Bad Monkey

“My country, you get free insurance when you hit the big six-five. Government pays damn near all the bills, you get sick. They got the same deal here in the islands?”

“Dot I cont say. I ain’t been sick.”

Again Christopher laughed through the mask. “Good for you, nigger.” He raised the barrel of the gun. “That means you can still run like a goddamn chicken.”

He aimed five feet above Neville’s head and a bolt of blue-gold fire punched a hole in the night. Neville ran and ran.

Seventeen

Nobody on Andros seemed especially worried about Tropical Storm Françoise. For a day the system had stalled down near Grand Turk; now it was sidling northwest again. The National Hurricane Center said atmospheric conditions were favorable for cyclonic growth. At this announcement, a TV weatherman in Miami began jabbing in febrile excitement at the floridly rendered “cone of doom”—a forecast map illustrating multiple possible pathways of the storm through the Bahamas chain and across toward Florida.

Yancy was watching on a flat-screen television in a second-story restaurant overlooking the Tongue of the Ocean. After the weather update he turned his attention to a bowl of chunky red chowder; submerged insect fragments would be hard to detect among the diced onions and celery. Yancy probed with a teaspoon. The night before he’d squashed seven adult-phase German cockroaches in his motel room; the largest was a flier that had alighted on his forehead as he slept.

The restaurant owner, an American expat with a white-streaked ponytail, asked, “What are you doing, mister?”

“Taking my time,” Yancy said.

“It’s only the best soup on the island. I use fresh-growed tomatoes.”

Eventually Yancy took a sip. He bowed at the man and said, “Outstanding.”

“Damn right.”

“How’s the bonefishing?”

“Super, if you can stand the heat.”

“I love the heat,” Yancy said.

A plane passed overhead, the pitch of the engine dropping during descent. Yancy hurried from the restaurant and pedaled his borrowed bicycle through gusty winds to the airstrip, where he found the white seaplane parked near the small terminal building. Claspers, the pilot, was talking on a cell phone while he set the wheel chocks. Standing alone by the fence was the beefy pinhead with the crumpled ears. He wore a brown guayabera, wet moons under the armpits. One side of his mug was shiny and swollen, testifying to an eventful dental appointment.

Yancy propped the bicycle against a shaded wall of the terminal. Soon a taxi van rolled up and the pinhead squeezed himself into the front passenger side. Yancy opened the sliding door and plopped down on the bench seat behind him.

“My bike’s got a flat. Can I ride back to town with you?”

“I ain’t gon dot way,” the big man said.

“Then we’ll drop you off first. My name’s Andrew. What’s yours?”

It was the driver who answered. “Egg’s wot dey call ’im.” The goon stared ahead, rubbing his jawbone. He told the taxi man to take him to Curly Tail Lane.

“You mean Green Beach?” the driver asked.

“Ain’t wot de sign say.”

“N’how ’bout you, suh?”

“Conch shack,” Yancy said.

The driver chuckled. “Almost lunchtime.”

Egg took a prescription bottle from a pocket and tapped out three oval pills. “Fuck lunch, mon. Juss drive.”

Yancy said he was from Florida. He said he loved the Bahamas and was thinking of buying a place on Andros, maybe a time-share. Egg ignored him.

The van stopped at a construction site. Egg paid the driver, unlocked the chain-link gate and disappeared inside an Airstream trailer that looked like it had been rolled off a cliff. Yancy didn’t see any signs or billboards on the property.

“Is this Curly Tail Lane?” he asked the driver.

“Yah.”

“I heard it’s going to be a five-star resort.”

“Dot’s de plon.”

“They’re just getting started, huh?”

The taxi driver laughed. “It’s not like Miami. Tings move lil’ slower here.”

“You hungry?” said Yancy.

The driver’s name was Philip and he was from Nicholls Town, on the north end. Yancy bought him fritters and a beer at the conch shack, where he flirted equitably with the two women behind the counter. Afterward he gave Yancy a motor tour of Lizard Cay, through the quiet old settlements of Elizabeth, Pindling’s Bluff and Weech Harbor. Along the way Yancy saw a few families boarding their windows, but the prevailing mood was leisurely. When the taxi began to jerk and sputter, Philip pulled over by the ferry dock on Victoria Creek. A squall blew in while he was beating with a wrench on the carburetor, so he scrambled back into the van.

While they waited for the rain to let up, Yancy described for Philip his unsettling encounter with the old woman on the motorized wheelchair. The driver frowned and told Yancy to be careful—she was a man-eater.

“A true sex witch, mon.”

“What do you mean?”

“Wonna my uncles sleep wit her and tree months later he drop dead,” Philip said. “She feed ’im poison coz he won’t screw her no more. Wicked bod lady—you stay ’way.”

“What’s the story with that monkey?” Yancy asked.