Carl Hiaasen – Native Tongue

“It works best when you aim it,” Molly chided.

Danny Pogue reached for the barrel. “I’ll do it!”

“Like hell,” said Bud Schwartz, spinning away. He sat in the rocker and braced the pistol on his knee. The air smelled pungently of gunpowder; it brought back the memory of Monkey Mountain and the trigger-happy baboon.

Watching the gray-suited man squirm in pain, Bud Schwartz fought the urge to get up and run. What was the old bat thinking this time? Nothing good could come of shooting an FBI man. Surely she understood the consequences.

Danny Pogue opened the front door for Molly, who disappeared into the house with a pleasant wave. Danny Pogue sat down, straddling an iron patio chair. “Take it easy,” he told the agent. “You ain’t hurt so bad.”

Billy Hawkins grunted up at him: “What’s your name?”

“Marcus Welby,” Bud Schwartz cut in. “Don’t he look like a doctor?”

“I know who you are,” the agent said. It felt as if a giant wasp were boring into his thigh. Billy Hawkins unbuckled his trousers and grimaced at the sight of his Jockey shorts soaked crimson.

“You assholes are going to jail,” he said, pinching the pale flesh around the bullet wound.

“We’re just burglars,” said Danny Pogue.

“Not anymore.” Hawkins attempted to rise to his feet, but Bud Schwartz wiggled the gun and told him to stay where he was. The agent’s forehead was sprinkled with sweat, and his lips were gray. “Hey, Bud,” he said, “I’ve seen your jacket, and this isn’t your style. Assault on a federal officer, man, you’re looking at Atlanta.”

Bud Schwartz was deeply depressed to hear the FBI man call him by name. “You don’t know shit about me,” he snapped.

“Suppose you tell me what the hell’s going on out here. What’s your beef with Frankie King?”

Bud Schwartz said, “I don’t know who you’re talkin” about.”

Miraculously, Danny Pogue caught on before saying something disastrous. He flashed a checkerboard grin and said, “Yeah, who’s Frankie King? We never heard a no Frankie King.”

“Bullshit,” Agent Billy Hawkins growled. “Go ahead and play it stupid. You’re all going to prison, anyhow. You and that crazy old lady?”

“If it makes you feel any better,” said Danny Pogue, “she shot us, too.”

The campsite was…gone.

“I’m not surprised,” Joe Winder said. He took Carrie’s hand and kept walking. A light rain was falling, and the woods smelled cool.

Carrie asked, “What do we do if he’s really gone?”

“I don’t know.”

Ten minutes later she asked if they were lost.

“I got turned around,” Winder admitted. “It can’t be too far.”

“Joe, where are we going?”

The rain came down harder, and the sky blackened. From the west came a roll of thunder that shook the leaves. The birds fell silent; then the wind began to race across the island, and Joe Winder could taste the storm. He dropped Carrie’s hand and started to jog, slapping out a trail with his arms. He called over his shoulder, urging Carrie to keep up.

It took fifteen more minutes to find the junkyard where the ancient Plymouth station wagon sat on rusty bumpers. The yellow beach umbrella—still stuck in the dashboard—fluttered furiously in the gale.

Joe Winder pulled Carrie inside the car, and hugged her so tightly she let out a cry. “My arms are tingling,” she said. “The little hairs on my arms.”

He covered her ears. “Hold on, it’s lightning.”

It struck with a white flash and a deafening rip. Twenty yards away, a dead mahogany tree split up the middle and dropped a huge leafless branch. “God,” Carrie whispered. “That was close.”

Raindrops hammered on the roof. Joe Winder turned around in the seat and looked in the back of the car. “They’re gone,” he said.

“What, Joe?”

“The books. This is where he kept all his books.”

She turned to see. Except for several dead roaches and a yellowed copy of the New Republic, the station wagon had been cleaned out.

Winder was vexed. “I don’t know how he did it. You should’ve seen—there were hundreds in here. Steinbeck, Hemingway. Jesus, Carrie, he had Garcia Marquez in Spanish. First editions! Some of the greatest books ever written.”