Torpedo Juice

Part One

1

IT WAS ANOTHER typically beautiful morning in the middle of the Florida Keys. People were drunk and people were screaming.

Patrons from the roadside bars heard the commotion and carried drinks outside to watch the routine mess on U.S. 1, the Nation’s Highway, 2,209 miles from Fort Kent, Maine, on the Canadian border, to the tip of Key West.

The road was snarled to the horizon in both directions. Standard procedure: midmorning congestion, then the chain reaction of rear-enders from inattention. Now a parking lot.

Drivers honked, shouted obscenities, turned off their engines and popped beers. A Mercury overheated and the hood went up. Ninety-nine degrees.

Two sheriff’s deputies stood at the window of their air-conditioned substation on Cudjoe Key. Veterans Gus DeLand and Walter St. Cloud. Drinking coffee. It was the beginning of the shift, the part where they were supposed to review the latest bulletins on all the serial killers and mass murderers heading their way.

Gus looked out the window with his hands on his hips. “We’ve got to do something about that road.”

“I’ve never seen a crucifixion before,” said Walter, holding a ceramic cup covered with swimsuit models. “Check out this new mug. I got it in Vegas. When you pour a hot beverage in it, like coffee, the bathing suits disappear. I don’t know how it works.”

The fax activated. Gus headed toward it.

He came back reading the all-points bulletin. “…Brown Plymouth Duster, brown Plymouth Duster, brown Plymouth…”

“What are you doing?” asked Walter, holding a coffee mug at eye level.

“Mnemonic device. Possible serial killer heading this way…. brown Plymouth Duster, brown…”

The fax started again.

Gus came back with another piece of paper. “…Metallic green Trans Am, metallic green Trans Am, metallic green…”

“I brought one back for you, too.”

“…Trans Am… What?”

“Coffee mug.” Walter set it on Gus’s desk. “Figured you might need it since you’re divorced.”

Gus stuck the mug in a bottom drawer.

“Aren’t you going to use it?”

“I’m not sure it’s appropriate in the office. But thanks for thinking of me.” Gus held up the second APB. “Spree killings in Fort Pierce. Six dead and counting. They got a partial license.” Gus began repeating a number.

Walter set his mug down on the first APB, making a round stain. “So, busy day already. Crucifixion, traffic jam and now two serial killers on the way.”

“No, the second is a spree killer.” Gus handed the fax to Walter.

“What’s the difference?”

“One’s in more of a hurry.”

“They always come down here.”

“And blend right in.”

“How’s that?”

“Just look at ’em all out there,” said Gus. “Hell-bent to lose their minds in Key West. A psychopath would be the quiet one.”

“But it doesn’t make sense,” said Walter. “They’re on the run, and this is the ultimate dead end. What are they thinking?”

“Who says they’re thinking?”

THE LOGJAM STARTED at Mile Marker 27 on Ramrod Key, feeding on itself for an hour. New arrivals flying down the Keys in convertibles and motorcycles and pickups pulling boats, getting closer to Key West, anticipation busting out of the cage, coming upon stalled traffic way too fast.

It quickly backed up over the Seven-Mile Bridge. People with to-go cups of warm draft stood in front of the Overseas Lounge and watched a Chevy Avalanche sail into a Cutlass, knocking the next six cars together like billiards, a half dozen airbags banging open like a string of firecrackers. Three minutes later, the audience outside the Brass Monkey saw a Silverado plow into a Mazda, the twenty-two-foot Boston Whaler on the pickup’s trailer catapulting over the cab.

Sirens reached the Sandbar, a rustic stilt-top lounge poking out of the mangroves on Little Torch Key. Customers ran to the cross-breeze windows overlooking South Pine Channel and the bottled-up ambulances unable to cross the bridge. The gang at Boondocks heard a whap-whap-whap-whap and looked up at the runners of a sheriff’s helicopter called in by the stranded emergency vehicles.

The Mercury with the raised hood had since caught fire, and the tiki bar crowd at the Looe Key Reef Resort appreciated the uncomplicated entertainment value when it reached the gas tank. A fishing guide with sun-cracked skin set his Miller on the bar. “This is worse than general. I have to make Boca Chica this afternoon.”

“Why don’t you call Foley?” asked the bartender. “See if it’s reached.”

A cell phone rang inside the bar at Sugarloaf Lodge.

“Foley here. Hold a sec, let me stick my head out…. No, road’s clear here. Traffic’s fine—” Crash. “Check that. A dope boat just rolled… because I can see the bricks in the street… Yeah, people are grabbing them and running away….”

More whap-whap-whap. Another chopper cleared the roof of the No Name Pub, a 1935 roadhouse hidden in the banana trees on Bogie Channel.

The customers wandered out the screen door and up the road, where a helicopter hovered over the bridge. Loudspeakers cleared the fishermen below, and the aircraft set down, scattering bait pails.

The rotors stopped. One of the pilots in a green jumpsuit got out and took off her helmet.

A bar patron approached. “What’s going on?”

“Car fire caught the brush on Summerland and jumped the road. Need a place to rest the engines.”

Three more patrons leaned against the bridge’s railing. The oldest was a well-read biker from north Florida named Sop Choppy who had relocated to the Keys under hazy circumstances. Bob was the middle in age. He operated a very seasonal accounting firm on the island and closed in the summer to run a customerless tour service with his personal pleasure craft for tax reasons. The youngest was also named Bob, a shirtless construction worker who hammered roof trusses by day and had dreams but no workable plan to become a dragster mechanic for Don Garlits. Two regulars named Bob made things complex, so the other customers called him “Shirtless Bob.” He had to wear a shirt in the bar.

The trio didn’t possess a single common reference point but were welded into a fragile axis of daily bar chatter by the necessities of tourist hegemony. They gazed across the water at the Spanish Harbor viaduct, where a frozen line of cars stretched down the highway as far as they could see. A tiny driver stood on his roof for vantage.

Their heads suddenly jerked back as a fireball went up in the direction of Ramrod. They sipped drinks as a mushroom of black smoke dissipated in the wind.

“Ever watch Monster Garage on the Discovery Channel?” asked Shirtless Bob. “Last week they converted a PT Cruiser into a wood chipper. You jam logs through the open back window and twin sprays of chips go flying up from two secret hatches in the roof.”

“Why?”

“Because it’s Monster Garage.”

Barely audible in the distance: Bang. Bang. Followed by: pop-pop-pop-pop-pop, a small under-the-armpit smuggler’s machine gun.

“They’ve got to do something about that highway,” said Bob the accountant. “Too vulnerable. Least little thing and it all craps out.”

Sop Choppy looked down in his empty drink, then up at the road. “Wonder how it started this time.”

