Torpedo Juice

Part Three

16

PSSST!

Yeah, you. Over here. Remember me?… Maybe if I take my shades off. See? It’s me, the narrator. Ex-narrator actually. I’m thinking of suing. I’m at the Slushie Hut. Not the one in Key West. The one in Marathon. They’ve got franchises all down the Keys now. Coleman turned me on to the place, told me to try the Torpedo Juice. Knew I shouldn’t have listened. So I need to hurry — I wanted to talk to you before the replacement narrator shows up. He’s not a bad kid, just a little on the green side. It’s totally unfair. Listen, I’m not the only one upset about how this is going. Think I’ve been screwed over? You should hear the guy sitting next to me. What’s your name again?

“Jack Buckley.”

Tell them what happened.

“I won this charity auction in Tampa. You know, to have my name used as a character in the book. Paid a bundle, but it was for the art museum. So I show up today like they told me, all ready to go. Then at the last second they say my part’s been cut.”

Classy outfit, ain’t it?

“I want my money back!”

Good luck.

“Who do I talk to?”

It won’t do any good. My advice is to let it go and move on.

“No, really. They can’t treat Jack Buckley like this! You hear me? I’m Jack Buckley!…”

Okay, fine, now stop talking. Have another Torpedo Juice…. See what I mean out there? This is the kind of organization we’re dealing with. But that’s not your problem; you just came here to have fun reading about the Keys. Which is what I wanted to talk to you about. Rampant development isn’t the only thing ruining this place. We’re also being overrun by world-class jerks. But you probably already got that picture. There are some more real quality people you’re about to meet. Actually you’ve already sort of met them. Remember some of the news reports? The used-car dealers who filled the airbags with sand? That really happened. Then there was the roofing company that tells every customer they need a whole new roof whether they do or not. That one’s not even a surprise. The new breed of Florida predators. Old folks, handicapped — doesn’t matter. There’s no out-of-bounds with these people. They come down to the Keys to celebrate their trail of misery…. What’s that you have there, bartender? Another Torpedo Juice? No, I didn’t order one. I was just waving my arm for emphasis. But since you already poured it… and you might as well get another one for my new friend here, Mr. Billingsly.

“Buckley!”

Whatever. Shut up. Those roofers I was telling you about? They’re here, right in this bar. This is where they enter the story. They’re the four guys down at the end in the seven-hundred-dollar yachting jackets. That’s right, those dolts who’ve been loud and obnoxious all night…. Hey, fellas! Yeah, that’s right, you over there! Nice way to treat people! Really nice code of living, you pieces of crap!

“You talking to us?”

You see any other assholes?

“Ignore him. He’s drunk.”

“No, I want to know what he said…. What did you say to us?”

I said you bite! What do you think about that? Huh? What are you going to do about it, Mr. Big Shitty-Roof-Job Fuck?

“That’s it!”

Good! Come on over here! I’m not one of your defenseless victims! I’ll kick your — Ow! Ah! Oooo! Ow! No, not the ribs! Ow! Shit! Ow!…”

“Are you his friend?”

“I’m Jack Buckley! I’m Ja—”

Punch.

A few days ago

AN UNMARKED NEWS truck rolled slowly through a fresh housing development west of Fort Lauderdale, built right up against a bermed canal that was the final encroachment barrier on the edge of the Everglades. Developers were looking for ways to jump it.

Spanking-new houses marched in tight formation down the right side of the road, all identical three-story hurricane fodder with circular drives, screened pools, minimum setbacks. The stately arches over the front doors were quick plywood forms with thin stucco. Politicians signed off on stormwater systems that couldn’t handle the runoff. The houses sold like crazy because the development had great shrubbery at the entrance.

This is today’s South Florida — inland sprawl, shiny, crime-free, exclusive.

Not exclusive enough.

The TV reporter huddled with his cameraman for last-second ambush choreography. The van’s side panel suddenly flew open and they jumped out commando-style, running for the house with the camera rolling, capturing that dramatic jiggling footage. Eyewitness 5 specialized in reporters asking bold questions of doors opened a crack. Then more questions of slammed doors. Sometimes they started asking questions of doors before people had time to answer, so the station would have stock footage in the can.

The man inside the house this morning didn’t have a care. He was on the couch reading the paper, digging his toes into thick white carpet. A high-definition TV was on a reality show where people trick each other. His wife sat in a loveseat on the distant side of the living room with a Parade magazine, “What People Earn.”

The man picked up the sports section. “The Marlins won again.”

“There’s a bus driver in Cleveland who makes fifty thousand dollars.”

“…This is Eyewitness Five correspondent Blaine Crease with another segment of ‘Consumer Bloodhound.’ We’re at the home of Troy Bradenton, owner of Troy’s Roofing Plus, asking the tough questions! Getting results! Just be glad we’re on — Your Side!…”

“Did you say something, dear?”

“No,” said the man. “I thought you said something.”

“Where’s that voice coming from? Sounds like someone’s on our front porch.”

“I didn’t hear the doorbell.”

“Neither did I.”

The doorbell finally rang. “What are you hiding from in there?…”

His wife put down her magazine. “I’ll get it.”

She opened the door on the chain.

The reporter was facing his cameraman. “Make my head bigger.”

“Yes?” said the woman. “Can I help you?”

The reporter turned around. “Oh, didn’t see you. Good morning.… Why won’t you answer our questions!…”

“Hold on a second.” She called back into the house. “Honey, it’s for you.”

“Who is it?” He turned a page to agate scores.

“Eyewitness Five again.”

“Let the dogs loose.”

“Okay.”

She smiled back through the crack. “Just be a moment.”

“Thank you,” said the reporter. She closed the door. “How much blood money did this house cost!…”

She walked through the living room and out the back door and opened a gate. She returned and sat down with her magazine.

The man grabbed the business section. The yelling on the front lawn eventually subsided. It went with the territory. He was Troy Bradenton, owner of Troy’s Roofing Plus. The Plus was the extra money you paid. Troy was one of the most respected, looked-up-to men in the local contracting industry, because he was rich.

Troy’s trucks made the rounds of the day-labor offices each morning, collecting winos to canvass suburban shopping centers with windshield flyers that shouted in big red letters: “Why throw away hundreds on needless roofing repairs? That little leak could be a modest shingle replacement. Don’t get ripped off! For honest, dependable work, call Troy today!” There was a cartoon of a happy homeowner counting a big wad of money.

Troy’s office was manned with phone answerers and salesmen whom Troy had personally trained with a slide show and a motto: “Every call is five thousand dollars!”

The Roofing Plus salesman went up on the prospective roofs and smoked or ate a Snickers, then came down and called out to the owner, “I need to show you something. Afraid it isn’t good.”

“What is it?”

The salesman scampered up the ladder in a hurry. “Take a look at this.”

“Do I have to climb up there?”

“Yes.”

The customer was now on the salesman’s turf, clinging to the rungs. Bolts were deliberately loosened so the ladders wobbled. The older the customer, the better.

“See these rusty nails? The whole thing’s shot. And the trusses are probably eaten.” He made notes on a pad. “I’m sorry, but the law requires me to inform the building department.”

No, it didn’t.

The salesman climbed down. “Luckily, we had a cancellation. A truck can be here this afternoon.”

Troy’s fortune swelled, and he became more respected. Even Eyewitness 5 couldn’t ruin it with their exposé footage. The next Friday was the last of the month. Sales bonus day. Tennis rackets, video cameras, water beds. The top three salesmen got the grand prize. Sailing trip to the Keys. Troy didn’t have a sailboat, so they all got sailing jackets and spent the weekend in the bars.

After announcing the winners, Troy packed up his black Jaguar, slipped into his blue and white sailing jacket with red piping and kissed his wife goodbye.

“Another great month,” said Troy.

“You earned it,” said Mrs. Bradenton. “Have fun.”

The Jag drove off.

17

A TV REPORTER stood on the edge of U.S. 1. He looked at the cameraman. “We ready?”

The cameraman pressed an eye to the rubber viewfinder. The reporter raised a microphone.

“Good morning. It’s another beautiful day in the Florida Keys for the twenty-third annual Seven-Mile Bridge Run….”

The camera panned across the sea of runners gathering at the eastern end of the bridge, which had been closed to traffic. A sheriff’s helicopter skimmed overhead. The camera swung back to the reporter. A ’71 Buick Riviera pulled up in the background. Serge and Coleman got out in shorts and T-shirts.

“I still don’t understand what we’re doing here,” said Coleman.

“I told you. Women respond to fitness. This is the first day of my big new working-out phase. I’ve decided to totally dedicate the rest of my life to running excellence.”

Coleman filled a sportster water bottle with two beers and began sipping through a Flex-Straw. “I heard you’re supposed to gradually ease into these new workout programs.”

“That’s for the sheep. The only correct way to do everything is dive right in the deep end.” Serge sat down and untied his sneakers, then retied them as tightly as he could.

Coleman put on knee and elbow pads. “You ever play sports before? I mean for real?”

“Was on the high school football team for part of a season, before I got kicked off.”

“What happened?”

“We were playing our big cross-city rival, and as the final seconds ticked off the clock, I dumped a cooler of Gatorade on our coach.”

“So what? I see that done all the time on TV.”

“We were losing by four touchdowns.”

A silver Infiniti pulled up next to them. A tall, handsome man got out wearing a gold silk warm-up suit. The man looked at Serge and Coleman and smirked. He took off the warm-ups to reveal matching silk shorts and an ultra-lightweight, breathable tank top. He leaned against the Infiniti and began a long menu of stretching exercises. Hamstrings, groin, calves, pulling his feet up behind him, twisting torso and neck.

Serge and Coleman had stopped talking and were now staring slack-jawed at the man like they were watching someone prepare shrunken heads. Then, just when they thought the protracted ritual was over, a whole new set of gyrations on another muscle group.

Coleman angled his head toward Serge. “Should we be stretching?”

“Absolutely not,” said Serge. “I’m naturally limber and you’re drinking beer, which is a form of stretching.” He looked down. “I can’t feel my feet.”

“Maybe your shoelaces are too tight.”

Serge sat on the ground.

The man finally completed his pre-race routine with a series of ankle and wrist bends. He reached back in his car and came out with a blood-pressure kit. He wrapped it around his left arm and timed himself on a stopwatch.

Serge rolled his eyes.

The man finished and smirked again at Serge and Coleman. Something under his breath that sounded like losers.

“Hey,” said Serge. “For your information, we’re going to win this race.”

The man laughed.

“And you know why we’re going to win? Because we don’t care about winning! That’s the big mistake you guys make….” Serge waved toward the thousands of runners near the starting line. “This thing today is about more than winning. It’s about something much bigger.”

“What’s that?”

“A souvenir T-shirt. You should see my collection.”

The man gave a final look of disdain and trotted off.

“We better get going,” said Serge. “It’s almost post time.”

The pair walked over to the assembling runners. “…Excuse me… excuse me…” Pushing their way through the pack, people running in place, thousands of independently bobbing heads. Men, women, children, a rainbow of brightly colored shirts, pieces of paper pinned to the fronts with four-digit numbers, except for the shirtless triathletes, who had numbers in grease pencil on shaved chests. “…Excuse me… excuse me…”

“Watch it!”

“Sorry,” said Coleman. He took a sip from his sportster bottle and tapped Serge on the shoulder. “Why do we have to be in the front row, anyway?”

“Because of my strategy to win this race. Most people make the mistake of trying to pace themselves. The key is to go all out from the starting gun and open up an insane lead, completely demoralizing the rest of the field, which will be flooded with confusing emotions of worthlessness and suicide. Then, before the end of the first mile, they’ll all stop running and go home.”

Serge and Coleman finally made the front row, wedging themselves between entrants who gave them dirty looks.

The official starter stood by the side of the bridge. “On your marks…”

The runners stopped jogging in place and leaned forward in anticipation. Except Serge. He was down on the pavement in a four-point sprinter’s stance, grinding the toes of his sneakers into the cement for traction.

“Get set…”

The starter raised his pistol.

Bang.

Serge took off running as hard as he could, making an intense, teeth-clenched face like James Caan in Brian’s Song. Soon, he was all alone with a giant lead, still running breakneck. After a hundred yards, he veered over to the side of the bridge and grabbed the railing. A thunder of footsteps passed behind him.

A few minutes later, Coleman walked up sipping his bottle and leaned over the railing next to Serge. “How’s the race going?”

“That’s enough running for today.”

Two hours later, the road was opened back up to traffic. A ’71 Buick Riviera crossed the bridge.

Thousands of runners milled around the post-race celebration area full of corporate sponsor tents. Paper cups of sports drinks covered folding tables. Big banners with the Nike swish, wireless sign-up booths. People formed lines at blue Porta-Johns. More lines of late-finishers snaked up to the race organizer’s table, where chest numbers were matched against printouts of official completion times. Then handshakes, certificates and souvenir T-shirts.

There was rustling down in the mangroves behind the Porta-Johns. Moaning and pleading.

“Oh, please! Stop! Dear God!…”

The owner of a silver Infiniti was pinned to the ground by Serge’s knees. Another punch in the face. “Gimme the fuckin’ T-shirt!”

18

Old Wooden Bridge Fishing Camp, cottage number five

SERGE STARED IN the bathroom mirror, admiring his torn and bloody race T-shirt.

Coleman stared in the open fridge. “Only bottled water.”

Serge returned to the sofa and opened a notebook.

Coleman plopped next to him and turned on the TV with the remote. The Style Channel, Fashion Emergency! “What’s the plan?”

“Now that I’m completely physically fit, we move on to Phase Two.” Serge flipped notebook pages to a freehand schematic. “I’ve chopped the islands up into grids, just like when they do population counts of the endangered deer. If Miss Right is within these quadrants, she won’t get away.”

Coleman hit the remote again. “You know, most of my married friends, it was a chance meeting. They were simply going about their lives, and one day true love just fell in their laps.”

“No time,” said Serge. “My clock is ticking.”

“What about a mail-order bride?”

“They’re always running up long-distance bills to Estonia.”

Coleman idly gazed around the inside of the simple cabin. “I didn’t know you were staying here. I didn’t even know it existed.”

“The Old Wooden Bridge? Absolutely! Couldn’t stay anywhere else! Just look at her!”

Coleman looked. “So?”

“So your paradigm’s all screwed up. The ideal motel isn’t someplace in walking distance of the strip-joint district and sports bars and flashing signs for Jell-O shots.”

“It’s not?”

“Check that beautiful water and sky. You need to get in harmony with life. Turn the TV off.”

“But without TV we’ll die.”

“Just try it.”

Coleman clicked the set off. He clicked it back on. “I see what you mean.”

“It’s like we just went to Mass.” Serge stood up. “Let’s rock….”

The ’71 Buick Riviera chugged slowly south on Big Pine Key. Serge was driving with binoculars to make sure they didn’t run over any deer.

“Can you drive better like that?” asked Coleman.

“I’m not sure. It’s too dark to see anything.”

Bang.

“What was that?” asked Serge.

“Used to be a mailbox.”

Serge tossed the binoculars in the backseat and turned in behind Eckerd drugs. The Buick parked at a small, lime green building. MONROE COUNTY BRANCH LIBRARY.

A dark van screeched around the corner and skidded up two slots down from the Buick. The side panel flew open.

“Uh-oh.”

“What is it?” asked Coleman.

Serge got out of the car. “Thought I told you guys to leave me alone!”

The cult people didn’t answer. They were all wearing identical custom T-shirts with a big picture of Serge’s face above a quotation: “I follow nobody.”

“You’ve got to stop tailing me,” said Serge. “I’m jumpy enough as it is.”

They sat on the ground and listened.

“Okay, okay. I give up. How about this: We set regular weekly meeting times at the community center when I’ll come by and give a talk. But the rest of the time you leave me alone. Deal?”

They nodded.

Serge and Coleman headed toward the library.

“You’re really going to go talk to them?” asked Coleman.

“Actually, there are some things I’ve been meaning to get off my chest,” said Serge. “An audience is an audience.”

They walked inside the library. Someone waved from the front desk.

“Hi, Serge!”

“Hi, Brenda!”

“That’s Brenda?” whispered Coleman, checking out the tall, curvy blonde with killer dimples and Cameron Diaz smile. “The one they were talking about in the pub who’s hot for you? She’s about the sexiest woman I’ve ever seen in my life!”

“Just a friend.” Serge started walking toward the desk.

“Holy cow!” said Brenda. “What happened to your shirt! It’s all torn and covered with blood.”

“Tough race.”

“You were in the big race today?” said Brenda.

“Was even leading for a while.”

“How’d you finish?”

“Pretty good, but those stupid race officials disqualified me.”

“Why?”

“I crossed the finish line in a Buick.”

Brenda laughed. She reached across the desk and put her hand on Serge’s. “You have a great sense of humor.”

“He’s getting married,” said Coleman.

Brenda lost her smile and stood upright, then hid her disappointment. “Congratulations. I’m happy for you. Who’s the lucky girl?”

Coleman explained.

Brenda laughed again. “You crack me up.”

“I’m ticking.”

She reached and squeezed his hand. “You’re not the marrying type. We’re two of a kind that way. I get off in a half hour. What do you say we grab a bite at Mama’s? It’s really romantic at night in the back garden.”

“Too busy,” said Serge. “You wouldn’t believe my workload. Injustice, disease, answering fan mail from Stephen Hawking…”

“If you change your mind, here’s my number.” She wrote on the back of an index card.

“Thanks.” Serge turned. “Coleman, where’d you get that six-pack? You can’t drink in the library!”

“He can if he’s with you,” said Brenda.

Serge wandered off for special collections.

Coleman came up from behind with his beer. “What on earth are you doing?”

“Looking something up.”

“No, I mean back there with Brenda. She wants you.”

“No, she doesn’t.”

“Are you blind? Didn’t you see how she was leaning? Touching your hand like that?”

Serge scanned bound volumes on a shelf.

“She even asked you out for a date. What more proof do you need?”

“That was only platonic.” Serge pulled down a volume and flipped through nineteenth-century deed filings. “I’m not going to punish a woman for being nice like the other men do.”

“What are you talking about?”

He replaced the volume and pulled down another. “A woman can’t just be courteous in today’s culture. She always has to worry about striking a perfect balance. If she’s too distant, she’s a bitch on wheels. If not, some guy starts driving by her house two hundred times a day.”

