Razor Girl by Carl Hiaasen Page B

in 1973. “Back then we were both in Snuggies,” he said. “I still wear one on special occasions.”
    “You. Are. Disgusting.”
    “At a minimum.” When he handed the coin to Deb, she slapped it out of his hand.
    He said, “I were you, I’d stall Brad as long as possible—”
    “
Brock,
you dick. Brock, Brock, Brock.”
    “Don’t let him bring in the heavy machinery until you’ve searched every square inch of this property. I’ll help you, Deb, but you’ve got to stay strong.”
    “How do I stall him? He wants the slab poured by next week.”
    Not happening,
thought Yancy. “Isn’t the ring insured?”
    Her answer was a bitter no. “If it was insured, he could get his money back and buy me a new one. Which is what I deserve, instead of wearing some other tramp’s diamond.”
    “He hasn’t noticed it’s not on your finger?”
    “I told him it’s at the jeweler, getting sized. That’s what makes me so mad—this is actually his fuckup, not mine. If he’d given me a ring that fit, my
own
ring instead of hers, it wouldn’t have fallen off.”
    Because Richardson had been too lazy (or too cheap) to insure the two-hundred-thousand dollar pebble, the search for it was bound to continue, delaying construction and buying Yancy some time. He fully intended to surrender the diamond once Deb and her beau split up, scrapped their vulgar house plans, and put the lot up for sale. In Yancy’s mind he hadn’t stolen the gem; he was holding it in protective custody. When the time came, he would return it in anonymous, untraceable packaging.
    The metal detector led Yancy to two more nails, a bent stub of rebar and a size 7/0 fishing hook. Deb warned that Brock was having him investigated by professionals, which Yancy saw as a positive development. The details of his personal history would only heighten Richardson’s doubts about Yancy’s fitness as a neighbor.
    “Tell me something,” he said to Deb. “Why do you lovebirds need to build such a huge place? What’s wrong with a classic four/three ranch-style? That’s plenty roomy for a vacation home—and you’d have space in the yard for a pool.”
    Deb said, “Nobody in Florida with Brock’s kind of money builds a one-story house. I can’t believe you’d say that.”
    “What is Brock’s kind of money?”
    “Enough to fill a Bounce House and roll around in naked. Haven’t you seen the ads on TV? He’s got all the Pitrolux lawsuits, a gi-mongous class-action.”
    Pitrolux was a deodorant armpit gel that also boosted testosterone. The target market segment was middle-aged men with slack penises and gagging body odor, but the refreshing juniper scent had attracted teenage girls who failed to read the warning label while rifling their parents’ medicine cabinets. Among the jarring side effects of Pitrolux were volcanic acne, yam-sized larynxes and goatees as lush as any in the NBA. Scores of young plaintiffs, including a squad of misfortunate high-school cheerleaders from Austin, went after the drug manufacturer, the labs, the retailers and even Ben Affleck, the famed actor who was the voice on the Pitrolux commercials. Affleck had been quickly dropped from the lawsuit and held blameless by a judge who happened to be a diehard fan of
Gigli.
    “Your fiancé must be quite the busy beaver at the courthouse,” Yancy said.
    Deb laughed. “Brock doesn’t do any trial work. He farms all the cases to other lawyers who specialize.”
    “So he’s basically an 800 number, a referral switchboard. What’s his split of the settlements? Or does he take a flat fee?”
    She nodded toward her Porsche. “However he collects it works just dandy for me.”
    “What a country,” said Yancy.
    “Grow up.”
    She asked if she could leave the metal detector so that Yancy could keep searching in his spare time. He played along, waving as she roared off. After lunch (a sardine-and-tomato sandwich), he went online to locate Rosa on Flight Tracker. According to the