“Exactly.”
“You know who’s quite the talker? Ethan. In the sack, I mean.”
“Not now, please?”
She arched, playfully clenching a certain muscle. “What’s the matter, Thlocko, you jealous?”
Sammy Tigertail measured his response.
“Don’t worry, you got him beat by a mile.” Gillian squeezed again. Then on she went: “Ethan’s gotta talk dirty or he can’t keep it up. But at the same time he’s, like, unbelievably shy. I’m serious, he won’t even say the F word!”
Sammy Tigertail bucked his hips so forcefully that Gillian hiccuped. “You go on with this story,” he told her, “I’m gonna stuff Lester’s socks in your mouth.”
“That old trick?” She giggled. “I don’t think so.”
He weighed the pros and cons of gagging her, then decided against it. Once she was gone, a life of sublime silence awaited him.
Gillian said, “He was so shy-Ethan was-that whenever we did it, he spoke German. That’s the only way he could make himself talk dirty! Problem is, nothing sounds dirty in German the way Ethan says it. But here he goes, poundin’ away, yankin’ on my hair, tellin’ me do this, Fraulein, do that-only I haven’t got a frigging clue what he’s talkin’ about. No lie, Thlocko, it’s like he’s reading from the owner’s manual of his old man’s Mercedes. Is that wild or what?”
The Indian said, “I’ve got a question.”
“But this is only after he told me about setting free those dolphins-before then I wouldn’t go to bed with him. What is it you just said?”
“I wanted to ask you something.”
“Like?”
“Could you check and see if we’re still having sex?”
Gillian smiled. “We are,” she said. “In front of Lester, too. Does it still count if he’s unconscious?”
Sammy Tigertail began pumping at such a pace that Gillian quit gabbing and hung on with both hands. Somehow they finished together, he with a low sigh and she with a sequence of piercing, feral yelps. Afterward he gently rolled her onto a blanket, where she curled up like a kitten.
He was standing away from the campfire, struggling to turn his khakis right-side out, when a gun barrel poked him in the small of the back. His first thought was that the wounded white man had made a miraculous recovery.
But it wasn’t Lester.
“Be still,” the voice warned.
“Yes, sir.”
A pause, then: “Sammy, is that you?” The gunman spun him around and exclaimed, “I’ll be damned!”
“Hello, Mr. Skinner.”
“What happened to your head, man?”
“I fell on an oyster shell,” Sammy Tigertail lied.
Gillian drowsily looked up, tugging the blanket over her breasts. “Who’s that?”
“A friend,” the Seminole said hopefully.
He and Perry Skinner had met when Sammy Tigertail was a teenager and new to the tribe. Skinner had rolled his truck after swerving to miss an otter pup on the Tamiami Trail. Sammy Tigertail and his uncle had been the first to drive up on the scene, and they’d dragged Skinner out of the wreck moments before it caught fire. Later Sammy Tigertail learned that Skinner was an important and prosperous man in Everglades City. It was he who’d loaned the young Indian the crab boat on which Wilson’s body was ferried to Lostmans River.
Sammy Tigertail assumed that’s why Skinner had tracked him down-the cops must have sorted out what had happened, then informed Skinner that his vessel had been illegally used to transport a dead tourist.
“I can guess why you’re here,” the Seminole said.
Skinner stuck the handgun in his belt. “Excellent. Where is she?”
Sammy Tigertail was puzzled. “Who, Mr. Skinner?”
“Honey.” For Gillian’s edification he added: “My ex.”
Sammy Tigertail tried to conceal his relief that Skinner’s surprise appearance was unconnected to the Wilson fiasco.
“She’s out here somewhere, Sammy. You remember what she looks like, right?”
“It’s big country, Mr. Skinner. I haven’t seen her.”