“I don’t understand you,” said Coleman. “You’re conducting this big search, and Brenda’s right under your nose.”

“Not my type.” Serge found an entry in the deed book and marked it with Brenda’s index card. “You wouldn’t know it to look at her, but she’s a real party animal.” He stuck the volume under his arm and headed for the Xerox. “Appears ultimately conventional in the library setting, reserved clothes and demeanor. But run into her on the weekend and all bets are off. Hangs out at the clothing-optional Atlantic Shores and gets absolutely wasted. She’s got a clit ring, which she’s always losing, along with her cell phone and purse…. Coleman, where’d you go?”

Coleman was grabbing a bookcase for equilibrium. “Jesus, Serge. If you don’t want her, I do.”

“She’d rip you apart.”

“Hopefully.”

Serge raised the Xerox’s cover and flattened the deed book on the glass.

Coleman finished his beer and threw it in the trash. He pulled another off the plastic ring. “Ever Xerox your balls?”

“Let me think a second,” said Serge. “Uh… no.”

He turned the deed book over and reached in his pocket. “I’m out of change.”

“I’ll be at the computers,” said Coleman.

Serge went to the research desk and pulled a one from his wallet. “Excuse me…”

He hadn’t noticed her before. The demure little woman. Thick glasses, hair pulled back, wrong clothes buttoned to the neck.

“What is it?” — not looking up from the novel she was reading.

“Uh… Xerox… dollar…”

She made change with one hand, never taking her eyes off the book.

Serge floated back across the library to the main desk, little cartoon hearts in a conga line around his head.

“Brenda…”

“Hellllloooo there, stranger.” She leaned practically close enough to kiss.

“Who’s that over there?”

Brenda tilted her head to look around Serge’s. “Molly? She’s new. Just started this week.”

“What do you know about her?”

“As much as you.”

“Think she’d go out with me?”

Brenda involuntarily giggled. She covered her mouth. “I’m sorry. I just don’t see the two of you…”

“She’s the one.”

Brenda covered her mouth again.

“No, really. I think she’s crazy about me.”

Brenda composed herself. “Did she even look at you?”

“Not exactly.”

“She doesn’t look at anyone. Barely talks.”

“I sense something. A soul-mate connection.”

Coleman came over from the computers. “They blocked the porn on those things.”

Brenda pointed across the room. “Coleman, what do you think of her?”

“Who? That goofy chick?”

“Serge thinks he’s found his soul mate.”

“I’m going to ask her out.”

Brenda and Coleman watched Serge stiffly approach the reference desk. Coleman popped another beer. Brenda checked her watch. Ten minutes till closing. “Can I have one of those?”

It was a short, one-sided conversation on the other side of the room. Molly kept reading her book. The discussion ended without her ever making eye contact. Serge came back to the front desk.

They were prepared to console him.

“She said yes.”

“You’re kidding,” said Brenda.

“I pick her up Saturday at seven.”

Serge and Coleman left the library and headed toward the Buick. Coleman stopped and whispered something to Serge.

Brenda flicked off the lights and went to lock up the front. Serge and Coleman were waiting outside. She opened one of the doors. “Yes?”

“Coleman has something he’d like to ask.” Serge poked him in the ribs.

Brenda waited.

Coleman looked at the ground and played with his belt buckle. “I was sort of wondering if you maybe, you know, might want to go on kind of a” — his voice dropped to inaudible — “double date?”

“I couldn’t hear you,” said Brenda.

“He wants to double-date,” said Serge.

Brenda suppressed the gag reflex. Then she thought quickly. It was one step closer to Serge. “Sure.”

“Really?” said Coleman. “I mean, great! Pick you up at seven!”

19

THIS IS EYEWITNESS FIVE correspondent Maria Rojas outside the Miami courthouse, where we’ve just received word that the jury has reached a verdict in the infamous airbag-murder case…”

The courtroom was hushed. The jury foreman stood.

“As to the single count of negligent homicide in the first degree, we find the defendants… not guilty.”

Yahoo!

People jumped up from the defense table. Hugs and high-fives. Prosecutors quietly filled briefcases with papers. Someone jumped up in the audience. “You call this justice!” Bailiffs grabbed the man, the father of the Margate woman who hit a retaining wall on I-95 and went headfirst into the undeployed airbag full of sand.

Pristine Used Motors made a killing fixing up totaled cars and not telling. They bought the wrecks at auction. Head-ons, T-bones, cars sheared in two. Sometimes they welded together halves of different cars. The junks were practically free, the bodywork done by underpaid wizards with no green cards. They replaced grills, straightened fenders, somehow got them running and, most crucial of all, a nice wash and wax. Out on the lot they went, under the balloons and strings of flapping pennants, big orange numbers on the windshields: $3999!

One of the biggest profit zones was the airbags that had opened in the wrecks and were required by law to be replaced. But that was hundreds of dollars. Sand was free. Other dealerships moved more cars, but Pristine Used Motors was all about the margin. The owners had become quite wealthy and now drove fancy luxury vehicles purchased from reputable dealers because they wanted to make sure the airbags worked.

The odds began to hit. One fatal head-on, then a second, paramedics peeling open cars with hydraulic jaws. Prosecutors took it to the grand jury. The owners were a step ahead. They had compartmentalized the operation, assigning only one mechanic to airbag duty in a locked garage after hours. Then, every other month, an anonymous tip to immigration, and the mechanics were somewhere in Tijuana when the D.A. came looking for witnesses.

The defense: Hey, we’re as outraged as you are! The mechanics were working on commission and did this without our knowledge. They skated on the first case. Prosecutors weren’t allowed to introduce the acquittal at the second.

The postverdict celebration spilled down the courthouse steps, where a red BMW full of scuba gear was waiting at the curb. The three defendants had decided in advance that they were going to let off some serious steam if they got out of this one. They jogged to the street and piled in the car.

A reporter ran after them with a microphone.

“Are you guilty anyway?…”

The BMW headed south.

THE ’71 BUICK RIVIERA neared the eastern end of the Seven-Mile Bridge. It had a newly installed trailer hitch.

Coleman fired a doobie. “Where are we going?”

“Have to start preparing for the wedding.”

“You mean the date.”

“That’s just a formality,” said Serge. “We’re meant to be together.”

“Aren’t you getting ahead of yourself?”

“That’s the best place. I’m going to ask her to marry me.”

Coleman took a big hit. “Can’t believe I’m actually going on a date tomorrow.”

“Weddings are incredibly complicated,” said Serge. “A million arrangements to be made. That’s why you have to get a huge jump.”

“I thought the women took care of everything.”

“Are you kidding? The guy has all kinds of responsibilities leading up to the big day.”

“Like what?”

“Like you need to hurry up and buy all the shit your wife would never let you get after you’re married. I’ve always wanted an airboat.”

“Hey, look!” said Coleman. “A waterspout!”

“I see it,” said Serge. “Out by the Sombrero Key light. It’s a big one.”

“Whenever I spot one, I feel special.”

“Me, too,” said Serge. “I’m going to make a wish.”

“You can’t make a wish on a waterspout. Only shooting stars and magic wells.”

“That’s just politics.”

“The spout’s gone,” said Coleman. He took a big hit. “Now I’m bored.”

“Let’s look for irony.”

“Okay.” Coleman took another hit. “Does something I already saw count?”

“If it’s worthy.”

“Then I’m calling it. That store back on Stock Island. Paradise Guns and Ammo.” Coleman licked two fingers on his right hand and slapped Serge hard on the forearm.

“Ow,” said Serge. “My turn. Let’s see…. Over there. That Suburban with the PROTECT THE MANATEES specialty license plate.”

“What about it?”

“It also has a Florida Cattlemen’s bumper sticker: EAT MORE BEEF.”

“So?”

Serge licked two fingers. “Save the seacows, fuck the land cows.” Slap.

“Ow.”

“Here’s Pigeon Key coming up.” Serge pointed north at the remains of the old Seven-Mile Bridge running parallel to the new span. “That gap is where they blew it up in True Lies, just before Schwarzenegger reached down from the helicopter and pulled Jamie Lee Curtis out the sunroof of a limo plummeting into the sea. And over there’s where the van transporting a drug smuggler crashed through the railing in James Bond’s Licence to Kill. In that same movie, then-Florida Governor Bob Martinez makes a two-second Hitchcock cameo as a short-sleeve guard when Timothy Dalton gets out of his cab at Key West International…. Coleman? You all right?…”

Coleman was giggling. “Pussy Galore…”

“Different movie. Low-water mark of Bondian humor.”

Coleman couldn’t control his snickers. “It’s just too funny. Know what I mean? How do they ever think up that stuff? See, her first name is, you know, and like her last name… Zow! Good weed!…”

The Buick neared the end of the bridge and the shore of Vaca Key.

“What’s that new building over there?” said Serge.

“Which one?”

“That big one on the shore. When did they start putting it up?”

“Looks like it’s already up.” A swarm of workers in white caps painted the outside with rollers.

“It’s a monstrosity,” said Serge. “It’ll wreck my views from the Seven-Mile.”

They came off the bridge. The Buick pulled into a strip mall on U.S. 1 and parked in front of Marathon Discount Books.

Ting-a-ling.

“Hi, Serge.”

“Hi, Charley. You got the new Keys history book in? That Viele guy?”

“Right in front of you.”

“Coleman, come here.”

“What?”

He swept an arm over the local-interest section. History, fishing, zoology, cooking, oversized pictorials — all faced out. “Charley values tradition. Let’s go to the bathroom.”

Charley watched skeptically as they walked to the back of the store, squeezed into the tiny, one-person rest room and closed the door.

They came back out. “Cool,” said Coleman. “Autographed literary posters while you take a leak.”

“The chains don’t understand anything.”

Charley rang up Serge’s book. “Twenty-six, fifty-seven.”

Serge tapped the counter. “Listen, Charley, do you think maybe you could put it on the tab?”

“Serge!”

“Charley!”

“No way! I was going to talk to you about that. You still haven’t paid from last time.”

“The only reason I didn’t pay was because that motel took all my money.”

“Why’d they do that?”

“I stayed there.”

“That’s how it works.”

“No, I mean they ripped me off. All the cottages were taken so they gave me the last converted unit over the office. Except after they closed the office and turned off the AC downstairs, all the heat rose and the little window unit couldn’t handle the load. It turned into a furnace. I called the after-hours number, but they refused to listen.”

“Serge, you know the Keys. You never rent the converted unit over the office.”

“I want to believe in people.”

“Take the book. It’s too much aggravation.”

“You sure?”

“I’m sure I won’t get paid.”

“What about that aerial photography book. I’ve also kind of had my eye on—”

“Serge!”

“Okay, just this one. I’m boning up on my pioneer research. I built a kiln the other day.”

“Ceramics?”

“No, the old charcoal kind they used to have in the back country.”

“Those were huge,” said Charley. “Where’d you build it?”

“In my mind.” Serge held up the new book. “I plan to reenact the life of Happy Jack, tracing the rum route from Sugarloaf to the Old Customs House that he and his merry band used to navigate in handmade sailboats. This book will help me faithfully re-create the experience down to the last primitive detail.”

“But the route took days, even in good weather.”

“That’s why I’m getting an airboat.” Serge casually flipped through his new history book. “What’s with that humongous building going up on the north end?”

“The house?” said Charley.

“That’s a house? I thought it was a new resort or sportsman mega-outlet.”

“Donald Greely’s new place.”

“That’s Greely’s place?” said Serge. “I heard he was building, just didn’t know where.”

“Who’s Greely?” said Coleman.

“You’ve never heard of Donald Greely?” said Serge.

Coleman shrugged and picked up a mini-booklight, flicking it on and off.

“You don’t remember all those news stories about Global-Con? The telecom-energy conglomerate that cooked the books and wiped out all those retirement accounts?”

“No.” The booklight stopped working. Coleman put it back. “Must have been watching another channel.”

Charley sat down in a chair behind the counter and leaned back with his hands behind his head. “Heard it cost twenty million. Put the yacht in his lawyer’s name and parked it out back.”

“But how’d he get clearance for that kind of construction?” said Serge.

“Bribes. But they couldn’t prove anything. Even had people come in at night and cut down mangroves…. Serge, your face is all red….”

THE BUICK PULLED away from the bookstore and continued east on U.S. 1.

Coleman had his hand out the passenger window, flying up and down in the wind. “Where to now?”

“Get my airboat.”

“I didn’t know they had any airboat places down here.” Coleman lit the roach he’d left in the ashtray. “Just on the mainland by the swamp.”

“DEA seizure auction in Islamorada. Saw my boat on the Internet.”

“What are you doing now?”

Serge was looking ahead and squinted hard, stiffening the muscles in his arms. “Concentrating on life so it doesn’t pass me by. From time to time I force myself to strip away all rationalization and gaze into the naked essence of existence. This is my truth stare.”

Coleman exhaled smoke out the window. “I have my own truth stare. I look in the opposite direction and hope it goes away.”

“Aaahhhhh!!!”

Coleman jumped. He picked his roach up off the floor. “What happened?”

“Found myself in the utter horror at the moment of birth. Let me tell you, it was no picnic…. Lower the roach — here comes a sheriff’s car.”

The Buick passed a green-and-white cruiser heading the other way. Deputy Gus was behind the wheel, popping Ibuprofen and chasing with coffee.

“Gonna eat your stomach lining,” said Walter.

Gus scanned the side of the road for cars from the all-points bulletins.

“Why won’t you tell me how the Serpico nickname started?” said Walter.

“There’s not much to tell.”

“I’ll help you look for cars if you tell me the story.”

“You should be looking anyway. It’s your job.”

“Why won’t you tell me? I’ve heard it from the other guys.”

“Then you don’t need me to repeat it.”

“How about just the embarrassing parts?”

GUS WAS A twenty-six-year-old rookie in 1985. Some officers get lucky and stumble over big cases. Gus had one crash into him — literally. Happened three A.M., a Saturday morning. Gus sat parked in his cruiser outside Overseas Liquors. The dome light was on. Gus filled out a report. The suspects were in the backseat on the other side of the mesh screen. Two of them, that is. The other six had already been carted away by backup. Gus nabbed them all single-handed — the “Overseas Eight,” as they became known in law-enforcement circles.

Overseas Liquors has the coolest 1950s neon signs in all the Keys. Red and aqua. It also has one of the few basements, if you want to call it that. Four feet deep, hewn into the limestone; you have to stoop over the whole time. The access door is an unassuming square panel on the bottom of the wall behind the cash register that looks more like a cabinet. They keep the liquor stock down there. Once upon a time, they also used to rent cheap rooms in the back of the bar over the basement. If you go in the basement today, there’s a diamond-shaped grid of bare alarm wires under the ceiling boards. The reason is the Overseas Eight.

Gus was the nearest deputy when the call came in. He found the store’s front door unlocked. His flashlight beam worked its way along a shelf of vodka bottles, then across the room to the dust-covered liqueurs. Nothing. Until he looked over the counter. A facedown body hung halfway through the basement access. He pulled his service revolver and crept around the counter. He got down on one knee. The flashlight and pistol were together in his hands to form a single unit. He shined over the body and through the opening into the basement.

The dispatchers told Gus to slow down; they couldn’t understand him. He was hyperventilating. “…Seven bodies. Maybe eight.”

Squad cars arrived. And kept arriving, until the whole shift was there. The laughter wouldn’t quit as the last of the passed-out burglars was dragged from the building. One of the tenants in the back of the store had sawed through the floor. Burglary wasn’t intended. He didn’t even know there was a basement. Sometimes he just started drinking and liked to saw stuff. Word of the discovery quickly spread on the bum telegraph. Dark figures converged from all directions. At its peak, twenty-nine people were crammed in that basement. Most grabbed as many bottles as they could and fled, but eight decided to party on the spot, like rats finding tasty poison in a fake cheese wedge.

Gus knew he’d never hear the end of it. That’s why he didn’t mind staying behind in the parking lot to start the report. He flicked on the dome light and scribbled to get a difficult pen to write. That’s when the Camaro doing a hundred on U.S. 1 flew through the guard rail. It scattered a row of news boxes and clipped the nose of Gus’s cruiser before wrapping itself around a cement light base. Gus saw the ejected driver, and jumped from the cruiser. His feet went out from under him and he slammed to the ground, sending up a fine white cloud. Gus stood and dusted himself.

The parking lot was full of patrol cars again. This time the day-shift commander was called in from home. Then an evidence team from Key Largo and federal agents with latex gloves, who collected ruptured cocaine packs that had spilled from the Camaro’s blown tires.

“Of all the dumb-ass luck!”

“That idiot’s going to get a drawer full of commendations for sure!”

He did. Bunches of them. Plaques and ribbons and shiny medals, one for each politician who got to shake Gus’s hand in a separate ceremony for the newspaper photographers. Not that Gus’s nonactions were particularly heroic, but his colleagues knew what the rookie didn’t. Funding for the War on Drugs was based on volume of press clippings. Thanks to Gus, Monroe County shot up forty-seven budget positions.

After all the headlines, Gus became too valuable for patrol duty. They made him the department’s token liaison with the multiagency state and federal task force fighting the war on South Florida’s flank. That way they could have a local face at the press conferences to ensure all the hometown media ran the story on the great work of the multiagency state and federal task force.

And darned if Gus didn’t do it again!

Everyone was thinking cocaine back then, watching for big, rusty foreign-flagged mother ships beyond territorial limits offloading to supercharged go-boats. Profits were so insane that the kingpins began sending shotgun waves of vessels at the overwhelmed Coast Guard. At least a couple had to make it. Then word came. A Liberian freighter expected off Fort Lauderdale any day now. Time to ship Gus to Key West.

He was assigned a low-probability scag investigation on the north end of White Street. This was before heroin came back. If he got lucky, he might collar a dime-bag peddler.

Gus tried all kinds of disguises but nothing worked. Sometimes suspects would smile and wave at Gus as he sat in his car outside a motel. Another time a bum walked up as Gus reclined on a bench, dressed like a tourist.

“You’re a cop, aren’t you?”

“No.”

“The people you want are on the other side of the motel. Room fourteen.”

“How do you know that?”

The bum opened a thrown-away paper sack and popped half a conch fritter in his mouth. “I’m homeless, not stupid.”

