“Big-time,” said Dealey. He had no intention of ripping Lily Shreave off, but a lie was still a lie. He might have felt worse about it, if she weren’t such a perv.
“So what’s the bad news?” she asked.
“I’m trapped. I can’t get outta this fuckin’ place.”
“And where exactly would you be?”
“I got no earthly idea, Mrs. Shreave. There’s ten thousand goddamn islands out here, and I’m stuck on one of ’em.”
“With my twenty-five-thousand-dollar sex tape.”
“Correct,” Dealey said.
“May I ask how you got there?”
“At gunpoint.”
“Holy Christ,” said Lily Shreave. “It wasn’t Boyd, was it?”
“Get serious.”
“Please don’t tell me you were kidnapped.”
“Twice,” Dealey said.
“But somehow you escaped.”
“Negative. Not by a long shot.”
“So who’s got you now?” Lily Shreave demanded.
“Not important.” Dealey saw no benefit to admitting that he was the prisoner of a guitar-toting Seminole Indian and a college sorority girl.
“Here’s what I need you to do,” he said to Mrs. Shreave, and he told her.
“I like it,” she said. “You’re a smart fella, Mr. Dealey. I’ll call first thing in the morning.”
He held no illusion that she cared whether he lived or died. Getting her mitts on the video was all that mattered to her.
Dealey heard a rustling and Gillian stepped from the thicket. He said into the phone, “I’ve gotta go.”
“Wait! One more question.”
“What?”
“The tape-how’d it turn out? Can you see…everything?”
“The works,” Dealey said.
“Wow.”
“More like double wow.”
“I can’t wait,” said Boyd Shreave’s wife.
“Oh, you’ll be surprised,” Dealey told her, and hung up.
Seventeen
Cecil McQueen died in a chokehold at a nightclub called Le Lube, where he and six friends had gone for a bachelor party. The branch supervisor of the trucking firm was being married the next day to his ex-wife’s divorce accountant, and his buddies couldn’t decide if it was a masterstroke or an act of self-destruction.
At the strip joint the men drank festively but set no records. Normally a shy person, Cecil McQueen surprised his companions when he bounded into the mud-wrestling pit to take on a dancer known as Big Satin, who outweighed him by fifty-three pounds and was unaware (as was Cecil) of his obstructed cardiac arteries. Afterward Big Satin felt terrible. So did Cecil’s co-workers and supervisor, although the wedding went on as scheduled.
The police ruled the death as accidental, but nonetheless it dominated the TV news, which is how the victim’s only son-then addressed as Chad-learned that his father had not perished while rescuing a vanload of orphans from a flooded drainage canal. That was the yarn his stepmother had cooked up.
Years later Sammy Tigertail often thought about his dad, a cheery and harmless soul who believed that the three essential ingredients of contentment were classic rock, Krispy Kreme doughnuts and a hot tub. It was the music that had cheered young Chad, even after he’d moved out to the Big Cypress and shed his name and turned forever away from white people (except for one). His affinity for rock was what had led to the foolish, soul-bruising lapse with Cindy, whom he’d met at a Stones concert in Lauderdale. Within ten seconds Sammy Tigertail had known she was poison, yet he’d willingly opened his veins.
And learned nothing from the ordeal, because the same thing seemed to be happening with Gillian.
“I’m gettin’ a complex,” she told him. “Why aren’t you trying to do me?”
“You asked to be the hostage.”
“So?”
“Hostages don’t get laid.”
“Who made up that stupid rule? Besides, I can tell you’ve been thinkin’ about it.”
“Bull,” Sammy Tigertail said.
She rose on her tiptoes and tried to peck him on the chin. He dodged sideways and said, “You don’t understand.”
“About being nervous? I do so.”
He grabbed the rifle from the crook of a tree, and nodded toward Dealey. “Keep an eye on Mr. Camera Man,” he told Gillian. “I won’t be long.”
“What if he tries somethin’? Like, jumps me and rips off my clothes?”
“Then shoot him. The shotgun’s over there,” the Indian said.
“Okeydoke.”
“But aim low, in case he turns out to be real. I don’t need to hassle with another dead body.”
“When you say low-”
“The legs.”
“Gotcha,” said Gillian.
On a rash impulse Sammy Tigertail leaned forward and kissed the top of her head, then he quickly moved into the night. The sky held enough moon that he was able to make headway without using a flashlight, though his sense of direction was as unreliable as ever. Fortunately, the island was small enough that it was difficult to stay lost. The Seminole eventually located the old oyster mound and took a position overlooking the campsite and the cistern. Embers from the fire glowed faintly, and Sammy Tigertail could make out the steepled shapes of two tents, and one bundled form on the ground.
He crept down the midden and, except for tripping once and dropping the rifle, his approach was practically furtive. Hearing snores, he assumed that all the kayakers were asleep. Quickly he padded into the clearing and snatched up a large duffel bag.
That’s when a head poked out from one of the tents. Sammy Tigertail saw the movement and whirled, waving the rifle. His heart hammered.
“Easy, big guy,” the woman whispered.
“We need water!”
“Like we don’t?”
“But I got the gun!” said Sammy Tigertail. “Now, shut up.”
“Did you steal our kayaks?” The woman had a mild southern accent and light hair, but the angles of her face were obscured by a shadow. “Hold on,” she said, squirming from the sleeping bag.
“What are you doin’?”
“Comin’ with you.”
“No fucking way. Not again,” the Seminole said angrily.
The woman stood up and stepped into her shoes, some sort of rubberized Yuppie sneakers. She was a tall one.
“You’ve got the boats, and now the last of our water-I’ll be damned if I’m stayin’ out here to die,” she said.
A breeze stirred the mangroves and riffled the leaves of the big poinciana. The woman folded her arms against the chill and said, “Well?”
Sammy Tigertail knew that if he left her behind, she would awaken the others, and they’d contact the authorities to report that a thieving redskin was loose on the island.
She said, “I’ll do whatever you want. And I mean whatever.”
The Seminole raised his eyes to the leering moon. The spirits seemed to be punishing him. He suspected it had something to do with Wilson, the dead tourist.
“You’ll do anything?” he asked the woman.
She nodded.
“Then carry this bag.”
“Yes, bwana.”
“And be quiet,” said the Indian, “or I’ll cut off your tongue.”
The woman stuck it out for him to see, the pearl stud burnished by the moonlight. Sammy Tigertail frowned.
“Oh well. Some guys dig it,” she said.
“My girlfriend had one attached somewhere else. It didn’t feel so good.”
The Indian turned and darted into the trees. He heard the woman trailing behind him, breathing fast under the weight of the duffel. He expected her to start chattering like a crow, but she didn’t. It was a nice surprise.
Thirty years in the seafood business combined with grossly irregular bathing habits had cloaked upon Louis Piejack a distinct and inconquerable funk. Were it cologne, the essence would have included the skin of Spanish mackerel, the roe of black mullet, the guts of gag grouper, the wrung-out brains of spiny lobster and the milky seepage of raw oysters. The musk emanated most pungently from Piejack’s neck and arms, which had acquired a greenish yellow sheen under a daily basting of gill slime and fish shit. Nothing milder than industrial lye could have cleansed the man.