by Carl Hiaasen
He said, “Mom, let’s go in. We need to talk.”
“This is pretty good,” Honey said, tapping a fingernail on the pages he’d written, “except you got Jesup’s name wrong. There’s only one s.”
“I’ll fix it later. How about some dinner?”
“You didn’t put in the part about them stealing Osceola’s head after he died. About that army doctor keeping it at home in a jar, and taking it out to frighten his kids.”
“Are you making this up? Because it’s incredibly twisted,” Fry said.
“I did not make it up!” Honey Santana slapped the essay pages into his hand. He could see she was telling the truth.
“Mom, you’re getting all torqued up again. Maybe you should go back to the doctor.”
She smiled and stretched like a cat. “Oh, I’m perfectly fine,” she said. “You up for pizza? I’ve got a coupon somewhere.”
Dealey was tired of the Shreave case. He’d done his job, nailing the knucklehead in the act, and now he was ready for fresh meat.
“Trust me. Your husband won’t give you any trouble over the divorce,” he assured Lily Shreave. “After seeing what you’ve got on him, he’ll sign anything.”
She said, “I want more, Mr. Dealey.”
“But why? I got you dinner tabs and floral receipts and eight-by-tens and video.” Dealey could not suppress his exasperation. “You said the photos of the blow job weren’t enough. You wanted ‘documentation of intercourse,’ so I got that, too—on tape, for Christ’s sake! What else do you need, Mrs. Shreave?”
“Penetration,” she replied.
Dealey waited for her to chuckle and tell him she was only kidding. When it became apparent that she was serious, he shut the door to his office so as not to offend his assistant, who had recently found religion.
“That video you took was good,” Lily Shreave said, “but I want something a hundred percent irrefutable.”
“Excuse me? I got you a naked woman grinding your husband on the sofa of her living room, and you say that’s not proof of adultery?” Dealey had his share of wacko clients, but Lily Shreave was breaking new ground.
He said, “I’d kill to be in court when Bouncing Boyd tries to explain that little scene. ‘Honest, Your Honor, she’s not my girlfriend. She’s a pelvic chiropractor.’”
“Yes, but in the video all you really see of him is the back of his head,” Lily remarked.
“The lady nearly knocks him unconscious with her tits, Mrs. Shreave! In my business, it doesn’t get any better than that. Seventeen years, I’ve never seen a tape of that quality,” he asserted with no small measure of pride.
Lily Shreave had replayed the video over and over during her last visit to Dealey’s office. He remembered her sitting unusually close to the screen—not angry or tearful, but hunched forward and studious. At the time, Dealey had thought it was a little creepy.
He said, “This is a slam dunk, Mrs. Shreave. Ask any divorce lawyer in Texas.”
Lily was unswayed. “I’d prefer to see penetration,” she said flatly. “That would be the smoking gun.”
“No, that would be a fucking miracle,” said Dealey, “literally.”
“I suppose I could find another private investigator.”
“And I’d understand completely.” He passed his invoice across the desk. “That includes gas and expenses.”
As Boyd Shreave’s wife wrote out the check, she said, “You never told me if this slut was really a Fonda.”
“Not even close. No family connection,” Dealey said. “It’s in my report.”
“Right. One of these days I’ll have to read it.” Lily took a tube of mint lip balm from her purse and applied it conservatively.
Dealey glanced at his wristwatch. “Mrs. Shreave, I’ve got another appointment across town.”
She closed the purse and said, “Ten thousand dollars if you get me proof of penetration.”
“That’s just crazy.”
“Cash,” she said.
Dealey sat down slowly. The woman obviously was getting off, watching her old man do it with somebody else. One time Dealey had been hired by a husband who got his kicks the same way, except he didn’t have ten grand lying around.
“Well?” said Lily Shreave.
Dealey pondered the unappetizing dullness of his next case—a fireman who’d claimed he injured his shoulder while hosing a burning Airstream was now playing thirty-six holes of golf daily while on disability leave. The city’s claims adjuster had expressed an interest in either stills or videotape.
