Isle of Dogs jhabavw-3

by Patricia Cornwell

  " 'Cause I ain't allowed to make no personal calls from the mansion. And they don't listen to inmates, anyhow. Everybody in trouble says there's been a mistake, so why should I be any different?"

  Regina was hiding behind an ancient boxwood and heard every word. She had lost interest in pool and wished she had thought to wear a coat when she'd decided to sneak out into the garden and eavesdrop. She had a special talent for spying on others, and was hoping to gather a little intelligence that might be useful to her.

  But as she listened to Andy talk to Pony, she felt herself go soft inside and forgot her original motive. She, too, had been frustrated in her occasional efforts to make friends and often felt wrongly accused.

  Regina was shivering uncontrollably, her breath rising in frozen clouds. Her stomach was feeling funny, too, and her intestines were tacking this way and that as they filled with an ominous wind that seemed to have gusted up from the sewer.

  "If I were you," Andy was saying to Pony, "I'd send Trooper Truth an e-mail and see if he can get to the truth of why you're still in lockup."

  "You think he'd do that for me?" Pony noticed that a boxwood was shaking and smoke was rising from it.

  "It can't hurt to ask."

  "Well, I don't got access to e-mail, either." Pony watched the shaking, smoking boxwood with growing alarm. He thought of the fisherman and panicked. "I think that boxwood over there's about to blow up!" he exclaimed as a loud, dull detonation sounded from behind the shrubs.

  Andy sprang from the stone bench and raced over to the smoking, foul-smelling bush as Regina gave up her cover and rose like a mountain.

  "What are you doing?" Andy demanded.

  "Practicing investigative techniques," she replied as she clutched her huge quivering gut.

  "Well, don't you be hiding behind things and looking like you might explode, Miss Reginia," Pony said, weak with relief. "Lord, you had me going for a minute, thought that crazy man had planted a pipe bomb in the garden and we was all gonna burn up."

  "It's time for me to go," Andy said.

  "Pick me up first thing in the morning so we can start working this case," Regina said. Even when she wasn't feeling well, she had a manner of making suggestions as if she were ordering an air strike. "I'll be waiting for you early."

  "Not possible," Andy replied. "I need to go to the morgue first thing to check on what the medical examiner finds in the case of the man who was killed at the river. You certainly don't want to see something like that. It's very unpleasant."

  "Of course I want to see it," Regina said with inappropriate enthusiasm.

  "It's very, very unpleasant and upsetting." Andy tried to dissuade her. "You ever smelled a dead animal that has flies all over it? Well, it's much worse than that, and the stench has a way of clinging deep up in your sinuses so that every time you get around food, the smell wakes up and makes you quite nauseous. Not to mention the sights and sounds in the morgue."

  "I'm going!" Regina would not take no for an answer.

  Andy's mood was very dark as he drove through downtown. He was beginning to wish he had never met the Crimms at the steak house the night before. There was no one he would have avoided more arduously than Regina, and now it appeared that he was going to have to be around her constantly. Not to mention, the governor was contemplating that Trooper Truth might be Trader's poisonous accomplice, on top of some psycho's carving Trooper Truth into a dead body and then leaving evidence at Andy's house.

  "I've gotten myself into quite a situation," he said over the car phone to Judy Hammer.

  "Andy, do you have any idea what time it is?" said Hammer, who had been sound asleep when her phone had startled her back into this world. "You sound very discouraged. What happened?"

  Once again, Andy happened to be close to Hammer's Church Hill neighborhood, and she suggested that he drop by at the precise moment Fonny Boy decided to drop by the clinic and check on Dr. Sherman Faux, who was shivering blindly in the folding chair.

  "Lord, I ask you for a miracle. Not a big one. Just one tiny miracle," Dr. Faux was praying. "Maybe a spare angel could drop by and get me out of here. I promise I'll move quickly and not take unnecessary time, because I know there are so many people and animals who need Your help far more than I do. But I can't do anybody any good as long as I'm tied up here on this island. And I'm stiff and getting sore in this metal chair. So just one angel, that's all I ask. For maybe an hour or two-however long it takes to get me back to the mainland."

