Cecil shook his head.
“You wouldn’t be trying to obstruct this investigation, would you?”
Cecil shook his head again, more vigorously this time.
“Good. We’ll call you if we need you,” Serge said and closed the door, and Cecil walked away confused, glancing back at the unit a couple of times.
Serge tossed the badge on the dining-room table and flopped down on the couch. Florida Cable News was on the tube. Serge propped his feet up on the glass-top coffee table and resumed writing on the clipboard. The key to life, Serge knew, was the diligent keeping of lists. The clipboard was Serge’s newest tether to reality. There were so many loose ends in Serge’s life, relentless injustices, endless chores, unphotographed historic sites. He felt a sense of control over things he had no control over by listing them. At the top of the clipboard: “Find 5 million.” After that, in smaller letters, “Visit Fort DeSoto, buy batteries/film, Egmont Key (rent boat?)”
The condo was a great setup, and Serge knew it would have to end all too soon. The sunsets were stunning from the balcony, and that was important to Serge. It had a cozy little walk-in kitchenette and a breakfast bar, where he liked to take his scrambled eggs and juice with the morning paper. He paced all day in the condo like a caged cheetah, barefoot on the shag carpet, talking to himself while holding the clipboard or newspaper or TV remote or all three. The AC was down as low as it would go, constantly giving Serge that just-showered feeling. He even liked the thick carpet under his toes, although to him Florida would always be terrazzo country.
The sun was on its way down again. According to routine, Serge dropped the clipboard and picked up his camera and walked out on the balcony. He leaned a little over the rail and looked north and saw a small crane lowering something on top of the sign next door at Hammerhead Ranch. A small neon top deck was being added to the old sign, so that it would now read “The Diaz Boys’ Hammerhead Ranch Motel.”
The three surviving Diaz Boys stood proudly in the road watching the sign go up. “I’m glad we finally got out of the cocaine business,” said Tommy Diaz with a large hoop of room keys around his neck.
The Diazes moved out of the driveway and waved at a departing white limousine with the five interlocking rings of the modern Olympics. The International Olympic Committee’s advance team grinned and waved back. They had a decision to make. Once back in Lausanne, Switzerland, they would weigh the rabid bigots, oppressive heat, armed criminals and hurricane against the quality of Lenny’s weed and the stunning sight of City and Country, and they would immediately leapfrog Tampa Bay into the front-runner position for the 2012 Olympic Games.
Serge watched the Olympic limousine pulling away down Gulf Boulevard, and he strolled back in from the balcony and onto the carpeting. Blaine Crease was on TV, standing at the roadblock that prevented looters from coming on the island. He was interviewing “the man who has cracked this case wide open!”
The man on TV with Crease tried to hide his face. “Please leave me alone. Get away from me.” It was Paul, the Passive-Aggressive Private Eye, who was bad with people but great with inanimate objects, and he was holding the handle of an attractive silver Halliburton briefcase.
Serge slapped his forehead in astonishment. “How the hell?”
He was in awe of Paul’s mystical gift. Then he saw Paul break free of Crease and climb into a Malibu driven by Jethro Maddox, who had hung in a palm tree the night before the hurricane and had an unobstructed aerial view of the Hammerhead Ranch grounds when Zargoza went running around in his pajamas hiding the briefcase for the last time.
Serge went over to his toiletry bag and grabbed his electronic homing device. He banged it on the table and it began beeping.
Cecil the neighbor arrived at the door with two officers. “Open up, police!”
Serge grabbed the toiletry bag and ran across the room and, a second before the officers kicked in the door, he jumped down through the hole in the floor made by Edna Ploomfield.
A s fear of crime continued to grip the residents of Florida in the late 1990s, legislators in Tallahassee examined the problem in exhaustive detail and finally saw it for what it actually was: an opportunity to exploit for votes.
In a selfless display of bombast, certain lawmakers brought back the tradition of the roadside chain gang. These same legislators then took a valiant stand against tax-and-spend liberals by steadfastly refusing to fund the chain-gang program.
On the first day of the new year, a group of prisoners in a medium-security detail collected trash down the hot median of I-275 on the underside of Tampa Bay. Their chains had never been purchased, so they walked around freely, and escapes were epidemic. In the middle of the shift, something began making a light beeping sound. One of the prisoners pulled a zebra-striped pager from under his baseball cap and read the alphanumeric message: “Crockett, we’re on!”
Over a small hill in the highway came the unmistakable theme song of the smash-hit TV show Miami Vice. A dented-up pink Cadillac containing Serge, City and Country flew over the hump and skidded to a stop next to the work detail. Lenny dropped the pager and sprinted up the incline of the median and dove into the convertible as the guard fired a round of buckshot. Serge hit the gas and the car accelerated east toward Interstate 75.
S ean Breen and David Klein were gone fishing again. Sean had bought a new Chrysler New Yorker with the insurance money after reporting the maniac who had stolen his car at the brush fire down in the Everglades. The new Chrysler was pulling a new, loaded fishing skiff, purchased with the advance on book rights to their harrowing story in the Florida Keys. (“I can see it now,” said their agent. “We’ll call it Florida Road -something.”) They were headed across the state to the Banana River, and the weather couldn’t have been nicer. The sky was blue and clear except for a string of popcorn clouds marching their way across the southern horizon.
A pink Cadillac convertible pulled up alongside. The driver waved and accelerated past. Sean and David looked at each other and then shook their heads and said together: “Nawwww.”
Serge steered the Caddy with his knees and fiddled with the homing device. It pointed him directly at Cocoa Beach.
A hundred miles ahead, a short, rumpled man and his stout friend with the white beard lounged poolside at the Orbit Motel, sipping drinks out of coconuts.
Country played with the radio, turning up Billy Preston, “Will It Go Round in Circles.”
“…I got a story ain’t got no moral, with the bad guy winnin’ every once in a while…”
Serge planned to hang loose and play it by ear. No big rush. If they didn’t find Paul and Jethro right away, there were plenty of things Serge needed to photograph over there. And of course he’d have to give Lenny, City and Country the A-Tour, starting with the John F. Kennedy Space Center, where thousands of people lined up every day to peer inside a bulletproof exhibit case proudly displaying a rock from the driveway of the Hammerhead Ranch Motel.
Acknowledgments
Again, a debt is owed to my agent, Nat Sobel,
and my editor, Paul Bresnick,
for helping me order in finer restaurants.
About the Author
Tim Dorsey was a reporter and editor for the Tampa Tribune from 1987 to 1999 and is the author of the novels Florida Roadkill, Hammerhead Ranch Motel, Orange Crush, Triggerfish Twist, The Stingray Shuffle, and the upcoming Cadillac Beach. He lives in Tampa, Florida. Visit his website at www.timdorsey.com
Visit www.AuthorTracker.com for exclusive information on your favorite HarperCollins authors
