Bad Monkey

One

On the hottest day of July, trolling in dead-calm waters near Key West, a tourist named James Mayberry reeled up a human arm. His wife flew to the bow of the boat and tossed her breakfast burritos.

“What’re you waiting for?” James Mayberry barked at the mate. “Get that thing off my line!”

The kid tugged and twisted, but the barb of the hook was imbedded in bone. Finally the captain came down from the bridge and used bent-nose pliers to free the decomposing limb, which he placed on shaved ice in a deck box.

James Mayberry said, “For Christ’s sake, now where are we supposed to put our fish?”

“We’ll figure that out when you actually catch one.”

It had been a tense outing aboard the Misty Momma IV. James Mayberry had blown three good strikes because he was unable to absorb instruction. Dragging baits in the ocean was different than jigging for walleyes in the lake back home.

“Don’t we need to call somebody?” he asked the captain.

“We do.”

The hairy left arm was bloated and sunburned to the hue of eggplant. A cusp of yellowed humerus protruded at the point of separation, below the shoulder. The flesh surrounding the wound looked ragged and bloodless.

“Yo, check it out!” the mate said.

“What now?” James Mayberry asked.

“His freakin’ finger, dude.”

The victim’s hand was contracted into a fist except for the middle digit, which was rigidly extended.

“How weird is that? He’s flippin’ us off,” the mate said.

The captain told him to re-bait the angler’s hook.

“Has this ever happened out here before?” James Mayberry said. “Tell the truth.”

“You should go see about your wife.”

“Jesus, I’ll never hear the end of it. Louisa wanted to ride the Conch Train today. She did not want to come fishing.”

“Well, son,” the captain said, “we’re in the memory-making business.”

He climbed back to the bridge, radioed the Coast Guard and gave the GPS coordinates of the gruesome find. He was asked to remain in the area and look for other pieces of the body.

“But I got a charter,” he said.

“You can stay at it,” the Coast Guard dispatcher advised. “Just keep your eyes open.”

After calming herself, Louisa Mayberry informed her husband that she wished to return to Key West right away.

“Come on, sugar. It’s a beautiful morning.” James Mayberry didn’t want to go back to the dock with no fish to hang on the spikes—not after shelling out a grand to hire the boat.

“The first day of our honeymoon, and this! Aren’t you sketched out?”

James Mayberry peeked under the lid of the fish box. “You watch CSI all the time. It’s the same type of deal.”

His wife grimaced but did not turn away. She remarked that the limb didn’t look real.

“Oh, it’s real,” said James Mayberry, somewhat defensively. “Just take a whiff.” Snagging a fake arm wouldn’t make for as good a story. A real arm was pure gold, major high-fives from all his peeps back in Madison. You caught a what? No way, bro!

Louisa Mayberry’s gaze was fixed on the limb. “What could have happened?” she asked.

“Tiger shark,” her husband said matter-of-factly.

“Is that a wedding band on his hand? This is so sad.”

“Fish on!” the mate called. “Who’s up?”

James Mayberry steered his bride to the fighting chair and the mate fitted the rod into the gimbal. Although she was petite, Louisa Mayberry owned a strong upper body due to rigorous Bikram yoga classes that she took on Tuesday nights. Refusing assistance, she pumped in an eleven-pound blackfin tuna and whooped triumphantly as it flopped on the deck. Her husband had never seen her so excited.

“Here, take a picture!” she cried to the mate, and handed over her iPhone.

“Hold on,” James Mayberry said. “Get both of us together.”

Louisa watched him hustle to get ready. “Really, Jimmy? Really?”

Moments later the captain glanced down from the bridge and saw the mate snapping photographs of the newlyweds posed side by side at the transom. Their matching neon blue Oakley wraparounds were propped on their matching cap visors, and their fair Wisconsin noses practically glowed with sunblock.

Louisa Mayberry was gamely hoisting by the tail her sleek silvery tuna while James Mayberry wore the mate’s crusty gloves to grip his rancid catch, its middle finger aimed upward toward the puffy white clouds.

The captain dragged on a cigarette and turned back to the wheel. “Another fucking day in paradise,” he said.

The phone kept ringing but Yancy didn’t answer it. He was drinking rum, sitting in a plastic lawn chair. From next door came the offensive buzz of wood saws and the metallic pops of a nail gun. The absentee owner of the property was erecting an enormous spec house that had no spiritual place on Big Pine Key, and furthermore interfered with Yancy’s modest view of the sunset. It was Yancy’s fantasy to burn the place down as soon as the roof framing was finished.

