Hammerhead Ranch Motel

24

Behind Hammerhead Ranch, just beyond the line of stuffed sharks, was the bar. It predated the motel. Originally built as a small beach house during the Florida land boom of the mid-twenties, it was gutted and renovated as a tavern during the forties. The building was wooden and sturdy, and over the years many of the beams had petrified and nails couldn’t be driven into them anymore. The cracker architecture stayed intact-floor raised on stilts and a vaulted pyramid ceiling open to the joists for ventilation. It smelled salty and looked like a shipwreck. The floor was uneven with a thousand cigarette burns and stains upon splotches on top of splatters. Small blue neon letters went up in 1963 over the entrance facing the Gulf. “The Florida Room.”

It hadn’t resisted change as much as change had rejected it. No crab pot buoys made into lamps or thick rope glued around the edges of the tables. The Bahama shutters were double-thick and held up with chains. There was no AC. It stayed hot so that when there was a breeze, it reminded people that they liked it.

The Florida Room would begin filling up in the next hour. But for now, Lenny and Serge had it to themselves. Serge took wide-angle photos from each of the bar’s four corners. Two sets-one flash, one natural light. The bartender wiped glasses and kept an eye on them. Serge and Lenny went back to the bar. It was quiet except for the squeaking of the bartender’s wash rag and the tumbling daiquiri machine. Serge had an olive burlap shoulder bag in which he stowed camera gear, notebooks and any souvenirs that got caught in his dragnet: matchbooks, postcards, keychains, ticket stubs, brochures, swizzle sticks. He decided that now was a good time to spread the contents on the bar, reorganize and repack.

Lenny ordered a draft, Serge another mineral water.

“You ever been to the John Ringling Museum down in Sarasota?” Serge asked the bartender.

“Heard of it,” he said, and continued wiping glasses.

“It’s unbelievable,” said Serge, turning to Lenny. “There’s all the circus stuff you’d expect from his days with Barnum and Bailey. But there’s also this incredible artwork, like he was trying to overcompensate for the bearded ladies and the fat guy they had to bury in a piano.”

“I think you have the fat guy mixed up with the Guinness book,” said Lenny.

“You sure?” asked Serge, looking up at a ceiling fan to concentrate. “Maybe I’m thinking of the guy born with his face upside down.”

The bartender stopped wiping, eyed them a moment, then resumed. He was forty-eight and a Vitalis man. He had a toothpick in his mouth and all the answers.

“They also have the Clown College down there,” said Serge. “Heard of that?”

The bartender nodded, kept wiping.

“It’s a historic institution,” Serge told Lenny. “The circus needed a school to keep their talent pool stocked, and since the Ringling Brothers crew wintered there, it was the natural place. The college takes it very seriously, just like a regular campus. Dorms, library, cramming all night, finals. It’s still there, even though they almost closed it down after some trouble back in the sixties.”

“What happened?” asked Lenny.

“Antiwar demonstration. The National Guard came in with Plexiglas shields. Horrible scene. Clowns running everywhere through clouds of tear gas; cops beating them with batons, the clowns kicking back with big, floppy shoes. At the administration building the guardsmen set up a barricade, and thirty students rammed it in a tiny car… Got a lot of bad press. Few days later there was a news conference showing unity for the antiwar movement-a long conference table in front of the cameras: a couple of Black Panthers, some SDS, the Weathermen, Leonard Bernstein, three clowns…”

The bartender stopped wiping and studied Serge again.

City and Country finished a rejuvenating swim in the Gulf and bounced into the bar full of spunk. At high tide the waves rolled twenty yards from the back door, even closer after storm erosion. A heat wave still hadn’t broken, and the water was filled with swimmers in numbers unusual for December.

The two women bellied up to the bar exuding sexual energy. The bartender immediately attached to his glass wiping the importance of a decathlete rosining up his vaulting pole. The women pointed at the daiquiri mixer. “We want two of those,” City said in her British accent. The bartender poured strawberry slush with aplomb.

The pair took seats next to Lenny and smiled.

Lenny smiled back.

“What’s that about?” asked Serge.

“I’m in love.”

Serge asked the bartender to turn on the TV. Business began to pick up.

A Japanese man walked in with a surfboard. Serge raised his water in toast: “Tora! Tora! Tora!”

The man gave Serge a thumbs-up and smiled. “Yankee go home, shit-eater!” He took the stool next to Serge, and Serge patted him on the back and bought him a beer.

“I see you’ve been teaching him,” said Lenny.

