Skinny Dip Read online

  Nothing about nature awed, soothed or humbled him—not the solitude or the mythic vastness or the primordial ebb and flow. To Chaz, it was all hot, buggy, funky-smelling and treacherous. He would have been so much happier on the driving range at Eagle Trace.

  Red Hammernut was the one who had insisted that Chaz stick to the program, in case Chaz’s supervisors at the water-management district decided to check up on him. It was also Red who’d bought him the Humvee, after Chaz had griped for months that the dirt roads were tearing up the shocks on his midsize Chevy.

  Chaz had chosen bright yellow for the Hummer on the theory that such an intrusive color would freak out any panthers that might be lurking in the sector of the Everglades to which he was assigned. Chaz was terrified of being ambushed by one of the big cats, despite the fact that no such attack on humans had ever been recorded. Furthermore, the animals were nearly extinct, perhaps only sixty or seventy remaining in the wild.

  When a fellow biologist reminded Chaz that the odds of being mauled by a Florida panther were roughly the same as being struck by a meteorite, Chaz announced he was taking no chances. When informed that the cats were color-blind and would therefore be oblivious to the blinding hue of his Humvee, Chaz wasn’t entirely disappointed. Girls seemed to go for the yellow.

  He climbed out of the driver’s seat and was promptly engulfed by mosquitoes. Grunting and flailing, he struggled to insert himself into the heavy rubber waders that he’d purchased from a high-end hunting catalog. The commotion spooked a turtle off a rock, the splash causing Chaz to spin around and glare at the telltale rings on the surface. When he was seven, his mother had presented him with a baby dime-store terrapin, which he’d named Timmy and later flushed down the toilet in disapproval of its casual potty habits.

  As he sloshed reluctantly into the marsh, Chaz wasn’t worried about a turtle attack, as turtles had no teeth. What he dreaded were the alligators, brazen and plentiful. Not a single scientist had been devoured or even maimed by a gator while working in the Everglades, but Chaz believed it was only a matter of time. He would have carried a high-caliber rifle except that it was strictly forbidden, and he couldn’t risk getting fired, demoted or transferred from the sampling sites. That would ruin everything, including his profitable association with Red Hammernut.

  Consequently, Chaz’s sole instrument of defense was a boron-shafted two-iron, which in his hands was far more efficient at scaring off aquatic reptiles than striking a golf ball. Chaz swung the club haphazardly and yowled like a hemorrhoidal bobcat as he hacked a soggy trail through the saw grass. Nature recoiled as he threshed the water, launching clumps of algae and splintered twigs and shredded lily pads. In the cumbersome waders Chaz clomped and teetered like the Frankenstein monster, but the desired effect was achieved: every living vertebrate within a hundred yards of the dike fled the scene.

  Only the mosquitoes and horseflies lingered to harass Chaz Perrone, and their impassive humming was all he heard when he finally reached the pond where the first monitoring station stood. Otherwise the swamp had gone mute and lifeless, which was how Chaz preferred it. He stood at the edge of the deeper water, catching his breath and waiting for the wavelets he’d made to subside.

  Here Chaz was required to immerse up to his armpits, surrendering what little mobility he had. The stiff rubber leggings that protected him so reliably from the razor-sharp saw grass and lethal moccasin fangs were not designed for swimming, and would in fact fill up and drag him down like an anchor if Chaz wasn’t careful.

  So he waited for the water to calm, intently scanning the surface for ominous log-like snouts. In his nightmares this is where the gators always nailed him—in the pond—because he was exposed and helpless, a sitting duck. On more than one occasion Chaz had retreated in a blind froth from the monitoring station, certain he was being pursued by one or more of the flesh-eating saurians. Today the only specimen to be seen was a vividly banded newborn that would have fit easily in a shoe box. Chaz bravely stepped forward and whaled away with the two-iron, failing (as usual) to land a blow. As soon as the baby alligator was gone, Chaz made his move.

  Wielding the golf club over his head, he skated his feet heavily across the muddy bottom. He was prepared to clobber anything that came to the surface, no matter how small or harmless, but nothing rose to challenge him. Along the way, he diligently paused to uproot several fresh sprouts of cattails, a small act of tidiness that Chaz believed was crucial to his future wealth and comfort.

