Carl Hiaasen – Basket Case

She chuckles. “Jimmy was always on vacation when we went to the islands. He loved to dive—he was, like, obsessed. He used to say that being underwater was better than any dope he’d ever tried. ‘The deeper I go, the higher I get,’ is what he said.”

Writing down every word, I’m thinking about how easily Mrs. Stomarti has settled into the past tense when speaking of Jimmy. Often a new widow will talk about her deceased husband as though he were still alive.

For example: He’s always on vacation when we go to the islands. Or: He loves to dive. And so on.

But Cleo hasn’t slipped once. No subconscious denial here; Jimmy Stoma’s dead.

“Can you tell me what happened,” I ask, “the day he died?”

She purses her lips and reaches for the drink. I wait. She slurps an ice cube out of the glass and says, “It was an accident.”

I say nothing.

“He was diving on an airplane wreck. Fifty, sixty feet deep.” Mrs. Stomarti is sucking the ice from cheek to cheek.

“Where?” I ask.

“Near Chub Cay. There’s plane wrecks all over the islands,” she adds, “from the bad old days.”

“What kind of a plane?”

Cleo shrugs. “A DC-something. I don’t remember,” she says. “Anyway, I was up on the boat when it happened.” Now she’s crunching the ice in her teeth.

“You don’t dive?”

“Not that day. I was working on my tan.”

I nod and glance down meaningfully at my notebook. Scribble a couple words. Look up and nod again. The worst thing a reporter can do in a delicate interview is seem impatient. Cleo takes another slug of her drink. Then she rolls her shoulders and stiffens, like she’s working out a kink in her spine.

“Jimmy went down same as always,” she says, “but he didn’t come up.”

“Was he alone?” I ask.

“No, he never dove alone.”

I’m thinking: Again with the past tense.

“Jay was down there, too,” Jimmy’s wife says, “only he was diving the tail section. Jimmy was up in the nose of the plane. See, it’s in two pieces on the bottom.”

“Jay Burns? From the Slut Puppies?”

She nods. “He and Jimmy were, like, best friends. He swum up off the wreck and starts climbing into the boat when all of a sudden he’s like, ‘Isn’t Jimmy up yet?’ And I’m like, ‘No, he’s still down.’ See, I was reading a magazine. I wasn’t watching the time.”

Cleo lifts the empty glass and turns her head toward the kitchen doorway. In a flash, the neckless bouncer guy hustles forward with a fresh screwdriver. A bodyguard who knows how to mix a drink—every pop star should have at least one.

The widow takes a sip and continues:

“So Jay grabs a fresh tank and jumps back in the water and… no Jimmy. He wasn’t anywhere on the wreck.” Cleo rocks back on the sofa cushion. She’s no longer looking at me; she’s staring out the bay window that faces the Atlantic. Her eyes are locked on something far away and invisible to mine.

She says, “Jimmy was everything to me, you know? My husband, my best friend, my lover, my manager—”

I’m writing like crazy. Trying to slow Cleo down, I say, “Have you got a phone number for Jay?”

“He’s still in the islands. He’s bringing Jimmy’s boat across tomorrow.”

“It’s nice they stayed so close after the band broke up.”

“Jay was the only one,” Cleo says, “the only one in the music business Jimmy would even talk to. Until he met me.”

She pauses while I catch up on my notes. Obviously she’s done interviews before.

“Anyway,” she goes on, “we called for help. They found him about three hours later, like, half a mile away. He was already gone. His tank was empty.”

I ask Mrs. Stomarti if an autopsy was performed in the Bahamas.

“Yeah, they said he drowned. I guess he just got wore out trying to find the boat. The currents get pretty strong out there, and all those years of smoking weed, Jimmy didn’t exactly have the lungs of a teenager.”

“But he’d been straight for some time, right?” I make the question sound casual.

Pages: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54 55 56 57 58 59 60 61 62 63 64 65 66 67 68 69 70 71 72 73 74 75 76 77 78 79 80 81 82 83 84 85 86 87 88 89 90 91 92 93 94 95 96 97 98 99 100 101 102 103 104 105 106 107 108 109 110 111 112 113 114 115 116 117 118 119 120 121 122 123 124 125 126 127 128 129 130 131 132 133 134 135 136 137 138 139 140

Leave a Reply 0

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *