Razor Girl Read online

  ALSO BY CARL HIAASEN

  FICTION

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  Tourist Season

  A Death in China

  (with William Montalbano)

  Trap Line

  (with William Montalbano)

  Powder Burn

  (with William Montalbano)

  FOR YOUNG READERS

  Skink

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  Scat

  Flush

  Hoot

  NONFICTION

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  (edited by Diane Stevenson)

  The Downhill Lie: A Hacker’s Return to a Ruinous Sport

  Team Rodent: How Disney Devours the World

  Kick Ass: Selected Columns

  (edited by Diane Stevenson)

  Paradise Screwed: Selected Columns

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  THIS IS A BORZOI BOOK

  PUBLISHED BY ALFRED A. KNOPF

  Copyright © 2016 by Carl Hiaasen

  All rights reserved. Published in the United States by Alfred A. Knopf, a division of Penguin Random House LLC, New York, and distributed in Canada by Random House of Canada, a division of Penguin Random House Limited, Toronto.

  www.aaknopf.com

  Knopf, Borzoi Books, and the colophon are registered trademarks of Penguin Random House LLC.

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Names: Hiaasen, Carl, author.

  Title: Razor girl : a novel / Carl Hiaasen.

  Description: First United States edition. | New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2016. | “2015 | “This is a borzoi book.”

  Identifiers: LCCN 2016007926 | ISBN 9780385349741 (hardcover) ISBN 9780385349758 (ebook) ISBN 9780451494269 (open market)

  Subjects: LCSH: Swindlers and swindling—Fiction. | Traffic accident victims—Fiction. | BISAC: FICTION / Mystery & Detective / General. | FICTION / Suspense. | FICTION / Thrillers. | GSAFD: Mystery fiction.

  Classification: LLC PS8558.I217 R89 2016 | DDC 813/.54—dc23 LC record available at http://lccn.loc.gov/​2016007926

  ebook ISBN 9780385349758

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Cover design by Mark Matcho

  v4.1

  ep

  Contents

  Cover

  Also by Carl Hiaasen

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Author's Note

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-one

  Chapter Twenty-two

  Chapter Twenty-three

  Chapter Twenty-four

  Chapter Twenty-five

  Chapter Twenty-six

  Chapter Twenty-seven

  A Note About the Author

  For Fenia, always dancing

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. However, true events in South Florida provided the lurid material for certain strands of this novel, beginning with the opening scene. The author also wishes he’d dreamed up the part about the giant Gambian pouched rats, but he didn’t. Those suckers are real.

  ONE

  On the first day of February, sunny but cold as a frog’s balls, a man named Lane Coolman stepped off a flight at Miami International, rented a mainstream Buick and headed south to meet a man in Key West. He nearly made it.

  Twenty-seven miles from Coolman’s destination, an old green Firebird bashed his car from behind. The impact failed to trigger the Buick’s airbags, but Coolman heard the rear bumper dragging. He steered off the highway and dialed 911. In the mirror he saw the Firebird, its grille crimped and steaming, pull onto the shoulder. Ahead stood a sign that read: “Ramrod Key.”

  Coolman went to check on the other driver, a woman in her mid-thirties with red hair.

  “Super-duper sorry,” she said.

  “What the hell happened?”

  “Just a nick. Barely bleeding.” She held her phone in one hand and a disposable razor in the other.

  “Are you out of your mind?” said Coolman.

  The driver’s jeans and panties were bunched around her knees. She’d been shaving herself when she smashed Coolman’s rental car.

  “I got a date,” she explained.

  “You couldn’t take care of that at home?”

  “No way! My husband would get so pissed.”

  “Unreal,” said Coolman.

  The woman was wearing a maroon fleece jacket and rhinestone flip-flops. On her pale thigh was the razor mark.

  “How about a little privacy?” she said. “I’m not quite done here.”

  Coolman walked back to the Buick and called the man he was supposed to meet in Key West. “I’ll be a few minutes late. You’re not gonna believe what just happened,” he said on the man’s voicemail, leaving it at that.

  The cops arrived and wrote up the red-haired pube shaver for careless driving. Naturally, she had no collision insurance; that would be Avis’s problem, not Lane Coolman’s. A tow truck hauled away the Firebird, which needed a new front end including a radiator. The woman approached Coolman and asked for a ride.

  “Tell your ‘date’ to come get you,” he said. One of the police officers had pried the damaged bumper from the Buick, and Coolman was trying to fit it into the backseat.

  “He doesn’t have a car,” said the woman, who’d buttoned her jeans. She was attractive in a loose and scattered way. Coolman had a weakness for redheads.

  “See, I work for an escort service. We go to where the client’s at,” she said.

  “Yes, I understand the concept.”

  The woman’s fleece was unzipped and beneath it she wore a black sequined top. Her toes must be freezing in those flip-flops, Coolman thought; the temperature was 55 degrees with a biting north wind, arctic conditions for the Florida Keys.

