Skinny Dip

Twenty-nine

Joey and her brother carried the dinner scraps down to the seawall to feed the fish. Stranahan sat at the picnic table, cleaning his rifle. He was relieved to be home, distant from the lunacy of the mainland. Strom lay at his feet and refused to move, even for a flock of rowdy gulls. All afternoon the dog had stayed near his side, sensing that something was in the works. If only humans were that intuitive, Stranahan thought.

With Strom at his heels, he carried the Ruger to the boat. Joey watched him wrap the gun in an oilcloth and stow it in the bow hatch.

"Mick, get this," she said. "My brother has the hots for my husband's girlfriend."

Corbett Wheeler waved an objection. "Hold on-all I said was, she didn't seem like a bimbo."

"That's what happens when you live with cloven beasts. Your standards take a dive," Joey said. "My advice is not to date anybody you meet at a funeral. Ask Chaz, if you don't believe me."

Stranahan sat down beside her on the seawall, the Doberman nosing between them. Joey clasped Stranahan's hand, the sort of knuckle-busting squeeze that takes place at 35,000 feet during heavy turbulence. She was nervous about the blackmail meeting, as any sane person would be.

Corbett asked, "What're the odds of actually collecting the dough?"

"Not too good," Stranahan conceded.

He anticipated that Samuel Johnson Hammernut would provide all or part of the five hundred grand as bait. Chaz's Neanderthal babysitter would guard the stash until they arrived at the drop site, where he'd open the suitcase and encourage Stranahan to count the bills. At the first opportunity he would then try to kill Stranahan. Later, probably on the boat trip back to the mainland, he'd do the same to Chaz Perrone.

There were a dozen unappealing variations of that scenario, and Stranahan had fretted through all of them. Initially he'd planned to make the pickup alone, but Joey and Corbett were adamant about joining him. Stranahan understood; for them it was personal. He also appreciated the tactical advantage in numbers-Hammernut's hired gorilla surely would realize that he couldn't take all three of them by surprise, and Stranahan was gambling that he wouldn't try. The man was more brute than sharpshooter.

Joey said, "If they do give up the money, we're donating it to one of the Everglades foundations."

"Anonymously, I presume," said her brother.

Stranahan felt like pouring a stiff drink but that was out of the question. There was a better-than-even chance he'd have to shoot somebody later.

Corbett Wheeler said, "I like your island very much, Mick, but it's a bit too near the city lights for me."

"Ssshh. I'm trying to persuade your little sister it's paradise."

"Little sister is already persuaded," Joey said, wiggling her toes in the water.

Corbett made a wistful pitch for New Zealand. "Once you come, you'll never want to leave."

"If tonight goes badly, we might be visiting soon," Stranahan said, "depending on the extradition policy."

Joey jabbed him in the ribs. "Stop. Think positive thoughts."

To the west, a palisade of violet clouds obscured the setting sun. The breeze died in wisps and the bay slicked off. Stranahan hurried to the boathouse and got out three suits of yellow foul-weather gear. Strom's ears pricked at the faraway roll of thunder.

"Never a dull moment," said Corbett.

Joey said, "The good news is, Chaz can't stand the rain."

Stranahan was more interested in the lightning. He could think of safer places to be than in an open skiff on a large body of water during an electrical storm. The sensible move was to call off the drop, but it was too late.

"Let's go," he said, "before the wind kicks up."

Chaz Perrone locked himself in the bathroom with a stack of smutty magazines and the framed photograph of Joey that he'd lifted from the altar of St. Conan's after the service. His habitual remedy for anxiety was to wank at himself with simian zest, but even the youthful picture of his late wife-centered beatifically amid the cheap porn-triggered only a transient tumescence. His fevered and doleful manipulations were interrupted by a heavy rap on the door.

"Where's that fuckin' gun?" Tool demanded.

"I got rid of it," Chaz lied, hastily tucking himself into his boxers.

"Lemme in."

"I'm on the can!"

"No you ain't." Tool kicked the door open and stared with overt disgust at the photos spread across the bathroom floor.

"God-a-mighty," he said.

Chaz snatched up the picture of Joey and wedged it under one arm. Then he dropped to his knees and started scooping up the magazines, saying, "You don't understand, I'm a nervous wreck. I had to do something."

Tool regarded him as if he were some sort of school-yard flasher.

