Murmurs rippled through the crowd.
“… Amazing…”
Behind the last row of onlookers, a trophy-less Serge walked by, filming.
“Coleman?” Another direction: “Coleman? Where’d you go?” Shuffling down the shore. “Coleman?”
BOSTON
Bedlam at the airport.
The blizzard was over. At twenty-six inches. Plows worked the runways.
Travelers pitched heated battles with ticket agents. Their win-loss record: zero to infinity. Others stared up in defeat at overhead departure screens. Status columns flashed.
All flights delayed.
Unless they were canceled.
The low-pressure front finally passed, but planes that had already taxied from the terminal were stacked twenty deep at de-icing machines by the foot of each runway.
At every gate, rows of vinyl chairs connected in single racks. All taken. A stress farm. Babies wailed, complainers complained, others phoned relatives to whine in different time zones. Candy bars, laptops, handheld video games. Some tried catching winks on the floor.
In a remote corner of the airside, a rare patch of empty seats, where agents formed an alert perimeter around Patrick McKenna, sitting with a floppy hat pulled down over his face. The sign at the gate’s departure desk: ANCHORAGE.
Ramirez paced with a cell phone to his head. University administration in Durham. On hold.
Another agent walked over. “Any luck?”
“Campus security turned up something,” said Ramirez. “Found one kid at the dorm feeding pets.”
“Didn’t Oswalt already talk to that guy?”
“Something new-” He returned his attention to the phone. “Yes, Sergeant, I’m still here… Under sedation? What’s he doing in the infirmary?… I see. Did he say anything before-… One second…” Ramirez flipped open a notebook and clicked a pen. “Fire away…”
Other agents strained for a glimpse as Ramirez scribbled in unrecognizable shorthand. “Thanks, Sergeant. I owe you.”
The rest were waiting: “Get the name of the hotel?”
“And the room. Holiday Isles, registered to one Kyle Jones.” He stuck the notebook in his pocket. “We’re splitting up. Johnson, Malone, Polaski: You take McKenna. The rest of us are going to Florida. Hatfield, check with the airlines.” He opened his phone again.
“Who are you calling now?”
“We’re not going anywhere soon with this snow. I’m getting some local people to that hotel before Madre’s crew can beat us there.”
Travelers grumbled. A plow went by the windows. Agent Hat-field finally returned, waving three electronic tickets. “Last seats, Atlanta.”
“Atlanta?” said Ramirez.
“Everyone’s rebooking. It’s the closest I could get without waiting till tomorrow.”
“Aren’t any of the bureau’s own planes available?” asked another agent.
“They all are,“ said Ramirez.”Stuck in snow.“ He looked at the Georgia tickets.”At least we’re out of here in six hours.”
“Gate’s at the other end of the terminal,” said Hatfield.
The agents began walking.
At the other end of the terminaclass="underline" “Atlanta?” said Guillermo.
“Closest they had,” said Pedro, waving tickets. “Everyone’s trying to get out.”
“Which is our gate?”
“That one.”
They took seats, facing dim windows.
Guillermo was back on his cell. “Yes, I’m trying to reach Andy McKenna, room five forty-three… He hasn’t checked in yet?… But five forty-three is his room number, right?… Thanks for your help.” Click.
“Do we even know what the kid looks like?” asked Raul.
“Saw him once with his dad.” Guillermo stuck the phone in his jacket. “Back in the day.”
“Fifteen years ago?”
“Right, we have no idea what he looks like. That’s why I just made that phone call. Ensure we have the right room.”
“But if we don’t know what he looks like, how can we be sure we get the right one?”
Guillermo gave him the same look he’d gotten just before they’d gone in that convenience store.
“Oh.”
A row away, three agents settled into seats with newspapers and magazines.
“So Madre’s people already visited the campus?” asked Hatfield. Ramirez nodded. “That kid who feeds the pets was pretty shaken. Means they’re close.”
“How close?”
Behind them, Raul offered an open foil bag to Guillermo. “Chex Mix?”
A TV hung from a bracket between the gates.
The G-men and Guillermo’s crew looked up.
“And for those of you snowed in back in Boston, we bring you another day of Red Sox spring training from sunny Florida…”
Chapter Nineteen
PANAMA CITY BEACH
Behind one of the beach motels, another massive event at a swimming pool. Hundreds of plastic beer cups. Students rimmed the patio ten deep.
A loudspeaker: “… our next contestant. Please give it up for Coleman!”
Thunderous applause.
Coleman wobbled to the end of the diving board with a pilot’s scarf around his neck. He licked an index finger and raised it to gauge crosswind. Then he bounced twice and sprang into the air.
Enormous belly flop.
A row of judges marked scorecards for style, splash height and stomach redness.
Four blocks away, on the other side of the road from the beach, a pastor walked out of a church activity hall. He reached the edge of the street and rubbed his chin. “Where’d they go?”
He returned to the building. Leaning against the outside walclass="underline" four free-pancake signs.
“Holy…”
Serge stopped behind the Holiday Inn SunSpree to empty sand from his sneakers.
Church kids took seats around him on the ground. “What else do you have?”
“Well,” said Serge, putting his left shoe back on. “There’s Casey Kasem’s American Top Forty. You know where the oldest lyrics ever to be heard on his show came from?”
Heads shook.
“Book of Ecclesiastes.” He stood. “Adapted for the Byrds’ mega-hit ‘Turn! Turn! Turn!’”
“Cool.”
Serge moved west up the beach, and his flock followed.
Heading the other direction, farther toward the waterline, a growing procession followed Coleman. “… This is the Boardwalk Beach Resort, headquarters of MTV… And that’s La Vela, largest nightclub in the entire United States. Afternoon speciaclass="underline" all the beer you can drink, twenty bucks, but the catch is, unless you pay extra for a jumbo plastic mug and rights to the VIP filling station”-he held a thumb and finger slightly apart-“you get these tiny cups and have to wait forever…”
They approached the club’s entrance. Beefy guards checking drivers’ licenses from twenty states. One of the kids quickly produced a wallet to pay Coleman’s cover.
Pounding music greeted them on the massive party patio. The students got in a seemingly endless beer line. Another wallet came out, buying Coleman a giant mug and VIP-line status. All around: hooting and hollering. In the middle of the pool stood a concrete dance-contest island connected to the patio by a small bridge. A driving beat boomed from a 360-degree sound system as a parade of young women strutted onto the island and jiggled their rears.
Coleman found an empty table in back where the previous occupants had left empty cigarette packs and a pile of giveaway sample condoms. Students quickly cleared the surface to make space for Coleman’s beer mug. It was promptly empty. He began getting up.
A student’s hand on his shoulder. “Sir, we got it…”
“I’m never leaving this town.”
For the next three hours, proxy students made perpetual trips to keep Coleman’s mug full.
At the four-hour mark, Coleman and his new friends were all in the pool, lining the edge of the dance island, surrounded by hundreds of other tightly packed students holding identical orange plastic cups. As many more kids hung over balconies wrapped around the patio.