STORMY WEATHER By CARL HIAASEN

“This is how you treat dissatisfied customers?”

A jittery laugh burst from the salesman. “Sport, you ain’t here for no refund.”

“You’re right.” Ira Jackson was pleased by the din of the neighborhood-hammers, drills, saws, electric generators. All the folks preoccupied with putting their homes back together. The noise would make it easier to cover the ruckus, if the mobile-home salesman tried to put up a struggle.

Tony Torres said, “You think I don’t know to use this twelve-gauge, you’re makin’ a big mistake. Check out the hole in that garage door.”

Ira Jackson whistled. “I’m impressed, Mister Torres. You shot a house.”

Tony’s expression hardened. “I’m counting to three.”

“My mother was hit by a damn barbecue.”

“One!” the salesman said. “Every second you look more like a looter, mister.”

“You promised her the place was safe. All those poor people-how the hell do you sleep nights?”

“Two!”

“Relax, you fat fuck. I’m on my way.” Ira Jackson turned and walked slowly toward the street.

Tony Torres took a deep breath; his tongue felt like sandpaper. He lowered the Remington until it rested on one of his kneecaps. He watched Beatrice Jackson’s son pause in the driveway and kneel as if tying a shoe.

Craning to see, Tony shouted: “Move it, sport!”

The cinder block caught him by surprise-first, the sheer weight of it, thirty-odd pounds of solid concrete; second, the fact that Ira Jackson was able to throw such a hefty object, shot-putter style, with such distressing accuracy.

When it struck the salesman’s chest, the cinder block knocked the shotgun from his hands, the beer from his bladder and the breath from his lungs. He made a sibilant exclamation, like a water bed rupturing.

So forceful was the cinder block’s impact that it doubled Tony Torres at the waist, causing the chaise longue to spring on him like an oversized mousetrap. The moans he let out as Ira Jackson dragged him to the car were practically inaudible over the chorus of his neighbors’ chain saws.

SEVEN

The Dade County Medical Examiner’s Office was quiet, neat and modern-nothing like Bonnie Lamb’s notion of a big-city morgue. She admired the architect’s thinking; the design of the building successfully avoided the theme of violent homicide. With its brisk and clerical-looking layout, it could have passed for the regional headquarters of an insurance company or a mortgage firm, except for the dead bodies in the north wing.

A friendly secretary brought coffee to Bonnie Lamb while Augustine spoke privately to an assistant medical examiner. The young doctor remembered Augustine from a week earlier, when he had come to claim his uncle’s snakebitten remains. The medical examiner was intrigued to learn from Augustine that the tropical viper that had killed Felix Mojack now roamed free. He E-mailed a memorandum to Jackson Memorial, alerting the emergency room to requisition more antivenin, just in case. Then he took a Xeroxed copy of Bonnie Lamb’s police report down the hall.

When he returned, the medical examiner said the morgue had two unidentified corpses that loosely matched the physical description of Max Lamb. Augustine relayed the news to Bonnie.

“You up for this?” he asked.

“If you go with me.”

It was a long walk to the autopsy room, where the temperature seemed to drop fifteen degrees. Bonnie Lamb took Augustine’s hand as they moved among the self-draining steel tables, where a half-dozen bodies were laid out in varying stages of dissection. The room gave off a cloying odor, the sickly-sweet commingling of chemicals and dead flesh. Augustine felt Bonnie’s palm go cold. He asked her if she was going to faint.

“No,” she said. “It’s just … God, I thought they’d all be covered with sheets.”

“Only in the movies.”

The first John Doe had lank hair and sparse, uneven sideburns. He was the same race and age, but otherwise bore no resemblance to Max Lamb. The dead man’s eyes were greenish blue; Max’s were brown. Still, Bonnie stared.

“How did he die?”

Augustine asked: “Is it Max?”

She shook her head sharply. “But tell me how he died.”

With a Bic pen, the young medical examiner pointed to a dime-sized hole beneath the dead man’s left armpit. “Gunshot wound,” he said.

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