Skinny Dip (novel) - Plot Summary

Plot Summary

Charles Regis “Chaz” Perrone, Ph.D., is a young, handsome marine biologist whose expertise in his field is marginal, and whose interest in it is nonexistent. Since his adolescence, he has devoted his life solely to the lazy pursuit of money, sex, golf, and an otherwise undisturbed, pleasurable existence devoid of any intellectual ambitions, or the urge to explore and experience the great outdoors. His main source of personal pride seems to be his sexual stamina. Despite his marriage to Joey, a beautiful and rich woman, he frequently has affairs with other women.

Chaz’s insatiable greed drives him to collude with Samuel Johnson “Red” Hammernut, a crooked farm tycoon who owns large vegetable fields adjacent to the Everglades, which he relentlessly pollutes with fertilizer run-off. Officially employed by the state authorities to test swamp water for pollutants, Perrone is secretly also on Hammernut's payroll, forging the test results and allowing Hammernut to avoid having to cut back on his overuse of fertilizers, or spend large amounts of money on purification plants. Perrone's worst days at work are those when he actually has to leave his office and make field trips and wade in to the Everglades to take water samples.

One day Joey Perrone returns home unexpectedly while her husband is filling in the doctored figures on a chart. As she has never taken any interest in her husband's work, Joey has no idea what he is doing, but Chaz is so paranoid that he is seized by a sudden fear that she might report him. Eventually, Perrone sees no other way out of his imagined predicament than to kill his wife. He begins to meticulously plan the perfect murder.

For their second wedding anniversary he invites his wife on a cruise and one night, while they are out at sea, throws her overboard. Having been an excellent swimmer all her life, Joey survives, managing to turn her fall into a dive, and then swimming toward the Florida coast. As her strength gives out, she clings to a floating bale of marijuana for several hours, and is picked up early the next morning.

Her rescuer is Mick Stranahan, 53, a former investigator with the State Attorney who was forced into early retirement. Stranahan lives on a small island in Biscayne Bay off the Florida coast owned by a successful but aging Mexican novelist. Stranahan, who has been married six times, is now in the novelist's pay as a caretaker, leading a solitary life guarding the island and "mak up for all the years of foolish companionship." Having cut down his trips to the mainland to an absolute minimum, he has hardly any means of contact with the rest of the world except an unreliable mobile phone. His only companion is an inefficient Dobermann called Strom.

After a few days the search for Joey Perrone is called off, and she is presumed dead. Chaz pretends to be a grieving husband. As no witnesses come forward, the authorities accept his suggestion that Joey either had an accident — Chaz having testified that she had had quite a lot to drink that night — or committed suicide. Karl Rolvaag, the Broward County Sheriff’s detective investigating the disappearance, is suspicious of Chaz’s too-rehearsed grief and pat answers, but can find no motive supporting a suspicion of murder. Joey was rich, but Chaz wasn’t in her will; and if he wanted to dump her for another woman, divorce would have been quick and easy.

Joey is equally baffled, and begs Stranahan not to report that she is still alive. Since she has no idea yet why he tried to kill her, she doubts that she can convince the police that it wasn’t a drunken accident or attempted suicide. Instead, she wants to find out herself why he did it, and drive her husband to insanity by building on his vanity and paranoia. Stranahan agrees.

Joey starts by entering their house while Chaz is at work and leaving traces of herself — negligees, a photo of herself and Chaz (with her face cut out). Chaz is unsettled enough by these clues that he experiences impotence for the first time in his life, which leaves him greatly flustered. Joey happens to be hiding under the bed when Chaz returns unexpectedly with one of his girlfriends and fails to perform with her.

Hammernut, worried by Chaz’s reports of a home intruder, orders one of his employees, an illiterate, heavy-set and hairy man called Earl Edward O'Toole, to act as Perrone's bodyguard. As Chaz’s mental state deteriorates, O’Toole’s job description changes to “babysitter,” to prevent Chaz from exposing Hammernut. "Tool", as O'Toole is called by everybody, collects highway fatality markers, and has been addicted to fentanyl, a potent painkiller, ever since he was hit by a rifle bullet that remains embedded just underneath his tailbone.

Tool visits nursing homes, pretending to be an employee, and steals fentanyl skin patches off elderly patients' bodies. During one of these expeditions, Tool meets Maureen, a dying woman with whom he develops a friendly relationship.

Joey and Stranahan soon develop a sexual relationship and continue to plan more intricate and sophisticated acts of revenge. Stranahan has the idea of pretending to blackmail Chaz, by inventing a witness to Joey’s murder.

Chaz is unnerved when a mysterious phone caller seems to know every detail of that night. He concludes that only Rolvaag could know so much about it. He confronts the detective with his accusation ("Can we please cut all this ridiculous bullshit? Just tell me how much you want.") The baffled detective becomes even more suspicious of Chaz.

Stranahan also recruits his brother-in-law, a corrupt lawyer, to draft a fake will leaving Joey’s entire fortune to Chaz. Delivering this to Chaz and to the police has the double effect of playing on Chaz’s vanity and greed, and energizing the stagnating investigation.

Chaz’s judgment deteriorates further with each passing day, and he erroneously concludes that his current mistress, Ricca, a hairdresser, is the blackmailer's girlfriend and accomplice. At gunpoint, Perrone drives her out to the swamp at Loxahatchee where, in the dark, he fires away at her. Though he only manages to wing her in the leg, Ricca plunges into the water and seemingly drowns. Unknown to Chaz, she survives and is rescued by an eccentric Vietnam veteran who considers the Everglades his home.

