Bad Monkey

Thirteen

When Yancy was younger, he’d briefly considered joining the U.S. park service, like his father. “Why didn’t you?” Rosa Campesino asked.

“I was too lazy. And the pay sucks.”

“Andrew, you’re full of shit.”

“Look at it this way. If I’d become a ranger in the Everglades, we would never have met.”

“Unless an alligator got you, and I was assigned to do the post.”

“Assuming there was something left of me,” Yancy said.

“Oh, there would be. Gators are sloppy eaters. By the way, you’ve healed magnificently.”

“I was hoping you’d notice.”

Rosa was massaging him on an autopsy table. It was half past midnight at the morgue and they were alone in the main suite, which had twelve forensic workstations. Each narrow table was made of eighteen-gauge stainless steel. Rosa had spread some towels, removed the headrest and instructed Yancy to lie still on his belly.

“What happens if somebody walks in?” he asked.

“Just play dead. I’m serious.”

She was wearing a lab smock, rubber-soled white shoes, and nothing else. In theory Yancy should have been wildly aroused, but the venue creeped him out. He’d made love to women in all sorts of odd places—with Bonnie Witt, of course, high on the tuna tower of her husband’s boat, but there had been other memorable trysts inside a windmill on a putt-putt golf course, the second-to-last car of a Metrorail train, an unoccupied toll booth on the Rickenbacker Causeway and a self-photo kiosk beside the manatee pool at the Miami Seaquarium. He understood the thrill of semi-public sex, but doing it among the deceased seemed more dark than daring.

The Miami-Dade morgue had been designed with a contingency for a worst-case airline crash; its five coolers were made big enough to hold all the passengers and crew from a fully loaded jumbo jet—a total of 555 bodies. Tonight there were only sixty-six in refrigeration. Yancy had declined Rosa’s offer of a tour. It felt good when she pressed her knuckles into the meat of his back, but he was having trouble unwinding. The cold filtered breath of the morgue didn’t smell like death, but it wasn’t exactly a breeze off Monterey Bay.

“Roll over, Andrew.”

“Then I can’t play dead if we’re caught.”

“And why not?” Rosa said.

“Because dead guys don’t get boners.”

“Do what the doctor says.”

She turned off the overhead light and climbed on top of him. The autopsy platform wasn’t comfortable but it was sturdy. Soon Yancy loosened up and his thoughts began meandering, which sometimes happened when a smooth physical rhythm was established. It was no reflection on his partner; he had an incurably busy brain. Rosa herself seemed happily diverted, so Yancy kept pace while sifting through the day’s events.

Except for a colorful exchange of profanity with a meth-head tanker driver on the turnpike, the ride to Miami had been uneventful. Yancy had first stopped at the Rosenstiel marine lab on Virginia Key, where an earnest young master’s candidate examined the shark tooth extracted from Nick Stripling’s severed arm and confirmed the species as Sphyrna tiburo, a common bonnethead that typically feeds inshore. The finding proved that Eve Stripling and her accomplice had placed the stump of her husband’s limb in the shallows and chummed up some resident predators in the hope that their gnashing would add verisimilitude to the drowning story.

The pale shards Yancy had plucked from the shower drain at the Striplings’ condo were definitely pieces of human bone, not stone crab shells as Caitlin Cox had claimed. Rosa made the determination visually over a paella at the Versailles, Yancy introducing the fragments in the same funky nest in which he’d found them. Rosa promised to order DNA tests on both hair and bones, and compare the results to the swab taken from Stripling’s arm by Dr. Rawlings in Key West. Yancy had no doubt of a match. The hatchet, presumed instrument of dismemberment, he had discreetly conveyed in a Macy’s shopping bag.

Later, over flan and Cuban coffee, Rosa had presented him with the only number dialed on Dr. Gomez O’Peele’s cell phone the night he died. She’d obtained this key information from a North Miami Beach detective who was striving to seduce her. The call had been made minutes after Yancy had left O’Peele’s apartment.

Yancy took down the number and went outside to make a call of his own, and soon he had a name: Christopher Grunion, no middle initial. The billing address on the telephone account was a post office box in South Beach. When Yancy returned to the table, he swept Rosa into his arms and kissed her exuberantly until the other diners broke into cheers. He was soaring because Christopher Grunion was the same name that Rogelio Burton had found on the charter contract for the Caravan seaplane Yancy had seen behind the Striplings’ house on Biscayne Bay.

