Skinny Dip

Five

Charles Regis Perrone was a biologist by default.

Medical school had been his first goal-specifically, a leisurely career in radiology. The promise of wealth had attracted him to health care, but as a devoted hypochondriac he was repelled by the idea of interacting with actual sick people. Perusing X rays in the relatively hygienic seclusion of a laboratory had seemed an appealing option, one that would leave plenty of time for recreation.

Chaz's master plan was derailed by his own lubricious appetites. During those pre-med years he spent more time in condoms than he did in the stacks, and consequently meandered through the University of Florida with a less than dazzling 2.1 GPA. Not many medical schools avidly pursue C students, but Chaz wasn't crushed. He'd already decided that being a doctor would cut too onerously into his social schedule, and that he would devise another way to get rich.

In the meantime he sailed forth into the world armed with his Ken-doll good looks, his priapic affability and a bachelor's degree in a subject he loathed-biology. Three months after graduation he reluctantly moved back home with his mother, whose new husband, an addled ex-RAF pilot named Roger, delighted in tormenting Chaz with odd pranks. Whenever he snuck into a bathroom to whack off, which was several times a day, Roger would turn up the Irish Rovers full blast, rap on the doorjamb and chant, "Bad monkey! Bad monkey!" in an eerie falsetto.

Chaz suffered under his mother's roof, but without a job there seemed no escape. Only one prospective employer had displayed a glint of interest in his college credentials-the Bay County Humane Society, which was looking for just the right person to hose down the kennels twice a day.

It dawned on Chaz that he was doomed to minimum-wage hell unless he obtained a master's degree, so he purchased one from a popular diploma mill in Colorado. The eight-week mail-order course guaranteed graduation (with honors) for a fee of $999, which Chaz remorselessly conned from his mother. Any topic vaguely related to biology was acceptable for a thesis paper, double-spacing being the only academic requirement. Chaz's opus, researched one afternoon in the produce section of the local supermarket, was titled "A Comparative Analysis of Late-Season Oranges, Ruby Grapefruits and Tangelos."

Ten days after mailing off the finished manuscript-a cashier's check clipped to the cover page, as required-he received a certified letter stating that the school had been shut down, stripped of its accreditation and evicted from the strip mall where its "campus" had been headquartered.

Grudgingly, Chaz accepted the fact that he might have to physically attend classes in order to secure an advanced degree. His mother, having stumbled upon the more unsavory elements of his porn collection, expedited his departure by imposing on a cousin who taught at the University of Miami's Rosenstiel School of Marine and Atmospheric Science. Although Chaz's GRE scores were nearly as forgettable as his grades, the politesse of nepotism prevailed and he was admitted to the master's program.

It was a buoyant and eager postgraduate who arrived at the Rosenstiel campus on Virginia Key, for he had grandly envisioned himself sailing the lazy tropics on a schooner, tracking pods of playful bottle-nosed dolphins. In this fantasy, Chaz held binoculars in one hand and a frosty margarita in the other.

Had he bothered to scan the curriculum in advance, he would not have been so poleaxed by the tedious reality of field biology. His first assignment was assisting a doctoral candidate in a study of coastal sea lice, an experience that reignited Chaz's antipathy toward the great outdoors and all denizens great and small.

Among his chores was collecting gobs of algal weed that harbored the tiny granular organisms, which were not true lice but rather the larvae of Linuche unguiculata, the thimble jellyfish. Chaz's initial aversion to his subject was justified on the second day, when the pests somehow burrowed beneath his wet suit and colonized his upper torso with an itchy pustular rash-a painful condition spectacularly exacerbated by an ill-advised choice of colognes. Before the first semester was half over, Chaz looked like he'd been dragged from a burning oil rig. He stiffly informed his faculty supervisor that the only sensible purpose for studying sea lice was to isolate a toxin that would wipe them off the face of the earth.

Clearly, Chaz had neither the hide nor the perspective required for scientific inquiry. Worse, he had no interest whatsoever in the lesser species. As an undergraduate he had muddled through classroom biology by memorizing just enough to pass the exams. In the field he couldn't fake it so easily. The work was sweltering, repetitive and just plain hard. Every time Chaz asked if he could go play with dolphins, he was told to fetch another tub of kelp.

His family connection spared Chaz the ignominy of flunking out. Instead, he was steered along a path of study that minimized his exposure to nature-the breeding cycle of captive mosquito fish. After two years of sullenly tending aquariums, he emerged with a marginal M.A. in marine biology. At graduation the entire Rosenstiel faculty rose as one to cheer Chaz as he crossed the stage, so elated were they to see the last of him.