Both Stranahan and Rolvaag, working independently, trace the bill of sale of Chaz’s expensive Hummer to one of Hammernut's companies, and patient investigation leads them to discover the Everglades scam.

Rolvaag does not share his conclusions with his captain: there is no evidence directly linking the scam to Joey’s disappearance, but Rolvaag is confident that Chaz is doomed anyway. In his paranoid state, Chaz is likely to break down and confess to the scam to minimize his own punishment, while Hammernut is likely to foresee this and have Chaz eliminated. Rolvaag has even discovered hints that Joey is still alive — her credit card has been used to buy women's clothes and accessories — but does not share this with Chaz.

Meanwhile, a few friends and relatives are let in on the true state of affairs and play along with Stranahan and Joey. Her brother Corbett, a reclusive sheep farmer in New Zealand flies to Miami and gleefully arranges more surprises for Chaz: he hires a squadron of helicopters to buzz Chaz’s Hummer on his way to the Everglades, parodying a scene from Goodfellas, and then arranges a memorial service for Joey at which Chaz is expected to give a speech. Chaz gets up to deliver a tear jerker eulogy, but collapses with fright when Ricca enters the church on crutches and sits next to Rolvaag in the audience.

Joey’s other accomplice is her sexy friend from her book club, Rose Jewell, who approaches Chaz after the memorial service and offers to console him over dinner at her place. Expecting an easy lay and opportunity to show off his sexual prowess, Chaz accepts the invitation, only to be drugged by Rose and put to sleep in her bed.

Only half awake, he thinks he is hallucinating when he finds his presumably dead wife sitting at his side asking him reproachfully why he has tried to murder her. He confesses the truth, that he thought she had figured out his scam. She says she had no idea what he was doing, and he groggily responds, “So maybe I overreacted.”

“You really are a monster,” Joey said hoarsely.
“If you were real, I’d tell you I was sorry.”
“And I’d tell you to go straight to hell!” she said. “Why did you marry me in the first place?”
Chaz seemed truly surprised at the question. “Because you were hot. And we were so fantastic together.”
“Because I was HOT?” Joey eyed the lamp’s electrical cord, and thought: no jury in the country would convict me.

The following morning Chaz wakes up from his drug-induced slumber sitting naked at the wheel of his Hummer, which has been parked on the shoulder of a busy road during rush hour. Later he receives a video allegedly recorded on the night of the murder showing his crime, a film in which he clearly recognizes his wife although he can see himself only from behind. The cassette includes a message summoning him to a rendezvous to deliver the blackmail money.

The final showdown takes place at night out in the open sea during a heavy thunderstorm. Following the blackmailer's instructions, Perrone rents a small boat with an outboard motor and, together with Tool, drives to Stiltsville, a former community of wooden houses built on pilings that was eradicated by Hurricane Andrew. This is the spot where he is supposed to hand over a suitcase containing $500,000. Hammernut, who has provided the money, has instructed Tool to kill Perrone well before the encounter with the blackmailer and return the suitcase to him, but Tool has other plans: inspired by Maureen, he wants to abandon his life of crime, reform, and become a respectable citizen. However, before the blackmailers appear on the scene, Perrone shoots Tool, who falls into the water but, again unknown to Perrone, survives.

While Stranahan and Corbett are pulling Tool out of the water, Joey appears in the flesh and confronts her husband. Chaz is mortified — Joey is alive and on her way to the police, his scam with Red has been blown wide open, and last but not least, the will leaving Joey’s fortune to him has been a fake from the beginning. Joey is tempted to shoot him, but, following Mick’s instructions, tells him to get lost. Chaz flees in the boat.

Chaz safely arrives at the mainland with the money and immediately drives home. His new plan is to compose a suicide note ("Tonight I shall reunite with my beloved"), disappear and start a new life in Costa Rica. But before he can leave he is snatched out of his house by Hammernut and Tool (tipped off by Ricca), hog-tied, and driven to the Everglades. Stranahan and Joey have used the blackmail money as the perfect bait — Chaz couldn’t resist the opportunity to grab it, and Hammernut concludes that the “blackmail” was just a con by Chaz to rip him off.

When Hammernut orders Tool to shoot Chaz, Tool deliberately misses and the biologist escapes into the swamp. On the way home to Hammernut's farm the entrepreneur insults Tool, who takes revenge on his boss in the middle of nowhere by slaying him and impaling his body on one of roadside crosses of the same type that Tool collects.

Joey Perrone decides to stay with Stranahan on the island. Corbett has taken an interest in Ricca, and invites her to share some time on his farm in New Zealand. Rolvaag finally closes the case and moves back to his native Minnesota. Before he goes, Rose tells him her mother lives in Minnetonka and coquettishly invites him to lunch the next time she’s in town.

In the end, Tool is left with all the money. He decides to spend the first part of it on a vet who removes two bullets from his body, and on a new, comfortable pickup truck in which he embarks on a trip to Canada. He takes along Maureen, who he has rescued from the nursing home at her request, and who wants to see the pelicans migrating.

In the book’s final pages, Chaz is picked up by the semi-deranged Vietnam veteran, who knows all about him through his encounter with Ricca. No description is given of Chaz’s ultimate fate, but several clues are dropped. In response to Chaz’s limp enquiry about what happens next, the veteran quotes Tennyson: “Nature, red in tooth and claw.”