by Carl Hiaasen
A lead pipe or a marlin gaff would have been helpful, but he settled for a hefty pine bough that he found where he ditched the bicycle, a quarter mile from the house. Under low purple clouds he walked the rest of the way. The property was lit up like a used-car lot; Yancy heard the rumble of a gasoline-powered generator, a luxury in the out-islands. It meant that one could spend the duration of a major hurricane in air-conditioned comfort listening to Puccini or Van Halen, as long as the walls didn’t blow down.
Yancy scouted swiftly, his footfalls muted by the noise from the shuddering trees. Egg wasn’t lurking out front; the backyard looked clear, too. Eve Stripling could be seen alone on the porch, untangling some wind chimes. Yancy snuck along the perimeter of the house peering in windows; no sign of Rosa, no sign of anyone. He felt a hot coal in his gut.
Then Eve’s mutt started barking madly, and he thought: Oh, what the hell.
He opened the front door and walked inside.
Standing in the foyer clutching a broken tree branch, expecting the absurd little canine to come lunging for his ankles, a creature that would have drowned or gotten gobbled by sharks if he hadn’t rescued it …
This is what I get for one minor act of decency.
The yapping stopped.
Yancy took a couple of steps. Paused to listen.
Peeked around a hallway corner—nothing.
A voice said, “Up here, asshole.”
Yancy climbed the stairs and there the man sat on a slick burgundy Super Rollie scooter, Yancy’s 12-gauge Beretta angled across his lap. Hanging from a brass hat rack in a corner, next to a full-sized print of the famous Audubon spoonbill, was a dirty blaze-orange poncho and a couple of camo sun masks. Outside, a broken shutter banged and banged.
“Where’s Rosa?” Yancy said.
“Sit down.” He motioned toward a straight-backed chair.
“Where is she?”
“I’ve got a shotgun and you’ve got what—a piece of fuckin’ firewood?”
“Nick, I asked you a question.”
“Eve said you’d figure it out right away. I said you’re not that bright.”
“And I say you’re bright enough not to shoot a cop.” With his free hand Yancy took out the police badge on loan from Johnny Mendez. “See? I’m back on the force.”
“First place,” Nicholas Stripling said, “there’s no law says a man can’t cut off his own arm.”
“Maybe not.”
“I know for a goddamn fact.”
“There’s a law against murder,” Yancy said. “You killed Charlie Phinney and Dr. O’Peele, and you tried to kill me.”
“Ha, try to prove any of that shit.”
“I will. In the meantime let’s start with the Medicare rip-off,” Yancy said. “Hey, guess what happens when the feds find out you’re still alive.”
“Who’s gonna tell ’em? Not you, because you’ll be disappeared.”
Stripling wore a vented tan fishing shirt that was missing the left sleeve. The opening had been sewn shut to cover his empty shoulder socket. One of his ears was bandaged where it had been snagged by a bonefish fly, although Stripling obviously didn’t know that the angler who’d wounded him was Yancy.
The air in the den was rank with cologne that smelled like apricots and linoleum wax.
“I remember the Herald didn’t run a photo with your obituary,” Yancy said.
“That’s because we didn’t give ’em one.”
“Good call. They see the paper in Nassau, you’re toast.”
“Sit down like I told you.”
“I guess I could’ve pulled up your mug shot,” Yancy said, “but that was taken, like, twenty years ago.”
“The picture on my driver’s license was new. How come you didn’t think of checkin’ that in your God-almighty computer?”
“It didn’t matter to me what you looked like because I thought you were dead. I was busy trying to catch your killer.”
Stripling smiled crookedly. “That’s pretty fuckin’ funny, I gotta admit.”
“Does your daughter know you’re alive?”
“Don’t worry about Caitlin. I’m gonna tell her when I’m ready.”
“Make it in time for the holidays,” Yancy said, “so she can order a big enough turkey.”
“Is that a joke? Are you seriously standing here doing jokes?”
“For what it’s worth, I took extremely good care of your arm. I kept it in the freezer of my refrigerator with the vodka and Popsicles. Didn’t Eve tell you?”
