Hammerhead Ranch Motel

17

Serge hunched over and turned a jeweler’s screwdriver, the last step in reassembling the homing signal receiver, which he was doing for the eleventh time in three days. He turned it on again. Nothing again.

“Dammit! What’s the deal?” He grabbed it in his right hand and smacked it on the writing table a few times. He stopped and waited. Still nothing. He had it over his shoulder, ready to fling at the wall, when the indicator lights began flashing and the beeper began beeping.

Serge looked out the window of room one. Zargoza was walking by on the sidewalk with a briefcase, every few steps spinning around in paranoia like a street crazy.

S erge ambled down to the jetty next to Hammerhead Ranch. A few dozen people fished at the end of the rocks, a wide mix of heritage and walks of life, getting along famously. A rapper with a Snoop Dogg T-shirt showed a skinhead how to tie off a new lure. Serge’s theory was that you could end the world’s troubles by going to the hot spots and handing out fishing poles.

He watched the people with saltwater casting rigs and buckets and stringers. Three men without shirts cast from the last rock of the jetty. Waves rolled in every minute, threatening to sweep them off. But there was a large tidal pool at the base of the rock, which sucked the waves down and blasted a spray high in the air in front of them.

To the left, on the beach side of the jetty, children and families played in the swim area, roped off with buoys. A small boy with a new dive mask was facedown in the knee-deep water, studying shells and schools of tiny translucent fish that changed direction abruptly and in unison.

Midway on the jetty, Zargoza had climbed down the boulders to the water line, where there were no other people, looking around nervously and jamming a metal briefcase in a cranny between the big rocks.

Serge arrived on top of the jetty without a sound and called down to Zargoza. “Nice weather.”

“Auuuuuhhhhh!” Zargoza yelled, jumping up in surprise. He put his hand over his pounding heart. “Don’t do that!”

“You’re the owner of the motel, aren’t you?” asked Serge.

“Who wants to know?” said Zargoza, climbing back up the boulders.

“I’m a guest. Room one.”

Serge smiled broadly and Zargoza didn’t like the looks of it.

The car thieves and Sid and Patty had been child’s play. But he hadn’t fully appraised this Zargoza cat yet. Might be a more worthy adversary. Serge decided to bide his time and draw the thing out in a war of nerves, maybe even use a little “rope-a-dope,” and his mind suddenly unanchored and floated back thirty-three years to Miami Beach, a young underdog named Cassius Clay going crazy at the weigh-in, pounding on Sonny Liston’s limo at the airport, then beating Liston like a rug at the Convention Center…

“Hello? Hello? Anybody home?” asked Zargoza.

Serge snapped back to the present. “Sorry. I was in Miami.”

Zargoza took a step back and gave him a wary look, but they were interrupted by a loud mechanical noise. They both turned and looked up the inlet. It was a growing buzzing sound, high-rpm engines like dirt bikes. Or Jet Skis.

There were four of them. Lots of colors, expensive swimwear and shirts with designer markings. Luxury dive watches on their wrists even though they weren’t divers. Huge scuba knives strapped in spring-loaded scabbards on their calves even though they never had any use for them. They did doughnuts in their personal watercraft, accompanied by “Wooooooo!” and “Yahoooooo!” Then another flat-out run in formation across the mangrove flats and toward the jetty. A rapidly approaching jackass armada.

“No nautical training, no understanding or respect for maritime courtesy,” said Serge. “Everyone with a boat knows the unspoken code you live by. The waterways were the last refuge of honor.”

Zargoza nodded gloomily. “Now I know how the outlaw bikers felt when these dingleberries started showing up on Harleys.”

On the first pass, the Jet Skiers snapped two fishing lines. Then they had the courtesy to come back and snap three more. By the third pass, they had driven every fish out of the inlet. People on the jetty slammed down their poles. The Jet Skiers whipped around the end of the jetty, and only providence saved them from the submerged boulders they didn’t know existed. They ran over the swim ropes and through the family bathing area, forcing a mother to snatch her two-year-old out of a blow-up turtle and dive toward the beach. They passed between shore and the small boy in the swim mask with his head down in the water.

The Jet Skiers stopped up the beach and one pulled a small fabric cooler off his shoulder. He opened it and tossed beers to his buddies. They killed them fast and chucked the empties in the water.

“Did you see that?” said Zargoza. “They almost ran over that kid. And they littered.”

Serge walked over to a garbage bin and pulled out a few soda cans and filled them from the faucet at the fish-cleaning table. He walked back and rejoined Zargoza out on the rocks. They could hear the high whine of the engines on their return trip. The Jet Skis rounded the end of the jetty one by one.

“I love Florida sunsets,” said Serge. “Every time the sun goes down it gives me renewed hope for tomorrow.”

Serge made practice swings with his arm, gauging the weight of the can. He lobbed the aluminum cylinder in a practice shot and it splashed ten yards out from the rocks. “Now you try.”

Zargoza made practice swings of his own to get the feel.

Serge studied his stance and motion. He pointed at the Jet Skiers yelling and doing more doughnuts at the end of the inlet. “What’s happening to this country?”

“No sense of sacrifice,” said Zargoza. “They live right up to the edge of their means, buying Jet Skis they ride two days a year. Fancy cars, Rolexes, all show. They eat their seed corn.”

“In Texas, they have a saying for people like that,” said Serge. “Big hat, no cattle.”

Zargoza got ready with the soda can. He reached his arm back.

“Say, you hear anything about the cursed five million dollars that’s in the papers?” asked Serge.

Zargoza became unnerved and bricked the shot ten feet off target.

Serge walked over and grabbed Zargoza’s arm like a golf instructor, and he swung it in a slow pendulum to demonstrate technique.

“The mistake people often make is to try to add too much velocity. That way you lose accuracy,” said Serge. “What you want to do is put all your effort into aim. At the speeds they’re going, they’ll supply all the velocity you’ll need. Finesse it. Air it out in a nice arch like Rip Sewell’s old ephus pitch for the Pittsburgh Pirates.”

Zargoza reloaded with another can. The first Jet Skier approached, and Zargoza let it fly. The skier didn’t notice as it missed wide and long.

The next Jet Skier was about to go by. Serge tossed the can in a two-handed lob from between the legs-a basketball free throw out of the fifties. The sound was a sickening thud as the can broke across the bridge of the man’s nose and knocked him backward off the Jet Ski like a horseback rider hitting the bottom branch of a tree.

The jetty broke into laughter.

The other three Jet Skiers circled and grabbed their friend out of the water. One skier pulled him aboard, and then the other two moved toward the rocks where Zargoza and Serge stood. They went for their scuba knives. Zargoza produced a pistol, and the men beat a panicked retreat, leaving the fourth Jet Ski bobbing nose down in the water.

“You know,” said Zargoza, tucking the pistol back in his waistband and turning to Serge, “you’re a lot of fun to be around.”

“That’s because I’m a people person.”