Bad Monkey

Dawn, they’re on the seaplane to Andros. That afternoon, Eve receives an urgent e-mail from the cemetery saying her husband’s gravesite has been “disturbed,” please call us right away. Luckily the cemetery people don’t find any incriminating clues, just a hole in the ground and a pried-open casket.

Which, the arm? Who knows what those sick bastards did with the goddamn thing after they dug it up. Long as it was gone, Stripling didn’t give a shit where. He had no attachment, emotional or otherwise.

Now his main concern—on top of this rotten weather—is the unexpected appearance in the Bahamas of Andrew Yancy, whom Nick is preparing to blast with the man’s own shotgun.

Actually, though, the timing for a body disposal is pretty convenient. People often disappear during hurricanes, just blow the fuck away.

“… I got no problem killing a goddamn roach inspector,” Nick is saying, intending for those to be the last mortal words Yancy ever hears.

Then Eve walks into the room.

“Hello there, Mrs. Stripling,” pipes Yancy. “Nice to see you again.”

“Don’t do it here,” she says sternly to her husband.

“Why not?”

“The mess is why. We’ll lose our security deposit.”

Stripling, barely able to contain himself. “Are you serious? So we buy ’em a new rug!”

“But meanwhile who has to clean it up? The only person in this household with two hands, that’s who. Me! So, no, Nicky, you take him outside to shoot him.”

Stripling is so fucking pissed off, he’s having trouble steadying the shotgun. He tells Eve to go downstairs and turn up the stereo full blast.

“Wait, she’s got a point,” Yancy interrupts. “Bloody entrails everywhere, then you’ve gotta drag the body out of the house, which tends to leave a forensic trail.”

“Shut the hell up.”

“It’s so windy outside, nobody would hear the gun go off. But you’re the boss, Nick.” Yancy shrugs. “Eve, where’s Rosa?”

“Don’t say one word,” Stripling snaps at his wife.

However, he sees the benefits of doing the murder outdoors, the hurricane rains washing away the splatter. So he rises from the Super Rollie and pokes Yancy down the steps, through the foyer, out the front door. He tells Eve to switch on the floodlights—thank God for the generator—and briskly he walks Yancy to the north side of the house, Eve joining them under a pair of coconut palms.

“This’ll work,” Stripling says.

Yancy looking more worried now, raindrops pelting his face.

From the shadows comes a high-pitched bark, like a squirrel, then Eve is saying, “Tillie, you bad girl, come here right now.”

Her spoiled runt of a dog, manically scooting between everybody’s ankles.

“Get her outta here!” says Nick.

Eve pleading: “Tillie, heel! Tillie, calm down!”

Then Yancy whistles once. Real simple, like a bobwhite quail.

And the retard mutt jumps into his arms.

“Nicky, wait!” Eve cries.

Yancy smiles, clutching the dog to his chest. “Shoot me, Nick, you shoot Tillie.”

Eve starts to lose it. “No, Nicky, don’t!”

“Unfortunately, that’s how shotguns work—big noise, big crater,” Yancy says in a calm expository tone.

Stripling is grinding his unshaven jaws, blinking the rain bubbles from his eyelashes. Which, the Beretta? It wasn’t designed to be aimed with one arm. Beefy as Nick is, the gun’s getting heavy. Slippery, too.

“Drop that goddamn dog,” he says to Yancy.

Tillie’s rose-petal tongue is lolling, Yancy holding her at center mass, patting her matted, spud-sized head. He matter-of-factly advises Nick to put down the gun, Nick snorting: Guy must be out of his mind.

“You really don’t want to kill this scrumptious little puppy,” says Yancy. “It would break your bride’s heart. Clumps of bloody fuzz all over the lawn?”

“I’ll buy her another one. This is not a problem.”

“You bastard!” Eve shouts, and jumps between her husband and the smart-ass restaurant inspector.

Which, Nick Stripling’s plan? All of a sudden it turns to shit.

Twenty-two

Tillie remembered him!

Yancy shouldn’t have been so surprised. Once he’d dated a veterinary assistant who told him that dogs never forget a person’s odor, even after one fleet sniff. She said the canine memory was headquartered in its nostrils, and this was as true for arctic wolves as it was for designer diva breeds. Still, with Stripling poised to blow his guts out, Yancy had been caught off guard when, in a show of improbable athleticism, Tillie bounded into his arms. He sentimentally accepted the animal’s forwardness as affection, possibly even gratitude for Yancy plucking her from shark-filled waters on his faux fly-fishing visit to Bannister Point.

For him now to employ Tillie as a shield against the loaded Beretta was understandably distressing to Eve, but not for a moment did Yancy believe Stripling would vaporize the family pet in order to kill him. It wasn’t a measure of compassion but rather the fear of domestic bedlam; Eve never would have forgiven Nick, and without her loyalty he couldn’t sustain the complicated artifice of his new life.