Stormy Weather

A short time later, a teal-blue Taurus had stopped in the driveway. The governor said it had to be a rental, because only rental companies bought teal-blue cars.

Two men had gotten out of the Taurus; neither had a disfigured jaw. The younger one was a trim-looking blond who wore eyeglasses and carried a tan briefcase. The older, heavier one had cropped dark hair and carried a clipboard; his bearing was one of authority-probably ex-military, Skink guessed, a sergeant in his youth. The two men had stayed in the house for a long time. Finally the older one had come out alone. He'd sat in the driver's side of the car, with the door open, and jotted notes. Soon the man with the briefcase had appeared around the corner of the house, from the backyard, and together they'd departed.

While the visitors didn't appear to be violent desperadoes, Skink said that one could never be certain in Miami. Augustine got the hint, and went to fetch the guns from the pickup truck.

Now the governor had his forehead on the sill, and he'd begun to hum. Bo

" 'Number Nine Dream,'". he said.

"I don't know that one."

She wanted so much to hear about his life. She wanted him to open up and tell the most thrilling and shocking of true stories.

"Sing it for me," she said.

"Some other time." Skink pointed across the street. A man and a woman were leaving the house.

Bo

The governor rose quickly. "Come, child," he said.

After the Sally Jessy show ended, Snapper made a couple of phone calls to set something up. Exactly what, Edie Marsh wasn't sure. Evidently he'd gotten a brainstorm about what to do with the old man, short of murder.

"Gimme hand," he said to Edie, and began tearing the living-room drapes off the rods. The drapes were whorehouse pink, heavy and dank from rain. They spread the fabric in a crude square on the floor. Then they put Levon Stichler in the middle and rolled him up inside.

To Edie, it resembled an enormous strawberry pastry. She said, "I hope he can breathe."

Snapper punched the pink bundle. "Hey, asshole. You got air?"

The gagged old man responded with an expressive groan. Snapper said, "He's OK. Let's haul his ass out to the Jeep."

Levon Stichler wasn't easy to carry. Snapper took the heavy end, but each step was agony to his shattered knee. They dropped the old man several times before "they made it to the driveway. Each time it happened, Snapper swore vehemently and danced a tortured one-legged jig around the pink bundle. Edie Marsh opened the rear hatch of the Cherokee, and somehow they managed to fold Levon Stichler into the cargo well.

Snapper was leaning against the bumper, waiting for the searing pain in his leg to ebb, when he spotted the tall stranger coming toward them from the abandoned house across the street. The man was dressed in army greens. His long wild hair looked like frosted hemp. At first Snapper thought he was a street person, maybe a Vietnam vet or one of those cracked-out losers who lived under the interstate. Except he was walking too fast and purposefully to be a bum. He was moving like he had food in his stomach, good hard muscles, and something serious on his mind. Ten yards behind, hurrying to catch up, was a respectable-looking young woman.

Edie Marsh said, "Oh shit," and slammed the hatch of the Jeep. She told Snapper not to say a damn word; she'd do the talking.

As the stranger approached, Snapper straightened on both legs. The pain in his injured knee caused him to grind his mismatched molars. He slipped a hand inside his suit jacket.

"Excuse us," said the stranger. The woman, looking nervous, stood behind him.

Edie Marsh said, helpfully, "Are you lost?"

The stranger beamed-a striking smile, full of bright movie-star teeth. Snapper tensed; this was no interstate bum.

"What a fine question!" the man said to Edie. Then he turned to Snapper. "Sir, you and I have something in common."

Snapper scowled. "The fuck you talkin' about?"

"See here." The stranger calmly pried out one of his eyeballs and held it up, like a polished gemstone, for Snapper to examine. Snapper felt himself keeling, and steadied himself against the truck. The sight of the shrunken socket was more sickening than that of the glistening prosthesis.

"It's glass," the man said. "A minor disability, just like your jaw. But we both struggle with the mirror, do we not?"

"I got no problems in that department," Snapper said, though he could not look the stranger in the face. "Are you some fuckin' preacher or what?"

Edie Marsh cut in: "Mister, I don't mean to be rude, but we've got to be on our way. We've got an appointment downtown."

The stranger had a darkly elusive charm, a dangerous and disorganized intelligence that put Edie on edge. He appeared content at the prospect of physical confrontation. The pretty young woman, tame and fine-featured, seemed an unlikely partner; Edie wondered if she was a captive.

The tall stranger cocked back his head and deftly reinserted the glass eye. Then, blinking for focus, he said, "OK, kids. Let's have a peek in that snazzy Jeep."

Snapper whipped out the .357 and pointed it at a button in the center of the man's broad chest. "Get in," he snarled.

Again the stranger gri

Augustine noticed a young towheaded boy, rigid in a shredded patio chair outside a battered house. Most of the roof was gone, so a skin of cheap blue plastic had been stapled to the beams for shade and shelter. It puckered and flapped in the breeze.

The towheaded boy looked only ten or eleven years old. He held a stainless-steel Ruger Mini-14, which he raised from his lap as Augustine passed on the sidewalk. In a thin high pitch, the boy yelled: "Looters will be shot!"

The warning matched a message spray-painted in two-foot letters on the front wall: lootersbewair!!

Augustine turned to face the child. "I'm not a looter. Where's your father?"

"Out for lumber. He told me watch the place."

"You're doing a good job." Augustine stared at the powerful rifle. A bank robber had used the same model to shoot down five FBI agents in Suniland, a few years back.

The boy explained: "We had looters, night after the hurry-cane. We were stayin' with Uncle Rick, he lives somewheres called Dania. They came through while we's gone."

Augustine slowly stepped forward for a closer look. The clip was fitted flush in the Ruger; all systems Go. The boy wore a severe expression, squinting at Augustine as if he stood a hundred yards away. The boy fidgeted in the flimsy chair. One side of his mouth wormed into a creepy lopsided frown. Augustine half expected to hear banjo music.