Lily said, “Think of it, Mr. Dealey. You pull this off, you’ll be a legend in your business.”
“But logistically, it would be…it would be…”
“A triumph?”
“A bear,” the investigator said. “Just so you know, I don’t do break-ins and I don’t do disguises. That means I’d have to figure out some other way to sneak a camera into her apartment.”
“Not necessarily,” Lily said. “This morning my husband informed me that his company is sending him to Florida to be treated for a rare condition called aphenphosmphobia.”
Dealey winced. “Holy crap. Is it fatal?”
“If only,” said Boyd Shreave’s wife. “It’s a fear of being touched. And as we both know from your excellent surveillance, my husband has no fear whatsoever of being touched. Or sucked, fucked and fondled, for that matter.”
“So he’s faking.”
“Here’s what else: Boyd was fired several days ago from the call center. He was out banging Ms. Fonda when his boss called to ask where to mail his final paycheck—minus the cost of some missing office supplies.”
Dealey said, “Mr. Shreave has no idea that you’re onto him?”
“No, it’s pathetic. I’ll give him as much rope as he needs to hang himself,” Lily said. “The only thing he’s not lying about is going to Florida. A friend of mine works at a travel agency—she went in the computer and found Boyd’s reservation on a flight to Tampa. Guess who’s got the seat beside him.”
“Where will the happy lovebirds be staying?”
“I haven’t a clue. But for ten grand I’ll bet you can find out.” Lily got up and headed for the door.
“Hold on,” Dealey said. “You expect me to do what exactly—hide in the closet of their motel room? This thing you’re asking for, Mrs. Shreave, would take some special planning. Not to mention luck.”
Lily told him to go rent some porn, if he needed tips on the camera work.
“But those are actors. They couldn’t care less if some stranger with a camcorder is crouched between their legs,” Dealey said.
“You’ll think of something.” Lily walked out of the office.
Dealey, who couldn’t recall accepting her offer, followed two steps behind. “It’s ten thousand plus expenses, right?”
“If you get me penetration, yes. Absolutely.”
“And what if I don’t?”
“Then all you get is a free trip to Florida,” said Boyd Shreave’s wife, “which isn’t such a bad deal, is it?”
Eight
Sammy Tigertail was doing fine until the girl named Gillian started messing with his guitar. That’s when he stripped a palmetto frond and wove the leaves into a twine rope and tied her wrists to her ankles. Oddly, she did not resist.
“You don’t dress like an Indian,” she remarked as he cinched the knots. “Those are pretty nice threads.”
“Haven’t you heard? We’re all richer than Trump now.” He resumed packing his belongings into the stolen canoe.
“I had a boyfriend who played in a rock group. He had a Gibson, too,” Gillian said, “only not as cool as yours. His band was called the Cankers. Mostly they did covers of Bizkit and Weezer. Know what else? He got his thingamajig pierced.”
“I’m warning you,” said the Seminole.
“His scrotum. They all did—it was the bass player’s idea.”
Sammy Tigertail crouched directly in front of her. “If you go
on with this story,” he said, “I’ll leave you here for the buzzards.”
Gillian squirmed. “You don’t scare me,” she said, but dropped the subject of her ex-boyfriend’s pierced privates.
“So where are you taking me?”
Sammy Tigertail didn’t answer because he didn’t know. He gagged her mouth with a balled-up pair of athletic socks and carried her to the canoe, which was wedged in some mangroves. Then he picked up the rifle and jogged back across the island.
In the moon glow he saw that Gillian’s friends were sleeping where they’d dropped, not far from the wisping campfire. Sammy Tigertail raised the gun and fired a shot over the beach. Quickly he stepped back into the tree line. As soon as he heard voices, he fired twice more.
Now the college kids were all on their feet, yelling and scrambling for their belongings. A male voice called Gillian’s name, and soon others chimed in. The Seminole squeezed off another round and the kids fell silent as they clambered into the remaining canoes.
