“Because I can’t leave you alone is what the doctors told me. In case you have a damn seizure or somethin’,” his father said sharply. “There’s nobody else to watch over you ’cept me.”
“What about Mom?”
Skinner didn’t answer. Fry now remembered seeing Louis Piejack cruise past the trailer that morning. He also remembered rushing to tell his dad at the crab docks.
“What about Mom?” he asked again. This time he opened his eyes. “Dad?”
“That’s where we’re goin’, to find your mother.”
“But where is she?”
“I don’t know for sure.”
“Is Mr. Piejack after her?” Fry asked.
“It’s possible.”
Fry slumped to one side, the football helmet clunking against the truck window.
Perry Skinner said, “I should’ve let ’em keep you in the hospital. What the hell was I thinking?”
“I would’ve just snuck out and hitched a ride.”
“Yeah, that sounds about right.”
Neither of them spoke again until they reached the flashing yellow light that marked the turn toward Everglades City.
Fry’s father said, “Your skateboard made out better than you. One of the wheels got snapped off, but that’s it.”
“Dad, you gonna bring your gun?”
“What?”
“When we go look for Mom. Are you takin’ the gun?”
“I am.” Perry Skinner cleared his throat.
“Good call,” Fry said.
Louis Piejack gazed through the binoculars and said, “Jackpot!” Then he said it another six or seven times.
“What is it?” Dealey asked miserably from the bow.
“Get your camera ready. I see titties.”
Dealey squinted ahead. The bay was a rippled puddle of glare, and the two kayaks were at least five hundred yards away.
“No good,” he said to Louis Piejack. “It’s too far, plus they’re backlit.”
“They ain’t Honey’s, but those are some major-league boobs. Rig up that damn camera.”
Dealey snapped open one of the Halliburtons and removed a Nikon body, which he attached to a small tripod. From the other case he took a 600-millimeter telephoto lens. Assembly was achieved with shaking fingers, for Dealey was afraid of dropping the expensive equipment overboard.
Louis Piejack laid off on the throttle, crowing, “Jackpot! Jackpot! They stopped at the island!” His good right hand held the field glasses to his eyes while his swathed left paw steered the johnboat.
“It’s still backlit, don’t you understand? There’s no shot from here,” Dealey complained.
“That’s Dismal Key. I know another way in.”
Dealey said, “Go slow, okay? Camera gets splashed and we’re out of business.”
And I’m out two grand, he thought.
“But I want movies,” Piejack said, “not pitchers.”
Dealey packed the Nikon away. He said they needed to get much closer to record usable videotape.
“Noooooo problem.” Piejack was fuzzy from the Vicodin tablets he’d eaten for lunch. It wasn’t easy maintaining a high-level addiction to prescription painkillers with one’s dominant hand swaddled so cumbersomely. Piejack had assigned Dealey-under threat of execution-to open the bottle and count out five tablets, which with lizardly flicks of his scabbed tongue he’d slurped from his captive’s palm. Dealey, mortified, had said nothing.
Piejack circled to the far side of the island and poked the johnboat along an overgrown mangrove creek. The talon-like branches clawed at Dealey’s skin and tore holes in his suit jacket, but Piejack seemed unconcerned. He ran the boat hard aground, snatched up his shotgun and jumped out. Dealey followed, lugging the camera gear.
“Don’t get no ideas,” Piejack warned.
“You think I’m crazy?”
In fact, Dealey had thought of nothing but escape since they’d motored out of Everglades City. Now, trailing Piejack into the heart of the island, Dealey waited for the loopy kidnapper to falter. With providence, Piejack soon would pass out from the excess of narcotics, presenting Dealey with a couple of options. Running like hell would be high on the list, but where would he go? Even if he got the johnboat running, Dealey wasn’t confident that he could find his way to the mainland.
A more practical idea was to snatch the shotgun while Louis Piejack slept, and then force the nimrod to ferry him back to town. Even with a plan in mind, Dealey remained anxious, for nothing on the streets of Fort Worth had prepared him for such a situation-being trapped in the Everglades with a maimed and trigger-happy fishmonger.
“Shut up,” Piejack barked.
“I didn’t say a word.”
“Then who the hell did?” Piejack halted, raising a begauzed hand. Dealey heard nothing except his own rapid breathing; the camera cases were heavy.
“Over there.” Piejack pointed to a fifteen-foot hill sprinkled with scrub and cactus plants. “You first.”
“Gimme a break.”
“How ’bout a load of bird shot up your butthole instead?”
The slope consisted almost entirely of broken oysters and seashells. Dealey’s shoes crunched noisily as he advanced, Piejack goosing him crudely with the barrel of the sawed-off. As they approached the top, Dealey heard voices on the other side. Piejack directed him toward a clump of sticky vines, where they took cover.
The three kayakers were in a clearing under a big tree, about fifty yards away. Boyd Shreave and Eugenie Fonda were sitting on a duffel bag, eating from plastic containers and sharing a gallon jug of water. The woman from the trailer park, Louis Piejack’s beloved Honey, stood spritzing her arms with bug juice.
“My God, ain’t she a treasure.” Piejack sighed. “Take out your camera, Hawkeye.”
“She’s got her clothes on. They all do.” Dealey felt sure that in his earlier sighting, Piejack had hallucinated the naked breasts.
“Just make me a goddamn movie,” Piejack whispered menacingly.
Dealey rigged up the camera and began to tape, Piejack hovering at his left shoulder. Through the viewfinder it appeared that Boyd Shreave was talking constantly, and that neither of the women was paying the slightest attention.
Dealey felt Piejack’s hot breath on his ear. Then, in a singsong voice: “Where’s my lil’ Honey Pie runnin’ off to?”
“How should I know?”
“Stay on her! Stay on her!”
Dealey said, “Easy, Louis.” He kept the camera trained on Honey as she made her way into a brushy stand of small trees.
“I bet she’s gonna pee,” Piejack said excitedly.
He’s probably right, thought Dealey, discreetly pressing the pause button.
“Are you still shootin’? Keep shootin’!” Piejack was panting like a broken-down dog. “Can you see her? I can’t see her no more.”
The crackpot was unaware that the tape had been stopped, so Dealey easily could have faked it. He could have kept quiet and pretended to record Honey squatting in the bushes, Piejack hopping beside him in elation.
Yet even Dealey, whose life’s work was invading and exploiting the most private moments of others, had moral boundaries. A sex tape was evidence; a pissing tape was trash.
The investigator pivoted with artistic deliberation, touched the record button and boldly advanced with the lens aimed squarely at his captor.
Louis Piejack began backing up. “Now what the hell you doin’?”
“Makin’ a movie,” Dealey replied, “about the sickest piece of shit I ever met.”
At the crest of the oyster mound, Piejack’s expression changed from ragged confusion to rage. He dug his heels into the loose shells and leveled the sawed-off at Dealey’s gut.
“Don’t come no closer. You’re done,” he said.
“I’m not so sure about that.” Dealey adjusted the exposure and continued taping.
Piejack peered at the red dot blinking beneath the lens. “Turn that damn thing off.”
“Don’t you want to be famous?”
“What for?”
“Stinking up the planet,” said Dealey.
“That’s it. Get ready to die, you sonofabitch.”
“Then good luck, Louis. You’re gonna need it.”