Stormy Weather (7 page)

At the lunch break, Jim Tile and Brenda Rourke went to an Arby’s. She was worried about her upcoming transfer to South Florida; Jim Tile couldn’t say much to allay her fears. She said she was studying Spanish, in preparation for road duty in Miami. The first phrase she’d learned was:
Sale del carro con las manos arriba
. Out of the car with your hands up!

At the time, Jim Tile held no romantic intentions. Brenda Rourke was a nice person, that was all. He never even asked if she had a boyfriend. A few months later, when he was down in Dade County for a trial, he ran into her at FHP headquarters. Later they went to dinner and then to Brenda’s apartment, where they were up until three in the morning, chatting, of all things—initially out of nervousness, and later out of an easy intimacy. The trial lasted six days, and every night Jim Tile found himself back at Brenda’s place. Every morning they awakened exactly as they’d fallen asleep—her head in the crook of his right shoulder, his feet hanging off the short bed. He’d never felt so peaceful. After the trial ended and Jim Tile returned to North Florida, he and Brenda took turns commuting for long weekends.

He wasn’t much of a talker, but Brenda could drag it out of him. She especially liked to hear about the time he was assigned to guard
the governor of Florida—not just any governor, but the one who’d quit, disappeared and become a legendary recluse. Brenda had been in high school, but she remembered when it happened. The newspapers and TV had gone wild. “Mentally unstable,” was what her twelfth-grade civics teacher had said of the runaway governor.

When Jim Tile had heard that, he threw back his head and laughed. Brenda would sit cross-legged on the carpet, her chin in her hands, engrossed by his stories of the one they now called Skink. Out of loyalty and prudence, Jim Tile didn’t mention that he and the man had remained the closest of friends.

“I wish I’d met him,” Brenda had said, in the past tense, as if Skink were dead. Because Jim Tile had, perhaps unconsciously, made it sound like he was.

Now, two years later, it seemed that Brenda’s improbable wish might come true. The governor had surfaced in the hurricane zone.

On the ride back from Card Sound, she asked: “Why would he tie himself to a bridge during a storm?” It was the logical question.

Jim Tile said, “He’s been waiting for a big one.”

“What for?”

“Brenda, I can’t explain. It only makes sense if you know him.”

She said nothing for a mile or two, then: “Why didn’t you tell me that you two still talk?”

“Because we seldom do.”

“Don’t you trust me?”

“Of course.” He pulled her close enough to steal a kiss.

She pulled away, a spark in her pale-blue eyes. “You’re going to try to find him. Come on, Jim, be straight with me.”

“I’m afraid he’s got a loose wire. That’s not good.”

“This isn’t the first time, is it?”

“No,” said Jim Tile, “it’s not the first time.”

Brenda brought his hand to her lips and kissed his knuckles lightly. “It’s OK, big guy. I understand about friends.”

When they got to Augustine’s house, Bonnie Lamb called her answering machine in New York. She listened twice to Max’s message, then replayed it for Augustine.

“What do you think?” she asked.

“Not good. Is your husband worth a lot of money?”

“He does all right, but he’s no millionaire.”

“And his family?”

Bonnie said her husband’s father was quite wealthy. “But I’m sure Max wasn’t foolish enough to mention it to the kidnappers.”

Augustine made no such assumption. He heated tomato soup for Bonnie and put clean linens on the bed in the guest room. Then he went to the den and called a friend with the FBI. By the time he got off the phone, Bonnie Lamb had fallen asleep on the living-room sofa. He carried her to the spare room and tucked her under the covers. Then he went to the kitchen and fixed two large rib-eye steaks and a baked potato, which he washed down with a cold bottle of Amstel.

Later he took a long hot shower and thought about how wonderful Mrs. Lamb—warm and damp from the rain and sweat—had smelled in his arms. It felt good to have a woman in the house again, even for just a night. Augustine wrapped himself in a towel and stretched out on the hardwood floor in front of the television. He flipped back and forth between local news broadcasts, hoping not to see any of his dead uncle’s wild animals running amok, or Mrs. Lamb’s husband being loaded into a coroner’s wagon.

At midnight Augustine heard a cry from the guest room. He correctly surmised that Mrs. Lamb had discovered his skull collection. He found her sitting up, the covers pulled to her chin. She was gazing at the wall.

“I thought it was a dream,” she said.

