Flag was most of the way out of the water when the incredible shrinking mayor ran right up to him at the edge of the surf and resumed shouting. He yelled in a measured cadence-one word to emphasize each time he stomped on Flag’s fingers-“Let…go…of…my…beach!”
Flag shouted and pulled his hands back to his chest in pain. A large wave knocked the mayor on his back and swallowed Flag.
Flag was quickly a hundred yards out, and his cries were sucked into the growling wind as he bobbed steadily toward Mexico. The mayor turned and headed back to the condo. The wind gusted harder, and the mayor had to lean at an acute angle. He made it to the stage set up on the beach for the Proposition 213 rally and grabbed one of the corner lighting poles for balance. He tried to rest a second. The wind kept picking up, eighty, ninety, a hundred miles an hour. The mayor had continued shrinking since his election and his suit was baggier than ever, catching an enormous amount of wind. Hundred and ten. Hundred and twenty. The Proposition 213 banner over the stage tore loose and flew away.
The guests in The Florida Room had to shut the door again, but Serge and Zargoza took turns watching through the hole where Zargoza had shot through the lock.
When the wind hit one-thirty, the mayor’s feet went out from under him, but he held on to the lighting pole with both hands-flapping horizontally like a yacht club pennant.
At one-forty, it was too much. His baggy suit was fully deployed, and the mayor lost his grip. He sailed out over the Gulf, never touching the water, dipping and lifting and looping like an autumn leaf carried up and away in a strong breeze.
“Look, he’s flapping his arms,” said Zargoza.
“That’s only making it worse,” said Serge. “It’s giving him more lift.”
There was a long moment of quiet, and Serge continued staring out the hole in the door until the mayor faded to a speck and disappeared. When Serge finally turned around, he saw Zargoza pointing a gun at him again.
“You realize this is a cry for help,” said Serge.
“Shut up! I’m tired of your talk!” snapped Zargoza. “I’m taking the money and getting out of here… Sorry…”
Zargoza leveled the revolver at Serge’s heart and thumbed back the Colt’s hammer. He stiffened his arm and began squeezing the trigger.
There was a bang and Serge clenched his eyes shut. But he didn’t feel anything. He slowly opened them and inventoried his body. Nothing. He looked up and saw Zargoza with a silly grin on his face. Serge’s eyebrows twisted in puzzlement. Zargoza was still grinning as he fell forward and hit the floor.
When he did, it revealed Country, standing directly behind him with one of the TEC-9s the Diaz Boys had kicked away.
“What have you done?” Serge yelled.
“I thought you’d be happy,” said Country.
“I had everything under control,” said Serge. He got down on the floor and rolled Zargoza onto his back. He slapped Zargoza’s cheeks lightly. “Wake up! Wake up!”
Zargoza barely opened his eyes.
“Look! I turned the TV down like you asked. Can I get you anything?”
Zargoza smiled calmly and started to close his eyes.
“Wait! Wait! Don’t go yet! Listen, buddy, since we got to know each other so well, why don’t you tell me where the money is-so I can make sure it gets to your favorite charity.”
Zargoza smiled a little broader and said in a weak voice, “You always did make me laugh.”
When Zargoza closed his eyes that last time, Serge’s yell of anguish shook the heavy wooden shutters of The Florida Room.
A fter Zargoza died, Serge, Art and the Diaz Boys sat down at the tables, guns all over the floor, not having the spirit to fight each other. There was a bond from the common goal of saving the boy, and of the ordeal that still lay ahead. The storm was back up to full strength, whipping around and under the bar again.
They looked over each other’s faces with resignation.
Art floated the question. “What do we do now?”
Serge picked up the remote control and hit the volume button. “We watch the rest of Key Largo.”
Time went by in exhausted silence until the sound of the wind outside wasn’t as loud.
“Storm’s passing,” said Lauren Bacall.
“A torn shutter or two, some trash on the beach,” said Bogart. “In a few hours there will be little to remind you of what happened tonight.”
Epilogue
Hurricane Rolando-berto was more remarkable for its insurance totals than loss of life. Prompt evacuation warnings by all but one of the local media outlets averted certain tragedy. Several stretches of the beach roads remained impassable for a week. Tow trucks dragged palm trees out of the streets, and the state flew in snowplows from New England to clear sand drifts. The Department of Insurance threatened to freeze the assets of six companies that tried to pull out of Florida.
In the hours immediately following Rolando-berto, a rookie police officer who lived on the island and owned an all-terrain cycle responded to the 911 distress call from Hammerhead Ranch. Everyone had decided not to mention Country’s shooting Zargoza. The officer wrote diligently in his notebook for five minutes before he shouted for everyone to stop talking at once.
“Hold it. Hold it!” he said. “Let me see if I understand. The motel owner was really a gangster. A guy named Lenny was pretending to be Don Johnson. The short fella over there wants to be a private eye from the forties. And this guy thinks he’s Hemingway. Do I have all this straight?”
Everyone nodded.
“What kind of a crazy motel is this?” asked the cop. “Is there anyone here who’s what they’re supposed to be?”
“I am,” said Serge, raising his hand. “I’m a one-hundred-percent, made-in-Florida, dope-smugglin’, time-sharin’, spring-breakin’, log-flumin’, double-occupancy discount vacation. I’m a tall glass of orange juice and a day without sunshine. I’m the wind in your sails, the sun on your burn and the moon over Miami. I am the native.”
And with that he grabbed two of his special bags and dashed out the door.
The remaining guests unlatched the shutters and propped them open. It was getting light out as sunrise approached. The air was still and cool and sandpipers scurried along the edge of the water. A dorsal fin moved offshore in the calm surface. The generator still had plenty of fuel, and, like at all good parties, everyone eventually ended up in the kitchen. They raided the refrigerator to cook breakfast.
The mother of the boy Art saved continued to profusely thank him. Said her name was Sally and it was so hard raising a boy alone. Tommy Diaz started the CD jukebox and picked the Rolling Stones, Let It Bleed, cuing up the whole album. “Gimme Shelter” boomed through the bar, making everyone jitterbug and jive as they walked around.
E mergency-management officials set up a triage center at the old Coliseum in St. Petersburg to handle an unusually large number of cut and bruised old men found wandering the streets in a confused state in the wake of the hurricane.
About half were ultimately identified as nursing-home patients who had apparently strayed from their facilities. The other half were members of an entertainment troupe who had parachuted out of a WC-130 shortly before the storm.
Five Look-Alikes were sent against their will to geriatric care at Vista Isles, where they were soon placed under psychiatric guard and sedated with Thorazine for demanding they be allowed to travel to Pamplona. Five Alzheimer’s patients went on a tour of Europe and performed flawlessly for the centennial celebration of Ernest Hemingway’s birth.