Hammerhead Ranch Motel

16

It was ninety-two degrees by noon.

Zargoza reclined on a chaise lounge next to the pool at Hammerhead Ranch. He wiped sweat off his forehead and thought, I know this is Florida, but we’re heading into the holiday season for heaven’s sake. His swimsuit was a golden tan and a short length last in vogue in 1973. He had a sheen of sunscreen butter on his rugged, hairy chest and read the St. Petersburg Times through postmodern sunglasses that looked like welder’s goggles. It was early afternoon, no clouds or haze, and the sun was full strength. A group of children splashed and shrieked in the pool.

Four swimsuit models lay on their stomachs on Budweiser beach towels. Their bikini tops were untied as they read paperbacks with vibrant covers, Done Deal, Bones of Coral, Skin Tight and The Mango Opera. Just behind Zargoza’s chair, a constant flow of Japanese, French and German tourists stopped and posed for pictures in front of the row of stuffed hammerhead sharks and then drove away. Zargoza had a tall, sweating glass of grapefruit juice on the boomerang cocktail table next to his lounger. A cheap transistor radio played “Lawyers, Guns and Money.” Zargoza took two Valium, the blue ones, and chased with the grapefruit. He was becoming a nerve case, thinking too much about the five million in the briefcase. Obviously drug money. Someone doesn’t lose that and not come looking for it. And, apparently, someone already had. Taxidermied alive? Ripped apart under a drawbridge? Zargoza shivered at the images. Those weren’t murders; they were messages. Definitely cartel work. It was only a matter of time.

Zargoza hadn’t been sleeping well. He kept waking up in the night obsessing about the briefcase, worrying it wasn’t hidden well enough. He couldn’t go back to sleep until he moved it again, and late each night he ran around the grounds of Hammerhead Ranch in his Devil Rays pajamas, the briefcase in one hand and a pistol in the other, making everything worse. “What was that?” Zargoza would spin around, aiming the pistol at imaginary shadows, dramatic music playing in his head. The curse was getting to be too much. Not to mention the Diaz Boys, the sweepstakes subpoenas and the simmering scandal at the nursing home. Zargoza decided right then to set C. C. Flag up as the fall guy; prosecutors can’t resist the headlines of bagging a celebrity.

Zargoza took another sip of grapefruit juice. He finished the Times and picked up a Weekly Mail of the News World left on the next lounger by a British tourist. Zargoza lifted the grapefruit juice again, gulped and put it back without taking his eyes off the tabloid. He couldn’t believe the stories.

First, a coke brick explodes in a car driven by a college student. Then the same student crashes through the glass dome of the Florida Aquarium. Finally, an unidentified Latin male with a shotgun is killed in the doorway of a condominium by an eighty-year-old woman with a hundred-year-old gun. The stories had the Diaz Boys’ fat fingerprints all over them. Shit, Zargoza thought, the British are covering this better than we are. He looked over the articles again. They all had the same byline, correspondent Lenny Lippowicz.

He turned the page and saw another story by Lippowicz about a frantic treasure hunt in Key West for a briefcase full of drug money. A giant headline: “The Five-Million-Dollar Curse!”

“AAAAHHHHHH!” Zargoza screamed and dropped the paper like it was on fire.

Panic turned to anger. Zargoza picked up the paper and shredded it, crunching the pieces into a ball and slamming it to the ground. “Fuck! Fuck! Fuck!”-spitting the words as fast as he could, losing breath, standing there shaking next to his lounger.

Tommy Diaz had terrible timing.

He drove up in a red Audi, and got out looking shaken.

“What’s wrong with you?” asked Zargoza.

“I almost ran over two guys duck-walking in your driveway!” said Tommy, sitting down on the side of the lounger next to Zargoza.

“You always were a shitty driver,” said Zargoza. He reclined again and closed his eyes. Minutes passed. Tommy looked at the patio around the loungers, wondering what the deal was with all the torn-up newspapers. Zargoza finally sat up again and faced Tommy.

“Do you have any concept of subtlety? Any aptitude at all for the soft touch? Is there a feather in that quiver of yours, or is it all sledgehammers and battering rams with you guys?”

“What do you mean?”

Zargoza threw up his arms.

They were distracted by a loud racket. Some hammering and a buzz saw. Both turned and looked out on the beach behind the Calusa Pointe condominiums next door. They saw a furious level of construction as if the Seabees were building a Coral Sea airstrip. Half the noise was coming from where a massive temporary stage was being erected. The rest of the noise was from people getting plywood ready for the hurricane.

“What’s that about?” asked Tommy, pointing at the lighting masts going up over the stage.

“It’s their stupid anti-immigration rally tomorrow,” said Zargoza.

Two workers hung a large cloth banner across the back of the stage. “Proposition 213: Because they just don’t look right!”

“Chowderheads,” muttered Zargoza. He grabbed the grapefruit juice and chugged the whole thing and wiped his mouth with the back of his arm.

Tommy Diaz didn’t say anything. He set a small object down on the cocktail table.

“What’s that?” asked Zargoza.

“It’s a beeper,” said Tommy.

“I know it’s a beeper, you dumb shit,” Zargoza said. “When I say ‘What’s that?’ I mean, what is it in the technical context of ‘Why should I give a flying fuck?’”

“It’s going to make us rich,” said Tommy.

“What? You’re putting up microwave towers?”

“No. We stole these. A whole semi full. When we unload them, we’ll make a fortune.”

“It has zebra stripes,” said Zargoza.

“They all have zebra stripes.”

“All?”

“All thirty thousand,” Tommy said proudly.

“Jesus, you got thirty thousand beepers with zebra stripes. How do you ever expect to unload them?”

“Because they’re Motorola,” said Tommy. “People want quality.”

“They don’t want zebra stripes.”

“Yes they do.”

“No they don’t! Maybe they want their favorite color, but not this nightmare. It’s hideous. Might as well be covered with 666s.”

“Maybe some people won’t like it, but there’ll still be plenty of other customers.”

“Look, you got only two markets for this thing,” said Zargoza, counting off on his fingers. “One, zoologists, and two, that hooker chick in Get Christie Love. That’s it. End of story. Fade to black.”

Tommy Diaz was crestfallen. “What am I gonna do with ’em?”

“That’s your problem,” Zargoza said as he lay back down and closed his eyes.

“Well, it’s kinda our problem. They’re all in room ten.”

Zargoza sprang up. “What!”

“Easy, easy. We had to get rid of the truck. It was bringin’ a lot of heat.”

“Bringin’ a lot of heat? As opposed to what? Dropping some kid through the roof of the aquarium?”

“We weren’t thinking right on that one. We were drinking and I got a little dizzy from the helium.”

“Jesus! You’re all over the papers. And if you go down, I go with you. You guys need to lay low for a while. Watch some cable TV. Catch up on Law & Order. You staying in room ten?”

“Can’t,” said Tommy. “It’s full of beepers.”

Zargoza’s head fell to his chest in frustrated exhaustion.

Tommy got a funny look on his face, like he was debating whether to say something. “You didn’t happen to come across five million dollars by any chance?”

“Five million? Are you kidding?” said Zargoza, and he laughed artificially.

“You wouldn’t hold out on us, would you?”

“Never!”

“Word on the street is it’s from the Mierda Cartel,” said Tommy.

“Mierda?” said Zargoza. “That means shit in Spanish.”

“Apparently they didn’t research the name well enough.”

They both lay back down on their loungers and closed their eyes. They were quiet a few minutes.

Tommy finally lifted his head. “I notice you don’t carry a beeper.”