The next day, a bum waved flies off a half-eaten crab cake. A red Maserati pulled up to the motel. A man in khaki slacks went in room fourteen. He came out with a pillow.

“I’ll take that.”

The man turned and noticed the bum for the first time. He’d never seen one before with a gun and a gold badge hanging around his neck.

Just like that. Nine ounces of heroin. Another round of commendations and photo ops. The “Serpico” business started.

Gus was promoted to the Narcotics Abatement & Deterrence Squad, an elite commando unit that went in with black uniforms, face paint and flash-bang grenades. He was the lead agent through the back door of a Mexican restaurant moving brown tar in south Miami. Gus’s body armor had been rated to stop most tactical rounds. It didn’t do as well when they tipped four hundred pounds of metal kitchen shelves on you. In the movies, he would have flung the racks aside and yelled, “You’re under arrest!” In reality, this is what Gus said: “Ow, my back.”

The publicity photos got even wider play because they were from the hero’s hospital bed. Rehabilitation was slow and incomplete. They offered Gus a desk job, but that would have meant… a desk job. He might as well sell shoes. Gus eagerly accepted a demotion back to deputy and took an assignment in one of the Keys’ smaller substations. Years went by and pounds went on. Instead of commendations, his personnel file swelled with reminders about the department’s fitness guidelines. Gus never complained.

If only he could make another big case.

20

A ’71 BUICK RIVIERA crossed the bridge to Upper Matecumbe and hit backed-up traffic. People in orange vests waved them into a field used for ad hoc parking.

Serge and Coleman walked across the grass until they came to a large array of flea-market tables. Stereos, computers, TVs, Japanese cameras, German binoculars, video equipment, night-vision goggles, parabolic directional eavesdropping microphones.

“I love DEA seizure auctions!” said Serge. “Coleman, where are you?…”

“I’m tired of walking,” said Coleman, trying out a personal treadmill until Serge yanked him off. The tables ended, giving way to the big stuff in the back of the field near the water. Motorcycles, sports cars, boats.

Serge stopped and put a hand over his chest. “She’s beautiful!”

There it was, like a mirage, radiating shafts of energy. Serge quietly approached and stroked it like a newborn. An eighteen-foot Diamondback fuel-injected 454 horse crate with the Stinger 2.09:1 gear reduction. “I’ve wanted one of these ever since 1967!”

“But you were just a kid,” said Coleman.

“That’s when Gentle Ben first aired on CBS. The coolest show: game warden tooling around the Everglades in an airboat, his son rescuing a cub from the evil hunter Fog Hanson, the bear growing into a lovable giant that helps the family out of complex situations.”

Someone stepped up next to Serge. A squat older gentleman with a cattle rancher’s hat, bolo tie and stubby cigar that he was more chewing than smoking.

“That’s my airboat!”

“It is?” said Serge.

“Gonna be. I scare away the others with my bold initial bids. Leave ’em pissin’ in their boots.”

“No kidding?” said Serge. “I scare ’em away with my ridiculously tiny bids.” He made a big grin.

The man studied Serge with tight eyes, then broke out laughing and slapped him on the shoulder. “I like you, boy!”

They looked at the airboat again.

“Mighty fine,” said the man.

“Yes, she is,” said Serge.

“I love the War on Drugs!” said the man. “Get more great shit since the forfeiture laws. They can take anything they want, not even due process.”

“Of course there’s due process,” said Serge. “This is America.”

“What are you, for drugs?” said the man. “Suppose you want proof, too.”

“Proof’s bad?”

“We’re talkin’ drugs, boy!”

Serge smacked a fist into his other hand. “Goddam the pusher-man!”

“ACLU technicalities!” The man removed his cigar and spit something on the ground. “But we’ve fixed proof. Here’s your new proof: A dog barks. Then they take whatever they want.”

“Barks?”

“This one family was ridin’ through Pasco County, and they had like ten thousand in cash when they got pulled over for a busted taillight, which may have been a busted taillight or maybe they looked a little too brown. Anyway, car’s clean as a whistle. So they bring the German shepherd over and he barks at the money, which may have been cocaine residue or maybe he had heart worms. Didn’t matter. ‘Well, we’re just gonna have to take that drug money away from you folks.’ Then they let ’em go. In the old days, that kind of arrangement would be called a bribe. Now it’s forfeiture. And if they want their money back, they have to hire an attorney because the law says the burden’s on them.”

“Doesn’t seem fair,” said Serge.

The man started laughing and slapped Serge on the shoulder again. “It ain’t!… Ha ha ha ha…”

Serge: “Ha ha ha ha…”

“Hoo.” The man pulled out a hanky and dabbed his eyes. “You ain’t thinkin’ of bidding against me, are you?”

“Lookin’ like I’m fixin’ to get a hankerin’ to.”

A final slap. “I like you, boy.” He walked away with his handkerchief.

Serge and Coleman headed over to the folding chairs in front of a small stage. They grabbed seats in the first row. Serge fanned himself with bid paddle number 142.

It was a furious auction, heated bidding, everything selling fast. Corvette, Indian motorcycle, forty-foot Scarab.

Coleman looked over his shoulder at the man in the cattle hat three rows back. “How much money you got?”

“Hundred dollars,” said Serge.

“That’s all?”

“It’ll be plenty.”

The auctioneer moved on to item thirty-two. “A beautiful Diamondback airboat. Only fifty hours on the engine. Who’d like to start the bidding?”

“Ooooo, me, me, me, me!” Bid paddle 142 waved frantically. “I bid a big one!”

“A thousand dollars?”

“A hundred,” said Serge.

“Sir, this is a very expensive boat.”

“That’s my bid.”

The auctioneer shrugged. “The bid is one hundred dollars.”

Booming laughter from the rear. Another bid paddle went up over a cattle hat. “Fifteen-thousand!”

The crowd gasped. Intimidated bidders lowered their paddles.

“…Going once, going twice, sold for fifteen thousand dollars!”

“Looks like you lost,” said Coleman.

“Got any more weed?”

“I thought you didn’t do drugs.”

“I don’t.”

Serge and Coleman hung around to the bitter end. Workers folded chairs and unplugged microphones. Winners paid with guaranteed checks.

A man in a cattle hat hung out the driver’s window of a Bronco, backing up to an airboat.

“Congratulations!” said Serge. “Let me give you a hand hitching that.”

“Mighty neighborly of ya.”

Serge set the clasp and hooked the chains. He waved toward the driver’s mirror. “You’re all set!”

Then Serge walked up next to a DEA agent in dark sunglasses. He leaned his head sideways and whispered.

The Bronco started pulling out of the lot toward U.S. 1.

“Freeze!” yelled the agent. “Turn the engine off and step out of the vehicle!”

“What in cotton-pickin’—”

They brought the dogs over.

Barking.

The agent reached in the airboat. “What’s this?” He held up a joint.

“That ain’t mine!”

“Unhitch it,” said the agent.

“I just bought it!”

“It’s government property now.”

“Excuse me,” Serge said to the agent. “You haven’t cashed his check yet or filed the title papers with the state.”

“So?”

“So under Florida law ownership hasn’t officially transferred. It never stopped being government property.”

“What’s your point?”

Serge raised paddle number 142 and smiled. “I was the next highest bidder. I’d like my boat now, please.”

“Who’s robbin’ this train?” yelled the man in the cattle hat. “You sumbitches give him that fuckin’ airboat, I’m writin’ my congressman!…”

The agent watched calmly from behind dark glasses. The noisy little dust devil in a cattle hat stomped in an angry circle. “I’ll have your badges!…”

The agent never moved. He spoke out of the side of his mouth to a colleague: “Give him the boat.”

“Thanks!” said Serge.

“Goddammit!” The man threw his hat on the ground. “You know who you’re trying to screw? You’re just a bunch of stupid fuckin’ hired thugs!…”

Serge tapped the agent on the shoulder. “I think you’re overlooking something.”

“What’s that?”

“While the airboat remained government property, it was hitched to the Bronco when the narcotics were found, which means under the forfeiture law the truck had become part of the smuggling continuum.”

The agent began nodding. “I wouldn’t mind driving one of those.”

The man in the cattle hat stumbled backward against the truck and spread his arms like a human shield. “No! Not the Bronco!”

“WOOOOOOO-HOOOOOOOO!”

The gang from the No Name Pub was up on the Bogie Channel bridge. An airboat raced toward them.

It zipped under the bridge. They ran across the road to the opposite rail as Serge came flying out.

“Yaba-daba-doooooooo!”

“…You should have been there,” said Coleman, leaning against the bridge railing. “It was priceless. They had to pry the Bronco’s keys out of the guy’s hands….”

The airboat made a tight turn in the middle of the pass, sending up a sheet of water. It whizzed back under the bridge.

Everyone ran across the road again. The airboat zoomed down the channel toward Spanish Harbor, Serge’s shouts becoming mere peeps in the distance.

“He sure seems happy,” said Sop Choppy. “Look at him go.”

Serge turned her around one last time near the viaduct and came back, idling through the man-made inlet at the fish camp. The gang trotted down the embankment for a better look. Jerry the bartender ran a hand along the polished wooden propeller with steel tips. “I wish I had an airboat like this.”

“Why’s that?” Serge hitched the Diamondback to the trailer line.

“Gentle Ben,” said the bartender. “Ever since I was a kid…”

Serge reached in his pocket. He worked a key off his chain and tossed it to the bartender.

“What’s this?” asked Jerry, catching it against his shirt.

“Spare key. Take it whenever you want.”

“I couldn’t—”

Serge started cranking the boat onto the trailer. “Why not?”

“Because it’s yours.”

“Jerry, I like you.”

“You do?”

“I’m not into possessions, just moments. And anyone who’s into Gentle Ben deserves a moment.”

“You sure?”

“Take her anytime.” Serge threaded the trailer straps. “Don’t even bother to ask. Just don’t wreck it.”

“All right,” said the bartender. “But I have to do something to repay you.”

“No, you don’t.”

“Yes, I do. Where are you going to keep it?”

“I don’t know. Probably parked at Coleman’s trailer.”

“Don’t do that,” said Jerry. “It’s a hassle every time you want to go out. You need to keep it near the water.”

“I don’t have a place like that.”

“I do. Over on No Name Key. Bought a parcel way back. Was going to build but waited too long and construction went out of sight with the freight charges. I camp there sometimes. It’s got this break in the mangroves that I smoothed out to launch my skiff. Not a proper ramp, but serviceable.”

Serge pulled a strap hard. “It’s a deal.”

“Why don’t we go out there now?”

Serge and Jerry drove off. They tied up the airboat on the edge of the flats and returned to the No Name Pub, where the petite woman in sunglasses was sitting alone again at a table in back.

A man walked over and grabbed the chair across from her.

“I got your call,” said Anna. “What made you change your mind?”

“Did some thinking.”

“You’re really going to help me kill him?”

“I liked your brother a lot. This has to stop.”

“You got an idea?”

“A couple. But I’m going to need a little time to sort this out. Until then we can’t be seen together.”

“What do I do?”

“Don’t do anything. Just stay in your cottage until I call. And keep that Trans Am hidden.”

21

Friday night, six o’clock

A WHITE JAGUAR WITH a blue tag hanging from the rearview pulled into a handicapped slot in the lower Keys. Four men in yachting jackets got out.

“Here we are,” said Troy Bradenton, looking up at a big wooden sign with words written in nautical rope. LOBSTER TOWN.

Troy and the roofing salesmen could have found their way to the bar blindfolded.

The lounge at Lobster Town was their favorite place in all the Keys. Heavily lacquered wood with brass portholes peering into saltwater aquariums full of coral and clownfish. It was also the annex of a great restaurant, where they could order food over to the drinking side and not miss the babe action. Only thing missing was the babes. Wouldn’t have made any difference if they were around. Troy and the boys had what might be termed an indelicate touch. They decided if their pickup lines weren’t going to work, then they really weren’t going to work. The construction site principle: Next best thing to scoring was impressing the other guys with how rude you could be.

The beer came in frosty mugs and soon the food. A waitress set up a folding stand behind their stools. It held a big round tray ready to collapse under their orders. Giant lobster tails with all the fixin’s! They strapped on the bibs, grabbed nutcrackers and tiny forks, and went at it like pigs with thumbs. “Can we have more bread?”

Lemon mist and shell splinters filled the air. The waitress returned with an extra loaf.

“You have such lovely blond hair,” said Troy. “Does the rug match the curtains?”

The waitress left quickly. The gang cracked up.

“Hey, guys,” yelled the bartender. “Want another round? Happy hour’s almost over.”

Troy looked at the ship’s clock over the bar. Two minutes till seven. “Set ’em up!”

Sugarloaf Key Community Center

ONE OF THE classrooms was full of people in Serge T-shirts. But where was Serge? This was the first scheduled meeting he’d called since they had accosted him outside the library. They quietly stared at the clock over the chalkboard. Two minutes till seven.

They heard running footsteps out in the hall. The door burst open and Serge marched to the front of the room. He dove right in, pacing and gesticulating, lost in thought like a field-goal kicker who blocks out the crowd. “…And then Neo took the red pill so he could see the truth. He was the Chosen One, ready to save the city of Zion….”

A man in the front row raised his hand. “So we should smash this Matrix?”

Others nodded. “Smash the Matrix!” “Smash the Matrix!”

“What are you talking about?” said Serge.

“The army of Morpheus. We’re ready to join!”

“Smash the Matrix!”

“No,” said Serge. “It’s just a movie. I told you that at the beginning. We’re here to talk about my favorite flicks.”

“Oh, that was a movie.”

“Weren’t you listening?” said Serge. “Now I want to discuss the oeuvre of Paddy Chayefsky. Network is one of the all-time greats, number sixty-six on the American Film Institute List….”

A hand went up. “We should smash this Network?”

“Smash the Network!” “Smash the Network!…”

Serge banged his forehead on the blackboard. He spun around. “Everyone, shut the hell up!”

The room stopped. All eyes on Serge. “That’s better.” He began pacing again. “You want a Matrix? Okay, I’ll give you a Matrix. There’s an elaborate world of illusion out there designed to control all facets of our daily lives, but it’s not made of computer codes. It’s made of words….”

They glanced at each other with concern.

“It’s the calculated packaging of your entire life, a twenty-four-hour reality manipulation on a hundred channels. Cell phone minutes that set you free, instant stuffing that makes your thankless family sit up and take notice, deodorant soap that turns a shower into a life-affirming epiphany… Enough already! I say, Kill the advertisers!”

“Kill the advertisers!” “Kill the advertisers!”

“Are you nuts?” said Serge. “It’s just advertising. If you can’t see that, you’re already toast. In fact, I want to be manipulated. If I have to watch a commercial, at least don’t give me the same dreary heartbreak I see every day on the street. Briefly balm me with cheerful, slow-motion footage of an orange slice spraying the air with droplets of that citrus goodness, and I’m ready to face another day!… No, the real problem is lawyers. Scum-sucking, double-talking, soul-selling leeches with legs. Everything that comes out of their mouths is a feckless belch of duplicity, their entire culture communicating in a regional accent of velveteen, overly qualified, triple-couched, can’t-nail-it-to-the-wall-like-Jell-O, circumlocutious fibbery. If you and I walked around nozzling this kind of fiction on a daily basis, we’d all be friendless, divorced and fired. But our justice system rewards their morning-noon-and-night press conferences pointing nine different directions away from the bloody client: ‘It was drug smugglers, the ex-boyfriend, the “Alphabet Soup” killer, Satanists in a windowless van that was the dark shade of a light color, and I vow never to rest as I travel the globe in my personal search for the real killer!’ And I’m thinking, yeah, well, you might want to save your frequent-flyer miles because I think I caught a glimpse of the ‘real killer’ today. He was sitting next to you at the fucking defense table!… There’s only one Shakespearean solution. Kill the lawyers!”

“Kill the lawyers!” “Kill the lawyers!…”

“Are you insane? Lawyers are good! We need lawyers! Be more skeptical. Analyze those attorney-bashing sound bytes by multinational corporations and the harems of far-right congressmen they buy up on the cheap like dazed crack whores chanting, ‘I take it in the mouth for jury-cap lobbyists.’ Listen carefully when Fortune Five Hundreds say the greatest threat is runaway verdicts that only enrich those greedy trial lawyers. Then ask yourself: Why does every vested interest that wants us to get rid of our lawyers have entire floors reserved for their own legal teams?… No, lawyers are the common man’s last defense against the deep pockets. It’s the corporations, I tell you!…”

The audience was indecisive. A woman in the front row slowly raised her hand. “Except the corporations are good?”

“No, they truly are fucking evil. But a necessary evil. We’re capitalists, after all, which means we benefit from man’s worst instincts, as opposed to Communists, who suffer from man’s best instincts. Who’s really to blame? The media! Those self-righteous hacks with their liberal bias. Kudos to you, Fox News! You tell us what the ‘media elite’ refuses to: that we need to get all wadded up and distracted over gay marriage so we don’t notice the next massive transfer of wealth scheme. No wonder the rest of the world hates us. Half of America hates the other half. The country’s tearing itself down the middle, and these latter-day pimps of yahooism are swinging sledgehammers at the wedge….”

In the next room, deputies Gus and Walter dismissed their class of juvenile delinquents. They were on their way down the hall when a raised voice caught their attention. They stopped and looked in a doorway.

“So now you don’t know what to believe,” said Serge, “and that’s exactly what you should believe. To borrow from Fire-sign Theater, Everything You Know Is Wrong. Because the biggest danger is the people who believe Everything They Know Is Right. That’s the key to personal growth: Identify your firmest, most self-comforting beliefs, then beat the living shit out of them and see if they’re still standing. The key to stagnation? Worry about other people’s beliefs. There’s an invisible war of self-interest between the ends of the spectrum, and we’re foot soldiers caught in the crossfire. That’s why I’m a moderate, from the extremist wing. Because the middle is where the good people are. It’s where hope is. And it’s where the truth lies. But what is this truth? For starters, it’s don’t listen to someone whose only credentials are that he’s standing at the front of a room. And that’s the truth.”

Serge trotted out the door past the deputies.

Gus looked at Walter. “There’s something not right here.”

22

Saturday, 5:30 P. M.

DEPUTY WALTER ST. CLOUD arrived at the sheriff’s substation for the evening shift.

Gus was already at his desk reading paperwork that Sergeant Englewood had just handed over from the day side.

