Bad Monkey

Seventeen

Nobody on Andros seemed especially worried about Tropical Storm Françoise. For a day the system had stalled down near Grand Turk; now it was sidling northwest again. The National Hurricane Center said atmospheric conditions were favorable for cyclonic growth. At this announcement, a TV weatherman in Miami began jabbing in febrile excitement at the floridly rendered “cone of doom”—a forecast map illustrating multiple possible pathways of the storm through the Bahamas chain and across toward Florida.

Yancy was watching on a flat-screen television in a second-story restaurant overlooking the Tongue of the Ocean. After the weather update he turned his attention to a bowl of chunky red chowder; submerged insect fragments would be hard to detect among the diced onions and celery. Yancy probed with a teaspoon. The night before he’d squashed seven adult-phase German cockroaches in his motel room; the largest was a flier that had alighted on his forehead as he slept.

The restaurant owner, an American expat with a white-streaked ponytail, asked, “What are you doing, mister?”

“Taking my time,” Yancy said.

“It’s only the best soup on the island. I use fresh-growed tomatoes.”

Eventually Yancy took a sip. He bowed at the man and said, “Outstanding.”

“Damn right.”

“How’s the bonefishing?”

“Super, if you can stand the heat.”

“I love the heat,” Yancy said.

A plane passed overhead, the pitch of the engine dropping during descent. Yancy hurried from the restaurant and pedaled his borrowed bicycle through gusty winds to the airstrip, where he found the white seaplane parked near the small terminal building. Claspers, the pilot, was talking on a cell phone while he set the wheel chocks. Standing alone by the fence was the beefy pinhead with the crumpled ears. He wore a brown guayabera, wet moons under the armpits. One side of his mug was shiny and swollen, testifying to an eventful dental appointment.

Yancy propped the bicycle against a shaded wall of the terminal. Soon a taxi van rolled up and the pinhead squeezed himself into the front passenger side. Yancy opened the sliding door and plopped down on the bench seat behind him.

“My bike’s got a flat. Can I ride back to town with you?”

“I ain’t gon dot way,” the big man said.

“Then we’ll drop you off first. My name’s Andrew. What’s yours?”

It was the driver who answered. “Egg’s wot dey call ’im.” The goon stared ahead, rubbing his jawbone. He told the taxi man to take him to Curly Tail Lane.

“You mean Green Beach?” the driver asked.

“Ain’t wot de sign say.”

“N’how ’bout you, suh?”

“Conch shack,” Yancy said.

The driver chuckled. “Almost lunchtime.”

Egg took a prescription bottle from a pocket and tapped out three oval pills. “Fuck lunch, mon. Juss drive.”

Yancy said he was from Florida. He said he loved the Bahamas and was thinking of buying a place on Andros, maybe a time-share. Egg ignored him.

The van stopped at a construction site. Egg paid the driver, unlocked the chain-link gate and disappeared inside an Airstream trailer that looked like it had been rolled off a cliff. Yancy didn’t see any signs or billboards on the property.

“Is this Curly Tail Lane?” he asked the driver.

“Yah.”

“I heard it’s going to be a five-star resort.”

“Dot’s de plon.”

“They’re just getting started, huh?”

The taxi driver laughed. “It’s not like Miami. Tings move lil’ slower here.”

“You hungry?” said Yancy.

The driver’s name was Philip and he was from Nicholls Town, on the north end. Yancy bought him fritters and a beer at the conch shack, where he flirted equitably with the two women behind the counter. Afterward he gave Yancy a motor tour of Lizard Cay, through the quiet old settlements of Elizabeth, Pindling’s Bluff and Weech Harbor. Along the way Yancy saw a few families boarding their windows, but the prevailing mood was leisurely. When the taxi began to jerk and sputter, Philip pulled over by the ferry dock on Victoria Creek. A squall blew in while he was beating with a wrench on the carburetor, so he scrambled back into the van.

While they waited for the rain to let up, Yancy described for Philip his unsettling encounter with the old woman on the motorized wheelchair. The driver frowned and told Yancy to be careful—she was a man-eater.

“A true sex witch, mon.”

“What do you mean?”

“Wonna my uncles sleep wit her and tree months later he drop dead,” Philip said. “She feed ’im poison coz he won’t screw her no more. Wicked bod lady—you stay ’way.”

“What’s the story with that monkey?” Yancy asked.

The driver said the animal starred in the Johnny Depp pirate movies until he turned rowdy and got fired—the rumor was that he had been caught masturbating on wigs in the costume trailer. Later the monkey was won in a domino game by a local man named Neville Stafford, who’d been working hard to rehabilitate his new pet. Nobody was sure why Neville had gifted him to the old voodoo hag.

“Dey call her Dragon Queen,” he added.

“Where’d she get those crazy wheels?”

