He said, “I kin go bok and look fuh sum ting more. Wot is it you want?”
The Dragon Queen grinned. She had perhaps seven teeth in her whole mouth. “Wot do I want? I want you, suh.”
It was a moment Neville had been fearing; the Dragon Queen’s rapacious appetite for men was legendary. Not wishing to become her next doomed lover, he’d prepared a defense.
“No, madam, I got de clap.”
“Lemme have a peek.” She rocked in her wicker chair and lit a cigar.
Neville shook his head. “Dot’s not proper.”
The Dragon Queen was firm: No sex, no more voodoo curses on Christopher. Neville was angry but he held back. Instead he said, “De mon already rip down de house where my own fahdder was born. He toyn it into a heap a goddamn rocks.”
She spat and said, “White devil.”
“Den help me take ’im down.”
“You don’t got de clap. Drop off your pants, bey, so I kin see your ting.”
“Wot else you take fuh pay? All I got is foity dollahs.”
The Dragon Queen chuckled and shut her eyes and blew a wreath of smoke that smelled like rancid mulch. “Mistuh Neville, where’s dot little pink boy a yours?”
“He’s outside. Why you ask?” Neville had leashed Driggs to the handlebars of the bike.
“So, den, here’s wot we do.” The Dragon Queen cracked one eyelid. “You give dot boy to me, as my own, and I’ll pudda coyse on dis white devil Chrissofer make ’im dread sorry he ever set foot on dis island. Maybe even kill de mon, fuh true. Dot’s all I want from you. No money, no fucky, juss Driggs.”
“Madam, I tole you. Dot’s not a real boy.”
“So you say.”
“Why you want ’im fuh?”
“It’s lonely here on dis dusty hill. I gotta pull de wings off flies juss so dey stay ’round to keep me comp’ny. Dot ol’ Driggs, he could dance hoppy circles ’n’ make me lof all night long. Nodder ting, I kin teach ’im how to pour my rum drinks and rub my feets.”
“But—”
“Dot’s my final offer, suh. If you want sum bigass woo-doo, either gimme de boy or every fine inch a your manhood.” The Dragon Queen stubbed the cigar and dropped it inside the black sock that Neville had taken from Christopher’s trash.
“Madam, he’s not a very good monkey.”
“Oh, I know.”
Neville wasn’t sure why he cared about Driggs, who had a corrupt streak and no appreciation for Neville’s many acts of kindness. The animal was dexterous and conniving, but discipline was almost impossible because Driggs retaliated with filthy bites to soft-tissue targets such as calves and thighs. Even when unprovoked, the creature traveled with a septic disposition. On the streets he shrewdly singled out white tourists and approached them for handouts. Those who balked might be punished by a rabbit punch to the genitals, or the nasty twist of a nipple. On one occasion, a German teen who tried to snap a picture of the animal was flogged with her own bikini top.
Driggs’s noxious attitude baffled Neville, although he suspected a dietary deficiency. He’d become worried when his little sidekick started molting, yet all efforts to wean the monkey from conch fritters and johnnycakes were vehemently rebuffed. Neville’s girlfriends were scared of Driggs and demanded that the scabby demon remain tethered outdoors during Neville’s nocturnal visits. The monkey’s response was to dig both hands into his diaper and hurl handfuls of feces at the windows, a raucous spectacle that had pitched Neville’s love life into a stall.
“He smot. Dot I kin tell,” said the Dragon Queen. “I teach ’im some prime woo-doo moves.”
“Butchu ain’t gon hoyt de fella, right?”
“Wot!” Indignantly she flapped her hem up and down, Neville turning away.
“Hoyt dot little fella?” she cried. “Come back in a few days, see if you don’t find de hoppiest pink boy in all de world. Under my roof he gern live like de Prince a Wales!”
Neville said Driggs was worth eight hundred dollars, which was what he’d been told by the sponger who’d given him the monkey years earlier at the domino game.
“Eight hundred! Dot’s crazy talk,” said the Dragon Queen.
“He was in de movies wit Johnny Depp. It’s no lie.”
“Cap’n Jack Sparrow? You fulla crap. Your boy played de bod monkey?”
“Yes, madam, in all dose pirate movies. And he is a monkey,” Neville reiterated.
The Dragon Queen crowed uproariously. “You bring me dot boy Driggs fuh payment, I put a jumbo coyse on your white devil.”
Neville was torn. “Led me tink wot to do. I come right bok.”
Outside, Driggs squatted on rash-covered haunches beneath the gumbo-limbo tree where Neville had left him. It was a repugnant scene that would alter both of their lives. The Huggies diaper lay shredded on the ground, and Neville’s bicycle seat was slathered with fresh shit.
Neville’s outrage swelled as he appraised the stinking mess. “I fed up wit your foolishness!” he snapped. “Come den, let’s go see your new momma.”
The monkey stopped gnawing on his leash and looked up. His upper lip wormed into a reflex sneer, but his rosy bald brow furrowed in consternation.
“Dot’s right,” Neville said. “Dis is good-bye.”
The owner of Big Luke’s Lobsteria was Luke Motto, a former Thoroughbred jockey who stood five-two. He was called Big Luke because he was the tallest among six siblings.
The Lobsteria was Yancy’s first official stop after a ten-day sick leave (ordered by Lombardo), during which Yancy went fishing alone every morning. For privacy he chose the Content Keys, and wore only his boxers while poling the skiff. The salt air hastened the healing of his gouged ass and also the mangrove scrapes on his limbs. His headaches ceased shortly after the bruises disappeared. As a treat he landed several good bonefish and an eighty-pound tarpon. Twice Rosa drove down after work and stayed the night.
“You double-clicked that fucker,” Big Luke said accusingly.
“I’m afraid not.”
They were arguing about German cockroaches, which Yancy was required to count during all restaurant inspections. The pest census was a challenging aspect of the job although Tommy Lombardo, Yancy’s instructor, had provided little guidance. For reasons unclear to Yancy, the state of Florida required that live roaches and dead roaches be tabulated separately. Perhaps a deceased roach was deemed less repellent to diners than a crawling one, but in truth the contamination differential was negligible—insect parts versus insect droppings.
Yancy himself favored dead roaches because live ones were too quick, a coppery flash disappearing beneath a shelf or baseboard. During his first week on the job, and uncertain of protocol, Yancy included in his live-specimen tallies only those he was able to corner and kill. Many others escaped, and he was nagged by a sense of falling short in his duties.
So, to the dismay of unsanitary proprietors such as Luke Motto, Yancy developed a method of herding and capturing live roaches that allowed a more precise accounting. In his right hand he wielded a billiard cue to which he’d bolted the head of a badminton racket. In the other hand he carried a DustBuster, a lighter, updated version of the device he had ingloriously deployed against Dr. Clifford Witt in Mallory Square.
One brisk pass through the kitchen of Big Luke’s Lobsteria filled the vacuum with a pulsing, melon-sized mass of roaches that Yancy neutralized by vigorously shaking the filter compartment until the captives were too addled to mount an escape. He then dumped his catch on a butcher-block cutting board, and got down to business with tweezers and a thumb-activated ticket counter he’d bought on Amazon for $2.99.
“That one right there—you did him twice!” Luke Motto insisted.
The total of live roaches was up to sixty-eight, which in Yancy’s view qualified as an infestation. “And I haven’t even checked the pipes under the sink,” he remarked through his hospital mask.