Walter put a fresh filter in the coffee machine.

Englewood snapped a briefcase shut. He was thinking about mashed potatoes. “See you guys tomorrow.”

“’Night, Sarge.”

Walter came over to Gus’s desk while the coffee perked. “What are you reading?”

“The reports both of us are supposed to read.”

“Can I ask you a question?”

Gus continued reading. “What is it?”

“The stories really don’t bother you?”

“I don’t pay ’em any mind.”

“Good.” Walter rolled up a chair and sat down. “Because I just heard this great new one I wanted to ask you about.”

Gus closed his eyes for an extended blink.

“A waitress told it at the Key Deer Café. I was having pie at the counter, and she was talking to these other people, but everyone was listening. It was the time you didn’t know about one of the department’s surprise urine tests, but your wife did because she was doing the major. So the night before she got you to let her draw on your penis. You couldn’t see what she was doing because of the angle. And she draws this goofy Mr. Bill face. You know: ‘Mr. Sluggo’s going to be mean to me!’ The next morning you hear about the test and try to scrub it off, but she used one of those indelible Sharpies that lasts for like a week. There was no hiding it from the monitor who has to witness you give the sample. And he blabs to everybody!”

“What’s your question?”

“Well, there wasn’t really a question. I just wanted someone to tell it to.”

Gus went back to reading.

“I think it’s my favorite one so far.”

Gus looked up at his partner.

“You know what I mean,” said Walter. “Actually it’s quite terrible. I’m going to be back over there at my desk.”

It was quiet again in the substation. The fax started.

Gus got up and grabbed the bulletin.

“What is it?” asked Walter.

“Remember that APB the other day on a brown Plymouth Duster? They just linked it to a charred body found in the Everglades. A witness also spotted it at Dade Corners. Ohio plates but no number.”

“Heading this way?”

Gus taped the new bulletin to the wall next to his desk. “That’s how it’s looking.”

SEVENTEEN MILES DOWN U.S. 1, two combat boots walked through a wrecked-car graveyard on Stock Island. “U Pull-It Auto Parts.” The boots stopped behind an ’81 Fiero. Hands in leather gloves twisted a screwdriver, removing a Delaware license. The plate went inside a shirt. The boots walked back out the barbed-wire gate to the side of the road and a brown Plymouth Duster.

One hour later

FOUR PEOPLE CONDUCTED predate rituals at four different locations in the lower Keys.

Serge was in his fishing cottage. His finest tropical shirt lay ironed and flat on the bed. He sprayed cologne and gargled and applied contingency layers of Speed Stick. The borrowed Buick sat outside. The plan was to arrive at Coleman’s trailer with an hour cushion in case Coleman needed to be revived, then swing over to pick up Brenda by 6:50 and knock on Molly’s door at seven sharp, to lay the reputation groundwork as a dependable husband.

Serge sang as he trimmed ear hair.

“I’mmmmmmmmmm coming up, so you better get this party started….”

Molly stood rigid at her bathroom mirror, hair pulled back tight and pinned in a bun. She had a dark-blue blazer over a light-blue shirt buttoned practically to her chin. She auditioned pairs of granny glasses.

Another apartment, another mirror. Brenda threw her head forward, that gorgeous blond mane hanging down in front of her face. She flung her head back, the locks making the return flight and falling over her shoulders for that sexy tossed look. She clipped a belly-button ring in her bare midriff. That was for Serge’s benefit, definitely not Coleman’s…. Coleman! Jesus! There was no way she could face this sober. Time for date-priming. She grabbed her giant plastic Sloppy Joe’s cup of rum and Coke.

Serge drove up to Coleman’s trailer, pressed the doorbell. No answer.

He knocked.

Still nothing.

Serge stepped back from the trailer to appraise the situation. He noticed the soles of two shoes at the edge of the roof. He cupped his hands around his mouth. “Coleman!”

Coleman slowly sat up with disheveled hair.

“What the heck are you doing up there?”

Coleman looked around. “I don’t know.”

“Hold on. I’ll get a ladder.”

They ended up in the living room. A bong bubbled.

“What are you doing?” said Serge. “We have to get ready for the date!”

“I am ready,” said Coleman. “See?” He opened the top of a camouflaged hunter’s cooler next to him on the couch: Everclear, Red Bull, ice, cups, mixers. “Dating is cool!”

“You’re going to make her Torpedo Juice?”

“Yeah,” said Coleman. “But now I’m thinking of leaving out the energy drink. Don’t want her too alert.”

“And look at how you’re dressed!”

“What?” Coleman examined himself. Cut-offs and an old T-shirt from a shop on Duval: My other car is your mother.

Serge paced and talked to himself.

“Man, are you nervous!” said Coleman. “Have a seat and relax.”

Serge dropped onto the couch next to him. “I can’t relax. Too much is at stake. Look, my hands are all clammy.”

Coleman leaned over the bong. Smoke filled the cylinder.

“Will you stop smoking dope! You’ll fall asleep in your food and fuck up the date.”

“Have to smoke to get ready for the show.”

“What show?”

Coleman clicked the TV with the remote. “Bob’s coming on.”

Serge perked up. “Bob?”

“Take your mind off your worries.”

Serge and Coleman settled into the couch and folded their hands in their laps. A catchy theme song began; they swayed with the music.

“…Absorbent and yellow and porous is he… Sponge… Bob… Square… Pants!…”

“I wonder if Gary the Pet Snail’s in this episode,” said Serge.

“My favorite is Patrick the Starfish.”

Serge heard clomping on the trailer’s rotten flooring. A miniature deer walked between the couch and the television and disappeared into the kitchen.

Coleman exhaled a hit. “His name’s JoJo.”

SpongeBob jumped up swimming from the ocean bottom, blasting right out of his pants.

Serge pointed at the screen. “Notice how his pants are tumbling slow motion back to the sea floor. That’s a deliberate reference to archival NASA footage of the Saturn V adapter ring between the first and second stages. Don’t tell me something deeper isn’t going on here.”

Coleman repacked the bong. “When I’m high, I pick up stuff about Jesus.”

They became engrossed. It was a double-header. And Gary was in the second show.

A commercial came on. Serge checked his watch. “We’re late!”

Brenda was sitting buzzed on her front steps. She drained the dregs of her Sloppy Joe’s cup and checked her watch again.

A Buick screeched up like a jailbreak.

Brenda stood, slightly unsteady. “Where have you been?”

“Get the fuck in the car!”

They raced across the island.

“When was the last double date you were on?” asked Coleman.

“I don’t know. Seven, eight years ago? I think it was the Davenports back when we lived on Triggerfish Lane.”

“I remember that one,” said Coleman. “What a disaster! Enough to make you never want to go on another.”

“There’s no way two in a row can turn out that bad.” Serge skidded up to an apartment building. He jumped out and ran around to the trunk. Inside was Serge’s dating kit: a dozen roses in a four-dollar vase, set of pipe wrenches, an out-of-order sign.

A polite knock on the door of unit 213. Molly silently came out and locked up.

Serge produced the flowers from behind his back. Molly accepted them with embarrassment. She noticed a price tag.

“Whoops,” said Serge, snatching the vase back and peeling the sticker. “The price-gun guy must have gotten it confused with a really cheap one. Shall we?…”

THE BUICK BLAZED down U.S. 1, hopping bridges in quick succession. Summerland, Cudjoe, Sugarloaf. It was dead in the front seat. Serge kept glancing over every few seconds. Molly’s eyes stayed fixed ahead, hands stiff-arming the dashboard.

The backseat was New Year’s Eve, Mardi Gras and Lollapalooza. Coleman had the contents of his camouflaged cooler in play. Brenda sloshed some of her drink on both of them and laughed. Coleman winked. “You cool?”

“Am I what?”

Coleman put his thumb and forefinger to his lips.

“You mean do I get high?” Brenda downed her drink. “Fuckin’A!”

Smoke curled its way into the front seat. Molly maintained her grip on the dashboard. They crossed the Saddlebunch Keys and pulled into the hottest new restaurant west of Marathon. Lobster Town. The line spilled out the door. Serge had a reservation. They gave him a coaster that would blink when their table was ready.

Coleman staggered up and tugged Serge’s shirt. “I think I’m getting a little too messed up to dine ’n’ dash.”

“We’re not going to skip out on the bill.”

“But we don’t have money for this kind of fancy place.”

The coaster began blinking. “This way,” said a waiter.

Their table overlooked the Gulf. Serge held Molly’s chair. Brenda looked at Coleman, already seated and tearing open a packet of saltines.

Another waiter came by. “Would anyone care for a cocktail?”

Coleman’s and Brenda’s arms flew up. Serge turned to Molly. Her first words in a tiny voice: “Zinfandel.” Serge to the waiter: “Zinfandel. Coffee for me, and a glass of ice on the side.”

“Ice water?”

“No, a glass of ice.”

“You want ice coffee?”

“No. Coffee. And a glass of ice. I have to control the temperature myself.”

Drinks arrived, their orders taken. Coleman and Brenda held giant pineapples in their laps with extra-long straws. Serge spooned ice into his coffee and chugged it dry.

“Uh-oh,” said Coleman.

“What?” asked Brenda.

“Serge drank coffee.”

“Coffee’s good for me,” said Serge. “Remember when the chicks from the band Heart did those coffee ads? Before the dark-haired one got into the doughnuts? Said it picked them up and calmed them down at the same time. That’s what it does for me! I love Heart! Barra-cuda! Da, da-da-da, da-da-da, da-da-da, da-da-da, da-da-da, DOW-DOW!…”

“Here we go,” said Coleman.

Serge turned to Molly. “I see you’re admiring my shirt. It’s my favorite, the one the state’s toll collectors wear. All these great old Florida scenes and postcards…” He touched various parts of his chest. “…Orange groves, beach balls, sailfish, names of famous roads and stuff. The turnpike, Sunshine Skyway, Dolphin Expressway, Yeehaw Junction. You know Yeehaw Junction, don’t you? The crossroads in the middle of nowhere with the historic Desert Inn. The women’s rest room has a statue of an Indian brave in a real loincloth that’s rigged with this trip wire, so if you lift it, a loud alarm goes off in the bar, and everyone’s laughing when you come out, and then you have to explain what you’re doing as a man in the ladies’ room. Only used to be able to get these shirts if you worked in a tollbooth. I wanted one so bad that I applied for a job. On the first day they gave me the shirt and stuck me in one of the booths, and when they weren’t looking, I ran off into the woods.”

Four lobsters arrived. The evening averaged out: Molly didn’t say a word, Serge didn’t stop. He pulled a notebook from his back pocket. “Okay, just a few routine questions. Nothing to worry about. Belong to a religion? Doesn’t bother me if you do, as long as it’s not one that says to stop thinking and be loud about it. How do you want the kids raised? Policy on in-laws? Are you a neat freak? Ever called Miss Cleo? What about Ted Williams being frozen upside down without his head?”

No answers.

More pineapples arrived.

Serge made marks in the notebook. “I’ll just pencil my best guesses and we can go back later and change them if you need to. Any childhood diseases? Ever seen a psychiatrist? No big deal if you have. I’ve gone, but it wasn’t my idea….”

And so it went. The waiter finally came and laid the bill facedown on the table.

“…One last question,” said Serge. “Will you marry me?”

Molly’s eyes bulged. But they had on some of the other questions, too, and Serge took it as an encouraging sign. He closed the notebook. “Get back to me on that last one when you’re ready.”

Coleman turned the bill over. “Two hundred dollars!”

“Plus tip.”

Coleman yanked the napkin from his collar. “I have to take a leak.”

Serge pushed his own chair back. “I’ll go with you.”

They stood at the sinks. Serge splashed water in his face. Coleman uncapped his graffiti pen. There was a sign: EMPLOYEES MUST WASH HANDS. Coleman wrote, Why can’t we wash them ourselves?

Serge splashed more water. “I think she likes me.”

Coleman went to a urinal. “How on earth are we going to pay for dinner?”

“Like this.” Serge splashed water on his shirt.

“What are you doing?”

Serge kept splashing water until he was drenched head to foot. “Taking care of the bill.”

They left the rest room. Serge pulled an out-of-order sign from his waistband and hung it on the men’s room doorknob. “Coleman, go keep the women company. I’ll just be a minute.”

People cleared a wide path as Serge dripped his way to the maître d’ stand. “Call the manager!”

A man in a well-fitting suit arrived. He pulled up short at the sight of Serge. “What the—?”

“You need to turn off all the water in this place.”

“Who the hell are you?”

“One of your customers. I was just in the men’s room. You got a main break…. What are you looking at? You have to shut the water off right now!”

“We can’t shut the water off. This is our biggest night….”

“We’re still talking. You’ve got three minutes tops before she starts flooding, which means backed-up sewage….”

People in line looked at each other and murmured.

“Lower your voice,” said the manager. He waved one of the waiters over. “Shut off the water. The valve is by the main loading door. The white one. There should be a wrench leaning against the wall…. What are you waiting for?” The waiter ran off.

“I’m a plumber,” said Serge. “I mean if you have your own, I perfectly understand. But it’s pretty straightforward. I got some tools out in the car. Can have you back up in five minutes.”

The man gave Serge a look like someone was trying to screw him. “And what exactly will this cost me?”

“Cost you? Oh, no, I wouldn’t think of… well, okay. I’ve just had a wonderful evening here with my friends. Going to tell everyone I know about this place. Yes, sir, best food in all the Keys! Why don’t you just comp our meals and we’ll call it even?”

“That’s it?”

“Throw in fifty for our waiter. He was incredible. Don’t let anyone steal him from you.”

“Deal.”

“Be right back.”

Serge ran out of the restaurant and returned with tools. He went in the rest room and slouched against the door, staring at his watch. Five minutes later, he emerged and removed the out-of-order sign.

The manager rushed up. “So?”

“Good as new!” Serge headed back to the table.

“What the hell happened to you?” said Brenda. “You’re soaked.”

“Gave ’em a hand with a plumbing problem.”

“He’s always helping people,” said Coleman.

Serge held Molly’s chair again as they got up. Brenda started getting up, too, but misjudged a number of things and took three off-balance steps backward before landing on her butt like a child in a playpen. “Whoa! Those pineapples!…”

“I do it all the time,” said Coleman. “Let me help you.”

They worked their way toward the front door, the manager shaking Serge’s hand hard as they went by. “Thank you so much. Please come back…”

They passed the packed lounge, newcomers waiting with cocktails and nonblinking coasters. Four men in yachting jackets were halfway in the bag. Troy Bradenton buttonholed a passing waitress. “Hey, baby, ever kissed a rabbit between the ears?” He stood and turned his pockets inside out. The woman stormed off. The salesmen cracked up. One of them noticed something going by the lounge’s entrance.

“Look at that soaking-wet asshole!”

“What’s his problem?”

Serge kept walking.

“And get a load of his date! Did dork school just get out?”

Serge froze. Hair stood up on his neck. He slowly turned to face the roofing salesmen.

The quartet got off their stools to form a united front. Troy stepped forward. “What are you going to do about it, drip on us?” He looked back and smirked at the others.

Molly was standing behind Serge. He couldn’t see her, but he could sense her discomfort like static electricity. He bit his lip and resumed walking out of the restaurant.

“That’s right,” yelled Troy. “Run away, tough guy!”

They got to the parking lot, and Serge called Coleman aside. “I need you to do something for me….”

There was a tiki bar on a landing down by the water. Serge asked the women if they wouldn’t mind waiting.

“What is it now?” said Brenda.

“I forgot to explain some plumbing things. And Coleman has to help. We’ll just be a minute.”

Brenda stumbled down the staggered terrace of railroad ties. “You said you’d just be a minute last time.” She slipped on the edge of a step and went down, then popped up and wiped her kneecaps. “I meant to do that…. Come on, Molly, let’s get a drink.” Molly followed, looking back over her shoulder. Coleman was walking toward the restaurant’s entrance, but Serge had split up and was sneaking around the back side.

TROY BRADENTON CALLED over a waitress. “Do you have a mirror in your pocket?”

“Why?”

“Because I can see myself in your pants! Ha, ha, ha…”

They noticed Coleman standing in front of them.

“Look, it’s one of Jerry’s kids!” said Troy. “The telethon’s over, beat it!”

“I’m not sure,” said Coleman, “but I think one of you dropped a whole bunch of money in the parking lot.”

“What are you talking about?”

“A big pile of twenties behind a Saab. Some fifties, too,” said Coleman. “Guy in a white jacket just like yours. Didn’t you just come in here a second ago?…” Coleman stood on his tiptoes and looked around the lounge. “Maybe it was somebody else.” He was acting a little drunk, except he wasn’t acting. “Or maybe it was me.” He patted his own pockets, then turned and started weaving back toward the front door.

Troy ran up and grabbed Coleman’s shoulder from behind. “No, it was me.”

“Great. I’ll show you where the money is.”

Troy winked at the guys. They gave him three big thumbs-up.

Coleman wandered back and forth across the parking lot. Troy grew impatient. “Where the hell is this Saab?”

“I could have sworn it was right around here. Wait, no, it’s on the side of the building, just around that corner.”

Troy followed Coleman into the darkness. “I didn’t even know they parked cars back here.”

Serge stepped out of the shadows. “They don’t.”

The man exhaled with frustration. “Not you again.”

Another classic cultural misunderstanding. Troy had a completely different context of confrontation. Preliminary bravado, then everybody gets ready and starts boxing and the best fighter wins. You know, rules. He started taking off his jacket to teach Serge a lesson, and Serge grabbed his testicles. Troy hit the dirt so immobilized he couldn’t even cover up when the kicking started.

“You mean little bastard!” Kick. “Where does that kind of cruelty come from?” Kick.

Down at the tiki bar, Brenda’s head started lolling around in her neck socket. She tried lighting a cigarette by the wrong end, but the flame kept missing. Luckily, the bartender had just taken an alcohol-awareness class. He realized what was happening and rushed over to figure out how he was going to fuck her. Molly got up and went looking for Serge, tracing his steps around the back of the building. As she got closer, she heard voices. She put her hands on the wall and peeked around the corner.

“You evil piece of shit!” Kick. “Nobody talks about my Molly that way!” Kick.

She quickly pulled back. A hand went to her mouth. “Oh, my!” Molly scurried back to the waterfront, trotting in an odd sort of way that made it appear as if her knees weren’t bending, like the Church Lady might run.