To his own surprise, he had no sooner laminated his diploma than he was offered a job. The company was a famous cosmetics manufacturer that conveniently had no use for the oceanic sciences and no concern about Chaz's lackluster grades. The firm merely needed a presentable face on staff-what serious biologists scornfully refer to as a "biostitute"-who would dutifully attest that its perfume products contained only negligible levels of toxins, acetones and carcinogens. Recruiters for the cosmetics company were impressed by Chaz's fastidious grooming and handsome features, which they felt would enhance his effectiveness as an expert witness, especially among female jurors.

He was assigned to the company's Jacksonville plant, where he was given an office, a small laboratory and a starter batch of one hundred white mice. These he occasionally swabbed with Blue Passion, Shiver or whatever new fragrance was being test-marketed at the time. Every now and then a mouse would manifest a tumor the size of a kumquat, causing Chaz to snatch up the wretched critter with barbecue tongs and heave it into a culvert behind the building. The idea of scientifically documenting such malignancies was never contemplated-

Charles Regis Perrone would not be laying his immaculate fingertips on diseased vermin, not for a lousy thirty-eight grand a year.

Then one morning, while shredding newspapers for the rodent cages, he spotted a headline that would change his destiny: congress MULLS $8 BILLION PLAN FOR EVERGLADES RESTORATION.

Fortune appeared to Chaz in a mystical burst of green light. With a zeal that would have flabbergasted his former college professors, he embarked upon an ambitious research project that ultimately connected him with a person named Samuel Johnson Hammernut, known as "Red" to both friends and enemies. Hammernut's name had become familiar to Chaz through archived newspaper articles that alleged recurring atrocities against his fellowmen-specifically, immigrant farmworkers-as well as the planet itself.

At first, Red Hammernut had been wary of Chaz's audacious proposition, but soon he'd come around. It was he who was now phoning Chaz at three in the morning at the Marriott.

"What's this I heard?" Red Hammernut barked from what sounded like a NASA wind tunnel.

Chaz peered at the digital clock. "Where are you?" he asked.

"Africa, 'member?"

Red Hammernut, in quest of a world-record tarpon, was calling from a satellite phone aboard a mother ship somewhere off the coast of Gabon.

"So what's this about Joey?" he said. "Is it true?"

Chaz sat up in bed, suddenly alert. "I'm afraid so, Red. We went on a cruise and she… well, she must've fallen off the ship. They can't find her anywhere."

"Damn."

"How'd you know about it?"

"It was in the Fort Lauderdale papers. Lisbeth faxed me the story," Red Hammernut said.

"But how'd you figure out where I was?"

"I called up that girl reporter and told her I was your uncle. Ha!"

"Oh."

Chaz understood that this was not a sympathy call, such sentiment being alien to Red Hammernut's character. The man wanted information, and he also wanted to remind Chaz of his larger responsibilities.

"I don't know what happened," Chaz said carefully, in case Detective Rolvaag was tapping the hotel line. "Joey went up on deck in the middle of the night and she didn't come back. Nobody saw her go overboard, but that's the assumption."

"Why, sure. What the hell else could it be?" Red Hammernut's voice whorled in the static. "What a tur'ble fucking thing, just tur'ble. Tell me, son, they still out searchin' for her? The Coast Guard boys, I mean."

"Until tomorrow at noon. Then they call it quits."

"Well, I'll be damned."

Chaz could picture the stumpy little Cracker lounging in the cabin of the yacht, lapping at a tumbler of Jack Daniel's. His freckled bowling-pin legs would be sunburned to a bright pink, and the sea breeze would have made a comedy of his sparse coppery comb-over. The round white circles around Red's squinty eyes-caused by his absurdly oversized Polaroids-would present the visage of an irradiated lemur.

"You need anything, Chaz, anything at all," Red Hammernut said. "I can have six private choppers in the air at dawn, that's what you want. We'll do our own goddamn search and rescue!"

Anxiously, Chaz wondered how many drinks Red had guzzled. "That's very generous," he told him, "but they've been up and down the coast a dozen times. They'd have found her by now, don't you think? The water's full of sharks."

"Oh man," Red Hammernut said. "You hear all that noise?"

"Sure do," Chaz said.

"Rough as a cob out here. It's gotta be blowin' thirty knots."

"You be careful."

"Hell, son, ain't you even gonna ask about the fishin'?"

"Right. How's it going?" Chaz sensed it was time to wrap up the chat, before Red abandoned all pretense of genuine concern.

"Sucks doggie schlongs, that's how it's goin'. Four days and we haven't jumped one tarpon over a hundred pounds," Red Hammernut complained. "You're the ace marine scientist, what's the goddamn deal? Where's my fish?"

