"Negative! As commanding officer of the White Clarion "
Chub rose to his knees and, with his clawless hand, snatched the pistol from the colonel. He jammed it to Amber's throat and told her to spread her legs.
Bode remembered the Colombian's Beretta in his belt. He considered drawing the gun, not so much for Amber's sake but to reinforce his superior rank. Without a steep improvement in discipline, Bode felt, the fledgling militia would soon go to pieces.
His consternation was heightened by the unexpected arrival of Shiner, the young blackmailer himself, stumbling through the trees. His cheeks were puffy and his pants were soiled and his twisted-looking fists were extended oddly at his sides, like a scarecrow's. Upon seeing Major Chub naked atop Amber, Shiner roared into a headlong assault.
Bodean Gazzer was poised to tackle the hapless skinhead when something exploded from the shoreline behind him. Chub was lifted off Amber as if there were springs in his ass. Then Bode heard a frightfully heavy thump, which he later learned was the butt of a Remington shotgun impacting his own skull.
When he regained consciousness, Bode was aware of being constricted. A white man he didn't know was tying him with a length of anchor rope to a buttonwood stump. Still flat on the ground was Chub, gurgling curses and drenched in his own blood. Shiner sat downcast in the bow of the stolen boat; his melancholy gaze was fixed on the bruised scabby mess of a tattoo. Amber stood back, wrapped in the oilskin tarpaulin. Irritably she plucked leaves and turtle grass from her hair.
All the militia's weapons had been piled on the ground. The captured arsenal was being inspected by a muscular young Negro woman with neon-green nails and a Remington shotgun. Bode Gazzer recognized her immediately.
"Not you!" was all he could say.
"That's right, bubba. Say hi to the Black Tide."
The sky and earth and universe began to spin madly for Bode Gazzer, as his fate appeared to him with sickening lucidity. The white man finished with the knots and stepped away from the tree. The Negro woman came forward, carrying the gun so casually as to cause a spasm in Bode's fragile sphincter.
"What do you want?" he asked.
JoLayne Lucks slipped the shotgun between his lips.
"Let's start with your wallet," she said.
25
The case of LaGort v. Save King Enterprises, Allied-Eagle Casualty, et al.was settled in a courthouse hallway after a pretrial conference lasting less than two hours. The attorneys for the supermarket's insurance carrier, having detected in Judge Arthur Battenkill Jr. a frosty and inexplicable bias, chose to pay Emil LaGort the annoying but not unpalatable sum of $500,000. The purpose was to avoid a trial in which the defense clearly would get no help from the judge, who'd already vowed to prohibit any testimony attacking the past honesty of the plaintiff, including but not limited to his very long list of other negligence suits. Emil LaGort attended the conference in a noisy motorized wheelchair with maroon mica-fleck armrests, and wore around his neck a two-tone foam cervical brace. The brace was one of nine models available in Emil LaGort's walk-in closet, where he saved all medical aids acquired during the phony recoveries from his many staged accidents.
After the settlement papers were signed and the sourpuss insurance lawyers filed into the elevator and Emil LaGort rolled himself across James Street to a topless luncheonette, his lawyer discreetly obtained from Judge Arthur Battenkill Jr. the number of a newly opened Nassau bank account, into which $250,000 would be wired secretly within four weeks.
Not exactly a king's ransom, Arthur Battenkill knew, but enough for a fast start on a new life.
The judge's wife, however, wasn't packing for the tropics. While Arthur Battenkill was tidying up the details of the Save King payoff, Katie was on her knees in church. She was praying for divine guidance, or at least improved clarity of thought. That morning she'd read in The Registerthat Tom Krome's estranged wife had come to town to receive a journalism award on her "late" husband's behalf. Regardless of Tommy's ill feelings toward the elusive Mary Andrea Finley, it seemed possible to Katie Battenkill that the woman might be mourning an imagined loss; that she still might love Tom Krome in some significant way.
Shouldn't somebody tell her he's not really dead? If it were me, Katie thought, I'd sure want to know.
But Katie had assured Tommy she wouldn't say a word. Breaking her promise would be a lie, and lying was a sin, and Katie was trying to give up sinning. On the other hand, she couldn't bear the thought of Mrs. Krome (whatever her faults) needlessly suffering even a sliver of widow's pain.
Knowing Tom was alive became a leaden weight upon Katie's overtaxed conscience. There was a second secret, too; equally troubling. She was reminded of it by another item in The Register,which reported that the human remains believed to be those of Tom Krome were being shipped to an FBI laboratory "for more sophisticated analysis." This meant DNA tests, which meant it wouldn't be long before the dead man was correctly identified as Champ Powell, law clerk to Circuit Judge Arthur Battenkill Jr.
The devious shitheel with whom Katie was about to flee the country forever.
"What do I do?" she whispered urgently. Head bowed, she knelt alone in the first pew. She prayed and waited, then prayed some more.
God's answer, when it eventually came, was typically strong on instruction but weak on details. Katie Battenkill didn't push it; she was grateful for anything.
As she walked out of church, she removed her diamond solitaire and deposited it in the slot of the oak collection box, where it landed with no more fanfare than a nickel. Lightning didn't flash, thunder didn't clap. No angels sang from the rafters.
Maybe that'll come later, Katie thought.
After the last of the pilgrims were gone, Shiner's mother approached the besheeted Sinclair, who was sloshing playfully with the cooters in the moat. She said, "Help me, turtle boy. I need a spiritual rudder." Sinclair's unshaven chin tilted toward the heavens: "kiiiikkkeeeeaayy kaa-koooo kaattttkin."
His visitor failed to decipher the outcry (kicking back with ultra-cool kathleen from a feature profile of the actress Kathleen Turner).
"How 'bout giving that a shot in English?" Shiner's mother grumped.
Sinclair beckoned her into the moat. She kicked off her scuffed bridal heels and stepped in. Sinclair motioned her to sit. With cupped hands he gathered several baby turtles and placed them on the billowing white folds of her gown.
Shiner's mother picked one up to examine it. "You paint these suckers yourself?"
Sinclair laughed patiently. "They're not painted. That's the Lord's imprint."
"No joke? Is this little guy 'posed to be Luke or Matthew or who?"
"Lay back with me."
"They paved my Jesus this morning, did you hear? The road department did."
"Lay back," Sinclair told her.
He sloshed closer, taking her shoulders and lowering her baptismally. Shiner's mother closed her eyes and felt the coolness of the funky water on her neck, the tickle of tiny cooter claws across her skin.
"They won't bite?"
"Nope," said Sinclair, supporting her.
Soon Shiner's mother was enfolded by a preternatural sense of inner peace and trust, and possibly something more. The last man who'd touched her so sensitively was her periodontist, for whom she'd fallen head over heels.
"Oh, turtle boy, I lost my son and my shrine. I don't know what to do."
'''Kiiikkkeeeaay ka-kooo,"Sinclair murmured.
"OK," said Shiner's mother. "Kiki-kakeee-kooo.Is that the Bible in, like, Japanese?"
Unseen by the meditators in the moat was Demencio, who stood with knuckles on hips at a window. To Trish he said: "You believe this shit she's in with the turtles!"