Skinny Dip

by Carl Hiaasen

Tool sat on his haunches, elbows propped on his knees.

  “Well, hurry it up, then,” Red said crossly. “Pull the damn thing outta the ground and let’s go. I need a drink and a steam.”

  Tool didn’t budge. Red glowered at him.

  “What the fuck, son?”

  “I just been workin’ the ’rithmetic in my head. This old boy was ’bout the same age as me,” Tool said, “give or take.”

  “The beaner?”

  “Mr. Doo-arty here. However you say it.”

  “Mercy.” Red thinking: Lord, please don’t let this moron go soft on me.

  Tool gestured at the wooden cross. “Least he was a ‘husband, father, son, brother’—I ain’t none a those things, Red. I got no wife and no family . . . one lousy cousin, he’s up at Starke for robbin’ a goddamn laundry-mat.”

  That was the end of Red Hammernut’s patience. In his judgment there was no good reason for a man of his stature to be standing on the side of State Road 441 on a Saturday night while some hairy half-wit with a bullet up his butt cheeks suddenly gets a middle-life crisis, all because some dead Meskin forgot to buckle his damn seat belt.

  Without a thought, Red slapped Earl Edward O’Toole across the top of the head. It was a poor decision, conveying what Tool regarded as an intolerable lack of respect.

  “Listen here, you doped-up dickhead of a gorilla,” Red said. “There’s half a million bucks of my money sittin’ like a big hot buzzard turd in the back of that pickup, out in the wide-open spaces, where any damn crackhead in basketball shoes can rip it off and be gone in five seconds. Now, I don’t honestly know what’s got into you, son, but I’m gonna count to ten and you’re gonna yank that stupid fuckin’ cross outta the ground and we’re gonna get the hell outta Dodge. You understand me?”

  Tool didn’t move, even to wipe Red’s spittle off his overalls.

  “One . . .” Red huffed, “two . . . three . . . four . . .”

  He had no earthly notion of what to do if the sulking fool refused to obey. Slap him again?

  To Red’s immeasurable relief, Tool rose slowly and said, “You the boss.”

  He placed his huge hands around the shaft of the white cross and worked it slowly out of the dirt, so as not to split the pine.

  Red said, “It’s about damn time. Now hurry up, let’s go.”

  “Not you, chief.”

  “What?” It was amazing, Red mused, how all the nuts and bolts of one’s existence could rattle loose with one bump. “What did you say?” he demanded again, somewhat heedlessly.

  Earl Edward O’Toole positioned himself between Red and the truck, his broad frame blocking the headlights. Red felt small and, for the first time, fearful. He was chilled by the sound of Tool’s breathing, slow and easy compared to his own.

  With a desolate curiosity Red peered upward at the towering shadow. “What now, you dumb ape?”

  “Hold still,” Tool advised.

  Samuel Johnson Hammernut could see the huge man raise both arms high, and for a moment he could see the cross of Pablo Duarte silhouetted against the pearly clouds, and after that he couldn’t see anything at all.

  The murder of the Everglades, as perpetrated by Red Hammernut and others, is insidiously subtle and undramatic. Unlike more telegenic forms of pollution, the fertilizers pouring by the ton from the sugarcane fields and vegetable farms of southern Florida do not produce stinking tides of dead fish or gruesome panoramas of rotting animal corpses. Instead, the phosphates and other agricultural contaminants work invisibly to destroy a mat of algae known as periphyton, the slimy brown muck that underlies the river of grass and is its most essential nutrient. As the periphyton begins to die, the small fish that feed and nest there move away. Next to go are the egrets and herons, the bluegills and largemouth bass, and so on up the food chain. Soon the saw grass prairies wither and starve, replaced by waves of cattails and other aquatic plants that thrive on the torrent of phosphorus, yet provide miserable habitat for native birds and wildlife.

  A primary objective of the government’s Everglades restoration project was to reduce the steady deluge of man-made fertilizers. Grudging cooperation came from sugar barons and corporate farmers who could no longer rely on favored politicians to keep the EPA and other regulators off their backs. And while filtration marshes designed to strain out some of the pollutants had shown early promise, the Everglades was still dying at the rate of two acres per day when Charles Regis Perrone made his lonely, woeful trek through Loxahatchee.

