Max Lamb asked Skink if he had a gun. Skink clicked his tongue against his front teeth. “See the running lights?”
“No.”
“Toward Key Biscayne. Over there.”
“Oh, yeah.”
“Two engines, it sounds like. I’m guessing twin Mercs.”
Somebody aboard the boat had a powerful spotlight. It swept back and forth across the flats of Stiltsville. As the craft drew nearer, the white light settled on the porch of the stilt house. Skink seemed unconcerned.
He began to remove toads from his pockets; gray, jowly, scowling, lump-covered toads, some as large as Idaho potatoes. Max Lamb counted eleven. Skink lined them up side by side at his feet. Max had nothing to add to the scenario, perhaps it was all a dream, beginning with the mangy hurricane monkey, and soon he’d awaken in bed with Bonnie….
The pudgy Bufo toads began to squirm and huff and pee. Skink rebuked them with a murmur. When the beam of the speedboat’s spotlight hit them, the toads blinked their moist globular eyes and jumped toward it. One by one they leaped off the dock and plopped into the water. Skink hooted mirthfully. “South, boys! To Havana, San Juan, wherever the hell you came from!”
Max watched the toads disappear; some kicked for the depths, others bobbed on the foamy crests of waves. Max didn’t know what would happen to them, nor did he care. They were just ugly toads, and barracudas could devour them, as far as he was concerned. His only interest was in drawing a lesson from the episode, one that might be employed to handle the cyclopean kidnapper.
But Skink already seemed to have forgotten about the Bufos. Once more he was rhapsodizing about the hurricane. “Look at Cape Florida, every last tree flattened- forest to moonscape in thirty blessed minutes!”
“The boat-”
“You ponder that.”
“It’s flashing a light at us-”
“The gorgeous fury inside that storm. And you with your video camera.” Skink sighed disappointedly. “‘Sin is a thing that writes itself across a man’s face.’ Oscar Wilde. I don’t expect you’ve read him.”
Max’s silence affirmed it.
“Well, I’ve been waiting,” said Skink, “to see it written across your face. Sin.”
“What I did was harmless, OK? Maybe a bit insensitive, but harmless. You’ve made your point, captain. Let me go now.”
The speedboat was close enough to see it was metallic
blue with a white jagged stripe, like a lightning bolt, along the hull. Two figures were visible at the console.
“There she is,” said Max.
“And no cops.” Skink waved the boat in.
One of the figures moved to the bow and tossed a rope. Skink caught it and tied off. As soon as the rope came tight, the twin outboards went quiet. The current nudged the stern of the boat against the pilings, into the lantern’s penumbra.
Max Lamb saw that it was Bonnie on the bow. When he called her name, she stepped to the dock and hugged him in a nurselike fashion, consoling him as if he were a toddler with a skinned knee. Max received the attention with manly reserve; he was conscious of being watched not only by his captor but by Bonnie’s male escort.
Skink smiled at the reunion scene, and slipped back into the shadows of the stilt house. The driver of the boat made no move to get out. He was young and broad-shouldered, and comfortable on the open water. He wore a pale-blue pullover, cutoffs and no shoes. He seemed unaffected by navigating a pitch-black bay mined with overturned hulls and floating timbers.
From the darkness, Skink asked the young man for his name.
“Augustine,” he answered.
“You have the ransom?”
“Sure do.”
Bonnie Lamb said: “Don’t worry, he’s not the police.”
“I can see that,” came Skink’s voice.
The boat driver stepped to the gunwale. He handed Bonnie a shopping bag, which she gave to her husband, who handed it to the kidnapper in the shadows.
Max Lamb said: “Bonnie, honey, the captain wants to talk to you. Then he’ll let me go.”
“I’m considering it,” Skink said.
“Talk to me about what?”
The driver of the boat reached inside the console and came out with a can of beer. He took a swallow and leaned one hip against the steering wheel.