"The gun, boy."

Chaz said, "I told you. I threw it away."

"Red said no funny bidness out on the water."

"I heard him."

"You done here?" Tool motioned snidely at the toilet. " 'Cause it's time we should go."

"Let me get dressed. I'll meet you outside," said Chaz.

The blue-plated.38 was hidden at the bottom of the laundry hamper. He slipped it with his cell phone into a zippered pocket of a Patagonia rain jacket, which he folded neatly and carried to the Hummer. Tool was enthroned behind the steering wheel, chewing a stick of beef jerky and tapping his stained fingers to a country song.

Chaz said, "What're you doing?"

"What's it look like?"

"You are not driving my truck."

"Red said so. Hop in, Doc."

Chaz was steamed. "What about the suitcase?"

He'd purchased a gray hard-shell Samsonite with retractable wheels.

Tool had packed the cash by himself, stack after stack of hundred-dollar bills. Although he'd refused to let Chaz anywhere near the money, the mere sight of it had been intoxicating.

Tool motioned with his thumb. "It's in the back."

Chaz climbed in on the passenger side. To remind Tool who owned the vehicle, he reached for the tuner knob on the stereo. Tool caught his hand and slammed it against the top of the dashboard. Chaz's arm went numb.

"That's Patsy Cline," Tool said simply.

"Christ, I think you broke my wrist!"

"Don't ever mess with the radio when Patsy Cline is on."

Goddamn psycho, Chaz thought. He couldn't feel any fractures, but something in his left hand was either sprained, torn or jammed.

Tool maintained a surly silence during the ride to Miami, though he turned out to be a decent driver. Chaz was holding himself together pretty well until he heard the first boom of thunder and eyeballed the blackening line of clouds ahead of them.

"What if they won't rent us the boat in this weather?" he asked.

Tool seemed entertained by the question. "Don't you worry, Red's got it all took care of."

Chaz opened the envelope and read over the blackmailer's instructions again. "You sure you know how to use a GPS?" he asked.

Tool said it was easy. "One season I had some trouble over at Immokalee, so I went down to Ramrod Key and run a crawfish boat for a feller. He had a import bidness on the side, so we spent some time in the islands, off the books. Made the crossing back and forth from Cay Sal in all kinds a storms."

"Worse than this?" Chaz said.

"On occasion, you bet."

The rain was sheeting by the time they parked at the Bayside Marina and found the boat. It was a twenty-three-foot outboard with a Bimini top and a big four-stroke Yamaha. A Garmin GPS had been mounted on the console.

Tool set the heavy suitcase in the stern. Chaz bundled unhappily into his foul-weather jacket, the hammer of the pistol poking his ribs. He pulled up his hood and peered at the leaking leaden sky. His left wrist throbbed painfully.

Tool found a portable spotlight and plugged it into a battery jack. He seemed surprised that the device actually worked. Tool started the engine and cast off the ropes and motored slowly away from the docks. When they reached the open water, he told Chaz to sit his ass down and he threw the throttle forward. Simultaneously there was a clap of thunder that made Chaz duck. This is insane, he told himself.

What he had planned for tonight would have been difficult in clear, calm conditions; in a squall it could be suicide. He hunkered low, cringing at every glint of lightning. Tool seemed at ease-one hand on the wheel, the other working the spotlight-though his overalls were soaked and sagging. The rain had slicked down the dense black curls on his arms and shoulders, giving him a surreal lustrous sheen in the twilight.

Soon they passed beneath the Rickenbacker Causeway Bridge, which Chaz had crossed often as a grad student on his way to the Rosenstiel School. The sight reminded him of his long-ago ordeal with sea lice, and he speculated that the hungry little bastards were floating all around them in avid anticipation, should Tool manage to capsize the boat. Also looming in Chaz's imagination was the larger, more lethal menace of sharks. Such attacks were virtually unheard of on Biscayne Bay, one of many facts that Chaz had either forgotten or simply failed to register during his idle schooling in the marine sciences. The ravenous two-headed alligator starring in Chaz's recent nightmares could just as easily have been a hammerhead, given his visceral dread-and lazy ignorance-of both species.