  It took only three minutes to remove a water sample from the monitoring station. Chaz made it look good, even though he was fairly certain that nobody from the district was within thirty miles of the site. Red Hammernut said they sometimes sent up helicopters to spy on the biologists in the field, but privately Chaz was doubtful. He acted out the charade of sample collecting only because it was Red’s wish, and Red was the last person on earth Chaz wanted to cross.

  Following his freshly cut path, he crashed and howled his way back to the levee without incident. After placing the quart-size container upright in the back of the Hummer, he kicked and wriggled out of his waders, which stunk of sweat and ripe muck. He grabbed a mango-flavored Gatorade from the cooler and sat on the bumper, the two iron propped within lunging distance. With a dirty shirtsleeve Chaz mopped the perspiration from his brow, thinking: What a steaming shithole this is! To think that the taxpayers of America are spending 8 billion bucks to save it.

  Suckers, Chaz thought. If they only knew.

  With the binoculars he checked in both directions along the rutted embankment. No other vehicles were visible. He squinted up at the sky and saw the omnipresent buzzards, circling clockwise, but no choppers or planes.

  Satisfied, Charles Regis Perrone finished off the Gatorade and lobbed the bottle into the saw grass. Then he unscrewed the lid from the sample jar and poured the tea-colored water into the dirt at his feet.

  River of grass, my ass, he thought.

  Eight

  Chaz was sitting in the bathtub, scrubbing off the swamp grime, when Ricca showed up.

  “Are you nuts?” he said.

  “Nope. Just lonely.” She stepped out of her oxblood heels.

  “Did anybody see you drive up? Where’d you park?”

  Ricca unfastened her hoop earrings and set them next to Chaz’s stick deodorant on the vanity. “What are you so jumpy about? I thought you’d be happy to see me.”

  In a moment she was out of her clothes, straddling him imperiously.

  “But I’m not finished,” Chaz said.

  “Damn right you’re not.”

  Ricca placed her palms against his chest and pushed. Chaz took a quick breath, squeezing his eyes closed as he submerged. Being a clean freak, he was concerned about the health risks of rough sex in dirty bathwater. Who knew what pernicious tropical microbes had hitched a ride back from the Everglades?

  It was too late to protest. He felt like he’d been thrown into a blender with a live coyote. The bare tile amplified Ricca’s feral yips and howls to soul-chilling decibels, the racket seeming louder every time Chaz came up for air. Meanwhile she was pounding against him with such zest as to generate a seismic rhythm of concussive smacks. Chaz feared that his eardrums might blow out underwater. With both arms he helmeted himself, not only to save his hearing but to prevent his skull from cracking against the brass drain plate. Ricca was as speedy as she was rambunctious, and Chaz was confident that he could outlast her, providing he didn’t drown.

  True to form, she was done in less than four minutes. Chaz disentangled and stork-stepped out of the bathtub, which by then was nearly empty. He grabbed a couple of towels and began mopping up the floor and the walls.

  “You’re somethin’ else,” Ricca gasped.

  She was splayed in the tub like a broken doll, one foot hooked on the soap tray and the other braced against the spigot. Jet-black hair fell in a dripping tangle across half her face.

  “My God, Chaz. That was fantastic.”

&n
bsp; He said, “Yeah. You damn near killed me.”

  “Hey, you’re still hard. What’s the matter?”

  “Not a thing.” He snatched a robe off the hook on the door.

  “Didn’t you come?”

  “Sure I did,” he lied. “All over the place.”

  “So that means”—Ricca pointing—“you’re ready to go again? Already?”

  He shrugged. “Let’s get some dinner.”

  “You are seriously amazing.” She stood up and wrung out her hair. “Wanna b.j. or something?”

  Chaz peered quizzically at her crotch. “What’d you do to yourself?”

  “It’s a shamrock. You like it?”

  “A shamrock.” He hadn’t noticed earlier.

  “For good luck,” Ricca explained. “I wanted four leaves, but I only had enough pubes for three.”

