Carl Hiassen - Stormy Weather

"Just let 'em go," he said to Edie.

The moment she dropped the leashes, the two dachshunds curled up at her feet.

"Beautiful," Snapper said with a grunt. "Hey, look what I found." He flashed the chrome-plated pistol he'd taken from the gangsters. Palming the cheap gun, he noticed the chambers were empty. "Damn spades," he said, heaving it into the murky swimming pool.

Edie Marsh told Snapper about the tough guy with the New York accent who came for Tony Torres. "You picked a peachy time to disappear," she added.

"Shut the fuck up."

"Well, Tony's gone. Even his damn beach chair. Figure it out yourself."

"Shit."

"He won't be back," Edie said gravely. "Not in one piece, anyway."

A concrete block occupied the spot where Tony's chaise had been. Snapper cursed his rotten timing. The ten grand was history. Even in the unlikely event that the salesman returned, he'd never pay. Snapper had fucked up big-time; he wasn't cut out to be a bodyguard.

He said, "I don't guess you got a new plan."

A siren drowned Edie's reply, which she punctuated with a familiar hand gesture. An ambulance came speeding down Calusa Drive. Snapper figured it was carrying Baby Raper to the hospital, for some unusual surgery. Snapper wouldn't be surprised to read about it in a medical journal someday.

He spotted Tony Torres's Remington shotgun, broken into pieces on the driveway. Snapper thought: It's definitely time to abort the mission. Tomorrow he'd call Avila about the roofer's gig.

"I'll give you a lift," he said to Edie Marsh, "but not those damn dogs."

"Jesus, I can't just leave 'em here."

"Suit yourself." Snapper scooped three Heinekens from Tony's ice cooler, got in the souped-up Cherokee and drove off without so much as a wave.

Edie Marsh tethered Donald and Maria to a sprinkler in the backyard. Then she entered the ruined shell of the salesman's house, to check for items of value.

Skink ordered Max Lamb to disrobe and climb a tree. Max did as he was told. It was a leafless willow; Max sat carefully on a springy limb, his bare legs dangling. Beneath him Skink paced, fulminating. In one hand he displayed the remote-control unit for the electronic training collar.

"You people come down here-fucking yupsters with no knowledge, no appreciation, no interest in the natural history of the place, the ancient sweep of life. Disney World-Christ, Max, that's not Florida!" He pointed an incriminating finger at his captive. "I found the ticket stubs in your wallet, Tourist Boy."

Max was rattled; he'd assumed everybody liked Disney World. "Please," he said to Skink, "if you shock me now, I'll fall."

Skink pulled off his flowered cap and knelt by the dead embers of the campfire. Max Lamb was acutely worried. Coal-black mosquitoes swarmed his pale plump toes, but he didn't dare slap at them. He was afraid to move a muscle.

All day the kidnapper's spirits had seemed to improve. He'd eyen taken Max to a rest stop along the Tamiami Trail, so Max could call New York and leave Bonnie another message. While Max waited for the pay phone, Skink had dashed onto the highway to collect a fresh roadkill. His mood was loose, practically convivial. He sang during the entire airboat ride back to the cypress hammock; later he merely chided Max for not knowing that Neil Young had played guitar for Buffalo Springfield.

Max Lamb believed himself to be blessed with a winning personality, a delusion that led him to assume the kidnapper had grown fond of him. Max felt it was only a matter of time before he'd be able to shmooze his way to freedom. He put no stock in Skink's oral biography, and regarded the man as an unbalanced but moderately intelligent derelict; in short, a confused soul who could be won over with a thoughtful, low-key approach. And wasn't that an advertiser's forte-winning people over? Max believed he was making progress, too, with tepid conversation, pointless anecdotes and the occasional self-deprecatory joke. Skink certainly acted calmer, if not serene. Three hours had passed since he'd last triggered the canine shock collar; an encouraging lull, from Max's point of view.