Although Grunion had no criminal record, and not even a Florida driver’s license, Yancy felt certain he was Eve’s secret boyfriend and co-conspirator. O’Peele had likely phoned him to demand hush money after Yancy’s unexpected visit, and got shot for his greedy play. “It’s Poncho Boy!” Yancy had exulted, waving a mango Popsicle while he and Rosa were driving to the morgue. “The guy who killed Phinney—the same fuckweasel who tried to drown me!”

The massage on the autopsy table had settled him a bit. Now, as he was boosting Rosa up and down with his hips, she reached up and fastened her hair into a primly perfect bun, an Elizabethan effect that revealed the flawless slope of her caramel neck and shoulders. For all her lithe athletics she stayed remarkably quiet, as if she were afraid to awake somebody in the building, which would have been quite a trick.

One advantage to fucking on immovable steel was that it didn’t squeak, unlike Yancy’s sagging bed at home. The first time they’d had sex there, Rosa was so distracted by the noise that she couldn’t make it happen. She said the box spring sounded like a chipmunk being skinned alive. Now, astride him on a slab where hundreds of homicide victims had been meticulously disemboweled, she shuddered suddenly, smiled and teetered forward. Pressing a moist cheek to his chest, she said, “Okay, this is pretty warped. I should probably get some counseling.”

“Well, I thought it was fantastic.”

“Don’t lie, Andrew.”

“Are you kidding? I came like Vesuvius.”

Rosa sighed. “It’s a freaking HBO miniseries. All I need is fangs.”

Yancy kissed the top of her head. “I would’ve been a worthless park ranger,” he said. “Disappearing for weeks at a time with just a tent and my fishing rods. The other thing? Poachers. If I caught some asshole jacklighting a fawn, I’m not sure I could restrain myself, arrest-wise. My dad, he’s a very disciplined guy. I did not end up with that gene.”

“I definitely don’t want children,” Rosa murmured. “Does that make me a selfish rotten person? Never mind. Not a fair question while you’re still inside me.”

“Christ, you cut up dead people for a living. Don’t be so tough on yourself.”

She sat up sleepily. “I should really make an effort to put on my clothes.”

“Do you have video in this place?”

“Of course.” Rosa pointed to a small camera mounted above the table. “Don’t fret, Andrew, it has an Off switch. I’m not that twisted.”

“Some weekend we should go camping down at Flamingo, just the two of us.”

“You’re very sweet,” she said. “Now let’s get out of here.”

Yancy drove back to Big Pine the next morning and was surprised to see a car in his driveway—an old Toyota Camry with a crooked Oklahoma license tag. He took the tire iron out of his Subaru and ran through a hard rain toward the house.

Bonnie Witt stood in the kitchen, scrambling eggs. She was wearing a Sooners jersey, and her toenails had been painted gold. The fugitive life had taken a toll on her tan.

“I’ve still got a key,” she said pertly.

“Another oversight on my part.”

“I can explain everything, but first I want you to meet someone special. Honey?”

“Hey yo.” A shirtless man was sprawled on the couch watching ESPN. He looked up and gave Yancy some sort of faux bro salute.

Bonnie said, “Andrew, say hello to Cody. Cody, this is my dear friend Andrew.”

Yancy propped the tire iron in a corner and shook Cody’s waxy hand. Whatever he might have looked like in high school, back when Bonnie was blowing his mind, the kid had grown up to be a lump—mottled skin, thinning hair and a gut that hung over unstrung board shorts. Yancy insisted on taking over breakfast duties so that the two of them could share their love story, which he anticipated to be a high point of his day.

“I just couldn’t stop thinking about him,” Bonnie said, “so one day I said screw it, life’s too short. Got up at four in the morning and drove nonstop from Sarasota to Tulsa, nineteen hours. This was after I’d found him on Facebook—”

“But she didn’t even friend me first,” Cody cut in. “One night she just shows up by the salad bar and, you know, holy shit.”

“He was the number two man at the Olive Garden—”

“My boss was a major dickbrain. It was time to move on.”

“When Cliff found out I was gone,” Bonnie said, “he went postal. Called the OSBI and totally sold me out.”