When she returned to the tiki hut, the bartender was doing calculus: Brenda’s weight vs. the distance to his car. Molly jerked her off the stool.

Coleman squatted near the ground. “I think you killed him.”

Serge was bent over, grabbing his legs and panting. “Huh? What are you talking about?”

Coleman stood up and nodded. “He’s dead all right. Must have been the head kicks.”

“I just wanted to teach him a lesson.”

“Serge, we gotta get moving. Anyone can just come walking around that corner.”

“Okay, you wait here with him. I’ll get the car.”

Molly kept tugging Brenda’s arm to move faster. “Come on!”

“Let go of me. I need to lie down.”

Molly dragged her friend toward the corner of the restaurant.

“You got his ankles?” said Serge.

“Ready when you are,” said Coleman.

Troy thudded into the bottom of the trunk.

Molly and Brenda appeared in front of the car. Serge slammed the trunk shut. “Oh, there you are! We were just coming to get you.” He opened the passenger door and gestured suavely.

“Your carriage awaits.”

23

U.S. 1

A POLICE SIREN ripped through the starry night, island to island.

A large crowd had gathered on the side of Lobster Town. A sheriff’s cruiser pulled into the parking lot.

Walter grabbed a clipboard. “There goes our quiet evening.”

The deputies got the onlookers back, and Gus began unrolling yellow tape to protect the crime scene. Other units arrived. Specialists took photos and video and poured plaster to make casts of tire imprints. There was a large quantity of blood and a shoe, but no body, just drag marks up to where the tire tracks stopped.

Walter canvassed the crowd. Nobody saw anything. He found the manager.

“And you say nothing unusual happened tonight?”

“Only a plumbing leak.” The manager remembered that one of his dishwashers was smoking outside by the garbage cans and heard something. “Alfonso! Get over here!”

A thin young man in a hairnet walked up. He was trying to grow a mustache. “…No, just crashing sounds, things breaking, shouts.”

“And you didn’t go look?”

“The parking lot always sounds like that.”

Gus rounded up three drunk roofing salesmen he’d found staggering down by the tiki hut, calling into the night for their missing buddy. They now leaned with their backs against the patrol car for balance.

“When did you last see him?”

“Someone found a bunch of money in the parking lot and he went to claim it.”

“Was it his?”

“Not really.”

An evidence tech with surgical gloves dropped a muddy Sebago Clovehitch into a clear bag.

“That’s his shoe!” yelled one of the salesmen.

“Don’t go anywhere,” said Gus. “I have more questions.”

Walter was directing a forensic photographer to a just-found pattern of blood spray on the side of the building. “Right over here.” Revolving blue and red lights swept across the dark wall. Gus walked up. “I think we have an ID on the victim.” Walter looked at his partner, then at the red splatter. A camera flash went off. Walter started laughing.

“You find this funny?”

“No, I’m sorry. I’m still thinking about the Mr. Bill drawing on your dick. You’d laugh too if you saw the photos.”

“Photos?”

“The waitress at the café had printouts. Your wife took pictures while you were asleep.”

“Printouts?”

“From the Internet.”

HEADLIGHTS PIERCED THE fog and a salt mist that hung over the road under a harvest moon. The Buick Riviera sailed back up the Keys shortly before midnight.

Serge’s face glowed green from the instrument panel curled around the steering column in that vintage Buick design. He drove casually with one hand. His right arm was over the seat back, slowly inching toward Molly, who was bunched up against the opposite door. He addressed the passenger compartment in general: “Figured we’d top off this great evening with a nightcap at the No Name. What do you say?”

Nothing from Molly. Odd sounds from the backseat. Serge looked in the rearview, but didn’t see anyone. “Hey, what are you kids doing?” He turned and craned his neck for a look. “Uh-oh.”

Dark islands passed beneath. Serge kept glancing across the front seat at Molly. What an angel! Almost looked lifelike with that green instrument patina on her face. Serge pretended to yawn. He stretched and extended his arm farther across the seat back. Molly made herself as flat as possible against her door, like people in a prehistoric sci-fi movie when the T. Rex sticks its head in the cave but can’t quite reach them, and then, for some reason, one of the minor characters carelessly steps forward and the dinosaur bites him head first and drags him out kicking and screaming.

“I won’t bite,” said Serge. “Why don’t you come a little closer?” He patted the vinyl bench seating between them.

Molly stayed put.

“You’re going to fall out of the car like that,” said Serge. “This thing’s pretty old. I can’t vouch for the latches.”

She released her grip on the door and sat stiffly in the seat. Serge’s fingers tiptoed toward her. They both stared ahead, cresting another bridge with a rhapsodic view across the night water, twinkling lights from homes along the western bank of Ramrod. Serge’s hand slithered. Easy now, almost there. The sounds from the backseat grew louder. Serge peeked out the corner of his eye. His hand was now hovering over Molly’s shoulder, Neil Armstrong looking for a place to land on the Sea of Tranquility. The Buick started rocking on the springs. Serge eased his hand down. Two inches, one inch. Steadyyyyyyyy…

Molly flinched slightly but didn’t pull away when Serge’s hand gently settled onto her shoulder. He released a breath of relief. Contact light, the Eagle has landed.

Brenda erupted in the backseat: “Oh, my God! Oh yes! Fuck me!…”

“Yikes!” said Serge, snatching his arm back and lunging for the radio dial. “How about some music?”

“Oooooo, love to love you, baby, oooooo, owwww, ohhhh!…”

Serge twisted the dial again.

“I can see paradise by the dashboard light…”

Another station.

“Get down with the boogie, say, ‘Uhhh! Hahhh!’ Feel the funk y’all! Let it flowwwwww…”

He turned the radio off and sat back with a nervous smile.

The Buick stopped rocking. It was quiet again. Not for long.

“Stop the car!” yelled Brenda. “Going to be sick!”

Serge skidded onto the shoulder as he’d done a hundred times for Coleman. Brenda’s door flew open.

Serge turned around in his seat. “Coleman! Be a gentleman! Hold her hair!”

THE SCREEN DOOR at the No Name Pub flew open.

“Serge!”

Serge ran down the line of stools high-fiving. He turned around at the end. “Molly, this is the gang. The gang, Molly. You already know Coleman. Not pictured is Brenda, who’s hanging out of the car.”

Coleman and Molly grabbed a table in the pool room. Balls clacked; the seven went in a side pocket. Pizzas came out of the kitchen.

Serge went over to the juke and pushed coins in a slot. “Let’s see. So many to choose from. Can’t make a mistake. Have to pick the perfect tunes. Tunes are everything. Tunes affect emotions. Tunes change behavior. The wrong tunes could ruin everything. Which one, which one, which one? Let’s see what we’ve got here….” His finger ran down the glass. “…She’s waiting by the phone, he needs to be free, she’ll stab you in the back, he’s cryin’ on the inside, her body’s a danger zone, his heart’s on fire, she needs more lovin’, his watch is set to cheatin’ time, she never dances anymore, he wants one last chance, she’s takin’ a midnight train. Someone dies at the end of that one. In that song, it’s always raining. In that one, it’s not raining but the sun don’t shine. The horn section in that one gives me the nagging sensation I’ve forgotten to study for an exam. That one reminds me of costly errors in foreign policy….”

“Pick a song!” yelled Coleman.

“Okay, okay! There, that’s a good love song.” Serge hit B-12. Six times.

He rejoined them at the table and sat sideways, appreciating the layout of the room, tapping along with the music.

“Saturday night’s all right for fighting…”

Molly studied his content profile. But all she could think about was the horror from the side of the restaurant. And just because some idiot had insulted her, like they always did.

“Yes.”

Serge didn’t hear her at first.

“I said yes.”

Serge turned. “Yes what?”

“I’ll marry you.”

Everyone at the bar startled at the outcry.

“Yaaaaaahhhhooooooooooooooooo!!!!… ”

Serge jumped up and began doing the twist, singing along with the juke. “… Sat-ur-day! Sat-ur-day! Sat-ur-day!… Sat-ur-day! Sat-ur-day! Sat-ur-day!…”

The commotion drew the owner out of the back room. “Serge! Get the hell off the pool table! What are you thinking?”

Serge hopped down. He did the moonwalk, the hand jive, the chicken dance, the Iggy Shuffle. “…Sat-ur-day! Sat-ur-day!…” He threw imaginary dice, dunked an invisible basketball. He fell to his knees and threw his arms toward the ceiling.

“She said yesssssssss!!!!!!”

Sop Choppy walked over to Coleman. “What’s going on?”

“I just got laid.”

“No, I mean Serge.”

“Oh, I think he’s engaged.”

“No kidding?”

The already festive mood inside the pub became reckless as the news spread. People bought rounds of drinks, toasted, got loud, went by to shake Serge’s hand. They pulled the newly betrothed couple out of their chairs and got them to dance. At least Serge was dancing. Molly just sort of stood there while Serge pogo-sticked in a circle around her.

MOLLY GOT UP on her tiptoes to give Serge a quick peck goodnight.

The Buick raced south on U.S. 1, Serge’s head out the window in the night breeze. He came back inside. “This is the best day of my life!”

“I got laid.”

“That’s right, you did! Congratulations! When was the last time?”

“Last time what?”

“Sex. You have had sex before, right?”

“Oh, sure.”

“When?”

“All the time. Yesterday morning, twice again in the afternoon.”

“I mean with someone else.”

“That doesn’t count?”

“Not exactly.”

“Then that would be” — Coleman began counting on his fingers — “the first.”

“You’re kidding!”

“Nope.”

Serge slapped the steering wheel. “Hot damn! Now we really have to celebrate. But what can we do? It has to be extra special….”

Coleman made a suggestion.

“You read my mind.”

Moments later, Coleman stared through hot glass at rotating corn dogs. “What would we do without convenience stores?”

“You know who can’t go to convenience stores?”

“Who?”

“Barbra Streisand.”

“That’s right. She’s a prisoner.”

They carried their haul out to the car in five plastic bags and drove back to the trailer. Soon it was spread across the floor of Coleman’s mobile home. A Looney Tunes marathon came on. They toasted with Slurpee cups.

“What about Brenda?”

“That’s right. We should probably bring her inside before we forget.”

“Next commercial.”

They each grabbed an armpit and dragged Brenda up the steps. Coleman lovingly tucked her into one of the two single beds in the back of the trailer.

He stood and smiled.

Serge pointed. “What about JoJo?”

Coleman looked at the tiny deer in the corner. “How can he sleep standing up like that?”

“The people at the post office do it all the time.”

“I’m going to put him in the other bed. Someday I want to get him some little clothes.”

Coleman set the deer on its side and began tucking him in.

“What’s all that red stuff on the blankets?” said Serge.

“What?”

“What do you mean, ‘what?’ You got ketchup everywhere.”

Coleman looked at his hands. “I always forget napkins.” He wiped them on his pants, then smiled at Serge. Serge smiled back. Nothing could ruin this evening. They watched the beds like proud parents.

“They’re so peaceful,” said Coleman.

“Life is good.”

24

SUNLIGHT STREAMED INTO the trailer. Brenda’s eyelids fluttered.

She rolled over and stuck her head under the pillow. “Oh, no.”

One of her top ten hangovers. She remembered all of them. Her brain throbbed, her mouth felt like something had molted in it. Somehow she found the strength to raise her head. “Hey, this isn’t my room. Where am I?”

Her head fell back on the pillow and her eyes closed. It gradually came to her. Coleman’s trailer. Then another delayed response. Something she’d just seen.

She opened her eyes again. Over on the other bed. What the hell is that sticking out from under the blanket? Looks like a deer head.

It is a deer head. And the blanket has a bunch of red stains. Brenda thought it was real, a local copycat of The Godfather. Probably someone after Coleman for a drug debt.

“Jesus! That’s some seriously sick shit.” She laid her head back down and closed her eyes again.

After a moment, she realized her arm was resting against something. Her hand felt along a large form in the bed next to her.

Brenda’s eyes sprang open.

JUST AFTER DAYBREAK, a Buick Riviera sped west on U.S. 1. Serge had already been up for two hours, reading the paper, watching early news on TV, anxiously checking out the windows to see when night would end, standing over Coleman and Brenda in bed, waiting for them to wake up so he’d have someone to talk to, but they never did. He finally gave up and hopped in the Buick for a solo breakfast run.

Serge cleared the bridge on the return trip to Ramrod Key. He sipped orange juice and peeked inside the warm brown sack in his lap, taking a deep breath of McMuffin magic. The Buick made a left after the Chevron station.

Serge pulled up to the trailer in a super mood. He got out of the car with a sack of fast food and thoughts of Molly.

Brenda flew out the front door. “Ahhhhhhhhh! Ahhhhhhhhh! Ahhhhhhhhh! I fucked Coleman! I fucked Coleman! I’m going to be sick!…”

Serge smiled and tipped an invisible hat as she ran by. “Good morning.”

“…I’ll never drink again! I swear to God!…” She grabbed the trunk of a sapwood tree and bent over retching.

Coleman was sitting up in bed with clumped hair when Serge entered the room. JoJo looked around from the other bed. Serge held out the bag and smiled. “McMuffins.”

Coleman grabbed an ashtray off the nightstand and excavated for roaches. “Where’s Brenda?”

“Out in the yard.” Serge sat on the foot of the bed and passed a sandwich.

“Thanks.” Coleman took a giant bite, chewing with open mouth. “Maybe I should get married, too. What do you think?”

“Absolutely,” said Serge. He jerked a thumb over his shoulder. “If you hurry, you can propose right now before she leaves. That way, last night’s memory is still fresh.”

“I think you’ve got something.” Coleman stuffed another bite in his mouth and threw the blanket off his legs.

Serge set his own sandwich on the bed and savored the unwrapping process. He heard the front door creak as Coleman went outside. He took a bite and closed his eyes. “Mmmmmm. Unbelievable! Never ate anything so good in all my life!” He opened his eyes and looked at JoJo. “That’s because I’m in love. Everything they say about it is absolutely true. Food tastes better. Colors are more vivid. The air is like candy gas….”

Serge and JoJo turned toward the racket coming through the front wall of the trailer.

“…No! Fuck no! I wouldn’t marry you if it meant eternal life! I renounce what happened last night as the most repulsive experience in human history! It was worse than eating maggots! I’d rather be buried alive in shit!…”

Serge and JoJo went to the door. People were now on the front steps of trailers along both sides of the road. Brenda stood several feet in front of Coleman. She had stopped yelling and was now repeatedly spitting at him as fast as she could work up saliva. Of course she was too far away, so she dropped to the ground and began packing dirt balls with shaking hands.

Serge and JoJo walked up next to Coleman. “What’s going on?”

A dirt ball hit Coleman in the chest. “I think she needs more time.”

Brenda collapsed facedown in the yard and kicked her legs. “I just want to fucking die….”

The neighborhood watched as Brenda eventually got up and staggered off down the street.

“You know, I have this weird sensation,” said Serge. “Like we’re forgetting something.”

Brenda stopped in the middle of the road and spread her arms wide in front of a dump truck. The truck hit the brakes and drove around her. She stumbled away crying.

“I know what you mean,” said Coleman. “I have the same feeling. But what can it be?”

“I’m not sure. It’s been bothering me all morning.”

They looked at each other, then at the sky, then over at the Buick’s low-riding trunk.

A RED FLAG with a diagonal white stripe snapped in the morning breeze.

The first dive boat of the day was returning. It rode a pair of silver pontoons and had a large, flat deck for all the scuba tanks and tanned people casting aside wet-suit tops. They were pumped from the morning run, endorphins, laughing, cracking beers, holding hands apart to represent the girth of barracuda and moray eels. The boat idled down an oolite canal cut through Ramrod and docked behind the Looe Key Reef Resort.

The “resort” label was a little dated, considering all the newer, sterile behemoths that had gone up in the last twenty years. More of a raggedy old Florida roadside motel, which was better. It had survived to become the last genuine diver’s joint. The back doors of the rooms opened right onto the dock; out the front doors was the tiki hut on the shoulder of U.S. 1. It was a big hut, as tikis go, and it was legendary. Every seasoned diver had done time there. The bar was always cranking, night, day, hurricane evacuation.

Three used-car salesmen climbed off the morning boat and headed for the thatched roof. They were the only ones still wearing wet-suit tops. The one worn by the chief partner of Pristine Used Motors was black and turquoise. He wore the wet-suit top for two reasons. First was the stud factor. He began sending free drinks to the women around the bar, and they began coming back. He decided to deliver the next drinks in person. He got off his stool with a rumrunner in each hand and slimed over to a pair of sorority sisters from Georgia Tech.

The women reluctantly accepted the glasses.

He hopped on the stool next to them. “Fuck me if I’m wrong, but haven’t we met before?”

That was the other reason for the wet-suit top. Drinks easily washed off.

A ’71 BUICK RIVIERA emerged from a side street on Ramrod Key and pulled onto U.S. 1.

Coleman looked out the passenger window as they passed the Looe Key Reef Resort. “Why don’t we just dump him in the mangroves like everyone else does?”

“Getting too crowded,” said Serge. “I found a better location.”

The Buick flew through Islamorada and Key Largo, back over the bridge to the mainland, Coleman bugging him for food the whole way.

“You just had a McMuffin.”

“I can’t taste it anymore.”

Serge acquiesced and hit a drive-through in Florida City, then raced straight into the heart of the Everglades.

Coleman reached in his Arby’s sack. “Want a sandwich?”

“Why’d you get five?”

“It was five for five dollars.”

Serge turned off the Tamiami Trail and onto a dirt road with a chained-shut gate. He hopped out with a pair of large bolt-cutters, glanced around and grabbed a link of the chain.

Coleman walked up with a soda cup. “Where are we?”

Serge leaned into the cutters. “Government research center.” The chain snapped. He pushed the gate open.

The Buick drove down the deserted road. Coleman’s nose twitched. “It stinks.”

“It’s supposed to.”

The road opened into a clearing. It looked like an abandoned movie set. Broken-down vehicles, rusty refrigerators, steamer trunks, fifty-five-gallon drums, some partially submerged in a pond. Coleman saw what looked like shabby mannequins draped in a variety of positions. They parked and Serge opened the trunk.

Coleman came up beside him. “I still don’t know where we are.”

