Chaz was so upset that he was panting. Tool grabbed the phone and said, "Boy, you done lost your marbles."
"That's what you want me to think, isn't it? That's the secret plan, right?"
Chaz poked his head out of the Hummer and looked up anxiously. The sky was bright and clear and empty, except for a solitary vulture rafting high in the thermals.
Joey Perrone had remembered that GoodFellas was one of her husband's favorite movies; that's what gave her the idea for helicopters. Corbett was thrilled and said it would be spectacular. He called the charter service himself and put the whole tab, more than twenty-three grand, on his platinum card. Joey didn't like to fly because of what had happened to her parents, but Corbett promised that she'd have a fine time. Choppers are a blast, he said.
And he was right. The baby-blue Bell Ranger picked them up on the island and shot out low across the bay, then up the coast. Corbett took the seat next to the pilot; Joey sat beside Mick Stranahan, both hands latched to his left arm. He pointed out Stiltsville, where he'd once lived; then Key Biscayne, South Beach, the high-rise canyons along Collins Avenue. The helicopter banked and began to pass over dense suburbs gridded by impossibly congested roads. Joey could see that the interstate was locked down in both directions because of an accident; at the vortex of the traffic jam was a twinkling of red and blue emergency lights.
Corbett swiveled in his seat and raised his voice to be heard over the rotors: "No offense, Sis, but I'd stick darning needles in my brain before I'd live in a place like this."
Later, as the pilot angled northward, Joey heard her brother gag in revulsion at the sight of western Broward County, where new subdivisions were erupting like cankers in all directions; thousands upon thousands of cookie-cutter houses, jammed together so tightly that it looked like you could jump from roof to roof for miles on end. Where there were no homes stood office parks, shopping plazas and enormous auto malls-acres and acres of Toyotas and Chryslers, cooking in the sun. Only a slender dirt levee separated the clamorous tide of humanity from the Everglades.
"At least they left a lake or two for the kids," Joey remarked. Mick shook his head sadly. "Rock pits," he informed her. "Hundreds of feet deep. That's where they dredged up the fill for the roads and houses."
"But what used to be out here? Before all this?" He pointed toward the other side of the levee. "That," he said. "The widest river in the world."
Corbett let out a sarcastic whoop. "I just saw a tree!" he cried. "I swear to God. A real tree!"
Before long, the sprawl gave way to wet saw grass prairies that undulated like flooded wheat in the brisk spring breeze. Except for an occasional airboat, gnat-sized specks on the tan landscape, there was no evidence of human occupation. Stranahan spotted three small deer bounding for the shelter of a tree island, and it occurred to Joey that- except for the occasional garbage-looting raccoon-these were the first truly wild animals that she'd seen since moving to Florida. She'd always been curious about the Everglades, but Chaz had refused to take her along on field trips, claiming it would violate the water district's rules. That he never spoke of the place, except to gripe about the snakes and the insects, was even more stunning to Joey now that she'd finally seen it for herself. How could Chaz-a biologist, for God's sake-not be dazzled?
Obviously, however, he wasn't. He had betrayed the wetlands as nonchalantly as he had betrayed Joey. He had sold out-this greedy swine she'd married-so that megatons of noxious crap could be pumped day and night into the glistening waters below. Maybe for someone as soulless as her husband it wasn't much of a reach, Joey thought, from killing a place to killing a person.
"Look out there," Stranahan said.
The other choppers had arrived, six in all, flying clockwise in concentric circles. It was quite a show. Joey turned to Corbett and said, "You've outdone yourself. This is fantastic!"
Chaz Perrone's yellow Hummer was hard to miss, even without the plume of dust trailing it down the levee. Stranahan handed Joey a pair of binoculars, through which she could see her husband's windblown head protruding from the driver's window and cocked toward the sky.
"He does not look overjoyed," she reported, drawing a gleeful cackle from her brother.
Their pilot was on the radio, double-checking the flight paths and altitudes of the other helicopters. A Cessna from the Palm Beach Sheriff's Office broke in, a Sergeant Robinson inquiring about all the chopper activity. The pilot of the baby-blue Bell replied that they were rehearsing an aerial chase for the new James Bond movie, a glamorous lie that produced the desired effect: The police Cessna banked sharply and drifted away. Authorities in South Florida were famously accommodating to the film industry, and had been known to shut down major freeways so that a teenaged vampire drag-racing scene could be shot and re-shot without artistic compromise.
When Chaz finally parked the Hummer and waded into the water, Joey insisted on buzzing him. It was Corbett, however, who persuaded the pilot to put the aircraft into a hover directly above his brother-in-law's hatless noggin. The helicopter stayed high enough that Chaz couldn't have seen who was aboard, but he didn't even try. It was amusing to watch him fumble with the water bottle while pretending not to notice the shadow of the chopper, or its earsplitting racket.
"That's enough," Joey called out, and the pilot pulled away.
They circled at a greater distance, alternating low sweeps with the other helicopters, until Chaz finished with the sample and sped off in the Humvee.
"What do you suppose he's thinking?" Corbett asked.
"Unhappy thoughts," Joey said.
Mick Stranahan laughed. "Wait until he sees the newspaper."
Later, after returning to the island, they all went fishing in the Whaler. Stranahan caught several nice yellowtails, which he fried Cuban-style for dinner. Afterward Corbett lit a cigar and Joey modeled the silk Michael Kors skirt that she'd purchased at the Galleria. Mick uncorked a bottle of Australian cabernet. The three of them sat together on the seawall and watched the sun go down, Strom parking his black brick of a head on Joey's lap.
"What should I say about you on Thursday?" Corbett asked. He was drafting his speech for the memorial service.
"You can say I was a kind and loving sister," Joey said.
"Aw, come on. We can do better than that."
Stranahan said, "Say she was a tiger. She never quit fighting."
Corbett beamed. "I like that."
"Say she was full of life and had a big heart."
"No, a dumb heart," Joey said.
"Not true." Mick touching her arm.
"I'll say you were idealistic," Corbett said.
Joey frowned. "Which is just another word for naive.''
"Then say she had great legs," Stranahan said.
"Well, why not?" Corbett chortled.
Joey covered her ears. "Stop it, both of you."
Corbett hadn't been able to line up a choir on short notice, so he'd settled for a trio of guitarists. "They do the folk Mass at the Catholic church in Lighthouse Point. The priest tells me they're pretty good."
Joey said, "What if Chaz doesn't show up?"
Corbett tipped up his red-blond chin and blew a wreath of smoke. "Oh, he'll be there. He knows how bad it would look if he didn't."
Stranahan agreed. "Right now he's scared to death of making a wrong move. He's got no choice but to play the grieving widower to the bitter end."
"God, I wish I could be there," Joey said.
Stranahan shot her a look. "Don't even think about it. You promised."
"But I could make myself up so that he'd never know it was me." Her brother said, "Joey, this isn't The Lucy Show. The man tried to murder you."
She was silent for a while, sipping her wine and stroking Strom's sleek neck. The sun dropped over the horizon and the sky over Bis-cayne Bay turned from gold to pink to purple. Joey wondered what her husband would wear to the service. Where he would sit. What he might say to her friends. Whether he would notice Rose in the first pew.