The Indian had met Honey Santana only once, but that was enough. Every autumn since the truck accident, Skinner had given Sammy Tigertail twenty-five pounds of fresh stone-crab claws to take back to the reservation. The gift was always picked up on October 15, the first day of the trap season, when the largest crabs were caught. One year when the Seminole came to get the cooler, Honey Santana happened to be at the packing house. She was reaming out her then-husband about a cracked exhaust pipe on one of his boats, which she said was polluting the air on the river, gassing the herons and ospreys. Sammy Tigertail had never seen a woman so lovely and so possessed. She had rattled him, and he hadn’t forgotten the episode. He had also not forgotten the sight of Perry Skinner calmly slipping on a set of Remington earmuffs to block out his wife’s fulminations.
“What’s she doing out here?” Gillian asked. “Did she, like, run away?”
Skinner didn’t answer. He said, “We heard gunfire on this island.”
“That was him”-Gillian was pointing at the Seminole-“shooting him.” She turned and nodded toward the prone pudgy white man.
“I didn’t mean to, Mr. Skinner,” Sammy Tigertail said. He noticed that the sky in the east was beginning to turn lavender. The sun would be coming up soon.
Skinner bent over and studied the man with the bloody shoulder, who was breathing loudly but steadily. Skinner said he didn’t recognize him.
“We call him Lester. He’s a private eye,” Gillian volunteered.
“Sammy, listen to me,” Skinner said. “There’s a sick fucker with a taped-up hand chasing after Honey. He’s got a johnboat, and he’s also carryin’ a sawed-off. You seen him?”
Gillian started to blurt something but the Seminole silenced her with a glare.
“Sammy?” Skinner said evenly.
“No, I haven’t seen anybody like that.” Sammy Tigertail hated lying to Mr. Skinner, but he didn’t need another corpse in his life.
“Tell him the truth. You didn’t do anything wrong,” said Gillian.
The Indian watched helplessly as she wrapped herself in the blanket and hurried to the other side of the campsite. She came back holding the sawed-off shotgun for Perry Skinner to see.
“Band-Aid Man was gonna shoot Lester, so Thlocko whacked him on the head,” she said.
“You kill him?” Skinner asked.
Sammy Tigertail shrugged. “He looked pretty dead. Smelled dead, too.”
“That would be wonderful news.” Skinner came very close to smiling.
“I didn’t mean to hit the man so hard.”
“We’ll take care of it, Sammy. Don’t worry.”
“Where was your wife headed?” the Seminole asked.
“Out here somewheres. And it’s ‘ex-wife,’ Sammy. She was taking some friends on a kayak tour.”
“How many people?”
“A man and a woman from Texas,” Skinner said.
“The kayaks, were they red and yellow?”
“That’s right. I found ’em tied in the mangroves not far from here.”
Sammy Tigertail was pleased to know that soon he’d have the island all to himself. “I think I know where she’s campin’, Mr. Skinner. Sorry, but I stole their food and water.”
“The boats, too,” Gillian chimed in.
“Water was all I wanted but the munchies were stashed in the same bag,” the Seminole explained.
Perry Skinner said, “You’re gonna take me there right away.”
“Definitely.”
“First let me run back and get my boy. I left him in the woods.”
“We’ll wait here,” Gillian promised.
After Skinner had gone, she said, “You do not want to mess with that guy.”
Sammy Tigertail nodded. “His old lady, either.”
Gillian leaned back and admired at the blushing sky. “Hey, there’s the sun!”
“Yup. Another day in paradise.”
“What should we do with the shotgun?”
“Toss it,” said the Seminole.
Waiting for sunrise, Boyd Shreave flailed at a lone mosquito floating about his head and shoulders. It felt too cold for mosquitoes, and Shreave feared he was being pursued by a dangerous rogue.
Earlier Honey had insisted upon reading aloud from a paperback text devoted to the insects, which were by far the deadliest creatures on earth. Shreave knew this was true because he’d seen a show about it on the Animal Planet channel. Millions of humans perished from hideous mosquito-borne maladies, including dengue fever, malaria, yellow fever, St. Louis encephalitis and the West Nile virus. Over the centuries the flying pests had brought painful death to popes and peasants alike, and ravaged robust armies.