He heard a car stop in his driveway but he didn’t rise from the chair. His visitor was a fellow detective, Rogelio Burton.

“Why don’t you pick up your phone?” Burton said.

“You believe that monstrosity? It’s like a goddamn mausoleum.”

Burton sat down beside him. “Sonny wants you to take a road trip.”

“Miami?”

“That’s right.”

“I’ll pass.” Yancy glared at the construction site across the fence. “The house is forty-four feet high—I measured it myself. The county code’s only thirty-five.”

“It’s the Keys, man. The code is for suckers.”

“Deer used to come around all the time and feed on the twigs.”

Yancy offered his friend a drink. Burton declined.

He said, “Andrew, it’s not like you’ve got a choice. Do what Sonny wants.”

“But I’m suspended, remember?”

“Yeah, with pay. Is that Barbancourt?”

“My last bottle. Tell him anywhere but Miami, Rog.”

“You want me to ask if you can go to Cancún instead?” Burton sighed. “Look, it’s a day trip, up and back.”

“They always screw me on the mileage.”

Burton knew this wasn’t true. Yancy had issues with the Miami Police Department, from which he’d been fired in a previous era of his life.

“Chill out. You’re just going to the ME’s office.”

“The morgue? Nice.”

“Come out to the car,” said Burton.

Yancy set down his drink. “This ought to be special.”

The severed arm had been bubble-wrapped and packed on dry ice in a red Igloo cooler. To make it fit, the limb had been bent at the elbow.

“That’s all they found?”

“You know how it goes,” Burton said.

“John Doe or Juan Doe?”

“Rawlings says white male, mid-forties, heavyset, black hair.”

Dr. Lee Rawlings was the pathologist who served as the chief medical examiner for Monroe County. There were relatively few murders or accidental deaths in the Florida Keys, but Rawlings never complained. He filled his free time with golf, and was rumored to have whittled his handicap down to five strokes.

Yancy knew the sheriff was sending the arm to Miami because Miami was the floating-human-body-parts capital of America. Maybe they’d luck out and find a match, although Yancy thought it was unlikely.

“Traumatic amputation,” Burton said.

“Ya think?”

“Charter boat brought it in yesterday. We checked our missing persons, all three of them. Nobody fits the description.”

Yancy noticed the upraised finger on the end of the arm. “A sour farewell to the mortal realm?”

“Random rigor mortis is what Rawlings says. He took a picture anyway.”

“Of course he did.”

“Look, I’m late for my kid’s soccer game.”

“Absolutely.” Yancy put the lid on the cooler and carried it up to his porch.

Burton said, “Sure you want to leave it out here all night?”

“Who’s gonna jack an arm?”

“It’s evidence, man. I’m just sayin’.”

“Okay, fine.” The island was plagued by opportunistic raccoons.

Burton drove off and Yancy moved the cooler into the house. From a kitchen cupboard he retrieved the Barbancourt bottle and ambled to the deck and poured himself one more drink. Next door, the construction crew was gone. Yancy’s watch said five p.m. sharp.

For the first time all day he could hear seabirds in the sky.

The new sheriff of Monroe County was a local bubba named Sonny Summers who won office because he was the only candidate not in federal custody, the two front-runners having been locked up on unconnected racketeering charges eight days before the election. Sonny Summers’s opponents were unable to post bond and therefore faced a strategic disadvantage during the campaign’s final debate, which was conducted via Skype from a medium-security prison near Florida City.

During his sixteen years as a road patrol officer, Sonny Summers had received numerous commendations for not fucking up on the job. He was well-groomed, courteous and diligent about his paperwork. One year he led the whole force in DUI arrests, a highly competitive category in the Keys. His spelling on arrest forms was almost always legible, he never took any of his girlfriends on dates in his squad car and he smoked pot only on his days off.

Upon becoming sheriff, Sonny Summers arranged a series of get-acquainted luncheons with business leaders up and down the islands, from Key West to Key Largo. A recurring theme of these meetings was the fragility of tourism and the perils of negative publicity. The BP oil spill was often invoked, although not a drop of crude had ever reached South Florida beaches. Sonny Summers was sympathetic to the business owners, whose support he would need for future elections. Under no circumstances did he wish to be blamed for scaring customers away.

