Stormy Weather

Max Lamb asked how a Vietnamese scorpion got all the way to Florida. Skink said it was probably smuggled by importers. "Then, when the hurricane struck, Mortimer here made a dash for it. I found him in the horse barn. Remember Larks? 'Show us your Larks!'"

"Barely." Max was a kid when the Lark campaign hit TV.

Skink said: "That's what I mean by legacy. Does anyone remember who thought up Larks? But the Marl-boro man, Christ, that's the most successful ad campaign in history."

It was a fact. Max Lamb wondered how Skink knew. He noticed that the scorpion had become tangled in the gray-blond hair on the captain's arm.

"What are you going to do with it?" Max asked.

No answer. He tried another strategy. "Bo

Skink scooped the scorpion into the palm of one hand. "This ain't no insect, Max. It's an arachnid."

"Bugs is what I meant, captain. She's terrified of all bugs." Max was speaking for himself. Icy needles of anxiety pricked at his arms and legs. He struggled to co

"Can she swim, your Bo

"Oh Jesus," said Max.

After a suitable pause, Skink opened his mouth. The scorpion was curled placidly on his tongue, its pincers at rest.

Max Lamb stubbed out the Bronco and urgently lit another. He leaned his head against a crate of soup cans and said a silent prayer: Dear God, don't let Bo

Avila's career as a county inspector was unremarkable except for the six months when he was the target of a police investigation. The cops had infiltrated the building department with an undercover man posing as a supervisor. The undercover man noticed, among a multitude of irregularities, that Avila was inspecting new roofs at a superhuman rate of about sixty a day, without benefit of a ladder. A surveillance team was put in place and observed that Avila never bothered to climb the roofs he was assigned to inspect. In fact, he seldom left his vehicle except for a regular two-hour buffet lunch at a nudie bar in Hialeah. It was noted that Avila drove past construction sites at such an impractical speed that contractors frequently had to jog after his truck in order to deliver their illicit gratuities. The transactions were captured with crystal clarity on videotape.

When the police investigation became public, a grand jury convened to ponder the filing of felony indictments. To give the appearance of concern, the building-and-zoning department reassigned Avila and several of his crooked colleagues to duties that were considered low-profile and menial, a status confirmed by the relatively puny size of the bribes. In Avila's case, he was relegated to inspecting mobile homes. It was a job for which he had no qualifications or enthusiasm. Trailers were trailers; to Avila, nothing but glorified sardine cans. The notion of "code enforcement" at a trailer park was oxymoronic; none of them, Avila knew, would survive the feeblest of hurricanes. Why go to the trouble of tying the damn things down?

But he made a show of logging inspections, taking what modest graft the mobile-home dealers would toss his way-fifty bucks here and there, a bottle of Old Grand-dad, porno tapes, an eight-ball of coke. Avila wasn't worried about police surveillance on his beat.

Authorities were concerned with protecting the upwardly mobile middle-class home buyer; nobody gave a shit what happened to people who bought trailers.

Except men like Ira Jackson, whose mother lived in one.

With the exception of the bus depot in downtown Guatemala City, the Dade County building department was the most disorganized and institutionally indifferent place that Ira Jackson had ever seen. It took ninety minutes to find a clerk who admitted to fluency in English, and another hour to get his hands on the documents for the Suncoast Leisure Village trailer park. Under the circumstances, Ira Jackson was mildly surprised that the file still existed. From what he saw, others were vanishing by the carload. Realizing the hurricane would bring scandal to the construction industry, developers, builders and compromised inspectors were taking bold steps to obscure their own roles in the crimes. As Ira Jackson elbowed his way to an empty chair, he recognized-amid the truly aggrieved-faces of the copiously guilty: brows damp, lips tight, eyes pinched and fretful. They were men who feared the prospect of public exposure, massive lawsuits or prison.

If only it were true, thought Ira Jackson. Experience had taught him otherwise. Bozos who rob liquor stores go to jail, not rich guys and bureaucrats and civil servants.

Ira Jackson thumbed through the trailer-court records until he found the name of the man who had botched the inspection of his mother's double-wide. He fought his way to the file counter and cornered a harried-looking clerk, who informed him that Mr. Avila no longer was employed by Dade County.

Why not? Ira Jackson asked.

Because he quit, the clerk explained; started his own business. Since Ira Jackson was already agitated, the clerk saw no point in revealing that Avila's resignation was part of a plea-bargain agreement with the State Attorney's Office. That was a private matter that Mr. Avila himself should share with Mr. Jackson, if he so desired.

Ira Jackson said, "You got a current address, right?"

The clerk said it was beyond his authority to divulge that information. Ira Jackson reached across the counter and rested his hand, very lightly, on the young man's shoulder. "Listen to me, Paco," he said. "I'll come to your home. I'll harm your family. You understand? Even your pets."

The clerk nodded. "Be right back," he said.

Snapper was more a

Pulling to the side of the road, he wondered if Baby Raper had blabbed when he got to the hospital. No doubt the kid was ticked when Snapper retrofitted that compact disc up his ass, like a big shiny suppository.

But why would the cops care about that? Snapper thought: Maybe it's got nothing do with the gangster rapper or the stolen Jeep. Maybe it's just my driving.

The cop who stopped him was a female Highway Patrol trooper. She had pleasant features and pretty pale-blue eyes that reminded Snapper of a girl he'd tried to date back in Atlanta, some sort of turbocharged Catholic. The lady trooper's dark hair was pulled up under her hat, and she wore a gold wedding band that cried out for pawning. The holster appeared oversized and out of place on her hip. She shined a light in the Jeep and asked to see Snapper's driver's license.