Two hours later he was wheeling it down the Cape Florida beach, calling on his cell phone for a taxi.
"Mick, I swear to God."
"I'm proud of you for not shooting him." Stranahan lifted the Ruger from her hands.
She said, "I couldn't do it. And don't ask why."
"As long as it's not because you still love him. Then I'll have to go drown myself."
"Love! The man is sewer scum," Joey said bitterly. "But I kept remembering what you told me about how it feels to kill somebody, about all the nightmares that come later."
"It's a good way to end up living alone on an island. You did the right thing," Stranahan told her.
"If I was a better shot, I would've winged him, at least."
"You get big points for hitting the spotlight. Here, I want you to meet somebody."
Earl Edward O'Toole sat upright, a glistening lump propped against a rusty propane tank at the far end of the dock. Corbett Wheeler knelt beside him.
"Mr. O'Toole has a bullet slug embedded in his right armpit," he reported, "and he refuses medical attention."
Tool's sopping overalls were frayed and his hairy arms were bloodied from hugging the barnacle-encrusted piling. That's where Corbett and Mick had found him, groaning and barely afloat under the stilt house. It had taken all their might to muscle him out of the water.
He blinked up at Joey. "I know you."
"Anastasia from Flamingo," she said, bowing. "Nice to see you again."
"But in real life you're the dead girl, right?"
"That's me. The dead girl."
"But I don't get it," Tool said. "Red said there was video of the whole thing."
Corbett cut in: "There is indeed. We made it ourselves. Mick put on a brown wig and played the homicidal husband, Joey played herself, and I held the camera." The tricky part had been staging his sister's tumble over the rail. They had chosen the deck where the lifeboats were hung, so she'd have a safe place to land.
Tool looked amused. "What the hell's this all about?"
"A touchy marital situation," Stranahan said.
Joey sighed impatiently. "That's enough. The man needs a doctor."
Tool winced as he rearranged his bulk. "Lady, your husband is a card-carrying shitwad."
"Thanks for the bulletin."
"Where's the suitcase?"
"In the boat," Joey said, "with Chaz."
"And where's he at?"
Stranahan pointed toward the mountain of weather that was sliding out of the bay toward the Atlantic.
"He took the money. Red's money," Tool said thoughtfully.
"That's our boy." Corbett tried to examine the bullet wound, but Tool knocked his hand away.
"Why did he shoot you?" Joey asked.
"Guess 'cause he figgered I was gone shoot him first."
"Were you?"
"Sure, but then I changed my mind. That's what gets me," Tool said sourly. "Here I go and do the decent Christian thing-which is to let the man off the hook-and what happens? He plugs me!"
Stranahan was putting on his clothes and rain suit. Corbett showed him the 9-mm Beretta that he'd taken from a pocket of Tool's overalls.
Stranahan emptied the chamber, popped out the clip and handed the empty gun to Tool, who flung it off the dock.
"Thing's waterlogged," he said. "Hey, you see him out there anywheres?"
Joey shook her head. Her fists were on her hips as she stared hard into the opaque gloom. The lightning had temporarily stopped, making it impossible to spot a small boat in the distance.
She said, "Mick, you'd better be right about this."
"Stop worrying. He's history."
Tool labored to his feet. "You take me back to dry land, we'll call it even for what happened at the doc's house-you sluggin' me in the damn throat'n all."
"It's the least I can do," Stranahan agreed.
He and Corbett helped Earl Edward O'Toole get in the skiff, which heeled precariously under the load. Joey was hesitant to join them, but there was no other way out of Stiltsville.
Corbett handed out life jackets. Tool couldn't fit into his.
"I gotta lay off them Pringles," he said.
Even in the night shadows Joey could see a thin dark stream running from under his arm. When she advised him to go straight to a hospital, he laughed harshly.
The skiff was wallowing so badly that one rogue wave could have swamped it. Nobody moved from their places as Stranahan motored tediously toward the western shoreline of Key Biscayne. The ride was wet and squirrelly, but it smoothed out when they reached the Pines Canal. They dropped Tool off in some millionaire's backyard, walking distance from Crandon Boulevard.
"Go take care of that bullet," Corbett said.
Tool smiled ruefully, as if enjoying some private joke. "I still don't unnerstand what the hell you people wanted," he said, "what you hoped to get from this whole fucked-up deal."
"Ask them." Corbett pointed to his sister and her accomplice.
"Accountability," Mick Stranahan said.
"An ending," said Joey. "Maybe some peace of mind."
Tool flapped his dripping arms in exasperation. "But come on! Life don't work like that!"
"Oh, sometimes it does," Stranahan said.
Thirty
Charles Perrone slept in his own bed, spooning the suitcase. He awoke before dawn, chewed up five cherry Maalox tablets, tossed a toothbrush and three pairs of clean underwear into a grocery bag, then sat down to write out a suicide note.
"To all my friends and loved ones," he began without irony.
Life alone is unbearable. lam reminded of my precious Joey with every sunrise. Although I've tried to stay strong, I'm afraid it's impossible. I clung to hope as long as possible, but now it's time to face the awful truth. She is never coming back and it's all my fault-how could I let her out of my sight that rainy night at sea?
I pray that all of you can forgive me. I only wish I could forgive myself. Tonight I shall reunite with my beloved, so that we may embrace each other on our journey to a dear and better place.
Get my swan costume ready!
Yours in sorrow, Dr. Charles Perrone Chaz foresaw that his integrity would be called into question once Joey surfaced and went to the police. It was his vainglorious hope that a heart-wrenching farewell message might cast enough doubt upon his wife's lurid story to gain him some getaway time. The salient phrases he had, of course, purloined from an Internet site devoted to memorable suicide notes and famous last words. Chaz was especially fond of the final sentence, supposedly uttered in 1931 by ballerina Anna Pavlova as she exited the mortal stage.
After taping the note to the refrigerator, he manually shredded the paper contents of his backpack. Special attention was given to the handwritten tables denoting minimal levels of phosphorus in the waste from Red Hammernut's farms. The dweebs at the water district would have been vexed to see that Chaz's charts had been completed and signed well in advance of upcoming sampling dates. Chaz had considered saving the forged documents in case he ever needed to blackmail Red, or testify against him. Now, thanks to Chaz's half-million-dollar windfall, his most promising option was to disappear without a trace. He would miss his yellow Hummer, but only until he bought a new one.
Assuming there was a dealership in Costa Rica.
He was waiting on hold with the cab dispatcher when the doorbell rang. Quietly he hung up the phone and padded to Tool's room, where he found a rusty revolver in a moldy gym bag. As he hurried back to the front of the house, the bell rang again. Chaz remained silent until the pounding started, as if someone was attacking the door with a croquet mallet.
"Yo, knock it off! Who's there?"
"The cleaning lady."
"Ricca?" he said incredulously.
"Open up or I'll scream bloody murder."
"Don't do that." Her yowls could shatter crystal, as Chaz well remembered from their lovemaking.