The OSBI was the Oklahoma State Bureau of Investigation, which, after Dr. Witt’s tip, had dispatched Agent John Wesley Weiderman to interview Yancy about the elusive Plover Chase. Unfortunately, the lawman’s investigatory mission to the Keys had been cut short when he was stricken with shellfish poisoning after eating contaminated mussels at Stoney’s Crab Palace on Stock Island. Yancy felt somewhat responsible, and he looked forward to ambushing Brennan with another surprise inspection.

“So I quit my job,” Cody said, “and Ms. Chase and I went seriously outlaw.”

Bonnie blushed. “He still calls me that, after all these years—Ms. Chase! The police were looking for the 4Runner so we switched to Cody’s car.”

“Except there’s no XM Radio. Bummer,” he said.

“Last night we camped on the beach at Bahia Honda.” Bonnie favored Yancy with a fond-memory wink. “A raccoon swiped our marshmallows.”

Cody said, “I chased after him but he got away.”

Yancy loaded two plates with eggs and bacon, and he slid them across the counter. Cody inquired about the possibility of a bagel.

“Cream cheese or marmalade?” Yancy asked.

The young man beamed. “Hell, yes!”

Solemnly Bonnie said, “I never stopped loving him, Andrew. You know that.”

Yancy knew no such thing, but he was savoring the plot line. “Does Clifford know Cody’s back in the picture?”

“Lord, no! He thinks you and I ran off to the Seychelles. That’s what I wrote in my good-bye note, just to throw him off.”

“For God’s sake, Bonnie.”

Cody glanced up from his plate. “ ‘Bonnie’? So who came up with that one?”

Yancy was wishing that Cody would put on a shirt. His tufted breasts were droopy and mole-covered, and Yancy spied what appeared to be a fresh bite mark above his left nipple. It was increasingly difficult to keep an open mind.

“The night before I left Cliff,” Bonnie was saying, “I walk into the bathroom and there he is, dangling from the shower faucet, flopping and gurgling and jerking on his little weenie. For a noose he used one of my Hermès scarves! I mean, seriously, Andrew, enough’s enough.”

“An intolerable situation,” Yancy agreed.

Through a cheekful of mulched bacon Cody said, “Hey, Ms. Chase. If you’re gonna be Bonnie then I’m changing my handle to Clyde!”

She laughed and squeezed his pudgy elbow. Yancy pried a scorched bagel from the toaster and dressed it to Cody’s specifications.

“So, where are you two heading?”

Bonnie said she was hoping they could stay with him. “Until the heat’s off? Please?”

Yancy told her about the visit from Agent John Wesley Weiderman. “It’s not safe here,” he added. “Also, my girlfriend wouldn’t go for it.”

“Whoa.” Bonnie hitched an eyebrow and put down her fork. “Andrew has a new lady,” she said to Cody, who was using a green-tinged thumbnail to remove a sesame seed from his teeth.

“She’s a doctor,” Yancy said.

“What kind of doctor?” asked Bonnie.

“Well, a surgeon.”

“Does she have a specialty?”

“She operates on pretty much everything.” It wasn’t a lie; when Rosa did an autopsy, she diced up the whole works.

“Funny,” Bonnie said.

“You don’t believe me.”

“No, I meant it’s ironic: I just dumped a doctor and here you’ve taken up with one.”

Through the window Yancy saw no sign of the construction workers next door. Wet weather was his ally.

Cody said, “Ms. Chase told me how you butt-plugged her hubby with a DustBuster. That’s some awesome man-shit right there.”

He reached across the counter to honor Yancy with a knuckle bump. Yancy tried to visualize the kid’s photograph in the school yearbook. From Cody’s present condition it seemed inconceivable that he could have made himself attractive to Bonnie at any age. Perhaps he had quieter charms, such as a nine-inch cock.

“May I ask you something?” Yancy said. “It’s about Ms. Chase’s trial. I read where you testified against her.”

“A suck move. Mom and Dad made me do that.”

Bonnie gently interrupted, suggesting a change of topic.

Cody went on: “The important thing is we’re back together again. Right?”

“You kept a hot little journal of your romance is what I heard,” Yancy said.

“Hey, I was fifteen. I thought I wanted to be a writer.”

Proudly Bonnie chipped in: “He was wild about Portnoy’s Complaint.”