Blessedly the thunder quieted and the downpour faded to a drizzle, although they hit a chilly wall of wind, which buffeted them most of the way to Cape Florida. The ride was more than sufficient to reinforce Chaz's loathing of the great outdoors. Clinging with his uninjured hand to the bench seat, he envisioned himself hurled to the deck with such force that the pistol in his jacket would discharge accidentally. If the shot didn't kill him outright, the noise would probably give him a heart attack.

Navigating with the magic of global satellites, Tool located what was left of Stiltsville, an old community of wooden houses constructed on pilings in the shallow grass beds. Hurricane Andrew had practically leveled the place, and the few remaining structures had been taken over by the National Park Service. The empty, unlit homes looked skeletal beneath the hot-blue flickers of lightning.

Tool turned off the engine and let the boat ride the outgoing tide down the channel. He muttered under his breath, his scowl visible in the green glow of the GPS screen.

"What's wrong?" Chaz asked.

"This is right where he told us to meet him," Tool said, "but I don't like it."

As they came abreast of the last stilt house, Tool lumbered to the bow and heaved out an anchor. The rope went taut and the boat stopped dead, the bow dipping slightly under Tool's bulk. He made his way back to the console and sat down with a grimace.

"Now we wait," he said, rubbing his buttocks.

Chaz checked his watch-it was more than an hour until the meeting. He turned on his cell phone, as the blackmailer had instructed. From the mainland came another rumble and, high in the clouds, a jagged burst of bright light.

"That bunch is still a ways off," Tool said. "If a-hole is on time, we'll be long gone 'fore it hits."

At least one of us will, Chaz thought. He was sure that Red Ham-mernut had ordered Tool to kill him and make it look like a suicide- the grief-stricken widower, unable to cope with the loss of his wife, decides to join her at sea for eternity.

But Chaz Perrone had 13 million reasons to stay alive, and a plan of his own.

"Where's the damn ice chest?" Tool asked. "I'm thirsty."

"Guess I left it in the Hummer."

"Tell me you ain't serious."

"Sorry." With his good hand Chaz took the Colt from his jacket and pointed it at Tool's massive silhouette.

Tool didn't notice the gun until it was illuminated by a flash from the oncoming storm. Chaz couldn't make out the goon's expression, but he plainly heard the warning: "I wouldn't do that, boy."

"Sure you would," Chaz said, and squeezed the trigger twice.

The first shot punched a hole in the canvas Bimini top. The second knocked Tool overboard, causing a splash that was more of a concussion, like a meat freezer being dropped into a swimming pool. Chaz emptied the.38 into the foamy crater and watched to see if the body would float up right away, like they did on TV cop shows. He'd expected Tool's wintry coat of hair to provide extra buoyancy, yet there was no sign of the dead man bobbing to the surface.

As Chaz pocketed the revolver, his cell phone rang.

"What the hell's going on?" The blackmailer sounded serious and alarmed; no Jerry Lewis impressions tonight.

"I was shooting at turtles," Chaz said. "Where are you?"

Chaz had thought he'd have plenty of time, but the guy was early. He'd heard the gunshots and now he was spooked.

"Turtles?"he said.

Chaz laughed casually. "I was bored. Are you close by? Let's get this done before that damn thunderstorm gets here."

"Where's the ape man?"

"Oh, he couldn't make it."

The blackmailer hung up.

"Shit," Chaz said. He groped around the deck until he found the spotlight. He swept the beam slowly back and forth across the water; no other vessel was in sight.

Moments later, the phone rang again.

"Where are you?" Chaz demanded.

"Up here!" said a different voice.

A woman's voice; one that made him stiffen.

"Get rid of the gun," she said. "Over the side."

Chaz worked the spotlight up and down the stilt cottage. Sitting on the edge of the roof was none other than his wife, very much alive. She appeared to be aiming a large-caliber rifle at his head.

"Joey, is that really you?" Chaz whispered into the phone.

The muzzle of the rifle flared orange and the windshield of the boat exploded before Chaz's terrified eyes.

"Does that answer your question?" she shouted.

Obediently he took the.38 from his jacket and threw it into the bay.

The first gunshots had caught Mick Stranahan by surprise.

"I believe numbnuts just killed his baby-sitter," he informed Joey Perrone and Corbett Wheeler.

The three of them were flattened against the roof, invisible to Chaz from the boat.

"Now what?" Joey whispered.

"I honestly don't know."

"Let me see the rifle," she said.

