The clerk said it was beyond his authority to divulge that information. Ira Jackson reached across the counter and rested his hand, very lightly, on the young man’s shoulder. “Listen to me, Paco,” he said. “I’ll come to your home. I’ll harm your family. You understand? Even your pets.”
The clerk nodded. “Be right back,” he said.
Snapper was more annoyed than afraid when he saw the flashing blue lights in the rearview. He’d figured the Jeep Cherokee was already hot when he swiped it from the gangster rappers; he didn’t figure the cops would be looking for it so soon. Not with all the hurricane emergencies.
Pulling to the side of the road, he wondered if Baby Raper had blabbed when he got to the hospital. No doubt the kid was ticked when Snapper retrofitted that compact disc up his ass, like a big shiny suppository.
But why would the cops care about that? Snapper thought: Maybe it’s got nothing do with the gangster rapper or the stolen Jeep. Maybe it’s just my driving.
The cop who stopped him was a female Highway Patrol trooper. She had pleasant features and pretty pale-blue eyes that reminded Snapper of a girl he’d tried to date back in Atlanta, some sort of turbocharged Catholic. The lady trooper’s dark hair was pulled up under her hat, and she wore a gold wedding band that cried out for pawning. The holster appeared oversized and out of place on her hip. She shined a light in the Jeep and asked to see Snapper’s driver’s license.
“I left my wallet at home.”
“No identification?”
“‘Fraid not.” For effect, he patted his pockets.
“What’s your name?”
“Boris,” said Snapper. He loved Boris and Natasha, from the old Rocky and Bullwinkle TV show.
“Boris what?” the trooper asked.
Snapper couldn’t spell the cartoon Boris’s last name, so he said, “Smith. Boris]. Smith.”
The trooper’s pale eyes seemed to darken, and the tone of her voice flattened. “Sir, I clocked you at seventy in a forty-five-mile-per-hour zone.”
“No kidding.” Snapper felt relieved. A stupid speeding ticket! Maybe she’d write him up without running the tag.
The trooper said: “It’s against the law to operate a motor vehicle in Florida without a valid license. You’re aware of that.”
OK, Snapper thought, two tickets. Big fucking deal. But he noticed she wasn’t calling him “Mister Smith.”
“You’re also aware that it’s illegal to give false information to a law-enforcement officer?”
“Sure.” Snapper cursed to himself The bitch wasn’t buying it.
“Stay in your vehicle, please.”
In the mirror, Snapper watched the flashlight bobbing as the trooper walked back to her car. Undoubtedly she intended to call in the license plate on the Cherokee. Snapper felt his shoulders tighten. He had as much chance of explaining the stolen vehicle as he did explaining the seven thousand dollars in his suit.
He saw two choices. The first was to flee the scene, which was guaranteed to result in a chase, a messy crash and an arrest on numerous nonbondable felonies.
The second choice was to stop the lady trooper before she got on the radio. Which is what he did.
Some cons wouldn’t hit a woman, but Snapper was neutral on the issue. A cop was a cop. The trooper spotted him coming but, encumbered by the steering wheel, had difficulty pulling that enormous Smith 8t Wesson out of its holster. She managed to get the snap undone, but by then it was good-night-nurse.
He took the flashlight, the gun and the wedding band, and left the trooper lying unconscious by the side of the road. Speeding away, he noticed a smudge of color on one of his knuckles.
Makeup, it looked like.
He didn’t feel shame, regret or anything much at all.
Edie Marsh was beginning to appreciate the suffering of real hurricane victims. It rained three times during the day, leaving dirty puddles throughout the Torres house. The carpets squished underfoot, green frogs vaulted from wall to wall, and mosquitoes were hatching in one of the bathroom sinks. Even after the cloudbursts stopped, the exposed beams dripped for hours. Combined with the cacophony of neighborhood hammers and chain saws, the racket was driving Edie nuts. She walked outside and called halfheartedly for the missing dachshunds, an exercise that she abandoned swiftly after spying a fat brown snake. Edie’s scream attracted a neighbor, who took a broom and scared the snake away. Then he inquired about Tony and Neria.