Fay headed toward Mattheson Hammock at top speed. The outlandish thought that Booger's injury had something to do with Granny's death hovered in her mind. It was more a feeling than a thought, like the sixth sense Granny had always talked about. It was beyond logic. Fay had always believed the minds of animals were badly underestimated. Someday the true potentials would be revealed, and humans would feel ashamed of their ignorant practices of slavery and butchery.
Fay slowed the boat as she neared the location. "I'll watch starboard. Britt, take port." She cut the engine to an idle and they drifted.
"Look," Britt hollered. She pointed at a half-moon shadow just visible under the edge of a dock. "There he is, just behind that black Cigarette boat." Britt blew out some air. "That's Joey G.'s dock. I don't think we should get any closer."
Fay turned to ask Jake. "Where's Jake?" "Probably stopped off for another beer." Fay didn't take time to ask what she meant. Booger moved out from under the dock. He raised his head. His round black eyes stared into Fay's. He did a couple slow logrolls on the surface between them and the Cigarette.
"What's the matter with him?" asked Britt.
"Must be his equilibrium is off. There's a gash in his jowl. It looks like a bullet wound, for heaven's sake."
Booger started smashing his tail flat on the surface of the water and angling his body toward the Cigarette. He smashed and angled, smashed and angled.
"I don't know what he's doing," Fay said. She pulled the boat closer and idled. "Somebody really tore up the hull of that boat. I hope they didn't kill any coral."
Booger smashed the water hard. Spray flew into the boat and drenched Britt from the shoulders down. "Damn!" she yelled. "Booger is going nuts. What's his problem?"
"I don't know, but I have a bad feeling."
Britt heard a sound and turned. Fay looked at her face and did likewise. On the dock behind them was a pudgy, balding man and a muscular, dark-haired man with a scorpion tattoo on his arm. She recognized him. "Hector," she said.
"Joey G.," said Britt, waving a hand at the fat one. "I thought you were in Fiji."
Hector lifted his other arm from his side and pointed an Uzi their way.
"Damn," said Britt. "Double damn."
"Pull your boat up to the dock, ladies," said Joey G. "We need to talk."
Fay remembered the canister in the starboard locker: big trouble. She saw the throttle out of the corner of her eye, and thought about slamming it forward. These guys were probably bluffing ... but then she thought better. It was Miami.
She shifted into reverse to maneuver into the spot and saw Booger hide himself back under the dock. She couldn't risk Britt's life. She'd have to wing it, pick the right moment to make a move.
11. WHERE ARE YOU DYING TONIGHT? – John Dufresne
In Biscayne Bay:Call me Booger. Now it is November in my soul and twilight in my heart. Light is leaving me. And hope. It is this blackness above all that appalls me. The blackness to come, the blackness of this loathsome hull above me, and the inky black hearts of those Stygian scoundrels who took Ma from me, the dark-complexioned, cloven-footed desperado who fired the bullet into my snout and that pink and squabby venom spouter who steered this floating coffin. The pair of them are madness-maddened, blackness-blackened. They have all that is bloody on their minds. Whatlunatic vision is it that drives these blackguards? Whatfurious passion? What unimaginable fear has freed them from the irons of civility? Loosed their bonds of horror? Nothing so simple as greed. Not that. We see differently, they and I. They have their colors, I my grays. But blackness we share. Blackness, agent of the mind, not the eye. We all see black alike. And it's blackness where our fates will meet. I have a plan.
At the Chapel of Our Lady of Perpetual Sorrow and Everlasting Anguish:Monsignor Armand Turgeon celebrated the funeral mass for his friend and patron Marion McAlister Williams. He praised her generous philanthropy, her unconventional but enthusiastic faith, her tenacious efforts to save the Everglades from the ravages of Big Sugar and the Corps of Engineers, to save the wildness that was Florida from the teeming masses breathing free, flushing waste into the bay, and paving the earth. Father Turgeon suggested that after death we return to what we were before birth – washed in the precious blood of the Lord and rocked in His mighty arms. He looked out at the assembled mourners, at the politicians, the curious, looked into the glassy eyes and disinterested faces of these waking dreamers who fend off their fears with distraction. He told them that our longing to survive is vanity only. Even God, he said, envies our mortality.
