Hammerhead Ranch Motel

2

Near the end of 1997, at longitude twenty degrees west and latitude ten degrees north, the waters of the North Atlantic Ocean reached a comfortable eighty degrees Fahrenheit, and vapor filled the air. The trade winds blew robustly and the barometric pressure dipped. Convection began to convect. The earth rotated, as it has for billions of years, and the force of the spinning imparted the Coriolis effect on the atmosphere. Nobody was there to see it happen, but lots of air and water molecules started turning slowly like a child’s top the size of Iowa.

Three thousand miles east of Florida and four hundred miles west of Dakar on the coastal tip of Africa sit the Cape Verde Islands. There are fifteen islands in the chain, ten large and developed, five not. In Cape Verde they grow coffee beans, bananas and sugar cane, and they catch tuna and lobster. They won independence from Portugal in 1975, and many residents practice animism, the belief that everything in nature has a soul. The monetary unit is the escudo.

Four of the five smaller islets of Cape Verde are uninhabited. But on the fifth is an aboriginal, nonviolent people who live in thatched huts atop stilts on the beach. The people are simple hunter-gatherers, subsisting on fish and mollusks and, until this century, a hairless feral dog that ran wild on the island.

Because of Cape Verde ’s remoteness, its tiny indigenous dogs have experienced quirky evolution, much like that of the Galapagos turtles, and they’ve developed extremely sensitive inner ears to detect predators. In the year 1897, a terrific tropical cyclone threatened the island late one night after everyone had gone to bed. When the barometer plunged from the impending storm, the painful pressure in the dogs’ delicate ears caused them to screech and jump up and down across the island. The villagers were awakened by the yelping little animals twirling on their hind legs in the middle of the village. Then they noticed the leading edge of the hurricane coming ashore.

The storm demolished every hut, but the entire population had enough warning to move upland to the center of the island and was spared. The good-luck dogs were given an indefinite reprieve from the island people’s cuisine.

Exactly one hundred years later, at the end of November, the last month of the official hurricane season, the village chief brought out the ceremonial dog after dinner. It had been a light hurricane season for the islands, and there had been no need to press the dog into service. He lived the good life in his own hut and had grown quite fat on the grateful and excessive amount of food the island people provided. Tonight, however, the chief had a feeling in his bones. The sky was strange, the fishing futile, and the birds were flying into things.

Following a dinner of stewed mollusk, the chief arrived with the sacred dog in a bamboo cage. The dog was dressed in his ceremonial costume. The inhabitants of the island were a carefree people, and the only thing they wore was a thong woven from palm fronds and bound tightly between the legs. The dog’s costume was a smaller version.

The chief placed the cage atop a tree stump and said the magic incantations. He lifted the door of the cage and the dog scampered under a bush and started chewing off the painful thong. There was no dance of the dog in the village circle. The chief raised his arms and decreed that the sacred dog had spoken: All was safe on the island.

Shortly after midnight, the village was awakened by a newly formed hurricane ripping huts off their stilts. Everyone was able to climb to safety, due to well-timed panic and mad scrambling. But dog was back on the menu.

A childless Colombian couple named Juanita and José Cerbeza moved into a four-bedroom million-dollar waterfront home in Tampa ’s prestigious Culbreath Isles community.

The residence had been the original model home for the Tampa Bay Tile Company. It had a Spanish tile roof and a circular driveway of brick-red paver tiles that curved around the giant fan of a traveler’s palm. The front porch was a colorful mishmash of broken porcelain and pottery set randomly in the mortar. The spleen-shaped swimming pool had a rim of violet ceramic bullnose tile and a large patio of glazed Mexican tile. From the pool was a clear view of Tampa Bay over a seawall capped with coquina tile.

The moving van arrived Saturday night. The Cerbezas began hand-to-hand combat Sunday morning.

José was a small, powerfully packed man with a falsetto voice and explosive temper. In contrast, Juanita was a woman of impressive avoirdupois, and if she could ever hold José still, she’d squeeze the breath out of him. Necessarily, José’s strategy was jab-and-run, and he danced around Juanita and darted in and out of the reach of her bologna arms, registering sharp jabs in the kidneys that caused her to make the birthing sounds of a Cape buffalo.

