Torpedo Juice

TIM DORSEY

The seventh book in the Serge Storms series

Copyright © 2005 by Tim Dorsey

For Jack Simms, Jerry Brown, and Ruth Brittin

This is funny.

— “Doc” Holiday’s last words, 1887

Prologue

THEY FOUND THE body crucified upside down on the side of the bat tower.

“Cut! Cut!” said a man in a director’s chair.

“What’s the matter?” asked someone holding a script.

“It’s starting to rain. Cover the equipment.”

HOWDY. I’M YOUR NARRATOR.

In literary classes, I’m what’s referred to as the “omniscient narrator.” Yeah, right. Truth is, I’ve been drinking. We were supposed to start this book several hours ago, except the weather’s been cruddy. All the big stars are back in their trailers eating catered food. But does the narrator get a trailer? What do you think?

I’ve been waiting it out in the No Name Pub. That’s on Big Pine Key, two hours south of Miami. Actually not all the stars are snooty. Coleman’s been here awhile. Whoops, I wasn’t supposed to say anything…. Screw it. You’ll find out soon enough. Yes, Coleman’s back. Remember the big supporting player a few books ago? He went and pulled a McLean Stevenson and left the series when he thought he had this big movie career. Then Hollywood put that notion out like a cheap cigar, and he came back around begging for work. But his character had already been killed off. What were they going to do? I’ll tell you what they did. They hatched some crazy gimmick to resurrect him, a stupid idea if you ask me, but nobody ever does. That’s typical. I’ve been loyal through seven books, dropping polite hints about a little on-screen time. Nothing big, just a few lines. But no, I’m “far too valuable in my current role.” Then the prodigal boob comes home and they fall all over themselves writing him back in…. I shouldn’t blame Coleman. It’s not his fault. It’s “The Suits.”… So Coleman’s here with me, and this is the thing about Coleman: You can’t just be sociable and party a little bit with him. It’s either avoid him like the plague or you end up in the eye of a complete fiasco. Like now. He’s still trying to get me to take these pills. Even he doesn’t know what they are, but he’s already taken like five. We’re getting nothing but glares. First he broke those glass mugs. Then he fell into the rack of cue sticks that went rolling under the pool table and he crawled in after them saying he was sorry and was going to fix everything until they pulled him out by the legs and told him to just go back and stay at the bar…. What’s that, bartender? Another beer? What the heck, weather ain’t going to clear, so there’s no way they’ll restart today…. What now, Coleman? Geez! Okay, okay! If you’ll stop bugging me, I’ll take one of those pills. No, not three — one!… All right, down she goes, chase it with a little brewski and…

…How much time has passed? And why is my head laying like this on top of the bar? Got to sit up straight — summon the will. Come on, you can do it. There. Mission accomplished…. Who’s that waving at us from the front door?… You got to be kidding! They’re actually going to start again? Now?… I am so screwed! There’s no way I can pull this off. Where are my breath mints? Freakin’ Coleman. He doesn’t go on for several pages. They’re waving for me again. Coming, just give me a minute. What the hell am I going to do?… What’d you say, Coleman? Are you sure? I just take this other pill of yours, and it will counteract the first one as well as all the beer? Damn, what a fix…. All right, gimme that thing. Coming!…

A-hem. So far so good. Nobody notices I’m bent. But that second pill better kick in soon. I guess this would make me what professors call the “undependable narrator,” except that’s usually some schizo character using first-person voice-over who’s supposed to be the sympathetic detective, but in a hairpin twist is revealed as the psychotic killer dressed in drag and suffering stress-induced blackouts. Man, am I fucked up. What the hell was I just talking about? That second one’s kicking in like a mother. I remember my place now. That undependable narrator guy? Well, that’s not me. I won’t steer you wrong. It’s going to be hard enough as it is. This story’s a mess. But it’s about the Florida Keys, which means it’s a documentary. And frig some fancy setup. Let’s slice through that elliptical fogbank of piffle right now! Here’s the conceit: And if you haven’t driven down to the Keys, you’ll just have to take my word on this. But you know how if you are driving down to the Keys, the people in all the other cars are freaks? Everyone flying down U.S. 1 for a million different reasons, and all of them are wrong. And the ones who don’t look like freaks — they’re the worst. Because that’s the thing about the Keys: Nobody is who they seem to be. It’s the perfect place to hide out and reinvent yourself. And that’s the story. Got it?