“Someone has to build the bridge,” said Serge.

A Haitian man ran up to the bartender and talked fast in French, gesturing desperately. Captain Bradley Xeno came in seconds later. “There you are!” He threw the bartender a ten, grabbed the Haitian by the collar and dragged him off.

At a nearby table, a short, squat man was trying to sell letters of transit to a vacationing couple. “Signed by de Gaulle. Cannot be rescinded.”

Serge wiped perspiration and gazed out the window and saw an armored van backed up to room five. Two men in dark suits and dark sunglasses jumped out the front of the vehicle with riot guns. Two more jumped out the back. The door of room five flew open and four more armed men in suits rushed a Mafia underboss with a beach towel over his head into the back of the vehicle, and it sped off for the next stop in the witness protection program.

As the van pulled out, a white limo pulled in. On the door were the five multicolored interlocking rings of the modern Olympics. Tampa Bay had placed a bid for the 2012 Summer Olympic games, and, although the Olympic Committee had no intention of awarding the games to Tampa Bay, they had an obligation out of fairness to show up and examine for themselves the level of local graft. Seven men of assorted ancestry got out of the limo and walked toward The Florida Room, followed by Sherpas carrying steamer trunks plastered with travel stickers. “I love Euro-Disney,” “I climbed the Matterhorn,” “ Hiroshima is for Lovers!”

The International Olympic Committee wandered around the bar with confident smiles and expectant eyes, looking everyone in the face, wondering which stranger was the preordained one who would whisk them off to unimaginable wealth and human titillations.

“Hey, pencil-dicks! Down in front!”

The Olympic Committee noticed they were blocking the wide-screen TV, which was on Florida Cable News. Mug shots of City and Country were on the screen, but by the time the Olympic Committee got out of the way, FCN was into the Celebrity Rehab Spotlight portion of the broadcast.

W hen Jethro Maddox and Art Tweed first arrived in Tampa Bay, they got gas and Sweet Tarts at a Rapid Response convenience store. Art went inside to ask around the Proposition 213 rally. The clerk gestured to the end of the counter-a stack of bumper stickers and pamphlets with Boris’s smiling face and an old car horn. On the back of the pamphlet was a map with directions to Beverly Shores. Art folded one and stuck it in his back pocket.

“You have been a noble and proud travel companion,” Jethro said back at the gas pumps, “but we shall sadly depart, for I must once again rejoin my own kind.”

“What?”

“I need to drop you ’cause I gotta meet the Look-Alikes for our gig… Anyplace you want me to take you?”

Art looked up and saw a billboard and pointed. “Take me there.”

Three miles down the road, they shook hands again and Jethro dropped Art at Crazy Charlie’s Gun Store. (“Our assault rifle prices are so low because we’re absolutely insane!”) Art went inside and quickly picked out a Colt Python.357, nickel, six-inch barrel.

“That’s a beaut!” said the clerk, running Art’s credit card. “You can pick it up Thursday.”

Art looked bewildered.

“It’s the law. Three-day cooling-off period.”

Art leaned forward. “No, no, no! I don’t want to cool off! Cooling off is bad! It’ll ruin everything!”

“You’re preachin’ to the choir,” said the clerk. “Tell it to our commie government.”

“Isn’t there anything you can do?”

“Well, if I was a private collector selling one of my own guns-instead of a licensed dealer-there’d be no waiting period.”

The clerk then looked around the store suspiciously. He took off his baseball cap embroidered with “Crazy Charlie’s” and replaced it with one embroidered “Private Collector.” He picked up the gun Art had selected and stuck it inside his jacket. He looked around again and then cocked his head toward the back door. “Let’s take a walk.”

They ended up behind the clerk’s car parked in the alley. He handed Art the gun, and Art felt the weight, liked the balance. But he shook his head and handed it back. “I only have credit cards.”

The clerk opened his trunk and took out a magnetic credit-card swiper and plugged it into a cell phone.

“That’ll be six hundred.”

“But it was only five hundred in the store!”

“I’m a private collector! I can’t compete with those prices!”

Art sighed and he forked over his Visa. Then he caught a cab for Beverly Shores. They were just about done building the stage. Art cased the place. He asked someone what time Boris the Hateful Piece of Shit was supposed to arrive. The nearest accommodation was the Hammerhead Ranch Motel next door. Not exactly the luxury digs he had intended, but this was business.

He checked in with a Diners Club, tuned a radio to Boris the Hateful Piece of Shit and began cleaning the Colt.