Skinner heard rubber peeling and glanced over his shoulder-Louis Piejack’s truck, speeding away. Skinner sat down and hung his legs over the seawall and watched the kayaks slowly shrink to bright specks crossing the water. He assured himself that he was doing this not because he still cared for his ex-wife, who was certifiably tilted, but because she was the mother of his one and only son and therefore worthy of concern.
After taking the handgun home, he returned to the crab docks, where one of his young mechanics, Randy, was doing battle with the broken diesel. Skinner told him to move aside. At lunchtime a woman whom Skinner was dating stopped by with cold beer and Cuban sandwiches. Her name was Debbie but she preferred to be called Sienna. Skinner had once asked her why she’d named herself after a Crayola, and she’d gotten her feelings hurt. She was only twenty-six years old and drove a propane truck back and forth from Port Charlotte. Her brother was a tight end for the Jacksonville Jaguars, which at least gave her and Skinner something to talk about during football season. The rest of the year it was pretty slow going.
“I’m so psyched about tonight,” Sienna said. “Aren’t you?”
Skinner studied the bubbles in his beer. He was trying hard to recall what was on the agenda.
“Green Day, remember?” she said. “God, Perry, don’t tell me.”
“Sure, I remember. They’re playin’ in Fort Myers.”
“You said you liked ’em.”
“I meant it, too.” To Skinner’s knowledge, he’d never heard any of the band’s songs; he was country to the bone.
Sienna said, “We don’t have to go if you don’t want. I could sell the stupid tickets on eBay in about thirty seconds.”
“Please don’t pout. I already said we’re going.”
“Twice I went with you to see Willie Nelson. Twice.”
“Yes, you did.” Skinner wasn’t in the mood for a rock concert, but he figured the distraction would do him good.
“Hank Jr., too,” Sienna went on, “or did you forget that one?”
“No, I didn’t forget.” Skinner wanted lunch to be done. He wanted Sienna to go away before he was obliged to heave her overboard.
“Excuse me for a second,” he said, and stepped into the wheelhouse.
Randy was thumbing through a MotoCross magazine, his rubber boots propped on the console. Skinner silently finished his beer and watched an old johnboat coming from upriver. In the bow was a paunchy, uncomfortable-looking man with a shiner over one eye. He was wearing a wrinkled gray business suit, unusual attire for a fishing trip, and on his lap he protectively embraced two metallic travel cases.
In the back of the johnboat sat Louis Piejack, his undamaged hand holding the tiller stick of the engine. He never glanced once at the crab docks as he puttered past, so he was unaware that he was being watched. Otherwise, he might have made an effort to conceal the sawed-off shotgun, which lay in plain view on the deck of the boat, between his feet.
“Goddammit,” Perry Skinner muttered.
Randy glanced up from his magazine. “What’s up, boss?”
There was no time to call the guys in Hialeah. Skinner would have to handle it himself, which was fine.
“What’re you doin’ tonight, Randy?”
“Not a fuckin’ thing, boss.”
“You wanna go see Green Day with Sienna? It’s on me,” Skinner said.
“Far fuckin’ out!”
Dealey wasn’t a tough guy. He’d never been a cop or Feeb, unlike many other private investigators. Eighteen years Dealey had worked for an insurance company, knocking down phony disability claims, before going out on his own.
And usually it wasn’t dangerous work, spying on unfaithful spouses. Dealey had only been injured once, by a flying vibrator. It had happened while he was surreptitiously photographing an acrobatic young couple in Candleridge. The woman, having spotted Dealey, had snatched the nine-inch missile from a nightstand and spiraled it with uncanny accuracy through the open ground-floor window of her apartment. Struck in the throat, the investigator had run for five blocks before collapsing in a cherry hedge. For three weeks afterward he’d been unable to speak or to take solid foods. The vibrator had tumbled into his camera bag, and Dealey kept the flesh-colored appliance in his desk as a sobering reminder of the perils of his trade. The batteries he’d tossed in the trash.
In all his many years of surveilling cheaters, layabouts and fraud artists, nobody had ever pointed a gun at Dealey, much less fired a round past his head. Louis Piejack was both vengeful and nuts, an unpromising combination.
“I’m not a great swimmer,” he’d warned Piejack as they got in the johnboat.
“Tough shit.”
Dealey’s hearing had returned to normal, so there was nothing fuzzy about Piejack’s response.
“Why don’t we wait for Honey to come back?” the investigator suggested. “What kind of sexy pictures you expect me to get when she’s paddling a kayak?”
“Shut your fat yap,” said Piejack.
Dealey had positioned the bulky Halliburtons on his lap to shield his vital organs from another gunshot, accidental or intended. As the small flat-bottomed craft headed downriver, he settled upon a strategy of falsely befriending Louis Piejack so that the man would let down his guard.
“What exactly happened with those stone crabs?” Dealey inquired in a plausible tone of sympathy. He couldn’t stop staring at the man’s fingertips, which protruded from the gauze like nubs of dirty chalk. Something wasn’t right.
“It was these goddamn Cubans hired by Honey’s shitwad ex-husband. They shoved my hand into a loaded trap and the fuckin’ crabs went to town,” Piejack said. “I know it was him that set me up, ’cause, first off, he speaks Cuban real good. Second off, he’s jealous of my hots for Honey.”
Dealey said, “Makes sense.”
“Then, when they got me to surgery, some doctor fucked up and sewed my fingers back all wrong. Look here.”
Louis Piejack held up what appeared to be a pinkie where a thumb ought to have been. Dealey was unnerved by the sight, although he wasn’t sure if he believed any of the man’s story, from the crabs to the surgeon. Piejack seemed entirely capable of self-mutilation.
He said, “I got me a sharp lawyer, don’t you worry. Come back in a year and I’ll own that fuckin’ hospital.”
“Can’t you find another doctor to stitch your fingers back where they belong?”
“I s’pose,” Piejack said, “but I’m gonna wait a spell and see how this new setup works.”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean, Honey might like me better this way.” Piejack attempted without success to wiggle the misplaced pinkie. “You follow?”
Dealey nodded agreeably, thinking: What a loon.
It was tempting to blame Lily Shreave for his predicament, but Dealey knew it was his own fault. Lily was merely rich and kinky; he easily could have said no to the Florida trip. Greed, pure and simple, had drawn him into this mess.
“I’ll say this: Them doctors put me on some superior dope for the pain,” Piejack remarked as they chugged past a row of commercial fishing boats.
“Yeah, like what?”
“Vikes,” he said. “But I et up the whole damn bottle the first day! Lucky I know this pharmacist up in East Naples-he traded me a hundred pills for five pounds of swordfish.”
Beautiful, thought Dealey. The man’s not only deranged, he’s overmedicated. Add the loaded shotgun and it’s party time.
“If you’re not feelin’ good, I can steer for a while,” Dealey offered.
“Yeah, right.” Piejack coughed once and spat over the side.
Dealey turned in his seat so that he could see where the madman was taking him. Soon the brown river emptied into a broad calm bay fringed with dense trees. There wasn’t a hotel or a high-rise to be seen, which Dealey found surprising. Piejack gunned the throttle and the johnboat picked up speed. Dealey hugged his camera cases and shivered at the rush of cool air.