Skinny Dip

Eleven

Tool twisted the AC knob to maximum high and it still felt like a hundred damn degrees inside the minivan. American-made, too, which he thought was disgraceful. Florida, of all places, you don't rent out vehicles with cheap-ass air conditioners.

Not even nine in the morning and already Tool was sweating off the fentanyl patches. To cool down, he removed his boots and overalls, then chugged a liter of Mountain Dew that he'd picked up at the Circle K on Powerline. Fiddling with the radio, he miraculously located a decent country station. Shania Twain was singing about how much fun it was to be a woman, though Tool couldn't see how that could be true. Just about every female he'd ever known, starting with his mother, seemed perpetually pissed off at the human race. Or could be it was just me in particular, Tool thought.

At half-past nine, the man he was bodyguarding emerged from the house and hurried up the street toward the minivan. Up close he looked shiny and clean-cut-awful damn young to be a widower, Tool mused. You couldn't help but wonder what had happened to the guy's old lady.

Charles Perrone motioned him to roll down the window. "Have you seen anybody strange hanging around?"

"Whole goddamn place is strange, you want my opinion," Tool said. "But no, I ain't seen nobody ain't supposed to be here."

"You sure? Because I think they got into my house again."

"Not while I was here they didn't."

The man looked as if he hadn't slept all night. "Somebody mutilated one of my favorite pictures," he said.

Tool was skeptical. "You want, I'll follow you to work and hang close today. Just in case."

Charles Perrone said he wasn't going to work. "How come you're not wearing any clothes?" he asked Tool.

" 'Cause inside this van it's hotter'n a elephant fart. Hey, Red says you're a doctor."

Charles Perrone seemed pleased. "That's right."

Tool pivoted his immense mass to display the two remaining patches on his back. "Can you get me some more a these?" he asked.

The doctor seemed put off by the damp wall of flesh before him.

"Stick-ons," Tool said. "They's medicine."

"I know, but-"

"Duragesic's the brand name. Can you write me a scrip?"

"No, I'm afraid not," Charles Perrone said.

"It's for super bad pain," Tool explained. "See, there's this bullet slug up the crack a my ass-I'm dead serious."

Charles Perrone blanched and stepped back from the minivan. "Sorry. I don't do prescriptions."

"Now hold on a second."

"I'm not that kind of doctor." He spun around and strode back to his house at an accelerated pace.

Tool grunted. That's one lame-ass quack, he can't even write scrips.

Two doors down, a middle-aged woman in a yellow linen robe came outside, leading two small animals on leashes. Tool guessed that they were dogs, although they resembled none he'd ever seen. Their roundish wrinkled faces were flattened, as if they'd run full bore into a cement truck. The woman herself had a fairly spooky mug, all slick and stretched out like a Halloween mask that was too small for her head. Tool was treated to a close-up view as she walked the strange pinch-faced dogs down the sidewalk. The woman must not have spotted him inside the minivan, for she nonchalantly allowed her critters to pee all over the right front tire.

Tool's instant response was to punch out the passenger window, raining glass upon the woman's sandaled feet. She bleated in fear as he stuck his head out the window and instructed her in the crudest terms to clean up the damn mess.

"What!" She yanked the dogs away from the van and gathered them into her arms. "Just who do you think you are, mister?"

"I'm the sumbitch gonna butt-fuck those puppies, you don't clean the piss off my tar."

He cracked the door enough for the woman to see all she needed. In a heartbeat she was on her knees, furiously dabbing at the wet tire with a wad of pink tissue while her pets whined and scrapped nearby.

When she was finished, Tool said, "I didn't hear no 'pology."

The woman made a spiteful sound and her cheeks turned red, yet her expression never changed. The skin from her forehead to her chin was so tight and glossy that Tool wondered if she might split open like a bad mango.

"Beat it," he said, and she did, sandals slapping in retreat. The accordion-faced dogs could barely keep up.

Minutes later, the doctor reappeared.

"What did you do to Mrs. Raguso?" he demanded.

"She let her damn mutts take a leak on my tar!" Tool protested. "I thought this was 'posed to be a class neighborhood, what they call 'upscale.' Hell, I live in a trailer and I wouldn't let my dogs pee on summon else's personal vee-hicle."

Charles Perrone said, "You'd better get out of here. Carmen Raguso is probably calling the police right this minute."

"What for? She's the one started it."

"You flashed her! I was watching from the living room." Charles Perrone had got himself quite worked up. "I don't want to deal with any more cops, you understand? Now hurry up, before she gets your license tag."

"But who's gonna watch your house?"

"Just keep driving," Charles Perrone said, "until you hear from Mr. Hammernut. He'll tell you what to do next."

"Shit," said Tool, and started backing down the street. At the corner he wheeled the minivan around, then shot forward at high speed toward the exit of West Boca Dunes Phase II. More than an hour passed before the cell phone rang, but by then Tool had scored two more fatality markers from the grass median of the Sawgrass Expressway. The flowers had rotted down to the ribbons, yet the crosses themselves were in mint condition. Consequently, Tool's outlook was much improved by the time Red Hammernut called.