Sammy Tigertail waited until they were out of sight and he could no longer hear their frantic paddling. He walked to the water’s edge and stood there, listening to the waves and trying to decide what to do next. Gillian had screwed up the whole plan. Her friends would go back to Chokoloskee and tell everyone that a sniper had chased them off the island, and that Gillian was missing. Airplanes and helicopters would be sent to search for the tangerine-colored canoe, which—Sammy Tigertail realized glumly—would stand out like a burning flare on the tea-brown creeks.
He hurried back to where he’d left the girl. Somehow she had gotten out of the canoe but he found her nearby, grunting and thrashing among the mangroves. He lugged her to a small clearing, where he cut off the palmetto ropes and uncorked the socks from her mouth and cleaned the scratches on her shins and arms.
“Stop crying,” he said.
“You killed my friends! I heard the shots.”
“Your friends are fine. All I did was scare ’em away.”
“What about me?” Gillian wiped her eyes with a sleeve of the sweatshirt. “They just left me here to rot?”
“I spooked ’em off with the gunfire.”
“What about Ethan? That guy I was with? I bet he just ran and never looked back.”
Sammy Tigertail said, “You remind me of my last girlfriend.”
Gillian sniffled and smiled. “Yeah?”
“It’s not a compliment. Take off that goddamn sweatshirt.”
“No way. I’m cold.”
He opened his duffel and dug out a gray fleece pullover, which he tossed to her. Grudgingly she removed the FSU sweatshirt.
“Give it here,” Sammy Tigertail said.
“I don’t see why you’re so pissy. It’s just a name,” she said, zipping up the fleece, “like the Atlanta Braves.”
He unsheathed a Buck knife and shredded the sweatshirt. Gillian sat stunned.
“It’s not just a name,” said Sammy Tigertail. “Do you have any clue what your people did to my tribe?”
Gillian said, “Chill, okay?” She didn’t take her eyes off the knife. “It wasn’t my people. My people were up in Ohio.”
“Yeah, screwing the Shawnee and the Chippewa.” Sammy Tigertail was depressed to think that this bubblehead would soon be a schoolteacher. It affirmed his view that white people were devolving with each generation.
He sheathed the knife and told her to take a seat in the canoe. “We’re outta here,” he said.
“Can’t we wait until the sun comes up? What if we flip over in the water?” Gillian was slapping haplessly at a mosquito. “Ethan said there’s sharks all over the place. He’s majoring in marine biology. My girlfriend’s engaged to his roommate. Well, practically.”
“I’m gonna count to three.”
She frowned. “You want me to shut up, I’ll shut up.”
Sammy Tigertail knew it was foolish to bring her along. If she remained on the island, the marine patrol or the Coast Guard would find her within hours after her friends reported her missing. She’d be hungry and sunburned, but unharmed….
Unless the other kids got hung up on the way back to the mainland. In that case, it might be several days before Gillian was located. By then the insects would have made a wreck of her and she’d be dangerously dehydrated, not that Sammy Tigertail should have cared.
Yet he did care—not much, but enough to unsettle him. He felt corrupted by the sentiment, which he blamed on his polluted half-white blood.
Into the night he paddled as fast as he could, the canoe gliding in a wash of moonlight. It occurred to the Indian that since he had no idea where he was going, it was technically impossible to get lost. At daybreak he’d stop at the nearest island, conceal the canoe and construct a lean-to that would be invisible from the air.
From the bow came Gillian’s voice: “What should I call you? I mean, since you won’t even tell me your name.”
“Thlocklo Tustenuggee,” he said.
It was his great-great-great-grandfather’s Seminole name.
“Thlocka what?” said Gillian.
Sammy Tigertail pronounced it again, although not as mellifluously as the first time. Since returning to the reservation, he had struggled to master the traditional Muskogee dialect.
“Never mind,” Gillian mumbled.
“Tiger Tail,” he said between strokes. “That’s my other name.”
“Cool. I like ’em both.”
The tip of the paddle struck something hard under the surface, jolting the canoe. Gillian yipped and said, “Easy, dude!”
