Flush - Carl Hiaasen [78]
Luckily, Dad’s anger-control counselor took pity on him and didn’t mention his broken hands in her letter to the judge. Instead, the counselor stated that Mr. Paine Underwood had made “significant though sometimes painful progress” in managing his temper, and that he presented “no immediate threat to himself, his family, or the innocent public.”
Whether he’s still a threat to innocent doors remains to be seen.
By coincidence the Coast Guard sent Dad his captain’s license on the same day that the fire investigators released their findings about the Coral Queen.
The story took up the entire front page of the Island Examiner, including photographs of Dusty Muleman and the burned boat. There was no photo of Jasper Jr., which was a shame since he was the star of the arson report.
Dusty’s first mistake had been allowing Jasper Jr. and Bull to hang out aboard the Coral Queen on the night of the grand reopening. Dusty’s second mistake had been losing track of those two nitwits while he celebrated.
By the time the party had ended, Dusty wasn’t thinking too clearly. He staggered from the boat, assuming that his son had already gone home.
He was wrong. Jasper Jr. and Bull had decided to throw a party of their own in one of the storage holds. They had snuck off with a handful of Dusty’s prized Cuban cigars and a twelve-pack of beer that they’d swiped from behind Shelly’s bar.
Unfortunately for them, the place they’d chosen for their smoking experiment was the same one where Dusty Muleman had stored several surplus boxes of fireworks. Being the leader in all things stupid, it was Jasper Jr. who lit the first cigar, inhaled deeply, gagged violently, and spit the thing twenty feet across the room … where it landed in an open crate of bottle rockets, which soon began to ignite, one after the other.
Before long, flames were shooting all over the place. The two party boys were lucky to get out alive.
Jasper Jr. was coughing so hard from the cigar that he was useless, so Bull threw him over his shoulder and ran through the smoke and sparks toward an open deck. They landed in the water at the same instant the Coral Queen’s fuel tank blew up.
When questioned a few days later, Jasper Jr. and Bull denied knowing how the fire started. However, arson investigators couldn’t help but notice that both kids had scorched eyebrows and singed earlobes. Jasper Jr. wasted no time blaming the boat disaster on his best buddy, the guy who’d saved his life. At that point Bull wisely terminated the friendship and offered a detailed statement to the fire department.
The fact that his own son had burned down the Coral Queen was not the worst news that Dusty Muleman would receive. The worst news was that the crime-scene technicians had found something unusual in the charred rubble of the casino boat—a fireproof, waterproof lockbox that was packed with cash.
“More than one hundred thousand dollars,” according to Miles Umlatt’s article in the Island Examiner, “all of it in fifty- and one-hundred-dollar denominations.”
Dad’s theory was that Dusty had been skimming from the profits of the gambling operation, a crime of great interest to the Internal Revenue Service—and also to the Miccosukee Indians who were supposed to be Dusty’s partners.
Fed up with all the rotten publicity, the Miccosukees announced that they intended to sue Dusty for embezzlement, and evict what was left of the Coral Queen from their “tribal grounds,” meaning the marina. Dusty’s casino scam was scuttled for good.
“What goes around comes around,” Mom remarked after seeing the headlines.
Abbey and I are finally starting to believe it.
A tropical wave blew through the Keys on the Saturday before Labor Day. We were all hanging around the house, waiting for the rain to quit, when the mail arrived.
Mixed in with the usual heap of bills and catalogs was a funny postcard. The picture side showed a scarlet macaw posed on a mossy branch in a beautiful rain forest. The bird was winking and holding an ancient