In the other kayak, Eugenie Fonda could be heard saying, “Boyd, would you please find out where the hell this woman is taking us.”
Followed in short order by Shreave hollering: “Hey, Nature Girl, where we goin’? I gotta stop and unload some a that coffee.”
Honey picked up the pace. As she paddled harder, the songs in her head began to fade. “Stay close, and watch out for oyster bars,” she called over her shoulder. “We’ll be there soon.”
Fry showered quickly and threw on some semi-fresh clothes, then grabbed his book bag and skateboarded to the crab docks. Perry Skinner was on one of his boats, taking the diesel apart. Fry climbed aboard and told him what he’d seen earlier at the trailer park.
“I’ll check it out,” his father said, seemingly unconcerned. “You get along to school now, so you won’t be late.”
“But what if Mr. Piejack is after Mom?”
“Don’t worry about that asshole.”
As soon as his son had gone, Skinner hopped down from the boat and drove home, where he removed a loaded.45-caliber semiautomatic from a floor safe in the laundry room. Even in Florida it’s against the law for convicted felons to have a gun, but as vice mayor of the town (and one who’d successfully petitioned to have his civil rights restored), Skinner had granted himself an ad hoc exemption. None of the police officers would dare arrest him, and he was on poker-playing terms with the local sheriff’s deputies. Only the federal park rangers posed a potential problem, but they mostly kept to themselves.
Skinner got on his motorcycle and went searching for Louis Piejack. Nobody was hard to find in Everglades City, which was geographically as complicated as a postage stamp. Piejack’s green pickup was parked next to the boat ramp by the Rod and Gun Club. From a distance Skinner was unable to identify the two men sitting in the front seat, though he assumed one of them was Louis. There was no sign of Honey Santana or her guests. Skinner parked the motorcyle near the restaurant and strolled down to the seawall, where Piejack would be sure to notice him. The gun was tucked in the back of Skinner’s pants and concealed by the tail of his work shirt.
Looking downriver he caught sight of two kayaks, one red and one yellow, heading more or less toward Chokoloskee Bay. The woman in the red kayak looked from a distance like Honey, which meant it probably was. Nobody else in the whole county looked like Honey. In the second kayak was a man in a wide-brimmed hat and a woman in a papaya-colored halter. Their teamwork with the paddles was not exactly fluid.
Skinner heard rubber peeling and glanced over his shoulder-Louis Piejack’s truck, speeding away. Skinner sat down and hung his legs over the seawall and watched the kayaks slowly shrink to bright specks crossing the water. He assured himself that he was doing this not because he still cared for his ex-wife, who was certifiably tilted, but because she was the mother of his one and only son and therefore worthy of concern.
After taking the handgun home, he returned to the crab docks, where one of his young mechanics, Randy, was doing battle with the broken diesel. Skinner told him to move aside. At lunchtime a woman whom Skinner was dating stopped by with cold beer and Cuban sandwiches. Her name was Debbie but she preferred to be called Sienna. Skinner had once asked her why she’d named herself after a Crayola, and she’d gotten her feelings hurt. She was only twenty-six years old and drove a propane truck back and forth from Port Charlotte. Her brother was a tight end for the Jacksonville Jaguars, which at least gave her and Skinner something to talk about during football season. The rest of the year it was pretty slow going.
“I’m so psyched about tonight,” Sienna said. “Aren’t you?”
Skinner studied the bubbles in his beer. He was trying hard to recall what was on the agenda.
“Green Day, remember?” she said. “God, Perry, don’t tell me.”
“Sure, I remember. They’re playin’ in Fort Myers.”
“You said you liked ’em.”
“I meant it, too.” To Skinner’s knowledge, he’d never heard any of the band’s songs; he was country to the bone.
Sienna said, “We don’t have to go if you don’t want. I could sell the stupid tickets on eBay in about thirty seconds.”
“Please don’t pout. I already said we’re going.”
“Twice I went with you to see Willie Nelson. Twice.”
“Yes, you did.” Skinner wasn’t in the mood for a rock concert, but he figured the distraction would do him good.
“Hank Jr., too,” Sienna went on, “or did you forget that one?”
“No, I didn’t forget.” Skinner wanted lunch to be done. He wanted Sienna to go away before he was obliged to heave her overboard.
“Excuse me for a second,” he said, and stepped into the wheelhouse.
Randy was thumbing through a MotoCross magazine, his rubber boots propped on the console. Skinner silently finished his beer and watched an old johnboat coming from upriver. In the bow was a paunchy, uncomfortable-looking man with a shiner over one eye. He was wearing a wrinkled gray business suit, unusual attire for a fishing trip, and on his lap he protectively embraced two metallic travel cases.
In the back of the johnboat sat Louis Piejack, his undamaged hand holding the tiller stick of the engine. He never glanced once at the crab docks as he puttered past, so he was unaware that he was being watched. Otherwise, he might have made an effort to conceal the sawed-off shotgun, which lay in plain view on the deck of the boat, between his feet.
“Goddammit,” Perry Skinner muttered.
Randy glanced up from his magazine. “What’s up, boss?”
There was no time to call the guys in Hialeah. Skinner would have to handle it himself, which was fine.
“What’re you doin’ tonight, Randy?”
“Not a fuckin’ thing, boss.”
“You wanna go see Green Day with Sienna? It’s on me,” Skinner said.
“Far fuckin’ out!”
Dealey wasn’t a tough guy. He’d never been a cop or Feeb, unlike many other private investigators. Eighteen years Dealey had worked for an insurance company, knocking down phony disability claims, before going out on his own.
And usually it wasn’t dangerous work, spying on unfaithful spouses. Dealey had only been injured once, by a flying vibrator. It had happened while he was surreptitiously photographing an acrobatic young couple in Candleridge. The woman, having spotted Dealey, had snatched the nine-inch missile from a nightstand and spiraled it with uncanny accuracy through the open ground-floor window of her apartment. Struck in the throat, the investigator had run for five blocks before collapsing in a cherry hedge. For three weeks afterward he’d been unable to speak or to take solid foods. The vibrator had tumbled into his camera bag, and Dealey kept the flesh-colored appliance in his desk as a sobering reminder of the perils of his trade. The batteries he’d tossed in the trash.
In all his many years of surveilling cheaters, layabouts and fraud artists, nobody had ever pointed a gun at Dealey, much less fired a round past his head. Louis Piejack was both vengeful and nuts, an unpromising combination.
“I’m not a great swimmer,” he’d warned Piejack as they got in the johnboat.
“Tough shit.”
Dealey’s hearing had returned to normal, so there was nothing fuzzy about Piejack’s response.
“Why don’t we wait for Honey to come back?” the investigator suggested. “What kind of sexy pictures you expect me to get when she’s paddling a kayak?”
“Shut your fat yap,” said Piejack.
Dealey had positioned the bulky Halliburtons on his lap to shield his vital organs from another gunshot, accidental or intended. As the small flat-bottomed craft headed downriver, he settled upon a strategy of falsely befriending Louis Piejack so that the man would let down his guard.