Bad Monkey

He was in ragged shape despite the painkillers. Eve told Egg to roll him outside while she finished filling the suitcases. In the hurricane’s aftermath Bannister Point was an obstacle course—branches and coconuts and two-by-fours all over the place. Egg in his hobbled condition did a poor job of dodging the rubble, and even the Rollie’s pneumatic suspension couldn’t spare Nick from the bumps. Between groans he rehashed for Egg the saga of his ambush.

Then he asked: “It wasn’t you who tried to kill me, was it?”

“No, mon. Why I do sum ting like dot?”

“You’d have to be brain-dead,” Stripling agreed. “But who could it be? I don’t have any enemies on this fuckin’ island. I don’t know anybody on this fuckin’ island.”

Egg reminded him about the vandal who’d peed on the backhoes at the construction site.

“I thought you took care of that sonofabitch,” Nick snapped.

“Yah, I hoyt ’im putty bod but he ain’t dead. I saw ’im utter night.”

Stripling wondered aloud if the stealth urinator was the same man he’d caught snooping outside the house, the old beach nigger he’d run off with the shotgun. Which, who’d be crazy enough to come back after somebody fired a twelve-gauge over your head?

Egg made no response. It wasn’t a daily occurrence that a sober white person used the n-word in his presence, but the boss man seemed clueless.

“You gotta find out who crippled me,” Nick went on. “That’s your number one job.”

Egg said he’d ask around town.

“Yeah, right. Be careful not to work up a goddamn sweat.” Nothing annoyed Stripling as much as lack of initiative. “Maybe your woman can help,” he needled Egg. “Do some of her voodoo shit and pull a name out of some dead chicken’s asshole.”

“Dot ain’t funny.”

“What’s with the limp?” Nick could see that the brute was hurting.

“Monkey fucked me up bod.”

“No shit?” It was Stripling’s first laugh in days.

Eve caught up with them on the road. When her husband saw she was out of breath, he asked what was wrong.

“You-know-who at Immigration just called,” she said. “Honey, it’s already in the computer—somebody in Miami flagged your passport!”

Stripling deflated in the scooter chair. “That fuckin’ Yancy got to the feds.”

Eve was jumpy and distraught. “So what now, Nicky? You-know-who said they won’t let you out of the country, and there’s nothing she can do. She said don’t go near the Nassau airport.”

“So screw Nassau. We’ll stay right here until I line up another way out. The Bahamians can’t arrest us till they get a warrant from the States, and that could take weeks. Months even. Meantime Mr. Ecclestone’ll keep an eye on Moxey’s for us, right? In case a chopper full of uniforms shows up.”

Egg sniffed noncommittally.

Eve said, “Arrest us? My passport’s clean. You’re the one with the fake.”

Sometimes she could be so thick it drove Nick nuts. “Yes, baby, ‘us’ as in Mr. and Mrs. Stripling, co-conspirators. You think Yancy left you out of the story? Like maybe he didn’t hear you telling me to go ahead and blow his brains out? Or maybe the Cuban babe forgot you were the one told Egg to put a gag in her mouth and get rid of her?”

“Yeah, but, Nicky—”

“Just shut up.”

Worse came to worse, he and Eve could escape by water. The new Contender would be arriving soon—the boat was a damn rocketship is what it was. He could run it straight down to Grand Turk.

Nick commanded Egg to take him back to the house. Eve walked on ahead. She didn’t speak again until they were alone and the new pilot had been dismissed and the bags were unpacked.

“We could fly a spine doctor over from Miami or Palm Beach,” she said.

“Really. And he’ll bring his own MRI and a CT scanner? Hell, all we gotta do is lease a 747 and he can haul the whole friggin’ OR. That’s genius, Eve.” Stripling chuckled mordantly. “It’s like you forget I was in the business.”

“Quit being an asshole, Nicky. You weren’t in the medical-care business, you were in the stealing business.”

Which, he would have run over her ungrateful ass with the Rollie except the motor didn’t work because Egg had removed the battery to lighten the vehicle for pushing. After Eve stormed upstairs Stripling stewed in the scooter chair for a long time. The ice melted and turned lukewarm in the towel she’d placed upon his puncture wound. The liquid sensation caused him to squirm.

Egg had slipped away again and Eve wasn’t responding to Nick’s yells, so he pitched forward out of the Rollie and worm-crawled to the nearest bathroom, where he struggled to seat himself. He noticed that his pee stream grew weaker whenever the pain got worse, which, according to MyBedsideMD.com, could be a troublesome indication. Unfortunately, his wife was in possession of the codeine Tylenols, meaning Nick would have to suck it up and apologize or spend the remainder of the day in deepening misery.

He swung open the bathroom door and called out, “Eve, I’m sorry! Come downstairs!”

No reply.

“Eve, baby, please! I said I was sorry.”

An astringent dispatch from the second floor: “Go blow yourself, Nicky.”