Flush - Carl Hiaasen [5]
“Don’t give him any ideas,” I said.
Lice Peeking lived in a trailer park on the old road that runs parallel to the main highway. I got there at lunchtime but he was still asleep. When I offered to come back later, his girlfriend said no, she’d be happy to wake him. She was a large lady with bright blond hair and a barbed-wire tattoo around one of her biceps. My dad had told me about her. He’d said to make sure I was extra polite.
The girlfriend disappeared down the hallway and came back half a minute later, leading Lice Peeking by his belt. He didn’t look so good and he smelled even worse—a combination of beer and B.O. was my guess.
“Who’re you?” he demanded, then sagged down on an old sofa.
The girlfriend said, “I’m off to the store.”
“Don’t forget my cigarettes,” Lice Peeking told her.
“No way. You promised to quit.”
“Aw, gimme a break, Shelly.”
They argued for a while and seemed to forget they had company. I pretended to look at the aquarium, which had pea-green slime on the glass and exactly one live fish swimming in the water.
Finally, Lice Peeking’s girlfriend said he was hopeless and snatched the wallet out of his jeans and stomped out the door. When he got himself together, he asked once more who I was.
“Noah Underwood,” I said.
“Paine’s boy?”
“That’s right. He asked me to come see you.”
“About what?”
“Mr. Muleman,” I said.
From Lice Peeking’s throat came a sound that was either a chuckle or a cough. He fished under one of the sofa cushions until he found a half-smoked, mushed-up cigarette, which he balanced in a crusty corner of his mouth.
“I don’t s’pose you got a match,” he said.
“No, sir.”
He dragged himself to the kitchenette and knocked around until he came up with a lighter. He fired up the moldy butt and sucked on it for a solid minute without even glancing in my direction. The smoke was making me sick to my stomach, but I couldn’t leave until I got an answer. For two years, until last Christmas Eve, Lice Peeking had worked as a mate on Dusty Muleman’s casino boat.
“Mr. Peeking?” I said. His real name was Charles, but Dad said everyone had called him Lice, for obvious reasons, since elementary school. It didn’t look like his bathing habits had improved much since then.
“What do you want, boy?” he snapped.
“It’s about the Coral Queen. My dad says Mr. Muleman is dumping the holding tank into the marina basin.”
Lice Peeking propped himself against the wall of the trailer. “Really? Well, let’s just say that’s true. What’s it got to do with you or me or the price of potatoes?”
“My father’s in jail,” I said, “for sinking that boat.”
“Aw, go on.”
“I’m serious. I thought everybody’d heard by now.”
Lice Peeking started laughing so hard, I thought he might have an asthma attack and fall on the floor. Obviously the news about my father had brightened his day.
“Please,” I said, “will you help us?”
He stopped laughing and snuffed the nub of his cigarette on the countertop. “Now why would I do a dumb fool thing like that? Help you do what?”
I explained how the toilet scum from the gambling boat flowed down the shoreline to Thunder Beach. “Where the turtles lay their eggs,” I said, “and all the kids go swimming.”
Lice Peeking shrugged. “Say I was to help you—what’s in it for me?”
Dad had warned me that Lice Peeking wasn’t accustomed to doing something simply because it was decent and right. He’d predicted that Lice Peeking might demand something in return.
“We don’t have much,” I said.
“Aw, that’s too bad.” He made like he was playing a violin.
I knew money would be tight at our house as long as Dad was in jail—my mother only works part-time at the law firm, so the pay isn’t so hot.
“What about my dad’s truck?” I asked. “It’s a ’97 Dodge pickup.” Giving it up was my father’s idea.
“No, I already got wheels,” Lice Peeking said. “Anyway, I’m not s’posed to drive on account of they yanked my license. What else?”
I thought of offering him Dad’s fishing skiff, but I couldn’t bring myself to do it. It was a cool little boat.
“Let me talk to my father,” I said.