Now, for reasons unknown, the one-eyed brute was seething again. To Max Lamb, he announced: "Pop quiz."

"On what?"

Skink rose slowly. He tucked the remote control in a back pocket. With both hands he gathered his wild hair and knotted it on one side of his head, above the ear-a misplaced mop of a ponytail. Then he removed his glass eye and polished it with spit and a crusty bandanna. Max became further alarmed.

"Who was here first," Skink asked, "the Seminoles or the Tequestas?"

"I, uh-I don't know." Max gripped the branch so hard that his knuckles turned pink.

Skink, replacing the artificial eyeball, retrieving the remote control from his pocket: "Who was Napoleon Bonaparte Broward?"

Max Lamb shook his head, helplessly. Skink shrugged. "How about Marjory Stoneman Douglas?"

"Yes, yes, wait a minute." The willow limb quivered under Max's nervous buttocks. "She wrote The Yearling'."

Moments later, regaining consciousness, he found himself in a fetal ball on a mossy patch of ground. Both knees were scraped from the fall. His throat and arms still burned from the dog collar's jolt. Opening his eyes, Max saw the toes of Skink's boots. He heard a voice as deep as thunder: "I should kill you."

"No, don't—"

"The arrogance of coming to a place like this and not knowing—"

"I'm sorry, captain."

"-not caring to learn—"

"I told you, I'm in advertising."

Skink slipped a hand under Max Lamb's chin. "What do you believe in?"

"For God's sake, it's my honeymoon." Max was on the slippery ledge of panic.

"What do you stand for? Tell me that, sir."

Max Lamb cringed. "I can't."

Skink chuckled bitterly. "For future reference, you got your Marjories mixed up. Rawlings wrote The Yearling; Douglas wrote River of Grass. I got a hunch you won't forget."

He cleaned the bloody scrapes on Max's legs and told him to put on his clothes. His confidence fractured, Max dressed in arthritic slow motion. "Are you ever going to let me go?"

Skink seemed not to have heard the question. "Know what I'd really like," he said, stoking a new fire. "I'd like to meet this bride of yours."

"That's impossible," Max said, hoarsely.

"Oh, nothing's impossible."

Among the stream of outlaws who raced south in the feverish hours following the hurricane was a man named Gil Peck. His plan was to pass himself off as an experienced mason, steal what he could in the way of advance deposits, then haul ass back to Alabama. The scam had worked flawlessly against victims of Hurricane Hugo in South Carolina, and Gil Peck was confident it would work in Miami, too.

He arrived in a four-ton flatbed carrying a small but authentic-looking load of red bricks, which he'd ripped off from an unguarded construction site in Mobile-a new cancer wing for a pediatric hospital. Gil Peck had caught the festive groundbreaking on TV. That afternoon he'd backed up the flatbed, helped himself to the bricks and driven nonstop to South Florida.

So far, business was booming. Gil Peck had collected almost twenty-six hundred dollars in cash from half a dozen desperate home owners, all of whom expected him to return the following Saturday morning with his truckload of bricks. By then, of course, Gil Peck would be northbound and gone.

By day he worked the hustle, by night he scavenged hurricane debris. The big flatbed conveyed an air of authority, and no one questioned its presence. Even after curfew, the National Guardsmen waved him through the flashing barricades.

Many valuables had survived the storm's thrashing, and Gil Peck became an expert at mining rubble. An inventory of his two-day bounty included: a bagel toaster, a Stairmaster, a silver tea set, three offbrand assault rifles, a Panasonic cellular telephone, two pairs of men's golf spikes, a waterproof kilogram package of hashish, a brass chandelier, a scuba tank, a gold class ring from the University of Miami (1979), a set of police handcuffs, a collection of rare Finnish pornography, a Michael Jackson hand puppet, an unopened bottle of 100-milligram Darvocets, a boxed set of Willie Nelson albums, a Loomis fly rod, a birdcage and twenty-one pairs of women's bikini-style panties.