Bad Monkey

“Madam! Stop!” Neville sprung off the bar stool and ran toward the approaching procession. “Madam, it’s me!”

The monkey barked once and the Dragon Queen’s ushers shifted themselves into a protective wedge around the still-rolling scooter. Neville was roughly turned away; there were filthy oaths and the threat of a stomping. Again he called out to the voodoo priestess, who dismissed his plea with a backhanded wave. The group proceeded past him along the path toward the conch hut, the Dragon Queen gliding ahead on rubber wheels.

Stunned, Neville crossed the street and sagged against a shaded coral wall. Momentarily a covered golf cart hummed into view, and out stepped the pinheaded security guard from Curly Tail Lane. He glanced at Neville long enough to scowl in recognition; then he strode directly to the palm-thatched restaurant, where the ragged assembly parted. Neville watched the goon kneel beside the electric dolly and plant a kiss on the Dragon Queen, a bobbing lip-lock that lasted long enough to draw saucy cheers. The stereo was engaged and soon the two of them were dancing to Jimmy Cliff. As the security guard pranced gaping and bear-like, the Dragon Queen used the joystick on her nimble chariot to spin fanciful circles around him. Throughout these maneuvers, Driggs—jouncing like a miniature stagecoach driver—cheeped in accompaniment.

Neville was stricken breathless from anguish. What a wretched mistake he’d made! The whore-witch Dragon Queen had taken him for both his money and his monkey.

Now she was screwing the white devil’s hired man.

Sonny Summers said: “Let me tell you about my day.”

“Wish I could make it better.”

“Maybe you can, Andrew.”

Yancy noticed some additions to the sheriff’s desktop display: a photo of his wife wearing a snorkel and hoisting a distressed lobster, a brass toothpick holder from the chamber of commerce, and a small chintzy replica of the Pilar, Hemingway’s fishing boat.

“Remember … you know … that little solid you did for me?”

“Babysitting the dead guy’s left arm,” Yancy said.

“Right. It was my understanding you delivered it to the widow.”

“Absolutely.”

“Who gave it a decent Christian burial.”

“Yes, I can personally attest.”

Sonny Summers slid forward. “So, this morning, I get a call from Dr. Rawlings, who says the ME’s office in Miami needs the DNA swab he took off the arm.”

That request would have come from Dr. Rosa Campesino, doing her job.

With false innocence Yancy said, “Maybe they found another body part from the same corpse.”

“Exactly what I was thinking. Hoping for, to be honest. But then later Rawlings calls back and says guess what. You won’t believe this, Andrew. They’ve got the actual arm in Miami. The freaking arm! From the Misty!”

Yancy of course had ID’d it himself at the Miami-Dade morgue. The distinctive watch stripe was still visible on Nick Stripling’s mummifying wrist, although the embalmer had decorously retracted the middle finger. The county police were still trying to figure out how the severed limb of a drowned fisherman had ended up in the possession of two career felons, their stoved selves now occupying adjacent autopsy tables. Yancy had theorized to Rosa that Caitlin Cox had blabbed to her stepmother about the incriminating hatchet and the bone fragments he’d removed from the condo. Fearing a homicide investigation, Eve had recruited two random nitwits to dig up her husband’s arm so there would be nothing for a coroner to exhume and examine.

Meanwhile, Rosa had to be careful what she told detectives. She might get fired if it became known that she was surreptitiously assisting a rookie restaurant inspector on an out-of-county murder case.

“Andrew, what the hell?” Sonny Summers threw up his hands.

“Give me back my old job and I’ll get to the bottom of this.”

“Christ, why would I want to get to the bottom of it? I just need it to go away.”

The sheriff had come to the office in a pressed blue blazer with the requisite American flag lapel pin. He appeared to have put on a few soft pounds.

“We were dealing with a routine accident, right? Guy goes fishing, flips his boat, the sharks show up, whatever … and then his arm gets snagged by a tourist. See, I don’t understand how we got from there to here.”

“Because it wasn’t an accident, Sonny.”

“You’re still pissed about getting canned. Is that what this is all about? Stirring the shit pot?”

Again Yancy thought of Rosa, who was definitely in the line of bureaucratic fire. Now she had real work to do, a case number and everything. Still, she hadn’t urged him to retreat or even move to the shadows. A true champ, Yancy thought.

To the sheriff he said: “You’re the one who wanted the guy’s arm to go up the road in the first place. Now you got your wish, so what’s the problem?”

“Channel 7, Andrew.”

“You’re killing me.”

“They’ll get a whiff of this. Don’t think they won’t.”

“Who cares?” Yancy asked. “You haven’t done anything wrong.”