Bonnie and Augustine got up and brushed themselves off. The governor was a sight. Twigs and wet leaves stuck to his knotted hair. Gossamer strands of a broken spider’s web glistened from his chin.
He tromped melodramatically toward the campfire, shouting: “Fornicators! Fellaters! You ought to be ashamed!”
Augustine winked at Bonnie Lamb. “That’s one I hadn’t thought of: shame.”
“Yeah, that’s a killer.”
The governor announced he had a tasty surprise for breakfast. “Your carnal frolics awoke me last night,” he said, “so I went walking the roads.”
From his fatigues he produced two small, freshly skinned carcasses. “Who wants rabbit,” he asked, “and who wants the squirrel?”
Later they doused the fire and loaded the truck. Using the hand-drawn map that Augustine had been given by the helpful Margo and David, they located Calusa Drive with no difficulty. The black Jeep Cherokee was parked halfway down the street, in front of a badly damaged house; the bawdy mud flaps were impossible to miss. Skink told Augustine to keep driving. They left the pickup half a mile away and backtracked on foot.
Bonnie Lamb noticed, uneasily, that Augustine wasn’t carrying either the pistol or the dart rifle. “Scouting mission,” he explained.
They stayed off Calusa and approached on a parallel street, one block north. When they got close, they cut through a yard and slipped into an abandoned house
directly across from 15600. From the broken window of a front bedroom, they had a clear view of the front door, the garage, the black Cherokee and two other cars in the driveway.
Margo and David were right. Their stolen license plate had been removed from the Jeep. Skink said: “Here’s what happened. After the guy beat up Brenda, he pulled the tag from the Cherokee and tossed it. What’s on there now probably came off that Chevy.”
The car parked nearest to the garage was a late-model Caprice. The license plate was missing. The second car was a rusty barge of an Oldsmobile with a lacerated vinyl top and no hubcaps. Augustine said it would be useful to know how many people were inside the house. Skink grunted in assent.
Bonnie tried to guess what the next move would be. Notifying the police, she surmised, was not in the governor’s plans. Looking around, she felt a stab of melancholy. The room had belonged to a baby. Gaily colored plastic toys were strewn on the floor; a sodden stuffed teddy bear lay facedown in a dank puddle of rainwater. Mounted on the facing wall were wooden cutouts of popular Disney characters-Mickey Mouse, Donald Duck, Snow White. Oddly, they made Bonnie Lamb think of her honeymoon and Max. The first thing he’d bought at the Magic Kingdom was a Mickey golf cap.
I should’ve known then and there, she thought. Bless his heart, he probably couldn’t help it.
She got up to see the baby’s crib. A mobile of tropical butterflies, fastened to the rail, had been snapped at the stem. The mattress was splotched with dark greenish mildew. Shiny red ants trooped across the fuzzy pink
blanket. Bonnie wondered what had happened to the infant and her parents. Surely they escaped before the roof blew off.
Augustine waved her back to the broken window. Heart skipping, she knelt between the two men. What am I doing? Where is this heading?
Another car drives up to 15600 Calusa. A white compact.
Man gets out. Bony and clerical-looking. Gray hair. Brown windbreaker, loose dark trousers. Reminds Bonnie of her landlord back in Chicago. What was his name? Wife taught piano. What the heck was his name?
Standing by his car, the old man puts on a pair of reading glasses. Looks at a piece of paper, then up at the numerals painted on the house. Nods. Takes off the glasses. Tucks them in the left pocket of his windbreaker. Pats the right pocket, as if checking for something.
Awfully hot for a jacket, Bonnie’s thinking. Summertime in Miami, how can a person be chilly?
“Where does he fit?” said Augustine.
“Contractor. Utility worker. Something like that,” Skink speculated.
Bonnie Lamb watches the old man straighten himself, stride purposefully to the doorway. Into the house he goes.