  “My name’s Merry,” she said, “spelled like Merry Christmas.”

  “My name’s Bob,” said Coolman, “spelled like Bob.”

  “Does that mean you’ll give me a lift?”

  “Why not,” Coolman said, the worst mistake he would ever make.

  At Mile Marker 22, Merry told him her last name was Mansfield, like the bombshell actress of the Fifties. Coolman stopped at a Circle K where he got a cup of coffee and Merry bought three eight-hour energy drinks, chugging the little purple bottles one after the other.

  “You running a marathon?” Coolman asked.

  “I’m all about performance.”

  At Mile Marker 17, she told him she didn’t really work for an escort service.

  “Wild guess—you’re a dancer,” he said.

  “On my own time,” she replied. “Not one of those.”

  “I didn’t mean it in a bad way.”

  “Why didn’t you just say stripper? The games you guys play, I swear.” Her eyelashes were a paler shade of red than her hair.

  Coolman said, “Why would you make up a lie about being an escort?”

  “ ’Cause I needed a ride, Bob. If I said I was an artifacts appraiser you would’ve left me standing in the road.”

  “What is it you appraise?”

  “Sunken treasure. Doubloons and cannonballs and so forth. Business is slow right now. I’m an expert on eighteenth-century Spanish maritime.”

  “Do you have a real date, or did you make up that part, too?”

  Merry laughed. “He’s an Air Force pilot based at Boca Chica. Why else would I be doin’ my trim at sixty-five miles per hour?”

  At Mile Marker 8, she blurted, “Did I say Air Force? I meant Navy.” She was buzzing like a flagpole in a lightning storm. “His name’s Rocky.”

  “What about your husband?”

  “He’s a Rocky, too.”

  “Stop,” said Coolman.

  “Don’t be judging me. I go for men with strong names.”

  The closer they got to Key West, the more Southern her accent became. Coolman was foolishly intrigued.

  “What about you?” she said. “What’s your field, Bob? Your expertise.”

  “I’m in the entertainment business. I manage talent.”

  “Your own, or somebody else’s?”

  “Ever seen the show Bayou Brethren?” Coolman asked.

  “Little Rocky watches it all the time.”

  “That’s your son? Little Rocky?”

  “No, it’s what I call my husband. Don’t make me spell out why.”

  “Anyway, I manage Buck. You know—the family pat
riarch? Buck Nance.”

  “No shit?”

  “Leader of the clan,” said Coolman.

  “Yeah, Bob, I know what a fucking patriarch is.”

  The show was taped in the Florida Panhandle at a swampy location that somewhat resembled a Louisiana bayou. Buck Nance and his brothers were actually from Wisconsin, but the network paid for a Cajun dialogue coach.

  Merry said, “So what brings you all the way down here?”

  “Buck has a personal appearance.”

  “Where?”

  “Parched Pirate.”

  “Doing what?”

  “Just being Buck.”

  Coolman hoped the guitar player had found the bar. Buck Nance had trouble speaking in public unless he was accompanied by a live musician. For his road gigs the writers at the network had come up with eight or nine amusing redneck stories, what you might call a monologue, and afterward Buck would take questions for ten minutes or so. The questions were printed on index cards distributed in advance to random fuckwits in the crowd.

  Coolman offered to take Merry to the show. “We’ll hang backstage,” he added. Like there was a backstage.

  “What about my date?” she asked.

  “Bail,” Coolman said. “Tell him the truth—you had car trouble.”

  “But then I shaved down there for no reason.”

  “Not necessarily.”

  The redhead smiled and shook her head. “For the Zac Brown Band I’d ditch my Navy boy in a heartbeat, but not for some yahoo from the bayou.”

  “It’s only the top-rated cable program in the whole country.”

  “I prefer the nature channels. You know—penguins and cheetahs. Shit like that.”

  “Buck converted his Bentley to an ATV with rifle racks.”

  “Why would a grown man do something so ridiculous?”

  “America worships the guy. You should come hear him tonight.”

  “Another time,” said Merry.

  At Mile Marker 5, she made a call on her cell phone. All she said was, “Don’t wet yourself, sugar. I’m almost there.”

  At Mile Marker 4, after they’d crossed the bridge into Key West, she flipped open the visor mirror and checked her makeup. Freshened her lipstick. Brushed her hair.

  “You look terrific,” said Coolman.

  “Damn right, Bob.”

  At Mile Marker 3, she exclaimed, “Okay, pull in here!”

  It was a small shopping center with a Sears as the high point. Merry directed Coolman where to park. He was surprised when a white Tesla rolled up beside them.

  “That’s your boyfriend?” Coolman knew a couple of CAA agents back in L.A. who drove jet-black Teslas. The white model looked pretty sweet. Coolman himself leased a corpuscle-red Mercedes SLK 350 that required no electric outlet.

  “I thought you said he didn’t have wheels.”