Stranahan glanced at Corbett, who nodded sympathetically. "She needs to get this out of her system."

"Easy," Stranahan said when she took the Ruger. He had allowed her to try it once before, blasting coconuts out of palm trees on the island. It had a powerful kick, but Joey had handled it capably.

Stranahan phoned Chaz Perrone on his cellular to find out what had happened on the boat. After a short exchange he hung up. "That's it," he said. "He's flying solo." Joey groaned. "What a schmuck."

"If he's killed the bodyguard, then he might be planning to kill Hammernut, too," Stranahan surmised.

"And the girlfriend," Corbett added quietly.

"Ricca. It's all right to say her name," Joey said. "Now, what about us, Mick?"

"Once Chaz sees the Ruger, he'll probably fold. Right now he thinks he's Vin Diesel." Stranahan dialed Chaz's cell number and handed her the phone. "Tell him to toss the gun or the deal's off," he said.

"Where are you?" Chaz was demanding on the other end.

"Up here!" Joey answered.

Corbett and Mick climbed down from the roof and sneaked beneath the house, where the Whaler was tied. Stranahan's idea was that the two of them would swim quietly out to the boat and overpower Chaz. They were peeling out of their clothes when the rifle went off, and they heard Joey shout: "Does that answer your question?"

"Don't shoot!" her husband screamed back.

"Give me ten good reasons why not!"

Thattagirl, thought Stranahan.

Corbett tugged his arm. "Mick, I heard something else."

"Where?"

"Close by. Listen."

Stranahan heard it, too. "I'll be damned."

Game over, he thought with a rush of relief. Thanks to Chaz Per-rone's fabulous inefficiency as a killer, they were now free to do what Darwin would have done: back off and let Nature take over. Left to his own greedy wits, Joey's husband had no chance whatsoever.

"There it is again," Corbett whispered intently.

Stranahan nodded. "Music to my ears."

A gust of wind caused the old stilt house to creak and murmur above them. The clouds lit up, and through the pilings Stranahan could make out the shape of the boat in the channel and the figure of Charles Perrone, holding the spotlight in the bow.

"Hurry." Stranahan crept down the catwalk toward the source of the moans-a floundering gray mass that in the shallows might easily have been mistaken for a stricken manatee.

"But what about Joey?" Corbett asked.

"Hell, let her have some fun," Stranahan said. "Come on, help me get this poor bastard out of the water."

Joey scooted off the roof and reappeared at the end of the dock, barely a hundred feet from where the boat was anchored. She wore an oversized yellow rain suit with the hood down, her blond ponytail whipping in the wind. Chaz struggled to steady the spotlight but the boat was rocking and his hand shook, a condition aggravated by the sight of his wife with a loaded rifle.

So, last night was real, he thought numbly.

"What's the matter, darling?" Joey shouted acidly.

He raised his palms in a gesture of defeat.

"What-you can't figure it out?" she said. "It's simple. You pushed me off the ship, only I didn't drown."

"How is that possible?"

"It's called swimming, Chaz. Where's the money?"

He motioned behind him, where the Samsonite lay flat against the transom. From the dock Joey couldn't see it. The wind was rising, and Chaz didn't hear her speak again until there was a lull between the gusts.

She yelled, "I'm waiting for the ten reasons why I shouldn't blow your head off!"

"What?"

A raindrop splatted on Chaz's nose, and morosely he cast his gaze downward. The black dress hanging in the closet, the cut-up photograph hidden beneath his pillow, the fact that the Coast Guard had found nothing but her fingernails-of course Joey was alive. It all added up.

"Chaz?"

"Just a second. I'm trying to think," he shouted back.

The barrel of the rifle flashed again, and the spotlight shattered in Chaz's fist. Shards of glass and plastic tinkled to the deck.

"Okay, I've got it!" he cried frantically. "I'm mentally disturbed!"

"What?"

"Reason number one why you shouldn't shoot me-I'm sick in the head! Honey, I need help!"

"That's the best you can do?" Joey asked.

Unfortunately, it was. Chaz Perrone couldn't come up with a single good reason why his wife shouldn't blast his brains out. Desperately he sought to change the subject.

"Where've you been for the last two weeks?"

"Watching you making a clown of yourself."

"Joey-"

"Hiding under our bed while you tried to screw a size ten with a rose tattooed on her ankle. It was pitiful."