“From her new boyfriend, mon. He won’t lost long. Nonna dem do.”

Yancy suspected that her Super Rollie was a demo left over from Nicholas Stripling’s Medicare-fleecing operation. Christopher Grunion could have conned the “personal mobility device” from Eve and given it to the Dragon Queen, though it seemed far-fetched that he—or any fully sighted male—would start a romance with such a revolting loon.

“Is the lady’s boyfriend a white American? About my age?”

Philip cackled. “No, bey, you already meet de fella! It’s Egg.”

“Oh, come on.”

“Yah, dot’s true. I tole you she’s a witch, dot Dragon Queen. No cock is safe!”

“You know a man named Grunion?”

“Yessuh. Egg’s boss.”

“Show me where he lives,” Yancy said.

“Why?” Philip seemed amused.

“Because … he’s a friend?”

“Dot’s your story, I guess. What if I say no?”

Yancy took out the Miami police badge belonging to retired sergeant Johnny Mendez and held it up briefly for Philip to see. The shield featured a lush palm tree but not the officer’s name, which was convenient for Yancy.

“You cont ’rest nobody here in de Bahamas,” the driver said mildly.

“I was hoping for some friendly cooperation, that’s all. Wouldn’t you at least like to know what crimes I’m investigating?”

“No, mon.”

“Three homicides that took place in Florida. Murders.”

Philip sucked in a breath and said, “God o’mighty.”

Yancy gave him some cash. “I’m not here to make trouble. I didn’t even bring a gun.”

“Too bod. He’s a mean mottafuckah.”

“You’re talking about Christopher.”

“Egg, too. You needa be cool.”

“My middle name,” Yancy said.

On the return trip to Rocky Town, Philip slowed the van as they passed the oceanfront house Grunion and “his woman” were renting. Yancy saw a yellow Jeep Wrangler in the driveway but no activity. When he got to his motel room, he placed a box of bonefish flies and a water bottle in his fanny pack. Then he grabbed the tube holding his fly rod, selected another bicycle and rode back toward Bannister Point.

· · ·

The tide was coming in, so the depth was fine. Under an overcast sky Yancy buttered his nose and cheeks with greasy white sunblock. Then he put on wide Polaroid sunglasses and a long-billed fishing cap with cotton neck flaps. This Unabomber style, tweaked for the tropics, ensured that neither Eve nor her boyfriend would recognize him from a distance.

He assembled the nine-foot rod, strung the peach-colored line through the guides and picked out a credible fly. Slowly he waded down the shoreline, occasionally pausing to cast at fish that weren’t there. The wind was strong but he quartered slightly into it and double-hauled for more distance. It was a graceful exercise; anyone watching from a dock or a porch would have pegged him as a serious angler, not one of the usual goobers.

As he came within sight of Eve Stripling’s place, Yancy spotted the widow herself. She was dragging a red kayak through the backyard toward one side of the house, where she stowed it beside a wall. Yancy continued wading, pretending to be focused on the flats. Next Eve went after a barbecue grill, which she rolled to the same sheltered location. Evidently she’d been following the TV weather reports.

Yancy put the fly rod under one arm and began the ceremony of tying on a new tippet. He took his time, hoping for a glimpse of Grunion roaming the property. The water felt warm on his bare legs, and the wind kept the ruthless doctor flies at bay. Out of nowhere a Stratocaster started twanging in his brainpan—an old Dick Dale surf riff. Offshore was a misting reef break, and Yancy could hear the waves plowing the coral ledges. Whatever he was doing on the flats of Andros Island, it sure didn’t feel like work.

From land came a yell. Eve Stripling stood on a rock outcrop waving her arms. Yancy’s first impulse was to flee, though the effort would be doomed to play out in slow motion. The human knee wasn’t engineered to sprint hundreds of yards in three feet of water.

How the hell did she know it was me? Yancy wondered dejectedly.

Then the wind dropped, and he was able to make out Eve’s words: “Help Tillie! Help her!”

He squinted at something in the water between him and the widow, something alive. To no one he grumbled, “Are you shitting me?”

A puppy no larger than a muskrat was swimming toward him like a laser-guided clump of mattress stuffing. One of those urban teacup breeds, the dog had a stunted tail that drew a pencil-thin wake in the chop. It was a brainless expedition.

“Barracudas!” Eve shrieked from the rock. “Save her! Hurry!”

“Yeah, yeah.”

“Sharks!”

“I heard you,” Yancy said to himself. He advanced in long splashy strides toward the weary pooch and scooped it up.

Now what? he wondered. If he carried the animal all the way to Eve, she would surely recognize him despite the sunglasses and SPF 75 war paint. And instantly she’d know why he was there—to build a murder case against her.

“Thank you, mister! Thank you!” she bleated across the shallows.

