Bad Monkey

“Right.” Evan Shook plainly had more to say, but his gaze kept dropping to the black butt of the Glock. The bracing accusations he’d had in mind, the harsh warning he’d composed—these would remain undelivered.

“The neighborhood’s gone to hell,” Yancy said supportively. “It used to be so safe and quiet.”

“If you see anything unusual going on over there—”

“Of course, of course.” Yancy craned his head out the doorway, as if warily scouting for a rabid dog pack or rampaging delinquents. “I’ll try to keep a closer eye on things, Mr. Shook.”

“Thanks.”

“There used to be deer on your property, did you know that? Every evening around sundown. But now they don’t come.”

Evan Shook nodded witlessly. The damn mosquitoes were eating him alive.

“When I first moved here, it was mostly small houses,” Yancy went on, “what you might call bungalows. Nothing as grandiose as your place. What is that, four floors?”

“I’ve gotta get to the hardware store,” said Evan Shook, “before it closes.”

Yancy stayed up listening to his iPod while the television was tuned to Animal Planet. The effect was enthralling: wildebeest migrations accompanied by Joni Mitchell and the Strokes. Yancy took no delight in Evan Shook’s tribulations but wrong was wrong—the mansion was a fucking abomination. Yancy’s objective was to prevent it from being sold and finished.

He ate three energy bars and weighed himself: 162 pounds, a string bean. He was surprised that Eve Stripling hadn’t sent her stud muffin Christopher back to the Keys to properly finish killing him. By now she’d surely learned from Nick’s daughter that Yancy wasn’t drowned and that he intended to keep pursuing the case. He flipped the channel to Conan and unplugged one ear for the monologue. Afterward he turned off the TV and searched the kitchen cupboards for evidence of vermin. In some ways his roach patrol duties weren’t so different from police work—the quarry was nocturnal, and unfailingly left a trail.

Marinating in a lukewarm bath, Yancy smoked the rest of the joint and dozed off. At some point he was rousted by Dr. Rosa Campesino’s voice. It was rising from his cell phone, which he had apparently grabbed off the toilet seat and answered in a haze.

“Andrew, I need you here right away.”

“Wadizzit? You awright?”

“Wake up!”

“Take it easy.”

“That damn arm is back!” she said.

“What?”

“You heard me. The arm. I’m staring at it right now.”

Yancy splashed out of the tub. “Stripling’s arm? No way.”

“Get your butt in the car,” Rosa said.

Fourteen

Grave robbing was not uncommon in South Florida due to a thriving underground market for human bones, prized by Santeria priests and practitioners of extreme voodoo. The crime required muscle and nerve though no special stealth, as most cemeteries refused to spring for nighttime security guards.

Flaco Chávez and his partner, whose street name was Delta Force, were robbers by trade and had never before cracked a coffin. They’d met in prison and later shared an inattentive parole officer. Delta Force claimed to be an ex-army commando and he sometimes broke into gyms after hours to work out with the weights. Flaco Chávez specialized in mugging elderly ATM patrons, although he spoke vaingloriously of graduating to armored cars.

One night, while scouting for carjacking prospects at a BP station, the men were approached by a couple with an enticing offer: Six hundred dollars for robbing a grave—half the money up front, half when the grisly contents were delivered to a Denny’s restaurant on Biscayne Boulevard. It sounded like an easy job to Flaco Chávez and his partner, who promptly stole a late-model Tahoe from a pregnant nurse and struck out for the St. Lazarus Gardens and Water Park in North Miami. Along the way they stopped to burglarize an Ace Hardware store, acquiring two shovels, a pick, canvas gloves and a flashlight.

The most challenging aspect of the heist, it turned out, was finding the correct target. Delta Force was ripped on coke and lacking in focus, so it was Flaco’s chore to locate the burial plot of Nicholas Stripling, whoever the fuck he was. Once the site had been isolated, the excavation took barely an hour, Delta Force digging like a dervish while Flaco Chávez feigned a hamstring cramp. Heading back downtown, their stolen SUV was spotted by a county police officer, who deftly swung his squad car into a U-turn and lit them up like a disco ball. Flaco Chávez spoke out in favor of a low-key surrender but Delta Force, facing multiple parole violations and a long bus ride back to Starke, stomped on the accelerator.