“Well, sure.” Yancy smiled. “Cody, are you keeping a journal now?”

He reddened. “No! I mean, what for?”

“In case you two get caught. Bonnie goes to jail, all the tabloids would line up to pay big bucks for your story. But I’m sure you wouldn’t do anything like that. Who wants coffee?”

After they were gone, Yancy walked over to the spec house and set up a Santeria shrine in the future living room. Improvising, he’d chosen a handmade doll of the warrior god Changó, and for sacrificial offerings included apples, tamales, copper pennies, a dead rooster collected on Simonton Street by Animal Control and a saucer of cat blood left over from a spaying performed by a veterinarian friend. These items were laid out upon a crude satanic pentagram that Yancy had drawn in red Krylon paint on Evan Shook’s floor slab. In the center he placed a rat skull, ominously marked with the numerals 666. Students of the occult would have discounted the scene as an amateurish juxtaposition of unconnected superstitions, but Yancy believed that maintaining cultural authenticity was less important than creating a vivid first impression for potential home buyers.

At lunchtime he drove down to Stoney’s and confronted Brennan, who disclaimed responsibility for Agent John Wesley Weiderman’s emergency trip to the hospital. “The man’s got a family history of diverticulitis!”

Yancy said, “I hope he sues your ass off.”

“Sit, Andrew, sit. Try the oysters Rockefeller.”

“I want to see the kitchen. You know the drill.” Yancy was carrying his vacuum-equipped roach-catching device.

“I’m glad you’re here.” Brennan fumbled to fit on a hairnet. “Somebody came by askin’ where you been. Jesus, is that a fuckin’ gun on your belt?”

“Absolutely.” After being nearly murdered by Eve Stripling’s accomplice, Yancy had purchased a used Glock to replace his forfeited service weapon. He would have preferred another 12-gauge but that was out of his price range.

Brennan seemed agitated. “Nobody on roach patrol packs a piece! Nilsson didn’t even carry a damn pocketknife.”

“This can be treacherous work,” Yancy said.

“The way some people do it, yeah. You got a carry permit?”

“Who was in here asking about me?”

“That girl,” said Brennan. “Phinney’s girl.”

“Madeline? She’s back?”

“For ’bout a week now. Come on, man, try the fuckin’ oysters.”

“Where’s she staying?”

“In Old Town, with some pimple-faced Russian d-bag. Hey, are you leavin’ already?”

“It’s your lucky day,” Yancy said, and made for the door.

Defiantly Brennan tugged off the hairnet. “I got nuthin’ to hide here! Drop in anytime!”

Madeline was working at the same skanky T-shirt shop on Duval, Pestov lurking ferret-eyed among the inventory. She told Yancy she’d returned to Key West because the police no longer considered her a suspect in Phinney’s murder. Yancy noticed that she’d chopped her hair even shorter and dyed it a shade of chartreuse that was popular for tarpon streamers. In addition she was sporting fresh ink—her dead boyfriend’s initials, tattooed on her left wrist.

He said, “It isn’t the cops I’m worried about. That’s not why I wanted you to get out of town.”

“Then who? Why would anyone want to hurt me?”

“Because—hold on, I’ll be right back.” Yancy went to the rear of the store and chased the scuttling Pestov out the door. Then he went back inside and informed Madeline that the man who’d shot Charlie had tried to kill him, too.

“Poncho Boy’s feeling some heat,” Yancy said.

“But he’s got no cause to kill me. I don’t know zip about zap.”

“You know where Charlie got all that money.”

Madeline said, “Stop tryin’ to scare me. And what’s with the gun?”

Yancy remembered her saying she had a sister in Crystal River. “Go stay with her until this is over. Please, Madeline.”

“Millie got born-again last October.”

“Oh.”

“For the third fucking time. All she does when I visit is preach Jesus Christ our Lord ’n’ Savior in my face, twenty-four/seven. One of her stupid cows got fried by lightning and she said it’s God’s will. No way can I be under the same roof with that psycho. She threw my Kools down the garbage disposer!”

Yancy said, “There must be somewhere else you can go.”

“The Russians won’t let anything happen to me. I already talked to Pestov.”

“Pestov is a barn maggot.”

“Dude, I need this job.”

“Really? All the T-shirt shops in the world?”

