Carl Hiaasen by Lucky You Page A

and Greve wrote one last check to their errant spawn, then disowned him. Onus needed no special encouragement to leave the state. In addition to the pending felony indictments for insurance fraud and game poaching, Onus had received a rather unfriendly letter from the Internal Revenue Service, inquiring why he’d never in his adult life bothered to file a tax return. To emphasize its concern, the IRS sent a flatbed and two disagreeable men to confiscate Onus’s customized Ford Econoline van. It was easy to spot. An elaborate mural on the side of the vehicle depicted Kim Basinger as a nude mermaid, riding anarwhal. Onus had fallen for the beautiful Georgia actress in the movie
9½ Weeks
and conceived the mural as a love tribute.
    It was the seizure of his beloved Econoline that turned Onus Gillespie bitterly against the U.S. government (although he was similarly resentful toward his parents, who not only had refused to pay his tax lien but had also tipped off the IRS agents about where to find the van). Before bolting, Onus burned his driver’s license and renounced the family name. He began calling himself Chub (which is how his brothers and sisters had referred to him when he was younger and had something of a weight problem). He couldn’t make up his mind on a new surname, so he decided to wait until something good popped into his head. He hitchhiked to Miami with only the clothes on his back, seventeen dollars in his wallet and, in a zippered pocket, his only tangible asset—the disabled-parking permit he’d scammed off the company doctor for the workmen’s comp claim.
    Pure good fortune and a round of free beers led to a friendship with an amateur forger, who entrusted Chub with his printing equipment while he went off to state prison. In no time, Chub was cranking out fake handicapped stickers and selling them for cash to local motorists. His favorite hangout was Miami’s federal courthouse, infamous for its dearth of parking spaces. Among Chub’s satisfied customers were stenographers, bondsmen, drug lawyers and even a U.S. magistrate or two. Soon his reputation grew, and he became known throughout the county as a reliable supplier of bootleg wheelchair emblems.
    That’s why he was sought out by Bodean Gazzer, who’d been having a terrible time trying to park downtown. Having recently purchased the Dodge Ram, Bode thought it was foolhardy to leave it three or four blocks away while he went to wrestle the bureaucracy of the corrections department. Those particular neighborhoods weren’t such lovely places to go for astroll; wall-to-wall Haitians and Cubans! He had nightmare visions of his gorgeous new truck stripped to its axles.
    Chub felt an instant kinship with Bode, whose global theories and braided explanations struck a comforting chord. For instance, Chub had been stung when his parents scorned him as a tax cheat, but Bode Gazzer made him feel better by enumerating the many sound reasons why no full-blooded white American male should give a nickel to the Infernal Revenue. Chub brightened to learn that what he’d initially regarded as ducking a debt was, in fact, an act of legitimate civil protest.
    “Like the Boston Tea Party,” Bode had said, invoking his favorite historical reference. “Those boys were against taxation without representation, and that’s what you’re fightin’, too. The white man has lost his voice in this government, so why should he foot the bill?”
    It sounded good to Chub. Damn good. And Bode Gazzer was full of such nimble rationalizations.
    Some of Chub’s acquaintances, especially the war veterans, disapproved of his handicapped-parking racket. Not Bode. “Think about it,” he’d said to Chub. “How many wheelchair people you actually see? And look how many thousands of parkin’ spaces they got. It don’t add up, unless …”
    “’Less what?”
    “Unless those parkin’ spots ain’t really for the handicaps,” Bode had surmised darkly. “What color’s them