“Was it necessary for you to go on TV in front of the whole world?” asked a Boston agent.
“Why are you talking to him?” said Ramirez. “It’s not his job to know your job.”
“You Miami hotshots fucked this whole thing up.”
“Mother-”
Everyone blew. A loud, overlapping, profanity-laced exchange.
“Hey,” said Patrick. “Guys.”
Nonstop yelling.
Then, uncharacteristically: “Everyone! Shut up!”
They all stopped and looked at their star witness. “Sorry,” said Patrick. “But what about my son?”
“You have a son?” asked a Boston accent.
Ramirez shook his head. “Typical you didn’t know.” The Florida agent placed a reassuring hand on Patrick’s shoulder. “We’re taking care of him.” Then, with an edge of sarcasm, “Someone had to.”
“This isn’t going anywhere,” said the ranking Boston agent. “Let’s start over from right now. Status on the son?”
“My people should have arrived at the college the same time we got to Dorchester,” said Ramirez. He opened an encrypted cell phone. “I’ll check in-probably already have the son and are on their way back to meet us now…”
Chapter Eleven
PANAMA CITY BEACH
Serge tilted the viewfinder as he walked. Hair-care products went by on both sides. He turned the corner and headed up the toothpaste aisle.
“Serge,” said Coleman, “what are we doing here?”
“My eye-opening documentary must be the final word on spring break.” He zoomed in on an endcap display of paper towels. “The footage is more compelling than I’d hoped.”
“Wal-Mart is part of spring break?”
“Not until 2006.” Serge entered the pet section, filming bird seed. “That’s when Drake University sophomore Skyler Bartell decided to spend his entire spring break in a twenty-four-hour Iowa Wal-Mart.”
“That’s odd.”
“No odder than what we’ve already seen here.” He panned across litter boxes for all income levels. “From March nineteen to twenty-one, Skyler spent forty-one straight hours in the store before detection. I mean to break that record. Wild horses can’t drag me out of here before I succeed and am written up in medical journals.”
“Where did he sleep?”
“On toilets.”
Coleman wandered through electronics. “I don’t want to sleep on toilets.”
“You do it all the time.” Serge checked his wristwatch, then shook it and held it to his ear.
“What’s the matter?” asked Coleman.
“Thought my watch had stopped. Could have sworn we’d been here more than three minutes.”
“Seems like hours.”
“I’ve just made an important discovery of the galactic bent-space continuum. Time slows down in Wal-Marts.”
Coleman followed his buddy back toward the front of the store. “Serge, where are you going?”
“Leaving.”
“Thought you were staying for at least forty-one hours.”
“I may have already.” They approached automatic doors. “Back through the wormhole to check regular clocks.”
FIFTEEN HUNDRED MILES NORTH
The southern border of New Hampshire is guarded by a string of sales-tax-free state liquor stores, militarily positioned like pillboxes. Their parking lots are full of Massachusetts plates, half customers, half Massachusetts alcohol agents who follow residents back over the commonwealth line for citations. Except they can’t, because New Hampshire agents block them in until customers make a clean getaway. Such is the delicate fabric of the republic, no more evident than in a state with the motto “Live Free or Die” stamped on its license plates, which comedians note are manufactured in prison.
New Hampshire’s trademark is the Old Man of the Mountain, an uncanny, eons-old geological rock formation high up the side of Franconia Notch. Its profile is ubiquitous: postage stamps, the state quarter, a thousand highway signs, flags, welcome centers, the capitol rotunda, history books, maps, pot holders, paperweights, snow globes and every tourist brochure ever printed. Residents proudly identify with the Old Man in a fierce emotional bond, much like Parisians and the Eiffel Tower or Texans and the Alamo. On May 3, 2003, the face slid off the mountain and disintegrated.
Somewhere between the liquor stores and the collapsed head is Durham, home of the University of New Hampshire, where a team of FBI agents raced down dormitory steps.
It began to snow.
A phone rang.
An agent flipped it open on the run. “Oswalt here… No, still at the college… Not yet… Of course we checked the dorm… It’s spring break. Everyone’s either gone home or to Florida… I realize that… I know that… We did try his cell phone… Three times, no answer… You sure he wasn’t going back to Dorchester for the week?… I didn’t mean it that way… We’re headed to the student paper where he works… Right, I’ll call as soon as we learn something.”
The phone went back in a jacket.
PANAMA CITY BEACH
Heavy foot traffic on the strip.
Everyone over thirty was ignored or insulted. There were always exceptions.
Young women’s heads universally turned as a suave Latin hulk strolled down the sidewalk. Tanned six-pack abs; long, sexy dark hair. Easily a movie double for Antonio Banderas.
Two blondes wore long, wet Indiana State T-shirts over bikinis, giggling at suggestive boys in passing pickups. Then they saw him.
“Rrrrrrrrrrrow!”-double-taking as he went by.
“But he’s old enough to be your father.”
“So fucking what?”
“Good point.”
Two pairs of bare feet made a U-turn on the sidewalk.
Johnny Vegas continued along the strip to more female rubbernecking. He’d just had his fortieth birthday, and he wasn’t playing around anymore.
The reaction of the opposite sex had been the same Johnny’s entire life. His trust fund didn’t hurt either. Almost as much attention from the same gender: “That son of a bitch must have more tail falling off his truck than we’ll ever see. It’s not fair.”
It wasn’t.
Despite appearances to the contrary, Johnny Vegas held a deep secret that would have shocked the populace. He’d never been able to close the deal. Not once.
Oh, sure, with the least flirtatious glance from those smoldering dark eyes, he could form a rock-concert line of willing partners. But it was always something. Always Florida. Some kind of typical Sunshine State strangeness invariably erupted at the worst possible moment. Hurricanes, brushfires, wayward alligators, overboard passengers, meth freaks, bodies under hotel beds, Cuban exile unrest. The odds were off the charts. Then again, there are a lot of guys in the world, and someone’s chips had to be resting on the unluckiest roulette square.
That would be Johnny Vegas, the Accidental Virgin.
His body clock ticked deafeningly between his ears. How long could he count on his drop-dead looks? Time to go fishing with dynamite.
Johnny had seen the Girls Gone Haywire spring break videos. What the hell was wrong with the world? Here he was, the ultimate bachelor. Then he pops in a DVD, and all these hometown-values girls are stripping for dorks with video cameras. What a colossal corruption of youth and moral decay. Johnny had to get there as fast as possible.
It wasn’t five minutes since he’d parked his Ferrari when the wolf whistles began.
“Hey, handsome.”
Johnny turned around on the sidewalk. Indiana State blondes. Good Lord, two, and he’d just gotten into town. No need for some dishonest ruse; Johnny would take the high road.
“I work for Girls Gone Haywire.”
“Let’s party.”
The roommates made the choice for him. “I think I’ll get some more sun on the beach. Behave yourself, Carrie.” Wink.