The clash was the age-old balance of the natural order, size against speed, and it was a fascinating thing to watch. However, early on a Sunday morning in one of Tampa’s toniest neighborhoods, the residents had yet to acquire an appreciation for a South American midget screaming Spanish profanities like Frankie Valli and sucker-punching a fat woman into submission between the jacarandas.

The police drove Juanita and José away in separate patrol cars.

Hours later-calm restored and bail posted-the couple was released at sunset for a tearful reunion outside the Orient Road Jail. They took a cab back to Culbreath Isles and embraced again on the red-tile driveway before going inside.

An hour later they were back at it on the front lawn, and a careless José got a little too close. Juanita began crushing him in a Kodiak hug.

Neighbors with cell phones filled the sidewalks as Juanita caved in José until his cries became mere peeps. Before police could respond to the eleven simultaneous 911 complaints from Culbreath Isles, a black Beemer pulled up to the house and cut the headlights. The engine and parking lights stayed on. Two men in gray jogging suits got out. They raised their right arms, fully extended, and aimed SIG 9mm automatic pistols, the P-210 model with the attractive scored wooden grip. They fired ten to twelve shots each, and the silencers gave the gunfire a docile, metallic ka-ching ka-ching sound that made it seem not quite real to the neighbors.

The BMW sped away, and the neighbors slowly approached to inspect the lifeless pile of José and Juanita.

T he Diaz Boys were crazy.

Three brothers and a cousin, they had smuggled, trafficked, extorted and strong-armed their way around Tampa Bay for fifteen years. They were the last of their breed. The average shelf life of their peers was three years, and the Diaz Boys had outlived them all. The Garcia Brothers, the Rodriguez Brothers, the Uptown Gang, the O’Malley Triplets, the Caballero Siamese Twins and Octopus Boy.

The Diaz Boys were lucky, because it certainly wasn’t brains. They were the statistical exception that proves the rule, and they were completely psycho. Whenever a light touch of sophistication was required, they kicked the door in. Their brazenness survived the odds the way the occasional drunk can weave across a freeway and not get splattered.

Florida still had its scars from the cocaine eighties. Prison expansion, after-care centers, foreclosed waterfront mansions, luxury yachts in dry dock. Like Germany after the war-lots of people fleeing to South America, abandoning cars, houses and artwork. Stashes of currency and gold were plastered into walls or buried at the base of a crooked tree. With a single haul of coke worth up to a hundred million dollars, smuggling methods became the stuff of Florida lore. Expensive airplanes and speedboats were ditched after a single shipment. When customs agents began giving “swallowers” laxatives at the airport, surgeons sewed the coke into their legs. Law enforcement had thought they’d seen it all.

Then came disposable real estate.

Smugglers set up “moles” in posh waterfront Florida homes with docks. The moles were married couples, and they’d live at the home about a year. They were given a sailboat and told to use it often. Every expense paid. All they had to do was blend in and keep a low profile until the day their “uncle” visited and went sailing with them at sunset and came back after dark with the boat riding much lower in the water.

It was simple in theory and profoundly problematic in practice. The people the Diaz Boys recruited could not for the life of them keep it together a full year. They went loopy from the wealth and drugs, partying and attacking each other in front of the neighbors. They tried using local talent-gringos-but the results were the same except the screaming on the front lawn was in English. Hundreds of thousands invested in one mole house. Poof! Wasted in a single violent incident that traumatized the whole block and ensured the couple’s every move would be watched closely from then on. The Diaz Boys had had it. In the last year alone, there’d been five aggravated batteries and a DeLorean driven into a swimming pool. When José and Juanita Cerbeza didn’t last two days in Culbreath Isles, the Diaz Boys had already made their decision.

A green Jaguar crested the hump of the Gandy Boulevard Bridge heading across the bay from St. Petersburg to Tampa. A few fishermen worked nets and rods on the old Gandy Bridge, now closed down, running alongside the new span. The illuminated red letters of “Misener Marine” glowed on the shore and reflected in the choppy midnight water.

Two men sat in the front seat of the Jag and one in the back.

“What do you think? Should they tear down the old Gandy or leave it up for a jogging trail?” asked the front passenger.

“I don’t jog,” said the driver.

“Sake of discussion.”

“Leave it up, I guess.”

