“Poncho Boy’s feeling some heat,” Yancy said.
“But he’s got no cause to kill me. I don’t know zip about zap.”
“You know where Charlie got all that money.”
Madeline said, “Stop tryin’ to scare me. And what’s with the gun?”
Yancy remembered her saying she had a sister in Crystal River. “Go stay with her until this is over. Please, Madeline.”
“Millie got born-again last October.”
“Oh.”
“For the third fucking time. All she does when I visit is preach Jesus Christ our Lord ’n’ Savior in my face, twenty-four/seven. One of her stupid cows got fried by lightning and she said it’s God’s will. No way can I be under the same roof with that psycho. She threw my Kools down the garbage disposer!”
Yancy said, “There must be somewhere else you can go.”
“The Russians won’t let anything happen to me. I already talked to Pestov.”
“Pestov is a barn maggot.”
“Dude, I need this job.”
“Really? All the T-shirt shops in the world?”
Yancy hung back while two dancers from Teasers came in to browse for the latest in nipple clips. After they left, Madeline smiled at Yancy and said, “I’m okay here. It’s kinda cool that you care, but I’ll be fine.”
When he returned to Big Pine, the rain had quit and the sky was clearing. Evan Shook stood on the street in front of his spec house, addressing a horseshoe-shaped gathering of the construction crew. Yancy interpreted Evan Shook’s gesticulations as beseeching. Some of the workers apparently had been unnerved by the sight of the Santeria altar or the rodent skull in the pentagram, possibly both. Yancy purposely had designed the display to touch a broad socio-religious spectrum.
He was rocking to Dave Matthews an hour later when Evan Shook pounded on the door, somewhat discourteously in Yancy’s view. He hid the Trainwreck he’d been smoking, unplugged his earbuds and straightened the shiny blue necktie he’d taken to wearing on restaurant inspections; the pattern on the fabric was a lateral skein of tiny silver handcuffs.
By way of a greeting, he said: “Is there news of the wild dogs? Please come in.”
Evan Shook remained on the front stoop, seething in the compressed manner of small men accustomed to bullying. Clearly he was inhibited by Yancy’s height, and also the hip-mounted firearm.
“Have you been in my house again?” he asked somberly. “Somebody …”
“Yes?”
“Somebody defaced the downstairs.”
“Good Lord. When did this happen?”
“Just this morning.”
“That’s unbelievable. In broad daylight? Kids, I’ll bet.” Yancy was counting on the conservative neckwear and police-model handgun to work in his favor, your average vandal being untidy and unarmed. The smell of pot, however, imperiled his credibility.
“I’ve been working all day,” he said. “Just got home.”
“So your answer is no, you haven’t been over there.” Evan Shook wondered if Yancy was too stoned to lie.
“Was anything stolen?” Yancy inquired. “You should hurry and hang those doors and windows, get the place buttoned up. Not just for security—it’s hurricane season.”
“Right.” Evan Shook plainly had more to say, but his gaze kept dropping to the black butt of the Glock. The bracing accusations he’d had in mind, the harsh warning he’d composed—these would remain undelivered.
“The neighborhood’s gone to hell,” Yancy said supportively. “It used to be so safe and quiet.”
“If you see anything unusual going on over there—”
“Of course, of course.” Yancy craned his head out the doorway, as if warily scouting for a rabid dog pack or rampaging delinquents. “I’ll try to keep a closer eye on things, Mr. Shook.”
“Thanks.”
“There used to be deer on your property, did you know that? Every evening around sundown. But now they don’t come.”
Evan Shook nodded witlessly. The damn mosquitoes were eating him alive.
“When I first moved here, it was mostly small houses,” Yancy went on, “what you might call bungalows. Nothing as grandiose as your place. What is that, four floors?”
“I’ve gotta get to the hardware store,” said Evan Shook, “before it closes.”
Yancy stayed up listening to his iPod while the television was tuned to Animal Planet. The effect was enthralling: wildebeest migrations accompanied by Joni Mitchell and the Strokes. Yancy took no delight in Evan Shook’s tribulations but wrong was wrong—the mansion was a fucking abomination. Yancy’s objective was to prevent it from being sold and finished.
He ate three energy bars and weighed himself: 162 pounds, a string bean. He was surprised that Eve Stripling hadn’t sent her stud muffin Christopher back to the Keys to properly finish killing him. By now she’d surely learned from Nick’s daughter that Yancy wasn’t drowned and that he intended to keep pursuing the case. He flipped the channel to Conan and unplugged one ear for the monologue. Afterward he turned off the TV and searched the kitchen cupboards for evidence of vermin. In some ways his roach patrol duties weren’t so different from police work—the quarry was nocturnal, and unfailingly left a trail.
Marinating in a lukewarm bath, Yancy smoked the rest of the joint and dozed off. At some point he was rousted by Dr. Rosa Campesino’s voice. It was rising from his cell phone, which he had apparently grabbed off the toilet seat and answered in a haze.
“Andrew, I need you here right away.”
“Wadizzit? You awright?”
“Wake up!”
“Take it easy.”
“That damn arm is back!” she said.
“What?”
“You heard me. The arm. I’m staring at it right now.”
Yancy splashed out of the tub. “Stripling’s arm? No way.”
“Get your butt in the car,” Rosa said.
Fourteen
Grave robbing was not uncommon in South Florida due to a thriving underground market for human bones, prized by Santeria priests and practitioners of extreme voodoo. The crime required muscle and nerve though no special stealth, as most cemeteries refused to spring for nighttime security guards.
Flaco Chávez and his partner, whose street name was Delta Force, were robbers by trade and had never before cracked a coffin. They’d met in prison and later shared an inattentive parole officer. Delta Force claimed to be an ex-army commando and he sometimes broke into gyms after hours to work out with the weights. Flaco Chávez specialized in mugging elderly ATM patrons, although he spoke vaingloriously of graduating to armored cars.
One night, while scouting for carjacking prospects at a BP station, the men were approached by a couple with an enticing offer: Six hundred dollars for robbing a grave—half the money up front, half when the grisly contents were delivered to a Denny’s restaurant on Biscayne Boulevard. It sounded like an easy job to Flaco Chávez and his partner, who promptly stole a late-model Tahoe from a pregnant nurse and struck out for the St. Lazarus Gardens and Water Park in North Miami. Along the way they stopped to burglarize an Ace Hardware store, acquiring two shovels, a pick, canvas gloves and a flashlight.
The most challenging aspect of the heist, it turned out, was finding the correct target. Delta Force was ripped on coke and lacking in focus, so it was Flaco’s chore to locate the burial plot of Nicholas Stripling, whoever the fuck he was. Once the site had been isolated, the excavation took barely an hour, Delta Force digging like a dervish while Flaco Chávez feigned a hamstring cramp. Heading back downtown, their stolen SUV was spotted by a county police officer, who deftly swung his squad car into a U-turn and lit them up like a disco ball. Flaco Chávez spoke out in favor of a low-key surrender but Delta Force, facing multiple parole violations and a long bus ride back to Starke, stomped on the accelerator.