Skinny Dip by Carl Hiaasen

Author:Carl Hiaasen
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Published: 2011-03-19T04:15:56+00:00

Eighteen

Joey struggled with the list of blackmail demands, but all she truly wanted from Chaz Perrone were, besides his eternal suffering, the answers to two questions:

(a) Why did you marry me?

(b) Why did you try to kill me?

"Pick a number," said Mick Stranahan. "This is supposed to be a shakedown, remember? How much dough can he scrape together?"

"Beats me." Joey turned to stare out the window.

Flamingo was a fish camp in Everglades National Park, on the southernmost shore of mainland Florida. Only one road led there, a two-lane blacktop that sliced through thirty-eight miles of unbroken scrub, cypress heads and saw-grass prairies. Although they were speeding through absolute darkness, Joey sensed a pulse of unseen life all around them. The post-Miami hush was so soothing, the night so engulfing, she was unable to focus on the details of the blackmail. The deeper they drove into the Everglades, the smaller and more absurd Chaz Perrone seemed.

Stranahan parked the Suburban in a cluster of cabbage palms near the campground, a short jog from the marina. By now it was ten o'clock and most of the campers, besieged by insects, had retreated to their sleeping bags. Mick fiddled with the dashboard stereo but the radio signal was spotty.

Joey said she'd never before been to the park. "Chaz refused to take me. He said it reminded him too much of work. Actually, I think the bugs creep him out."

"The bugs."

"Mosquitoes especially," she said. "Then there's the snake issue- he's terrified of being bitten by a moccasin. At home he used to practice injecting the antivenin serum into grapefruits."

"Boy, is he in the wrong line of work," Stranahan remarked. "You ever wonder why? How the hell he got where he is?"

Joey had always assumed that her husband made a wrong turn in graduate school.

"I meant to ask you," Stranahan said, "who's Samuel J. Hammernut?"

"Some rich redneck pal of Chaz's. I met him at the wedding," said Joey. "Why? What's he got to do with all this?"

"I made a few calls about the Hummer. It was bought for your hubby by Hammernut Farms."

Joey had no idea why Mr. Hammernut would have given Chaz a brand-new SUV. "You're just now telling me this? Who did you call?"

"Friends who do that sort of thing-trace paperwork. Friends in law enforcement," Stranahan said. "Remember I told you this was all about greed. My guess is that Chaz has some sort of dirty arrangement with Hammernut, and that maybe you got in the way."

"But how? What did I do?"

Stranahan told his theory to Joey, who was intrigued but skeptical. "Who ever heard of a crooked biologist?" she asked.

"Who ever heard of one with a bodyguard?" he countered.

Joey conceded the point. She had been surprised, and tickled, to learn from Mick that her husband was now being protected by paid muscle.

"Look, there are cops who take payoffs," Stranahan was saying, "judges who fix cases, doctors who cheat Medicare. Are you telling me Chaz is too pure to sell himself-the man who pushed you into the ocean to die?"

He's right, Joey thought.

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