Chaz felt gutted by humiliation. Medea, he recalled abjectly, the humming reflexologist. It made him shrivel to think that Joey had been eavesdropping during one of his sexual malfunctions.

He tried to turn the tables by slinging guilt. "You put all of us through hell. We had a church service and everything!"

"I'm touched," Joey called out. "Start packing for prison, because I'm going to the cops-and I'm taking the videotape."

"Honey, please."

"There's no golfing in prison, Chaz. No slutty hairdressers, either."

The rain slapping down on the waves sounded to Charles Perrone like cruel applause.

"What about that will?" He heard his voice quaver. "Was it real or not?"

"Apparently you are sick in the head," his wife said.

So that's that, Chaz thought bleakly. No 13 million bucks after all. The wind dropped suddenly to a cool sigh, the proverbial calm before the storm.

"I don't understand a damn thing anymore," Chaz spluttered. "Where's the guy who set up this meeting? The sonofabitch who dragged me out in that canoe with all those damn mosquitoes?"

"Oh, he's right here, Chaz, waiting for you to try something foolish."

"Then you're in on this, too?"

Joey let out a hoot. "From day one, darling."

"But why? You don't need the fucking money!"

"It's not about the money," she said. "How can you be such a bonehead?"

A fair question, Chaz had to admit. He'd been wrong about almost everything-starting with the direction of the Gulf Stream-and wrong about almost everyone from Rolvaag to Red Hammernut to Ricca. The reappearance of his once-dead wife left Chaz hopelessly stewed in confusion. The only thing that seemed real was the suitcase containing $500,000. Chaz couldn't help thinking about where it could take him, and how long he could make it last.

"You threw my stuff away!" Joey was saying. "All my clothes and my pictures and my books-even my orchid!"

"Not everything. Your jewelry's in a safe box at the bank," Chaz said. "I'll give you the key if you want."

"Asshole!"

"What if I said I was sorry. Because I really am," Chaz pleaded across the water. "I messed up big-time, Joey. Nothing's the same since you've been gone."

"Wasn't that the whole point?"

A lightning bolt struck one of the other stilt houses, the thunderclap so deafening that Chaz shielded his head. When he got the nerve to look up, he saw through a fresh sheet of rain that his wife had been joined on the dock by the blackmailer, who was shirtless. The man had one arm around Joey's waist, and he was whispering in her ear.

"Don't worry, I've got your money!" Chaz hollered anxiously.

"Keep it!" the man called back.

"What?"

"You keep it, Chazzie."

Joey waved a mocking farewell. "You heard him. Now get out of here before I change my mind."

Chaz hurriedly hauled up the anchor. When Joey appeared to raise the rifle to her shoulder, he sensibly dove behind the console. The gunshot coincided with a boom of thunder, the bullet whining harmlessly above the stern. Chaz held his breath but not his bladder, shivering at the sudden flood of warmth down his legs.

"Aren't you even going to say good-bye?" Joey shouted. A final burst of shots followed, all high. The tide and a tailwind carried the boat steadily away, the bow spinning in the surface currents. The rain began to sting and the lightning strobed and the air crackled like fire. Chaz stayed low, strangely comforted by the knocking of the waves against the hull. He couldn't understand why Joey and the blackmailer had let him go, nor could he shake the vision of the two of them standing on the dock. They'd looked shockingly comfortable together, more like a couple than business partners, and Chaz wondered jealously if it was possible that his wife was now sleeping with a shakedown artist.

The farther the boat floated from the stilt house, the less Chaz Perrone worried about gunfire. When he finally found the courage to grab for the ignition, he managed to break off the key inside the switch. Not knowing how to hand-crank an outboard motor, Chaz abandoned his fantasy of a high-speed escape. By now there was more than an inch of water on deck, and no evidence of a functioning bilge pump. He crabbed to the stern and clammed onto the Samsonite, in case the boat began to sink. He was banking that the suitcase would float, cash and all.

Two hours later he was wheeling it down the Cape Florida beach, calling on his cell phone for a taxi.

"Mick, I swear to God."

"I'm proud of you for not shooting him." Stranahan lifted the Ruger from her hands.

She said, "I couldn't do it. And don't ask why."

"As long as it's not because you still love him. Then I'll have to go drown myself."