“Thanks for nothing.” Stripling’s hand moved toward the trigger of the shotgun. Gleaming on his hairy wrist was a garish rose-gold Tourbillon.
“Nick, I’ve been very patient. Now, where’s Rosa?”
Something beeped on the console of the Super Rollie. The padded footrest began to ascend, and with it rose the blue-black barrels of the Beretta, braced between Stripling’s knees and pointed at Yancy’s chest.
“You’re right about one thing. Which, I’m not dumb enough to murder a cop.” Stripling said. “But I got no problem killing a goddamn roach inspector.”
Twenty-one
The decision to have his own arm amputated, a perfectly healthy arm—well, first you needed jumbo-sized cojones. Nobody facing a Medicare rap had ever tried it before, Nicholas Stripling was certain. Faking one’s own death, sure, that happened all the time. The fuckwits usually got caught, too, whoring around Mexico or Costa Rica. Thinking they could just go missing without a trace on a whitewater raft or a solo desert hike, and the feds would say oh well and forget about them.
Which, how stupid can you be? The only way to foolproof the scam was to disappear with a trace. Give the bastards something to bag up and truck to the morgue, actual human remains. So when they do the DNA, when they stare at your mauled rotting stump, there’s no doubt in their minds that this poor fucker is dead as a doornail.
Because who’d be crazy enough to cut off his own arm?
Eve had begged her husband not to do it, but he had no intention of going to prison, not even a country-club joint. The feds in Miami were going hard-ass on fraud cases, and three guys Nick knew were doing heavy time, meaning double digits. One of them was an old Cuban gentleman who’d billed Uncle Sam for eighty-two hundred physical therapy sessions that he’d never performed. Stage 3 lung cancer and still they wouldn’t let him out early! Nick Stripling told his wife that he couldn’t do the flu in lockup, and that jail was not a goddamn option.
During the red-hot years of Midwest Mobile, he’d socked away eleven-plus million dollars—and don’t forget this was South Florida, the Medicare-fraud capital of America, where the most experienced dirtballs came to gorge. Stripling had found himself competing against the slickest and slimiest—former mortgage brokers, identity thieves, arms dealers, insider traders and dope smugglers, all who’d switched to home-care durables because stealing directly from the government was so much easier, and the risk so small. Lots of Medicare scammers got richer than Nick Stripling, but still he’d raked in some sweet bank from all those fake orders for Super Rollies (also walkers, electric hospital beds, blood-pressure cuffs, bariatric commodes, wander alarms and sitz baths).
If he got caught the feds would demand full restitution, which wasn’t going to happen in this particular universe. Stripling had made sure his ill-gotten loot was on the wing, moving it from Barbados to Luxembourg to Geneva, then finally back to a Nassau bank account belonging to one Christopher Grunion. The name had been invented by Stripling to enable an unscrutinized investment of his swindled fortune in some prime oceanfront on Lizard Cay. Eve was skeptical until he showed her an article from the Nassau Guardian predicting a flash turnaround of the luxury real estate market, wealthy Asians having discovered the sun-drenched charms of Bahamian life. Which, the Chinese and so forth? Nick was still waiting for the big stampede to Andros, trying to remain patient and optimistic.
The hardest part of his plan, what scared him the most, was letting a twitchy, shot-out
pillhead like O’Peele perform the operation. Again, not much choice—no legit surgeon would have agreed to the job. Man walks in says please cut off my left arm. Doctor says what’s wrong with it—gangrene? Melanoma? And the guy says nothing’s wrong with it, I just don’t need it anymore, could you please saw it off?
O’Peele said okay because Stripling was his boss and also because he needed the money. Percocets aren’t cheap when you gobble ’em like Cracker Jacks. And by then Midwest Mobile was going down. Some of the geezers whose ID numbers had been stolen got around to reading their benefit statements, and they started calling Medicare saying they’d never ordered a Rollie scooter chair but they’d sure like to try one. As soon as the FBI began sniffing around, Stripling closed the office and promised new positions in future health-care enterprises to all his loyal staff, including Gomez O’Peele.
Who was grateful for the opportunity to pocket an extra five grand, which is what Stripling offered him to cut off Stripling’s left arm and then beat on the bone stump with a hatchet to make it look like a boat propeller caused the wound.