  Chaz was trying to remember if she was Irish.

  “It took, like, an hour to do. With two mirrors,” she added.

  “And they make green hair dye these days?”

  “You bet.”

  “Well, I’m impressed,” Chaz said.

  “Then we’re even. Come here, lemme take care of that.”

  Chaz was unnerved to realize that he wasn’t in the mood. He glanced down at himself and wondered: What the hell’s the matter with me?

  “I think I heard the phone,” he said, and hurried to get dressed.

  A few minutes later, Ricca found him slouched on a corner of the bed. He wore one brown sock and a misbuttoned shirt, and he was staring dully into an open closet.

  “What’s wrong?” she asked, touching his shoulder.

  He shook her off dismissively.

  “Baby, I was thinking,” she said. “Are you gonna have a service for Joey? You probably should.”

  “I hate funerals. Besides, there’s no body to bury.”

  Ricca said, “A memorial service, I mean. They do it all the time for people who get burnt up in plane crashes, or when a ship sinks and everybody’s lost at sea.”

  Chaz insisted there was no point. “Joey’s only family is some hermit brother who lives on the other side of the world.”

  “What about her friends?”

  “So, I’ll put a notice in the paper. They can make donations to the World Wildlife Mission. Save the endangered yaks or whatever.”

  Ricca smoothed her skirt and sat beside him on the bed. “What happens next? I guess you’ve gotta have her declared legally . . . you know . . .”

  “Dead?”

  “Right.”

  “Christ, Ricca, it’s only been a few days.”

  “Eventually, I mean.”

  “There’s no rush,” Chaz said.

  That damn detective, Rolvaag, would be scrutinizing him for a while. Chaz didn’t want to appear in a hurry to be single.

  “How long, then?” Ricca asked.

  “What’s the difference? I’m not getting any of her money anyway,” he said. “The fucking yaks can wait.”

  “Well, suppose I can’t?”

  Chaz pretended not to hear. He approached the closet and focused once more upon the sheer black dress. It was scooped in the front and featured a racy slit up one side.

  He took it out and showed Ricca. “Did you bring this with you tonight? Because Joey had one just like it, I mean identical.”

  Ricca was peeved. “It’s not mine, Chaz. Not unless I’ve grown three inches taller and dropped ten pounds.”

  “Aw, come on.”

  “It’s not mine.”

  “Okay, okay.” He yanked the dress off the hanger, rolled it up and tossed it in a corner. “I swear I packed that away yesterday.”

  Ricca glanced uneasily around the room. “To be honest, this is kinda freaky, being in the house with your wife dead.”

  “What—it was easier when she was alive?”

  “No, it’s just very sad, what happened to her,” Ricca said. “Can we get outta here?”

  Chaz went to the dresser and pawed through the drawers one by one. He couldn’t find Joey’s panties and bra, the ones he’d meant to save for Ricca. He wondered if he was cracking up.

  “Lookin’ for your other sock? It’s right there on the floor, under the nightstand.”

  “So it is,” said Chaz. “Thanks.”

  As soon as Ricca went to fix her makeup, he slipped out the kitchen door and into the garage. The cardboard boxes containing Joey’s belongings were exactly where he’d left them, piled next to the Camry. The boxes didn’t appear to have been touched, causing Chaz to think that he had somehow forgotten to collect his wife’s black dress. As for the missing undergarments, perhaps he’d moved them to another place.

  In the living room he was gratified to see that the stinking dead fish had not re-materialized in his aquarium since he’d flushed them down the toilet. Chaz made himself a drink and began scanning the alphabetized-by-artist CD rack, looking for some kick-ass driving music. What he found while thumbing through the T’s gave him a chill. Bad to the Bone was missing. So was Move It on Over. Even the Anthology was gone.

  Ricca appeared, looking spectacular but troubled. She said, “I hope you don’t mind—I borrowed some of Joey’s lipstick.”

  Chaz felt the hairs prickle on his neck. “That’s impossible.”

  “I left mine in the car. I’m sorry.”

  “You don’t understand. I threw out all her lipstick,” he said. “I went through the whole goddamn bathroom and tossed out every goddamn thing of hers.”

