by Tim Dorsey
“Is this some kind of sobriety test?”
“Just do it!” The pair crept down the hall, flash, flash, flash . . .
They returned to the desk.
“Serge, nothing happened.”
“Something’s definitely fishy. Let me see if I’m right—”
“Welcome to Tupperware!” said the receptionist.
“We just popped in off the street and wanted to wander around.”
“That’s great . . .” said their greeter.
Serge raised an eyebrow at Coleman.
“. . . Have you ever been here before?” continued the receptionist.
“Driven by hundreds of times and wanted to stop, but it was always something, and it was usually banging in the trunk . . .”
Her smile remained.
“I remember my mom having Tupperware parties as a kid.” Serge’s hands swiftly sliced the air, stacking invisible objects. “I loved those parties, the whole neighborhood hanging out in our backyard by the mosquito torches in an iconic sixties experience.”
“Cream cheese and celery,” said Coleman.
“The curtains had fiberglass,” said Serge.
“Deviled eggs,” said Coleman.
Serge frantically scratched his neck.
Coleman slowly moved his hands in front of his face. “Whoa!”
Her smile never wavered.
Serge uneasily grinned back.
Coleman tugged his sleeve. “Isn’t this the part where they usually ask if they can help you?”
“That’s the problem,” Serge said out the side of his mouth. “Her game is to deliberately throw me off-balance.”
“How’s she doing that?”
“By tolerating me.” He pulled Coleman aside a step. “This has never happened before. I know I’m a little exhausting to be around, but I’m also a pretty good student of body language: People usually try to break free by the time I get to the Pavlovian itch-response to curtains.”
“Serge, I don’t find you exhausting. But I self-medicate.”
“And that’s the dynamic of our special friendship. But the receptionist is totally lucid. Not only is she tolerating my high-octane quirks, but she’s actually encouraging them.”
“How is that a problem?”
“Because this is a business negotiation,” said Serge. “And in every hardball negotiation, there’s a point where you shut up, and the next person who talks loses. Except I’ve never gotten to that point before because people always jump in and shut me up. But this woman’s good. I’ve never encountered such a formidable foe who can indulge my verbal incontinence.”
“The temptress.”
“Time to get back to the negotiation,” said Serge. “Be cool.”
“It’s hardball.”
Both stepped back up to the desk and grinned.
The receptionist grinned back.
Serge and Coleman smiled harder.
The woman maintained even pleasantness.
Serge began to perspire.
The woman didn’t.
“Okay! Okay!” said Serge. “You win! I want to see the Tupperware Museum.”
“We used to have a museum, but we updated the displays and it’s now called the Confidence Center.”
“I’m all about positivity.” Serge opened his wallet. “How much?”
“It’s free.” She handed them flowery visitor stickers for their shirts. “Hope you enjoy it.”
A cell phone rang. Serge turned it off.
DOWNTOWN MIAMI
The lunchtime crowd strolled along Biscayne Boulevard. They passed the eternal torch at Bayfront Park, and a bench where someone was eating Cuban rice and beans out of a Styrofoam container.
The person on the bench was alone, wearing a golf shirt and aviator sunglasses on a cloudy day. He had a tightly cropped haircut. Cheekbones jutted like a cross between Nicolas Cage and a competitive bicyclist. Under his shirt was a deceptively powerful, angular frame he’d developed from ocean swimming.
He finished lunch, grabbed his briefcase and headed toward a garbage can on the corner to toss his trash.
So did someone else.
Wham. They ran into each other, and he dropped his briefcase.
The other man also dropped a briefcase. Funny, but the two cases looked striking similar. Actually identical.
“You okay?” said the second man.
“Fine.”
“I’m so sorry. It was all my fault.”
“No, I wasn’t looking where I was going.”
“Did you like the movie Collateral?”
“What?”
“This is just like that.”
“Don’t talk anymore.”
They picked up each other’s briefcase and left in opposite directions.
The first man waited for a red light and crossed the boulevard toward an upscale hotel, where he had received an express check-in as a platinum customer. Then he headed for the elevators and hit 10.
Once in his room, the man set his sunglasses atop the TV. He opened the briefcase on the bed, removing a rifle with a folding stock and detachable barrel. Then an Austrian nine-millimeter and silencer. Beneath the weapons was a large tan envelope sealed with red wax.
He pulled out a chair at the desk and broke the seal. Out came the dossier, complete with eight-by-ten black-and-white glossies taken at long range.
His assignment.