"On this bodyguard thing," Red said, "the trick is, you gotta blend in."

"I never been too good at that."

"Okay. Lemme work up another plan."

"Meantime, can I swap out the minivan?" Tool asked.

"By all means."

"Get me somethin' with a decent AC."

"You bet."

"By the way, your boy ain't much of a doctor."

Red Hammernut chuckled. "Don't you dare tell a soul."

Mick Stranahan and Joey Perrone were surprised to see Chaz's yellow Humvee when they came around the corner at ten-thirty.

"Guess who's taking a sick day," Joey said.

Stranahan positioned the Suburban in the driveway of the fugitive telemarketers, same as the last time. Moments later, a panel truck turned onto the street and drove past the Perrone house, then braked, reversed and pulled in beside the Hummer. Painted in red lettering on the sides of the truck: sunshine locksmith.

"Damn," Stranahan said. "He's changing the locks."

"So what?"

"So the spare key in the bird feeder won't fit."

Joey raised an eyebrow. "Wait and see."

Soon another truck appeared. It was a small white pickup with magnetic signs on the doors: gold coast security systems.

"Now what?" Stranahan grumbled.

"He's reconnecting the alarm."

"Terrific."

"Would you please stop worrying?" Joey said.

"Just so you know, I'm not keen on B-and-E's."

"Translation?"

"Break-ins. They're messy," Stranahan said, "and very hard to explain if the cops show up. Are your window screens wired?"

"No, but there are motion detectors in the hallway and bedrooms. I suppose Chaz could put in more, depending on how spooked he is."

"I would say plenty spooked," said Stranahan, "based on what we're seeing."

"It was your phone call, Mick. The Moses impersonation."

"Let's not forget the snapshot under his pillow."

"Oh yeah." Joey would have given anything to see her husband's face when he found it.

By noon the locksmith and the alarm technician were gone, but Charles Perrone hadn't come out of the house. Joey was restless, ready to roll. She had tucked her hair under a Marlins cap and costumed herself in long pants and a loose-fitting work shirt. Instead of a Bible, her prop this time was a toolbox. Someone watching her come down the sidewalk might have mistaken her for a man, because of her height and long athletic stride.

"What if he's really sick in bed?" she said.

Stranahan was scanning the place with the binoculars. "Give him one more hour."

A blue car turned the corner and approached the Perrone residence. It was the Ford compact belonging to the woman with the kelly-green pubic hair.

Joey groaned. "You've got to be kidding."

"Take it easy, now."

"What, he can't even make it past lunch without getting his rocks hauled?"

Stranahan said, "Looks like she's not going in."

Two short honks came from the Ford, then the front door of the house opened. Out came Charles Perrone, carrying a brown paper bag.

"See that golf shirt he's wearing? I gave him that for his birthday," Joey said. "New set of irons, too."

Chaz got in on the passenger side and the blue car pulled away. Joey noted that the woman was wearing large Jackie Onassis-style sunglasses-"probably so she won't be recognized from her porno flicks."

Stranahan advised Joey to stay focused on her no-good husband. "What do you want to do?"

"I want to go back in the house. My house."

"But how?"

"Wait here," she said, "until you see the sprinklers come on."

Stranahan touched her wrist. "The second the alarm goes off, I'm rolling. Be sure to come out the front door, not the back, then walk very calmly to the street."

"Mick, don't you dare leave me stranded here. That would really suck."

"Come to think of it, I still owe you one."

"Not the stolen boat thing again." Joey sighed as she hopped out of the Suburban. "How many times did I say I was sorry? Like a dozen?"

Stranahan had been underestimating women for about forty years, so he was not flabbergasted to see the lawn sprinklers bloom at the former residence of Joey Perrone. He would have congratulated her merely for getting past the new locks; that she'd also thwarted the security alarm was truly impressive.

When she met him at the door, he asked, "Were you a burglar in a previous life?"

"No, a wife," Joey said. "Chaz hid the new key in the same bird feeder, just like I knew he would."

"Because…"

"See, it was his idea the first time. He was so proud of himself, thought he was so darn clever. And since I'm the only other person who knew about the hiding place-"

"And he thinks you're dead-"

"Exactly. Why not hide it there again?" she said. "He probably figures that whoever snuck into the house scored the old key from our cleaning service, or maybe the guy who does the aquarium."

"Okay, but how'd you disarm the alarm?"

"Now, Mick, put on your thinking cap."

He grinned. "Don't tell me Chaz used the same keypad code as before."

"Yup," Joey said. "Two, twenty-one, seventy-two."

"Sounds like a birthday."

"Bingo. I knew he'd be too lazy to make up a new sequence."

"Still, that's quite a gamble you took," Stranahan said.

"Not really. Not knowing him the way I do."

