Flush - Carl Hiaasen [19]
She snatched up the Island Examiner and sped through Miles Umlatt’s article, grumbling the whole time.
“Hunger strike!” she huffed when she was done, slapping the newspaper on the table. “What’s wrong with him? Is he dense or what?”
“Abbey, don’t talk that way about your father,” Mom said, “and the word is ‘deluded,’ not ‘dense.’”
“But this is so embarrassing. Can’t he understand that?” She slumped into a chair and laid her head on her arms.
“How about some scrambled eggs?” my mother asked.
“Ack!” said Abbey.
I excused myself and hurried out the door.
The scene at the jail wasn’t as laid-back as before. At the door a deputy actually frisked me, like you see on TV. All I’d brought was a paperback book about chess—I figured my father ought to learn the game for real, before the lieutenant figured out he was faking it. The deputy examined the puny little chess book as if he was expecting to find a false compartment and a skeleton key. When he finally returned it to me, he announced that the visitation time had been cut to five minutes, on orders from the sheriff himself.
I waited a long while in the interview room. The big jowly deputy was there, too, but he stared right through me. When my father eventually came out, he was wearing a faded orange jumpsuit with the words MONROE COUNTY INMATE stamped on the back.
“Nice fit,” I said.
“Oh, they’re just ticked off at me because of the newspaper story. Did you see it?” he asked.
“Oh yeah. So did Mom and Abbey.”
“And?”
“Nobody’s buying the hunger strike,” I told him, “and you definitely need to back off this Mandela thing.”
Dad seemed disappointed at the family’s reaction to the Island Examiner article, but I couldn’t lie to him.
“You need to come home. Seriously,” I said.
“Noah, please don’t start with that again.”
I gave him the chess book. He winked and said thanks.
“You seen Mom?” I asked.
“Not in a few days. I know she’s been real busy with work.” He shook off the question, like it was no big deal.
“Haven’t you talked to her on the phone?”
“I’ve tried to call, but the machine always picks up.”
I could see that my father was concerned, which was healthy. When it came to Mom, he needed to be. It’s pathetic for grown-ups to pretend everything’s okay when it’s not.
“Listen, Dad, there’s something you need to know.” I lowered my voice, as if it mattered. The room was so tiny that the deputy could hear me blink.
“We snuck down to the dock last night after the Coral Queen closed,” I said. “We hid aboard one of the charter boats.”
“Who hid—not you and Abbey?”
“Yes, me and Abbey.”
I didn’t dare tell Dad about the stranger grabbing my sister, because I knew he’d bail himself out of jail in a flash and go hunting for the guy. In no time he’d be back in the slammer, for doing something even worse.
“Guess what?” I said. “Dusty’s crew didn’t pump the wastewater into the basin. They hooked up to a sewer tank onshore.”
At first Dad was stunned. “You sure?”
“We saw it with our own eyes,” I said.
My father rubbed his jaw and made a faint clicking sound with his teeth. “You know what it is? Dusty’s freaking out because of all the publicity about me sinking his stupid boat. He’s going to lay low and act like a model citizen, in case the Coast Guard comes snooping around.”
It was possible, for sure. But if Dusty Muleman was starting to obey the law, I thought, how would we ever prove that Dad’s accusations were right?
As if reading my thoughts, he said, “Lice Peeking knows the truth about the Coral Queen. What’d he say about my skiff? Will he take it or not?”
“He’s picking it up at noon.”
“Excellent!”
“And he promised to sign a statement, like you wanted.”
“Noah, that’s super!”
Dad slapped me a high five. I didn’t want to spoil his mood by reminding him that Lice Peeking wasn’t the