What?… Oh, right, the plot. Okay, mixed in with all the freak cars is one very important plot car — a white Mercedes with tinted windows. That’s the key to everything. Remember sea monkeys when you were a kid? Doesn’t have anything to do with this book, but my brain is starting to fizz. The crew is giving me weird looks — need to wrap this up fast, get the hell out of here. So I was supposed to tell you in this prologue what balls to keep your eyes on, and I just did. Cross that off the list. There’s lots of other cars and buses and boats and planes racing south, too many to count. Hey, that’s the Keys. Every day the entire island chain is this Idiot’s Gumball Rally. Get used to it. Just pay attention to that white Mercedes and you’ll be fine. It all starts with this massive traffic jam on U.S. 1. Wait, no, it starts when they find a body. But right after that there’s this big tie-up clogging everything. You guessed it — Coleman again. He didn’t mean to cause it. Trouble just seems to find him like he’s some kind of big trouble-type thing like a magnet or something. What are those twinkling lights? These beautiful bugs are circling my head. Let me catch one and inspect its bioluminescent ectoskeleton. Ho. Wha—? Blubbrsg. Shnbeb? Gfhljlsm. Lijloiejlkme…

Crash.

“Cut! Cut!… What the hell happened to the narrator? He passed out…. Coleman!”

“I didn’t do anything. He was fine a minute ago.”

“Wonderful… Where’s the backup narrator?”

“Right here.” A young man in a starched dress shirt ran over with a pack of stapled pages.

“You’re on.”

“I am?” He nervously rustled pages and talked to himself. “This is what you’ve been waiting for. Get your head in the right spot. Narrator, narrator, narrator…”

“What are you waiting for? This is costing us money!”

“Okay…”

THEY FOUND THE body crucified upside down on the side of the bat tower.

Two Monroe County sheriff’s deputies got the call. Gus and Walter. The green-and-white cruiser rolled down a bumpy dirt road on Sugarloaf Key, coming around a bend in the mangroves until an old wooden tower came into view.

In 1929, a real estate developer named Richter Perky decided to make a killing on Sugarloaf, about fifteen miles from Key West. The only thing standing in the way were the mosquitoes. Millions of ’em.

But Perky had an angle. He erected a giant, gothic wooden tower covered with cedar shingles. It was hollow. Perky planned to fill the inside with bats, which were known to come out at night and feed voraciously on the insects. The tower’s interior contained a series of ascending louvers coated with bat guano, just the way Perky had heard they liked it.

On the appointed day, thousands of bats arrived in cages. They were released under the tower’s open bottom. And flew away, never to be seen again.

Three-quarters of a century later, the tower still stands anonymously on an isolated part of the island. No historic plaque or anything else to identify the enigmatic structure that has been described as a bladeless windmill. Now there was a guy nailed to it.

Gus parked the sheriff’s cruiser near the base of the tower. The deputies got out and looked up.

“I may be ill,” said Walter.

“I know him,” said Gus.

“You do?”

Gus nodded. “Drug smuggler named Hendry. Indicted yesterday. Was in the papers.”

“Who would do such a sick thing?”

“Who do you think? His employer. That’s why nobody can ever pin anything on him. Never leaves any witnesses.”

“You don’t mean…” Walter stopped short.

“Don’t tell me you’re afraid to even say his name.”

“No, but some people are.”

“Not that stupid urban legend again.”

“They say he’s gone completely insane, especially since he started using that nickname… you know…”

“What?”

“Okay, I am afraid.”

“That’s silly.”

The medical examiner arrived, along with a small fire truck, because it had ladders.

“I’ll tell you something else,” said Gus.

“What’s that?”

“We’re about to have a whole lot more bodies. There were a bunch of other names in that indictment.”

Walter looked up again. “Nobody knows what he looks like. He stays hidden in that secluded place out on No Name Key. They say if you ever see him, you die.”

“More myth,” said Gus, helping prop one of the ladders against the side of the tower. “We’ve got hundreds of hermits like that way back in these islands who haven’t been seen in years.”

“Yeah, but this one’s running a drug empire. It’s like he’s a ghost. How does he come and go without anyone seeing him?”

“He drives this big white Mercedes, but the windows are tinted.”