Stormy Weather by Carl Hiaasen Read Free Book Online Page B

agreed that ten thousand dollars was a good week’s work.
    “Trouble is,” Edie said, “I don’t trust that asshole. What is it he sells?”
    “Trailer homes.”
    “Good Lord.”
    “Then let’s walk away,” Snapper said, without conviction. “Try the slip-and-fall on somebody else.”
    Edie contemplated the ugly, self-inflicted scratch on her arm. Posing under a pile of lumber had been more uncomfortable than she’d anticipated. She wasn’t eager to try it again.
    “I’ll coast with this jerkoff a day or two,” she told Snapper. “You do what you want.”
    Snapper configured his crooked jaws into the semblance of a grin. “I know what you’re thinkin’. I ain’t no salesman, but I can read youjust the same. You’re thinkin’ they’s more than ten grand in this deal, you play it right. If
we
play it right.”
    “Why not.” Edie Marsh pressed her cheek against the cool glass of the car’s window. “It’s about time my luck should change.”
    “
Our
luck,” Snapper said, both hands tight on the wheel.
    Augustine helped Bonnie Lamb search for her husband until nightfall. They failed to locate Max, but along the way they came upon an escaped male rhesus. It was up in a grapefruit tree, hurling unripened fruit at passing humans. Augustine shot the animal with a tranquilizer dart, and it toppled like a marionette. Augustine was dismayed to discover, stapled in one of its ears, a tag identifying it as property of the University of Miami.
    He had captured somebody else’s fugitive monkey.
    “What now?” asked Bonnie Lamb, reasonably. She reached out to pet the stunned animal, then changed her mind. The rhesus studied her through dopey, half-closed eyes.
    “You’re a good shot,” she said to Augustine.
    He wasn’t listening. “This isn’t right,” he muttered. He carried the limp monkey to the grapefruit tree and propped it gently in the crook of two boughs. Then he took Bonnie back to his truck. “It’ll be dark soon,” he said. “I forgot to bring a flashlight.”
    They drove through the subdivision for fifteen minutes until Bonnie Lamb spotted the rental car. Max wasn’t there. Somebody had pried the trunk and stolen all the luggage, including Bonnie’s purse.
    Damn kids, Augustine said. Bonnie was too tired to cry. Max had the car keys, the credit cards, the money, the plane tickets. “I need to find a phone,” she said. Her folks would wire some money.
    Augustine drove to a police checkpoint, where Bonnie Lamb reported her husband missing. He was one of many, and not high on the list. Thousands who’d escaped their homes in the hurricane were being sought by worried relatives. For relief workers, reuniting local families was a priority; tracking wayward tourists was not.
    A bank of six phones had been set up near the checkpoint, but the lines were long. Bonnie found the shortest one and settled in for a wait. She thanked Augustine for his help.
    “What will you do tonight?” he asked.
    “I’ll be OK.”
    Bonnie was startled to hear him say: “No you won’t.”
    He took her by the hand and led her to the pickup. It occurred to Bonnie that she ought to be afraid, but she felt illogically safe with this total stranger. It also occurred to her that panic would be a normal reaction to a husband’s disappearance, but instead she felt an inappropriate calmness and lucidity. Probably just exhaustion, she thought.
    Augustine drove back to the looted rental car. He scribbled a note and tucked it under one of the windshield wipers. “My phone number,” he told Bonnie Lamb. “In case your husband shows up later tonight. This way he’ll know where you are.”
    “We’re going to your place?”
    “Yes.”
    In the darkness, she couldn’t see Augustine’s expression. “It’s madness out here,” he said. “These idiots shoot at anything that moves.”
    Bonnie nodded. She’d been hearing distant gunfire from all directions.
Dade County is an armed camp
. That’s what their travel