Bad Monkey

The manager brought a plate of fries, which Yancy accepted along with a refill on the coffee. By Keys standards it could hardly be considered a payoff. His phone thrummed and lit up, and so did his heart.

But it wasn’t Bonnie calling.

“My name is Eve Stripling. Are you Detective Yancy?”

“Actually, it’s Inspector Yancy.” As in roach inspector.

“Sheriff Summers gave me your number.”

She sounded fairly young. The accent was flat, midwestern.

Yancy said, “I’m sorry for your loss, Mrs. Stripling.”

“Yes, it’s awful, just awful. Where’s the best place to meet up?”

Before Evan Shook’s bulldozers razed the lot next door, Yancy went outside almost every evening to watch the white-tailed Key deer nibble on the hammock scrub and red mangroves. They were fantastically small and delicate-looking; even a buck was no bigger than a golden retriever. Only a few hundred of the deer remained, roaming a handful of islands. Big Pine and No Name Key had the most, but the animals were hapless when it came to avoiding cars, especially at night. Every year the Citizen published a gloomy scorecard of roadkills as the species teetered toward extinction. Not everyone shared Yancy’s fondness for his four-legged neighbors; signs urging motorists to watch out for the critters were sometimes found spray-painted as rifle sights.

Ninety-two hundred acres had been patched together as a refuge for the remaining deer. Being unable to read, they frequently meandered beyond its boundaries. Some had become recklessly tame, mooching handouts from tourists and losing all fear of humans. Yancy never fed the small herd that appeared at dusk on the land beside his own. He didn’t snap pictures, or whistle, or make up cute names for the fawns. He just sat there sipping rum and watching the deer do their thing.

Now they were gone, and Evan Shook’s spec house was fucking up the sunset.

Yancy trudged inside and transferred the severed arm from his freezer to the Igloo cooler. He then toted the cooler to his personal 1993 Subaru—the roomy Crown Vic having been reassigned to a working detective—and drove to the Winn-Dixie supermarket. There he purchased two large bags of ice to make sure the limb belonging to Eve Stripling’s late husband didn’t thaw during her drive back home, wherever that might be.

She arrived at the store a half hour late driving a generic Malibu. To Yancy it looked like a rental. He was leaning against the front fender of his car, sporting a red baseball cap so she could locate him in the parking lot.

“This feels like a dope deal,” she said with a nervous smile. “You are Inspector Yancy, right?”

“And you must be Mrs. Stripling.”

“Eve is fine.” She was in her mid-thirties, slightly on the heavy side. The outfit was gold-strapped sandals, tight white jeans and a long-sleeved blue cotton top. Her auburn hair was tied back and her pale nose was freckled. All this Yancy could see by the light of the grocery store.

“Guess I should have a look,” she said.

“You sure about that?”

“It’s all I got, all that’s left of my sweet Nicky.”

Yancy set the cooler on the warm hood of the Malibu and removed the lid. Fortunately, the parking lot wasn’t crowded. He untaped the bubble wrapping to expose the arm.

The upraised middle finger was the first thing to greet Eve Stripling.

“Who’s the comedian?” She was clutching her elbows to her midsection, as if trying to stop herself from spinning into orbit.

“That’s how they found it,” Yancy told her. “Weird, I know.”

She managed a brittle laugh. “Maybe it was Nicky flipping off the sharks.”

“Is that his wedding band?”

“I’m pretty sure.” She held her breath and leaned close to examine the stiffened purple hand. “You got a flashlight?”

Yancy had one in the Subaru. The batteries were weak but he shook it until the bulb lit up.

Eve Stripling gave a heavy nod. “That’s his ring. It’s most definitely him.”

She didn’t comment on the etiolated band of skin where her husband’s watch had been, which surprised Yancy. Earlier he’d received a phone call from comely Dr. Campesino in Miami. Apparently the pathologist wasn’t completely put off by Yancy’s incompetent flirting, for in her spare time she’d digitally enlarged her photograph of the rectangular outline on the wrist of the phantom limb. In that way she was able through online resources to identify the missing watch as a limited-edition Wyler Genève Tourbillon, distinguishable by a unique clasped crown shield and also for its suggested retail price of $145,000. Yancy had assumed that the loss of such an expensive timepiece would catch the notice of a widow, even in the throes of grief. But Eve Stripling said nothing, so Yancy left the subject untouched.

A radish-eyed old geezer in hiking boots walked by, pushing a grocery cart. He saw the two of them looking into the cooler and piped, “You catch some fish?”

“Lobsters,” Yancy said.

“How much you want for ’em?”

“Not for sale.”

“Don’t be a dick.”