Flush - Carl Hiaasen [6]
“You do that.”
“Will you at least promise to think about it?”
“You listen here,” Lice Peeking said. “What do I care about baby sea turtles? I got my own daily survival to worry about.”
He pointed to the door and followed me out. I was halfway down the steps of the trailer before I got up the nerve to ask one more question.
“How come you don’t work for Mr. Muleman anymore?”
“Because he fired me,” Lice Peeking said. “Didn’t your old man tell you?”
“No, sir, he didn’t.”
To keep from wobbling, Lice Peeking braced himself with both arms in the doorway. His face was pasty in the sunlight, and his eyes were glassy and dim. He looked like a sick old iguana, yet according to my dad, he was only twenty-nine. It was hard to believe.
“Ain’t you gonna ask why I got canned?” he said. “It was for stealin’.”
“Did you do it?”
“Yep, I sure did.”
“How much?” I asked.
Lice Peeking grinned. “It wasn’t money I stole from Dusty,” he said. “It was Shelly.”
“Oh.”
“What can I say? I needed a lady with a big heart and a valid driver’s license.”
I said, “I’ll be back after I see my father.” “Whatever,” said Lice Peeking. “I’m gonna hunt down a beer.”
My mother says that being married to my father is like having another child to watch after, one who’s too big and unpredictable to put in time-out. Sometimes, when Mom and Dad are arguing, she threatens to pack up our stuff and take me and Abbey out of the Keys to “go start a normal life.” I think my mother loves my dad but she just can’t understand him. Abbey says Mom understands him perfectly fine, but she just can’t figure out how to fix him.
When I got back from the trailer park, my mother was in the kitchen chopping up onions. That’s how I knew she’d been crying. Nobody in our family likes onions, and the only time Mom ever fixes them is when she’s upset. That way she can tell Abbey and me that it’s only the onions making her eyes water.
I knew she’d been to the jail, so I asked, “How’s Dad?”
My mother didn’t look up. “Oh, he’s just dandy,” she said.
“Is there any news?”
“What do you mean, Noah?”
“About when he’s getting out.”
“Well, that’s entirely up to him,” Mom said. “I’ve offered to put up his bail, but apparently he’d rather sit alone in a cramped, roach-infested cell than be home with his family. Maybe the lawyer can talk some sense into him.”
Of course I couldn’t tell her what my father had asked me to do. She would’ve raced back to the jail, reached through the bars, and throttled him.
“Think they’ll let me visit him again?” I asked.
“I don’t see why not. It isn’t as if his social schedule is all booked up.”
From the tone of her voice I knew she was highly irritated with my father.
“I spoke to your Aunt Sandy and your Uncle Del,” she said. “They offered to call him in jail and try to talk some sense into him, but I told them not to bother.”
Aunt Sandy and Uncle Del are Dad’s older sister and brother. They live in Miami Beach—Sandy in a high-rise condominium with a gym on the top floor, and Del in a nice house with a tennis court in the backyard. This is a sensitive subject at our home.
Several years after my grandfather disappeared in South America, a large amount of money was discovered in a safe-deposit box that he’d kept at a bank up in Hallandale. Nobody ever told Abbey or me exactly how much was there, but it must have been a lot. I remember Dad talking about it with my mother, who always wondered how a charter-boat captain could afford to put away so much cash. She had a point, too—nobody we knew ever got rich in the fishing business.
Anyway, Grandpa Bobby had left instructions that the money was to be split evenly among Sandy, Del, and my father, but Dad wouldn’t take a nickel. My mother didn’t argue about it, either, which made me think there must have been a good reason for steering clear of that cash. Aunt Sandy and Uncle Del were more than happy to take Dad’s share, and they’ve been living the high life ever since.
“They wanted to send some hotshot Miami lawyer down to handle his case,” Mom said, “but I told them it wasn’t necessary.”
“You’re right.