  Fonny Boy listened attentively without being detected, because he had known since birth not to make sudden movements that might alert fish and crabs that they were about to be caught. Crabs especially were very wily and had excellent vision. If one didn't keep the wire pot perfectly clean, then the crab wouldn't be able to see all the way through it and would get suspicious as to why a piece of rotten fish was inside a box-shaped tangle of eel grass. Fonny Boy kept the family crab pots impeccably clean and could be as silent as a butterfly when necessary.

  He would make the dentist think that God was intervening and answering his prayer, when the truth was, Fonny Boy wanted to take Dr. Faux up on his offer of employment on the mainland. Fonny Boy got up and made not a sound as he left the storeroom, then turned around and walked back inside and shut the door so the dentist could hear him enter.

  "Who's there?" Dr. Faux said with hope. "That you, Fonny Boy?"

  "Yass."

  "Oh, thank God. I'm cold and need to go home, Fonny Boy. How's your tooth? The lidocaine wear off?"

  "Yass."

  "What about the cotton you swallowed? Any problems with that?"

  "Yea!" he talked backward, meaning he'd had no problem yet. "I'll carry you ashore," he added. "There's neither time to get the spyglass and searchlight offer my daddy, and it's right airish out, and you don't have a coat. But we need to scud along now afore all the bateaus head out to fish-up the pots!"

  "I don't care about a coat, and we can certainly make do without binoculars or a flashlight!" the dentist exclaimed with joy.

  He had tears in his eyes, although Fonny Boy could not see them because of the brackish-smelling bandanna that was still tied around the dentist's head. All these years the dentist had been reimbursed for working or pretending to work on that boy's mouth, and never once had it occurred to Dr. Faux that Fonny Boy was an angel.

  "God bless you, son," Dr. Faux whispered as they silently made their way out of the clinic.

  "Shhhh," Fonny Boy warned him. "Keep quite."

  The island's streets were deserted and dark, and there wasn't a light on in a single house as every Islander slept soundly and golf carts recharged. But Fonny Boy knew that soon enough it would be 3:00 A.M. and the watermen would be heading out to their bateaus, so he and the dentist had best hurry along. If Fonny Boy got caught rescuing Dr. Faux, there would be trouble. For sure, Fonny Boy's mother would march him straightaway to Swain Memorial United Methodist Church, and she would rat on him to Reverend Crockett. Fonny Boy had been in trouble with Reverend Crockett before, and was sick and tired of memorizing Scripture to pay for his sins.

  The family bateau was docked only several blocks from the church, and with every step, the silhouette of the church steeple seemed to watch Fonny Boy and follow him. The people of Tangier were God-fearing, and disobedience to one's parents was not tolerated. Although Fonny Boy might be an angel to Dr. Faux, Fonny Boy was openly disobeying his father and mother by sneaking out of the house and letting the dentist go. Furthermore, when Fonny Boy's father arrived to putter out to the crab pots, he would have no means of doing so and would be extremely out of sorts because of his missing bateau.

  As Fonny Boy and the dentist descended rickety wooden steps leading down to the bateaus, Fonny Boy worried aloud and nonstop. He was having second thoughts and was terrified to go down that last step, which would surely lead to an entirely new, scary world. The dentist tried to comfort Fonny Boy by telling him that he was feeling the same way the men and boys had felt
in December, 1606 as they'd filed down the Black-wall stairs on the Isle of Dogs and boarded the ships. Little Richard Mutton of St. Bride, London, was only fourteen, the same age as Fonny Boy, and no doubt froze on the bottom step, too.

  "His family, was they with him?" Fonny Boy whispered.

  "Little Richard was the only Mutton on the list of settlers, at least that we know of."

  "Then what for did he do it?" Fonny Boy whispered as he imagined Richard Mutton all alone and shivering in the dark as he stared out at three tiny ships that were going to sail all the way across the Atlantic Ocean to an unknown, dangerous world.

  "Gold," Dr. Faux replied. "The little Mutton boy, like most of our country's first settlers, felt sure they would find gold or at least silver, just like the Spanish were in the West Indies. And of course, they would be assigned great parcels of land so they could begin farming."

