“Done,” said Eugenie.
Gillian declined. “I’m totally stayin’. He kissed me tonight.”
“The Indian?” Dealey smiled wearily, thinking: True love in the mangroves.
“He’s an Indian? But his eyes are blue,” Eugenie said.
“A Seminole, most definitely,” Gillian reported. “I’m still waitin’ to get the full story.” She turned to Dealey. “So, Lester. Who’s comin’ to rescue you?”
The investigator said it wasn’t important. “I’m goin’ home to Texas in one piece, that’s all that matters.”
“Without the money shot,” Eugenie reminded him. “Boyd’s wife will be seriously bummed.”
“Ask me if I give a shit.” Dealey took a swig from the water bottle. “Something real bad’s going to happen on this island, and I don’t want to be here when it does.”
“Me neither,” said Eugenie, a millisecond before the blue-eyed Seminole’s rifle went off and Gillian screamed and Dealey dropped like a moose.
Nineteen
Honey Santana believed there might be hope for the world if she could save a man as empty as Boyd Shreave. She wanted to try one more time.
“The Indian shot somebody. I couldn’t see who,” she told him when she returned.
“Get this goddamn noose off my neck.”
“It’s just a slipknot, Boyd.”
The rope came undone as easily as a shoelace. Shreave rolled to his knees and whispered, “You’re a sicko.”
After peeling the tape from his ankles and wrists, Honey offered him some dry cereal. “It’s all we’ve got. The Indian took everything else.”
“There’s somebody hidin’ out there.” Shreave glanced anxiously behind him. “I never saw the guy but he sounded real close. Said he’s watchin’ us the whole time.”
Honey made a torch by fastening Shreave’s natty Indiana Jones hat to a driftwood limb, squirting it with lighter fluid and holding it in the embers. She walked the perimeter of the campsite and found no sign of another intruder. She didn’t look inside the cistern.
“There’s nobody in the bushes, Boyd.” She believed he’d cooked up the story to frighten her into fleeing the island with him.
“Who is he? Tell me!” Shreave demanded.
“Eat your Cheerios.”
Honey reflected upon what she’d done-tracking down this disagreeable stranger and suckering him with a phony Florida vacation. She didn’t feel guilty and she didn’t feel crazed; frustrated is what she was. After Fry was born, her low tolerance of cretins, liars and lowlifes had dwindled to zero. She came to regard all of them, from the leering bag boy at Winn-Dixie to the thieving third-term congressman, as potential threats to the happiness and well-being of her offspring. If a common bottom feeder such as Boyd Shreave could be reformed, Honey reasoned, the future would be incrementally brighter for all mankind, including Fry.
It wasn’t an easy theory to sell, and Perry Skinner had never bought it. Neither had her son. Honey was aware that she sometimes appeared to them as naive and obsessive, even borderline manic.
“You asked why I did this, Boyd, how come I went to all the trouble of tricking you down here,” Honey said. “Well, apparently I’m trying to fix the entire human race, one flaming asshole at a time.”
Shreave sniggered. “Good luck, sister.”
“You didn’t even ask about your girlfriend. What’s the matter with you?”
Shreave rubbed his arms nervously. “The scream didn’t sound like Genie. It sounded like a girl.”
“I couldn’t get close enough to the Indian’s camp to see who it was. Don’t you love her, Boyd?”
“I’m not gettin’ my brains blown out over some chick who ran out on me.” He snatched a handful of cereal and crammed his cheeks. “Let’s go find those damn kayaks and get away from here.”
Honey saw that he was genuinely frightened. She said, “They’re hidden in some trees on the other end of the island. I spotted them on the way back from the Indian’s.”
“Then what are we waitin’ for?” Shreave leapt up and grabbed her arm.
Honey easily shook free. “Dawn is what we’re waiting for. There’s something you need to see.” One last chance to awaken your shriveled soul, she thought.
He lunged toward her, then halted. Again he turned toward the woods, straining to listen. “This was part of the setup, right? You got some goon in the trees, waitin’ to kick out my teeth.”
Honey said, “Nobody’s there. Nobody’s watching.” She had no fear of Shreave, who was as unimposing as any man she’d ever met.
His voice dropped to a growl. “Listen, you psychotic twat. This is a goddamn suckhole and we’re gettin’ out now.”
“No, Boyd, it’s an incredibly peaceful and inspiring place,” she said, “and I’m not leaving until morning. You want to sail off on your own, be my guest.”
“Un-freaking-believable. You won’t even show me where the kayaks are?”
Honey said no. Shreave called her another crude name and glared into the night. Then he sat down, fuming, by the campfire.
“Try to keep an open mind,” Honey told him.
“Just shut the hell up,” he said.
The rifle slug had ricocheted off a branch and passed through Dealey’s right shoulder, exploding the rotator-cuff joint. As he rocked in and out of consciousness, he wondered if he was dying. It seemed possible, judging by the pain.
He found himself speculating about who might show up at his funeral, in the event his body was returned in a recognizable condition to Fort Worth. The visitor list would be short-two or three other private investigators with whom he occasionally hoisted a few beers; an aunt from Lubbock who was so senile that she was still mailing campaign donations to Barry Goldwater; his landlady and her yodeling poodle; a bisexual nephew who hung drywall in Austin; possibly one or two ex-wives, snorkeling for loose change.
Not appearing at the ceremony would be Dealey’s next of kin, a younger brother who was a halibut fisherman in British Columbia and forbidden by the terms of his parole from leaving the province. Nor would any of Dealey’s past girlfriends be at the funeral, all having married and long ago terminated correspondence.
Dealey was not sentimental, and the prospect of a sparsely attended memorial didn’t bother him. A more nagging concern was the safe-deposit drawer he kept at the Bank of America branch on Ridglea Place. The private investigator regretted leaving no instructions in his will regarding the box, which meant the lock would be drilled and the contents inventoried for his modest estate. His avaricious ex-spouses would insist.
Inside the bank drawer, awaiting the eyes of some unwary probate functionary, was a small trove of trysts, betrayals and adulterous moments, including Eugenie Fonda’s virtuoso number at the delicatessen on Summit. Dealey’s interest in such a collection wasn’t salacious, but rather one of stout professional pride. The photographs and videotapes stood as triumphs of solo surveillance, the greatest hits from his life as a snoop. The paper files he diligently expurgated every three years, but the most sensational visuals were faithfully preserved. Having always felt underrated by his peers, Dealey found comfort and validation in this secret gallery, which he revisited no more than four or five times a month. Of course he’d never intended for such tawdry gems to reach the public domain, as the fallout would be both tumultuous and career-ending.
Hey, there’s the wife of Zeke Gibbons, our new city councilman, checking into the downtown Hilton with her Bavarian riding coach…
And there’s the husband of Mary Lisette Scowron, chair of the local Justice for DeLay committee, nestling on a Utah ski lift with a dancer for the Mavericks…
And, whoa, there’s the middle daughter of the Rev. Jimmy Todd Barnwell, televangelist and on-call spiritual adviser to our governor, entertaining a vanload of longboarders on South Padre…
Fucking beautiful, thought Dealey. It’s just as well I’ll be six feet under when the shit hits.
He felt his suit jacket and shirt being cut away, and he shivered as the night air awakened his wound. Cracking one eye, he saw a handsome ash-blond woman kneeling over him. She appeared to be disrobing.