“She’s mine,” whispered a raw voice, causing Dealey to lose his balance and pitch sideways into a mound of potting soil. Somehow he managed to keep the video camera aloft, sparing it from damage. At first he was too startled to speak.
“Don’t you move,” the man whispered. He appeared to be wearing a white glove, and he was most definitely pointing a sawed-off shotgun at Dealey’s heaving gut. Unshaven and wispy-haired, the man reeked of booze, sweat and fish.
After Dealey caught his breath, he said, “It’s not what you think, mister.”
“Well, she’s mine. Like I tole you.”
“Who’s yours?”
“Honey. So you just put your johnson back in your pants and forget about her. Honey Santana is all mine.”
Dealey sat up slowly. “I don’t know who you’re talkin’ about, friend, and that’s the truth.” He introduced himself, and began to explain what he was doing. “I was hired by a rich lady in Texas to follow her husband.”
The man sniffed. “Is he here to do Honey, too?”
“No, sir, he brought his own girlfriend.”
“Well, I don’t care to believe a goddamn word outta your mouth. I think you’re a sexually degenerated individual. What they call a stalker,” the man said, “but tough shit. I was here first.”
Dealey kept an eye on the barrel of the shotgun, which was bobbing in conjunction with the stranger’s agitations. It was now apparent that it wasn’t a glove he was wearing; his left hand was completely bandaged except for the fingertips, one of which was poised on the trigger of the sawed-off.
“Can I ask your name?” Dealey said.
“Louis Peter Piejack.”
“What happened to your hand?”
The man was having difficulty hearing him over the air conditioner, so Dealey repeated the question.
“Crabs,” the man named Louis replied.
Dealey realized that he must have looked disgusted because the man angrily blurted: “Not those kinda crabs, you asswipe. Real crabs, okay? Jumbo stoneys.”
“Oh.” Dealey thought: I should’ve gotten out of this damn town while I had the chance.
“It was all ’cause of my feelin’s for Honey,” the man went on. “Her ex hired some vicious Cuban bastards to scare me off, but I don’t give up easy. He’s gonna be sorry he fucked with me. Let’s see that lil’ camera.”
Dealey noticed that the bedroom window had gone dark. He lowered his voice. “The camera’s not mine, Louis.”
“You steal it or somethin’?”
“No, I borrowed it for this job.”
Piejack instructed the private investigator to stand up and start moving. Dealey didn’t argue. He was waiting for an opportunity to jump the drunken twit and grab the shotgun. When they got to Piejack’s pickup truck, Piejack took the video camera and ordered Dealey to get behind the wheel.
Half an hour later they were parked on a long dirt road in pitch-blackness. Dealey was demonstrating the night-vision lens, with the expectation of distracting Piejack from the shotgun that he now cradled loosely in his right arm.
Piejack blinked at the viewfinder and expressed awe. “It’s like what our boys got in Iraq”-he pronounced it eye-rack-“for shootin’ ragheads in the dark!”
Dealey said, “Cool, huh?”
Piejack chortled. “Lookie there at Momma Possum!”
Fifty yards ahead, an opossum shuffled across the road, followed by a dozen little ones, their eyes glowing like rubies in the infrared lighting.
Piejack rocked in the truck, giddy at the sight. Dealey made what he thought was a slick move for the shotgun, but Piejack swung it sideways and cracked him solidly above the right eye. With a moan, Dealey blacked out against the steering wheel.
What awoke him was warmness running down his cheeks, and the sharp gun barrel jammed against his ribs. With a shirtsleeve he dabbed the blood from his face.
“What zackly did that Texas lady hire you to take movies of?” Piejack asked.
“What do you think.”
“You serious? That’s some high-class job you got, mister.”
Dealey shrugged. He had a wretched headache and was in no mood for a morality lecture.
“And I thought sellin’ shrimp was a smelly business,” Piejack said.
“Can I go now?” Dealey asked. “Take the damn camera, if you want it.”
The man grinned. “Tell you what-I wouldn’t mind havin’ some private home movies of Miss Honey Santana.”
“It’s all yours, Louis.”
“But see, here’s the problem.” He raised his bandaged mitt. “I can’t work all them teensy video buttons with my hand wrapped up such as it is-the focus and zoom and whatnot. Shit, I can barely find the trigger on this damn thing.”
He turned the shotgun away from Dealey and casually blew out the window on the driver’s side. Dealey screamed and clamped his hands over his ears.
Piejack himself seemed stunned by the force of the blast. He cracked the passenger door to switch on the dome light, then sourly contemplated the broken glass.
Dealey, who like many private investigators had developed a skill for lipreading, saw Piejack say, “Shit, I thought the fuckin’ window was down.”
“Let me go!” Dealey pleaded. “Take the video camera, my credit cards, whatever the hell you want. Just let me walk.”
“Not till you get me some sexy movies of Honey. Then you’re free to go,” Dealey observed the man saying. “But till then, Mr. Dealey, you work for me.”
“Please don’t do this.”
“Welcome aboard,” said Louis Piejack.
Thirteen
At dawn Fry got up to run. The weather was ideal, clear and cool. He went all the way to the caution light at the Tamiami Trail, where a family of tourists had piled out of an RV to snap pictures of a dead python on the road. Heading back toward town, Fry turned in to the trailer court where his mom lived. He passed two unchained pit bulls asleep near an empty black Escalade, and he thought it might be a good omen; usually the dogs were awake, waiting to chase him.
When Fry reached his mother’s street, he sat down under a neighbor’s mango tree. From there he could see the painted trailer, and in the front yard three figures that had to be his mom and the couple who’d come to visit her. They were strapping the kayaks-or trying to-on top of her car.
Fry considered going to help, but he decided to stay where he was. Once his mother saw him, she’d rush over and hug him and then start bragging to the visitors about his track trophies or whatever. Fry wasn’t up for that scene so early in the morning.
It worried him to think of his mom leading an expedition into the Ten Thousand Islands. Any fool could mark a marine chart at the kitchen table, but once you were out there it was a jungled maze; even experienced boaters could get lost. Fry knew his mother hadn’t been kayaking for years, since before the divorce, although she claimed to have been practicing while he was at school. He hoped she wasn’t feeling too ambitious. A leisurely day trip around Chokoloskee Bay would be perfect-from there a blind goose could find its way back to the mainland.
As he watched the visitors get in the car, Fry was nagged by the suspicion that they weren’t really old friends of his mother. She’d been too sketchy about the connection. He didn’t know why she would lie about who they were, but he felt almost certain that she was up to more mischief.
After she drove away, Fry stepped from the shade of the mango tree and resumed his run, heading in the opposite direction. He made it as far as the corner when he was almost clipped by a pine-green pickup with two men in the cab. Fry darted off the road, but not before he caught a good look at the passenger.
It was Mr. Piejack.
Fry couldn’t imagine a single good reason for that perverted turd to be cruising his mother’s street. He watched the brake lights flicker as the truck slowed briefly in front of the painted trailer, then sped off.
On an impulse Fry ran after the pickup. He kept running long after it was out of sight.