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Carl Hiassen
Stormy Weather
CHAPTER ONE
On August 23, the day before the hurricane struck, Max and Bo
Max Lamb sat at the foot of the bed and gazed at the color radar image-a ragged flame-colored sphere, spi
A hurricane, Bo
Her husband nodded. "We're on the edge of the edge."
Max Lamb seemed excited in a way that Bo
She said, "They'll probably close the park."
"Disney?" Max Lamb smiled. "Disney never closes. Not for plagues, famines, or even hurricanes." He rose to adjust the volume on the television. "Besides, the darn thing's three hundred miles away. The most we'll see up here is more rain."
Bo
The cable news was showing live video of elderly residents being evacuated from condominiums and apartment buildings on Miami Beach. Many of the old folks carried cats or poodles in their arms.
"So," said Bo
Her husband didn't answer.
"Honey?" she said. "Epcot?"
Max Lamb's attention was rooted to the hurricane news. "Oh sure," he said absently.
"You remembered the umbrellas?"
"Yes, Bo
She asked him to turn off the television and come to bed. When he got beneath the covers, she moved closer, nipped his earlobes, played her fingers through the silky sprout of hair on his bony chest.
"Guess what I'm not wearing," she whispered.
"Ssshhh," said Max Lamb. "Listen to that rain."
Edie Marsh headed to Dade County from Palm Beach, where she'd spent six months trying to sleep with a Ke
She cleaned out her boyfriend's bank account and grabbed the Amtrak to West Palm, where she found a cheap duplex apartment. She spent her days sleeping, shoplifting cocktail dresses and painting her nails. Each night she'd cross the bridge to the rich island, where she assiduously loitered at Au Bar and the other trendy clubs. She overtipped bartenders and waitresses, with the understanding that they would instantly alert her when a Ke
Besides, Edie Marsh was nothing if not a realist. John Ke
Unfortunately, six grueling months of barhopping produced only two encounters with Ke
That dismal evening, it turned out, was Edie's last shot. The summer went dead in Palm Beach, and all the fuckable Ke
The hurricane on the TV radar had given her a new idea. The storm was eight hundred miles away, churning up the Caribbean, when she phoned a man named Snapper, who was coming off a short hitch for manslaughter. Snapper got his nickname because of a crooked jaw, which had been made that way by a game warden and healed poorly. Edie Marsh arranged to meet him at a sports bar on the beach. Snapper listened to her plan and said it was the nuttiest fucking thing he'd ever heard because (a) the hurricane probably won't hit here and (b) somebody could get busted for heavy time.