Yancy responded with a modest-seeming wave. He set Tillie back in the water and pointed her toward the spot where Eve awaited: “Now be a good little rodent and swim to Momma.”

But the pup wouldn’t go; it spun around and thrashed its way back to Yancy, nosing into the crotch of his shorts. He tried a second launch with the same outcome. Tired Tillie was done for the day.

Now Yancy had no choice. He couldn’t abandon the dog to a certain drowning, nor could he take her ashore and risk exposing his identity. So he turned and headed up-island across the flats. In one hand was the fly rod; in the other sat Tillie.

“Hey! Hey, you! Where are you going?” Eve cried.

The wind resumed blowing and her voice faded. Yancy glanced back and saw that she’d been joined by her boyfriend, glowing like a harbor buoy in his orange poncho. Together the couple was stork-stepping along the rocky ledge, trying to keep parallel with Yancy. It wasn’t difficult to do; the water was now up to his thighs. Shells and sea urchins crunched beneath his wading booties, and once the bottom skated out from under him—a half-buried stingray, streaking seaward in a gray plume of marl.

As soon as Grunion reached a sandy stretch, he broke away from Eve and began to run, his poncho flapping like an unzipped tent. Yancy knew what was coming. Fifty yards down the beach, Grunion veered ninety degrees and sloshed into the shallows on a course of certain interception. Both of Yancy’s escape options were problematic—returning the opposite way, toward Eve’s house, or heading out to the deep, rough water. He wasn’t blind to the irony of his dilemma; he didn’t even like runty dogs. A pertinent question was whether pet-napping would be considered a felony or a misdemeanor in the Commonwealth of the Bahamas.

Yancy elected to stand his ground, submerged though it was. He secured Tillie in his fanny pack and rapidly stripped line from the fly reel. As Grunion splashed closer, Yancy spoke up in a defective Irish accent: “Git away from me, y’arsehole!”

Then he began arcing the tapered line in fluid loops back and forth over his right shoulder, using the robust breeze to extend his distance. Visually this motion recalled the virtuoso fly-casting scenes in A River Runs Through It, his father’s favorite movie, except that Yancy’s target was a human being, not a rainbow trout.

Shining on the end of his leader was a saltwater pattern called a Gotcha, size 1/0, tied on a stainless steel hook honed to surgical efficacy. Yancy stung Poncho Boy on the bridge of his nose, drawing a dark comma of blood. Grunion swore and backed off awkwardly. The next cast pricked an unshaven cheek and the one after that whip-snapped just shy of his left eyelash. Grunion, who showed no sign of recognizing Yancy, became preoccupied with self-protection. As if buzzed by hornets, he flailed one beefy arm in front of his face.

And on that arm was the large gaudy watch Yancy had seen before, on the wrist of his assailant on Big Pine. He was sure it was the same Tourbillon missing from the severed limb of Nick Stripling.

“Call yer dog to come!” he huffed at Grunion.

“What?”

“Ye heard me, dumb shite. Gawn and call yer bloody mutt!”

Yancy deftly kept the fly whistling through the air and with his left hand reached back and lifted the clueless canine from the fanny pack. He plopped her in the water and nudged her toward Grunion. On the beach, a hundred yards away, Eve Stripling paced and whinnied.

“Tillie, come!” Grunion commanded.

The addled pup swam in circles.

“Tillie! Over here! Tillie, yo!”

Pitiful, Yancy thought. He stopped casting and tickled the dog’s rump with the tip of the rod. To Eve’s boyfriend he said: “Try’n whistle, ye eejit.”

Grunion whistled and Tillie’s cornflake ears pricked.

“Now clap yer hands,” Yancy said.

The man didn’t clap; he whistled again. This time the puppy turned and paddled on a zigzag course toward the sound. “Good girl! Good girl!” Grunion hollered. Minutes later he was gathering Tillie from the waves.

Yancy resumed shooting casts at an imaginary point between Grunion’s eyebrows. Flinching and ducking, the killer slogged back toward the sandy mound where Eve fretted. For extra coaxing, Yancy thwacked the Gotcha against the nape of Grunion’s crispy poncho, and on the subsequent cast he stuck him in the right earlobe—a keen display of aim from seventy feet in a crosswind. Yancy set the hook using a sharp strip that broke the tippet and caused Grunion to bellow vituperatively. The pink-and-white fly remained loyally embedded, sparkling in the cocksucker’s punctured ear like a dainty shrimp-shaped stud.

Once safely on land, Grunion pushed the dog at Eve and, cupping his wound, stalked back toward the house. Eve followed a few paces behind, cradling Tillie and pausing intermittently to glare across the flats at the would-be abductor of her precious princess.

