“We’re going back,” Stoke said, steering off the wave crest, taking a diagonal back down the face. “Get up. Slowly. See if you can get back in your seat without getting tossed into the drink, all right? I’m not in a rescue mood right now.”
The big yellow race boat was pointed sharply downward on the foamy green face of the wave at a forty-five-degree angle.
“Jesus,” Yurin said, managing to get to his feet by holding on to the bar. He slid back inside his seat, buckled up. Stoke kept the Glock in his hand, in case the guy got courageous. But he was a little green around the gills now, his nose mashed over to one side, the blood and spittle trickling out the sides of his mouth blown backward on both cheeks, not looking too sporty.
“Your nose is broken, Yurin. You want me to fix it? I can do it back at the dock. What I do, I jam my two little pinkies straight up your nostrils and, pop-pop, voilà, straight as an arrow again. Hurts like a bitch, though, I gotta be brutally honest.”
Yurin didn’t reply, didn’t even look over.
It wasn’t easy getting through the narrow end of the funnel with a fiercely following sea, but Stoke managed it, just surfed a big roller all the way through the chute.
When they were back in the relative calm of the marina, the seriously pissed-off Russian said, “Any reason why we couldn’t have had that conversation in my office?”
“Just two,” Stoke said, nosing the big Magnum back toward the Miami Yacht Group docks. “Number one reason, I’m a habitual thrill seeker.”
“Yeah? You Americans haven’t seen anything yet.”
“That’s a threat?”
“That’s a promise.”
“What’s your problem with Americans, Yurin?”
“You people are a fucking error that needs correcting.”
“So, I guess you don’t want to hear the second reason.”
“Yeah, yeah. What?”
“Me being just a fucking error, like you say, I guess you wouldn’t want to sell me this boat?”
“What?”
“I guess you don’t want to sell me the boat, Yurin.”
“You serious? You actually want to buy it?”
“Of course I want to buy it.”
“Jesus. You are serious. I thought Moscow was crazy. Miami is the freaking moon.”
“Windshield will have to be replaced, of course.”
“Of course.”
“Give me a number,” Stoke said, smiling at the Russian guy for the first time all afternoon.
35
Mayor Monie Bailey spooned the last little bit of macaroni and cheese into her four-year-old daughter’s mouth and then used a dishcloth to remove the rest of Stouffer’s finest from her child’s hair, ears, cheeks, and the scruffy terry bib hanging by a thread below her chin.
“More,” Debbie Bailey demanded, banging on the plastic highchair tray with a wooden horse. “More mac.”
“All gone!”
“No! More!”
“All gone, I said. Night-night time!”
“No night-night! More!”
“You ate the whole thing, Debbie. The whole Family Size. You must have worms.”
“No worms. Yucky!”
She plucked the child from her chair in the kitchen and carried her upstairs to the room she shared with her older sister, Carrie. The room always made her smile. It was what she’d always wanted as a girl but was never able to have. A pink powder-puff dream, walls, rugs, curtains, duvet covers, even the two dressers and the mirrors above them, all the same pale shade of pink. And the pink lampshades everywhere just made everything glow.
Carrie, who’d turned nine last week, was propped up against her fluffy pink pillows, reading. She’d received a hardcover illustrated Black Beauty for her birthday, but that remained uncracked, jammed in among all the shelves of well-thumbed graphic novels and paperbacks in the pink bookcase beneath the window.
“Hi, Mom,” Carrie said, her eyes never leaving the page.
“Street Girl,” Monie said, eying the book’s lurid cover. “Interesting. What’s that one about?”
“Hookers. Well, not really hookers. See, their moms are all hookers, and their kids all sort of grow up in the life, you know? You know, they, like, copy the behavior of the parents, or parent in this case, since there don’t seem to be a whole lot of dads in this book. Just gangsta pimps, mostly. But this one girl, Amanda, she’s, like, the hero, and-”
“Heroine.”
“Right, heroine, and she’s determined to break out of the vicious cycle and make something of herself, you know, beyond just shooting smack and hooking.”
“Isn’t that great?” Monie said, tucking Debbie in, pulling the duvet cover up under her chin. It was supposed to get really cold tonight, dip down into the teens. “A girl with spunk, huh? If you like girls like that, you should try Nancy Drew, girl detective. Talk about spunky.”
“She’s cool. I like her.”
“Nancy Drew? You do?”
“Noooo-a, Amanda, silly. Now, shush, Mom, I’m at a really good part. Amanda’s about to get caught with her mom’s crack pipe in her purse at school. She didn’t put it there, of course. Her mom’s scag boyfriend, Notorious Ludacris, did it.”
“Sorry, Charlie. Lights out. Tomorrow’s a school day, remember?”
“Okay, okay, Mom. Just lemme finish this chapter, okay?”
“Now. Light’s out.”
“My God! We are, like, so strict in this household, it’s just pathetic!” She closed the book and put it on the nightstand.
“Go to sleep. Sweet dreams, you two.”
“More kissing!” Debbie cried.
“Kiss-kiss, now go to sleep.”
Monie flicked a wall switch by the door that turned all the lights off. “Night-night, Mommy,” Debbie said.
“Night, Mom,” Carrie said. “Love you.”
“I love you, too, sweetie. Both you guys.”
She pulled their door closed and walked a few feet down the hall to her husband’s study. George was at his desk, staring at his computer screen. EBay Motors, most likely. George spent every evening he wasn’t playing fantasy football or watching the Golf Channel on that damn eBay, chasing his dream car. She walked over and stood behind him.
Yep, eBay.
“How’s it going, hon?” she asked.
“Aw, hell. You know that dirt-cheap ’58 Vette I was bidding on? The maroon one? White interior?”
“Uh-huh.”
“Some butthead aced me out at the last second. I mean, the very last second. One second before the time expires, he slips in there at five hundred over my final bid. Damn it!”
“Aw. Did you have a good day at the office?”
George turned around in his swivel chair and smiled up at her. “Isn’t that an oxymoron?”
“Probably.”
“Kids asleep?”
“One down, one to go.”
“One X-Men flashlight shining under the blanket?”
“Yep. That’d be my guess, five minutes after lights out. She should be clicking it on right about now. She’s started a new book.”
“Black Beauty?”
“Dream on, clueless dreamer. She’s reading Street Girl. By the beloved author of Ho Town.”
“Sounds bad.”
“Mmm.”
“Hey. You want to fool around?”
“How’d you know?”
“I don’t know. The way you’re standing with your one hip cocked out. Usually a reliable indicator. How’s the mayor business?”
“Endless meeting with the Civic Association. Annual report from the Public Relations Committee. You know my definition of a committee?”
“A group that keeps minutes and wastes hours.”
“Correct. Well, guess what the chairman of that committee told me at the end of his annual report? At the end of his endless two-hour PowerPoint presentation?”