Bad Monkey

“I was at the time of the crime!” She was a plucky one.

“That’s a long shot with juries.”

“Now you sound like Andrew.”

It was time to go. The lawman stood up and buttoned his suit jacket.

“Well, good luck,” he said.

She gave a little smile that wrinkled her nose. “How long have you been chasing me, Agent Weiderman?”

He was halfway to his car when a cab pulled into the parking lot of the stockade. The driver chose a spot in the shade of a tree, and a rear door was flung open. Cody Parish got out holding a brown grocery bag. He clutched the bag with both hands as he headed toward the front doors of the building.

John Wesley Weiderman thought it odd that the cab stayed to wait. Running the meter was expensive, and Cody Parish didn’t give the impression of a young man with a bankroll. He braked like the cartoon coyote when the lawman called out his name.

“Oh. Yo!” Cody lifted one hand off the brown bag to wave, sort of.

John Wesley Weiderman crossed the parking lot unknotting his tie. The heat shimmered off the pavement like a vapor.

“I just had a visit with Ms. Chase,” he said.

Cody was antsy, shuffling in his flip-flops. “Yeah? That’s where I’m goin’ now.”

“Bet you’re wondering how all this will turn out.”

“Sure, dude. Absolutely.” His cheeks were flushed and his chubby neck was moist.

“Okay, here it is,” said John Wesley Weiderman. “Ms. Chase is going back to Tulsa, no matter what she thinks. The prosecutors here will drag out the arson case for months and she’ll wake up one day understanding that she’s basically rotting in that cell, that Mr. Yancy is no longer infatuated with her, and that she might as well be in Oklahoma working off her sentence. Her lawyer here will be relieved that she came to her senses, and the very next day we’ll be on a plane home, she and I.”

Cody looked as if his face had locked in the middle of a sneeze. “Huh,” was all he said.

“You all right?”

“Yeah, I’m … I’m good. Holy shit, it’s like two hundred friggin’ degrees out here.”

“What’s in the bag?”

“Books and stuff. She’s a major reader.”

“Me, too. May I have a look?” John Wesley Weiderman took the bag from Cody and opened it. He said, “See, this is what I was afraid of.”

“Dude, come on. Don’t, please …”

“Oh, I’m not about to touch anything,” the agent said. “Neither are you.”

There was a rubber Liberace mask and a chrome cap pistol. Cody had intended to bust his true love out of jail.

“I thought it’d be a super-cool thing for my diary, for when they make the book and movie. Her breaking out with some mystery man,” he whispered. “See, all I got so far is fifty-three pages and this agent I called in New York? She said that’s not enough. She said I need more material.”

The lawman closed the paper bag and handed it back.

“And that taxi would be your getaway car?”

“I know, right?” Cody was about to break down. “Sometimes I can be, like, a total fucking idiot.”

“That doesn’t begin to cover it,” said John Wesley Weiderman. “Get back in the cab and go straight to the bus station.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Buy yourself a ticket to anywhere.”

“Okay, dude. Thanks, like, so much. I totally mean it.” As Cody was stepping backward, he dropped the brown bag and kicked it away from his feet. “Yo, would you tell Ms. Chase I still love her like crazy?”

“If it ever comes up,” said John Wesley Weiderman.

Yancy lay out watching a thunderhead bloom in the Gulf. Every afternoon it was a new show, now that the house next door was gone. Earlier a convoy of dump trucks had hauled away the rubble and ashes, Evan Shook watching blankly from his Suburban. He’d told Yancy that the insurance payoff was tied up in his divorce, as was the property. He and his future ex-wife couldn’t even agree on a real estate broker. Meanwhile his mistress had dumped him for a bluegrass player who had his own fucking website. Yancy couldn’t make himself feel sorry for Evan Shook. Bonnie shouldn’t have burned down the man’s house, but the house shouldn’t have been built to start with.

Not nine feet over code.

Not big enough to block out a setting moon.

Rosa was caught in Miami traffic, so Yancy put in his earbuds and smoked half a joint and opened a new bottle of Barbancourt. His name was in the papers again, thanks to Bonnie’s birdbrain interview with the Citizen. The headline: FIERY CLIMAX TO SEX FUGITIVE’S ROMANCE. To the reporter Bonnie had decoded the arson as a misguided act of love for Yancy. Then she’d rehashed their whole affair, a lowlight being the foolishness at Mallory Square.

The article made a racy splash, and Yancy could hardly blame Sheriff Sonny Summers for not taking his calls. He would be more approachable after Nick Stripling was arrested and returned to Florida, and there was credit to be claimed.