Skinny Dip

A fair question, Chaz had to admit. He'd been wrong about almost everything-starting with the direction of the Gulf Stream-and wrong about almost everyone from Rolvaag to Red Hammernut to Ricca. The reappearance of his once-dead wife left Chaz hopelessly stewed in confusion. The only thing that seemed real was the suitcase containing $500,000. Chaz couldn't help thinking about where it could take him, and how long he could make it last.

"You threw my stuff away!" Joey was saying. "All my clothes and my pictures and my books-even my orchid!"

"Not everything. Your jewelry's in a safe box at the bank," Chaz said. "I'll give you the key if you want."

"Asshole!"

"What if I said I was sorry. Because I really am," Chaz pleaded across the water. "I messed up big-time, Joey. Nothing's the same since you've been gone."

"Wasn't that the whole point?"

A lightning bolt struck one of the other stilt houses, the thunderclap so deafening that Chaz shielded his head. When he got the nerve to look up, he saw through a fresh sheet of rain that his wife had been joined on the dock by the blackmailer, who was shirtless. The man had one arm around Joey's waist, and he was whispering in her ear.

"Don't worry, I've got your money!" Chaz hollered anxiously.

"Keep it!" the man called back.

"What?"

"You keep it, Chazzie."

Joey waved a mocking farewell. "You heard him. Now get out of here before I change my mind."

Chaz hurriedly hauled up the anchor. When Joey appeared to raise the rifle to her shoulder, he sensibly dove behind the console. The gunshot coincided with a boom of thunder, the bullet whining harmlessly above the stern. Chaz held his breath but not his bladder, shivering at the sudden flood of warmth down his legs.

"Aren't you even going to say good-bye?" Joey shouted. A final burst of shots followed, all high. The tide and a tailwind carried the boat steadily away, the bow spi

The farther the boat floated from the stilt house, the less Chaz Perrone worried about gunfire. When he finally found the courage to grab for the ignition, he managed to break off the key inside the switch. Not knowing how to hand-crank an outboard motor, Chaz abandoned his fantasy of a high-speed escape. By now there was more than an inch of water on deck, and no evidence of a functioning bilge pump. He crabbed to the stern and clammed onto the Samsonite, in case the boat began to sink. He was banking that the suitcase would float, cash and all.

Two hours later he was wheeling it down the Cape Florida beach, calling on his cell phone for a taxi.

"Mick, I swear to God."

"I'm proud of you for not shooting him." Stranahan lifted the Ruger from her hands.

She said, "I couldn't do it. And don't ask why."

"As long as it's not because you still love him. Then I'll have to go drown myself."

"Love! The man is sewer scum," Joey said bitterly. "But I kept remembering what you told me about how it feels to kill somebody, about all the nightmares that come later."

"It's a good way to end up living alone on an island. You did the right thing," Stranahan told her.

"If I was a better shot, I would've winged him, at least."

"You get big points for hitting the spotlight. Here, I want you to meet somebody."

Earl Edward O'Toole sat upright, a glistening lump propped against a rusty propane tank at the far end of the dock. Corbett Wheeler knelt beside him.

"Mr. O'Toole has a bullet slug embedded in his right armpit," he reported, "and he refuses medical attention."

Tool's sopping overalls were frayed and his hairy arms were bloodied from hugging the barnacle-encrusted piling. That's where Corbett and Mick had found him, groaning and barely afloat under the stilt house. It had taken all their might to muscle him out of the water.

He blinked up at Joey. "I know you."

"Anastasia from Flamingo," she said, bowing. "Nice to see you again."

"But in real life you're the dead girl, right?"

"That's me. The dead girl."

"But I don't get it," Tool said. "Red said there was video of the whole thing."

Corbett cut in: "There is indeed. We made it ourselves. Mick put on a brown wig and played the homicidal husband, Joey played herself, and I held the camera." The tricky part had been staging his sister's tumble over the rail. They had chosen the deck where the lifeboats were hung, so she'd have a safe place to land.

Tool looked amused. "What the hell's this all about?"

"A touchy marital situation," Stranahan said.

Joey sighed impatiently. "That's enough. The man needs a doctor."

Tool winced as he rearranged his bulk. "Lady, your husband is a card-carrying shitwad."

"Thanks for the bulletin."

"Where's the suitcase?"

"In the boat," Joey said, "with Chaz."

"And where's he at?"

Stranahan pointed toward the mountain of weather that was sliding out of the bay toward the Atlantic.

"He took the money. Red's money," Tool said thoughtfully.

"That's our boy." Corbett tried to examine the bullet wound, but Tool knocked his hand away.

"Why did he shoot you?" Joey asked.

"Guess 'cause he figgered I was gone shoot him first."

"Were you?"

"Sure, but then I changed my mind. That's what gets me," Tool said sourly. "Here I go and do the decent Christian thing-which is to let the man off the hook-and what happens? He plugs me!"

Stranahan was putting on his clothes and rain suit. Corbett showed him the 9-mm Beretta that he'd taken from a pocket of Tool's overalls.

Stranahan emptied the chamber, popped out the clip and handed the empty gun to Tool, who flung it off the dock.

"Thing's waterlogged," he said. "Hey, you see him out there anywheres?"

Joey shook her head. Her fists were on her hips as she stared hard into the opaque gloom. The lightning had temporarily stopped, making it impossible to spot a small boat in the distance.

She said, "Mick, you'd better be right about this."

"Stop worrying. He's history."

Tool labored to his feet. "You take me back to dry land, we'll call it even for what happened at the doc's house-you sluggin' me in the damn throat'n all."

"It's the least I can do," Stranahan agreed.

He and Corbett helped Earl Edward O'Toole get in the skiff, which heeled precariously under the load. Joey was hesitant to join them, but there was no other way out of Stiltsville.

Corbett handed out life jackets. Tool couldn't fit into his.

"I gotta lay off them Pringles," he said.

Even in the night shadows Joey could see a thin dark stream ru

The skiff was wallowing so badly that one rogue wave could have swamped it. Nobody moved from their places as Stranahan motored tediously toward the western shoreline of Key Biscayne. The ride was wet and squirrelly, but it smoothed out when they reached the Pines Canal. They dropped Tool off in some millionaire's backyard, walking distance from Crandon Boulevard.

"Go take care of that bullet," Corbett said.

Tool smiled ruefully, as if enjoying some private joke. "I still don't u

"Ask them." Corbett pointed to his sister and her accomplice.