They sat in the dining room, Chaz's mud-smeared backpack on the table. Joey said she'd once bought him a nice leather briefcase, but he had told her it was impractical for working in a swamp. Stranahan unfastened the backpack's many buckles and zippers and emptied the contents pocket by pocket: a sheath of loose papers and charts, a handful of mechanical pencils, two aerosol cans of insect spray, a snakebite kit, tape and gauze, a pair of heavy cotton socks, canvas gloves, rubberized gloves, chlorine tablets, a tube of antibiotic ointment, a rolled-up Danish skin magazine, a bag of stale chocolate doughnuts, a pound of trail mix and a plastic bottle of Maalox tablets.

"Your husband has a nervous tummy. That could be helpful," Stranahan said.

Joey leafed through the papers. "This is the same kind of stuff he was working on the day he got so mad at me."

"You were right. They're charts for water samples." Stranahan removed a blank form, folded it up and slipped it in the pocket of his Florida Power amp; Light shirt.

"That's all we're taking?" she asked.

"For now, yes."

He carefully replaced each of the other items in the backpack. "That was a nice little bonus. Now-where does Squire Perrone hide his checkbook?"

"Be right back." Joey disappeared down the hallway, and returned carrying at arm's length a crusty, soiled sneaker. "Never been washed," she reported distastefully.

A clever idea, Stranahan had to admit. Even the most desperate of thieves avoid rancid footwear. Joey turned the shoe upside down and the checkbook dropped out. Flipping through the register, Stranahan found no unusual transactions; the only deposits were Chaz Perrone's bimonthly paychecks from the state of Florida.

"When did you say he bought the Hummer?" Stranahan asked Joey.

"Middle of January."

"There's nothing here, not even a down payment."

"Maybe he's got another account I don't know about," she said.

Or maybe he didn't pay for the Hummer himself, Stranahan thought. "What about Chaz's so-called nest egg?" he asked.

Joey shook her head weakly. "Stocks and bonds?"

"Then he should get brokerage statements in the mail."

Joey admitted that she'd never seen any. Stranahan stood up and said it was time to go, before Chaz returned with his lady friend.

"Wait. Let's leave him another present." Joey was eyeing one of her husband's umbrellas, which was leaning in a corner.

"Absolutely not," Stranahan said.

"Mick, come on."

"He's already a nervous wreck, I assure you."

Joey feigned a pout as she followed him to the door. "At least can I leave the sprinklers running?"

"Is the timer box outside?"

She nodded. "On the wall outside the utility room. He'll have no reason to think that we actually got into the house."

"Then, sure, what the hell," Stranahan said. "If it makes you feel better."

"It'll do for now," said Joey, and reset the alarm.

Ricca remarked that Chaz looked dreadful.

"I didn't sleep much," he mumbled.

"That's because I wasn't there to tire you out."

"Some crank called first thing this morning."

"A breather?" Ricca asked. "I get those all the time."

"No. Just a crank." Thinking about the mystery phone call, Chaz felt his palms go damp.

Ricca asked if he had given any more thought to holding a memorial service for Joey.

"What is it with you?" he said irritably. "I already told you I hate funerals. Light a goddamn candle if it makes you feel better."

Ricca said, "Doesn't have to be a major production. Rent a chapel, get the priest to say a few words. Maybe some of Joey's friends would like to share their feelings, too."

Chaz stared out the window.

"It's important, baby," she said. "For closure."

He exhaled scornfully, blowing invisible smoke rings.

"One chapter of your life has ended," Ricca went on, "and another is just beginning."

Jesus, Chaz thought. She's about as subtle as a double hernia.

"Besides, it'll look bad if you don't do something in Joey's memory. It'll look like you don't even care that she's dead."

Ricca had a point. Eventually he might have to stage a service for the sake of appearances. He was surprised that Detective Rolvaag hadn't called him on that, too.

The crooked, blackmailing sonofabitch. It had to be him, the voice on the phone.

"Chaz, are you listening to me?" Ricca said.

"Do I have a choice?"

She made a sad-sounding noise. "Baby, I'm just trying to be here for you."

Right, thought Chaz. Here, there and everywhere.

He said, "Maybe I'll arrange a memorial for later. In a couple weeks." Thinking: After all this heavy-duty shit is behind me.

Ricca remained in the car while he went inside the bank. Later, at lunch, she got around to asking what was in the paper bag.

"It was jewelry," Chaz said. "I was putting it in a safe box."

"Your wife's jewelry?"

"No, Liz Taylor's. She asked me to hold it for her."

"Don't have to get snotty," Ricca said.

Chaz mustered an apology. "I've got a jillion things on my mind."

"You wanna stop over my place for a fashion show? I just got a new box of thongs from Rio."

"Not today, sweetie. I've got to haul a major load of trash out to the county landfill."

Ricca froze, a forkful of linguini halfway to her mouth. "Let me get this straight: You'd rather go to a garbage dump than get laid?"

Chaz said, "Come on. It's not that simple."

At least he hoped it wasn't.