Yancy hurriedly waded north, reeling in his line. The homicide investigation that he’d hoped would resurrect his law enforcement career was foundering, torpedoed by bad luck and a deficit of careful planning. He expected the bright yellow Wrangler to appear any moment on the coast road, an enraged Grunion tracking him toward a fateful landfall. The man would have armed himself, probably with the 12-gauge Beretta he’d swiped from Yancy’s home in the Keys. Yancy himself was a sitting duck. A graphite fishing wand, no matter how artfully deployed, was useless against a screaming load of buckshot.

However, Grunion never returned. Nor, evidently, did Eve summon the island police, for Yancy came ashore unmolested. Riding the bicycle through a fresh rain toward Rocky Town, he concluded that the widow Stripling and her consort must have dismissed him as a crank, fly anglers being notoriously irascible if their solitude is violated.

He was on his way to the motel when a thunderclap chased him off the road, into an open carport attached to a small abandoned house. The slab floor was littered with rusting Red Bull cans and green shards of Kalik bottles that threatened his bicycle’s bald tires. Still, the place was dry and its roof offered material protection from the sudden electrical storm, a summertime sensation that Yancy had learned to fear and respect during his Florida childhood. One afternoon, while camping at Cape Sable, he and his father had witnessed a lightning bolt incinerate a flock of turkey buzzards roosting in the boughs of an old pine, which then flared like a sparkler and split down the midline.

The sky over Lizard Cay had closed in and the rain began to slant. Cars passed every few minutes, slowing for puddles, though none of them were yellow Jeeps. Yancy set his fly rod against a wall and stayed perched on the bicycle, pondering what to do. The sensible move would be to return to the Keys and construct his homicide case the old-fashioned way, with forensics, paper trails and dodgy self-serving witnesses.

To remain on Andros was to risk spooking Eve and Grunion, which would screw up a prosecution beyond salvation. The trip certainly hadn’t been a waste—Yancy had established that the couple was hiding out together, apparently investing the late Nicholas Stripling’s Medicare plunder in a resort development remote from the noses of U.S. authorities.

In the downpour Yancy no longer could see the road except during bursts of lightning. Overhead the beams of the carport began to drip so he adjusted his position, clearing away more broken glass and clutter. From somewhere inside the house came an unhappy squeak and the sounds of scuttling, which Yancy attributed to rats. His shoulders tensed when he caught a whiff of spiced tobacco smoke.

Peeking through a rotted-out doorway, he spied an unexpected shelter mate—the voodoo woman’s monkey, bedraggled, sopping, undiapered. The animal squatted in a corner sucking on a meerschaum pipe that he clutched blowgun-style with four tiny fingers, the dirty kernel of a thumb clocking in an agitated motion. The whitish bowl of the pipe was carved into a miniature topless angel of the voluptuous style found on bowsprits of old sailing ships.

If the taxi driver’s story was true—that the monkey was featured in the Pirates of the Caribbean movies—his descent from stardom had been steep indeed. Yancy hoped the little bastard had forgotten the painful pinch he’d inflicted upon him the night before during the scuffle aboard the voodoo skank’s scooter chair.

The animal’s expression betrayed nothing as he sucked on the pipe. Then a boom of thunder—or perhaps Yancy’s stare—caused the mangy desperado to bark sharply and flash brown-stained chompers.

“Chill out, little man,” Yancy said.

The monkey spat the meerschaum and flew at him, snapping and scratching at his kneecaps and bare shins. From the superior height of his bicycle Yancy kicked back in a fevered defense until the heavy toe of his wading boot caught the beast flush on his crusty chin, launching him tail over head through a charred window frame, into the squall.

With blood-streaked legs Yancy pedaled out of the carport and down the road. His visibility was so foreshortened by the deluge that there was no opportunity to dodge the endless potholes, and by the time he reached the motel he’d bitten through his bottom lip. After a hasty dismount Yancy also realized that he had left behind his fly rod, a long-ago birthday present from Celia. Disconsolately he trudged across the soggy lawn toward his room, pulling up short when he spied the door ajar.

For a time Yancy waited in the raw wet dusk, rows of fat droplets pouring off the bill of his fishing cap. Was it Grunion himself who had come, or had he given the job to Egg? Yancy thought. Hell, does it really matter?

He uprooted a cane tiki torch, unlit, and rushed through the doorway swinging like Barry Bonds. Two matching lamps and a tray of decorative sand dollars were demolished before the torch broke to pieces. Dr. Rosa Campesino stepped from the bathroom wearing lace panties and a look of consternation.

“What on earth, Andrew?”

“Oh shit. I thought you were somebody else.”

“It was supposed to be a surprise. I even brought some slutty red lipstick.”

“Babe, you look fantastic.”

“I caught the last plane in.”

“Let’s light some candles.”

“The last plane before the hurricane.”

“What?” Yancy said.

“Take off your clothes, dummy. You’re dripping all over the rug.”