"Love! The man is sewer scum," Joey said bitterly. "But I kept remembering what you told me about how it feels to kill somebody, about all the nightmares that come later."

"It's a good way to end up living alone on an island. You did the right thing," Stranahan told her.

"If I was a better shot, I would've winged him, at least."

"You get big points for hitting the spotlight. Here, I want you to meet somebody."

Earl Edward O'Toole sat upright, a glistening lump propped against a rusty propane tank at the far end of the dock. Corbett Wheeler knelt beside him.

"Mr. O'Toole has a bullet slug embedded in his right armpit," he reported, "and he refuses medical attention."

Tool's sopping overalls were frayed and his hairy arms were bloodied from hugging the barnacle-encrusted piling. That's where Corbett and Mick had found him, groaning and barely afloat under the stilt house. It had taken all their might to muscle him out of the water.

He blinked up at Joey. "I know you."

"Anastasia from Flamingo," she said, bowing. "Nice to see you again."

"But in real life you're the dead girl, right?"

"That's me. The dead girl."

"But I don't get it," Tool said. "Red said there was video of the whole thing."

Corbett cut in: "There is indeed. We made it ourselves. Mick put on a brown wig and played the homicidal husband, Joey played herself, and I held the camera." The tricky part had been staging his sister's tumble over the rail. They had chosen the deck where the lifeboats were hung, so she'd have a safe place to land.

Tool looked amused. "What the hell's this all about?"

"A touchy marital situation," Stranahan said.

Joey sighed impatiently. "That's enough. The man needs a doctor."

Tool winced as he rearranged his bulk. "Lady, your husband is a card-carrying shitwad."

"Thanks for the bulletin."

"Where's the suitcase?"

"In the boat," Joey said, "with Chaz."

"And where's he at?"

Stranahan pointed toward the mountain of weather that was sliding out of the bay toward the Atlantic.

"He took the money. Red's money," Tool said thoughtfully.

"That's our boy." Corbett tried to examine the bullet wound, but Tool knocked his hand away.

"Why did he shoot you?" Joey asked.

"Guess 'cause he figgered I was gone shoot him first."

"Were you?"

"Sure, but then I changed my mind. That's what gets me," Tool said sourly. "Here I go and do the decent Christian thing-which is to let the man off the hook-and what happens? He plugs me!"

Stranahan was putting on his clothes and rain suit. Corbett showed him the 9-mm Beretta that he'd taken from a pocket of Tool's overalls.

Stranahan emptied the chamber, popped out the clip and handed the empty gun to Tool, who flung it off the dock.

"Thing's waterlogged," he said. "Hey, you see him out there anywheres?"

Joey shook her head. Her fists were on her hips as she stared hard into the opaque gloom. The lightning had temporarily stopped, making it impossible to spot a small boat in the distance.

She said, "Mick, you'd better be right about this."

"Stop worrying. He's history."

Tool labored to his feet. "You take me back to dry land, we'll call it even for what happened at the doc's house-you sluggin' me in the damn throat'n all."

"It's the least I can do," Stranahan agreed.

He and Corbett helped Earl Edward O'Toole get in the skiff, which heeled precariously under the load. Joey was hesitant to join them, but there was no other way out of Stiltsville.

Corbett handed out life jackets. Tool couldn't fit into his.

"I gotta lay off them Pringles," he said.

Even in the night shadows Joey could see a thin dark stream running from under his arm. When she advised him to go straight to a hospital, he laughed harshly.

The skiff was wallowing so badly that one rogue wave could have swamped it. Nobody moved from their places as Stranahan motored tediously toward the western shoreline of Key Biscayne. The ride was wet and squirrelly, but it smoothed out when they reached the Pines Canal. They dropped Tool off in some millionaire's backyard, walking distance from Crandon Boulevard.

"Go take care of that bullet," Corbett said.

Tool smiled ruefully, as if enjoying some private joke. "I still don't unnerstand what the hell you people wanted," he said, "what you hoped to get from this whole fucked-up deal."

"Ask them." Corbett pointed to his sister and her accomplice.

"Accountability," Mick Stranahan said.

"An ending," said Joey. "Maybe some peace of mind."

Tool flapped his dripping arms in exasperation. "But come on! Life don't work like that!"

"Oh, sometimes it does," Stranahan said.