  "Who learned you all this?" Fonny Boy asked in awe.

  "Some of it was in Trooper Truth the morning before you kidnapped me. And I've always loved Virginia history."

  Lights were beginning to fill windows in the small houses across the island, and Fonny Boy jumped into his father's bateau and began to imagine gold and treasure as they sped through the bay in the pitch dark. It would have been a good idea for him to have checked out how much gas was onboard and perhaps brought along an auxiliary tank or two for the hour-and-a-half voyage. As it was, they were five miles west of Tangier and inside restricted area R 6609 when the outboard motor began to hiccup and sputter just before it quit.

  "Oh, no," Dr. Faux said as he began to fear that God hadn't answered his prayer after all, but had merely thrown him into worse trouble to punish him for his fraudulent life. "What do we do now, Fonny Boy?"

  Every waterman kept a flare gun in his bateau, but Fonny Boy couldn't possibly resort to that because he could not be rescued by his own people and then face the unthinkable punishment that would await him for running away with the dentist. He was also mindful of the military restricted areas all around the island and wasn't sure it was a good idea to shoot something up into the air. What if the military shot back?

  "You think the current will eventually drift us to Reedville?" Dr. Faux asked as frigid air began to work its way through his inadequate clothing.

  "Nah," Fonny Boy replied.

  He began digging around in the various compartments in the bateau, moving aside rope, a rusty pocket knife, several bottles of water, and mosquito repellent, which the dentist used liberally, even though it was too cold for insects to be on the prowl. The compartment under the pilot's seat was secured with a padlock, and Fonny Boy tried to conjure up the combination. Anything of true value, including the flare gun, would be inside that compartment, and although he wasn't certain, he was hopeful that his father might have left the handheld radio in there instead of taking it home.

  Twenty

  Cruz Morales evaded state troopers by cutting through a series of alleyways and parked by a Dumpster behind Freckles, just off Patterson Avenue. He sat in the dark, breathing hard, listening, his eyes nervously jumping everywhere. Country music and the murmur of voices sounded from inside Freckles, which Cruz took to be a small local bar. Suddenly he wanted a beer more than anything else. His nerves were fried, and he was as scared as he had ever been in his life. He was certain all those huge helicopters flying low with searchlights probing were in pursuit of him. He had no idea what he had done to cause such a manhunt, unless it was that package in the tire well. But how did the authorities know about it? When those white dudes at the automotive shop had taken him in back and given him the package in exchange for another package, Cruz knew he was participating in an event that might get him into trouble, but the dudes certainly wouldn't have snitched on him. What would be the point? And no one saw the transaction, and as best he could recall, it seemed the helicopters were already out before he even pulled into the automotive shop parking lot. So were the authorities looking for him before he did anything? How could that be?

  He climbed out of his car, opened the trunk, and retrieved the package from the tire well, which really wasn't much of a hiding spot since there was neither a spare tire nor carpet, and the first place a cop would check for illegal items was under the very conspicuous tire-well door. Cruz was about to heave the package into the Dumpster when the back door of the bar swung open, spilling light and loud voices into the dirt alleyway.

  Major Trader was drunk and feeling macho and decided to pee outside, even though Freckles had perfectly adequate restrooms. But relieving himself in the great outdoors returned him to his roots, and pirates and watermen were quite skilled at adapting to inconvenience. Bateaus, for example, did not have heads, and when Trader was coming along, his family had had an outhouse, which he rarely used, unless he had more serious business than peeing to manage. Trader staggered a bit as he struggled with his fly, and stubborn zipper teeth bit into the cloth of his ill-fitting pants and held on for dear life.

  "Shit!" Trader swore like a pirate, yanking hard. "Damnation seize my soul!"

  The harder he tugged, the deeper the zipper sunk in its teeth. Now he was in a bind, all right, because the zipper was stuck exactly midway, and the more he fought with the zipper, the more his bladder wanted to surrender. He clamped a hand between his legs while he danced and stumbled about, cursing the zipper and trying to rip its metal teeth apart.