Chaz had no idea. "Maybe they're spawning," he said lamely.

When Red Hammernut laughed, he sounded like a constipated mule. "Spawning, my ass! Don't tell me you needed a Ph.D. to come up with that one? A Ph.D. that I fuckin' paid for?"

"Well, that wasn't my field of study." Chaz strained to conceal his annoyance.

"What's not your field?"

"Migratory game fish."

Red Hammernut guffawed. "That's too bad, 'cause I could use some honest-to-God expertise right now. This little operation's costin' me about three grand a day."

Then maybe you should've started with something small and dumb, Chaz felt like saying, like perch. Red Hammernut had taken up sportfishing only three months earlier.

"Maybe your luck'll change tomorrow," Chaz offered, but the crusty bastard couldn't lay off.

"I trust you know more 'bout sharks than you do 'bout tarpon," he said, "if you catch my drift."

The guy's unbelievable, Chaz thought, joking about what happened to Joey.

"I think we're losing the signal!" Chaz shouted into the mouthpiece. "You take care of yourself, and we'll talk when you get back."

"For sure," Red Hammernut said. "Hey, I'm real sorry about the missus. A damn shame is what it is."

The little shitkicker was trying to sound sincere, but Chaz wasn't fooled. The man had the heart of a scorpion.

"You be careful," Red added in an unmistakable tone of warning. "You hear me? Be real damn careful. Am I comin' through?"

"I hear you fine, Red."

Joey Perrone awoke before sunrise and unwrapped the strip of towel from her head. Although her eyelids remained tender from the man o'war stings, her vision seemed clear. Quietly she made her way to the bathroom, where she tried to ignore the blotched and bleary woman in the mirror.

She had slept in an oversized Stanford jersey and a pair of white jogging shorts that had belonged to one of Mick Stranahan's ex-wives, the television producer. When Joey had inquired how long that particular marriage had lasted, he'd said, "Depends who you ask."

Gingerly she washed her face, then managed to gargle without making a peep. Afterward she hunted through the vanity and found a rubber band for her hair.

Stranahan was asleep, sprawled on a sofa in the living room. Joey tiptoed up to him and leaned as close as she dared. In the half-light she studied his features and smiled.

Not bad, she thought. I knew it.

She stopped in the kitchen to grab two apples and a ripe banana. Slipping out the back, she was careful to close the screen door softly. Strom lifted his head when she stepped barefoot onto the dock. Joey stroked his muzzle and whispered, "You're a handsome fella. Maybe someday mean ol' Mick will find you a girlfriend."

As she climbed aboard the skiff, Joey was thinking: This is really rude. The least I could have done was leave him a note.

She untied the ropes and shoved off. As the boat slid lightly away, Joey sat down at the wheel, peeled the banana and waited. She didn't want to crank up the engine too near the island and awaken Stranahan-she felt guilty enough about the way she was leaving.

Inside the steering console was Stranahan's telephone, plugged in with a charger cord; that meant he'd have no way to call the authorities when he discovered his skiff was gone. Again Joey felt lousy, but keeping Mick incommunicado would give her some extra time to do what she had to.

As the boat drifted away, she finished the banana and placed the peel under the seat. In an aft hatch she located the fuel-primer bulb and squeezed until it was hard in her fist. She knew something about outboards-years earlier she had taught her first husband to water-ski, and together they'd bought an Aquasport powered with a i5o-horse Yamaha.

Stranahan's boxy old Evinrude started on the third try. Joey nudged the throttle forward and checked over her shoulder. There was no sign of Mick, but the Doberman was watching her from the end of the dock, his ears pricked and his butt wiggling excitedly. She waved at the dog, then took off toward the Miami skyline.

"Not again," Stranahan muttered, kicking at a fallen coconut.

He sat down at the picnic table with a cup of coffee, Strom settling at his feet. Joey wasn't the first woman to take off with Stranahan's skiff, but she was the first he hadn't already slept with, lived with and then driven away in a state of exasperation. When they made up their minds to go, melodrama seemed mandatory.

The last one to try the same stunt had been a successful patent attorney named Susan. She had professed to adore the isolation of the island, but in fact she was going batty because she couldn't uplink her BlackBerry-whatever the hell that meant-due to unspecified atmospheric anomalies. Possibly other factors contributed to her restlessness, as well, Stranahan had concluded afterward.

One evening at sunset, Susan snapped. After lacing Stranahan's rum-and-Coke with Ambien, she packed her bags, boosted his boat and promptly piled into the submerged rocks off the Ragged Keys. She cracked not only her collarbone but the shaft on the Evinrude, which set Stranahan back eighteen hundred bucks.