“Please don’t be afraid.”

“Are they real?”

“Friends send them to me,” Augustine said, “from abroad, mostly. One was a Christmas present from a fishing guide in Islamorada.” He wasn’t sure what Bonnie Lamb thought of his hobby, so he apologized for the fright. “Some people collect coins. I’m into forensic artifacts.”

“Body parts?”

“Not fresh ones—artifacts. Believe it or not, a good skull is hard to come by.”

That was the line that usually sent them bolting for the door. Bonnie didn’t move.

“Can I look?”

Augustine took one from a shelf. She inspected it casually, as if it were a cantaloupe in a grocery store. Augustine smiled; he liked this lady.

“Male or female?” Bonnie turned the skull in her hands.

“Male, late twenties, early thirties. Guyanese, circa 1940. Came from a medical school in Texas.”

Bonnie asked why the lower jaw was missing. Augustine explained that it fell off when the facial muscles decayed. Most old skulls were found without the mandible.

Lifting it by the eye sockets, Bonnie returned the spooky relic to its place on the wall. “How many have you got up there?”

“Nineteen.”

She whistled. “And how many are women?”

“None,” said Augustine. “They’re all young males. So you’ve got nothing to worry your pretty head about.”

She rolled her eyes at the joke, then asked: “Why all males?”

“To remind me of my own mortality.”

Bonnie groaned. “You’re one of
those
.”

“Other times,” Augustine said, “when I’m sure my life has gone to hell, I come in here and think about what happened to these poor bastards. It improves my outlook considerably.”

She said, “Well, that makes about as much sense as everything else. Can I take a shower?”

Later, over coffee, he told her what the FBI man had said. “They’ll treat your husband’s disappearance as a kidnapping when there’s a credible ransom demand. And he stressed the word ‘credible.’”

“But what about the message on the machine? That other man’s voice cutting in?”

“Of course they’ll listen to it. But I’ve got to warn you, they’re shorthanded right now. Lots of agents got hit hard by the storm, so they’re out on personal leave.”

Bonnie was exasperated by the lack of interest in Max’s plight. Augustine explained that restless husbands often used natural disasters as a cover to flee their wives. Precious manpower and resources were wasted tracking them to the apartments, condominiums and houseboats of their respective mistresses. Consequently, post-hurricane reports of missing spouses were now received with chilly skepticism.

Bonnie Lamb said, “For God’s sake, we just got married. Max wouldn’t take off on a stunt like that.”

Augustine shrugged. “People get cold feet.”

She leaned across the kitchen table and took a swing at him. Augustine blocked the punch with a forearm. He told Mrs. Lamb to settle down. Her cheeks were flushed and her eyes shone.

Augustine said, “I meant we can’t rule out anything.”

“But you heard that man on the answering machine!”

“Yeah, and I’m wondering why a serious kidnapper would be such a smartass. ‘Don’t flatter yourself, Max.’ And then the guy gets on the line and says, ‘I love you, Bonnie.’ Just to needle your husband, see? Make him feel like shit.” Augustine poured more coffee for both of them. He said, “There’s something damn strange about it. That’s all I’m saying.”

Bonnie Lamb had to agree. “To leave his voice all over a telephone tape—”

“Exactly. The guy’s either incredibly stupid, or he’s got brass balls—”

“Or he just doesn’t care,” Bonnie said.

“You picked up on that, too.”

“It’s scary.”

Augustine said, “I’m not so sure.”

“Don’t start again. Max is
not
faking this!”

“That stuff about having you call Pete at Rodale, the Bronco billboard—was he talking in code or what? Because some maniac kidnaps
me
, the last thing I’m worried about is keeping up with my ad accounts. What I’m worried about is saving my hide.”

Bonnie looked away. “You don’t know Max, what a workaholic he is.”

Augustine pushed back from the table. Normally he wasn’t wild about women who punched for no good reason.

“What do we do now?” She held the cup with both hands, shaking slightly. “You heard the man’s tone.”

“Yeah, I did.”

“Let’s agree he’s not your average kidnapper. What is he?”

Augustine shook his head. “How would I know, Mrs. Lamb?”

“It’s Bonnie.” She stood up, perfectly calm now, tightening the sash on the robe he’d loaned her. “Maybe together we can figure him out.”

Augustine emptied his coffee in the sink. “I think we both need some sleep.”

