Carl Hiaasen - Nature Girl

“That he’s an asshole. Seven hours later he calls to see if I’m alive!”

“Say one word about me, I’ll-”

“What-kill me? Rape me? Stake me to an anthill?”

The phone stopped ringing.

“Hey, where you goin’?” she asked.

“To make a call,” Sammy Tigertail said.

“Watch my battery. I didn’t bring a charger.”

He laughed. “I didn’t bring any electricity.”

He went outside and dialed his mother’s house at the reservation. Her machine answered, so he left a message saying that he was camping in the Fakahatchee, collecting tree snails.

Next he phoned his uncle Tommy, who answered on the tenth ring.

“Who’s Gillian St. Croix?” he said, reading from his caller ID, “and why are you calling from her number?”

“Long story. Is anybody hunting for me?”

“No, but they’ve been out to the reservation asking about a man from Milwaukee.”

Sammy Tigertail’s heart quickened as he thought of Wilson at the bottom of Lostmans River. “Do they know about the airboat ride?”

“My guess is no. But that drunken shithead ran the SunPass lane on Alligator Alley, so they got a photo of his car heading west. They figure he probably drove into the canal on his way to Big Cypress.”

“I like that theory.”

“We’re doing what we can.”

“What kind of questions are they asking?”

“Don’t sweat it,” Uncle Tommy said.

Sammy Tigertail was worried. What if the dead tourist had big-shot kin back in Wisconsin? The search might drag on for months.

“Where the hell are you?” asked his uncle.

“Some island near Everglades City. I don’t even know the name.”

“No problem. I’ll get the air force up and we’ll find you.”

Tommy Tigertail had been the financial architect of the tribe’s early bingo enterprises, which had made him a power player in the Seminole hierarchy. He was not a fan of white men, but he liked their toys. A Falcon jet and several luxury turboprops were available to him on an hour’s notice.

“You can stay at the town house on Grand Bahama until the heat’s off,” he told his nephew.

“Thanks, but I’m okay out here,” Sammy Tigertail said. “I’m learning the guitar.”

“Your brother told me. Is she with you-this Gillian girl?”

“Temporarily.”

“Don’t lose your senses, boy. White pussy is bad medicine.”

Sammy Tigertail chuckled. “Speaking of which, you seen Cindy?”

“Yeah. She says she’s finally off the crystal and dating a realestate man from Boca Grande. I told her she’ll be getting your remittance, and she said you’re a prince.”

“Hang on a second.” Sammy Tigertail flattened himself against the cistern wall and scanned the sky.

“She said she’s going to take the first check and buy herself some new boobs,” his uncle continued. “She wanted me to be sure and tell you thanks.”

Sammy Tigertail heard the thing clearly now, coming in fast from the south. “Uncle Tommy, I gotta go,” he said, and vaulted through the narrow opening.

He landed hard on the bare cement floor, and lay there listening as a small plane passed very low over the island. A shadow moved to block the sunlight, and there was Gillian standing over him-pointing the rifle at his chest. Sammy Tigertail noticed that she’d removed his shirt from the point of the barrel, indicating a possible seriousness of purpose.

“Are you arresting me?” he asked.

Gillian sighed in exasperation. “Gimme the damn phone.”

Eugenie Fonda didn’t complain about flying coach, although she let it slip to Boyd Shreave that her book publisher had always sent her first-class.

“Book publisher?” he said.

“Didn’t I mention?” Eugenie thinking: Damn those Valiums.

“That you wrote a book? No, I definitely would’ve remembered,” said Shreave. “What was it, like a cookbook?”

“Not exactly, sugar.”

The plane was sitting on the runway at DFW, eleventh in line for takeoff. Eugenie would have killed for a pre-flight vodka tonic, but there was no prayer. Not in fucking coach.

“It was a few years back,” she said. “I was involved with a man who turned out to be a seriously bad guy. Later they asked me to do a book-wasn’t my idea.”

“What was it called? Maybe I read it,” he said.

Eugenie Fonda would not have been shocked to learn that Boyd Shreave hadn’t cracked a book since twelfth grade.

She said, “Storm Ghoul. How’s that for a title? Sounds like a Halloween movie.”

“You make some bread off it?”

“I did okay. It was on the best-seller list for a while.”

“Oh, really.” Shreave sagged into a pout. “I thought you and me weren’t going to have any secrets.”

“I don’t recall such an agreement, Boyd.”

“You wrote a best-seller! That’s huge, Genie. Why didn’t you tell me?”

“Because it was a long time ago and the money’s all gone.”

“Fine. Anything else I should know?”

“Yeah, there is,” she said. “I don’t date nine-year-olds, or guys who act like them. So sit up straight, paste a smile on your face and show everyone on the plane that you’re proud to be flying with a hot-looking lady like me.”

They didn’t speak again until they were somewhere over Louisiana, where Boyd Shreave screwed up the nerve to ask about the other man.

“Well, he turned out to be a killer,” Eugenie said, emptying the last droplet from the vodka miniature into her cup. “Bonneville was his name. The story was all over the media.”

“And you were married to this lunatic?”

“No, I was his girlfriend. He drowned his wife and blamed it on a hurricane.”

“Holy Christ. I do remember that one,” Shreave murmured. “It was on Court TV, right?”

Eugenie said, “Let’s talk about a happier subject-like famine, or polio.” She signaled a flight attendant for another drink.

They were passing over Panama City when Boyd leaned closer and whispered, “So, besides being totally beautiful and sexy, you’re also a famous writer. That’s pretty flippin’ cool.”

Out the window Eugenie could see the gleaming crescent shoreline of the Florida Panhandle. For one fine moment she was able to imagine that she was traveling alone.

She said, “I’m not a famous writer, Boyd, I’m a famous mistress. Big difference.”

He placed a hand on one of her legs. “But think about it, Genie. A man killed for you. How many girls can say that?”

“Somehow it didn’t seem all that flattering at the time.” She was irritated that he’d gotten aroused by the thought of her consorting with a homicidal nutball.

“It wasn’t exactly the high point of my life,” she added, thinking: But what if it was?

Boyd smooched her neck and simultaneously sent his fingers reconnoitering beneath her skirt. Eugenie Fonda clamped her knees so emphatically that he yipped and jerked away, drawing an amused glance from a young cowboy across the aisle.

“You behave,” Eugenie said to Boyd, who decamped into another slouch.

As she drained what she vowed would be her final cocktail of the flight, she observed through the clear bottom of the plastic cup that the young cowboy was smiling at her. She did not smile back, although her outlook vastly improved.

Five miles below, the green Gulf of Mexico licked at the coastline. Somewhere toward the east, nuzzled by the Suwannee River, was Gilchrist County, which in scraggly ten-acre parcels Eugenie Fonda and Boyd Shreave had hawked over the phone to all those innocent saps. From high up in the clouds it didn’t seem like such a bad deal.

Eugenie closed her eyes and sucked on the last ice cube, which clacked lightly against the pearl in her tongue.