Stormy Weather

"It was a mistake. I told you."

"Here's the deal: You're gone stay down here two, maybe three days with the girls. They're gone fuck ya and blow ya till you can't walk. Plus they gone take some pitchers."

Levon was skeptical. The man reeked of liquor and spoke as if he had a mouthful of marbles.

"Just shoot me and get it over with."

"We're not shooting anybody." It was the pretty brunette. "Honest," she said, "long as you behave."

Snapper said, "Maybe you're too old to get it up or maybe you like guys-I don't fuckin' care. Point is, you stay here with these girls till I call and say it's OK to leave. Then what you do, you take your sweet time gettin' back to Miami. By that I mean, stand on the highway with your thumb out. U

Levon stammered and blinked. Snapper swatted him twice across the face.

Edie Marsh said: "I don't think Mister Stichler realizes the alternative. The alternative is we go to the cops and tell how you tried to murder Snapper and rape me with that trailer spike. Your family'll think you've gone senile. The photographs won't help-Grandpa doing pony rides with two call girls."

Levon glanced up at Bridget and Jasmine. They were large and scary. He could tell they'd worked together before.

"Think of it as a vacation," said Edie. "Hey, you're allowed to have fun,"

"I wish I could."

"Uh-oh." Bridget knelt beside him. "Prostate?"

The old man nodded somberly. "It was removed last year."

Jasmine told him to cheer up. "We'll think of something."

Skink, fitting his glass eye into its socket, advised Levon Stichler to do what he was told. "It's still better than getting shot."

Bridget said, "Gee, thanks."

Snapper paid the prostitutes from a wad of the stolen roofing money, which they counted, divided and put away. They turned their backs so he wouldn't peek inside their pocketbooks, which bulged with the other cash given to them ten minutes earlier by Avila, and ten minutes before that by the good-looking young man with the .38 Special.

"Is there ice in the bucket?" Bo

The one-eyed man helped the prostitutes lift Levon Stichler to his feet. Snapper poked the old man's Adam's apple with the barrel of the gun. "Don't try nuthin' stupid," he said. "These young girls can crack coconuts in their legs. Killing a ski

Levon Stichler didn't doubt it for a moment. "Don't worry, mister. I'm no hero."

The redhead pinched his butt playfully. "We'll see about that."

Augustine was hiding behind a Dumpster when the black Cherokee with the cheesy mud flaps arrived at the Paradise Palms. His spirits leaped when he saw Bo

The man opened the hatch of the Cherokee and barked something at Skink, who removed a long lumpy bundle and hoisted it across his back. Once the procession disappeared into the motel, Augustine ran to the Jeep, climbed in the cargo well and quietly closed the hatch. He flattened himself below the rear window, placing the .38 at his right side. With both hands he held the dart rifle across his chest.

This, he thought, would be something to tell the old man. Make those fat wormy veins in his temples pop up.

Dad wouldn't dream of risking his neck unless vast sums of money were at stake. Love, loyalty and honor weren't part of the dope smuggler's creed. Augustine could hear the incredulity: A.G., why the hell would you do such a crazy thing?

Because the man deserved it. He beat up a lady cop and stole her mother's wedding ring. He was scum.

Don't be an idiot. You could've been killed.

He kidnapped the woman I love.

I raised an idiot!

No you didn't. You didn't raise anybody.

Whenever Augustine wrote his father, he made a point of mentioning how much money he'd given away to ex-girlfriends, obscure charities and ultraliberal political causes. He imagined his father's face turning gray with dismay.

You disappoint me, A.G.

This from a dumb shit who ran aground at full throttle with thirty-three kilos in the bilge and the entire Bahamian National Defense Force in pursuit.

"You disappoint me."

Right. Augustine listened to the rain thrumming against the roof of the truck. It made him drowsy.

He hadn't expected to see his father waiting when he awoke from the coma, so he wasn't disappointed. Predominantly he was thrilled to be alive. The person at his bedside was a middle-aged Haitian nurse named Lucy. She told him about the plane crash, the months of slumber. Augustine hugged her tearfully. Lucy showed him a letter from his father, sent from the prison in Talladega; she'd read the letter aloud to Augustine when he was unconscious. She volunteered to read it again.

Son, I hope you are alive to read these words. I'm sorry the way things turned out. Dad should've signed off right there, but grace and decency were never his strong suits.

Everything I did was for you, he wrote. Every move I made, right or wrong.

Which was crap, an u

So what if it took him years to come up with a new agenda? Here it was. Here she was.

Dad would not approve. Fortunately, Dad was not a factor.

Augustine heard the closing of a door, footsteps slapping in the puddles, voices advancing across the motel parking lot. He took three deep breaths. Checked the safety on the dart rifle.

He was glad for the weather, which misted the Jeep's windows and made him invisible from the outside. The voices grew sharper-two men arguing. Augustine didn't recognize them. Perhaps Snapper and somebody else, but who?