How it started: before dawn

THE WORLD LOOKED weird to Coleman. It was curved in a fisheye through the peephole of room 133 at the Royal Glades Motel. A single raindrop on the outside of the small glass bubble distorted the crime lights on Krome Avenue. This was up on the mainland, south of Miami, across the agricultural flats with pesticide musk and giant industrial sprinklers that were still at this hour. Coleman toked the roach beginning to heat his fingertips and kept an eye to the door. Downtown Homestead. Not a soul.

Coleman was at the threshold of forty-something and crouched against the bong-hit ceiling of eighth-grade maturity. His honeydew head was too big for his body. Coleman was never up before dawn, except now. Because he needed to make the Great Escape.

Cash was low, and Coleman had slept — make that remained unconscious — through checkout the previous day. The front desk had been phoning ever since. “Coming up in a minute to pay.” “Be right there.” “Eating dinner now, but immediately after that.” Then knocks at the door. “No clothes on — be over in a sec.” The night manager finally opened up with a passkey. Coleman lay snoring in his BVDs, empty beer cans randomly strewn around the room like spent artillery shells in a busy howitzer battery. The manager decided his salary didn’t cover social work. He closed the door and left a note in the office for the morning person.

Most recently, Coleman had been living on the couch of a party buddy’s apartment in Port Charlotte. Then, cultural differences. His friend had a job. And the evenings of brainless bingeing curiously began to seem like evenings of brainless bingeing. Coleman was asked to move on, enticed by some free pot for the road. His host considered it a high-yield investment.

The Royal Glades Motel was halfway back to Coleman’s rusty trailer with rotten floorboards on Ramrod Key. He’d headed south on I-75 and soon reached the edge of the Everglades at the bottom of the state’s west coast.

People with a few dollars in turnpike money preferred to cross the swamp on Alligator Alley, a safe, divided, four-lane interstate with fences on both sides to keep wildlife out of traffic. Those who couldn’t scrape up tollbooth change were forced to drive farther south and take the Tamiami Trail, a harrowing two-laner with no shoulders next to deep canals. Depth perception in the Everglades was always tricky. Stupidity even trickier. People were always trying to pass, and there were many spectacular head-ons.

It was worse at night.

But there was little traffic at four A.M. when Coleman entered the Glades. No light or sound either, just stars and the cool air coming in his open windows. Coleman hadn’t seen anything but black marsh for fifteen miles, when he passed the silhouette of a Miccosukee Chickee hut and a peeling billboard of a falsely cheerful Indian giving airboat rides to Eurocentrics. Then nothing again for a half hour until an auburn first-quarter moon on the horizon toward Miami. His headlights bounced off a panther-crossing sign. There was a small glow to the south: something burning down one of the gravel roads to a water-filled quarry. Coleman was driving a gold ’71 Buick Riviera that dripped oil. The maintenance money had been spent on the car’s furry steering wheel cover and Playboy shift knob. This was Coleman’s version of the economy.

The Buick passed a closed restaurant that served frog’s legs, then the locks of a dam where they had diked for this road way back. Coleman was lighting a joint and trying to get something on the radio when another set of headlights made him look up. “What’s that guy doing in my lane? Wait, what am I doing in this lane?” Ahead: A Datsun had come to a complete stop, its passenger compartment and the driver’s open mouth filled with Coleman’s high beams. Brakes squealed. At the last second, Coleman veered around the other car. He glanced back over his shoulder at the Datsun, then turned around to find a twelve-foot gator in the mist of his headlights. He stiff-armed the steering wheel and slammed the brakes again. Thump. The squish-grease made the tires lose traction, and the Buick slowly rotated sideways down both lanes until it completed a perfect three-sixty. Coleman came out of the spin back in his own lane, still speeding east. “This road is way too dangerous. I need a beer.” He reached under the seat. On its own, the radio picked up a weak station fading in and out. Steely Dan. Something about a weekend at a college that went awry. Coleman imagined a wooden shack and a lone radio tower with a blinking red beacon, personally transmitting to him from an island in the middle of the swamp. He slouched and settled in for the rest of the drive. Fate. It was meant to be. God was watching out for him, Coleman thought, or he never would have made it to this age.

He couldn’t have been more right.

APB #1: the brown Plymouth Duster with Ohio plates

BACK UP THE Tamiami Trail, a light grew brighter, the one Coleman had seen down the gravel road. The fire was really involved now. An Oldsmobile with a body inside.

A brown Plymouth Duster with Ohio plates sat nearby. The trunk lid went up. Hands in leather gloves placed a metal gas tank inside and slammed the hood.

The Duster began driving out the gravel road, branches scraping the windshield. Gravel became tar as the car turned onto the Tamiami Trail, leaving behind the burning Oldsmobile with the sticks of dynamite that soon sent a chute of flame and evidence skyward.

The Plymouth continued east. The driver could make out major power lines against the moon, the first wisps of Miami. A tiny traffic light flashed in the distance. It took ten minutes to get to it. The crossroads. The Duster made a lazy right, then a half-hour straight shot south through migrant tomato fields and palm tree farms.

It turned in the entrance of the Royal Glades Motel.

2

West Palm Beach, near the airport: five A.M.

A DOZEN POLICE cars with flashing lights filled the parking lot of a small brick medical complex that looked like a strip mall. There was crime tape and a sheet-covered body. Little numbered markers sat on the pavement next to each bullet. Evidence cameras flashed. The head detective was on the phone to the home of the police chief.

“I think we just solved that tourist robbery at the motel… no, not an arrest, a body… yes, the victims just made a positive ID….” He glanced toward the traumatized retired couple from Michigan clutching each other. The man had bandages on his chin and nose. “…No, I don’t think a press conference is a good idea right now…. I know you’re getting a lot of pressure from the mayor’s office because of the tourism angle…. Because I don’t think we know what we’re dealing with yet. Something’s not right…. Six bullet wounds… right, but they’re all exit wounds…. No, someone didn’t stick a gun up his ass or down his throat. The medical examiner has confirmed the trajectory. These are all straight through, three in the stomach and three in the back, like someone was firing a gun inside him. I’ve never seen anything like it….”

A uniformed officer approached the head detective, who covered the phone. “What is it?”

The officer told him.

“Thanks.” The detective uncovered the phone. “Sir, we have a second crime scene. Someone broke into one of the clinics in the medical complex…. Yeah, it’s related. I think we just figured out those exit wounds. You’re not going to believe this…. No, we definitely want to hold off on that press conference….”

The previous evening

A LANKY MAN in a flowing tropical shirt raced down Southern Boulevard on a ten-speed ultralight aluminum racing bike. He passed the airport, a steak house, a medical complex, some gas stations, budget motels…. Suddenly, his senses perked up. Something was out of place. He squeezed the brake levers on the handlebars.

A RENTED GRAND Am with its doors open sat in front of room 112 of the Golden Ibis Motel. Hank and Beatrice Dunn from Grand Rapids carried luggage inside. Beatrice began unpacking a suitcase on the sagging king bed. Hank locked up the car and went in the room. He hung the DO NOT DISTURB sign on the outside knob and started closing the door.