The operation was performed at the couple’s vacation town house in the Keys, Eve acting as nurse, her husband blitzed on pills and hooked to a morphine drip. The surgical saw and other implements were brand-new—Stripling had made sure of that. Before they got started he had O’Peele pee in a cup, one of those drugstore kits, to prove the doctor was clean for the day. Also: blow into a portable booze tester of the style favored by suburban parents with teenage drivers.
Admirably, the doctor had arrived totally sober, his hands steady, and he came through big-time. Afterward the town house looked like they’d been butchering hogs, but the floors had been covered with Visqueen—Nick’s idea—so that all they had to do was roll up the mess and cram it in a Dumpster.
Eve sobbing behind a hospital mask flecked with her husband’s blood, O’Peele chugging Gatorade pretending it was Ketel One. Stripling lying there thinking, okay, during the Civil War? Medics had to do this shit on open battlefields, hack off arms and legs. These were fucking kids, most of ’em—no anesthesia, no antibiotics. For sutures they’d rip the stitching out of boot soles, for bandages they’d tear up filthy uniforms, maggots crawling in the open wounds.
So I’ll be fine is what Stripling assured himself, not that his raw shoulder socket didn’t hurt like a motherfucker. Holy Christ did it hurt! But he was a new man, a free man.
This was the day after he’d sunk the Summer’s Eve, the fuel tanks topped out, the coolers packed with ice and bait. Just like a real fishing trip. His wife had followed him offshore in a rented SeaCraft, past Sombrero Light, rough as a cob and no other vessels in sight. First he pulled the plugs and then he got her sideways in a trough and gunned her in reverse, the mighty blue Atlantic pouring over the transom and filling the cockpit. Stripling used a 5/0 hook to put a hole in the skin of the life raft (in case anyone wondered why he hadn’t used it). Then Eve motored up in the SeaCraft, he jumped aboard, and together they watched the Summer’s Eve sink: a whorl of bubbles and seat cushions and not much else, owing to the whitecaps.
The next morning Stripling went under the knife of Gomez O’Peele, and by nightfall his severed left arm was staked on a mud flat near Vaca Cut being gnawed by sharks. That’s what happens when a person drowns in the Florida Keys, which is a shark’s version of a Golden Corral—all you can eat, all the time.
Which, the Tourbillon? That’s one reason Stripling didn’t leave it on his severed left wrist after the operation. Why not, Eve had said, just drive a Rolls-Royce off a pier? Besides, you love that watch, she said, which he couldn’t deny. The Tourbillon was a work of art, far as Nick was concerned. He didn’t want it to end up in a hammerhead’s stomach.
Some mistakes along the way, no question.
First: choosing Phinney, the pothead mate from the Misty Momma IV. Eve had gone to the docks and scoped out the crews and personally picked him out. Showed him the arm and said the plan was to punk her cousin, who was chartering the Misty the next morning. Eve said the limb came from a med-school cadaver so no worries, Charlie, everything’s cool. Her cousin’s crazy fraternity brothers, she said, they’re the sickos who dreamed this up. And Phinney fell for the whole story, practically came in his pants when she counted out the three grand.
But then he couldn’t keep his trap shut about the wad, buying rounds all over Key West, and Stripling knew it was only a matter of time before he got stoned and blabbed about the arm, too. So Nick rented a moped and ambushed the guy after he and some hooker walked out of the Half Shell. To make it look like robbery Nick even snatched Phinney’s wallet—seven hundred and two bucks was all the kid had left from the biggest score of his life.
If Stripling had to do that part over again … but, see, it was the best way to make sure the fucking arm got found—arrange for some tourist to reel it in while he’s trolling for tuna, whatever. At first Eve had suggested they put the limb on the shore behind somebody’s house, as if it washed up with the tide. But Nick feared the coons or pouch rats might drag it off, even a stray dog. Remember, the whole plan depended on the thing being recovered and positively identified as belonging to him. Being indisputably dead would get the feds off his case, not to mention bring a sweet payoff on the life insurance.
Stripling had flapped his empty left sleeve and said to Eve: I didn’t go through all this misery just for sport! Like my secret dream was to be an amputee.