"For God's sake, why didn't you just ask me to give you a lift?" he'd said to her later in the emergency room.

"Because I didn't want to upset you," she'd replied. "I know how you are."

That's what they all said-Iknow how you are-and usually they were mistaken. They didn't really know him at all. But since Stranahan wasn't much good at revealing his sensitive inner self, the women who took an interest couldn't be blamed for misreading the signs. The Susan incident had cast him into a mood of frank introspection, but in the meantime he'd taken steps to protect his humble vessel from future hijackings by disgruntled companions.

With a hunting scope he easily located Joey Perrone, adrift less than two miles from the island. "Wanna come along?" he asked Strom, who declined in favor of licking his privates.

Stranahan dragged the yellow ocean kayak from the shed and pushed it into the water. He stripped off his shirt, kicked away his flip-flops and climbed in. He paddled through the light chop with short, hard strokes, and the burn in his shoulders felt good. With the wind behind him, he reached the disabled skiff in twenty minutes.

Joey sat on the bow with her legs dangling. She said, "Twice in three days. How lame is that?"

Stranahan pulled himself aboard and secured the kayak to a cleat on the stern. "This one definitely doesn't count as a rescue," he said. "This is purely a fuckup."

"Mick, I wasn't stealing the boat. Honest."

He opened one of the front hatches and with some effort inserted his head and arms inside.

"I was going to leave it tied up at Dinner Key," Joey insisted. "Look, I didn't mean to break the darn thing. I'll pay for the damage, okay?"

From below he said, "What makes you think it's broken?"

"No?"

"Actually, it's working perfectly." He got up, wiped his palms on his khakis and stepped back to the console. The instant he turned the key, the engine rumbled to life.

Peevishly, Joey asked, "How'd you do that?"

"I've got a manual valve on the fuel line, near the tank. Last night I shut it off," he said. "Force of habit, I guess."

"A cutoff valve."

"Exactly. Whatever gas was left in the hose, that's all you had to run on this morning," he explained, "and that's why the engine crapped out."

"Clever." Joey was working her lower jaw.

"See, I've had my boat swiped before."

"That doesn't surprise me."

Stranahan motioned her away from the bow. She moved to the ice cooler and assumed a slump-shouldered pose, watching him as he spun the steering wheel.

He said, "I can't blame you for being disappointed. You were expecting the pale rider and all you got was me."

Joey rolled her eyes.

Stranahan took it easy on the trip back to the island, the kayak bouncing lightly in the backwash of the skiff. Leaning sideways, he said, "I would've gladly taken you to the mainland myself. What the hell were you thinking?"

"I was thinking you're probably going to call the Coast Guard or the police, regardless, and that's not what I want."

"Where were you going?"

"To surprise my husband. To enjoy the look on his face when he saw I was still alive."

"And then what-let him try to murder you again?"

"So maybe it wasn't the smartest idea I've ever had," Joey said. "I'm just so damn furious-I was going to wait 'til he was taking a shower and then sneak in the bathroom and yank open the curtain. I thought maybe I could give him a heart attack."

"Great scene," Stranahan said, "but not a great plan."

"I thought of a better one. Want to hear it?"

"Nope," he said.

"It came to me all of a sudden while I was floating around out here in your boat," she said. "I think you'll approve."

"Doubtful," said Stranahan. "And for what it's worth, I keep my promises. There was no need to run away-I wasn't going to call the cops until you were ready."

Joey tugged the rubber band out of her ponytail. "What if I'm never ready?"

"That's the new plan? You want everybody to keep on thinking you're dead?"

"Mainly my homicidal shithird of a husband."

Stranahan played along. "And this is so you can disappear to someplace far away, right? Take a new name. Start a new life."

"Oh no," Joey said, "this is so I can ruin his."

"Ah, sweet revenge."

"Justice is a better word for it."

"Please." Stranahan laughed. She was a fireball, this one.

"Joey, what about your folks and your family? Your friends? You really want to put them through that sort of agony?"

She informed him that her parents were dead and that her only brother lived on the other side of the world. "Him, I'll tell," she said. "He'll be cool with it."

"And your boss? The people you work with?"

"I quit my job when I got married," she said. "Also, you might as well know I've got money, a ridiculous amount-more than enough to do what I have in mind for Chaz."

"Christ, you're serious."

"Of course. I'm surprised you can't understand." Joey turned away, raising an arm to shield her eyes from the sun.

When they pulled up to the dock, Strom wet himself in exuberance. Stranahan tied off the skiff, stowed the kayak and went inside to make omelettes. Joey changed into somebody's yellow sundress and an oversized straw hat.

