Eve had begged her husband not to do it, but he had no intention of going to prison, not even a country-club joint. The feds in Miami were going hard-ass on fraud cases, and three guys Nick knew were doing heavy time, meaning double digits. One of them was an old Cuban gentleman who’d billed Uncle Sam for eighty-two hundred physical therapy sessions that he’d never performed. Stage 3 lung cancer and still they wouldn’t let him out early! Nick Stripling told his wife that he couldn’t do the flu in lockup, and that jail was not a goddamn option.
During the red-hot years of Midwest Mobile, he’d socked away eleven-plus million dollars—and don’t forget this was South Florida, the Medicare-fraud capital of America, where the most experienced dirtballs came to gorge. Stripling had found himself competing against the slickest and slimiest—former mortgage brokers, identity thieves, arms dealers, insider traders and dope smugglers, all who’d switched to home-care durables because stealing directly from the government was so much easier, and the risk so small. Lots of Medicare scammers got richer than Nick Stripling, but still he’d raked in some sweet bank from all those fake orders for Super Rollies (also walkers, electric hospital beds, blood-pressure cuffs, bariatric commodes, wander alarms and sitz baths).
If he got caught the feds would demand full restitution, which wasn’t going to happen in this particular universe. Stripling had made sure his ill-gotten loot was on the wing, moving it from Barbados to Luxembourg to Geneva, then finally back to a Nassau bank account belonging to one Christopher Grunion. The name had been invented by Stripling to enable an unscrutinized investment of his swindled fortune in some prime oceanfront on Lizard Cay. Eve was skeptical until he showed her an article from the Nassau Guardian predicting a flash turnaround of the luxury real estate market, wealthy Asians having discovered the sun-drenched charms of Bahamian life. Which, the Chinese and so forth? Nick was still waiting for the big stampede to Andros, trying to remain patient and optimistic.
The hardest part of his plan, what scared him the most, was letting a twitchy, shot-out pillhead like O’Peele perform the operation. Again, not much choice—no legit surgeon would have agreed to the job. Man walks in says please cut off my left arm. Doctor says what’s wrong with it—gangrene? Melanoma? And the guy says nothing’s wrong with it, I just don’t need it anymore, could you please saw it off?
O’Peele said okay because Stripling was his boss and also because he needed the money. Percocets aren’t cheap when you gobble ’em like Cracker Jacks. And by then Midwest Mobile was going down. Some of the geezers whose ID numbers had been stolen got around to reading their benefit statements, and they started calling Medicare saying they’d never ordered a Rollie scooter chair but they’d sure like to try one. As soon as the FBI began sniffing around, Stripling closed the office and promised new positions in future health-care enterprises to all his loyal staff, including Gomez O’Peele.
Who was grateful for the opportunity to pocket an extra five grand, which is what Stripling offered him to cut off Stripling’s left arm and then beat on the bone stump with a hatchet to make it look like a boat propeller caused the wound.
The operation was performed at the couple’s vacation town house in the Keys, Eve acting as nurse, her husband blitzed on pills and hooked to a morphine drip. The surgical saw and other implements were brand-new—Stripling had made sure of that. Before they got started he had O’Peele pee in a cup, one of those drugstore kits, to prove the doctor was clean for the day. Also: blow into a portable booze tester of the style favored by suburban parents with teenage drivers.
Admirably, the doctor had arrived totally sober, his hands steady, and he came through big-time. Afterward the town house looked like they’d been butchering hogs, but the floors had been covered with Visqueen—Nick’s idea—so that all they had to do was roll up the mess and cram it in a Dumpster.
Eve sobbing behind a hospital mask flecked with her husband’s blood, O’Peele chugging Gatorade pretending it was Ketel One. Stripling lying there thinking, okay, during the Civil War? Medics had to do this shit on open battlefields, hack off arms and legs. These were fucking kids, most of ’em—no anesthesia, no antibiotics. For sutures they’d rip the stitching out of boot soles, for bandages they’d tear up filthy uniforms, maggots crawling in the open wounds.
So I’ll be fine is what Stripling assured himself, not that his raw shoulder socket didn’t hurt like a motherfucker. Holy Christ did it hurt! But he was a new man, a free man.
This was the day after he’d sunk the Summer’s Eve, the fuel tanks topped out, the coolers packed with ice and bait. Just like a real fishing trip. His wife had followed him offshore in a rented SeaCraft, past Sombrero Light, rough as a cob and no other vessels in sight. First he pulled the plugs and then he got her sideways in a trough and gunned her in reverse, the mighty blue Atlantic pouring over the transom and filling the cockpit. Stripling used a 5/0 hook to put a hole in the skin of the life raft (in case anyone wondered why he hadn’t used it). Then Eve motored up in the SeaCraft, he jumped aboard, and together they watched the Summer’s Eve sink: a whorl of bubbles and seat cushions and not much else, owing to the whitecaps.
The next morning Stripling went under the knife of Gomez O’Peele, and by nightfall his severed left arm was staked on a mud flat near Vaca Cut being gnawed by sharks. That’s what happens when a person drowns in the Florida Keys, which is a shark’s version of a Golden Corral—all you can eat, all the time.
Which, the Tourbillon? That’s one reason Stripling didn’t leave it on his severed left wrist after the operation. Why not, Eve had said, just drive a Rolls-Royce off a pier? Besides, you love that watch, she said, which he couldn’t deny. The Tourbillon was a work of art, far as Nick was concerned. He didn’t want it to end up in a hammerhead’s stomach.
Some mistakes along the way, no question.
First: choosing Phinney, the pothead mate from the Misty Momma IV. Eve had gone to the docks and scoped out the crews and personally picked him out. Showed him the arm and said the plan was to punk her cousin, who was chartering the Misty the next morning. Eve said the limb came from a med-school cadaver so no worries, Charlie, everything’s cool. Her cousin’s crazy fraternity brothers, she said, they’re the sickos who dreamed this up. And Phinney fell for the whole story, practically came in his pants when she counted out the three grand.
But then he couldn’t keep his trap shut about the wad, buying rounds all over Key West, and Stripling knew it was only a matter of time before he got stoned and blabbed about the arm, too. So Nick rented a moped and ambushed the guy after he and some hooker walked out of the Half Shell. To make it look like robbery Nick even snatched Phinney’s wallet—seven hundred and two bucks was all the kid had left from the biggest score of his life.
If Stripling had to do that part over again … but, see, it was the best way to make sure the fucking arm got found—arrange for some tourist to reel it in while he’s trolling for tuna, whatever. At first Eve had suggested they put the limb on the shore behind somebody’s house, as if it washed up with the tide. But Nick feared the coons or pouch rats might drag it off, even a stray dog. Remember, the whole plan depended on the thing being recovered and positively identified as belonging to him. Being indisputably dead would get the feds off his case, not to mention bring a sweet payoff on the life insurance.
Stripling had flapped his empty left sleeve and said to Eve: I didn’t go through all this misery just for sport! Like my secret dream was to be an amputee.
So they’d recruited Phinney to do the old sailfish scam, only using Nick’s arm instead of a fish. And everything would have turned out great except Phinney couldn’t keep a secret. Dumbass.