“Why don’t you take your arm in from the window and roll it up?”

“You cold?” asked the driver.

“No, I don’t want you trying to signal the police or other drivers.” He pushed the six-inch barrel of the.44 Magnum into the driver’s ribs.

“Look, you got the wrong guy. I sell insurance. Check my wallet. Check the glove compartment.”

The driver certainly looked like the insurance type. Conservative, neat black hair in a business cut. On the handsome side, a rough-hewn Burt Lancaster type. Light acne scarring, but only enough to add character. Five-eleven, one-eighty. White oxford shirt rolled to the elbows, now soaked in sweat, and an awful maroon tie with flying squares all over it.

“Fuck you, Fiddlebottom. You owe us fifty grand. That coke had been cut. You think we’re stupid? You think we didn’t have someone inside in Opa-Locka test purity? Fifty grand. That’s the cost of a ten-point step.”

“I got kids! A wife! Will you look at that wallet? You’re making a mistake. You got me mixed up with someone… Look, I won’t tell anyone. You’ve got me scared to death. I’ll just be happy to get out with my life.”

“Which ain’t gonna happen!”

“I’ll give you fifty grand myself.”

“Hell no. Fifty K is nothin’ to the boss. But you shit on him. He wants you to stop using his oxygen. We’re gonna take you out by the port. You don’t give us any trouble, we’ll do you a favor and put two in the back of your head. You won’t feel a thing. You fuck around, we shoot your knees, then we’ll do the rest slow with knives. All above the neck.”

They were coming off the bridge.

“Slow to thirty-five and stay in the left lane,” said the passenger.

“We turning left?” asked the driver.

“No. I don’t want you to sideswipe a parked car or a pole. You’re starting to get desperate, and I know what’s going through your head. Maybe thinking you’ll hit something and I’ll fly into the dashboard and lose my gun. Well, if I don’t get you, Lou back there will.”

The driver looked over his right shoulder. Lou, the silent one, smiled. He had the perfect angle on the driver, aiming a.45 automatic that lay sideways atop the back of the passenger seat.

“We had a guy try to crash us once,” said the front passenger. “Veered for a mailbox. We saw it coming and Lou popped him behind the ear. We hit the box and got banged up pretty good, but we laid the guy over in the front seat to cover the bullet hole. When everyone rushed up to the car, we yelled for an ambulance. All they saw was this guy and a lot of blood. What’s new? Blood in a friggin’ accident? By the time the paramedics turned him over and saw the entry wound, we’d disappeared. So whatever’s going through your mind, you won’t be fast enough.”

The driver shook visibly.

“I’m telling you, you got the wrong guy. This is a horrible mistake. I want to see my family again!”

“Don’t lose it on us,” said the passenger. He jammed the barrel harder into his ribs. “Don’t fuck up now, Fiddlebottom.”

“You know what model Jaguar this is?” asked the driver.

“What?”

“You know what model this is?”

“How the hell should I know? It’s your car.”

“That’s right, it is.”

They approached the light at West Shore Boulevard.

“Just shut up,” said the passenger, growing annoyed.

“You should have taken me in your own car instead of carjacking me. You don’t know anything about this Jag.”

“I said, shut up!”

The driver turned and stared the passenger straight in the eyes. The passenger started to get angry but something gave him the creeps. “What’s wrong with you! Watch the road!”

The driver didn’t speak right away. While staring at the passenger, the driver saw everything he needed with peripheral vision. He imperceptibly turned the wheel to the left. He smiled and said in a calm voice, “We only have one air bag.”

When the passenger heard the horn, the oncoming cement mixer was only feet away.

The last thing the passenger heard: “You shouldn’t have called me Fiddlebottom.”

The passenger went through the windshield and into the grille of the truck. Lou, recently of the backseat, only made it halfway out the windshield behind his buddy. His moaning was a faint gurgle, the lacerations superficial, the internal injuries mortal.

The Jag’s driver awoke from unconsciousness and shook his head to clear the fog. He pushed away the deflating airbag. His white oxford was splattered with blood. He checked quickly-not his. He sighed. “I have got to get out of the cocaine business.”

He saw two police officers rushing toward his door, and he started crying. They told him to stay still-they’d have the door pried open in no time. He looked up at them through tears. “I was carjacked!”