  He cursed the pungent mire that sucked the socks off his feet, the whips of saw grass that shredded his undershirt and boxers, the clots of lilies and leafy bladderwort that impeded his flight. The sprouts of newly blossomed cattails announced the presence of fertilizer in the water, but that wasn’t the source of Chaz’s trepidation. He knew that phosphorus was not toxic in the nasty bacterial style of, say, fecal sewage. He also understood that the lower levels recorded at Loxahatchee were more hospitable to native life than the felonious amounts found in the waters contiguous to Red Hammernut’s fields.

  Still, Chaz Perrone crossed the breeze-swept marsh with a puckering fear that he was being stalked—by Red and his shotgun-toting goon; by voracious disease-bearing insects; by needle-fanged cottonmouth moccasins, blood-slurping leeches and deer ticks; by hydrophobic bobcats and inbred panthers; by the gators whose husky mating calls fractured the brittle silence. . . .

  Chaz saw no irony in his own plight, having always regarded himself as more of a bystander than a villain in the poisoning of the wilderness. Blaming the demise of the Everglades on science whores such as himself seemed as silly to Chaz as blaming lung cancer on the medical doctors employed by tobacco companies, who for generations had insisted that cigarettes were harmless. The truth was that people were determined to smoke, regardless of what any pinhead researchers had to say. Likewise, cities and farms were bound to dispose of their liquefied crap in the cheapest, most efficient way—flushing it into public waters—regardless of the environmental hazards.

  You can’t buck human nature, Chaz had reasoned, so you might as well go with the flow, so to speak.

  After taking the job as Red Hammernut’s undercover biostitute, he had familiarized himself with Everglades ecology only enough to converse with colleagues and not reveal himself as an ignorant fraud. From his crash course he recalled that the ripe muck through which he now trudged was important in some nebulous way to the ecology, and that the other scientists jokingly referred to it as “monkey puke”—a description for which Chaz held newfound appreciation.

  He abhorred getting wet even in benign settings, refusing even to tiptoe into country-club shallows to retrieve an errant golf ball. The idea of slogging buck naked and unarmed through a dark bog was so mortifying to Chaz that he couldn’t dwell on it without risking a breakdown. The sky had begun to clear, and enough starlight was being cast upon the water that he could finally make shapes out of shadows. He was especially attentive to those that even vaguely resembled alligators, whose abundance was being confirmed by full-throated rumbles near and far. Chaz remembered from basic herpetology that such territorial outbursts were sexual in origin, and he wondered whether he was in greater danger of being devoured, or defiled. He was aware that most snakes had two operative penises—a topic of high mirth in undergraduate biology—but he could not recall if crocodilians were similarly endowed. It wasn’t long before his recurring nightmare of being eaten by a two-headed gator had been supplanted by a vision even more harrowing.

  In the distance loomed a tree island, an oasis of higher ground in the midst of the watery savanna. Chaz splashed ahead at a savage pace, adrenalized with dread at the prospect of being double-boned by a randy five-hundred-pound lizard. The saw grass sliced him mercilessly as he advanced, but he remained driven and unbowed. It was only when he reached the bushy hump of dry land and sagged against a bay tree that Chaz paused to contemplate the full measure of his misery.

  His muscles were cramping from fatigue
and dehydration.

  His back stung hotly from a freckling of buckshot.

  His arms and torso were striped bloody from the grass blades.

  His face was covered by a humming shroud of mosquitoes.

  His crotch and thighs itched mysteriously.

  And that was only the physical torment. Emotional pain assailed Chaz Perrone, as well.

  The $13 million inheritance he’d dreamed of receiving had turned out to be a sadistic hoax.

  The wife he had tried to kill was still alive, and on her way to the police.

  The girlfriend he’d shot with similar intent had survived, and set him up for an abduction.

  The man with whom he’d so profitably conspired had turned on him, and ordered him put down like a lame horse.

  And now Chaz found himself filthy wet and abjectly naked, lost and defenseless in a place that he loathed more than any other.

  Do I deserve this? he wondered. Really?