The door flew back open, knocking Hank to the ground. A burly man with sores and crazed, crack-head eyes ran in the room. “Where’s your money!”

Beatrice screamed. The man went to punch her.

Hank grabbed his arm from behind. “Don’t hurt us. We’ll give you everything.”

So he spun around and punched Hank. He was going to do more damage, but saw the wallet and jewelry on the dresser. Then he tore through a purse on the bed. When he was satisfied he had just about everything, he turned to Beatrice. “Give me your wedding ring!”

She clutched her hand to her chest. “No!”

Hank was still woozy on the ground with a torrential nosebleed, trying to get up. “Honey, give him the ring!”

“Shut the fuck up!” The man seized Beatrice’s arm and yanked on her finger. The ring didn’t budge. He pulled and pulled. No luck.

“It’s stuck,” said Beatrice. “I never take it off. Please!”

The thug unsnapped a leather holder on his belt and flicked open a jackknife. “It’ll come off now!”

“No!” yelled Hank, grabbing the man’s shirt from behind. He got another punch in the face and hit the floor again. The assailant turned back to Beatrice and forced her hand down on the sink counter for a cutting surface.

He heard a click behind him and felt something cold and metal against the back of his head. A new voice: “What do you say we let her keep the ring?”

The couple was dizzy from the swing of events. First the motel invasion and now this mystery man in a tropical shirt holding their assailant down on the bed and tying his hands behind his back with the cord from the curtains.

When he was finished, Serge jerked the man up off the mattress and turned to the retirees: “I just want you to know this isn’t what we’re about down here. I’m very sorry about the inconvenience. Welcome to Florida!”

Serge marched his prisoner toward the door.

“Uh, what are you?” Hank called after him. “Some kind of undercover cop?”

“No, a historian.”

THREE BLOCKS AWAY Serge was still marching his prisoner down a series of alleys. He had the gun in one hand and was walking his ten-speed bike alongside him with the other.

“That’s far enough,” said Serge. They were behind a medical complex. Serge went to work with a lock-pick set. “What’s wrong with you? When I was growing up, the criminals had a code. No kids, old people or cripples. Now they’re the first ones you guys go for.”

The back door of a clinic popped open and Serge flicked on the lights. He waved the gun, ordering the man inside.

The man looked around, confused. Serge reached in his pocket and pulled out a handful of bullets. He raised them to the man’s mouth. “Swallow these.”

“Fuck you.”

Serge held his hands out like scales, the bullets in the left, the gun in the right. “Your pick. Bullets are going in your mouth one way or the other.”

The man didn’t answer. Serge forced the barrel through his teeth. The man started yelling and nodding.

Serge removed the gun. “Good choice.” He fed the bullets one by one, even fetched a paper cup of water from the cooler when the going got rough after number three.

“That wasn’t so bad, was it?”

The man didn’t know what the hell was going on.

“Now come over here and lie down on this table.”

The man didn’t move.

“You were starting to cooperate,” said Serge, poking the gun in his ribs. “Don’t make this go worse than it has to.”

The man reluctantly lay down on the table. Serge pulled some extra curtain cord from his pocket and tied the man’s ankles. The table was narrow. It was on some kind of rolling track. Serge pushed the table until the man began sliding headfirst into a tight tube in the middle of a gigantic medical contraption.

“I know what you’re thinking,” said Serge, pushing the bottoms of the man’s feet until he was completely inside. “What the hell is this thing? Well, I’ll tell you. And it’s really amazing stuff. This is an MRI. That stands for Magnetic Resonance Imagery. Huge leap forward in medical diagnosis! And since Florida has so many old people, they’re conveniently located all over the place, lucky for me.”

Horrible screaming echoed out of the tube.

“Quiet down. I can’t think.” Serge walked behind the control panel and began throwing switches. “Now, how do we get this baby going?…” More switches and dials. “These machines use a powerful magnetic field to produce three-D X-ray-type images. And when I say powerful, I’m not kidding. This is an absolutely true story: One hospital learned the hard way it couldn’t mount fire extinguishers in the MRI room. They were in the middle of scanning a patient, and the extinguisher snapped out of its wall holder, flew clear across the room and stuck to the side of the machine. That’s why they can’t use this thing on anyone who has metal plates or pins — rips them right out your body…. Okay, I think this is the right switch…. Are you ready? I sure am! This is going to be so great!…”

Downtown West Palm Beach: the wee hours

A POLICE CRUISER rolled quietly toward the waterfront. A spotlight swept storefronts and alleys. There’d been numerous reports of a suspicious person in the vicinity of Clematis. He matched the description the Michigan couple had given of the vigilante in their motel room.

The patrol officer was bored. He turned at the end of the block and backtracked on Daytura, just to be thorough.

Okay, this is definitely a waste of time. He clicked off the spotlight. Just as he did, a silent form shot across the end of the street. At least he thought he’d seen it. He clicked the light back on.

Nothing.

The patrol car accelerated and whipped around the block. The spotlight scanned the street. Empty except for a skinny cat darting under a van with four flat tires.

Five blocks away, a dark form flew down Dixie Highway. It zoomed under a street light. A lanky man in a flowing tropical shirt on a ten-speed ultralight aluminum racing bike. Leaning way over in aerodynamic wedge, legs like pistons, no wasted motion.

The bike took the next corner in a graceful arc and zigzagged through a grid of streets near the train tracks. It raced south on Tamarind Avenue. Knife-fight territory. A juke joint had its door open to the street, blue light and arguments spilling out, then the next corner, two guys waiting for business. One saw the bike coming and pulled a pistol. “Give it up!”

“Buy a fuckin’ antecedent!…”

The cyclist’s voice trailed off as he sailed through the intersection; the gunman never had a shot and went back to discussing the Monroe Doctrine. The cyclist sat up in his seat as he cruised down the center line with no hands. He looked at his left arm and the checklist taped around his wrist like a quarterback’s game plan. Jupiter Inlet Light, Blue Heron Bridge, Royal Poinciana Playhouse, Flagler Park, Hypoluxo house where they shot Body Heat… All crossed off. He activated the backlight of his watch, then looked up at a red and blue sign three blocks ahead. Right on schedule.

The cyclist parked in front of the bus station. He leaned the bike against the wall and went inside, and someone jumped on the bike and rode away. Half the people in the waiting room were fighting to stay awake, the rest trying to fall asleep. The man walked briskly for the lockers. He opened one of the largest and removed a beaten-up knapsack and a guitar case, then ran out the back exit to the loading platform. The door closed on an idling Greyhound.

“Hold on!” — waving a ticket — “You got one more.”

The door opened. Serge A. Storms bounded aboard.