With that in mind, Sonny Summers ordered his public-information officer not to divulge any information about the severed arm that had been brought in aboard the Misty Momma IV. It was the new sheriff’s worry that floating body parts would be bad for tourism, particularly the waterfront trades. This was laughably untrue, as any marina owner in Miami could have assured him. Nothing short of a natural disaster discouraged people from going out on (or into) the water. One particular beach on the Rickenbacker Causeway got spunked regularly by raw sewage, yet squads of riot police couldn’t keep the swimmers and kiteboarders away.

In any case, Sonny Summers was fighting a lost battle. A crime-scene van had been waiting for the Misty Momma IV when it docked, so news of the icky discovery spread quickly. Worse, the boneheaded angler who’d reeled in the dead arm was showing the pictures on his cell phone to everybody at the Chart Room. There was even a rumor that he’d posted a photo on Facebook.

“I’m counting on you,” the sheriff said to Yancy, after Yancy finally answered the phone.

“How so?”

“I’m counting on you not to come back from Miami with that you-know-what.”

Yancy said, “What if there are no matching limbs at the morgue up there?”

“I need some optimism from you, Detective. I need some can-do mojo.”

“The Gulf Stream flows north.”

“Duh,” said Sonny Summers.

“Also, the prevailing breeze this time of year blows from the southeast.”

“I was born here, Yancy. Get to the point.”

“Factor in the wind and currents, the odds of that arm floating from Miami all the way down here are pretty damn slim—unless it was paddling itself.”

The sheriff was aware of Yancy’s employment history. “You don’t want to drive up to the big coldhearted city, that’s all.”

“What if they won’t take the case?”

“See, I’m depending on you to persuade them.”

“I can’t just leave a limb at the ME’s office if they don’t want it.”

Sonny Summers said, “Tomorrow I’m announcing that the investigation has been turned over to the appropriate authorities in Miami-Dade County. That’s the game plan, okay? This is officially no longer our headache.”

“I would wait a day to be sure.”

“Know what happened this morning? Some dickhead from Channel 7 calls up and says he heard that mangled corpses are floating up in Key West harbor!”

“Did you tell him to fuck off?”

“Call back tomorrow is what I told him. Wait for the media statement.”

“Our victim’s probably a rafter,” Yancy said. “Drowned on the crossing from Havana and then got hit by a bull shark or a hammerhead.”

“There you go!” the sheriff exclaimed brightly. “Aren’t most rafters on their way to Miami to meet up with family? So that’s where the goddamn arm belongs—Miami! End of discussion.”

“It’s not really up to me, Sonny.”

“Let me put it another way: There will be no human remains on my watch. Understand? No human remains.”

Those close to Sonny Summers sensed that he was sometimes overwhelmed by his elevated responsibilities. The transition from writing speeding tickets to commanding a recalcitrant law enforcement bureaucracy had been bumpy. One aspect of the new job that Sonny Summers did enjoy was putting on a blazer and schmoozing with the chamber-of-commerce types.

Yancy tried to suggest that an occasional severed limb was no cause for panic.

“Really? The two-day lobster season is next week,” the sheriff said. “We’re expecting, like, thirty thousand divers.”

“A sea of reeking turds wouldn’t keep those lunatics off the water. What are you worried about?”

“We’ll speak again tomorrow,” said Sonny Summers.

Yancy said, “I’ll drive up there on one condition: You lift my suspension.”

“Not until after the trial. How many times do I have to tell you?”

“But it’s such bullshit, Sonny. I didn’t even hurt the guy.”

The sheriff said, “Talk to Bonnie. She’s the problem.”

Bonnie Witt, Yancy’s future former girlfriend, was prepared to testify that he’d assaulted her husband of fourteen years with a portable vacuum cleaner, specifically a tubular attachment designed for upholstery crevices. Clifford Witt had required some specialized medical care but he was more or less ambulatory within a week.

Sonny Summers said, “Of all the women you had to get involved with. Swear to God, Andrew. All the women on these islands.”

“Our love was like a streaking comet.” Yancy paused. “Her words, not mine.”

“Did you take a look at it? The …?”

“Arm? Yes, Burton insisted.”

“Any theories?”

“No,” said Yancy. “But it makes a dandy back-scratcher.”

“Call me on your way back from Miami. I want some happy news.”