"Do people like her?"
"My Ma says so."
"Shiner, are there many black people where you live?"
"In Grange? Some. What's 'many'? I mean, we got a few." Then it occurred to him that she might be considering a move, so he added: "But not many. And they stick pretty much to theyselves."
Showing good sense, Amber thought.
"You all right?"
"How much farther?"
"Just up the road," Shiner said. "We're almost there."
He was relieved to see his Impala next to the trailer, where he'd parked it, although he'd apparently left the trunk ajar. Dumb-ass!
Amber said, "Nice paint job."
"I done the sanding myself. When I'm through, it'll be candy-apple red."
"Look out, world."
She stood and stretched her legs. She noticed an opossum curled on the trailer slab; the mangiest thing she'd ever seen. It blinked shoe-button eyes and poked a whiskered pink snout in the air. When Shiner clapped his hands, it ambled into the scrub. Amber wished it had run.
She said, "I can't believe anybody lives like this."
"Chub's tough. He's about the toughest I ever met."
"Yeah. Look where it got him a dump." Amber meant to shatter any notions Shiner might have about inviting her inside. "So where's the tape?" she asked impatiently.
He stepped to the Impala and opened the passenger-side door. The glove compartment was open, and empty.
"Oh shit."
"Now what?" Amber leaned in to see.
"I can't fucking believe this." Shiner wrapped his arms around his head. Someone had been inside his car!
The videotape was gone. So was the bogus handicapped parking emblem, which Shiner had hung from the rearview. Also missing was the Impala's steering wheel, without which the car was scrap.
"It's them again. The goddamn Black Tide!" Shiner gasped out the words.
Amber looked inappropriately amused. He asked her what was so damn funny.
"Nothing's funny. But it issort of perfect."
"Glad you think so. Jesus, what about the Lotto!" he said. "And what about my car? I hope you got Plan B."
Amber said, "Let's get going." When he balked, she lowered her voice: "Hurry. Before 'they' come back."
She made Shiner drive, an enforced distraction. Soon he blabbered himself into a calm. In Homestead she instructed him to pull over by a drainage canal. She waited for a dump truck to pass, then tossed Chub's Colt Python into the water. Afterward, Shiner stayed quiet for many miles. Amber knew he was thinking about all that money. She was, too.
"It wasn't meant to be. It wasn't right," she said, "not from any angle."
"Yeah, but for fourteen million bucks "
"Know why I'm not upset? Because we're off the hook. Now we don't have to make a decision about what to do. Somebody made it for us."
"But you still got the ticket."
Amber shook her head. "Not for long. Whoever came for that video knows who really won the lottery. They know,OK?"
"Yeah." Shiner went into a sulk.
She said, "I've never been arrested before. How about you?"
He said nothing.
"You mentioned your mom? Well, I was thinking about my dad," Amber said. "About what my dad would do if he turned on the TV one night and there's his little blond princess in handcuffs, busted for trying to cash a stolen Lotto ticket. It'd probably kill him, my dad."
"The rabbi?"
She laughed softly. "Right."
Shiner wasn't sure how to get back to Coconut Grove, so Amber (who needed to pack an overnight bag, check in with Tony and arrange for her friend Gloria to cover her shift at Hooters) told him to stick with U.S. 1, even though there were a jillion stoplights. Shiner didn't complain. They were stopped in traffic at the Bird Road intersection when the car was approached by an elderly Cuban man selling long-stemmed roses. Impulsively Shiner dug a five-dollar bill from his camos. The old man grinned warmly. Shiner bought three roses and handed them to Amber, who responded with a cool dart of a kiss. It was the first time he ever got flowers for a woman, and also his first experience with a genuine Miami Cuban.
What a day, he thought. And it still ain't over.
The videotape gave Moffitt a headache. Typical convenience-store setup: cheapo black-and-white with stuttered speed, so the fuzzy images jerked along like Claymation. A digitalized day/date/time flickered in the bottom margin. Impatiently Moffitt fast-forwarded through a blurry conga line of truckers, traveling salesmen, stiff-legged tourists and bingeing teenagers whose unwholesome diets and nicotine addictions made the Grab N'Go a gold mine for the Dutch holding company that owned it.
Finally Moffitt came to JoLayne Lucks, walking through the swinging glass doors. She wore jeans, a baggy sweatshirt and big round sunglasses, probably the peach-tinted ones. The camera's clock flashed 5:15 p.m. One minute later she was standing at the counter. Moffitt chuckled when he saw the roll of Certs; spearmint, undoubtedly. JoLayne dug into her purse and gave some money to the pudgy teenage clerk. He handed her the change in coins, plus one ticket from the Lotto machine. She said something to the clerk, smiled, and went out the door into the afternoon glare.
Moffitt backed up the tape, to review the smile. It was good enough to make him ache.
He'd left Puerto Rico a day early, after the de la Hoya cousins wisely discarded their original explanation of the three hundred Chinese machine guns found in their beach house at Rincon (to wit: they'd unknowingly rented the place to a band of leftist guerrillas posing as American surfers). Attorneys for the de la Hoyas realized they were in trouble when they noticed jurors smirking (and, in one case, suppressing a giggle) as the surfer alibi was presented during opening statements. After a hasty conference, the de la Hoyas decided to jump on the government's offer of a plea bargain, thus sparing Moffitt and a half dozen other ATF agents the drudgery of testifying. Once the case was settled, Moffitt's pals headed straight to San Juan in search of tropical pussy, while Moffitt flew home to help JoLayne.
Who was, naturally, nowhere to be found.
Moffitt had known she wouldn't take his advice, wouldn't back off and wait. There was nothing to be done; she was as stubborn as a mule. Always had been.
Finding her, if she was still alive, meant finding the Lotto robbers whom she undoubtedly was tracking. For clues Moffitt returned to the apartment of Bodean James Gazzer, which appeared to have been abandoned in a panic. The food in the kitchen was beginning to rot, and the ketchup message on the walls had dried to a gummy brown crust. Moffitt made another hard pass through the rooms and came up with a crumpled eviction notice for a rented trailer lot in the boonies of Homestead. Scratched in pencil on the back of the paper were six numbers that matched the ones on JoLayne's stolen lottery ticket.
Moffitt was on his way out the apartment door when the phone rang. He couldn't resist. The caller was a deputy for the Monroe County sheriffs office, inquiring about a 1996 Dodge Ram pickup truck that had been found stripped near the Indian Key fill, on the Overseas Highway. The deputy said the truck was registered to one Bodean J. Gazzer.
"That you?" the deputy asked on the phone.
"My roommate," Moffitt said.
"Well, when you see him," said the deputy, "could you ask him to give us a holler?"
"Sure thing." Moffitt thinking: So the assholes ran to the Keys.
Immediately he began calling marinas, working south from Key Largo and asking (in his most persuasive agent-speak) about unusual rentals or thefts. That's how he learned about the Whaler overdue in Islamorada, rented to a "nigrah girl with a sassy tongue," according to the old cracker at the motel dock. The Coast Guard already had a bird up, so Moffitt made another call and got cleared to tag along. He was waiting at Opa-Locka when the chopper came in for refueling.
Ninety minutes later they'd spotted her JoLayne with her new friend, Krome. Tooling along in the missing skiff.
Watching through the binoculars, Moffitt had felt sheepish for worrying so much about her. But who in his right mind wouldn't?