Bad Monkey

“No problem.” Miguel took the cash from Yancy and counted it. “Here is the thing, Andrew, because I am what you call a straight shooter. When they find that motherfucking hive, the people that own the house, I’m the one they gone to call first.”

“Well, who else?” Yancy said.

“ ’Cause I’m the top bee guy from here to the Redlands.”

“Everybody knows that, Miguel. Everybody.” Yancy envied the man’s pride in his work. “Shook is the owner’s name. When he calls, I’m thinking maybe you could be tied up for a while—let those poor honeybees have some fun.”

“I got so much fucking jobs right now, my wife she is ready to kill me.”

“All right, then. Mr. Shook can wait.” Yancy gave Miguel another twenty-dollar bill.

“You want, I’ll e-mail to you some pictures, Andrew. For proof.”

“Not necessary, amigo. I’ll know when it’s done.”

Miguel was grinning as Yancy got in his car. “You look sharp, man, all pimped out. Must be some world-class pussy waiting up on the mainland.”

“Actually,” said Yancy, “I’m going to a funeral.”

A short death notice had been posted on the Herald’s website: Nicholas Joseph Stripling, age forty-six, of Miami Beach. Survived by his loving wife, Eve, and one daughter, Caitlin Cox. Private services to be held at the Neo-Pentecostal Church of Faith, followed by interment at the St. Lazarus Gardens and Water Park in North Miami.

North Miami!

The drive took almost four hours in manic traffic, Yancy cussing humanity most of the way. He owned one dreary black suit that he’d bought years earlier for his mother’s service, and he hadn’t worn it since. Now the coat hung too loosely on his frame, Yancy having dropped so much weight since becoming a restaurant sleuth. The paradox wasn’t lost on him—he’d worked many bloody crime scenes and never once felt queasy, yet the glimpse of a desiccated rat carcass in a vat of stale muffin mix left him poleaxed with revulsion.

So far, the only good thing about the job was that nobody complained if he didn’t show up. The restaurant owners were relieved not to be inspected, and they made no inquiries to Yancy’s supervisor regarding his whereabouts.

His decision to skip work and attend Nicky Stripling’s burial was out of character for two reasons. First, Yancy had always been a punctual public employee and, second, he strenuously avoided graveyards. A morgue full of chilled stiffs was no problem, but for some reason a field of sunlit tombstones gave him the willies.

Ever since meeting Eve Stripling, Yancy had been sleeping poorly, nagged by the missing pieces of her story—a story of no evident interest to anyone but him. It was an easy matter to feed Nick Stripling’s name through the state crime computer, revealing a single arrest and conviction at the age of twenty-seven. The colorful details were in a file at the courthouse.

Young Nicky had had a minor role in a common Florida insurance scam in which fraudsters would intentionally crash cars into innocent drivers and then submit mountains of phony medical claims, which the victims’ insurance companies almost always paid off. Stripling acted as the driver and was skilled at directing each staged collision with such finesse—front bumper angled into a rear rocker panel, the impact buffered by a subtle last-second deceleration—that neither he nor any of his co-conspirators received so much as a knot on the head. Whiplash was the faked injury of choice because of its domino cascade of serial billings and easy profits. The lineup of complicit health-care providers included an alcoholic chiropractor, a senile orthopedist, an unlicensed radiologist and a battalion of nonexistent physical therapists. Nick Stripling’s take for each crash was relatively paltry, so he’d turned state’s witness at the first prodding from investigators. He ended up getting ninety days in the county jail and five years’ probation.

From such inauspicious beginnings Stripling was somehow able to retire in his forties. Yancy was curious to know the secret of the man’s prosperous turnaround.

No more than fifty hardy souls showed up for the funeral in a baking summer heat that undulated off the bright green grass. Yancy feared he might sweat through his suit. Eve Stripling wore a black dress, black heels and a veil. She sat in the shade under the canopy before a walnut coffin piled with wreaths. Yancy wondered if the mortician had prorated his embalming fee, since there was only one limb to bury.

A young blond woman, also dressed in black, sat at the opposite end of the first row. Yancy assumed she was Caitlin Cox, Nick Stripling’s daughter from a prior marriage. From her body language Yancy perceived that she wasn’t enamored with her father’s current wife. Wearing saucer-sized sunglasses, Caitlin Cox fanned herself and every so often whispered to her buzz-cut husband, who was built like a stevedore.