Jake Lassiter hadn't heard a word the reverend said. He'd spent the morning at the library, trying to keep his mind off Fay and Britt and where they might be and in how many pieces. He looked up "manatee" in the dictionary and learned that it comes from the Cariban manati,which means breast, and for some reason he found the revelation distressing and depressing. He couldn't stop himself from thinking about that sea cow Booger, and about Fay and Britt. What kind of man beholds a hulking sausage-shaped, beaver-tailed, cleft-lipped creature and decides to name it for the female breast? A man too long at sea, perhaps. But still. Jake reminded himself where he was. He studied the Stations of the Cross on the stained-glass window. Veronica wipes the face of Jesus. He stared at the crucifix suspended above the altar, thought Jesus looked like the daring young man on the flying trapeze. Jake couldn't stop his obsessive thoughts: beaver, sausage, tail, lips, cleavage, breast. What was worse, he'd also read that a manatee's breasts were situated under the flippers, where appendage meets torso. Jake cursed himself for going to the library in the first place. It would never happen again. He turned to Janice Deal, his buddy John's ex, smiled, squeezed her hand. She smiled, returned her attention to the priest. Jake inhaled her vanilla scent. He tried not to think of breasts in her armpits.
Judge Manuel Dominguez wondered why this priest was carrying on about the failure of a people to cast off its oppressors. Quebec, he was yapping about, not Cuba. Not a very apt or decorous sermon, certainly. What did all this have to do with the death of this esteemed grande dame? Had he missed something? All this sadness. First his nephew Victor and now Ms. Williams. Poor Victor, a lousy bailiff, sure, and a worse jai alai player. "Victorless" they called him at the fronton. But why would he try to do that, race the drawbridge like he did in the new Acura? With the young, the judge thought, often the danger is in not taking the risk.
Vernon Sawyer wanted to sing "What Wondrous Love Is This?" "Abide with Me," or "There Is Power in the Blood," anything. Why can't Catholics sing? He was tired with all this talk, talk, talk. He wanted his religion to carry him out of the church, out of himself, to lift his heart, to set his feet in ecstasy. He looked at the hair of this vaguely familiar man seated in front of him, saw how it thinned at the crown. He hated the treachery of baldness. Vernon knew that when there is a mystery, there are always two stories – what happened and what seemed to happen. What seemed to happen here was a drowning. But no, not with the granddaughter gone missing like she'd done. That was no coincidence, no sir. Something to do with that key he'd passed to Fay. The key to the whole mystery, likely.
Dash Brandon didn't like his seat. He belonged up there with Governor What's-his-face and Jimmy Carter. This sort of affront would never happen at Planet Hollywood or at the Raleigh, where just this morning he'd been seated by Johnnie Cochran's table. What was he in town for? Defending some fat tourist? Something about a riot. Or was it the Club Hell fiasco? Dash had given Johnnie a nod and a conspiratorial thumbs-up. He'd eavesdropped as Johnnie rehearsed his forensic couplets: "If the facts don't indicate, you must vindicate," "If the fault's with the police, you must release," and so on throughout the brunch. Dash thought about his own funeral. A full-couch, polished copper casket with taffeta lining, interior lighting, brass fittings. Or an Egyptian sarcophagus. Wouldn't that be a hoot? Show tunes and spontaneous eulogies. He cast his pallbearers: Arnold, Bruce, Sly, Wesley, Woody, the Boz. No, not the Boz. Denzel. Ziff Bodine nudged Dash, showed him the sketch he'd been doodling. Castro, it looked like, without the beard and toupee.