Bad Monkey

Ever since the night she seduced him on the autopsy table he had wondered how to satisfy such an appetite for excitement. Sending her off to meet with a pair of murderers was one way to spice up a date weekend, but experimenting with variable-speed sex toys in a bounce house would have been safer.

Yancy knew nothing about Christopher Grunion beyond his homicidal capacities; there wasn’t a trace of the man in the public records or state crime computers. That Eve Stripling’s companion might be using an alias wasn’t surprising, but it heightened Yancy’s anxiety about Rosa meeting with the man. If she didn’t return by ten sharp, Yancy would go to Grunion’s place and check on her. His watch now said eight forty-six.

The wind blew a fat palmetto bug from the thatching and it landed on the opposite bar, next to a plate of cracked conch. A tourist woman who’d been enjoying the native entrée emitted a shriek and nearly tumbled backward. Her companions, all sporting ripely sunburned cheeks, joined in the squealing and pointing. The six-legged intruder composed itself and with probing antennae began to stalk the drippings of a half-finished piña colada. Hysterically the patrons appealed to the bartender, who indicated an unwillingness to intervene.

Yancy couldn’t stand the racket. He walked around to where the first woman had been sitting, and with a bare palm he flattened the insect. The crunch sounded like a boot heel on a pistachio. There was a smatter of tipsy applause and one or two supportive shouts, which Yancy didn’t acknowledge. If it had happened back in Florida, he’d be writing up the place.

He used a cocktail napkin to wipe the roach bits off his hand as the aggrieved female patrons gathered up their pocketbooks and scrunchies. They departed in an ungrateful flock just as a frayed-looking older fellow walked in and propped a fully assembled fly rod against the bar rail.

“Who is that gentleman?” Yancy asked the bartender.

“Dot’s Neville Stafford. Poor mon bin out all night lookin’ for his monkey.”

“We’ve all been there. Let me buy him a beer.”

The American sat down beside him and Neville said thanks for the Kalik.

“Rough time?”

“Yeah, mon.”

“I ran into your flea-bitten buddy,” said the American.

He showed Neville the bite marks and scratches on his legs. Neville felt bad. The American said the monkey had run off in a rainstorm after a fracas at the abandoned house.

Then he said: “Mr. Stafford, I believe that’s my fly rod.”

Neville nodded and set it by the man’s stool. He told him the errant monkey’s name was Driggs and mentioned the Johnny Depp connection. The American said he’d first seen the animal riding a motorized wheelchair with the Dragon Lady.

“Queen,” Neville corrected him. “Dragon Queen.”

“She sort of freaked me out.”

“She freak everbotty out.”

“Isn’t her boyfriend that huge bald dude works for Christopher Grunion?”

Neville said, “How you know Mistuh Chrissofer?”

“I heard he’s building a fancy tourist resort down on the beach.”

“Yeah, mon. My beach.” Neville stopped talking and finished his beer. The American ordered him another one.

“You sell him that land?”

“He tore down my house and put up a fence with a got-tam padlock. Ain’t no hoppy situation, mon. It was my hoff sister made the deal. Nobody axe me.” Neville went through the story of the sale. He couldn’t tell if the American, like others, thought he was crazy.

The man finished listening and said, “That’s a lot of money, Mr. Stafford. You could have been rich.”

“In wot way?”

The American broke into a warm smile. “Exactly. My name’s Andrew.”

His grip was firm when he shook Neville’s hand. He said he lived on Big Pine Key, in the southernmost part of Florida. Neville said he had been twice to Miami and once to Fort Lauderdale, to have a mole on his neck removed. The American told him about his own house, about the hot-pink Gulf sunsets and the small wild deer that roamed the island. The deer were no larger than dogs, the man said, which Neville found fascinating.

“Every evening they’d come into this clearing to eat sprouts and twigs,” the man named Andrew said. “I’d sit on the deck and watch them do their thing until it got dark.”

“Ain’t no deer on Andros dot I ever saw,” Neville remarked. “Only pigs.”

“But then some guy named Shook from upstate New York, he bought the lot next to mine and started putting up a huge house, a ridiculous fucking house. It’s way too tall for the building codes but obviously he paid off somebody,” the American went on. “Worst part? He doesn’t even intend to live there, Mr. Stafford. Can’t abide the heat and mosquitoes. All he wants to do is unload the monstrosity on some clueless sucker, take the money and go back north.”

The American seemed deeply bothered by what his neighbor was doing to the land. Neville had never run into a tourist like Andrew, although he’d met a few like Mr. Shook.

“Wot ’bout dose lil’ deer?” Neville asked.

“They don’t come anymore. They can’t eat plywood.”

The man went still. Neville asked him what he was going to do.