Bad Monkey

“So I lost my mind for five lousy minutes. You’ve seen what Bonnie Witt looks like? Now imagine her dancing around your kitchen wearing nothing but dive booties. Sonny, I was possessed!”

The sheriff shrugged one shoulder. “Her husband’s connected, Andrew. He’s biopsied half the county commissioners. You were lucky Dickinson didn’t charge you with sodomy.”

“What if I told you the On switch got stuck.”

“It took us a month before YouTube agreed to pull those nasty clips.”

“Fine, I get it.” Yancy surrendered to the inevitable. “So, what’s my new gig?”

“A good one, under the radar.”

“But just until things cool off, right?”

“Sure, Andrew.”

Yancy surveyed the items on the sheriff’s desk: a glass leaping-dolphin paperweight from the Kiwanis Club, an oversized Rubik’s Cube, a MacBook, a coffee mug from America’s Most Wanted and a half dozen photographs featuring Mrs. Summers and their three children, the youngest of whom wore in every frame the hollow stare of a future serial killer.

“Do you enjoy a good meal?” Sonny Summers said. “The reason I ask is you’re pretty thin. Unlike some of us, right?” He patted his gut and chuckled.

“I like to eat, sure.”

“But you probably go out a lot, being single and all. You know where I’m headed with this?”

“No fucking clue, Sonny.”

“Your new job—it’s an enforcement position.”

“But not law enforcement.”

“Next best thing,” the sheriff said.

Yancy said, “I’m begging you.”

Sonny Summers winked. “Restaurant inspector—it’s like a paid vacation, Andrew.”

Yancy’s jaw made a popping sound. “Roach patrol?”

“They had an opening, so I made a call. The other fella, he got sick and quit.”

“He died, Sonny.”

“Okay, he died. But first he got sick.”

Yancy rose slowly. “I really don’t know what to say.”

“Thanks is enough. By the way, we’ll need your Glock and the keys to the Crown Vic.”

Because Sonny Summers technically was no longer his boss, Yancy thought it might be entertaining to tell him the truth about the severed arm—that the Miami medical examiner had rejected custody and now it reposed back in Sonny’s jurisdiction, among the Popsicles and grouper fillets in Yancy’s kitchen freezer.

Instead, all Yancy said was: “When do I start?”

He was born in South Miami and raised in Homestead. His father was a ranger at Everglades National Park and his mother worked in the dock store at Flamingo. Yancy grew up on the water and dreamed of becoming a backcountry charter guide until he realized it would require almost daily contact with tourists. When Yancy was eighteen, his dad put in for a transfer to Yellowstone and Yancy chose to stay behind. The young man was anchored to Florida, for better or worse. A passion for tarpon fishing prolonged his education but eventually he earned a degree in criminal justice and wound up with the Miami Police Department. His marriage to a robbery detective named Celia expired when she accepted a job in Ann Arbor and again Yancy refused to move. They had no children, only a hyperactive border collie that had failed to bond with Yancy despite his earnest efforts. Usually dogs adored him so he was glad to see this one go, though not so much his wife.

For consolation he bought a secondhand Hell’s Bay skiff with a ninety-horse outboard. He still had it, and after his dispiriting sit-down with the sheriff he spent the afternoon poling down the oceanside flats. The tide was all wrong but Yancy didn’t care. A light sea breeze nudged the boat across crystal shallows, past eagle rays and lemon sharks and an ancient loggerhead turtle, half-blind and thorned with barnacles. It was a perfect afternoon, though he didn’t cast at a single fish.

When Yancy returned home he saw a cream-colored Suburban parked in front of the soon-to-be mansion next door. A well-dressed man, stumpy in stature, stood in the future portico. He was slapping at bugs and speaking with agitation into a cell phone. Yancy recognized him as the owner.

The man, whose name was Evan Shook, soon came to the fence. “Excuse me,” he said.

Yancy was hosing the salt rime off his boat. He nodded in a false neighborly way.

“There’s a dead raccoon in my house,” Evan Shook reported with gravity.

“Not good,” Yancy said.

“It’s huge and it’s starting to rot.”

Yancy winced sympathetically.

“Could you help me dump it somewhere? I’ve got people on their way to look at the place. They flew all the way from Dallas.”

“Did you call Animal Control?” Yancy asked.

“Lazy pricks, they won’t come out here till tomorrow. I could seriously use a hand.”

Yancy shut off the hose. “Here’s the thing. It’s really bad luck to disturb a dead animal, and I can’t afford any more of that.”

Evan Shook frowned. “Bad luck? Come on.”

“Like a Gypsy curse, which is not what I need at the moment. But you can borrow my shovel.”

“The damn thing reeks to high hell!”

Yancy changed the subject. “That’s quite the Taj Mahal you’re building.”

“Seven thousand square feet. Tallest house on the island.”

“I can believe it.”