To avoid being noticed by Bodean Gazzer, Tom had arranged to meet a safe distance from the gravel ramp where the pickup truck was parked. He'd pointed out a break in the mangroves, a bare gash of rocky shoreline on the ocean side of the highway. A deepwater cut strung with red-and-blue lobster buoys would help JoLayne locate the place.
She navigated with excessive precision, cleaving two of the bright Styrofoam balls on her way in. Krome was waiting by the water's edge, to catch the bow. After patiently untangling the trap ropes from the skeg, he climbed in the boat and said, "OK, Ahab, scoot over. They've got a ten-minute head start."
"Aren't you forgetting something?"
"JoLayne, come on."
She said, "The shotgun." Expecting another argument.
But Tom said, "Oh yeah." He jumped out and dashed across the road. In a minute he'd returned with her Remington, concealed in a plastic garbage bag. "I really didforget," he said.
JoLayne believed him. She had one arm around his shoulders as they headed across the water.
According to Chub's orders, Shiner wasn't supposed to talk to Amber except to give directions. He found this to be impossible. The longest and closest he'd ever been with such a beautiful girl was a thirty-second elevator ride with an oblivious stenographer at the Osceola County Courthouse. Shiner burned to hear everything Amber had to say – what stories she must have! Also, he felt crummy about poking her with the screwdriver. He longed to reassure her that he wasn't some bloodthirsty criminal.
"I'm in junior college," she volunteered, sending his heart airborne.
"Really?"
"Prelaw, but leaning toward cosmetology. Any advice?"
Now, what was he supposed to do? For all his crude faults, Shiner was essentially a polite young fellow. This was because his mother had flogged the rudeness out of him at an early age.
And it was rude, his mother always said, not to speak when one was spoken to.
So Shiner said to Amber: "Cosmetology – is that where they teach you to be a astronaut?"
She laughed so hard she nearly upended her bowl of minestrone. Shiner perceived that he'd said something monumentally stupid, but he wasn't embarrassed. Amber had a glorious laugh. He'd have gladly continued to say dumb things all night long, just to listen to that laughter.
They'd stopped at a twenty-four-hour sub shop on the mainland, Shiner being in no hurry to get down to Jewfish Creek. It was possible his white brethren were already waiting there, but he wasn't concerned. He wanted nothing to spoil these magical moments with Amber. In her skimpy Hooters uniform she was drawing avid stares from the dining public. Shiner despaired at the thought of turning her over to Chub.
She said, "What about you, Shiner? What do you do?"
"I'm in a militia," he replied without hesitation.
"Oh wow."
"Saving America from certain doom. They's NATO troops gonna attack any day from the Bahamas. It's what they call a international conspiracy."
Amber asked who was behind it. Shiner said communists and Jews for sure, and possibly blacks and homos.
"Where'd you come up with this?" she said.
"You'll find out."
"So how big is this militia?"
"I ain't allowed to say. But I'm a sergeant!"
"That's cool. You guys have a name?"
Shiner said, "Yes, ma'am. The White Clarion Aryans."
Amber repeated it out loud. "There's, like, a little rhyme."
"I think it's on purpose. Hey, remember what you said about fixin' my tattoo? What I need is somebody knows how to make the W.R.B.into a W.C.A."
She said, "I'd like to help. Really I would, but first you've got to promise to let me go."
Not this again, Shiner thought. Nervously he rolled the screwdriver between his palms. "How 'bout if I pay ya instead?"
"Pay me what?" Amber said, skeptically.
Shiner saw her cast a glance at his dirty bare feet. Quickly he said: "The militia's got a shitload a money. Not right now, but any day."
Amber leisurely finished her soup before she got around to asking how much they had coming. Fourteen million, Shiner answered. Yes, dollars.
What a laugh thatbrought! This time he felt compelled to interject: "It's no lie. I know for a fact."
"Oh yeah?"
Decisively he lit a cigaret. Then, in a tough voice: "I helped 'em steal it m'self."
Amber was quiet for a while, watching a long white yacht glide under the drawbridge. Shiner worried that he'd said too much and now she didn't believe any of it. Desperately he blurted, "It's the God's truth!"
"OK," said Amber. "But where do I fit in?"
Shiner thought: I wish I knew. Then he got an idea. "You believe in the white man?"
"Honey, I'll believe in Kermit the Frog if he leaves twenty percent on the table." She reached over and took hold of Shiner's left arm, causing him to tremble with enchantment. "Let's have a look at that tattoo," she said.
Chub was in no mood to hear whining about the pickup truck. "Leave it," he snapped at Bode Gazzer.
"Here? Right by the water?"
"Won't nobody fuck with it, you got the handicap deal on there."
"Yeah, like theycare."
"They who?"
"The Black Tide."
"Look here," Chub said, "the boat thing was your idea, so don't go chickenshit on me now. Not after the motherfucker of a day I've had."
"But – "
"Leave the goddamn truck! Jesus Willy, we got twenty-eight million bucks. Buy a whole Dodge dealership, you want."
Sullenly Bode Gazzer joined Chub in loading the stolen boat. The last thing to come out of the pickup was the rolled-up chamois.
"The hell's in there?" Chub said. "Or shouldn't I ast. Sounds like a bag a Budweiser cans."
Bode said, "The AR-15. I took it apart to clean."
"God help us. Let's go."
Bode knew better than to ask for the wheel; he could see there'd been problems on the boat. Chub's clothing was soaked, and his ponytail was garnished with a strand of cinnamon-colored seaweed. The deck and vinyl bucket seats were littered with small broken pieces of what appeared to be bluish ceramic, as if Chub had smashed a plate.
As they idled away from the ramp, Bode turned for one last look at his red Ram truck, which he fully expected to be stripped or stolen outright by dusk. He noticed a man standing a short distance up the shore, at the fringe of some mangroves. It was a white man, so Bode Gazzer wasn't alarmed; probably just a fisherman.
As the boat labored to gain speed, Bode shouted: "How's she run?"
"Like a one-legged whore."
"What's all the mud and shit in here?"
"I can't hear you," Chub yelled back.
Given the slop on deck and the halting performance of the outboards, it was pointless for Chub to deny that he'd run the thing aground. He saw no reason, however, to tell Bodean Gazzer how close he'd come to losing half the lottery jackpot.
Bravely kicking back to the shallows.
Flailing and groping in the marl and grasses until he'd found it in eighteen inches of water: the Lotto ticket, waving in the current like a small miracle.
Naturally it was in the claws of a blue crab. The nasty fucker had staked a claim to the moldy Band-Aid on which the ticket was stuck. The delirious Chub hadn't hesitated to leap upon the feisty scavenger, which gouged him mercilessly with one claw while clinging with the other to its sodden prize. With the crab fastened intractably to his right hand, Chub had clambered over the transom and thrashed the little bastard to pieces against the gunwale. In this manner he had reclaimed the Lotto ticket, but victory came with a price. The only intact segment of the defunct crab was the cream-blue pincers that hung from the web of skin between his thumb and forefinger; a macabre broach.