The bus was mostly empty as Serge walked down the aisle, thinking: Where do I want to sit? Whom do I want to talk to? That’s absolutely critical. For long rides, I require a stimulating conversation partner with deep reservoirs of cultural references upon which my metaphors can find purchase….

Serge spoke his thoughts out loud, quite loudly in fact, as he moved through the bus, studying fellow riders who either gathered their belongings tightly or spread them out on the next seat so there was no room.

Serge placed a hand on the back of each person’s seat as he passed by.

“…No, not this woman, a disaster-in-waiting. Clothes and makeup that are only in fashion in penitentiary visiting rooms…. Not this guy, the bad-breath merchant keeping alive his record-breaking streak of wrong life decisions… Not this woman, who looks like she’s running from a failed two-week marriage consisting of late-night shrieking, credit card debt and venereal disease…”

Serge was running out of people. He glanced toward the back of the bus and brightened. “Ahhh, that looks like a hospitable chap.”

He trotted all the way to the last row and took a seat across the aisle from a late-stage alcoholic from Lower Matecumbe Key on the verge of kidney failure. The bum was sleeping across two seats with his neck bent against the side of the bus in a way that would remind him later.

Serge stowed his knapsack, then opened the guitar case and began strumming. He rattled around in his seat. He cleared his throat. He paused and looked over at the bum. No movement.

Serge reached across the aisle and shook the man hard — “Hey you!” — then quickly sat back in his seat and strummed. The bum raised his head and looked around in a fog.

“Oh, I’m sorry,” said Serge. “Did I wake you?”

The bum began reclining again.

“Well, since you’re already up—” Serge hopped across the aisle and made the bum scoot over. “Traveling is all about talking to new people. That’s the ball game. That’s the whole point, travel to an exotic place, meet the people, immerse in their culture, and find out why they’re so fucked up. If you’re not going to spill your guts to complete strangers, why take the trip? You might as well just stay home abusing sex toys until that mishap that brings paramedics and you become the talk of the neighborhood. But communication is easy for me because I’m a listener. I love to hear people gab about themselves. Every single person is special. Everyone has great stories. Like you. I’ll bet you have a million. How old are you? Sixty?”

“Forty-three.”

“I’m all about listening. That’s why the world is in shambles. Nobody listens anymore!”

“I, uh…”

“Shhhhhh! Listen,” said Serge. “I have big news. I’m getting married! I don’t know who yet. I’m still conducting the statewide search, in case you have any undamaged relatives…”

The bum began slouching and closing his eyes.

Serge jerked him upright. “I’m taking it to the next level. Marriage will force personal growth. In the meantime, I’m trying other methods. Like this one.”

Serge turned forward and stared with intense concentration. Small folds twitched under his eyes until…

“Ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!”

The bum jumped. The bus driver looked up in his rearview.

“Sorry,” said Serge. “I’m training my brain to look directly into the naked essence of life. Do you realize the person who lies to us most is ourself? Several times a day I stop and take a prolonged, unblinking look at the truth….”

The bum started getting up. “I’d like to go to another seat.”

Serge yanked him back down. “…It usually goes one of two ways. Horror or ecstasy. That time I flashed on the Black Death sweeping Europe in 1348. Let me try again….”

Serge stared ahead and squinted.

“Yeeeeeeeeeeeee-hawwwwwwwwwwwwwww!”

Serge turned to the bum. “Now that was a good one! I just realized how lucky I am. I could have been born a cystoblast! It’s not important what that is. All you need to know is it’s one of the many, many things you definitely don’t want to be. It’s not even an organism, just a bunch of cells, which means they don’t have eyes and can’t appreciate the radiant colors of God’s creation. From nature: sky blue, forest green, the creamy pink of the spring blossom, the honey in the clouds at sunset. From food: eggshell, guacamole, tangerine, cranberry. From science: carbon, chrome, cobalt, copper. From women’s magazines: mauve, ecru, fuchsia, taupe. Colors I dig just because I like saying the word: gamboge, gamboge, gamboge. Other words that should be colors but aren’t, like Cameroon and DiMaggio. You’re a cystoblast, you can forget about all that….”

Serge hadn’t noticed that the bus was pulled over. The driver stood over him. “If you keep yelling, I’ll have to ask you to get off.”

“Sorry,” said Serge. “Can I play my guitar?”

“Do you yell when you play?”

“Not usually.”

The driver was already walking back up front. “No more yelling!”

Serge cradled his acoustic and began strumming. “…Mama don’t take my Kodachrome awaaaaaaayyyy-eeeee-yay….”

A GIANT EYEBALL rotated in the peephole of room 133 of the Royal Glades Motel. Coleman took a hit from the corner of his mouth. Still dark out there. Nothing but the sandwich shop across the street, where local teens had come along in the night and rearranged letters on the roadside marquee: 99¢ HAND JOBS.

Inside room 133, two days of Lifestyle Coleman. Fast-food sacks, roaches, matches, spilled trash cans, wet socks on lampshades, smashed potato chips in the carpet, fried chicken bones between the sheets, slice of pepperoni stuck to the mirror, bloody footprint on the dresser, pocket change in the bottom of the toilet, sink clogged with vomit, cartoons on TV.

Coleman’s eye stayed pressed to the door. Paranoid. Every time he thought he’d watched long enough for a clean escape… second thoughts. What if someone comes out of the office in the next minute? Then he’d watch another minute, and so forth. Coleman wanted to make sure his getaway was absolutely perfect; nothing as much as a hair out of place. The eyeball scanned the street again. Drugs finally made the decision. The roach had burned out; no reason to stay any longer. Coleman stepped back from the peephole and grabbed the strap of a duffel bag at his feet. He took a deep breath.

Now!

Coleman threw open the door and it banged against the wall. He took off running. Into a metal garbage can. They both went over with a crash. The can tumbled loudly across the parking lot. Coleman pulled himself up by a car door handle, activating the auto-burglar alarm. Whoop-whoop-whoop. “Shit!” Lights started coming on all over the motel. Bleary people walked onto balconies without shoes. The manager emerged from the office. Coleman dove in the Buick. He dropped the keys. He hit the horn. The car finally started. Tires squealed. Coleman patched out, running over the garbage can, which wedged under the bumper and sprayed sparks. The people on the balconies winced when the Buick’s undercarriage bottomed out at the base of the driveway, and they cringed again when Coleman made a hard left turn, sending the garbage can flying free and shattering the lighted roadside marquee in front of the sandwich shop.

Then he was gone. Quiet resumed. Motel guests trudged back to rooms. Some decided sleep was futile. Might as well get a leg up on driving. They began loading luggage. Two blue American Touristers went into the trunk of a brown Plymouth Duster with Ohio plates.

3

APB #2: the metallic green Trans Am

DARK AND DESERTED on the Florida Turnpike, the part of day you can’t quite put your finger on. No longer the night before, not quite the next morning. Even more off-balance if you’ve been driving some hours.