Breakfast, which included fresh-squeezed grapefruit juice, was served on the deck under partly cloudy skies. Stranahan waited until they were done before finishing his lecture.

"Listen to me, please. You can't kill your husband and get away with it," he said, "just because everybody thinks you're dead. That kind of nonsense only happens in the movies."

She peered from under the brim of the immense hat, her expression one of broad amusement. "Mick, I don't want to kill Chaz Per-rone. I just want to screw with him until he screws himself. Can't you see the possibilities?"

Stranahan was alarmed to find himself intrigued by the idea. He hoped Joey wouldn't notice.

She sat forward intently. "Has anyone seriously tried to murder you? Tell the truth."

"Yes, as a matter of fact."

"And what'd you do about it?"

"That was different, Joey. I was in law enforcement."

Triumphantly she banged her hands flat on the table. "I knew it! I frigging knew it!"

"Was," Stranahan said. "Long, long time ago."

"Answer the question, Mick. What did you do to the guy who tried to murder you?"

He took a slow breath before answering. "I killed them."

She sat back as forcefully as if she'd been shoved. "Wow," she said.

"Want a papaya?"

"Them? You're talking dead guys plural?"

"I was in the military, too," Stranahan said. "Be right back."

He went to the kitchen and returned with two bagels and a platter of glistening papaya slices.

"Tell me everything," Joey said, her eyes shining.

"Under no circumstances."

Stranahan's two least favorite topics of chat were, in order, the women he'd married and the men he'd killed. Of the latter, Raleigh Goomer, the crooked judge, was the most well known, although others had come before and after. All the killings were by most moral standards justified, from the North Vietnamese Army regulars he'd shot in a firefight to the slow-footed hit man he'd impaled with the sword of a stuffed marlin. They made for colorful stories, Stranahan supposed, but none he wished to share with a young stranger.

Joey said, "I guess I should be scared of you."

He shook his head. "Other way around."

"I told you, Mick, I don't want to kill Chaz. I can't even squish a darn palmetto bug without feeling guilty. But he needs to pay for what he did."

"What have you got against prisons?" Stranahan asked. "Trust me, ten years at Raiford will rock your husband's little world worse than anything you can dream up."

Joey popped a crescent of papaya into her mouth. "Assuming he's convicted," she said, "which ain't exactly a slam dunk. Not without eyewitnesses, or at least a motive. Am I right?"

"There's got to be a motive, Joey. There's always a motive."

"Look, I haven't got all the angles figured out. But let me tell you-Chaz is slicker than pig snot on a doorknob, or however the saying goes."

"Close enough," Stranahan said.

"The thought of me against him in court, it's too scary. I can't take that risk."

Stranahan appreciated Joey's misgivings. Trials in South Florida were famously unpredictable.

"Before I met Chaz, he worked for a cosmetics company," she said. "He was their big scientific hotshot, the one they'd trot in to testify how safe their perfumes were. He showed me a tape of himself on the witness stand, and you know what? He was good, Mick. I can totally see a jury buying his act."

Stranahan knew that he should tell her to trust the system, but he couldn't say the words with a straight face. He'd seen more than a few cold-blooded monsters stroll out of a courtroom scot-free.

"So where do we stand?" Joey asked him. "What're you going to do with me now?"

He was pondering a reply when he noticed a blaze-orange helicopter approaching low from the ocean. Strom spotted it, too, and began barking insanely, leaping in circles.

Joey's hat fell off when she tilted her head to see the aircraft, which flew directly over them and slowed to a hover. Stranahan could make out the Coast Guard spotter, positioned at an open door. The man was wearing a white helmet and aiming binoculars, and almost certainly he was searching for Mrs. Charles Perrone, believed lost at sea.

To end it, Stranahan had only to stand up, wave both arms and point toward the woman in the yellow sundress-the one who had hastily ducked back under her floppy hat and was now eyeing him anxiously.

How easy it would be, he thought, and how tempting, too, because honestly he was too old for this shit.

Yet he didn't wave or point or signal to the chopper in any of the usual ways. Instead he reached for Joey's left hand and brought it to his lips, lightly but long enough for the Coast Guard spotter to see him do it.

So that the searcher would conclude, as any observer might, that the woman in the sundress wasn't a castaway but obviously the wife or girlfriend of the lucky middle-aged guy at the picnic table.

And, sure enough, the helicopter buzzed away. They watched until it was a bright dot in the soft blue distance. Satisfied that he'd done his job, Strom stopped barking and curled up. A flock of perturbed gulls materialized overhead.

"Thank you," Joey Perrone said to Stranahan. "Does this mean I can stay?"

"I must be nuts," he said.