  He ran a forefinger along one of his shins, skimming off the muck like chocolate icing. Holding it to his nose, he detected no noxious or rancid odor. Even if this gunk is loaded with fertilizers, so what? Chaz thought. It’s just mud, for God’s sake. It’s not like I was clubbing baby harp seals.

  A sliver of moon spread a pale bluish light across the savanna. Something rustled heavily, out of sight. Chaz Perrone drew his knees to his chest and silently groped for a rock. Another alligator boomed from a nearby pond.

  Who . . . do . . . you love?

  Yeah, who . . . do . . . you love?

  Thirty-two

  Maureen smiled fondly when she saw Tool hobble out of the barn. He opened the door of the truck and arranged himself behind the steering wheel.

  “Well?” She held out one hand.

  He dropped two misshapen kernels of lead into her palm. “The rusty one is what come outta you-know-where,” he said. “The shiny one’s from under my arm.”

  After examining the slugs, Maureen said, “I’m proud of you, Earl. That must’ve stung like the dickens.”

  He said the pain wasn’t so bad. “Guy’s a real pro.”

  “His specialty being . . . cattle?”

  “Livestock in general.” Tool had explained to Maureen that a medical doctor would be required by law to notify authorities if a patient turned up with a gunshot wound. A veterinarian had no such obligation.

  “The important thing is, you’re finally free of the burden,” Maureen told him. “No more needless suffering.”

  “Yeah. Now it’s your turn.”

  “I’m doing all right, Earl.”

  “Tell the truth,” he said.

  “The truth is, I’m absolutely elated to be outdoors in the fresh air.”

  “Wait’ll we get clear of this pasture.”

  “No, it’s all glorious,” said Maureen, “even the cow poop. Thank you, Earl.”

  “For what?”

  “My freedom. Being my Sir Galahad. Rescuing me from Elysian Manor!”

  She tugged him closer and bussed his cheek.

  “That’s enough a that.” Tool felt himself redden.

  Nobody had uttered a word of objection when he carried Maureen out of the convalescent home. Nobody had dared to get in his way.

  She’d already been awake for hours, sitting upright in bed, waiting with her handbag on her lap.

  Pulled the intravenous tube from her arm and got herself to the bathroom. Ditched the hospital gown in favor of a light cotton shift, periwinkle blue. Fixed her hair, put on some lipstick, brushed a little color into her face. Dashed off a note to each of her daughters, telling them not to worry.

  At breakfast time the nurse from hell had stalked in, eyeing Maureen as if she were a nutcase; humoring her, telling her how cute and pretty she looked, fluffing her pillows, all the time trying to con her into lying still so they could jab her with another needle.

  But Maureen had resisted fiercely, forcing the nurse to call for backup. Eventually two lumpish, pimply orderlies had shown up; the lumpier of the two seizing Maureen’s arms while the other attempted to pin her legs—the nurse hovering with a gangrenous smirk; uncapping a loaded syringe and lining up her shot.

  That’s when Tool had appeared, shiny with sweat, a mammoth miasmal presence blocking the doorway. His work boots were crusty and the overalls hung crookedly off his shoulders, exposing a crude mummy wrap of soiled tape. His arms and neck were damply matted, jet-black curls that at a distance could have been mistaken for an ornate body tattoo.

  “Git away from her,” he’d said without a flicker of emotion.

  Instantly the orderlies had released Maureen and stepped away. “It’s all right, Polly,” she’d told the quaking nurse. “He’s my nephew, from the Netherlands. The one I told you about.”

  Tool had stomped in and gathered Maureen from the bed, carrying her out of the room, down the hall, past the front desk, through the double doors and into the circular driveway, where he had parked the apple-red F-150 supercab pickup, purchased the day before with $33,641 cash.

  Leaving, by Tool’s arduous calculation, more than $465,000 in the Samsonite.

  With plenty of room for the thirty-one fentanyl patches he had burglarized from a discount pharmacy in Boynton Beach—the medicine meant for Maureen, not for himself.

  “It’s a beauty!” she’d exclaimed upon seeing the new truck. “But I may need a stepladder.”

  “Naw,” Tool had said, and lifted her royally into the passenger seat.