  Merry shrugged. “Must be a loaner.”

  The young man who got out of the Tesla was wearing a leather bomber jacket. If not for the gold earring and oily long hair he could have been a Navy pilot.

  “It was nice meeting you,” Coolman said to the redhead.

  “Oh, you’re coming with.”

  “Me? What for?”

  The man in the bomber jacket yanked open Coolman’s door and put a pistol to his neck.

  “Let’s go, dipshit.”

  “Just take my wallet,” Coolman said, breathless. “The Rolex, too, whatever you want.”

  “You’re adorable, Bob,” the woman whispered. “Now get out of the fucking car.”

  —

  Bayou Brethren had been conceived as a reality show about moonshiners, but another network snatched that idea first. Next on the concept list was pig farming, the unsavory auditions dragging on for months. Eventually Buck Nance and his three younger brothers were chosen to star in the program, though they knew nothing about swine husbandry. They got the nod because of their exquisite beards, rough-edged banter and punctuality.

  The pilot episode of Bayou Brethren was a major disappointment, the visual appeal of high-def hog shit having been overestimated by a network vice president who was summarily promoted to a more harmless position. The new network vice president in charge of the project felt the brothers needed a more esoteric vocation to distract from their unappealing personalities, a view shared by potential advertisers who’d screened the off-putting pilot. Specialty chicken breeding was chosen as the alternate milieu—Buck and his brothers would raise prize roosters whose multi-hued hackle feathers would be crafted into beautiful flies for catching gamefish such as trout and tarpon.

  Midway through the first season Buck got pecked in the eye while chasing one of the birds, which he vanquished indecorously with a Babolat tennis racket. The show’s ratings soared, and the Nances made the cover of People magazine. Currently Lane Coolman’s agency was negotiating preposterous new contracts for the clan, and during a short break in taping it was decided to put Buck on the road in a few soft markets, South Florida being one of the softest due to its diversity.

  The Parched Pirate was packed, so Buck was on edge. Coolman hadn’t arrived yet, which meant no pep talk, no wild stories about the hot babe (or babes) Lane had banged the night before. Even though there were direct flights to Key West, Lane had insisted on driving down from Miami because he said he wanted to see the islands. Now he was late for the event, something that had never before happened.

  Buck and Lane had a certain way of getting ready, and Buck faltered if their routine was altered. Plus the guitar player was nowhere in sight—some cow-eyed slacker from Pasadena, all he had to do was pick a few notes while Buck told humorous redneck yarns. Buck had lobbied for a banjo player but Lane said they cost too much, which made no fucking sense to Buck because a banjo’s got fewer strings than a damn guitar.

  Before the show, Buck waited alone in a small room that had a card table and a couple of folding chairs. He would have preferred to park himself at the bar except he would have been mobbed by fans. The manager said several male customers had torn off their shirtsleeves in homage (Buck always wore a wifebeater on TV). Sometimes he’d stay after a gig and autograph the shirt fragments, but not tonight. No way.

  The bartender poked his head in the door. “Ready, dude?”

  “Born that way,” said Buck Nance, though he was definitely not ready. Where the hell was Lane? The message he’d left on Buck’s phone said something crazy had happened.

  Everybody cheered and wooo-hooed when Buck ambled onto the small stage. Lane had assured him that the Parched Pirate drew a good biker crowd, and Buck was relieved to see lots of black leather mixed in with the cruise-ship garb.

  He relaxed a little. Waved. Gave a fist pump. Somebody handed him a Jack-and-Coke, which he gulped, then somebody handed him another.

  The first bit started out fine. It was the one about a good ole boy who comes home drunk and rolls into bed with what he thinks is his wife but it turns out to be a bear, only the man is too trashed to notice, and the two of them—him and the bear—are sleeping spoon-style when the wife walks in…

  But storytelling wasn’t the same for Buck Nance without the accompanying guitar, which set a laid-back mood. He started blanking—not stage fright exactly, just a few crucial gaps in the memory loop. It had happened two or three times before, but Lane Coolman had always been there, stage right, with a verbal cue to lead Buck back on track.

  Not tonight. The microphone felt like a barbell in Buck’s sweaty hand, and he wrapped up the bear-and-hairy-wife story as best he could. People chuckled, though it sounded to Buck like a communal politeness and not the genuine guffaws he’d come to expect in working-class sports bars. He wondered if he’d been given some faulty information about the Parched Pirate, and Key West in general.

  He couldn’t remember the second yarn on his set list. So, in an ill-considered burst of spontaneity, he decided to tell a joke he’d heard from one of his brothers.

  “Hey, why can’t homos drive faster than 68 miles an hour?” Buck Nance said. “ ’Cause at 69 they blow a rod!”

  The barroom didn’t go silent, but the walls weren’t exactly shaking with riotous laughter. Buck wondered whether the joke worked better if you used “faggot” instead of “homo.”