved him the rump of the dead raccoon that was boiled for dinner. Max wanted no part of it.

  They came to a canal. Skink untied Max's hands, unbuckled the shock collar and ordered him to swim. Max was halfway across when he saw the blue-black alligator slide out of the sawgrass. Skink told him to quit whimpering and kick; he himself swam with the rejuvenated monkey perched on his head. One huge hand held Max's precious Sony and the remote control for the dog collar high above the water.

  After scrabbling ashore, Max said, "Captain, can we rest?"

  "Ever seen a leech before? 'Cause there's a good one on your cheek."

  After Max Lamb finished flaying himself, Skink retied his wrists and refastened the dog collar. Then he sprayed him down with insect repellent. Max croaked out a thank-you.

  "Where are we?" he asked.

  "The Everglades," Skink replied. "More or less."

  "You promised I could call my wife."

  "Soon."

  They headed west, trudging through palmettos and pinelands shredded by the storm. The monkey scampered ahead, foraging wild berries and fruit buds.

  Max said: "Are you going to kill me?"

  Skink stopped walking. "Every time you ask that stupid question, you're going to get it." He set the remote on the weakest setting.

  "Ready?"

  Max Lamb clenched his lips. Skink stung him with a light jolt. The tourist twitched stoically. Soon they came to a Miccosukee village, which was not as badly damaged as Max Lamb would have imagined. Since the Indians were awake, cooking food, Max assumed it would soon be dawn. In open doorways the children gathered shyly to look at the two strange white men: Skink with his brambly hair, ill-fitting eye and mangy monkey, Max Lamb in his dirty underwear and dog collar.

  Skink stopped at a wooden house and spoke quietly to a Miccosukee elder, who brought out a cellular phone. As he untied Max's hands, Skink warned: "One call is all you get. He says the battery's running low."

  Max realized that he didn't know how to reach his wife. He had no idea where she was. So he called their apartment in New York and spoke to the answering machine: "Honey, I've been kidnapped—"

  "Abducted!" Skink broke in. "Kidnapping implies ransom, Max. Don't fucking flatter yourself."

  "OK, 'abducted.' Honey, I've been abducted. I can't say very much except I'm fine, all things considered. Please call my folks, and also call Pete up at Rodale about the Bronco billboard project. Tell him the race car should be red, not blue. The file's on my desk.... Bonnie, I'm not sure who's got me, or why, but I guess I'll find out soon enough. God, I hope you pick up this message—"

  Skink snatched the phone. "I love you, Bonnie," he said. "Max forgot to tell you, so I will. Bye now."

  They ate with the Miccosukees, who declined Skink's offer of boiled coon but generously shared helpings of fried panfish, yams, cornmeal muffins and citrus juice. Max Lamb ate heartily but, mindful of the electric dog collar, said little. After breakfast, Skink tied him to a cypress post and disappeared with several men of the tribe. When he returned, he declared it was time to leave.

  Max said, "Where's my stuff?" He was worried about his billfold and clothes.

  "Right here." Skink jerked a thumb toward his backpack.

  "And my Sony?"

  "Gave it to the old man. He's got seven grandchildren, so he'll have a ball."

  "What about my tapes?"

  Skink laughed. "He loved 'em. That monkey attack was something special. Max, lift your arms." He spritzed the prisoner with more bug juice.

  Max Lamb, somberly: "That Handycam retails for about nine hundred bucks."

  "It's not like I gave it away. I traded."

  "For what?"

  Skink chucked him on the shoulder. "I'll bet you've never been on an airboat."

  "Oh no. Please."

  "Hey, you wanted to see Florida."

  It wasn't easy being a black Highway Patrol trooper in Florida. It was even harder if you were involved intimately with a white trooper, the way Jim Tile was involved with Brenda Rourke.

  They'd met at a training seminar about the newest gadgets for clocking speeders. In the classroom they were seated next to each other. Jim Tile liked Brenda Rourke right away. She had a sane and healthy outlook on the job, and she made him laugh. They traded stories about freaky traffic stops, lousy pay and the impossible FHP bureaucracy. Because he was black, and few fellow officers were, Jim Tile rarely felt comfortable in a roomful of state troopers. But he felt fine next to Brenda Rourke, partly because she was a minority, too; the Highway Patrol employed even fewer women than blacks or Latins.

  During one session, a buzz-cut redneck shot a rat-eyed look at Jim Tile to remind him that Trooper Rourke was a white girl, and that still counted for plenty in parts of Florida. Jim Tile didn't get up and move; he kept his seat beside Brenda. It took the cracker trooper only about two hours to quit glaring.

  At the lunch break, Jim Tile and Brenda Rourke went to an Arby's. She was worried about her upcoming transfer to South Florida; Jim Tile couldn't say much to allay her fears. She said she was studying Spanish, in preparation for road duty in Miami. The first phrase she'd learned was: Sale del carro con las manos arriba. Out of the car with your hands up!

  At the time, Jim Tile held no romantic intentions. Brenda Rourke was a nice person, that was all. He never even asked if she had a boyfriend. A few months later, when he was down in Dade County for a trial, he ran into her at FHP headquarters. Later they went to dinner and then to Brenda's apartment, where they were up until three in the morning, chatting, of all things– initially out of nervousness, and later out of an easy intimacy. The trial lasted six days, and every night Jim Tile found himself back at Brenda's place. Every morning they awakened exactly as they'd fallen asleep– her head in the crook of his right shoulder, his feet hanging off the short bed. He'd never felt so peaceful. After the trial ended and Jim Tile returned to North Florida, he and Brenda took turns commuting for long weekends.

  He wasn't much of a talker, but Brenda could drag it out of him. She especially liked to hear about the time he was assigned to guard the governor of Florida-not just any governor, but the one whp'd quit, disappeared and become a legendary recluse. Brenda had been in high school, but she remembered when it happened. The newspapers and TV had gone wild. "Mentally unstable," was what her twelfth-grade civics teacher had said of the runaway governor.

  When Jim Tile had heard that, he threw back his head and laughed. Brenda would sit cross-legged on the carpet, her chin in her hands, engrossed by his stories of the one they now called Skink. Out of loyalty and prudence, Jim Tile didn't mention that he and the man had remained the closest of friends.

  "I wish I'd met him," Brenda had said, in the past tense, as if Skink were dead. Because Jim Tile had, perhaps unconsciously, made it sound like he was.

  Now, two years later, it seemed that Brenda's improbable wish might come true. The governor had surfaced in the hurricane zone.

  On the ride back from Card Sound, she asked: "Why would he tie himself to a bridge during a storm?" It was the logical question.

  Jim Tile said, "He's been waiting for a big one."

  "What for?"

  "Brenda, I can't explain. It only makes sense if you know him."

  She said nothing for a mile or two, then: "Why didn't you tell me that you two still talk?"

  "Because we seldom do."

  "Don't you trust me?"

&nb
sp; "Of course." He pulled her close enough to steal a kiss.

  She pulled away, a spark in her pale-blue eyes.

  "You're going to try to find him. Come on, Jim, be straight with me."

  "I'm afraid he's got a loose wire. That's not good."

  "This isn't the first time, is it?"

  "No," said Jim Tile, "it's not the first time."

  Brenda brought his hand to her lips and kissed his knuckles lightly. "It's OK, big guy. I understand about friends."