  Cruz lurked in deep shadows behind the Dumpster, peering out and watching all this in amazement. He had never seen such a display, and what the hell was the language flying out of that fat man's mouth, and why was he hopping on one foot and then the other and holding his privates? In the incomplete light it seemed he was yanking himself up by the crotch, as if trying to break free of gravity and take flight. Now he was panting and cursing like a pirate, and his hopping and jumping were getting more vigorous, and propelling him around the Dumpster in Cruz's direction.

  Cruz set the package on the ground and stepped around to the front of the Dumpster just as the wild man hopped around to the back of it. Then Cruz made a run for it. He jumped into his car, cranked the engine, and sped off as Trader grabbed himself and hopped, his urgency becoming unbearable. The zipper had gone from being stubborn to having lockjaw. Those metal teeth weren't going to let go and were clamped with such violence that the zipper felt hot to the touch.

  Trader yanked on the zipper and moaned in excruciating discomfort, feeling as if someone had attached a bicycle pump to his bladder and was seeing how many pounds of pressure could be squeezed in before it blew up and went flat with relief and shame. Pirates did not pee on themselves, not even as infants. It was one thing to pee on property and others, but you did not soil yourself, not even if you were in the middle of raiding a ship or torching a crab plantation. Trader was out of breath and exhausted from hopping when he happened to notice a package on the ground and sat on it with his legs tightly crossed.

  "Goddamn it," he muttered repeatedly as the back door of Freckles opened, casting Trader in a stripe of light and making him squint.

  Hooter Shook had just ended her shift at the toll-booth and had dropped by Freckles for a little male company and refreshment. She had been having such a good time with that big Trooper Macovich that her head had begun to spin, and then, unfortunately, they had gotten into a disagreement.

  "Don't believe in getting married," Macovich told her as he threw back his fourth beer." 'Cause I don't want no bunch of kids jumping on me the minute I walk in the door and then all my money going out the window. I been saving for a Corvette."

  "Whaaaat?" Hooter was a bit looped herself, and beer and her basic disposition weren't a good mix. "You just like all the rest," she accused him as she clacked her amazingly long acrylic nails on the Formica tabletop. "Uh huh. I work my ass off and come home to you and you just be out there polishing that 'Vette a yours while the babies are in the house squalling with dirty diapers and nothing to eat. Then you expect sex from me while you drinking beer and you don't even a
sk me about my day!"

  "Wooo! You skipping to the end of the movie, babe. We ain't even held hands yet and already we's married with babies. Why don't we just drink beer and chill, you know?"

  She clacked her nails so loudly and erratically that they sounded like ice skates in a hockey game.

  "I never did understand why you women got to have these nails three inches long," he confessed. "How you even pick up a penny or a postage stamp?"

  "I don't pick up no pennies without gloves," she said indignantly. "You know how I feel about dirt and things unsanitarian!"

  This worried him considerably. If she felt that way about money, what kind of exchanges could he ever hope to have with her? For all he knew, she wore a biological hazard suit to bed and those nails of hers could cause him damage in tender places. Woooo, he thought. What if she dug them nails into his horsie? Why did she wear a perfume called Poison, too? He ought to know better than to pick up somebody at the tollbooth. Last time he picked up a woman he knew nothing about, the situation had been similar. Letitia Sweet worked in the Shell Quik Mart not far from headquarters, and Macovich was minding his own business one afternoon when he popped in for a coffee and popcorn. Letitia was built like an old Cadillac and probably had just as many miles and layers of paint, but Macovich was in a mood because of that pool shark Crimm girl.

  "What you got on?" he asked Letitia when he stepped up to the counter and impressed her by pulling out a twenty-dollar bill.

  "What you mean, what I got on?" She gave him a smirk as she bent over the cash drawer in a way that exposed her bulletlike headlights.

  He had to give her credit: That woman was a handful no matter which way he grabbed her, even though their first date was their last.

  "Who you think you are?" Letitia yelled at him in the car. "What you think you're doing grabbing at me like that? You think I ain't got no nerves beneath all that flesh? How you like it if I grabbed and twist you like a rag I'm wringing out when I clean up the nacho bin at the end of the day?"