Dealey said, “Go slow, okay? Camera gets splashed and we’re out of business.”
And I’m out two grand, he thought.
“But I want movies,” Piejack said, “not pitchers.”
Dealey packed the Nikon away. He said they needed to get much closer to record usable videotape.
“Noooooo problem.” Piejack was fuzzy from the Vicodin tablets he’d eaten for lunch. It wasn’t easy maintaining a high-level addiction to prescription painkillers with one’s dominant hand swaddled so cumbersomely. Piejack had assigned Dealey-under threat of execution-to open the bottle and count out five tablets, which with lizardly flicks of his scabbed tongue he’d slurped from his captive’s palm. Dealey, mortified, had said nothing.
Piejack circled to the far side of the island and poked the johnboat along an overgrown mangrove creek. The talon-like branches clawed at Dealey’s skin and tore holes in his suit jacket, but Piejack seemed unconcerned. He ran the boat hard aground, snatched up his shotgun and jumped out. Dealey followed, lugging the camera gear.
“Don’t get no ideas,” Piejack warned.
“You think I’m crazy?”
In fact, Dealey had thought of nothing but escape since they’d motored out of Everglades City. Now, trailing Piejack into the heart of the island, Dealey waited for the loopy kidnapper to falter. With providence, Piejack soon would pass out from the excess of narcotics, presenting Dealey with a couple of options. Running like hell would be high on the list, but where would he go? Even if he got the johnboat running, Dealey wasn’t confident that he could find his way to the mainland.
A more practical idea was to snatch the shotgun while Louis Piejack slept, and then force the nimrod to ferry him back to town. Even with a plan in mind, Dealey remained anxious, for nothing on the streets of Fort Worth had prepared him for such a situation-being trapped in the Everglades with a maimed and trigger-happy fishmonger.
“Shut up,” Piejack barked.
“I didn’t say a word.”
“Then who the hell did?” Piejack halted, raising a begauzed hand. Dealey heard nothing except his own rapid breathing; the camera cases were heavy.
“Over there.” Piejack pointed to a fifteen-foot hill sprinkled with scrub and cactus plants. “You first.”
“Gimme a break.”
“How ’bout a load of bird shot up your butthole instead?”
The slope consisted almost entirely of broken oysters and seashells. Dealey’s shoes crunched noisily as he advanced, Piejack goosing him crudely with the barrel of the sawed-off. As they approached the top, Dealey heard voices on the other side. Piejack directed him toward a clump of sticky vines, where they took cover.
The three kayakers were in a clearing under a big tree, about fifty yards away. Boyd Shreave and Eugenie Fonda were sitting on a duffel bag, eating from plastic containers and sharing a gallon jug of water. The woman from the trailer park, Louis Piejack’s beloved Honey, stood spritzing her arms with bug juice.
“My God, ain’t she a treasure.” Piejack sighed. “Take out your camera, Hawkeye.”
“She’s got her clothes on. They all do.” Dealey felt sure that in his earlier sighting, Piejack had hallucinated the naked breasts.
“Just make me a goddamn movie,” Piejack whispered menacingly.
Dealey rigged up the camera and began to tape, Piejack hovering at his left shoulder. Through the viewfinder it appeared that Boyd Shreave was talking constantly, and that neither of the women was paying the slightest attention.
Dealey felt Piejack’s hot breath on his ear. Then, in a singsong voice: “Where’s my lil’ Honey Pie runnin’ off to?”
“How should I know?”
“Stay on her! Stay on her!”
Dealey said, “Easy, Louis.” He kept the camera trained on Honey as she made her way into a brushy stand of small trees.
“I bet she’s gonna pee,” Piejack said excitedly.
He’s probably right, thought Dealey, discreetly pressing the pause button.
“Are you still shootin’? Keep shootin’!” Piejack was panting like a broken-down dog. “Can you see her? I can’t see her no more.”
The crackpot was unaware that the tape had been stopped, so Dealey easily could have faked it. He could have kept quiet and pretended to record Honey squatting in the bushes, Piejack hopping beside him in elation.
Yet even Dealey, whose life’s work was invading and exploiting the most private moments of others, had moral boundaries. A sex tape was evidence; a pissing tape was trash.
The investigator pivoted with artistic deliberation, touched the record button and boldly advanced with the lens aimed squarely at his captor.
Louis Piejack began backing up. “Now what the hell you doin’?”
“Makin’ a movie,” Dealey replied, “about the sickest piece of shit I ever met.”
At the crest of the oyster mound, Piejack’s expression changed from ragged confusion to rage. He dug his heels into the loose shells and leveled the sawed-off at Dealey’s gut.
“Don’t come no closer. You’re done,” he said.
“I’m not so sure about that.” Dealey adjusted the exposure and continued taping.
Piejack peered at the red dot blinking beneath the lens. “Turn that damn thing off.”
“Don’t you want to be famous?”
“What for?”
“Stinking up the planet,” said Dealey.
“That’s it. Get ready to die, you sonofabitch.”
“Then good luck, Louis. You’re gonna need it.”
Piejack scowled. “What the fuck’s that s’posed to mean?”
“Good luck opening your precious medicine bottle without me to help,” Dealey said.
Piejack pensively nibbled his upper lip. “It’s those goddamn kiddy-proof caps. They’re murder with one hand.”
“Oh, you’ll figure out a way.” Dealey noticed a brown iodine-stained nub on the trigger of the shotgun. It was a thumb, sprouting from the gauze where a forefinger ought to have been. Dealey briefly zoomed in on it.
“Make up your mind, Louis.”
Piejack grunted. “You think I won’t shoot? Ha!”
Dealey heard a dull crack and the kidnapper disappeared from the viewfinder. In his place stood a muscular young man holding a rifle. Dealey lowered the camera and saw Piejack, facedown and lifeless in a cactus patch.
“I owe you, bud,” the investigator said to the stranger, who retrieved Piejack’s shotgun and tucked it under one arm.
Then he walked up to Dealey and ungently pinched his nose.
“You’re not real,” the man said accusingly.
“I am too,” Dealey quacked, struggling to pull free.
“Look at your damn suit.”
“I can explain!”
The man with the rifle said, “Don’t lie to me. You’re a death spirit.”
Perfect, Dealey thought. Another Florida wacko.
The man let go of Dealey’s nose and said, “Take off your shoes and socks.”
Dealey stowed the video camera and did what he was told. The man balled up the sweaty socks and crammed them into Dealey’s cheeks.
“You got any water?” he demanded.
Dealey shook his head apologetically.
“Hell,” the young man said. He motioned with the rifle. “Stand up and follow me.”
When Dealey pointed to his Halliburtons, the man shrugged. Dealey hoisted the two cases and trudged heavily after the stranger. The broken oyster shells gouged the soles of the investigator’s feet, and before long he heard himself whimpering.
This is the worst job I ever took, he thought. By far.
Fifteen
She thought she’d heard voices, but what else was new? Rarely was there a silence in her world; no peace, no quiet. Nat King Cole crooned a duet with Marilyn Manson, a sniper tripped a fire alarm at the nursing home, a parakeet landed in a margarita blender…
Just another day inside the head of Honey Santana.
“Some vacation,” said Boyd Shreave, the man who’d phoned during dinner and given his name as Eisenhower and tried to sucker her into buying a tract of overpriced real estate.
The man who’d called her a skank.