A metallic green Trans Am skirted the backside of Miami International, down through Sweetwater. The blackness alternated with pockets of light at the interchanges. The lights were the harsh orange shade found at businesses with barbed wire and surveillance cameras. They said: Don’t exit here.

Almost five A.M., but the driver didn’t know where her watch was. The strap had broken. She kept looking in the rearview. The Trans Am had a smoked T-top. Her legs had bruises.

The woman was petite, practically swallowed by the Pontiac. Twenty-eight years old, but her new skin, dimples and tiny features always got her carded.

The Trans Am passed a tollbooth sign that said to get seventy-five cents ready. A shaking hand rubbed makeup onto the bruised thighs. Her window went down. Change flew into a toll basket, and the Trans Am accelerated. The makeup compact flew into an oversized purse on the passenger seat, then she jerked the whole thing into her lap and rummaged. The handbag’s organizational system was shot, the entire contents dumped out and thrown back in twice already tonight. She found a cigarette, lit it with the car lighter and coughed. She had just un-quit smoking with the pack bought back in Delray. The nicotine slowed her rampaging imagination, but it couldn’t block the involuntary images: what she’d seen when she opened the bathroom door. And again at the second place. That’s what really shook her, besides all the blood. How on earth did they know about the second place? It meant she wasn’t safe anywhere. She looked in the rearview. No sign of the white Mercedes with tinted windows.

The Trans Am passed the Kendall exit and a blue info sign. She waited for a tanker to go by and slid over a lane.

The Snapper Creek Service Plaza was at Mile Nineteen. Nineteen miles till the end of the turnpike, then just two isolated lanes through mangroves as the mainland seeps into the part of the map with those spongy symbols before reaching the drawbridge to Key Largo.

Only a few vehicles at the plaza. An unattended Nissan with no tag. A security car with a sleeping guard in the driver’s seat and an emblem on the door of an irritable eagle and lightning bolts. A Peterbilt tractor-trailer, dark in the cab but the engine still on, along with hundreds of amber running lights that traced the entire outline of the truck in a manner that said someone was getting rich on amber running lights.

The Trans Am pulled into the space closest the building. The woman forced her legs out of the car. She walked stiffly to the pay phones, pushed coins in a slot and dialed an exchange in the lower Keys. “Come on!” Three no-answers at the last three service plazas. Now ten rings and counting. The exposure time out of the Trans Am seemed eternal. A car door opened. Her eyes shot toward the sound. The night guard smiled like a sex offender.

Thirteen rings, about to call it quits. A sleepy voice answered. The woman jumped. “Don’t hang up! It’s me!”

BELOW MIAMI, YOU’RE on your own. Dixie Highway slants across a hot, dusty wasteland of Mad Max predators, where the famous roadside “Coral Castle” is now ringed with razor wire, and copulating dogs tumble past the doors of Cash Advance Nation. Above all this, another world away, are the elevated lanes of the Florida Turnpike. A metallic green Trans Am raced south just before dawn until the lanes ended and twisted their way down to merge with U.S. 1. Welcome to Florida City, a franchised boomtown decided by automatic traffic counters and satellite imagery. Mobil, Exxon, Wendy’s, Denny’s, Baskin-Robbins and a continuous row of chain motel signs indicating that the cornerstones of the white race are free breakfast and AARP rates.

A maid pushed her cleaning cart and sang a merry Spanish song. Room doors opened; Middle America herded kids into cars. Lobbies filled with people grabbing Pop-Tarts and sticking paper cups under spigots. “The orange juice is out.” The sky grew lighter. The maid knocked. “Housekeeping!” The gas lanes at the food marts filled. “Pump five is already on (you idiot)!” College students with beer suitcases piled back into their Jeep Grand Cherokee and raced to the edge of the parking lot.

Two sedans went by, then a metallic green Trans Am. The coast was clear. The Jeep took off with a wallet on the roof and shaving cream on the back window: “Key West or Bust!”

COLEMAN CHECKED HIS rearview. No witnesses from the Great Escape. He continued through some modest new construction in the wake of Hurricane Andrew until the city of Homestead eventually dwindled out in a quilt of vacant lots.

The Buick rolled to a stop at the intersection with U.S. 1. Coleman’s windows were down, letting in morning sounds that emphasized how quiet it was. A bird chirping, a far-off diesel getting a punch of fuel. Coleman opened a bag of peanuts and waited for some last cars to pass. A metallic green Trans Am and college students in a Jeep Grand Cherokee. He turned right.

Nothing oncoming for the first three miles. The sky went from dark to light blue, the world waking up. Coleman smelled salt. The sun finally broke, orange blotches of light flickering through breaks in the mangroves. Coleman popped nuts in his mouth. Formations of wading birds flew over the causeway. Then more birds on foot, vultures standing around overnight roadkill with the posture of guys loitering outside an adult video store. Every other mile: dead raccoon, dead snake, dead opossum, dead armadillo. Traffic began filling Coleman’s rearview, and he was soon being passed nonstop by convertibles and SUVs and rental cars. Coleman was always being passed because the Buick couldn’t go faster than fifty without vibrating like a paint shaker. Some of the other drivers leaned on their horns. Coleman didn’t pay no mind. He was one of the most carefree creatures you’d ever meet, which meant he was an enemy of the state. He finished his peanuts and tossed the empty bag on the dashboard, which had become one of those trash gardens you frequently see on the highway: crumpled burrito wrappers, smashed soda cups, napkins, matchbooks, lottery tickets, coffee stirrers, dead AA batteries, Gulf Oil road map of Arkansas, intact vending-machine Condom of Ultimate Optimism, still-folded litter bag. As new layers of garbage were added, the older ones compacted into the seam between the front of the dash and the tapering windshield, where you could trace Coleman’s downfall like a museum cross-section of an Indian shell mound. On the floor of the passenger side was a chewed pencil, an umbrella handle and a broken answering machine he’d found in a field. The AC didn’t work.

Mile Marker 108 went by. The Buick slowed as it struggled up the incline toward the bridge over Jewfish Creek, the official border between mainland Florida and the Keys. Coleman was passed in the left lane by a Greyhound bus with some kind of commotion in the backseat.

“Wake up! Wake up!” yelled Serge, shaking the bum. “You don’t want to miss this!”

The bum was having one of those fantastic drunk dreams, like if Georgia O’Keeffe did claymation of organic decomposition. “Wha—? What is it?”

Serge pulled him upright and pointed out the window. “There’s the bridge! We’re about to enter the Keys! It’s one of those relaxing little life pleasures you should get into. So get the fuck into it!”

The bus rattled across the metal grating of the drawbridge. Serge threw his arms in the air like he was on a roller coaster but remembered not to yell.

