Bad Monkey

If Caitlin ever told Simon about Nick’s scheme to vanish, the buzz-cut sonofabitch would be down at the FBI in two minutes flat. So Stripling had chosen to keep his daughter out of the loop, planning to wait until she got bored with Simon and divorced his hopelessly square ass, which was inevitable. Then, when the time was right, Nick would send the seaplane to Miami and surprise Caitlin on her birthday, some sappy move like that.

Meanwhile there had to be a funeral, and—Stripling learns later—that’s where his daughter starts talking to Yancy, the cop who had custody of the arm. Only Caitlin doesn’t know he isn’t a cop anymore, which was all over the Keys newspapers except Caitlin doesn’t read anything besides price tags and horoscopes. Into her greedy little skull has crept the notion that Eve murdered Nick and is trying to screw Caitlin out of her inheritance. This she apparently tells Yancy. Puts him on the trail of Midwest Mobile Medical, which leads him to Gomez O’Peele, which results in the junkie doctor calling Stripling one night demanding more money, this time for keeping quiet.

Some detective came to see me, O’Peele said in a low voice, asking all kindsa questions about the Medicare stuff! I wrote down his name, you don’t believe me.

The surgeon swearing on a stack of Bibles that he didn’t say boo to Yancy about the Super Rollies, or about all those illegal prescriptions and 849s, and especially not about surgically removing that arm to help Stripling stage his own death. But honestly I don’t know how long I can hang tough, the doctor says, you sitting pretty and me with the law knocking on my door. How about another five grand, Nicky? I know you can swing it.

And Stripling tells him okay, sit tight. Then he puts on a latex glove and drives straight to Gomez O’Peele’s condo and gives him the same surprise as Charles Phinney, only this time setting it up like a suicide.

Next move is to address the Caitlin situation as any loving parent would, by offering the scheming bitch some cash up front and half the life insurance payout. Eve isn’t thrilled about sharing, but they agree it’s the fastest, cheapest way out. And sure enough, Caitlin hops on board, the sorrow over losing her father dissipating like a fart at the prospect of becoming a millionaire.

Which, all her nutty talk about Eve being a murderer? Miraculously forgotten. Caitlin can’t wait to call Yancy and tell him she was wrong about dear Eve, out of her head with grief and so on. My dad died when his boat sunk, end of story, says Caitlin.

Not knowing, to this day, that he’s alive and well. Stripling being in no hurry to inform his one and only offspring, with her track record of indiscretion and Simple Simon on the scene.

Mistake number three—possibly the worst—was Nick trying (make that failing) to kill Andrew Yancy.

Eve had met the guy once, the night she went to fetch the arm. Thought he was flaky but harmless. Later they find out he got demoted from sheriff’s detective to roach patrol, the Key West Citizen reporting it was because he’d attacked his girlfriend’s husband with a vacuum cleaner in front of hundreds of tourists, which didn’t strike Nick as all that harmless. But Eve said trust me, honey, the man is not a threat.

Then he showed up at Dr. O’Peele’s, asking questions, after which Eve said you’re right, he’s gotta go. Stripling planned to thump the sonofabitch and dump him in a canal. Set it up like an accident—the man went fishing off the bank, drank too much, took a fall. Made way more sense than shooting him point-blank, because even an ex-cop? The authorities wouldn’t let that slide.

But that night, when Yancy disappeared under the water, sunk like an anvil, Nick had gotten a little anxious. Like, what if I didn’t hit him hard enough? What if the fucker woke up on the bottom and swam off into the mangroves?

Which, turns out, is exactly what happened. Yancy pulled himself out of the canal, now sure that Caitlin’s story about Eve was true because obviously Eve had sent her new “boyfriend” after him. And what does Yancy do next? He turns up at Nick’s place on Duck Key, finds the hatchet and some bone fragments in a drain—this Yancy tells Caitlin, who immediately calls Eve, who in a cold panic calls her husband.

Now they’ve got another problem: how to retrieve Nick’s left arm from Nick’s grave before Yancy obtains a court order to exhume it. Because, with all the new CSI technology, a clever coroner could aim some type of super-ionized laser-imaging ray at the putrid limb and see that the amputation wasn’t accidental.

And then Eve would get arrested for murdering a spouse who wasn’t even dead.

So they end up paying two random shitbirds to dig up Stripling’s coffin and snatch his arm, a job Nick would have done himself except it would have taken all fucking night, a one-handed man trying to shovel packed dirt. But the grave robbers never show up at Denny’s, so Nick and Eve take off.