SKIN TIGHT by Carl Hiaasen

Without glancing from the wheel, Luis Córdova said, “There’s a boat overdue from Crandon. Two cops.”

“No shit?”

“They found a body this morning floating off Broad Creek. Homicide man named Salazar.”

“What happened?”

“Drowned,” yelled Luis Córdova. “Who knows how.”

Christina Marks listened to the two men going back and forth. She wasn’t sure how much Luis Córdova knew, but it was more than Stranahan would ever tell her. She felt angry and insulted and left out.

When they arrived at the stilt house, Stranahan took out the Smith .38 and returned it to Luis. The marine patrolman was relieved to see that it had not been fired.

Stranahan hoisted two of the duffel bags and hopped off the patrol boat.

From the dock he said, “Take care, Chris.” He wanted to say more, but it was the wrong time. She was still fuming about last night, furious because he wouldn’t tell her what had happened. She had kicked the coconut head off the scarecrow, that’s how mad she had gotten. It was at that moment he’d asked her to marry him. Her reply had been succinct, to say the least.

Now she turned away coldly and said to Luis Córdova: “Can we get going, please.”

Stranahan waved them off and trudged up the steps to inspect the looted house. The first thing he saw on the floor was the big marlin head; the tape on the fractured bill had been torn off in the fall. Stranahan stepped over the stuffed fish and went to the bedroom to check for the shotgun. It was still wedged up in the box spring where he had hidden it.

The .whole place was a mess all right, depressing but not irreparable. Stranahan was glad, in a way, to have such a large chore ahead of him. Take his mind off Murdock and Salazar and Old Rhodes Key. And Christina Marks, too.

She was the first woman he had loved who had ever said no to marriage. It was quite a feeling.

Luis Córdova came back to the stilt house as Mick Stranahan was finishing lunch. There was a burly new passenger on the boat: Sergeant Al Garcia.

Stranahan greeted them at the door and said, “Two Cubans with guns is never good news.”

Luis Córdova said, “Al is working the dead cops.”

“Cops plural?” Stranahan’s eyebrows arched.

Garcia sat down heavily on one of the barstools. “Yeah, we found Johnny Murdock inside the boat. The boat was up in a frigging tree.”

“Where?” Stranahan asked impassively.

“Not far from where you and your lady friend went camping last night.” Garcia patted his pockets and cursed. He was out of cigars. He took out a pack of Camels and lit one halfheartedly. He glanced up at the beakless marlin hanging from a new nail on the wall.

Luis Córdova said, “I told Al about how I gave you a lift down to the island after your house got trashed.”

Stranahan wasn’t upset. If asked, Luis would tell the truth about what he saw, what he knew for a fact. Most likely he had already told Garcia about loaning the two detectives a map of the bay. Nothing strange about that.

“You hear anything funny last night?” Al Garcia asked. “By the way, where’s the girl?”

“I don’t know,” Stranahan said.

“What about last night?”

“A boat went by about eleven. Maybe a little later. Sounded like an outboard. What the hell happened, Al—somebody do these guys?”

Garcia was puffing hard on the cigarette, and blowing circles of smoke, like he did with his stogies. “Way it looks,” he said, “they were going wide open. Missed the channel completely.”

“You said the boat was in a tree.”

“That’s how fast the bozos were going. Way it looks, Salazar got thrown, hit his head. He drowned right away but the tide took him south.”

“Broad Creek,” Luis Córdova said. “A mullet man found the body.”

Garcia went on: “Murdock stayed in the boat, but it didn’t save him. We’re talking major head trauma. The medical examiner thinks a mangrove branch or something snapped his neck. Same with Salazar. Figures it happened when they hit the trees.”

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