Serge pulled a pair of hankies from his pocket. He covered his nose and mouth with one and handed the other to Coleman. “Necro-studies.”

“What?”

“The cadaver farm.”

“Cadaver?… You mean those mannequins are really… Oh, gross!”

“Forensic detectives face a particular problem in Florida. Decomposition is too aggressive, so the regular textbook decay tables are useless. Had to establish a local lab to come up with their own figures. The Everglades are ideal. Perfect breeding ground for everything that can ravage a corpse. Heat, moisture, bacteria, more insects than you can count. Some with little pincers and mandibles that bore right through the skin, others that get in through body cavities. It’s amazing how they know right where to go. Rodents, crabs, snakes. Oh, and birds. Don’t forget them. They go for the eyes.”

Coleman steadied himself against the car. “I don’t feel so good.”

Serge reached in the trunk and grabbed wrists. “Get his ankles.”

They hoisted Troy Bradenton out of the Buick, lugged him twenty yards and set him down behind the bumper of a tireless Impala. Serge retrieved a crowbar from the Buick and began working on the Impala’s trunk. “A body that lasts three months in the Virginia winter might be down to the wishbone in weeks….”

Serge put his weight into the bar. The trunk popped.

Coleman jumped back. “There’s already a body in there!… And some stuff’s moving—” His hand flew to his mouth.

Serge poked the second corpse with the crowbar. He bent down and grabbed Troy’s wrists again. “Coleman, give me a hand…. Coleman?”

Coleman was holding his stomach. His cheeks bulged.

“Stop fooling around!”

Coleman reached for the ankles. “What if somebody sees us?”

“Today’s Saturday. I have the place to myself on weekends…. Lift!”

Coleman grunted. “Yeah, but what if someone happens to come off-hours?”

“Not a chance. This is a government operation.”

The new corpse fell on top of the first. Serge slammed the trunk lid. “I love science.”

They climbed back in the Buick.

“I still think the mangroves would have been better,” said Coleman. “They might find him here.”

“They’ll definitely find him,” said Serge, starting the engine. “That’s what makes it so perfect.”

“What do you mean?”

Serge began driving back out the dirt road. “They used to have one body in the trunk; now they have two.”

“So?”

“Everything’s backward at the cadaver farm. They may be dealing in dead bodies, but it’s still a bureaucracy, which means the cardinal sin is to lose inventory. If they come up with a high count, they don’t think they gained a body; they think they lost paperwork. And in civil service, that could be someone’s ass. So they’ll cook the numbers.”

“What if they don’t?”

“These are professionals. It’s why we pay taxes.”

Serge stopped and got out of the car, locking the gate behind the Buick. He jumped back in and gunned the engine, sending up a thick cloud of dust as they whipped back onto the Tamiami.

A half minute later, another car appeared out of the cloud. A brown Plymouth Duster.

The Buick neared the end of the Everglades. It flew through the flashing red light at Dade Corners and kept on going for the turnpike. Serge and Coleman began seeing evidence of western Miami. Heavy industry, quarries, refining plants, paint-sample test institute.

“Hold everything,” said Coleman, watching something go by his window. “Turn around!”

“What is it?”

“Just turn around. We’re getting farther away.”

Serge veered off the right shoulder, making a liberal U-turn in the grass on the opposite side. “What’s the flavor of this wild-goose chase?”

“We passed a medical supply depot,” said Coleman. “The warehouse with the barbed wire around all those industrial tanks in the back lot. I think I saw nitrous.”

“Laughing gas?” Serge slammed the brakes and the Buick squiggled to a stop down the middle of the empty road.

“What are you doing?” said Coleman.

“I’m not going on some drug safari!”

“Why not?”

“Didn’t you read where those two guys in that van passed out and died from nitrous.”

“Because they were abusing it.”

Serge yanked the stick on the steering column. “I’m turning around.”

“No fair!” said Coleman. “We already got to do what you wanted to.”

“What are you, in second grade?”

“I didn’t kick the guy to death. I didn’t have to come out here and help you.”

Serge stewed a moment. “Okay. Since you appeal to my sense of fairness. But I’m not waiting forever.”

The Buick drove another hundred yards and pulled over next to chain-link with a red-diamond warning sign: VICIOUS DOGS.

They got out and walked to the fence. “You’re right,” said Serge. “These are medical tanks. Oxygen and nitrogen. And there’s the nitrous….”

Two Dobermans galloped across the storage yard. They jumped up on the fence and snapped teeth at the level of Serge’s face. “Hello, puppies.”

Coleman walked up next to Serge, pulled the dog whistle from his shirt and blew. The Dobermans yelped and scampered off to hide behind a stack of empty pallets.

Four hundred yards back, a brown Plymouth Duster sat quietly on the shoulder of the road with a clear view of the tiny Buick parked in the distance. Hands rested on the steering wheel. They were inside tan leather gloves, the kind with holes cut out for the knuckles. The hands came off the wheel. The driver’s door opened, then the trunk. Out came wading boots and a bolt-action Remington deer rifle. The boots started down the shoulder into the swamp.

“Where are your bolt-cutters?” asked Coleman.

“Trunk.”

Serge climbed up on the Buick’s roof and sat with his legs crossed, leaning forward with rapt curiosity. Coleman snipped away at the chain-link fence, the dogs repeatedly charging, Coleman dispatching them each time with another blast from the ultrasonic whistle.

A half-mile north of the highway, an eye pressed against the scope of a deer rifle. The 10X-magnification compressed the view, eight hundred yards of sawgrass and cattails, then two Dobermans, a fence and, finally, Serge, sitting yoga-style on the roof of the Buick. A finger curled around the trigger.

Serge was amazed. He had never seen Coleman put together such linear purpose. After a few minutes, Coleman had snipped a Coleman-shaped hole in the fence.

There was a faint pop in the distance. The car window shattered beneath Serge.

“What did you do to my car?” said Coleman.

Serge leaned forward and looked down at the empty window with jagged pieces of glass around the frame. “I didn’t do anything.”

“Yes, you did. All your weight.”

“Hope you’re not expecting me to pay for that.”

“Forget it. I was tired of rolling it down anyway….”

“Coleman!”

“What?” He turned around. The Dobermans were almost on him. He blew the whistle. The dogs ran under a forklift.

In the unseen distance, wading boots sprinted away through the reeds, back toward a brown Plymouth Duster.

Coleman stuck the whistle in his mouth, climbed through the hole in the fence and wrapped his arms around a four-foot-tall chemical tank. He returned through the fence, tooting the whistle all the way, and slid the cylinder into the Buick’s backseat.

“We can go now,” said Coleman. He turned as the Dobermans were almost to the car. The whistle blew. They ran back through the hole in the fence.

Serge threw the car into gear and nodded. “So that’s why you carry the whistle.”

“Dogs just don’t like me.”

THE BUICK FLEW south on U.S. 1. Serge accelerated across the drawbridge from the mainland to Key Largo. He looked at Coleman. “What’s the matter?”

Coleman scratched his arms. He glanced in the backseat. Then scratched again.

Serge grinned. “You can’t get in the tank, can you?”

“There were always other guys before. They had equipment.”

“What were you planning?”

“I don’t know. Maybe tap a little hole with a pick and a hammer.”

“Are you insane? Those things are highly pressurized. It’ll blow the pick right back through your forehead!”

“What about a really tiny hole?”

“You don’t know anything about physics, do you?”

“Will you help?”

The Buick pulled into a strip mall and parked at the first of fifty scuba shops on the island. The store was empty except for a single employee behind the cash register. The nineteen-year-old salesman had sun-bleached hair, a surfer’s tan and half-mast marijuana eyelids. He was totally stoked.

“Uh, listen,” said Serge, lounging against the counter. “We need some valve work on a tank.”

“No problem-o.”

“Except it’s not really a scuba tank. It’s for medical purposes.”

The salesman shook his head. “No oxygen tanks. I can’t work on anything flammable.”

“It’s not oxygen. It’s something else, but it’s inert.”

“What?”

“Why don’t I just show you?”

Serge and Coleman wrestled the tank into the store.

The salesman started giggling and pointing at them. “You dudes are gonna do nitrous!”

“Shhhhhhhhhhhh!” Serge set the tank in front of the counter.

“Don’t worry, dudes. I do this all the time. One of my specialties.”

“How long?”

“Half hour. But it has to be cash. The owner’s kind of weird about this.”

Serge and Coleman killed time wandering the store. They gazed into a glass case of hulky metal wristwatches with five-hundred-foot crush depths. Coleman picked up a Speedo box. “So you’re really going to marry Molly?”

“Isn’t she special?”

Coleman opened the box and stretched the trunks in front of his face. “I just don’t see you two together.”

“There’s a soul-mate connection,” said Serge. “I can’t explain it, but she’s definitely the one.”

The Speedo ripped. Coleman stuck it back in the box. “What if she isn’t the one?”

“Then we shake hands, say no hard feelings, and I drop her some place with no phones for five miles. Word on the street is you need a big head start….”

“Nitrous tank’s ready!”

They went in the back room. The salesman beamed proudly at his art. “Okay, you’re gonna love this. Easy connections, that’s my trademark. Here’s where your regulator goes” — he attached a rubber hose that ran to the mouthpiece in his other hand — “and this is your auxiliary port with universal mount.”

“What for?” asked Coleman.

“So you can fill other tanks. Regular scuba or the minis. You can’t take this giant thing to parties. Suggest you get one of those little emergency tanks we have. Fits in your pocket. Five minutes of air…” The salesman stuck the regulator in his mouth.

“Hey! Hey! Hey!” said Coleman. “That’s my gas!” He jerked the regulator away and stuck it in his own mouth.

“C’mon. This is a quality job,” said the salesman. “Gimme a bump.”

“All right, but just a little.”

A short while later, Coleman picked up the tank and stepped over the passed-out teen. They got back in the Buick and continued west. More bridges, Tavernier, Upper and Lower Matecumbe. They started across the Long Key Viaduct.

“Coleman, check this out.” Serge wiggled his finger inside a hole in the driver’s door. “I think I feel a bullet…. Coleman?”

Coleman was slumped against the far door with the regulator in his mouth, a puddle of drool on his shirt. Serge plucked the rubber mouthpiece from Coleman’s lips, and it came out with the sound of someone popping a finger in a cheek.

A minute passed; Coleman sat up. “What did you do that for?”

“There’s a bullet hole. I told you I didn’t break your window. Somebody was shooting at us. It shattered the glass, traveled across the car and lodged here.”

“Why would anyone do that?”

“I don’t know, but I’ve been getting an odd feeling lately that I’m being followed.”

“You’re imagining things.”

“How do you explain the bullet?”

“South Florida,” said Coleman. “Probably a stray from all the people shooting for reasons that don’t concern us.”

“Think so?”

“Remember that celebration after the Miami Heat playoffs where they shot those guns in the air, and one of the slugs came down and dropped that guy sticking videos in the overnight box?”

“Guess you’re right.” Serge looked off the south side of the bridge. “I spy… another waterspout!”

“I see them all the time in the Keys.”

“The conditions are just right in the Gulf Stream.”

“Maybe it’ll bring us good luck.”

A few miles back, a brown Plymouth Duster began crossing the Long Key Viaduct.

25

The night before the wedding

SERGE WAS A WRECK. He paced back and forth at a boat ramp on the northwest end of Big Pine.

The sun started down over the Gulf. A wavering orange furnace reflecting off the incoming surf. All three types of clouds in attendance. A bank of stratus burned red on the western sky. Straight and high above, wispy cirrus glowed pink from the underlight. To the east, a front of purple and gray cumulus from an approaching storm. Serge stopped on the boat ramp and raised his camera. He snapped the shutter as a lone gull crossed the center of the bright ball filling his zoom.

Serge always had to wait until the very end. Once the sun touched the horizon, it would go fast, quickly halfway down, then a brilliant arc on the rim of the earth. Finally, a last pop of light and it was gone, leaving Serge consumed with the same postcoital emotion he had after every session of strenuous sex: He wanted a pizza.

Serge had to stay till the end because he was still hoping to see the elusive Flash of Green that John D. MacDonald had written of so eloquently — an extremely rare emerald ignition over water at the exact moment of sunset. Diehard Floridians were always chasing it. Some people, like Serge, went years without success. A few old-timers said they’d seen it two or three times. There were many competing theories for the flash. Others thought it was just a fairy tale. Serge was not one of them.

On this particular evening, Serge stood beside the ramp and took the last of his photos as the sun dipped deep into the sea. Almost gone. Time to look for the flash. He let the camera hang from the strap around his neck and crossed his fingers. “Please, please, please…” He squinted at the last bit of light wavering on the horizon. It disappeared.

Serge gasped and put a hand to his mouth. “Oh, my God. I saw it! I finally saw it!” He turned and began running across the island toward the No Name Pub. “I saw the flash! I saw the flash!…” Serge noticed a big green spot down the road ahead of him. Serge stopped and held a hand up to his face, a green spot in the middle of the palm.

“Shit, of course. The sun was almost solid red at the end. It’s just a damn reverse-image afterspot on my eyeballs from staring too long.” His shoulders slumped as he trudged on toward the pub. “Now I’m depressed.” He reached the parking lot and looked up at a tiny jetliner, its lengthy contrail catching light from over the horizon to form a bright streak across the darkening blue sky with a green spot in the middle.

The No Name was rockin’. J. Geils on the juke. Early Whammer Jammer stuff. Serge opened the screen door.

“Serge!”

He grabbed a stool and sagged at the counter. Jerry the bartender came over with a bottle of water. “Why so down?”

“I just saw the Flash of Green.”

“That’s great!” said Jerry. “I’ve never seen it and I’ve been looking forever. Where? On the north shore?”

“It’s still here.” Serge reached out with his finger and touched a point in the air between their faces. “It’s just a damn spot on my eyeballs. There’s no magical flash.”

“Yes, there is. It’s an atmospheric condition. You just stared too long.”

Serge noticed a commotion at the pool table. “What’s going on over there?”

“Bar bet. They’re working on Coleman.”

Serge looked at his hand again. “I think I’ve done some kind of damage.”

“It’ll fade.”

Serge picked up his water and headed for the pool table, where three guys were gripping Coleman’s head from different angles, trying to dislodge the cue ball stuck in his mouth.

Serge walked up to Sop Choppy. “How are they doing?”

“Almost got it out. You ready for tomorrow?”

“Really nervous. I don’t understand it. I never get this way.”

A cue ball bounced across the floor.

“It means you’re normal,” said the biker. “Even the toughest guys get the shakes.”

“You know how to get rid of a green spot on your eyeballs from staring at the sun too long?”

“Look at the pool table. It’ll blend in.”

Coleman came over. “Whew. Another close one.” He pulled an envelope from his pocket and handed it to Serge. “Got a piece of mail for you.”

Serge checked the address through the cellophane window. The Grodnicks. “Perfect!” He tore open the envelope and stuck the credit card in his wallet. “Just in time for the wedding.”

The screen door flew open. “Son of a bitch!”

The gang didn’t even have to look. Gaskin Fussels. Sop Choppy’s head fell. “Not again.”

Fussels charged up to the bar and jumped on a stool. “I’m going to have to kill someone!”

“What happened?” said Jerry.

“I just got ripped off! One of those little mom-and-pop motels. Oh, they’re so fuckin’ sweet and countrified when you arrive. You know what they did to me? They stuck me in the last room over the office. Then after they closed up, all the heat rose and the window unit couldn’t handle it. I had to check into another motel!”

“Didn’t you ask for a refund?” asked Jerry.

“Of course! I called the after-hours number, but they refused!”

“That’s not right,” said Jerry.

“I’m going to get them!” said Fussels. “I’m going to get them so good!”

The gang at the pool table was having difficulty focusing on their game with Fussels yelling and pounding the bar with his fists. Sop Choppy concentrated on a shot. He pulled the stick back.

“Nobody messes with Gaskin Fussels!”

The five went in the corner pocket, followed by the cue ball. Sop Choppy slammed the butt of his stick on the floor. “That’s it. He’s gotten on my last nerve.”

“We can’t wait any longer,” said Rebel. “This used to be a great place.”

Jerry came over with a tray of drafts the gang had ordered. “Here you go, guys….”

“Jerry, why the hell do you talk to that jerk?” said Bob the accountant. “You’re just encouraging him!”

“What?” said Jerry. “Did I do something wrong?”

“No, Jerry. You didn’t do anything,” said Sop Choppy. “You’re just a nice person. Bob’s upset about something else.”

“You’re upset about it, too,” said Bob.

“What is it?” said Jerry. “Maybe I can help.”

“Trust me. This isn’t in your area,” said Sop Choppy.

“We need to figure out how to get rid of Fussels,” said Bob.

Jerry looked puzzled. “Why? What’d he do?”

“See, that’s what I mean,” said Sop Choppy. “You like everyone. It’s not your nature.”

“He’s fucking up the whole pub,” said Rebel.

“He is?”

“Jesus, Jerry. You talk to him more than anybody, and he doesn’t annoy you? All his offensive jokes? We’re the most offensive people we know, and we find him offensive.”

“You like it if I got rid of him?” asked Jerry.

“Shoot, we’d love it!” said Rebel.

“I know how to do it,” said Jerry.

“Yeah, right.”

“No, really…” Jerry told them what he had in mind.

“Jerry, that’s awful!” said Bob. “I can’t believe you said that. It’s so out of character. It’s perfect!”

“You really think so?”

The guys started laughing. Rebel put a hand on Jerry’s shoulder. “We always knew we liked you…. Serge, what the hell are you doing?”

Serge was working with the wooden break triangle, tediously assembling an elaborate triple-deck configuration of balls in the middle of the table. “Pool trick. Saw Minnesota Fats do this once on TV, but not nearly so complex.” He grabbed the bridge, three sticks and some chalk. Coleman was already kneeling on the floor behind the right back pocket, holding the eight ball on top of his head with an index finger.

“Serge, you’re not going to knock that ball off Coleman’s head, are you?”

