Carl Hiaasen: Flush

That night I was jolted awake by wailing sirens, one after another. I figured there was a bad wreck somewhere on the highway. The clock by my bed said 4:20.

With all the noise, it took me a while to go back to sleep. The next thing I recall, it was daylight and Abbey was shaking me by the shoulders.

“Get up, Noah, hurry!” she whispered. “The cops are here to arrest Dad!”

I jumped into a pair of jeans and ran to the living room. Abbey was a half step behind me.

My father was still in his pajamas, and sitting in his favorite armchair. On each side of him stood a uniformed sheriff's deputy. I recognized one of them as the jowly guy from the jailhouse.

Standing in front of Dad was a young, barrel-chested man wearing a shiny blue suit. The man was jotting in a notebook, except he wasn't a newspaper reporter. He was a detective.

“This is Lieutenant Shucker,” said my mother.

Abbey and I nodded hello. We were real nervous, though not as nervous as Dad. Mom was pouring coffee into his mouth as fast as he could slurp it down.

“Mr. Underwood, what happened to your hands?” Lieutenant Shucker asked. “You didn't happen to burn them, did you?”

“No, I didn't burn 'em. I broke 'em,” my father said. “Donna, show him the door.”

“I'm not going anywhere,” the detective said curtly.

“No, I mean show him the holes in the doors,” Dad explained.

Lieutenant Shucker examined the damage, but he didn't seem impressed.

“Where were you this morning,” he asked my dad, “between three A.M. and four A.M.?”

“He's been right here with us,” my mother interjected.

“That's right,” I said. “Dad was home all night.”

“How do you know that for sure?” the detective asked snidely.

Abbey looked as if she wanted to bite him. “Geez, mister, check out his hands!” she said. “He can't pick his own nose, much less drive a car!”

The two deputies began to snicker, then caught themselves. Mom's jaw tightened. “Abbey, that'll be enough from you.”

Dad tried to act indignant by folding his arms, but the casts were too bulky. “Officers, what's this all about?” he demanded.

“Mr. Underwood, you have the right to remain silent,” Lieutenant Shucker said. “You also have the right to an attorney-”

“Wait a minute! Hold on!” I burst out. “You're arresting him?”

“Not right this minute,” the detective said, “but we've got lots more questions. He's definitely our prime suspect in this crime.”

“What crime?” Abbey and I exclaimed in unison.

“Yeah, what crime?” asked my father.

“Burning down the Coral Queen, ” Lieutenant Shucker replied. “It's called arson.”

The detective wouldn't tell us anything more, but Shelly filled us in by phone later. It was a wild story.

Dusty Muleman had invited all the local big shots and politicians to the grand reopening of the casino boat. They all showed up, too, since Shelly was pouring free drinks. There were fireworks, a lobster buffet, and calypso music from the steel-drum band. The party rocked on until two in the morning. Afterward it took Shelly forty-five minutes to clean up the bar, and she was one of the last to leave the boat.

The first explosion took place shortly after three A.M., and within half an hour the Coral Queen was on fire from bow to stern. The new watchman, Luno's replacement, nearly fried when a falling cinder ignited the ticket shed, where he was phoning for help. The watchman made a frantic attempt to douse the flames with a dock hose, then ran from the marina.

By the time the fire engines got there, the gambling boat was a floating torch. By the time Dusty Muleman got there, it had burned to the waterline-seventy-three feet of smoldering ash and melted poker chips. Naturally, he believed that my father was the culprit. Knowing what Dad thought of Dusty, the sheriff didn't need much convincing.

Even Abbey felt the circumstances were suspicious.

“You think he might've had something to do with this?” she asked me in private. “Maybe he paid somebody to go burn the boat.”

“Paid them with what?”

“How about with the thousand bucks he got from the sanctuary?”

“No way, Abbey,” I said. “Absolutely impossible.”

But she'd gotten me worried. What if Dad had flipped out again? Blown another gasket. Flown off the handle.

So when we were alone, I asked him.

“I won't tell a soul if you were involved,” I said. It was a promise I wasn't sure I could keep.

“Noah, it wasn't me. I swear on a stack of Bibles.” He solemnly raised his right arm, cast and all. He was so intense that it startled me.

“I had nothing to do with torching the Coral Queen, ” he said. “Please believe me-and please tell Abbey to believe me, too.”

And, in the end, we did.

Because my father had never lied to us about something serious. Whenever he screwed up, he admitted it right away. He always took the blame, the responsibility-and the punishment. Why would he change now?

Mr. Shine, our lawyer, was at the house when the detective and two deputies returned that afternoon with a search warrant. They snooped around for a long time, but they couldn't find anything that connected Dad to the boat arson.

Lieutenant Shucker was visibly disappointed. “I ought to lock you up anyhow,” he said to Dad. “It's crystal clear what happened-you had the motive, you had the opportunity…”

“Without evidence you've got no case,” said Mr. Shine, looking less mopey than usual. “I would kindly advise you to stop bothering my client.”

“Evidence?” the detective scoffed. “You want evidence? Just look at the brand-new casts on his hands-obviously he burned himself while he was lighting the fire.”

Dad angrily clacked his plaster paws together. “What a load of bull!”

“We'll see about that. I'll be back tomorrow with another warrant, Mr. Underwood, and a doctor to saw off those casts. If your fingers are barbecued, you're goin' straight to the slammer.”

“But what about the fist holes in our doors?” Abbey protested. “That proves he's telling the truth.”

“Nice try,” Lieutenant Shucker said sarcastically, “but you could do the same thing with a tire iron.” Then he stood up to leave.

My mother had been sitting on the sofa, not saying a word. I figured she was just depressed, thinking about Dad returning to jail and how he might never get his captain's license and how our quiet, seminormal life was a total mess again. That's what I was thinking anyway.

But it turned out that Mom wasn't depressed at all. She was merely waiting for the right moment to drop a little stink bomb on the snotty detective.

“Here, Lieutenant,” she said pleasantly, “you might want to take a look at this.”

She handed a computerized printout to Lieutenant Shucker, who studied it suspiciously.

“It's the bill from the emergency room,” Mom said.

“Yeah, Mrs. Underwood, I can read.”

“From when my husband was admitted for severe injuries to both his hands.”

The detective frowned impatiently. “So? What's your point?”

My mother is truly awesome in situations like that. Nothing fazes her. She stood beside Lieutenant Shucker and calmly pointed to a line of type on the computer receipt.

“He was treated for fractures, not burns. It says so right here, Lieutenant.” Mom smiled. “That's my first point.”

The detective grunted.

“My second point,” Mom went on, “concerns the precise time my husband arrived at the hospital. See? It was 11:33 in the morning. Yesterday morning, Lieutenant.”

“Oh.”