Carl Hiaasen Read Online Free PDF

your trip,” she said, handing it to him. “There’s five shots left. Maybe six.”
    Krome thanked her but explained it was unnecessary. Sinclair would be sending a staff photographer if the lottery story panned out.
    “That’s for the newspaper,” Katie said. “This is for me. Could you take a picture of the weeping Madonna?”
    For a moment Krome thought she was kidding. She wasn’t.
    “Please, Tom?”
    He put the cardboard camera in his jacket. “What if she’s not crying? The Virgin Mary. You still want a picture?”
    Katie didn’t catch the sarcasm that leaked into his voice. “Oh yes,” she said ardently. “Even without the tears.”

3
    T he mayor of Grange, Jerry Wicks, complimented JoLayne Lucks on her cooters.
    “My babies,” she said fondly. Her blue fingernails sparkled as she shredded a head of iceberg lettuce into the aquarium. The turtles commenced a mute scramble for supper.
    Jerry Wicks said, “How many you got there?”
    “Forty-six, I believe.”
    “My, my.”
    “There’s red-bellies, Suwanees and two young peninsulars, which I am told will grow up to be something special. And see how they all get along!”
    “Yes, ma’am.” Jerry Wicks couldn’t tell one from another. He was impressed, however, by the volume of noise made by the feeding reptiles. He was quite certain the crunching would drive him insane if he lingered too long.
    “JoLayne, the reason I came by—there’s talk you won the Lotto!”
    JoLayne Lucks dried her hands on a towel. She offered the mayor a glass of limeade, which he declined.
    “It’s your own private business,” he went on, “and there’s no need to tell me yes or no. But if it’s true, nobody deserves it more than you….”
    “And why’s that?”
    Jerry Wicks was stumped for a reply. Ordinarily he wasn’t nervous around pretty women, but this afternoon JoLayne Lucks possessed an uncommonly powerful aura; a fragrant dazzle, a mischievous twinkling that made him feel both silly and careless. He wanted to run away before she had him down on the floor, howling like a coon hound.
    “The reason I’m here, JoLayne, I’m thinking about the town. It’d be great for Grange if it was true. About you winning.”
    “Publicity-wise,” she said.
    “Exactly,” he exclaimed with relief. “It would be such a welcome change from the usual…”
    “Freak shit?”
    The mayor winced. “Well, I wouldn’t…”
    “Like the road stain or the weepy Virgin,” JoLayne said, “or Mister Amador’s phony stigmata.”
    Dominick Amador was a local builder who’d lost his contracting license after the walls of the Saint Arthur catechism school collapsed for no good reason during a summer squall. Dominick Amador’s buddies advised him to relocate to Dade County, where it was safe for incompetent contractors, but Dominick wanted to stay in Grange with his wife and girlfriends. So one night he got hammered on Black Jack and Xanax, and (using a three-eighth-inch wood bit) drilled a perfect hole in each of his palms. Now Amador was one of the stars of Grange’s Christian pilgrim tour, touting himself as a carpenter (“just like Jesus!”) and assiduously picking at the circular wounds in hishands to keep them authentically unscabbed and bloody. There were rumors he was planning to drill his feet soon.
    The mayor said to JoLayne Lucks: “See here, I’m not one to pass judgment on others.”
    “But you’re a religious man,” she said. “Do
you
believe?”
    Jerry Wicks wondered how the conversation had drifted so far off course. He said, “What I personally believe isn’t important. Others do—I’ve seen it in their eyes.”
    JoLayne popped a Certs. She was sorry about putting the mayor on the spot. Jerry wasn’t a bad fellow, just soft. Thin blond hair going gray at the sides. Pink slack cheeks, a picket line of tiny perfect teeth, and sparse guileless eyebrows. Jerry ran an insurance business he’d inherited from his mother; homeowners and auto,