He switched off the flashlight and sat on the shuffle-board court to steady himself. Stealing the TV saucer obviously was out of the question; Gil Peck was working up the nerve to swipe the expensive watch he’d spotted on the crucified guy’s left wrist.
Except for kissing his grandmother in her casket, Gil Peck had never touched a corpse before. Thank God, he thought, the guy’s eyes are closed. Gingerly Gil Peck climbed into the satellite dish, which rocked under the added weight. Holding the flashlight in his mouth, he aimed the beam at the dead man’s gold Cartier.
The clasp on the watchband was a bitch. Rigor mortis contributed to the difficulty of Gil Peck’s task; the crucified guy refused to surrender the timepiece. The more Gil Peck struggled with the corpse, the more the TV saucer rolled back and forth on its axis, like a top. Gil Peck was getting dizzy and mad. Just as he managed to slip a penknife between the taut skin and the watch-band, the dead man expelled an audible blast of postmortem flatulence. The detonation sent Gil Peck diving in terror from the satellite dish.
Edie Marsh paid a neighbor kid to siphon gas from Snapper’s abandoned car and crank up Tony Torres’s portable generator. Edie gave the kid a five-dollar bill that she’d found hidden with five others inside a toolbox in the salesman’s garage. It was a pitiful excuse for a stash; Edie was sure there had to be more.
At dusk she gave up the search and planted herself in Tony’s BarcaLounger, a crowbar at her side. She turned up the volume of the television as loudly as she could stand, to block out the rustles and whispers of the night. Without doors, windows or a roof, the Torres house was basically an open campsite. Outside was black and creepy; people
wandered like spirits through the unlit streets. Edie Marsh had the jitters, being alone. She gladly would have fled in Tony’s huge boat of a Chevrolet, if it hadn’t been blocked in the driveway by Snapper’s car, which Edie would have gladly swiped if only Snapper hadn’t taken the damn keys with him. So she was stuck at the Torres house until daybreak, when it might be safe for a woman to travel on foot with two miniature dachshunds.
She planned to get out of Dade County before anything else went wrong. The expedition was a disaster, and Edie blamed no one but herself. Nothing in her modest criminal past had prepared her for the hazy and menacing vibe of the hurricane zone. Everyone was on edge; evil, violence and paranoia ripened in the shadows. Edie Marsh was out of her league here. Tomorrow she’d hitch a ride to West Palm and close up the apartment. Then she’d take the Amtrak home to Jacksonville, and try to make up with her boyfriend. She estimated that reconciliation would require at least a week’s worth of blow jobs, considering how much she’d stolen from his checking account. But eventually he’d take her back. They always did.
Edie Marsh was suffering through a TV quiz show when she heard a man’s voice calling from the front doorway. She thought: Tony! The pig is back.
She grabbed the crowbar and sprung from the chair. The man at the door raised his arms. “Easy,” he said.
It wasn’t Tony Torres. This person was a slender blond with round eyeglasses and a tan briefcase and matching Hush Puppy shoes. In one hand he carried a manila file folder.
“What do you want?” Edie held the crowbar casually, as if she carried it at all times.
“Didn’t mean to scare you,” the man said. “My name is Fred Dove. I’m with Midwest Casualty.”
“Oh.” Edie Marsh felt a pleasant tingle. Like the first time she’d met one of the young Kennedys.
With a glance at the file, Fred Dove said, “Maybe I’ve got the wrong street. This is 15600 Calusa?”
“That’s correct.”
“And you’re Mrs Torres?”
Edie smiled. “Please,” she said, “call me Neria.”
EIGHT
Bonnie and Augustine were cutting a pizza when Augustine’s FBI friend stopped by to pick up the tape of Max Lamb’s latest message. He listened to it several times on the cassette player in Augustine’s living room. Bonnie studied the FBI man’s expression, which remained intently neutral. She supposed it was something they worked on at the academy.