Randy White - Everglades

Jerry was in a hunting and fishing phase, maybe because of the sporting types he’d been hanging with in the Carcass Bar at Sawgrass.

Carcass Bar-that’s the way Izzy thought of it. All those dead animals that reminded him of roadkill, with their glassy stares. Or maybe Jerry was still trying to impress the Indians. Pointless. But who knew?

It was 10:15 P.M. Izzy was still wearing his dancing shoes and satin jacket. So what he could do if he wanted was run up the bay to the Biscayne Yacht Club-they had reciprocals with Sawgrass-and check out the waitresses, or see if there was maybe a lonely widow or two looking for companionship.

Izzy loved to waltz. Since childhood, waltzes were his favorite.

But no. If Sally Minster really had gone away for the weekend, this was a chance too good to pass up.

She hadn’t answered her phone the five times he’d called during the drive down.

Standing at the console, seeing city lights reflect off a pale moon, Izzy idled the boat west beneath the bridge at Cocoplum Plaza. Lots of fast, Friday-night traffic clattering overhead-it was a weird feeling to be on water beneath moving cars. It gave him an uncomfortable, drowning sensation that was gone the moment he exited from beneath the bridge.

Ironwood, the gated community where Sally and Geoff Minster lived, was the fifth waterway down on the left, just past Sunrise Harbor, its own little island, right on Biscayne Bay.

Izzy watched an Ironwood security patrol car pass over the bridge. He floated there, running lights off, for a full two minutes before he clunked the boat into gear again, and idled out into the bay, then north past the docks of the lighted mansions.

Minster had built an ultramodern castle on the water, all stucco and glass. It had pointed gables and balconies built over a screened infinity pool, and a lawn landscaped in white quarry rock around islands of palms.

Moonlight on the rock reminded Izzy of when he was a kid in New York, looking out the window at night on fresh snow.

He swung the Bayliner into Minster’s dock and shut off the engine. Then he leaned to remove the white cowling of the Johnson outboard-he’d claim to have engine trouble if anyone confronted him.

Izzy paused once more, crouching beneath a traveler’s palm as he watched the lights of the same security patrol car sweep by. Then he stood and walked toward the pool door, taking rubber surgical gloves from his pocket.

Sally, the pretty, religious born-again church lady, still enjoyed her private time alone in the bedroom.

Izzy was in her bedroom now, searching through drawers, seeing that certain items had been moved; presumably used.

He liked her bedroom. It smelled of clean linen and body lotion, everything done in white and yellow, very feminine. Like the big four-poster bed with the overstuffed white comforter, pillows stacked in a way that suggested the lady liked lying on the bed watching the flat-screened television that was recessed into the wall.

He checked a final drawer, and thought, Yep, she’s been at it again. Izzy felt a pleasant fluttering in his abdomen.

Breathing slightly faster, he crossed the room to the electronics control center mounted at eye level behind a plastic cover. It was next to the hallway door.

Beneath the cover, he’d hidden a Mitsubishi 900 MHZ wireless, sub-micro video camera. The camera’s lens was smaller than a dime. The entire unit was smaller than the nine-volt battery that powered each of the two mini-recorders he’d hidden beneath boxes in her closet.

He’d placed a second camera on her bathroom ceiling.

Touch any button on the control center-turn on the lights, dim the lights, adjust the air-conditioning, anything-both cameras were activated.

Izzy went to the closet and removed two mini-cassette tapes. Then, as he fitted the first mini cassette into a standard-sized converter, he found the remote to Sally’s TV and VCR. When everything was ready, he threw himself onto her bed, turned on the television and pressed play. Then he lay back, watching.

Izzy grinned. There she was, Sally Minster, walking into her bedroom, a little wrinkled after dealing with a flat tire, dressed in a peach-colored business suit.

He scooched back, and began to fast-forward, searching for any good parts the camera might have captured. As he searched, he considered going to Minster’s study to make himself a gin and tonic. A big one with lots of ice. Or maybe just a nice cold beer, so he could savor the video in style.

But Izzy was too excited.

He got off the bed only once: Went to Sally’s drawer and selected blue satin bikini underwear before returning to her bed.

It took a lot of fast-forwarding, but he finally found what he was hoping to find. It was on the second tape; the bathroom camera. He turned the sound up so loud that he could hear Sally breathing.

He watched the screen as she came into the bathroom, wearing a white cotton robe. His stomach stirred as she turned to look at herself in the mirror, paused for maybe thirty seconds, thinking about it, before she loosened the robe, opening it, so that she could see herself.

Then Sally stood with the robe loose, bare skin in the mirror, her ribs showing, abdomen showing, blond pubic hair in the shadows, one white breast bared, her nipple pink and elongated, her eyes intense.

Izzy whispered, “Oh my God,” thinking, What a body. Pale skin, firm, heavy-breasted over thin hips. It was better than he’d hoped. No way of knowing she looked like that, the way she dressed, the religious woman always covering herself.

He focused on the TV screen, thinking, Do it… do it… do it, as Sally let the robe slide off her shoulders. Then she stood naked, comfortable with herself, alone in her own bathroom.

He watched her shake her hair free around her shoulders, looking into her own eyes. Then he watched her eyes seem to fog, as if her brain had drifted off to some distant place, and the color of her cheeks began to flush as she touched her stomach with long fingers, nails painted with pink gloss.

Now she was relaxing, getting into it. Her head was tilted back, eyes closed, as her fingers moved over her breasts gently, touching them, then massaging the weight of her breasts with open palms, moaning in a voice that seemed high, experimental or apologetic, nipples squeezed long between her fingers.

Izzy whispered, “Yeah. Go for it,” as Sally, moving faster now, knelt and removed a plastic, candle-sized object from the pocket of her robe.

He was done, now. He’d cleaned the bedroom, put everything back just the way he’d found it. Everything, including the video equipment.

The tape of Sally was so unbelievable, he’d considered removing the cameras, packing up the recorders. But then Izzy thought, What the hell, he’d leave them for one final week. His last week in the States.

There was something about this woman that got to him. More than just her body. It was her face, the way she dressed, the fact that she was a religious priss. Something.

Plus, he’d always detested Geoff Minster. A pompous, rich asshole who tried hard not to play the part. The few times he and Geoff were together, Geoff had looked at him as if he were something unsanitary.

Izzy wanted to see the man’s wife naked again.

So he decided to leave the cameras in place. He’d pick up the cameras and recorders before he split for Nicaragua. One more look. She was worth it. Just on the chance of getting something better.

But, oh my God, it would hard to get anything better than this. He’d made lots of tapes of lots of women, but nothing as good as Sally alone in her bathroom.

Izzy figured he’d give it six months, a year, wait ’til he had everything squared away in Nicaragua, then get a couple of thousand duplicate tapes made. Then he’d go to the Internet, upload a sample and put the tape up for sale. Maybe call it The Merry Widow.