Bad Monkey

Getting past the reception desk required dropping the name of a well-regarded Miami police lieutenant for whom Yancy had once worked. Eventually he ended up in an interview room with the two humorless street agents he’d encountered at Nick Stripling’s funeral. They remembered Yancy with manifest unfondness, so he rather enjoyed dropping the bomb.

“Mr. Stripling isn’t dead. I just left him in the Bahamas, bleeding from a fresh hole in his back.”

The posture of the agents improved. They began to fashion questions. One of them asked who stabbed Stripling. Yancy said he didn’t know; it was a drunken dispute.

The other agent asked if Yancy had traveled alone to the islands.

“Yep,” he said, which was technically true. Rosa hadn’t told him to leave her out of the recap, but that was his intention. The FBI needed to know only the basics, beginning with Stripling’s whereabouts.

The taller agent was Strumberg and his partner was Liske. Their suits weren’t the same shade of gray but the cut of the lapels looked identical. When Yancy told them about Stripling’s self-amputation, they tried to act as if they heard such stories every day.

However, Yancy knew they were stoked because they called in an assistant to take down what he was saying. The assistant’s laptop needed recharging so there was a period of lame small talk while she got on the floor to locate an electric outlet. Strumberg asked how Yancy had lost his detective job.

“Aw, come on. You guys know what happened. They let you have free Internet, right?”

“The media can exaggerate.”

“Not this time,” Yancy said. “In defense of a woman’s honor I waylaid her husband with a portable vacuum. The gesture was unappreciated and, unfortunately, witnessed by the proverbial throngs.”

The assistant’s laptop beeped to life, and the important phase of the interview continued. At one point Liske asked Yancy to draw a map of Lizard Cay. Yancy politely suggested that a satellite photo would be more accurate. The assistant found one on a classified government website and zoomed in on Bannister Point.

Yancy placed a fingertip to the screen. “That’s the house your subject is renting, but he won’t be there much longer. You should call whoever you need to call and have him arrested. But that’s probably not going to happen this afternoon, is it?”

“There’s a strict diplomatic process,” said Liske, “we’re obliged to follow.”

“Then you might lose him.”

“Not for long,” Strumberg asserted. “How badly was he hurt?”

“This morning I saw him in a car at the airfield. And if he’s well enough to ride in a car, he can ride on a plane.”

“How do you know he hasn’t already left the island?”

“His pilot flew off without him,” Yancy explained, “at my instruction.”

“You hijacked his aircraft?”

“Not with a weapon—and I prefer the word ‘commandeer.’ The pilot didn’t know who Stripling was until I told him. He might be in a mood to cooperate.”

“We’ll see.” Liske looked at Strumberg. “Stripling could charter another flight to Nassau. From there it’s a straight haul to London or New York.”

“Or even easier to come here,” Strumberg said. “Hell, we know the man’s got brass balls. If he cut off his own arm, as you say.”

Yancy informed the agents that the Nassau airport had gotten trashed by the storm. “But I’m guessing the runways will open by midafternoon, tomorrow morning at the latest. I were you guys, I’d be putting on my Bluetooths and workin’ those phones, because that fucker’s probably got a fake passport. Ask Immigration to look up a Christopher Grunion.”

The quick-typing assistant piped, “Could you spell that name for me, please?”

Overall Yancy thought the debriefing went as well as he could have hoped. Although the FBI agents were riveted on the Medicare case, they showed more than polite interest in the two murders committed by Stripling in Florida. Such heavy allegations could boost him to the top of the fugitive list and, in Liske’s priceless phrasing, “incentivize” the Bahamian government to apprehend him. It would help if a homicide warrant was waiting in Monroe County or Miami-Dade, the jurisdictions where the shootings took place. That would be Yancy’s next project.

Back in the car he plugged in his phone and called Rosa. She was already at work, elbow-deep in an autopsy. The spare key to her house was hidden inside a fake cactus next to the back door. Yancy let himself in, fed the fish, showered and fixed a peanut-butter-and-cucumber sanwich. He left messages for Rogelio Burton and Sheriff Summers, telling them that he had big news and that he was on his way back to the Keys.

The cell rang in his hand—Tommy Lombardo at the health department.

“Hey, I know you’re supposed to be on vacation and all—”

“No, I’m working,” Yancy said. “What, they got a roach emergency in the Bahamas?”

“That’s hilarous, Tommy. It’s a murder case.”

“Sure, it is.”

“I’m back in the States. What do you need?”