So they’d recruited Phinney to do the old sailfish scam, only using Nick’s arm instead of a fish. And everything would have turned out great except Phinney couldn’t keep a secret. Dumbass.
Mistake number two: waiting too long to deal with the Caitlin problem.
Again, Nick’s call. He and his daughter had been on the outs ever since he’d married Eve. Caitlin had a big mouth, too, and don’t forget she’s married to Mr. Simon Cox, ex-military. The man was so straight he’d once turned in his next-door neighbor for watering the lawn on Thursday instead of Tuesday, some lame county law, a fifty-dollar fine.
If Caitlin ever told Simon about Nick’s scheme to vanish, the buzz-cut sonofabitch would be down at the FBI in two minutes flat. So Stripling had chosen to keep his daughter out of the loop, planning to wait until she got bored with Simon and divorced his hopelessly square ass, which was inevitable. Then, when the time was right, Nick would send the seaplane to Miami and surprise Caitlin on her birthday, some sappy move like that.
Meanwhile there had to be a funeral, and—Stripling learns later—that’s where his daughter starts talking to Yancy, the cop who had custody of the arm. Only Caitlin doesn’t know he isn’t a cop anymore, which was all over the Keys newspapers except Caitlin doesn’t read anything besides price tags and horoscopes. Into her greedy little skull has crept the notion that Eve murdered Nick and is trying to screw Caitlin out of her inheritance. This she apparently tells Yancy. Puts him on the trail of Midwest Mobile Medical, which leads him to Gomez O’Peele, which results in the junkie doctor calling Stripling one night demanding more money, this time for keeping quiet.
Some detective came to see me, O’Peele said in a low voice, asking all kindsa questions about the Medicare stuff! I wrote down his name, you don’t believe me.
The surgeon swearing on a stack of Bibles that he didn’t say boo to Yancy about the Super Rollies, or about all those illegal prescriptions and 849s, and especially not about surgically removing that arm to help Stripling stage his own death. But honestly I don’t know how long I can hang tough, the doctor says, you sitting pretty and me with the law knocking on my door. How about another five grand, Nicky? I know you can swing it.
And Stripling tells him okay, sit tight. Then he puts on a latex glove and drives straight to Gomez O’Peele’s condo and gives him the same surprise as Charles Phinney, only this time setting it up like a suicide.
Next move is to address the Caitlin situation as any loving parent would, by offering the scheming bitch some cash up front and half the life
insurance payout. Eve isn’t thrilled about sharing, but they agree it’s the fastest, cheapest way out. And sure enough, Caitlin hops on board, the sorrow over losing her father dissipating like a fart at the prospect of becoming a millionaire.
Which, all her nutty talk about Eve being a murderer? Miraculously forgotten. Caitlin can’t wait to call Yancy and tell him she was wrong about dear Eve, out of her head with grief and so on. My dad died when his boat sunk, end of story, says Caitlin.
Not knowing, to this day, that he’s alive and well. Stripling being in no hurry to inform his one and only offspring, with her track record of indiscretion and Simple Simon on the scene.
Mistake number three—possibly the worst—was Nick trying (make that failing) to kill Andrew Yancy.
Eve had met the guy once, the night she went to fetch the arm. Thought he was flaky but harmless. Later they find out he got demoted from sheriff’s detective to roach patrol, the Key West Citizen reporting it was because he’d attacked his girlfriend’s husband with a vacuum cleaner in front of hundreds of tourists, which didn’t strike Nick as all that harmless. But Eve said trust me, honey, the man is not a threat.
Then he showed up at Dr. O’Peele’s, asking questions, after which Eve said you’re right, he’s gotta go. Stripling planned to thump the sonofabitch and dump him in a canal. Set it up like an accident—the man went fishing off the bank, drank too much, took a fall. Made way more sense than shooting him point-blank, because even an ex-cop? The authorities wouldn’t let that slide.
But that night, when Yancy disappeared under the water, sunk like an anvil, Nick had gotten a little anxious. Like, what if I didn’t hit him hard enough? What if the fucker woke up on the bottom and swam off into the mangroves?