“That’s rich,” said Gillian, “getting kidnapped twice in the same day. It might be a world record.”
“I’m not makin’ this up. That’s the guy who gave me the black eye!”
Gillian told Dealey that she believed him. Sammy Tigertail instructed her to stop speaking to the death spirit.
“But I think he might be real,” Gillian said, giving Dealey a secret wink.
“That could be bad for him,” said the Seminole, who’d already considered the possibility. Unlike the spirit of Wilson, Dealey hadn’t faded away when Sammy Tigertail opened his eyes. More suspiciously, he’d made himself visible and audible to Gillian, who was plainly not an Indian.
Sammy Tigertail fingered a D chord and began to strum feverishly. He wished he had an amplifier. Gillian pulled out Dealey’s digital Nikon and took some shots of the Seminole playing, which she showed to him in the viewfinder. She said, “Damn, boy, you could be quite the rock star.”
The Seminole liked the way he looked holding the Gibson, though he tried not to appear too pleased. “I don’t want to be a rock star,” he said.
“Sure you don’t,” said Gillian. “All the free poon and dope you can stand, who’d want to live like that?”
“I need quiet. I can’t think.” Sammy Tigertail carefully wiped down the guitar and put it away. Then he unrolled his sleeping bag and ordered Dealey to crawl inside.
“Zip him up. I mean all the way,” Sammy Tigertail told Gillian.
“Even his head?”
“Especially his head.”
Dealey turned pink. “Don’t! I’m claustrophobic!”
“Where are those damn socks?” Sammy Tigertail asked.
“No-not that! I’ll keep quiet, I swear.”
Gillian said, “Come on, Thlocko, can’t you see he’s scared shitless?”
“Then you squeeze in there with him. For company,” Sammy Tigertail said. “There’s room for two.”
“Gross.”
“He can’t try anything. He’s dead.”
“Nuh-uh,” she said.
Dealey turned on one side to make space. Gillian slid into the sleeping bag behind him, positioning her elbows for distance enforcement. The Seminole zippered the top, sealing them in warm musty darkness. He said, “I told you, I need to think.”
After a few moments he heard their breathing level off. He sat down not far from the lumpy bulk. It was a mean thing to do, putting Gillian together with a possible death spirit, but maybe she’d finally come to her senses and abandon the notion of staying on the island. No normal young woman would tolerate the sack treatment, but then Gillian was miles from normal.
A part of Sammy Tigertail didn’t want to drive her away; the weak and lonely part. But what did he need her for? Surely not to teach him the Gibson. He could learn on his own, like so many of the great ones. His father had told him that Jimi Hendrix had taken one guitar lesson in his whole life, and that the Beatles couldn’t even read music.
“Hey.” Dealey’s hushed voice, inside the bundle.
“Hey what?” said Gillian.
Sammy Tigertail edged closer to listen.
“There’s a motorboat,” Dealey was saying.
“I don’t hear anything.”
“No, there’s a boat on the island. That’s how we got here.”
“You and Band-Aid Man?” Gillian said.
“Yeah, his boat,” Dealey whispered. “I think I could find it.”
“And your point is?”
A short silence followed. The larger of the two lumps shifted in the sleeping bag. Sammy Tigertail massaged the muscles of his neck, waiting.
“The point is,” Dealey said impatiently, “with the boat we can get away from him!”
“And why in the world would I want to do that?” Gillian whispered back, with an earnestness that made the eavesdropping Seminole smile in spite of himself.
Sixteen
The vice mayor of Everglades City borrowed from his neighbor a skiff rigged with a 35-horsepower outboard and an eighteen-foot graphite pole for pushing across the shallows. Perry Skinner brought a cooler of water and food, a spotlight, two bedrolls and the.45 semiautomatic. Fry, who was still hammered from the pain medicine, dozed in the bow for an hour while his father poked around Chokoloskee Bay. There was no sign of Honey and her guests, or of Louis Piejack’s johnboat.
Fry awoke as the sun was setting.
“What now?” he asked his father.
“We keep lookin’.”
“Can I take off this helmet? I feel okay.”
“You lie.” Perry Skinner knew that Honey would blame him if anything happened to the boy. She would, in fact, go berserk.
Fry felt his ribs and grimaced. “It’s gettin’ dark,” he said.
“Better for us.”
“But they’ll hear us coming a mile away.”
“Give me some credit, son.”
Perry Skinner hadn’t forgotten the art of night running, which was essential to prospering as a pot smuggler in the islands. He had never been busted on the water because the feds couldn’t find him, much less catch him. They’d arrested him on dry land at daybreak, along with half the male population of Everglades City. Five DEA guys had come crashing through the screen door, Honey half-naked and hurling a fondue pot at the lead agent, who’d been too entertained to book her.
During his outlaw career Skinner had been exceptionally cautious and discreet. His only mistake was trusting a man he’d known since kindergarten. To save his own hide, the friend had ratted out both Perry and Perry’s brother, betrayal being the boilerplate denouement of most drug-running enterprises. Skinner only fleetingly had contemplated revenge against the person who’d turned him in. It was, after all, his first cousin.
The shit had gone down before Fry was born, and he wouldn’t have been born at all if Honey Santana hadn’t been waiting for Skinner when he got out of prison; waiting in a lemon-colored sundress and white sandals. It was a total surprise, especially the smile. She’d mailed 147 letters to Skinner while he was locked up; few were conciliatory and none were forgiving. Yet there she’d been, all dressed up and glowing in the Pensacola sunshine when he’d stepped through the gates at Eglin. The first words from her mouth were: “If you ever run another load of weed, I’m gonna cut off your pecker and grind it into snapper chum.”
Perry Skinner had resumed a life of honest crabbing, and things at home had been good, for a while.
“You gave the GPS to your mom?” he asked Fry.
“Yep.”
“And showed her how to use it?”
“I tried,” Fry said.
“What are the odds?”
“Fifty-fifty. She still can’t figure out the cruise control on her car.”
Nothing ever changes, Skinner thought. “How are you feelin’? And tell the truth.”
“Shitty.”
“That’s more like it.” Skinner was still worried about bringing Fry. He was not a fan of hospitals, and leaving the boy with strangers in the emergency room had seemed unthinkable at the time.
“You gonna shoot him, Dad?”
“Piejack? If it comes to that, yeah.”
“But what if we’re too late? What if he already did something bad to Mom?”
“Then he dies for sure,” Skinner said.
Fry nodded. It was the answer he’d expected.
Louis Piejack hadn’t heard anyone sneak up behind him. The blow had caught him at the base of the skull and he was out cold before he hit the cactus patch.
At dusk he regained consciousness, roused by an onslaught of medieval pain. He thrashed free of the clinging limbs, lost his balance and skidded backward into a ravine full of Busch beer cans. His landing sounded like a Krome Avenue head-on.
In the twilight, the prone and panting Piejack surveyed upon his fishy clothing and sunburned flesh a bristle of fine needles. Incessant stinging enabled him to map mentally a pattern of perforation extending from his forehead to his shins. Miraculously spared from puncture were the tender digits protruding from the grubby gauze on his left hand. Unfortunately, because of the surgical bungling, his forefinger and thumb were now situated so far apart and at such inopportune angles as to render impossible the simplest of tweezing motions. Consequently Piejack had to rely on his weaker and less facile right hand to pluck at the tiny cactus spines, the number of which he calculated to exceed one hundred.