Christopher Grunion seldom spoke during these flights. Often he appeared to doze with his forehead pressed against the window, causing Claspers to wonder if he was loaded, drunk or possibly ill. The girlfriend, Eve, was a nervous chatterbox who spewed questions. Are we still in the Bahamas? What’s that island down there? How fast are we going? Do we have enough fuel? What’re you gonna do if the Coast Guard spots us? Her yammering made Claspers long for the days when he flew the starry tropics in solitude, accompanied only by silent herbal tonnage and a terse Hispanic voice on the headset.
Bringing in the Caravan required a stretch of calm water, typically on the leeward side of an island. Daylight was also helpful, particularly during lobster season when the channels and bays of the Keys were clotted with small buoys that could tear up the floats and ruin a perfectly fine landing, even flip the aircraft. Once they safely touched down, Eve would call a taxi to come fetch her and Grunion. Then the two of them would inflate the rubber raft they always brought as cargo (along with a small outboard engine), and from the plane they would putt-putt to shore.
Claspers thought the well-fed couple might benefit from rowing, although Grunion would need to shed the orange weather poncho that he always wore. Surely he sweltered like a pig beneath the plastic pullover; Claspers figured he kept it on because of some weird phobia or unsightly medical disorder. A pilot friend of Claspers’s had been morbidly afraid of centipedes and refused to remove his heavy woolen socks, even while bathing. Eventually the poor bastard ended up on crutches, grounded. Later a photograph of his ravaged feet was featured in an illustrated atlas of fungal infections.
Claspers enjoyed sneaking in and out of the States, but much of his flying for Grunion was routine, Andros to Nassau and back. Grunion was breaking ground on an upscale tourist resort at Lizard Cay, so Claspers would bring in architects, designers, contractors, bulldozer mechanics and even the real estate agents to whom Grunion was pitching his project. About once a week Eve would ride the seaplane to Miami but there was no cowboy stuff—it was straight into Opa-locka or Tamiami, strictly legal, her passport open and ready for stamping. Claspers looked forward to those trips because he got some time to go home and chill. Nassau wasn’t hard duty, either, though he always blew too much cash at the clubs and casinos.
The toughest part of the Andros gig was cooling his heels for days at a time, waiting for Grunion or his girlfriend to call with a flight in mind. Rocky Town was the nearest settlement to the construction site, and there wasn’t much to do except eat conch, drink rum and ruminate about growing old with a prostate the size of a toadstool. Marley and the Wailers were all over the radio, yet even that got stale after a while.
Grunion and the woman were renting a house on the ocean but not once had they invited Claspers for lunch or even a cocktail. He would have hired one of the local kids to take him snorkeling or grouper fishing except that Grunion insisted he hang within fifteen minutes of the plane, which stayed chocked on the tarmac at what they called Moxey’s airfield.
That’s where Claspers was, drinking a flat Fresca, when the late afternoon flight from Nassau landed. Three Bahamian women got off lugging shopping bags and next came a rangy guy in his late thirties, early forties. He was carrying a duffel and a fly-rod tube. Claspers knew he was American because of his tan; the Brits and Canadians were white as milk when they stepped off the planes and pink as shrimp when they left. The American paused on the apron to look at the Caravan; then he ambled up to Claspers and asked, “Do you know who owns that seaplane?”
“Private charter.”
“Too bad,” the American said. “I want to fly down and wade the Water Cays. I was looking for someone to take me.”
Claspers told him not to get his hopes up, because there weren’t many floatplanes for charter. “Wish I could help, but I’m stuck here.”
“So you’re the pilot.”
“That’s me.”
The American held out his hand. “My name’s Andrew.”
“I’m K. J. Claspers.”
“You got time for a drink?”
Claspers said thanks anyway but he had to work. “I gotta do a run for the boss.”
A dented blue van pulled up and Grunion’s hired man got out. He was a dome-headed hulk with shriveled-looking ears. They called him Egg but the name on his papers was Ecclestone. He wore a bleached white T-shirt that by contrast made his skin shine like onyx.
“Let’s go, mon,” he said to Claspers.
“In a minute.” Claspers wasn’t afraid of Egg and he didn’t care much for him. The guy was your basic pea-brained muscle, straight from central casting. Claspers said, “I gotta take a leak. Go wait by the plane.”
Egg sneered and headed across the baking tarmac toward the Caravan.
The American said, “That’s some boss.”
Claspers snorted. “Not him, no way—he’s just the help. Poor baby’s got a toothache so I’ve gotta take him to a dentist in Nassau. Talk about the glamour life.”
The pilot went to the restroom and propped himself at the only urinal, where he spritzed and dribbled for what seemed like an eternity. A doctor back home had prescribed some heavy-duty pills but half the time Claspers forgot to take them. Maybe if that hot bartender at Marbles ever gave him a real shot, he’d get with the program and tend to his plumbing.
Claspers wanted to ask the man with the fly rod why he’d come to the island during the hottest, deadest time of summer, when the bonefish lodges were closed. It was rare to see tourist anglers so late in the season, and even more uncommon for one to arrive alone. Typically they fished in pairs to split the cost of chartering a skiff.
When Claspers emerged from the head, he tugged down the bill of his cap against the glare of the sun. He looked around and there was Egg, sitting truculently on one of the airplane’s pontoons.
The American was gone.
Sixteen
Evan Shook was surprised to see a muddy Toyota parked out front. The Oklahoma tag didn’t make sense; the Lipscombs had said they were from Virginia. Plus they weren’t supposed to arrive for another forty-five minutes.
Inside the house Evan Shook encountered two squatters, an attractive woman with frosted blond pigtails and a flabby guy who looked younger.
“Please don’t get mad,” the woman began.
“Clear out right now, before I call the cops.”
The man said, “Bro, we took a major hit. This is not where we want to be.”
It was the woman doing most of the talking, some hard-luck story about her purse being stolen, all their cash and credit cards. Evan Shook wasn’t even pretending to listen.
“And this was supposed to be our second honeymoon,” she concluded sadly.
That part Evan Shook heard, with vexation; the woman was way too hot to be sleeping with such a zero. Evan Shook was unaware that people said the same thing about his mistress. Recently she’d been harping at him to leave his wife, demands inflicted at the cruelest bedroom moments. He couldn’t afford a messy divorce, just as he couldn’t afford to diddle for another six months with the Big Pine spec house. Between the construction loan and the property mortgage, the bank had him by the short and curlies.
“We tried camping,” the male squatter piped up, “but, dude, the fuckin’ skeeters!”
Evan Shook checked around. Except for the strange couple’s tent, the place was in good shape for the Lipscombs. The menacing pentagram on the floor had been painted over by a select member of the construction crew, a Sikh carpenter who took no stock in silly Western superstitions. It was also he who’d disposed of the icky Santeria artifacts, lobbing the stiffened rooster into the canal and granulating the rodent skull with a belt sander.
The cute woman in pigtails said, “We weren’t trying to make trouble. We just needed somewhere dry and safe.”