Chaz began to stutter.
Tool slapped him. "Spit it out, boy."
Obviously the working dynamic between the two men had changed. "You're not supposed to be slapping me around," Chaz complained. "You're my bodyguard, for Christ's sake!"
Tool shook his head. "Not no more. Now tell me-who was it? I smelled the barrel, Doc. I know what you done."
Here goes, Chaz thought. "Remember that lady with the little blue Ford? The one who came by last week?"
"I 'member. Your grief nurse, you said."
"Yeah, well, she got it in her head to make trouble. It was going to be bad."
"Is that right," Tool said.
"Ricca was her name. I'm pretty sure she hooked up with that asshole who's blackmailing us. I bet she was the one you saw down at Flamingo."
Tool frowned. "She sure didn't look familiar."
"But it was dark. And you said she wore a hat."
"Yeah, but still." He remembered the blue-Ford lady as being sort of short and stacked. The one with the ball cap seemed taller and thinner.
"Listen," Chaz said, "I need you to help me ditch her car and go through the apartment. We should make it look like she ran out on her rent."
Tool eyed him as if he were a tick. "That's two girls you whacked. What's up with you?"
"Come on. Will you help me or not?"
Tool dug a bottle of Mountain Dew out of the refrigerator and took a chug. "I ain't a bodyguard no more," he reiterated. "Now on, I'm your 'baby-sitter' is what Red says. That means I can spank your sorry ass, you don't do zackly what you're tole."
"My baby-sitter," Chaz repeatedly thinly. It was even more degrading than he'd feared. "I'm calling Red right now. We'll get this nonsense straightened out."
Tool shoved his cell phone at Chaz. "He's on the speed dial. Number one."
Red Hammernut was empathetic but unmoved. He said that while he was sensitive to Chaz's feelings, the gravity of the blackmail situation required that Mr. O'Toole take a more proactive role. Chaz was left with the unnerving impression that Red's goon would not be protecting him so much as holding him in custody. He was, more or less, under house arrest.
Cheerfully, Red Hammernut added, "Relax, son. Soon as we're done with this greedy prick who's shakin' us down, everything'll go back to normal in your life."
Chaz doubted that seriously. He said, "You're gonna pay him, aren't you?"
"Oh, he'll be paid. Don't you worry."
After Red said good-bye, Chaz passed the cellular back to Tool, who asked, "How come you didn't tell him 'bout that woman you shot?"
Chaz turned away. "Guess I forgot."
"Don't ever set foot outta this house without me. You hear?"
"Aye, aye," Chaz said, assuming incorrectly that Tool would miss the sarcasm. Tool promptly clouted him in the head and told him to get with the damn program.
Chaz shrank away, shielding himself with his arms. He was sick and tired of getting pummeled, first by the smartass blackmailer and now by this hairy troglodyte. He hadn't suffered so many bruises since the night he got wiped on roofies and fell down the stairs of a sorority house in Durham.
"All right then," said Tool, and went out back to plant a new cross that he'd uprooted off Highway 27 during the drive back from LaBelle.
Chaz fixed himself a cup of black coffee. By nature he was neither thorough nor introspective, but he reviewed with some attention to detail the events of recent days. That his stock had fallen with Red Hammernut was clear, and it caused Chaz to wonder if Red was now reconsidering his past commitments. In exchange for carrying out the Everglades scam, Chaz had been promised a plum position with Hammernut Farms-staff biologist, with a fat salary, big office, slutty blond secretary, whatever he wanted. That was the deal. They had drunk a toast and shaken hands on it.
But now… now it seemed to Chaz as if Red was blaming him for the entire unfortunate shitstorm, from the jerkoff detective snooping around to the jerkoff blackmailer demanding half a million bucks. True, none of it would be happening had Chaz not chosen to push his perfectly innocent wife off the cruise liner-but how could he possibly have known that some conniving dirtbag was lurking in the shadows, watching the whole damn thing?
It was unfair of Red Hammernut to lose faith so easily, to tie Chaz on a short leash and put him in the hands of a chowderhead like Tool. With a measure of bitterness Chaz concluded that Red was underestimating him, just as his mother had underestimated him not so many years ago. He believed that Red's tepid assessment of his character might be different had he witnessed Chaz in action the night before at Loxahatchee; the smooth and unflinching way that Chaz had taken care of the Ricca problem. Red surely would have been impressed, he thought. Maybe even amazed.
As he watched Tool plant yet another white cross in the yard, it began to gnaw at Dr. Charles Perrone that Red Hammernut was now treating him like a liability instead of an asset.
And he knew what men like Red Hammernut did with their liabilities.
Twenty-three
Joey and Mick Stranahan were waiting when Corbett Wheeler's chartered Falcon landed at Tamiami. He stepped out wearing a long black drover's coat and, over an explosion of reddish-blond hair, a wide-brimmed leather hat. He sported a lushly ungroomed beard, and he carried a burl walking stick of the sort favored by fast-water trout fishermen. Two inches taller than Stranahan, Corbett Wheeler shook hands in a way that suggested the closure of a sensitive, high-stakes business deal. Then with one ropy arm he twirled his sister until she giggled. On the drive to Dinner Key he insisted on sharing Polaroids of a prize ewe named Celine, a Coopworth-East Friesian hybrid that had survived a nasty bout with foot rot to become Corbett's most fertile breeder.
"Isn't she gorgeous?" he enthused.
Mick and Joey chose to treat the question as rhetorical. To Stranahan, Corbett Wheeler confided: "These are the most peaceable creatures on God's green earth. Strange as it seems, I vastly prefer their company to humans."
Stranahan said he understood completely.
"There's no sort of unnatural attraction, if that's what you're wondering," Corbett added sternly. "Joey will back me up on that."
She said, "It's true. Corbett is partial to women. He's been engaged what-three or four times?"
He nodded remorsefully. "I'm impossible to live with. I crave my solitude."
"Then you'll approve of the island," Stranahan said.
"Yes, but first the ship!"
"What a champ," Joey said.
Corbett Wheeler tipped his hat. "Anything for you, little sister."
Three hours later, after an arduous mission to the Galleria Mall, they were standing on the fan tail of the M.V Sun Duchess in Port Everglades, waiting for the sun to set. Joey's brother was looking over the rail, pointing with his walking stick, saying, "Christ Almighty, I can't believe you didn't die in the fall."
"I turned it into a dive," Joey explained. "That's what saved me- four years on the college swim team."
Stranahan noticed her shying away from the side of the ship. When he asked if she felt all right, she said, "It's just a little creepy out here, that's all."
"We don't have to go through with this," he said.
"Like hell we don't."
Still gazing down at the water, Corbett Wheeler whistled. "It was me, I wouldn't have made it."
"If it was you," Joey said, "you wouldn't have married someone who'd push you overboard."
Her brother shrugged. "Relationships are complicated. That's why I'm partial to livestock."
Stranahan watched the meandering procession of tugs and freighters and fishing boats. The roiling cross-wakes would have made for an interesting ride in his skiff.
"You rented this whole ship?" he asked Corbett Wheeler.