Yancy hung back while two dancers from Teasers came in to browse for the latest in nipple clips. After they left, Madeline smiled at Yancy and said, “I’m okay here. It’s kinda cool that you care, but I’ll be fine.”

When he returned to Big Pine, the rain had quit and the sky was clearing. Evan Shook stood on the street in front of his spec house, addressing a horseshoe-shaped gathering of the construction crew. Yancy interpreted Evan Shook’s gesticulations as beseeching. Some of the workers apparently had been unnerved by the sight of the Santeria altar or the rodent skull in the pentagram, possibly both. Yancy purposely had designed the display to touch a broad socio-religious spectrum.

He was rocking to Dave Matthews an hour later when Evan Shook pounded on the door, somewhat discourteously in Yancy’s view. He hid the Trainwreck he’d been smoking, unplugged his earbuds and straightened the shiny blue necktie he’d taken to wearing on restaurant inspections; the pattern on the fabric was a lateral skein of tiny silver handcuffs.

By way of a greeting, he said: “Is there news of the wild dogs? Please come in.”

Evan Shook remained on the front stoop, seething in the compressed manner of small men accustomed to bullying. Clearly he was inhibited by Yancy’s height, and also the hip-mounted firearm.

“Have you been in my house again?” he asked somberly. “Somebody …”

“Yes?”

“Somebody defaced the downstairs.”

“Good Lord. When did this happen?”

“Just this morning.”

“That’s unbelievable. In broad daylight? Kids, I’ll bet.” Yancy was counting on the conservative neckwear and police-model handgun to work in his favor, your average vandal being untidy and unarmed. The smell of pot, however, imperiled his credibility.

“I’ve been working all day,” he said. “Just got home.”

“So your answer is no, you haven’t been over there.” Evan Shook wondered if Yancy was too stoned to lie.

“Was anything stolen?” Yancy inquired. “You should hurry and hang those doors and windows, get the place buttoned up. Not just for security—it’s hurricane season.”

“Right.” Evan Shook plainly had more to say, but his gaze kept dropping to the black butt of the Glock. The bracing accusations he’d had in mind, the harsh warning he’d composed—these would remain undelivered.

“The neighborhood’s gone to hell,” Yancy said supportively. “It used to be so safe and quiet.”

“If you see anything unusual going on over there—”

“Of course, of course.” Yancy craned his head out the doorway, as if warily scouting for a rabid dog pack or rampaging delinquents. “I’ll try to keep a closer eye on things, Mr. Shook.”

“Thanks.”

“There used to be deer on your property, did you know that? Every evening around sundown. But now they don’t come.”

Evan Shook nodded witlessly. The damn mosquitoes were eating him alive.

“When I first moved here, it was mostly small houses,” Yancy went on, “what you might call bungalows. Nothing as grandiose as your place. What is that, four floors?”

“I’ve gotta get to the hardware store,” said Evan Shook, “before it closes.”

Yancy stayed up listening to his iPod while the television was tuned to Animal Planet. The effect was enthralling: wildebeest migrations accompanied by Joni Mitchell and the Strokes. Yancy took no delight in Evan Shook’s tribulations but wrong was wrong—the mansion was a fucking abomination. Yancy’s objective was to prevent it from being sold and finished.

He ate three energy bars and weighed himself: 162 pounds, a string bean. He was surprised that Eve Stripling hadn’t sent her stud muffin Christopher back to the Keys to properly finish killing him. By now she’d surely learned from Nick’s daughter that Yancy wasn’t drowned and that he intended to keep pursuing the case. He flipped the channel to Conan and unplugged one ear for the monologue. Afterward he turned off the TV and searched the kitchen cupboards for evidence of vermin. In some ways his roach patrol duties weren’t so different from police work—the quarry was nocturnal, and unfailingly left a trail.

Marinating in a lukewarm bath, Yancy smoked the rest of the joint and dozed off. At some point he was rousted by Dr. Rosa Campesino’s voice. It was rising from his cell phone, which he had apparently grabbed off the toilet seat and answered in a haze.

“Andrew, I need you here right away.”

“Wadizzit? You awright?”

“Wake up!”

“Take it easy.”

“That damn arm is back!” she said.

“What?”

“You heard me. The arm. I’m staring at it right now.”

Yancy splashed out of the tub. “Stripling’s arm? No way.”

“Get your butt in the car,” Rosa said.