  “But it was right there, Chaz. In the vanity—”

  “No! Not possible.”

  Chaz felt a bloom of cold sweat under his arms. He stalked up to Ricca, grabbed her chin and turned her mouth toward the light so that he could examine the color.

  “Shit,” he muttered. It was definitely Coral Tease, Joey’s favorite.

  His favorite, actually. Just like that slitted black dress, the one she’d worn at his request to Mark’s on Las Olas for their first anniversary.

  He let go of Ricca’s face and said, “Something’s fucked up around here.”

  “Why would I lie about lipstick?” Rubbing her jaw, she was bewildered and angry.

  “You’re right. I’m sorry,” he said.

  “Can we get outta here, like, now?”

  “Absolutely,” Chaz told her. “Right after I make a call.”

  “Swell. I’ll be in the bathroom.” She shut the door forcefully behind her and fumed for a minute.

  “Where’s your razor?” she called out, but Chaz was already on the phone.

  Joey Perrone and Mick Stranahan were watching the house from a neighbor’s driveway halfway down the block. Joey said it was safe because the neighbors had gone to upstate New York for a month and possibly longer.

  “Dodging subpoenas,” she explained. “They run a telephone boiler room, selling ethanol futures to senior citizens. Every time the feds shut ’em down, they dash off to their lodge in the Adirondacks.”

  “It’s a great country,” Stranahan said.

  “What’re you doing?”

  “Trying to figure out the damn CD player.”

  For surveillance purposes, Joey had rented them a dark green Suburban with tinted windows.

  She said, “Mick, please don’t.”

  He was sorting through the George Thorogood discs that Joey had swiped from her husband’s collection. “What, you don’t like the slide guitar?”

  “I don’t like the memories,” she said.

  Joey meant to drop the subject, but then she heard herself saying, “We’d be going along in the car and whenever he’d put on ‘Bad to the Bone,’ that was the signal he wanted me to, you know . . .”

  “Gotcha.” Stranahan tossed the CDs into the backseat. “So he imagines himself a wit, Mr. Charles Perrone, and a sex machine to boot.”

  Joey recited the ten things that Chaz disliked most about her, with hiding Thorogood being number six.

  “That’s not why he tried to kill you. Believe me,” Strana
han said.

  “See, this is what’s driving me crazy,” she said. “I can’t figure out why he would do what he did.”

  “Money’s my guess.”

  “But I told you, he’s not getting a dime if I’m dead.”

  Stranahan fiddled with the radio dials. “Most murders come down to lust, anger or greed,” he said. “From what you’ve told me about your husband, I’m betting on greed. If this isn’t about your money then it’s about somebody else’s.”

  Joey said that, in a way, she hoped he was right. “I’d hate to think he threw me off that ship just so he could be with her.” She shot a glare toward the house.

  “Not likely,” said Stranahan.

  “I wish you could’ve met Benny, my first husband. He was a sweetheart,” she said fondly. “Not exactly a firecracker in certain departments, but a good honest guy.”

  Stranahan aimed the binoculars at the bay window of the Perrone residence. The lights had come on, though the curtains remained closed. It had been an hour since the dark-haired woman had arrived, parking a blue Ford compact next to Chaz’s Humvee.

  “You don’t know who she is?”

  “No idea. It’s pitiful,” Joey said. “He’s got so many bimbos, you’d need radio collars to track them all.”

  Stranahan secretly was pleased that Chaz Perrone was entertaining female company only three tender days into widowhood. Such a boggling lack of self-restraint could open a world of squalid opportunities for someone seeking to mess with Chaz’s head.

  “Let’s call it a night,” Stranahan suggested.

  “Honestly, did she look that smokin’ hot to you?”

  “The longer we stay, the riskier it gets.”

  “This is what the Secret Service drives. Chevy Suburbans.”

  “Joey, we’re not the Secret Service. I’m supposed to be retired and you’re supposed to be deceased.”

  “Hey, we should copy the license off her car!”

  “Done.” Too tired to trust his memory, Stranahan had jotted the tag number on the inside of his wrist.

  “Fifteen more minutes,” she said. “Then we can go.”