Serge’s tongue stuck out the corner of his mouth. He carefully set the last ivory ball atop the pyramid inside the triangle. “Not at first.” He arranged the three cue sticks in the bridge with their ends jutting over the edge of the table. He stepped back. “Okay, here’s what’s going to happen. Don’t take your eyes off the table because it’ll be over in a blink. I’ll have to go all the way to that corner on the far side of the bar because I need the biggest running start possible. Then, when I get up enough speed, I slam the ends of the three sticks. If I do it just right, the balls scatter and one will immediately fly into each of the six pockets. But that’s just the beginning. Other balls will leave the table altogether, the three ball caroming off the rest-room door, the seven taking a short hop on that wall, the two skipping back, knocking the eight off Coleman’s head” — Serge patted the side pocket near his hip — “which ends up right here.”

“I gotta see this,” said Rebel.

Gaskin Fussels banged the counter with an empty glass. “Jerry! Getting mighty dry over here!”

“Coming, Mr. Fussels!” He hurried over and stuck a frosted mug under a tap.

“Hey, Jerry, I got a new joke for ya.”

Jerry poured foam off the top of the mug. “What is it?”

“Why did God give women vaginas?”

“I don’t know, why?”

Fussels slapped the bar. “So we’d talk to them! Ha ha ha ha…”

Jerry set the refill in front of Fussels. “And we talk to them and then what?”

“No, you see the thing about women… screw it, this one’s easier. Stay with me, boy. You know why my ex-wife threw away her vibrator?”

“No.”

“It chipped her teeth! Ha ha! Woooo!…”

“She threw it away? What? It didn’t work right?”

“Jerry, you gettin’ enough oxygen back there?”

Serge passed behind Fussels, counting off paces to the far corner of the pub.

Jerry wiped the bar down with a towel. “So, Mr. Fussels… that motel business really got under your skin?”

“Damn! You had to go and remind me! Of all the underhanded, chicken-shit—”

Jerry worked hard with the towel on a particular spot. “Yeah, it sounds like something he’d do.”

“Who?”

“The owner.”

“You know the owner?”

“A total asshole.”

“Jerry, I’ve never heard you talk bad about anyone.”

“This guy’s different.” The bartender slung the towel over his shoulder. “Biggest jerk I ever met in my life.”

“You’re preachin’ to the choir.”

“I know how you can get even with him.”

“You do?”

“Definitely. I know what he loves. That’s what you attack.”

“Jerry, this is a completely different side of you,” said Fussels. “I like it!”

“Believe me, this will completely burn his ass.”

“I’m all ears.”

Serge went sprinting by in the background.

“I know where he lives,” said the bartender. “He’s out of town right now. What you want to do is go over to his house….”

A three ball bounced across the top of the counter between Fussels and the bartender.

“Jerry!” yelled Sop Choppy. “Quick! Get me all the ice you got!”

“What’s the matter?”

“We got some people down.”

26

The morning of the Big Day

SERGE HAD SLEPT all night in his white tux. At the first hint of sunrise, he leaped from the couch in Coleman’s trailer. There was much to do before the wedding.

He’d told Molly not to worry about a thing. Just leave the planning to Serge. He reached under the couch and grabbed a tickle stick used to catch lobsters. The sticks were long Lucite wands with a hook on one end and a scuba diver’s wrist strap at the other. If you saw antennas twitching out a hole in the coral, you stuck the stick inside and “tickled” the lobster on the tail, and it would jump out into your grasp.

Coleman was dead to the world.

“Wake up! I’m getting married!”

A groan and a head buried in the pillows.

Serge poked him in the ribs with the tickle stick. “Wake up!”

Coleman swatted blindly behind him.

“Wake up!” Poke.

“Ahhhhh!” Coleman rolled onto his back and swatted wildly with eyes closed.

Poke.

Coleman reared up and grabbed the end of the stick. Serge struggled expertly with the other end like an alligator poacher. “There we go, big boy…. Easy now…”

Coleman suddenly stopped and opened his eyes. He swung his legs over the side of the bed. “I’m hungry.”

They wandered into the kitchen. Coleman rubbed his ribs. “Why do you always have to use the stick?”

“Because you always swing.”

“Automatic reflex,” said Coleman. “From those times I’ve woken up in jail with some guy straddling my chest punching me in the face.”

“Need to shake a leg.” Serge dragged three already packed gear bags from a closet. Coleman plopped down on the end of the sofa next to his nitrous tank. He turned on the TV and grabbed the regulator.

Serge yanked it out of his mouth.

“Hey!”

“We have to get moving!”

“But the wedding isn’t till this afternoon.”

“I’m expecting a lot of traffic.”

He wasn’t kidding. It was going to be a huge day in the lower Florida Keys, and not because of the wedding. One of the largest annual community events was about to kick off. That was no coincidence. Serge couldn’t conceive of getting married without a cultural tie-in. He’d approached the organizers, who loved the idea. A wedding would be great publicity. Lots of photos for the newspapers. Serge was going to get married at one of his favorite places on earth: Looe Key.

Looe Key wasn’t like the other keys. You couldn’t get there by highway. And even if you could, you’d be in trouble. Looe Key was submerged.

It was named for the HMS Looe, which sank in 1744. There’s almost nothing left of the wreck, but the awash coral reef is famous for its spectacular pattern of finger channels supporting teeming quantities of angelfish, parrotfish, tarpon, snapper, eel and just about everything else. The reef sits five miles offshore to the south. Dive boats make continuous runs from Ramrod, Little Torch and Big Pine.

For twenty-one years, the locals have hosted the annual Looe Key Underwater Music Festival. Water conducts sound much better than air, and divers come from all over to feel the tunes pulse through their bones. The music is broadcast by WCNK — “Conch FM” — and pumped down to the reef with special underwater speakers from Lubell Laboratory. Some of the divers arrive in wacky costumes. They jump in the ocean with guitars and trombones and whatnot, forming string quartets and marching bands. Some dress like pop stars. Tina Tuna. Britney Spearfish.

The concert lasts six hours. The minister would arrive during the third. The vows would be exchanged under water. Serge had written them himself.

Gear bags flew into the Buick’s trunk and the lid slammed. Serge checked his watch. “Still on schedule. You got the ring?”

“Ring?”

“Coleman! You’re the best man!”

“What ring?”

“I gave it to you last night. I was extremely clear. I said, ‘Coleman, put down the bong and pay attention. This is the ring. It is of utmost importance. Screw up everything else, but don’t lose the ring. The ring is everything. The ring is life and death. Do you understand?’ And you said, ‘Sure,’ and I handed it to you.”

“Oh, that,” said Coleman. “I thought you were handing me a piece of trash.”

Serge and Coleman sorted through garbage dumped out on the kitchen floor.

A half hour later, the Buick pulled up to the tiki bar at the Looe Key Reef Resort. Serge took the ring from his pocket and wiped off coffee grounds. He handed it to Coleman. “This is the ring. It isn’t trash. Do not throw away.”

The gang from the No Name was already waiting under the thatched roof. Molly was there, too, sitting on a bar stool in her wedding gown. Wearing glasses. Serge gave her a peck on the cheek.

“We’re not supposed to see each other before the ceremony,” said Molly.

“I don’t believe in bad luck….” Serge pointed at the ground. “Coleman!”

“What?”

“In the dirt! The ring!”

“How’d that get there?” Coleman picked it up.

Serge snatched it. “You’re relieved of ring duty.”

“Thanks. That was way too much pressure.”

The gang toasted the happy couple. Nothing could go wrong now. They were already in place with a full two-hour pad. Just let the moment build enjoying the company of friends.

They weren’t all friends. Most of the customers in the tiki hut were divers attending the music festival. Lots of rum drinks, cans of beer, buckets of oysters and cocktail sauce and chisels. It was noisy. The loudest were the three used-car salesmen on the opposite side of the bar from Serge and Molly. They’d just gotten in from the morning dive, drinking up quickly so they could work in another afternoon dive. A definite no-no. But rules were for other people.

Serge had noticed the trio in passing, but now he happened to catch them pointing his way and laughing. Actually, they were pointing at Molly. Serge scowled at them. They looked away, made another unheard remark and laughed even harder.

Serge turned to Molly. Her head hung sadly. Laughter across the bar. They were pointing again. Serge got off his stool.

The three men were still giggling when Serge arrived in his white tux.

“Hey, look. It’s Bogart!”

“Were you pointing at my fiancée?”

“Who?” The leader stretched his neck theatrically and looked across the bar.

“I’m getting married today,” said Serge. “So you’ve caught me in a good mood.”

“Oh, the one in the wedding dress.” He looked back at his buddies. “Wonder how a nerd does it?”

Serge tapped him on the shoulder.

The leader got off his stool and stood up to Serge’s chest. He was a lot taller than he looked sitting. “Why don’t you go back to your seat before you get hurt?”

“I’m trying to be polite.” Serge snapped his fingers for the bartender. “Give these guys a round on me.” He turned to the salesman again. “A little common courtesy. It’s all I ask. I don’t want anything to ruin this special day.”

“Whatever, Bogey.”

“Thanks.” Serge returned to his stool. He and Molly faced each other, holding hands, lost in each other’s eyes. A loud remark came across the bar. This time it was clearly audible.

“My Big Fat Geek Wedding!”

Serge continued smiling at Molly. “Would you excuse me?” He got off the stool and tugged Coleman’s arm. “We need to go back to the trailer.”

On the way to the Buick, Serge stopped in the motel’s dive shop to pick up the reserved scuba tanks for him and Molly. “I’m going to need an extra.”

The pair made an express trip to the mobile home and was back at the tiki hut in under forty minutes.

Serge hoisted an orange tank from the trunk and carried it on his shoulder into the bar. He walked up to the head car salesman and set the tank down. “Sorry about the misunderstanding earlier. Free tank on me. No hard feelings.”

A sheriff’s cruiser drove up. Gus and Walter got out and walked through the parking lot. Gus stopped behind one of the cars and looked at the APB in his hand. “This is the one.”

The deputies entered the tiki hut and made a slow circuit around the bar, studying customers.

“Uh-oh,” said Serge. He held up a hand to shield his face.

Gus stopped behind a stool and checked the mug shot on the bulletin in his hand. “Are you Rebel Starke?”

“Yeah, why?”

Gus pulled handcuffs off his belt. “You’re under arrest for six hundred traffic tickets in Tennessee.”

Rebel jumped off his stool and ran up to Serge, grabbing him by the lapels of his white tux. “Serge! Hide me! Do something!”

The deputies dragged him off.

Serge stood and straightened his jacket. “Sorry there was a disturbance, folks, but everything’s all right now. Just relax and have a good time.” He offered Molly his arm. “Shall we?”

THE DIVE BOAT throttled down and moored to a special float over the reef. The minister was already waiting below. The wedding party and best man lay around the afterdeck. They would be staying topside because of safety technicalities like not having dive certificates and being drunk. Serge and Molly stood on the back dive platform with their tanks. They held hands and gazed at each other one last time, before clutching regulators to their mouths and splashing into the ocean.

The first song was “Octopus’s Garden,” then “Fins” and “Aqualung.” The radio station had let Serge pick them out himself. Serge also gave the station a marriage script that would be piped into the water as the minister and the couple pantomimed. The groom removed the ring from a Velcro pocket in his buoyancy compensator. The theme from Jaws started. A DJ began reading.

I, Serge, take you, Molly, to be my lawfully wedded wife, to love and hold, in sickness and in health, in good times and bad, choosing you exclusively as my wife, friend, partner, airtight alibi, getaway driver, nurturing each other’s growth, making fun of the same relatives behind their backs, developing a list of running gags that is the foundation of any solid relationship, doing all the cool things married people do, which is why I’m really looking forward to this: snuggling on the couch with photo albums, watching classic movies in bed with lots of snacks, making silly remarks when we fart, at least at first before it becomes contentious, always agreeing with my wife that her really hot-looking friends dress like sluts and promising never, ever to fight. And when we do, to fight fair and not take off our rings and throw them at each other or reach for hot-button secrets we confided like those kids from junior high and their cruel nicknames — damn them to eternal hell! Then having lots and lots of kids with normal names instead of Scout, Tyfani, Dakota, Breeze or Shaniquatella, reading them bedtime stories and nursery rhymes, singing Christmas carols, teaching them that the “special words” Mommy and Daddy use around the house can’t be repeated at school because it’s “our little secret.” Now a moment to thank the sponsor of today’s wedding. Let’s hear it for Conch FM, home of the hits! And remember to keep a lookout for the Southernmost Prize Wagon! Back to live action: I further solemnly swear to adore and respect, to honor and defend, against all foes foreign and domestic, my love, my light, my life, the wind beneath my wings, the rockets’ red glare, the bombs bursting in air, fourscore and seven years, in Birmingham they love the guv’nah — ooo-ooo-ooo! As long as we both shall live! Amen!

He slipped the ring on her finger.

“I now pronounce you man and wife.”

The nuptials spit out their regulators and kissed to “Yellow Submarine.”

The dive boat erupted in applause when Serge and Molly broke the surface. People on the other boats began cheering, too. So did some of the divers who had wandered into the ceremony and surfaced with the couple. They scrambled for the artificial bouquet that sailed over Molly’s shoulder into the Gulf Stream.

There was a cake on the boat, finger food, champagne. The merriment built. People danced. Serge stomped on a plastic cup.

Before they knew it, the sun was fading and the wind had picked up. The underwater music festival neared another successful conclusion. Time to head in and continue the celebration back on land. Boat engines started; mooring clamps were unhooked. The remaining divers began surfacing.

Except one.

Down in a distant ravine between the corals heads, a diver in a black and turquoise wet suit top was acting a little strange. He stumbled along the sandy bottom with a goofy grin. The diver had logged over a thousand hours, and his experience told him something was amiss. He was too happy. He checked his watch and his depth gauge. It didn’t add up. He hadn’t been down deep or long enough for nitrogen narcosis, but there was every indication. He staggered and swayed in the current. A barracuda stopped and stared in that unnerving, teeth-bared way they do. The diver just smiled. He thought: Narcosis isn’t that bad. In fact, it’s pretty great! So this is how all the less-experienced guys get the bends or die. They’re having such a good time, they forget the fundamentals. Well, not me. Have to fight it. Must think.

The owner of Pristine Used Motors forced his mind to reach back through years of underwater training. He checked the mini decompression table on his wrist, then hit a timer button on his scuba watch. Twenty minutes, then a little air in the vest and up to the next depth for another stage. The diver was executing the procedure to perfection, resisting the natural tendency to panic and shoot to the surface, which is what he should have done with Serge’s ten percent mixture of nitrous oxide building up in his bloodstream.

He watched the sweep-second hand on his chronograph as it approached the ten-minute mark. The periphery of his vision slowly dissolved to darkness as Pink Floyd throbbed from a dozen submerged speakers.

Eleven minutes. The diver stared straight up. Tunnel vision. Solid black around an ever-tightening circle of light from the surface. Twelve minutes, the tube of light shrank to the diameter of a quarter. Thirteen minutes. An ultimately euphoric grin wrapped across the diver’s face as Floyd built to climax.

A pinpoint of light.

“…I-yiiiiiiiiii… have become… comfortably numb….”

The light went out.

27

ANOTHER TRAFFIC JAM in Marathon. The airport crowded with people. Local chamber of commerce, reporters, federal agents. A line of limos waited by the terminal. This was the day he arrived.

The largest private jet the airport had ever seen came into view. It touched down and used all of the five-thousand-foot runway coming to a stop.

Stairs rolled up. The door opened. People on the runway tried to surge forward but were held back by private security. A pair of executive attachés emerged first, followed by lawyers, accountants and a team of miscellaneous handlers in dark sunglasses. Finally… Wait, there’s more. Personal guests, local politicians and a handful of relatives, including the grandmother who had to be lowered with a special lift…. Was that it? No, hold on. Yes-men, suck-ups, professional entourage members, two “independent” experts ready to go on CNN at a moment’s notice, the unemployed celebrity golfing pal, and a woman in a bright tangerine scarf carrying a leather organizer — the highly protective traveling publicist. Okay, that was definitely it. Finally, the person they’d all been waiting for. And he comes now, confidently striding down the stairs in a lightweight gray suit tailored in Rome. Donald Greely, former CEO and chairman of embattled Global-Con, Inc.

Greely reached the tarmac and was immediately mobbed by a tight crowd that shuffled with him toward the terminal. Newspaper photographers held cameras in the air, snapping photos over the swarm. Reporters shouted questions.

“Will the company reorganize?”

“What about all the wiped-out retirement accounts?”

“Why’d you take the fifth before Congress?”

“How much did the house cost?”

“Are you going to live here permanently?”

The reporters were roundly booed by supporters from local civic organizations, who endlessly thanked Greely for his generosity. The new hospital wing, new arts center, scholarships for local teens with high SATs and the home for unwanted puppies.

With an artful and carefully rehearsed technique, the team of handlers acted in choreographed unison as a kind of giant ectoplasm, gradually elbowing, shouldering, sidestepping and jockeying the noisiest journalists to the outer rim of the crowd, simultaneously letting the most enthusiastic supporters percolate through to the inner core.

All the way to the terminal, Greely grinned and signed autographs. They clasped his hand earnestly. “Can’t thank you enough for the donation!” “Will you speak at our awards banquet?” “You’ve been such an inspiration!”

“Just trying to be a good member of the community,” said Greely. “Really, no need to thank me.” He had a point. It was all being paid for by other people’s life savings, routed through Caribbean shell corporations. Standard PR for controversial companies and public figures moving into town: Buy advance goodwill.

The crowd approached the terminal. The traveling publicist glowed. Everything unfolding according to plan. Lots of photos of happy residents greeting their newest neighbor.

Something caught the eye of one of the newspaper photographers. Out in the parking lot on the other side of the runway fence. The photographer broke from the pack and started shooting on the run. When his rivals noticed, they stampeded for the same picture, followed by reporters with open notebooks.

The traveling publicist noticed the crowd around her client getting a little lean. Where’d the media go? She looked back and saw her worst nightmare. On the other side of the fence was a lone picketer, an elderly woman with an expression of collapsed hope, barely strong enough to hold up her homemade sign written in a pitifully unsteady hand: I HAD TO GO BACK TO WORK.

“Goddammit!” shouted the publicist. “What did I ever do to her?”

28

THE HONEYMOON WAS a corker.

The gang gave Serge and Molly a traditional Keys send-off. They waved farewell from the dock on Little Torch Key. Serge and Molly waved back from the rear of a charter boat with aluminum cans and fishing bobbers tied to the stern, the gunwales shaving-creamed: “If this boat’s a rockin’, don’t come a knockin’.”

