Flush - Carl Hiaasen [40]
From the living room we heard the low tone of the deputy’s voice, politely saying, “No, thanks. Really, I’m fine.” It sounded like Mom and Abbey were trying to feed him breakfast.
Moments later I heard my mother’s footsteps, followed by a light rap on the door. “Paine, are you up yet? There’s a gentleman from the sheriff’s department here to see you.”
“Be out in a minute,” Dad drawled, trying to sound sleepy.
From the intense way he was gripping the tools, I knew my father truly didn’t want to go back to jail—but that’s where he was headed if we didn’t get the bracelet clamped back on his ankle.
“Almost there,” he murmured, pausing to wipe the palms of his hands. Both of us were sweating, we were so nervous.
There were more footsteps in the hall, only this time they were too heavy to be my mother’s. This time the knock on the door was sharp and impatient.
“Mr. Underwood? Open up, please, this is Deputy Blair from the sheriff’s office. Mr. Underwood?”
Another hard knock.
I motioned for Dad to hurry. He looked up, smiled, and made an “okay” sign with his fingers.
When I let go of the bracelet, it held fast to my father’s leg. The police would never know it had been unfastened for a night, or so we thought.
Now the doorknob began to jiggle. On impulse I grabbed up the tools and rolled under the bed.
My father opened the door. “Sorry to keep you waiting, Officer, but I was putting on some clothes.”
“Step this way, sir,” I heard the deputy say, in a tone that wasn’t particularly friendly.
My dad was an awesome fishing guide. Everybody in the Keys said so. Tarpon, bonefish, redfish, snook—Dad was dialed in on all of them. He could put his customers into fish when the other guides were getting skunked. My mother said it was a special talent he inherited from Grandpa Bobby.
We all knew how much Dad missed being out on the boat every day. He never complained, but he was basically miserable driving a taxi up and down the highway. Three different times he’d gotten rear-ended by other cars while crossing one of the bridges. That’s because he always slowed down to stare out at the open water. He couldn’t help himself—scoping out the tides, the depth, the wind direction, all the things that were important if you were hunting fish.
After the third accident, my father’s boss at the cab company got on his case. Dad pointed out that, technically, none of the rear-enders had been his fault. It had always been the other drivers who’d gotten the tickets, for following too close.
But his boss didn’t care. It was costing him money every time the cab was off the road, in the body shop. “One more crash,” he’d warned my dad, “and you’re fired.” The guy acting like he was Donald Trump.
I had a hunch he wouldn’t hold Dad’s job open after what happened with the gambling boat, and I was right. When Mom called the taxi company, the owner told her that he’d hired a new driver the day my father got arrested. Mom told us that she didn’t blame the guy—he had a business to run. Still, I knew she was worried. The bills were piling up, and her paycheck wasn’t nearly enough to cover them all.
It would be a while longer before Dad could start searching for a new job, because now he was back in jail.
I don’t know if Dusty Muleman ratted him out, or if the electronic ankle bracelet was programmed to send a certain signal when somebody messed with the lock. In any case, the sheriff ordered my father hauled in again, for “tampering with a court-ordered monitoring device.”
He wasn’t in a great mood when I went to visit.
“This is really getting old,” he said wearily. “You didn’t have to come today, Noah. This place is the pits.”
In a way I was glad to find my father depressed, because that was a perfectly normal reaction to being in jail—and Dad acting normal wasn’t something you could take for granted. He was a much different person from the happy camper I’d visited there only three weeks ago.
“I bet your mother’s really ticked off,” he said.
“What for?” I said.
How could any of us be mad at him? The only reason he’d pried