On the way back to Tony Torres’s house, Edie Marsh asked Snapper if he had a stopwatch.

“Why?”

“Because I want to put a clock on this jerk,” she said, “see how long it takes before he tries to screw me.”

Snapper, who had daydreamed of doing the same thing, said: “I give him two days before he makes a move.”

“I give him two hours,” Edie said.

“So what’ll you do? Ten grand’s ten grand.”

Edie said, “You better be joking. I’d shove hot daggers in my eyes before I’d let that pig touch me.” It was a long bleak slide from dating a Kennedy to fucking a mobile-home salesman.

“What if he don’t let up?” asked Snapper.

“Then I walk.”

“Yeah, but—”

“Hey,” Edie said, “you want the money so bad,
you
fuck him, OK? I think the two of you’d make a very cute couple.”

Snapper didn’t press the issue. He’d already hatched a backup plan, in case the Torres deal fell apart. Avila was in a happy mood when he’d called the motel. Apparently the
santería
saints had informed him he could become very rich by starting his own roofing business. The saints had pointed out that the hurricane left two hundred thousand people without shelter, and that many of these poor folks were so desperate to get their houses repaired that they wouldn’t think of asking to see a valid contractor’s license, which of course Avila did not possess.

“But you’re afraid of heights,” Snapper had reminded him.

“That’s where you come in,” Avila had said. “I’m the boss, you’re the foreman. All we need is a crew.”

“Meaning you won’t be joining us up on the roof with the boiling tar in the hot sun.”

“Jesus, Snap, somebody’s got to handle the paperwork. Somebody’s got to write up the contracts.”

Snapper had inquired about the split. Avila said guys he knew were charging fifteen grand per roof, a third of it up front. He said some home owners were offering cash, to speed the job. Avila said there was enough work around to keep them busy for two years.

“Thanks to you,” Snapper had said.

Avila failed to see irony in the fact that corruptly incompetent building inspections were a chief reason that so many roofs had blown off in the storm, and that so much new business was now available for incompetent roofers.

“You guys plan it this way?” Snapper had asked.

“Plan what?”

Snapper didn’t trust Avila as far as he could spit, but the roofing option was something to consider if Torres went sour.

The trailer salesman also happened to be in sunny spirits when Snapper and Edie Marsh arrived. He was sprawled, shirtless, in a chaise on the front lawn. He wore Bermuda shorts and monogrammed socks pulled high on his hairy shins. The barrel of the shotgun poked out from a stack of newspapers on his lap. When Edie Marsh and Snapper got out of the car, Tony clapped his hands and exclaimed: “I knew you’d be back!”

“A regular Nostradamus,” said Edie. “Is the electricity up yet? We picked up some stuff for the refrigerator.”

Tony reported that the power remained off, and the portable generator had run out of gas overnight. He was storing food in two large Igloo coolers, packed with ice he’d purchased from gougers for twenty dollars a bag. The good news: Telephone service had been restored.

“And I got through immediately to Midwest Casualty,” Tony said. “They’re sending an adjuster today or tomorrow.”

Edie thought: Too good to be true. “So we wait?”

“We wait,” Tony said. “And remember, it’s Neria. N-e-r-i-a. Middle initial, Gas in Gómez. What’d you buy?”

“Tuna sandwiches,” Snapper replied, “cheese, eggs, ice cream, Diet Sprite and stale fucking Lorna Doones. There wasn’t much to choose from.” He iced the groceries, found a pool chair and took a
position upwind of the sweaty Tony Torres. The sky had cleared and the summer sun blazed down, but it was pointless to look for shade. There wasn’t any; all the trees in Turtle Meadow were leveled.

Tony complimented Edie Marsh for costuming herself as an authentic housewife—jeans, white Keds, a baggy blouse with the sleeves turned up. His only complaint was the sea-green scarf in her hair. He said, “Silk is a little much, considering the circumstances.”

“Because it clashes with those gorgeous Bermudas of yours?” Edie glared at Tony Torres as if he were a maggot on a wedding cake. She was disinclined to remove the scarf, which was one of her favorites. She had boosted it from a Lord & Taylor’s in Palm Beach.

“Suit yourself,” said Tony. “Point is, details are damn important. It’s the little things people notice.”

“I’ll try and keep that in mind.”

Snapper said, “Hey, Mister Salesman of the Year, can we run the TV off that generator?”