“I’m dying to know where we’re going!” said Molly.

“I told you,” said Serge. “It’s a surprise.”

“I’m so excited!”

The ferry took them on a short, three-mile hop to a private dock, and that’s when Molly saw it. She grabbed Serge around the neck and jumped up and down. “I love you! I love you! Thank you!…”

“Easy, my neck.”

Little Palm Island.

Oasis.

Tahitian bungalows riding small rolling hills, surrounded by bright island flowers and coconut palms growing out over the water. More like the South Pacific, which is why it was the movie location for PT-109.

A chilled bottle of wine waited in the couple’s suite. Molly walked onto the veranda and drank in the aquamarine harbor. She squealed with glee and swirled in a circle.

Nothing was too good for his Molly. Serge had arranged a mega-package of romance and pampering. All weekend long: the serenity massage, seaweed body mask, volcanic earth clay ritual, bali spice treatment, then hours together in their private teakwood Jacuzzi filled with lilacs.

And the food! An elite team of world-class gourmets kept it coming. Breakfast: avocado omelets, salmon mimosas, silver pots of coffee and fresh-squeezed juice, then a room-service lunch of chilled lobster bisque, black mussels poached in fennel, goat cheese with arugula, goose liver pâté, steak au poivre and pommes frites. Wait, leave room for dinner: petite bouillabaisse, grilled yellow snapper, pollo-sautéed andouille with hearts of palm and corn-roasted chipotle sauce. Finally, the pièce de résistance, raspberry tart with crème anglaise.

It didn’t come cheap. As they say, don’t forget your VISA. Seven thousand bucks. Molly read the welcome card that came with the chilled wine. Congratulations, Mr. & Mrs. Grodnick.

Almost forgot! The sex!

Serge had been apprehensive. He was a fairly urbane guy — didn’t want to spook Molly with anything too weird right away. He brushed his teeth and walked barefoot into the room with the mahogany poster bed and gauzy white canopy. “Honey?…”

Something slammed him hard from the blind side and knocked him onto the mattress.

“I’m going to make you so happy! I’m going to be the best wife!…” She seized the front of his pants. His zipper ripped apart.

Serge grabbed her wrists. “Honey, slow down. We’ve got the rest of our lives.”

“I’m sorry. Did I do something wrong? I did, didn’t I? I’m so sorry….”

“You’re fine. Just don’t burden yourself.”

She stared down. Serge gently put a hand under her chin and raised her head. “You don’t have to answer this if you don’t want to, but… is this, uh, your first?…”

She tried to lower her head again, but Serge’s hand was still there. She nodded.

“No crime in that. Let’s start slow with the basics.”

It was a precipitous learning curve. What Molly apparently lacked in experience, she more than compensated for with enthusiasm, stamina and mind-curving imagination.

Serge began to suspect he wouldn’t last the night. At the two-hour mark, he tremored on the mattress. “Where’d you learn to do that?”

“I just made it up. Want me to stop?”

“Hell, no!”

Deeper into the night. More pioneering technique. Serge never would have guessed she was double-jointed. And just what was this she was starting to — oh, no!… Serge’s head arched back over the pillow, his mind’s eye catapulting through the Milky Way, comets and quasars zooming past….

She sat up. “You didn’t like that, did you? I’m sorry. Now I’m embarrassed.” She put a hand over her eyes in shame. “You’re always going to picture me doing that….”

Serge pulled the hand away from her face and grabbed her by the shoulders. “Holy God!… You sure you haven’t done this before?”

She shook her head.

“I want you to listen carefully and trust me on this one,” said Serge. “You’re incredible. You have absolutely nothing to feel self-conscious about.”

“You really mean it?”

“Completely,” said Serge, nodding hard. “Especially the naked-but-still-wearing-glasses part. Throws something into the mix I can’t quite explain.”

Molly sprouted a giant grin. “Good!” She jumped off the bed and skittered into the next room, returning quickly with a turkey baster and feather duster. “Let’s try this!…”

Serge pitched in agony against the pain-pleasure threshold. Molly finally showed mercy and let him up for air. “How was that?”

Serge panted until he regained speech. “Where’d you get the accessories?”

“I packed a few things. Wanna see?” She ran in the other room again, coming back with an overnight case that she opened on the foot of the bed. Oils, ointments, fur cuffs, nipple clips, whip, latex mask, double-ended dildo, illustrated manuals, ball of twine, clear tubing, bungee cords and trick-or-treat costumes.

“I wasn’t sure what you were into, so I got a little of everything.”

“From where?”

“That adult superstore in Fort Lauderdale. The one with the shopping carts.” She reached in the case. “Now hold still….”

On it went, Molly’s self-esteem climbing. By midnight, she had lost all inhibition and bloomed into a regular Chatty Cathy. “I have an idea. Let’s… no, I’m going to surprise you. You like surprises, right? You still having fun? I sure am! You’re going to love this one! You don’t have any heart conditions, do you?…” She reached deep into the overnight bag.

“What’s that?”

“Blindfold.” Molly strapped it to his face. Her voice deepened. “Lie down, slave!” Her voice returned to normal pitch. “Is it okay I call you ‘slave’? I don’t really mean it. I read it in a magazine. It’s just a game. I can leave the ‘slave’ part out if you want. I’d like to leave it in because of the story line….”

“Go for it.”

“Shut up, slave! Open your mouth!”

A piece of twine tied his big toes together. He heard some kind of motor start.

The next thing Serge knew, the blindfold was off and he was staring at the ceiling. Molly lightly slapped his cheek. “Honey, are you okay?”

“What happened?”

“You passed out. At first I thought I’d killed you.”

“Make a note. That’s how I want to go.”

“You’re not tired yet, are you? I’m not. I’m just getting started….”

Who was this woman? Still waters certainly ran deep. It continued the rest of the night. Serge tried to remember as much as he could, but there was too much new data, Molly venturing far beyond her shell and into uncharted territory. Three to four A.M. became the profanity hour, which Molly executed with naughty, schoolgirl glee. She was on top, riding fast and hard. “Wow, I’ve never said these words before! I didn’t know it could be such a turn on. Fuck! Pussy! Cock! You like that? I think I’ll try it with the word ‘hot.’ Hot pussy! Hot cock! I like it better that way. What do you think? What about ‘sweet’? Which do you prefer? ‘Sweet’ or ‘hot’? Hey, it’s kind of like mustard. Get it? Sweet and hot mustard? Did you ever think of that, you big-cock mother-fucker?…” Right on through daybreak, Serge stretched out on his back, utterly spent. Molly sat next to him on the bed, flipping through her manual. She turned the book toward him and tapped an illustration. “We haven’t done the Praying Mantis….”

Serge didn’t know how much more he could take, but Molly showed no signs of fatigue. “Come on up!” said Molly. “It’s the ‘Wallenda,’ page 143,” swinging from one of the driftwood rafters.

Finally, mercy. “I’m starting to get tired,” she said, stifling a yawn with the back of her hand. “It’s all right if we stop? I need to get some sleep. But I don’t want to disappoint you. That’ll disappoint you, won’t it? I can tell. Okay, one more thing….” She trotted out of the room again and came back wearing one of the trick-or-treat costumes from her overnight bag.

Serge sat up. “Which one are you supposed to be?”

“Buttercup.”

Molly ran toward the bed for her superhero pounce. She pulled up at the last second. “Baby?…”

He was snoring.

Serge usually had an immense aquifer of energy, but it wasn’t bottomless. Now he had to recharge. And there was no more restful place than Little Palm Island. Isolated, exclusive, utterly tranquil. It stayed that way because of the limited access. Only three ways to get there: private yacht, the seaplanes that occasionally splashed down in the harbor with a belly full of executives, and the ferryboat that docked at the landing on Little Torch Key. The landing had a small parking lot where you could leave the car overnight. It currently held eight vehicles. The last car was backed into its slot, hiding the license plate against the bushes. A brown Plymouth Duster.

SHAFTS OF BLINDING afternoon light streamed through bungalow windows on Little Palm Island.

Serge’s eyelids fluttered open.

Molly was in the wooden Jacuzzi, luxuriating in exotic bath gels. She heard him stir. “Where are you, my love?”

Serge banged into a doorframe.

“Honey?”

“Right here,” said Serge.

Molly cupped her hands together and squirted water into the air. “I’m in the hot tub. Why don’t you join me?”

“Not right now.” He stepped onto the veranda.

Molly hummed and squirted water. “Come on. We’ll play.”

“I have to go down to the shore for a minute.”

“What for?”

“To die.”

“I’ll keep the water warm… hmmm, hmmm, hmmm.” Squirt.

Serge was operating on fumes. He needed to find some place away from that woman and gather strength. He stumbled down to the beach toward one of the big burlap hammocks that were hanging everywhere between the palms. Being a Floridian, he looked up to make sure no coconuts were hanging over the end where his head would be. He clawed his way into the mesh and was snoring again in under a minute.

Molly walked out on the veranda. “Serge?”

The hammock sagged deep in the middle where Serge curled up like a baby. He’d never slept harder. After an hour, the wind changed and the hammock began taking an eastern breeze off the harbor. It was down by the dock on the southern indentation of the island, visible from the upland bluff where two hands in leather gloves parted the fronds of a saw palmetto. The hands opened a small steel case lined with foam padding. A disassembled Marlin thirty-ought-six. The hands screwed on the barrel and snapped the stock in place. The barrel poked through the branches and rested in the yoke. An eye went to the scope, a leather finger eased through the trigger guard. A hammock appeared in the crosshairs. The finger squeezed.

The first bullet grazed Serge’s shoulder, an otherwise excellent shot. The elevation was dead-on, but a tiny miscalculation in windage. Serge woke up grabbing his arm. The second shot was hurried and missed altogether, smashing the support ring fastening one end of the hammock to the tree. Serge crashed to the ground just before the third shot flew through the spot where his head had just been. Serge instinctively tucked and rolled toward the cover of brush. Leather hands jerked the rifle out of the branches and deftly broke it down into the case. Serge was on his feet, running in a tight crouch against the vegetation, then into the thick of the trees, taking a long, looping fox trail around the island.

Serge finally made it back to the cottage, clearing the front steps in two giant leaps and diving through the door. Molly heard the noise and came in the room drying her hair with a hundred-watt blower.

Serge ran for the sink, blood trickling through the fingers holding his injured shoulder.

A scream. The dryer crashed to the floor.

“It’s just a flesh wound,” said Serge. “The bullet didn’t even enter.”

“Bullet!”

Serge grabbed the bungalow’s first-aid kit from a cabinet and patched himself up with antibiotic cream and large bandage. “There, like it never happened.”

“You got shot?”

“A little bit.”

“Who did this!”

“Who knows? It’s a crazy world.”

“I want you to tell me right now about this consulting work you do.”

“What’s to tell?”

“Have you ever been in jail?”

“Where’d that come from?”

“Just answer the question.”

“Jail?” Serge repeated. “Words are such relative things….”

“I knew it!” Molly jumped up and headed for the bedroom.

Serge ran after her. She started packing.

“Baby, wait. I can explain….”

“Let go of my arm!” She stuffed clothes in a bag and muttered to herself. “What was I thinking getting married so fast? Right, people do it in Vegas all the time. I’m so stupid! I don’t know anything about him!…”

“Why did you marry me so fast?”

“Because you were the first man who ever…” She finished the sentence by cramming a bathing suit in the bag.

Serge grabbed her by the hand and got down on a knee.

“I married you because I just knew. When you’re positive you’ve found your soul mate, why continue shopping?”

She pulled her hand away and kept packing.

“You’re the only woman for me. Whatever I was before was before. Everything is all new now. I meant every word of my vows.”

Her packing rate slowed. “There’s just so much I don’t know about you.”

“Okay, I’ll come clean. You’re my wife and you deserve the complete, unfiltered truth. Marriage is sacred. It must be based on total trust….” He paused and looked deep into her eyes. “Okay, here goes…. I’m… a social worker.”

“Social worker?”

Serge nodded. “I find people with really screwed-up lives and gradually ease them back into the herd.”

“Coleman?…”

“My toughest case. Been working on him for years.”

“Oh, Serge. I’m so proud of you! That’s a wonderful line of work!”

“Most of the time,” said Serge. “But some of these people are pretty bizarre. That’s why you’ll have to understand if I’m suddenly required to go someplace in the middle of the night.”

“But why didn’t you just tell me in the first place?”

“Afraid it might scare you away. Some of my clients are totally unpredictable, which is why you can’t tell anyone about me or where I live.”

Molly released a big sigh. “I feel so much better now.”

“Hey! Let’s open our wedding gifts!”

“Okay.”

They unwrapped Coleman’s present. A porn tape. Chitty Chitty Gang Bang.

“Thanks, Coleman.” Serge grabbed the next gift.

Molly reached for the cast-aside video. “Let’s watch it.”

So went the next thirty-six hours. The honeymoon finally ended but not the endurance test. Serge moved into Molly’s apartment, and life turned into a Pink Panther movie. Serge would stroll out of the kitchen with a sandwich and — wham! — Molly diving from a closet, pinning him to the ground.

The staff at the Big Pine library didn’t recognize Molly when she returned to work. Hair down, clothes fitting. She looked them in the eye and even talked! Good heavens, they thought, I need sex like that. The transformation was so stunning that her female colleagues involuntarily pictured Serge’s manhood in scale next to a Polaris missile, an old-growth redwood and the Statue of Liberty.

29

THE NO NAME PUB’S screen door flew open.

“I’m Gaskin Fussels! And I rule!”

Hearts sank around the bar.

Fussels was holding a large box with both arms. He marched up and set it on the counter. “Y’all come over and take a gander at this!”

Nobody moved.

“Okay, stay where you are. I’ll take it out of the box and show you.” Fussels reached in with both arms and carefully extracted the contents. He proudly placed it on the bar.

The pub went silent. Mouths agape.

“I knew you’d be impressed,” said Fussels. “This’ll teach him to fuck with me!”

They hopped off their stools and crowded around Fussels.

Bud looked at Sop Choppy. “I hope that isn’t what I think it is.”

“Uh, where exactly did you get that?” asked Daytona Dave.

“Just up the street,” said Fussels. He formed a vicious grin. “At the home of that dick-head who owns the motel.”

“What motel?” said Bud.

“Lazy Palms. The one that ripped me off.” Fussels nodded to himself with satisfaction. “We’ll see about that fucking refund policy.”

“Where exactly was this house again?” asked Sop Choppy.

Fussels waved an arm east. “Right across the bridge on No Name Key. Down one of those back roads.”

“That’s not where the owner lives,” said Bud.

“What are you talking about?” said Fussels.

“I know the owner. His place is up on Cudjoe.”

“Then who lives out there?” asked Fussels.

It slowly began filtering back to Sop Choppy through the haze of the other night’s boozing. “Oh, no.” He looked at Bob the accountant, who was just beginning to remember himself.

“What is it?” asked Bud.

Bob had his hands over his face. “Us and our stupid practical joke.”

Sop Choppy looked at the object on the counter. “How could we be so dumb?”

“Because we were drunk!” snapped Bob.

“This is a major fuck-up,” said Sop Choppy.

Jerry the bartender started shaking. “I-I-I thought it’s what you wanted me to tell him.”

Bob ran his hands through his hair. “We have to think.”

They became silent again and stared at the bar.

Fussels looked around at everyone. “Will somebody tell me what the hell is going on?”

Nobody answered. All eyes on the magnificent, scratch-built model of a nineteenth-century British schooner. Scarface carved into the base.

“I’m starting to get pissed off!” said Fussels.

“Shut the fuck up!” yelled Sop Choppy. “You didn’t steal from a motel owner. You stole from a drug kingpin. He’s going to kill you, okay?”

“What are you talking about?” Fussels pointed across the bar. “Jerry said—”

“Jerry lied!”

“Why would he do that?”

“So we’d like him!”

“This is so bad,” said Daytona Dave.

“We gotta get it out of here,” said Bud.

“I don’t understand,” said Fussels. “Why would you want Jerry to—”

“Because you’re an asshole!” said Sop Choppy. “We were trying to get rid of you!”

“Get rid of me? I thought we were friends.”

Five guys: “Shut up!”

“He’s got to take it back right now,” said Sop Choppy.

“I’m not taking shit back,” said Fussels. “Not until I get my refund.”

“Aren’t you listening? Jerry was fucking with you!”

“You really are serious about this, aren’t you?”

“Yes! The guy’s had dozens of people killed!”

Bud grabbed the empty box. “You have to pack it back up and return it right now before he discovers it’s missing.”

The color left Fussels’s face. “No way. I’m not going back anywhere near there.”

“You have to!”

Fussels looked like he might faint.

“Hold on,” said Sop Choppy. “We might be missing something here. How do we know there’s any way to connect him to this?”

“Think hard!” said Bob. “Did anybody see you go in the house? Did you leave any clues?”

“I don’t know. Maybe.”

“What does that mean?”

“I left a ransom note.”

“You what!”

“How was I supposed to get my refund?”

“It’s still okay,” said Sop Choppy. “It’s just a ransom note. They’re anonymous.”

“I sort of signed it.”

“You idiot!”

“What did the note say?” asked Bob. “You’d be calling him or something?”

“No, I said I’d be waiting at the No Name Pub. Just bring my refund here.”

The guys jumped back and spun toward the door.

“Oh, my God!” said Bob. “They could be coming in here any second with machine guns!”

“You have to take it back right now!”

“I can’t!”

“You have to!”

Fussels’s legs got rubbery. “I need to sit down.”

“Jerry, get him a beer.”

Fussels upended the draft in one long guzzle. The others quickly packed the ship back up and pushed the box into his stomach. “Get going!”

Fussels walked meekly toward the screen door.

“Whatever you do, don’t drop it!”

“What?”

“Don’t drop it!”

He dropped it.

The gang screamed. They ran over to the box.

“Maybe it’s all right,” said Bud. “It’s a pretty tough box.”

They opened the flaps. Sop Choppy pulled out a handful of broken toothpicks.

Bob held up a snapped crow’s nest. “We’re fucked.”

“He’s gotta go back and get that ransom note!” said Bud.

“That’s right. You have to get the note!”

Fussels was frozen with fear. The gang picked him up by the arms and rushed him out the screen door.

“Go get the note!”