His gun lay on the seat between them.
“Fine,” said Edie, unsettled by the change of plans, the chaos, the grim dripping skies. “Fine, we’ll find another one.”
Max and Bonnie Lamb arrived in Dade County soon after daybreak. The roads were slick and gridlocked. The gray sky was growling with TV helicopters. The radio said two hundred thousand homes were seriously damaged or destroyed. Meanwhile the Red Cross was pleading for donations of food, water and clothing.
The Lambs exited the Turnpike at Quail Roost Drive. Bonnie was stunned by the devastation; Max himself was aglow. He held the Handycam on his lap as he steered. Every two or three blocks, he slowed to videotape spectacular rubble. A flattened hardware store. The remains of a Sizzler steak house. A school bus impaled by a forty-foot pine.
“Didn’t I tell you?” Max Lamb was saying. “Isn’t it amazing!”
Bonnie Lamb shuddered. She said they should stop at the nearest shelter and volunteer to help.
Max paid no attention. He parked in front of an exploded town house. The hurricane had thrown a motorboat into the living room. The family-a middle-aged Latin man, his wife, two little girls-stood in a daze on the sidewalk. They wore matching yellow rain slickers.
Max Lamb got out of the car. “Mind if I get some video?”
The man numbly consented. Max photographed the wrecked building from several dramatic angles. Then, stepping through the plaster and broken furniture and twisted toys, he casually entered the house. Bonnie couldn’t believe it: He walked right through the gash that was once the front door!
She apologized to the family, but the man said he didn’t mind; he’d need pictures anyway, for the insurance people. His daughters began to sob and tremble. Bonnie Lamb knelt to comfort them. Over her shoulder she caught sight of her husband with the camera at his eye, recording the scene through a broken window.
Later, in the rental car, she said: “That was the sickest thing I ever saw.”
“Yes, it’s very sad.”
“I’m talking about you,” Bonnie snapped.
“What?”
“Max, I want to go home.”
“I bet we can sell some of this tape.”
“Don’t you dare.”
Max said: “I bet we can sell it to C-SPAN. Pay for the whole honeymoon!”
Bonnie closed her eyes. What had she done? Was her mother right about this man? Latent asshole, her mother had whispered at the wedding. Was she right?
At dusk Edie Marsh swallowed two Darvons and reviewed the plan with Snapper, who was having second thoughts. He seemed troubled at the idea of waiting weeks for the payoff. Edie said there wasn’t much choice, the way insurance worked. Snapper said he planned to keep his options open, just the same. Edie Marsh took it to mean he’d bug out on a moment’s notice.
They had picked a house in a flattened development called Turtle Meadow, where the hurricane had peeled away all the roofs. Snapper said it was probably one of Avila’s routes. He said Avila had bragged of inspecting eighty new homes a day without leaving the truck. “Rolling quotas,” is what Avila called them. Snapper allowed that Avila wasn’t much of a roof inspector, as
he was deathly afraid of heights and therefore refused to take a ladder on his rounds. Consequently, Avila’s roof certifications were done visually, from a vehicle, at speeds often exceeding thirty-five miles an hour. Snapper said Avila’s swiftness and trusting attitude had made him a favorite among the local builders and contractors, especially at Christmastime.
Scanning the debris, Edie Marsh said Avila was damn lucky not to be in jail. That’s why he quit when he did, Snapper explained. The bones told him it was time. That, and a grand jury.
Bones? said Edie.
You don’t want to know, Snapper said. Honestly.
They were walking along the sidewalk, across the street from the house they had chosen on the drive-by that morning. Now the neighborhood was pitch black except for the erratic flicker of flashlights and the glow of a few small bonfires. Many families had abandoned the crumbled shells of their homes for nearby motels, but a few men had stayed to patrol against looters. The men wore pinched tense expressions and carried shotguns. Snapper was glad to be white and wearing a suit.