Sammy Tigertail cursed under his breath as the hull screaked across a submerged oyster bar.
A few minutes later the girl said, “I did two semesters of crew.”
“What?”
“Rowing. We can take turns with the paddle,” she offered. “I’m serious. It’ll give me somethin’ to keep my mind off the damn bugs.”
“Why’d you ask to come with me?”
“I dunno, Thlocko. Why did you let me?” Gillian laughed. “I’m semi-drunk and totally stoned. What’s your excuse?”
“I’m weak,” Sammy said flatly. He dug harder against the tide.
“So, am I your first-ever hostage?” she asked.
He thought of Wilson, the tourist. “The first live one,” he said.
“You’re funny.”
“Yeah,” he said. “Me one funny Injun.”
Honey Santana grew up in Miami, where her parents owned a jewelry store on Coral Way. She had three older sisters, each of whom married urologists and moved across the causeway to Miami Beach. Honey was different. Even as a child she’d felt suffocated and disoriented in the city. Crowds made her dizzy and traffic gave her migraines.
She inherited her father’s impatience and her mother’s lousy sense of direction, a combination that made her teen driving years exceptionally eventful. On the night of her senior prom, Honey’s date got blasted on Cuervo and passed out on top of her in the spacious backseat of his father’s Continental Mark IV. The task of navigating homeward fell to Honey, who missed the turn off Eighth Street and continued due west on the Tamiami Trail, all the way to the opposite coast of Florida. Honey’s date, who would grow up to be a heartthrob on a popular Latin soap opera, awoke to the surreal vision of Honey skipping barefoot in her ice-blue prom gown along the Naples beach.
On the return drive across the Everglades, the young man pulled over numerous times to throw up. The last of these pit stops occurred near a kidney-shaped pond in which a large alligator was wolfing down a purple gallinule. Honey got out of the car to watch, aghast but fascinated. After a while she went back to the Lincoln and found her date snoring in a splash of his own vomit. She took a long thoughtful walk around the pond, counting three more alligators and five old beer cans, which she gathered up.
From the road came the sound of squealing brakes. Honey turned and saw a westbound pickup skid to a halt, tires smoking. The man who stepped out wore a dark flannel shirt and pale dungarees
and white rubber boots that came up to his knees. He walked over to Honey and asked if she was all right. Then he took the rusty beer cans from her arms and lobbed them one by one into the bed of his truck.
Immediately Honey Santana forgot about the tuxedoed nitwit passed out in the Continental.
The man in the rubber boots had broad shoulders, his hair was sun-bleached and his face was baked caramel brown. Honey thought he was uncommonly good-looking. He told her he was a commercial fisherman from Everglades City, and a volunteer firefighter. He said he was heading home from Dania, where he’d purchased two new propellers for his crab boat. He said his name was Perry Skinner.
“Perry, do you have a pen I can borrow?” Honey asked.
In the console of the truck he found a black marker that he used for numbering boxes of crab claws.
“That’ll do fine,” Honey said.
She walked over to the Lincoln and picked up the limp right arm of her date. She removed the silver cuff link and rolled up the sleeve. With the black marker she wrote out the word LOSER in fat block letters stretching from the young man’s wrist to his elbow.
Perry Skinner, who was standing behind Honey, said, “I can’t take you home. I’ve gotta work tomorrow.”
“I don’t want to go home,” she told him. “Anywhere except home would be lovely.”
“Look, I’m married,” he said.
“Liar.”
He grinned. “How’d you know?”
Honey hooked a finger in the waistband of his dungarees. “See, you missed a loop with your belt. My mom would never let my dad out of the house if he did that. No wife would—or girlfriend. I got ten bucks says you live alone.”
Skinner raised his hands in surrender. Honey let go of his pants.
“What’s your name?” he asked.
Honey told him. She was thinking about his outstanding smile.
“How old are you, Perry?”
“Twenty-nine.”
“Well, I’m only eighteen and a half,” Honey said, “but if I stay in Miami ’til my next birthday, I’ll go totally fucking insane. Honest to God.”