Then it was over. He smiled at the bum. “Like no other place on earth. Raw natural beauty, relentless freedom, unorthodox natives. A friend told me something else about the Keys I never forgot: Down here, nobody is who they seem to be. When people in other parts of the country want to reinvent themselves, they come to Florida. But when people in Florida want to reinvent themselves, they come to the Keys. That’s what I’m doing….”

They passed Overseas Insurance, Paradise Tattoo and a house trailer with a hand-painted sign on the side of the road. WANTED: GRAND PIANO OR LEGAL ADVICE.

Serge began strumming his guitar again. He stopped and silenced the strings with his hand. “Got a ground-floor opportunity for you.” He looked around to make sure nobody else was listening, then leaned closer. “I’m going to be the next Jimmy Buffett.” He winked. “Only better…” He resumed playing. “…Oh, I’m an irresponsible pirate mixin’ drinks and bein’ lazy…” He stopped playing. “That’s an original. It’s unfinished. The working title is ‘Make Me Rich.’ I really don’t know how to play yet, or write songs, but that doesn’t matter. It’s about marketing. Jimmy’s cousin is Warren Buffett…” — Serge reached in his back pocket for a computer printout and unfolded it across the guitar — “…It’s all in the numbers. I have an MBA.” The printout was blank. Serge put it away. “I don’t really have an MBA. I can admit that because you look like someone who doesn’t care. I mean that in a good way. And we’ll have to be straight with each other if we’re going to be partners….”

The bus pulled over at a roadside shelter. The bum started getting up. “This is my stop.”

Serge pulled him back down. “You need to stop and think about my offer. The world is becoming too stressful. Both parents working, losing shirts in mutual funds, running to after-school functions, filling weekends with unfinishable home improvements that looked so easy on the Renovation Channel. They never expected adulthood would be like this. ‘Holy shit! It’s just more and more responsibility! Maybe if I work a little harder it’ll start to get easier…. Nope, it’s even worse now and… oh my God! I’m having a heart attack!’” Serge grabbed his chest and fell into the aisle. He lay motionless. The bum bent over. “You okay?”

Serge popped back up. “And then you’re fuckin’ dead! What kind of life is that?” Serge faced forward and nodded. “This is where I come in. I’ll give people the momentary illusion of escaping adulthood, for a fee. The market’s ripe: Everyone’s become obsessed with maturity….”

A gold ’71 Buick Riviera drove past the parked Greyhound, Coleman hitting the nub of a joint and humming in falsetto: “Hmm, hmm-hmm, hmm-hmm, fruit juicy. How’d you like a nice Hawaiian punch?…”

Coleman reached under his seat, locating a loose beer and an empty convenience-store collector’s cup promoting the Harry Potter industrial complex. He poured the beer in the cup so he could sip while driving, nobody the wiser, instead of having to hunch over and sneak with a can, because that would be dangerous.

The Buick passed a row of fiery poincianas down the median on Key Largo, then countless red and white dive flags, coral-reef murals, concrete angelfish, big plaster shark jaws for tourists to pose inside, a fish-basket restaurant with stone patio tables out front from a pool store, the famous Caribbean Club, the famous African Queen movie boat, a dozen famous tiki huts, a seashell gift outlet mall, Tradewinds Liquors, Paradise Insurance, Kokomo Dental, and the parking lot of a boarded-up shopping center where a third-rate carnival was working its way down the Keys. Rusty Ferris wheel, Ping-Pong ball goldfish games, mechanical crane rigged so you couldn’t grab the mini-spy camera or switchblade comb. Disinterested clowns shuffled floppy shoes through the grimy midway. The clowns had gotten into substance abuse, flunked out of the prestigious Ringling Brothers Clown College in Sarasota and were now relegated to the hard-luck circuit of broken clown dreams. An audience of three preschoolers sat cross-legged on a mat. Mr. Blinky juggled a pair of balls. The children got up and left. Mr. Blinky put the balls in his pocket. Another clown walked up. They watched forlornly as the children entered the computer arcade tent.

“Let’s go get high,” said Mr. Blinky.

“Fuckin’ A,” said Uncle Inappropriate.

The clowns went behind some propane tanks as a Greyhound bus drove by in the background, the last window open, a man strumming his guitar.

SERGE STOPPED PLAYING his guitar and faced the bum. “It first hit me when I was eating dinner in Margaritaville. I had ordered the Cheeseburger in Paradise. Figured it had to be the best cheeseburger in the world if Buffett was involved. You know what? The fucking thing was inedible, a gray Keds sole. And as far as accuracy, get this: no pickle. There’s a pickle in every refrain in that song. I’ve heard it a thousand times. But was there one with my cheeseburger? They’re betting on us not noticing. Well, they bet wrong!…”

The bum began standing. “I’d like to get off—”

Serge pushed down on his shoulder. “…The waitress comes by, and I’m looking under my plate. She asks if everything is okay. I say, ‘There’s no pickle.’ I turn the burger vertical, going through it like a wallet, and the waitress says it doesn’t come with a pickle. I stop and look up. ‘Yes, it does.’ She says there’s no mention in the menu. I say I know what the menu says; lyrics overrule. Then we started yelling. Actually it was just me. Suddenly, there goes the table. Guess who they blame? So now these four beefy guys in festive shirts are dragging me toward the front door, and I’m screaming at the other customers: ‘Call Jimmy! Somebody call Jimmy!’ I land on my back on the sidewalk, and the cheeseburger patty hits me in the chest and they throw the buns and everything at me, just an ugly scene…. I have to tell you, somewhere along the line, something has gone horribly wrong in Margaritaville….”

Vehicles flew by Serge’s window. Jeep Grand Cherokee, metallic green Trans Am, brown Plymouth Duster, over the Marvin D. Adams cut, Tavernier Creek, Snake Creek, the Whale Harbor bridge, into Islamorada, the scuba industry giving way to rows of offshore charter boats at marinas with stuffed marlin and sea bass and hammerheads hanging from trophy hooks facing the road. A ’71 Buick Riviera chugged past Paradise Pawn and a motel with a faux lighthouse, then another bus shelter and the pulled-over Greyhound that Coleman had been leapfrogging the last thirty miles. The views from the bridges began opening up, and Coleman grooved on the scenery. The Long Key Viaduct was particularly inspiring, especially on the Gulf Stream side, so Coleman hit his blinker and cut into the left lane for a closer look over the top of the parallel bridge span heading the other way. Yes, sir, this is living. He smiled and hit his joint.

Coleman began noticing a lot of pelicans on the other bridge span. Then a camping tent. And another. Several fishermen. More and more tents. More fishermen. Hold the phone, thought Coleman. That’s not a parallel bridge going the other way; it’s a span that’s been converted into a fishing pier. Hmm, interesting. So I guess that means I’m on a two-way bridge. Coleman looked forward and saw the oncoming Camaro stopped cold, fifty yards up.