  The pickup had leather-trimmed captain’s chairs, loads of legroom, a crackerjack air conditioning system and a cargo bed deep enough to accommodate Tool’s entire crop of highway crosses, which he had carefully uprooted one at a time from behind his trailer. The task had taken most of the night.

  Appalled by the ratty condition of his bandages, Maureen had insisted that Tool seek out a doctor. For miles she’d begged, until he reluctantly had pulled off the turnpike near Kissimmee and made his way to the cattle ranch on the river. His veterinarian pal had agreed, at Maureen’s urging, to extract both of the bullets.

  “Soon you’ll feel like a new man,” Maureen proclaimed, dropping the slugs into her handbag. “Did he give you something for pain?”

  “Whatever they use on bulls,” Tool said. Truth was, he felt pretty darn fine. “So, where you wanna go?”

  “Earl, may I ask a personal question?”

  “Sure.” They were bouncing along a narrow dirt track, heading off the ranch. Tool turned down the radio, some sappy song about loneliness and heartbreak on the road.

  “Now, it’s none of my business,” Maureen said, “but I’m curious how you can afford a chariot like this on a bodyguard’s income.”

  Tool thought about his answer while he took a long draw of lukewarm Mountain Dew. “Well, you gotta unnerstand,” he said, “some cases pay better’n others.”

  “This turned out to be a good one, then?”

  “I’d have to say yeah, all things considered,” he said. “So, now it’s my turn for askin’ a question, ’kay?”

  “Fair enough.”

  “What’s your all-time fantasy vacation?”

  “You mean, if we could go anywhere in the world?”

  “That’s what I’m tryin’ to tell you,” Tool said. “We can go anywheres. You just name the place.”

  Maureen gazed out the window. Her hair seemed thinner and grayer in the direct sunlight, though her eyes were as blue and bright as the sea. Tool could easily picture her as a young woman, not from her features so much as from her open, untroubled expression.

  She said, “It’s still springtime, isn’t it?”

  “April, yes, ma’am. Goin’ on May.”

  “I was thinking of those pelicans. They’ll be heading north, I suppose.”

  “All the way to Canada is what it said on that TV show.”

  “Yes, to Canada. I remember,” Maureen said. “Isn’t that just remarkable?”

  “Must be one helluva thing, thousands a huge white birds c
omin’ down from the sky all together. Flyin’ home,” Tool said. “I’d sure like to see that operation.”

  “Me, too, Earl.”

  “It’s a mighty long haul. Sure you’re up for it?”

  She leaned across and boxed him on the ear. “Don’t worry about me, buster. You just drive.”

  “Yes, ma’am.” Tool was beaming as he reached for the radio. “How ’bout some music?”

  Karl Rolvaag had a dream that he was being strangled very slowly with a pale silken noose. He woke up clutching at his throat and discovered it snugly enwrapped by a sinewy albino tail. After a few interesting moments the detective managed to extricate himself and turn on the lamp. He trailed the departing length of python across the sheets, beneath the bed and into a ragged hole in the box spring. When Rolvaag cut the ticking away, he found not one but both of his absent companions, balled together in platonic contentment. Upon inspection neither of them manifested any doggy- or kitty-size lumps. To the contrary, the snakes appeared taut and hungry.

  Rolvaag was relieved, though not entirely surprised, as the pets missing from Sawgrass Grove had earlier turned up unharmed. Pinchot, the geriatric Pomeranian, had been located at the county pound, where it had been quarantined after nipping a slow-footed Jehovah’s Witness. Pandora, the lost Siamese, had been ransomed back to the Mankiewicz family by neighborhood hooligans in exchange for a case of malt liquor.

  The detective felt vindicated, but one piece of unfinished business remained. He removed the muscular animals from their box-spring hideaway and draped them carefully over his shoulders; a colorful, though hefty, adornment. He crossed the hallway to Mrs. Shulman’s apartment and knocked three times. It was a blessing that she was too short for her security peephole, for otherwise she never would have opened the door.

  “Nellie, you owe us an apology,” Rolvaag said.

  Mrs. Shulman shrank away in revulsion. “You degenerate monster! Get away from me with those slimy things!”

  “Not until you say you’re sorry.”

  “The only thing I’m sorry about is not getting you into court, you twisted freak. Now go!”