Carl Hiassen - Stormy Weather

He had captured somebody else's fugitive monkey.

"What now?" asked Bonnie Lamb, reasonably. She reached out to pet the stunned animal, then changed her mind. The rhesus studied her through dopey, half-closed eyes.

"You're a good shot," she said to Augustine.

He wasn't listening. "This isn't right," he muttered. He carried the limp monkey to the grapefruit tree and propped it gently in the crook of two boughs. Then he took Bonnie back to his truck. "It'll be dark soon," he said. "I forgot to bring a flashlight."

They drove through the subdivision for fifteen minutes until Bonnie Lamb spotted the rental car. Max wasn't there. Somebody had pried the trunk and stolen all the luggage, including Bonnie's purse.

Damn kids, Augustine said. Bonnie was too tired to cry. Max had the car keys, the credit cards, the money, the plane tickets. "I need to find a phone," she said. Her folks would wire some money.

Augustine drove to a police checkpoint, where Bonnie Lamb reported her husband missing. He was one of many, and not high on the list. Thousands who'd escaped their homes in the hurricane were being sought by worried relatives. For relief workers, reuniting local families was a priority; tracking wayward tourists was not.

A bank of six phones had been set up near the checkpoint, but the lines were long. Bonnie found the shortest one and settled in for a wait. She thanked Augustine for his help.

"What will you do tonight?" he asked.

"I'll be OK."

Bonnie was startled to hear him say: "No you won't."

He took her by the hand and led her to the pickup. It occurred to Bonnie that she ought to be afraid, but she felt illogically safe with this total stranger. It also occurred to her that panic would be a normal reaction to a husband's disappearance, but instead she felt an inappropriate calmness and lucidity. Probably just exhaustion, she thought.

Augustine drove back to the looted rental car. He scribbled a note and tucked it under one of the windshield wipers. "My phone number," he told Bonnie Lamb. "In case your husband shows up later tonight. This way he'll know where you are."

"We're going to your place?"

"Yes."

In the darkness, she couldn't see Augustine's expression. "It's madness out here," he said. "These idiots shoot at anything that moves."

Bonnie nodded. She'd been hearing distant gunfire from all directions. Dade County is an armed camp. That's what their travel agent had warned them. Death Wish Tours, he'd called it. Only a fool would set foot south of Orlando.

Crazy Max, thought Bonnie. What had possessed him?

"You know why my husband came down here?" she said. "Know what he was doing when he got lost? Taking video of the wrecked houses. And the people, too."

"Why?" Augustine asked.

"Home movies. To show his pals back North."

"Jesus, that's—"

"Sick," Bonnie Lamb said. " 'Sick' is the word for it."

Augustine said nothing more. Slowly he worked his way toward the Turnpike. The futility of the monkey hunt was evident; Augustine realized that most of his dead uncle's wild animals were irretrievable. The larger mammals would inevitably make their presence known-the Cape buffalo, the bears, the cougars-and the results were bound to be unfortunate. Meanwhile the snakes and crocodiles probably were celebrating freedom by copulating merrily in the Everglades, ensuring for their species a solid foothold in a new tropical habitat. Augustine felt it was morally wrong to interfere. An escaped cobra had as much natural right to a life in Florida as did all those retired garment workers from Queens. Natural selection would occur. The test applied to Max Lamb as well, but Augustine felt sorry for his wife. He would set aside his principles and help find her missing husband.

He drove using the high beams because there were no street lights, and the roads were a littered gauntlet of broken trees and utility poles, heaps of lumber and twisted metal, battered appliances and gutted sofas. They saw a Barbie dollhouse and a canopy bed and an antique china cabinet and a child's wheelchair and a typewriter and a tangle of golf clubs and a cedar hot tub, split in half like a coconut husk-Bonnie said it was as if a great supernatural fist had snatched up a hundred thousand lives and shaken the contents all over creation.

Augustine was thinking more in terms of a B-52 raid.

"Is this your first one?" Bonnie asked.

"Technically, no." He braked to swerve around a dead cow, bloated on the center line. "I was conceived during Donna-least that's what my mother said. A hurricane baby. That was 1960. Betsy I can barely remember because I was only five. We lost a few lime trees, but the house held up fine."

Bonnie said, "That's kind of romantic. Being conceived in the middle of a hurricane."

"My mother said it made perfect sense, considering how I turned out."

"And how did you turn out?" Bonnie asked.

"Reports differ."

Augustine edged the truck into a line of storm traffic crawling up the northbound ramp to the Turnpike. A rusty Ford with a crooked Georgia-license plate cut them off. The car was packed with itinerant construction workers who'd been on the road for several days straight, apparently drinking the whole time. The driver, a shaggy blond with greenish teeth, leered and yelled an obscenity up at Bonnie Lamb. With one hand Augustine reached behind his seat and got the small rifle. Bracing it against the doorpost, he fired a tranquilizer dart cleanly into the belly of the redneck driver, who yipped and pitched sideways into the lap of one of his pals.

"Manners," said Augustine. He gunned the truck, nudging the stalled Ford off the pavement.

Bonnie Lamb thought: God, what am I doing?

They broke camp at midnight-Max Lamb, the rhesus monkey and the man who called himself Skink. Max was grateful that the man had allowed him to put on his shoes, because they walked for hours in pitch darkness through deep swamp and spiny thickets. Max's bare legs stung from the scratches and itched from the bug bites. He was terribly hungry but didn't complain, knowing the man had saved him the rump of the dead raccoon that was boiled for dinner. Max wanted no part of it.

They came to a canal. Skink untied Max's hands, unbuckled the shock collar and ordered him to swim. Max was halfway across when he saw the blue-black alligator slide out of the sawgrass. Skink told him to quit whimpering and kick; he himself swam with the rejuvenated monkey perched on his head. One huge hand held Max's precious Sony and the remote control for the dog collar high above the water.

After scrabbling ashore, Max said, "Captain, can we rest?"

"Ever seen a leech before? 'Cause there's a good one on your cheek."

After Max Lamb finished flaying himself, Skink retied his wrists and refastened the dog collar. Then he sprayed him down with insect repellent. Max croaked out a thank-you.

"Where are we?" he asked.

"The Everglades," Skink replied. "More or less."

"You promised I could call my wife."

"Soon."

They headed west, trudging through palmettos and pinelands shredded by the storm. The monkey scampered ahead, foraging wild berries and fruit buds.

Max said: "Are you going to kill me?"

Skink stopped walking. "Every time you ask that stupid question, you're going to get it." He set the remote on the weakest setting.

"Ready?"

Max Lamb clenched his lips. Skink stung him with a light jolt. The tourist twitched stoically. Soon they came to a Miccosukee village, which was not as badly damaged as Max Lamb would have imagined. Since the Indians were awake, cooking food, Max assumed it would soon be dawn. In open doorways the children gathered shyly to look at the two strange white men: Skink with his brambly hair, ill-fitting eye and mangy monkey, Max Lamb in his dirty underwear and dog collar.