The Greyhound driver slammed the brakes, pitching Serge and the bum into the seats in front of them with the sound of scraping guitar strings. “Hey!” yelled Serge. “What the hell’s going on up there?”

The driver threw the transmission back into low gear. “Some fool almost had a head-on.”

The bus entered Marathon, smack in the middle of the Keys. The airport went by on the right. Small terminal, big fuel tank, Piper Cubs, biplanes for novelty rides, rows of corporate aircraft, white limo waiting at the edge of the runway.

Key West didn’t allow jets for noise reasons. So if a big executive wanted to take the Lear, he landed in Marathon and rode a limo the last fifty miles, drinking the whole way. Like the man right now climbing down the stairs and crossing the tarmac in a tropical shirt and flip-flops. Gaskin Fussels from Muncie. The chauffeur ran around the car. “Mr. Fussels, let me get those bags….”

Fussels was short, chubby and bald. He also reeked of money, which meant he was sexy.

The limo left the airport and headed west on U.S. 1. It was stopped within a mile. Fussels ran inside Overseas Liquors and was back in a flash with his usual fifth of their most expensive rum. The driver wondered whether he might get a better tip if he stopped in advance and had the bottle waiting. He’d done that once for another client, but the tip was the same and he’d gotten stiffed on the booze. The rich never ceased to amaze the driver. He’d seen everything. Take Fussels, for instance. Big attorney from Indiana with a second home in the Keys. Four-day work week, then every Friday morning a private charter into Marathon for another lost weekend as Calypso Johnny. Every single week. How could he afford it? Is there that much money floating around? The driver decided there was a secret world he wasn’t being told about.

“No other way to live,” Fussels explained as he always did, tidying the wet bar. “It’s just service economy down here, so I couldn’t make near the money. But I couldn’t live anywhere else. Yes, sir, these flights are worth every penny. My competition shivers all weekend up north, then I come back to the courthouse Monday morning, tanned, recharged, the weight of the world off my shoulders, and I bash their brains out!”

The limo started across the Seven-Mile Bridge. What a day, not a cloud, the Gulf Stream chocked with color. Fussels settled into the middle of the backseat with his drink and stretched his legs. “Got a joke for ya….”

The driver looked up in the mirror. “What is it?”

“How does a blind person know when he’s finished wiping?”

“I don’t know, Mr. Fussels. How?”

“No, you see, that’s the joke.”

“Oh… ha, ha, ha, ha…” The driver would never understand the rich.

Fussels grabbed his bottle. “Moron.”

They didn’t talk for a while after that. Fussels diligently got plowed. They reached Ramrod Key.

“Pull over. I need to take a leak.”

The chauffeur looked up the road. “There’s a Chevron next block.”

“Fuck it. I wanna go here.”

The rich again. The limo eased onto the shoulder. Fussels got out, walked down a mild embankment and stumbled to his knees. “Whoa, good rum.” He stood and undid his zipper, not remotely concealed, children pointing from station wagons as they drove by. Mr. Fussels started feeling splashes on his bare ankles. “What the hell?” He angled his head to look around the stream. “Am I hitting something?”

There was movement in the brush. A nocturnal armadillo raised its head. What woke me up? And what’s this stuff hitting my shell? The animal desired to be somewhere else and began marching toward the road.

Fussels returned to the limo. The chauffeur looked back up U.S. 1, waiting for traffic to clear. Just a couple more vehicles. A Greyhound bus and a metallic green Trans Am. The driver of the Trans Am had her radio on low, Shania Twain. A single tear trickled out from beneath dark sunglasses concealing two black eyes. She put on a blinker and swung around the Greyhound bus, which was slowing to an unscheduled stop behind a limousine.

The bus’s door opened and Serge came flying out with his knapsack. He picked himself up from the dirt and turned around, spreading his arms in a gesture of innocence. “What?”

A guitar hit him in the chest. The bus drove off.

Serge noticed the limo and began running for it. “Hey! Do you think you could give me a—”

The limo sped off. Serge hoisted the knapsack over his shoulder and stuck out his thumb. “Here comes somebody. Looks promising. The car’s pretty beat up, so they have a history of poor judgment like picking up hitchhikers….”

The driver of the brown Plymouth Duster with Ohio plates was distracted by Serge, leaning way too far into traffic with exaggerated hitchhiking gestures. Never saw the armadillo.

Bang.

The Duster’s driver looked in the rearview and watched the unfortunate animal tumble down the highway, coming to rest on the centerline with four legs in the air.

4

THE INSIDE OF the ’71 Buick Riviera smelled like grease-smoke. Coleman had stopped at an independent convenience store with Citgo gas pumps out front and a glass case inside heated with red light bulbs. A Styrofoam box of yesterday’s food now sat in Coleman’s lap: chicken wings, chicken gizzards, potato logs, egg rolls, mozzarella sticks, crab cakes. He sipped a plastic soda cup of beer.

“Look, a drawbridge! I love drawbridges. And there’s a waterspout! I love waterspouts.”

Coleman was watching the waterspout and didn’t see the lowering arm of the drawbridge that the Buick had just sailed under. The bridge tender quickly hit a button raising the second arm on the other side.

The gas gauge was on E when Coleman hit the Torch Keys. The needle had been pushing hard against the right post ever since the Seven-Mile Bridge, where an approach sign told motorists to check their fuel. Coleman checked it. Yep, on E.

He barely made it to the top of the Ramrod Key bridge before the engine cut out. Coleman had been here before. He threw the car in neutral and switched over to gravity power, coasting down the back side and saving money.

He saw a gas station sign in the palms a couple blocks up. Thirty miles an hour. Twenty-five. Twenty. Cars honking again, whipping around, giving him the finger. Coleman smiled and waved. Fifteen miles an hour, ten. Traffic stacking up. The gas sign getting bigger. He rocked forward in his seat, giving her body English. Allllllllmost there…

Coleman noticed a discarded couch on the side of the road next to the gas station, then something in the middle of the street, a dead armadillo. He hit his blinker and made an ultraslow-motion left turn around the carcass. The Buick reached the edge of the parking lot and Coleman jumped out with the car still rolling, grabbing the door and lip of the roof, jogging alongside the Buick the rest of the way to the pumps.

He started gassing. When the pump reached five dollars, Coleman’s eyes darted back and forth. He clicked the pump handle, resetting the price back to zero, and resumed pumping again until the tank was full.

Coleman went inside and began loading up. Red-hot pork rinds, red-hot pub fries, red-hot beef sticks, sixer of Natural Lite Ice. He spilled it all on the counter. The clerk stared at him.

“What?” said Coleman.

“I saw you. You reset the gas pump.”

“I did?”

“Coleman!”

“Must have hit it by accident.”

“You do it every time, and I just add it to your bill.”

Coleman got out a credit card.

“I can’t take your credit card anymore.”

“Just try it.”

