Bad Monkey by Carl Hiaasen

Author:Carl Hiaasen
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub, pdf
Tags: Suspense
ISBN: 1847443362
Publisher: Knopf
Published: 2013-01-01T08:00:00+00:00

Sixteen

Evan Shook was surprised to see a muddy Toyota parked out front. The Oklahoma tag didn’t make sense; the Lipscombs had said they were from Virginia. Plus they weren’t supposed to arrive for another forty-five minutes.

Inside the house Evan Shook encountered two squatters, an attractive woman with frosted blond pigtails and a flabby guy who looked younger.

“Please don’t get mad,” the woman began.

“Clear out right now, before I call the cops.”

The man said, “Bro, we took a major hit. This is not where we want to be.”

It was the woman doing most of the talking, some hard-luck story about her purse being stolen, all their cash and credit cards. Evan Shook wasn’t even pretending to listen.

“And this was supposed to be our second honeymoon,” she concluded sadly.

That part Evan Shook heard, with vexation; the woman was way too hot to be sleeping with such a zero. Evan Shook was unaware that people said the same thing about his mistress. Recently she’d been harping at him to leave his wife, demands inflicted at the cruelest bedroom moments. He couldn’t afford a messy divorce, just as he couldn’t afford to diddle for another six months with the Big Pine spec house. Between the construction loan and the property mortgage, the bank had him by the short and curlies.

“We tried camping,” the male squatter piped up, “but, dude, the fuckin’ skeeters!”

Evan Shook checked around. Except for the strange couple’s tent, the place was in good shape for the Lipscombs. The menacing pentagram on the floor had been painted over by a select member of the construction crew, a Sikh carpenter who took no stock in silly Western superstitions. It was also he who’d disposed of the icky Santeria artifacts, lobbing the stiffened rooster into the canal and granulating the rodent skull with a belt sander.

The cute woman in pigtails said, “We weren’t trying to make trouble. We just needed somewhere dry and safe.”

“This’ll be a cool-ass crib when it’s done,” her companion added for ingratiation.

Evan Shook nodded brusquely. “Yup. A real cool-ass crib.”

Over the phone the Lipscombs had sounded like long shots. The guy claimed to be a retired hedge funder who was now raising trotters. He said he was driving all the way to Florida because the wife refused to fly ever since their Lear 45 had clipped a cow elk on the runway at Jackson Hole. He said they already owned a seaside spread at Hilton Head and a cottage up on the Boundary Waters. Evan Shook responded with cordiality but not gushing enthusiasm. It was his experience that people with serious money didn’t broadcast their real estate portfolios to strangers who were angling to peddle them another property.

But maybe the Lipscombs were real. Maybe his luck would change.

The woman said, “I’m begging you, don’t call the police. We have nowhere else to go.”

Evan Shook opened his billfold and peeled off two, three, four hundred dollars. “Pack up your stuff and go get a room.”

When the woman leaned forward to kiss his cheek, Evan Shook caught a heartbreaking glimpse down her blouse.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.