Carl Hiassen - Stormy Weather

That's when he'd asked Augustine for The Club.

He turned his back to the others while he fitted it under Snapper's papery gray lips. Bonnie believed the procedure would have been physically impossible, were it not for the preexisting crookedness of those saurian jawbones. Afterwards nobody said a word, until Snapper made a groggy inquisitive murmur.

Skink bent over him. "Lester?"

"Mmmmmfrrrttthh."

"Lester Maddox Parsons!"

Snapper's eyelids fluttered. The governor asked Augustine to take a bucket down to the creek and get some water to wake up the sorry sonofabitch.

The pink-orange parfait of dawn failed to elevate Edie's spirits. She was sticky, scratched, hot, parched, filthy, as wretched as she'd ever been. She wanted to cry and pull at her hair and scream. She wanted to make a scene. Most of all she wanted to escape, but that was impossible. She was trapped on all sides by humming crackling wilderness; it might as well have been a twelve-foot wall of barbed wire. Her hands and feet weren't shackled. The governor held no gun to her head. Nothing whatsoever prevented her from running, except the grim certainty that she'd never find her way out, that she'd become blindly lost in the woods and starve, and that her emaciated body would be torn apart and devoured by crocodiles, rattlers and ravenous tropical ants. The prospect of an anonymous death in the swamps offended Edie's dignity. She didn't want her sun-bleached bones to be found by hunters, fishermen or bird-watchers; pieced together by wisecracking medical students and coroners; identified by X-rays from her childhood orthodontist.

She approached the governor. "I want to talk."

He was mumbling to himself, feeling around in his shirt. "Damn," he said. "Out of toad." He glanced at Edie: "You're a woman of the world. Ever smoke Bufo?"

"We need to talk," she said. "Alone."

"If it's about the suitcase, forget it."

"It's not that."

"All right, then. Soon as I finish chatting with Lester."

"No, now!"

Skink cupped her chin in one of his huge, rough palms. Edie Marsh sensed that he could break her neck as effortlessly as twisting the cap off a beer. He said, "You've got shitty manners. Go sit with the others."

Bonnie and Augustine were kneeling in the back of the junked ambulance, poring through Skink's library. Edie couldn't understand how they could seem so unconcerned.

She said, "We've got to do something." It came out like a command.

Augustine was showing Bonnie a first edition of Absalom, Absalom. He glanced up at Edie and said, "It's a ride. When it's over, it's over."

"But who is he?" She pointed toward Skink. Then, facing Bonnie: "Aren't you afraid? God, am I the only one with brains enough to be scared?"

"Last night I was," Bonnie said. "Not now."

Augustine told Edie to quiet down. "It'll be over when he says so. In the meantime, please do your best not to piss him off."

Edie was jarred by the harshness of Augustine's tone. He jerked a thumb toward Snapper, agape by the campfire. "What're you doing with that shitbird, anyway?"

Bonnie cut in: "Let's drop the whole thing."

"No, it's all right. I want to explain," said Edie. "It was just business. We were working a deal together."

"A scam."

"Insurance money," she admitted, "from the hurricane." She caught Bonnie staring. "Welcome to the real world, princess."

"So when's the big payoff?" Augustine asked.

Edie laughed ruefully. "The adjuster said any day. Said it was coming Federal Express. And here I am, lost in the middle of the fucking Everglades."

"It's not the Everglades," said Augustine. "In fact, this is Saint-Tropez compared to the Everglades. But I can see why you're upset, watching two hundred grand fly away."

Edie Marsh was dumbfounded. Bonnie said, "You're joking. Two hundred thousand dollars?"

"Two hundred and one." Augustine chided Edie with a wink.

She asked, almost inaudibly: "How'd you know?"

"You left something in the house on Calusa."

"Oh shit."

He unfolded the pink carbons of the Midwest Casualty claim-Edie recognized the cartoon badger at the top of the page. Augustine ripped the carbons into pieces. He said, "I were you, I'd come up with a clever excuse why your pocketbook might be in that particular kitchen. The police'll be mighty curious."

"Shit."

"What I'm saying is, don't be in such a rush to get back to civilization." He turned back to the governor's books.

Edie bit her lower lip. Lord, sometimes it was tough to stay cool. She felt like breaking down a'gain. "What's this all about-some kind of game?"

"I don't think so," Bonnie said.

"Jesus Christ."

"Ride it out. Hang on till it's over."

Not me, thought Edie. No fucking way.

The Club exaggerated Snapper's pre-exaggerated features. It pushed the top half of his mug into pudgy creases, like a shar-pei puppy; the eyes were moist slits, the nose pugged nearly to his brow. The rest was all maw.

"An authentic mouth-breather," Skink said, studying him as if he were a museum piece.

"Fhhhrrrggaaah," Snapper retorted. His elbows stung from scrapes received when the lunatic had dragged him to the creek.

Now the lunatic was saying: "God, I hate the word 'nigger.' Back at the motel I considered killing you when you said it. Blowing your three pitiful teaspoons of brain matter all over the Jeep. Even if you hadn't shot my friend, the thought would've crossed my mind."

Snapper stopped moaning. Worked at controlling his slobber. Watched gnats and mosquitoes float in and out of his mouth.

"Nothing to be done about that." Skink flicked at the insects. He'd already spread a generous sheen of repellent on his captive's neck and arms. " 'Not to be taken internally.' Says so right on the package."

Snapper nodded submissively.

"Lester Maddox Parsons is the name on your license. Wild guess says you're named after that clay-brained Georgia bigot. Am I right?"

A weaker nod.

"So you started out two strikes against you. That's a shame, Lester, but I expect even if your folks had called you Gandhi, you still would've grown up to be a world-class dickhead. Here, let me show you something."

The governor yanked the Bill Blass suitcase from under his butt. He positioned it in front of Snapper and opened it with a gay flourish. "Drool away," he said.

Snapper rose to his haunches. The suitcase was packed with money: bank-wrapped bundles of twenties.

"Ninety-four thousand dollars," Skink reported.

"Plus assorted shirts, socks and casual wear. Two packs of French condoms, a set of gold cuff links, a tube of generic lubricant-what else? Oh yes, personal papers."

He probed in the luggage. "Bank statements, newspaper clippings about the hurricane. And this ..."

It was a glossy color sales brochure for a real estate project called Gables-on-the-Bay. Skink sat next to Snapper and opened the brochure.

"There's our boy. Christophe Michel. 'Internationally renowned construction engineer.' See, here's his picture."

Snapper recognized him as the dork at the Circle K.

"What would you do," Skink mused, "if you designed all these absurdly expensive homes-and they fell down in the first big blow. I believe a smart person would grab the money and split, before subpoenas started flying. I believe that was Monsieur Michel's plan."

Snapper didn't give two shits about the Frenchman. He was transfixed by the sight of so much money. He would have gaped rapturously even if his jaws weren't bolted open. He remembered a Sally Jessy, or maybe it was a Donahue, with some hotel maid from Miami Beach who'd found like forty-two grand under a bed. The maid, for some reason, instead of grabbing the dough she'd turned it in to the manager! That's how come she'd got on Sally Jessy; the theme that day was "honest people." Snapper remembered shouting at the TV screen: What a dumb cunt! They'd showed a picture of the cash, and he'd almost come in his pants.