The clerk swiped it through the machine. “Says to confiscate card.”

Coleman snatched it back. “I’ll pay cash.” He opened an empty wallet. “Where’d my money go?”

“Coleman!”

“You know I’m good for it. I live just around the corner. I’m always in here.”

The clerk glared.

“Thanks.” Coleman grabbed a souvenir coolie with the gas station’s name and threw it on the pile. “Can I get a bag?”

Coleman tossed his nonpurchases in the Buick. There were a number of beer empties on the floorboard. He wouldn’t have minded except he remembered the time one got stuck under the brake pedal. He gathered the cans and headed for the trash. He happened to look up at U.S. 1. He got an idea. He had seen it in a poster.

Coleman walked to the edge of the highway. Traffic zipped by at a steady clip. He waited for a break, then wobbled into the street and went to work.

He giggled his way back to the Buick and climbed in behind the wheel. The car pulled away from the pumps with a loud ker-chunk. Coleman drove down a side street and turned up the dirt driveway of his single-wide rental. The trailer was dark orange. Had been white, before the rust. He could afford it because the landlord didn’t want to lift a finger, and Coleman was one of the few people unbothered by rain buckets in the living room and kitchen.

It was a dump. But in the Keys, even dumps are magnificent. Coleman’s crib was tucked in a thick grove of coconut palms, sea grapes, jacaranda and a tree with brilliant yellow blooms. Vines crawled up the sides of the mobile home, and wildflowers sprouted along the front, blocking more empties in the crawl space.

Coleman got out of the Buick. He saw a gas pump handle and a short length of torn rubber hose sticking out the side of the car.

“How’d that get there?”

Coleman threw it in the trash and went inside.

TRAFFIC BEGAN SLOWING on U.S. 1. Soon it was backed up to Little Torch, Big Pine and all the way to Bahia Honda. Rubberneckers inched past the Chevron station on Ramrod Key. Others pulled off the road altogether and got out with cameras, snapping pictures of the armadillo on its back, holding a can of Budweiser to its mouth with rigid front claws.

The gas station clerk was too busy to notice. He’d hit the big red emergency shutoff button and placed fluorescent cones around the fuel slick, according to corporate training. He ran back inside and looked up the phone number for environmental recovery.

More vehicles pulled over. Business at the gas station picked up despite the closed pumps. College students jumped out of a Jeep Grand Cherokee and headed for the beverage cooler. A woman in a Hog’s Breath T-shirt stuck her head through the door. “Disposable cameras?”

The clerk was on the phone. He pointed at a Fuji display.

The students set cases of beer on the counter. “Bags of ice?”

The clerk pointed at the freezer next to them.

Then, the first of the wrecks, a nasty rear-ender next to a SLOW DOWN — ENDANGERED KEY DEER sign. Traffic was at a standstill by the time the students came out the door. So they walked the edge of the highway, took off their shirts and plopped down on the discarded sofa. The volume went up on a boom box. Van Halen’s “Beautiful Girls.” Sunscreen squirted onto chests.

COLEMAN WAS FAT and happy, sunk deep into his living room couch with bad springs that he had considered swapping for the one on the side of the road. He ate and drank and worked the remote control. Outside: sirens and helicopters. Coleman surfed past something on TV. He backed up a channel. Local newscast. Live feed from one of the overhead choppers.

“Hey, that’s my gas station.”

The airborne camera swept to the horizon, showing U.S. 1 at a standstill over endless islands and bridges. The picture panned back down to the filling station, where tiny college students drank and smoked on a little sofa. One of the youths tossed a cigarette over his shoulder.

Coleman’s head jerked back as a fireball exploded on TV, engulfing the Chevron pumps.

“Cool!”

THE GANG FROM the No Name Pub was down at the Bogie Channel bridge when the fireball cleared the trees in the distance.

“Wonder what that was,” said Sop Choppy, hair blowing as another helicopter took off from the bridge.

“Let’s get a drink,” said Bob.

They started walking back to the pub. A pink taxi came up the road from the opposite direction. The gang reached the bar as the cab pulled into the gravel parking lot. Serge got out of the backseat with his guitar case. He pulled cash from a pocket and leaned through the open passenger window. “Sure you won’t reconsider my offer? Ground-floor opportunity. I’m going to be the next Buffett.”

“Hey buddy, I got another fare….”

“Last chance,” said Serge, handing over money. “You wanna be a fuckin’ cabbie your whole life?…”

Serge and his guitar spun to the ground as the taxi took off.

COLEMAN SPENT THE rest of the morning taking on the shape of his couch. He had never watched one channel so long. People running all over the place at the gas station. A lone fire truck had somehow gotten through and foamed down the pumps. Coleman raised a can to his lips. Empty. He went to the fridge. Out. He pulled cushions off the sofa and collected coins.

Coleman walked three blocks to the charred gas pumps. Firemen folded hoses. Excited witnesses filled the parking lot, repeating stories for latecomers. Coleman went inside and grabbed another six from the cooler. He set it on the counter next to a windproof-lighter display showing a woman with a cigarette in a monsoon. Coleman fiddled with one of the lighters, broke the lid and set it back. He eventually realized nobody was coming. Out the front window, the clerk was giving a statement to a fire official with a clipboard. Coleman reached in his pocket and dumped coins on the glass counter. Pennies rolled off. He counted exact change for the sixer, including tax, which he knew from genetic memory.

Coleman pulled one of the cans off the ring and pushed open the front door. There were several clusters of people on the side of the road, each surrounding someone who said he “saw the whole thing.” Coleman walked up behind the nearest group, sticking his head between two people in back. “…Then this idiot drove off with the fuckin’ handle in his tank!…”

Coleman raised his face to the sky, chugging the rest of the beer. He popped another off the plastic ring and moseyed to the next group. The man in the middle was pointing at the road. “The armadillo committed suicide, an accident. I know all about this. They jump when startled. If they stayed put, they’d be fine, but instead they spring up and fracture their skulls under the cars. I’m from Texas.”

Coleman drifted away from the second gathering and approached the edge of U.S. 1. People with cameras formed a line on the opposite side of the road. One had a picture-taking cell phone, beaming the action to his tax attorney in Buffalo. Coleman walked out into the traffic jam, picked up the armadillo, stuck it under his arm and headed home. The people on the side of the road lowered their cameras and became depressed. Cars began moving.

A HANDFUL OF regulars stood outside the No Name Pub, watching Serge jump up and down on a guitar. He crammed the pieces in a garbage can and dusted his hands. “Enough of that sad chapter.”

They went inside through a screen door. The day wore on. The last helicopter took off from the bridge. Traffic got back to normal on U.S. 1. Time slid into early afternoon, the hot hours when everything stops in back reaches of the islands. It was quiet outside the No Name.

The silence was broken by gravel crunching under car tires that rolled past the pub.

A white Mercedes with tinted windows.