There was a calendar of the target’s recent movements and detailed background on confirmed associates. Current status: location unknown, but believed to regularly frequent the Miami area.
He reached in the envelope again and removed a genuine Florida driver’s license with his own photo and new identity for the operation.
Enzo Tweel.
If there was a single word to describe Enzo, it was precision. He had the closest possible shave and rigidly manicured fingernails. Each evening he used a pair of tiny travel scissors and checked his clothes for stray threads.
Right now that focus was on the contents of the briefcase, which he arranged atop the dresser with geometric tyranny. Weapons, ammunition, untraceable cell phone, cyanide capsules, badges from five law enforcement agencies, and tiny rubber fingertip cups with fake prints. Then he went to work at the desk, creating neat rows of dossier documents surrounding a stack of perfectly aligned photos.
When he was satisfied, he walked to the window and pulled open the curtains, revealing the twinkling edge of Miami overlooking Biscayne Bay. To the left, South Beach and all its urgent emptiness. To the right, the Rickenbacker Causeway and the Seaquarium. Straight ahead, cruise ships in the port. And right below, the bench at Bayfront Park where he had just been sitting.
He watched the pavilion’s eternal torch flicker, and he exhaled a rare sigh. The whole vista grew painfully familiar. Had it already been two whole years? What an omni-dimensional fiasco. If only they had hired him as the primary shooter, instead of making him play backup to that incompetent amateur they had stuck in the sniper’s perch. Not only had he been a bad shot, but even worse in the art of concealment. The idiot got discovered and was forced to kill two cops, which meant that Enzo had to silence the sniper and sanitize the nest. That really irked him. Enzo much preferred the solitary tranquillity of adjusting a rifle scope on a distant target than a close-quarters judo fight in a hotel room.
Enzo looked around. Was it this room? Hard to be sure after two years, but it could have been. He stared out the window again at the jetties flanking the Government Cut shipping channel at the end of Miami Beach. His mind drifted back to the added inconvenience from that last nightmare of a visit: creating a dead scapegoat to take the fall for the whole scandal.
Felicia.
A cell phone began vibrating next to the silencer.
He answered. It was the c
ounter-intelligence electronics expert on call if he ever needed anything. And now he did. With the target at large, the best lead was the closest associate identified in the dossier. Recent calls from the associate to the target had already been confirmed. He ordered up a wireless phone tap that would be routed by satellite to a message app in his smartphone.
Then he tossed a few items from the dresser into a small leather satchel and headed out the door.
Chapter Twenty-Two
ORANGE BLOSSOM TRAIL
Serge stuck the coffee tube back in his mouth and hustled Coleman down the hall. There was no specific beginning to the exhibit, but the building gradually changed.
“Freaky,” said Coleman. “There are no straight edges in the room. Everything curves and bends and is shiny.”
“And it’s all covered with retro circles and swirls and starbursts in colors only found on Jefferson Airplane’s tour bus.” Serge marveled as he slowly snaked through the winding displays. “Check out these lighted bubbles in the walls and domed pedestals with the funkiest Tupperware I haven’t seen since I was a kid. It isn’t just an homage to nostalgia. We’re actually in the sixties. This is like the last and greatest parts of the Carousel of Progress from the 1964 World’s Fair that Disney disassembled and rebuilt up the road at the Magic Kingdom. Then at some point they chucked the sixties diorama and ruined everything, but who knew it landed over here.”
“Trippy—” Coleman turned and rotated his head. “I hear God’s voice.”
Serge pointed up at flush-mounted speakers. “Piped-in narration.”
“ . . . Every one-point-seven seconds, a Tupperware party starts somewhere in the world . . .”
“I didn’t know the parties were still going on,” said Coleman. “And that they’re using stopwatches.”
“So that’s what those international plaques in the hallway were about,” said Serge. “The parties may be played out a little here in the States, but the rest of the world is just discovering that hand-to-hand gelatin-mold transactions are a joyous intermission between Greek austerity riots.”
They walked past a concave sequence of interlocking screens flashing historic Technicolor images, and approached a round column of pinwheel flowers.
Serge tucked the flex tube under his shirt. “I feel like I’m in one of John Lennon’s dreams.”
“Did his dreams have a dollar-bill slot?”
“What? . . . Oh my God!” Serge ran up and placed respectful hands against the column. “A vending machine for miniature Tupperware souvenirs on key chains . . .” Serge fumbled for his wallet again. “Someone must have been spying on me when they conceived this place.”
Moments later, Serge’s pockets bulged with key chains hanging out. He stared into the billfold. “No more singles. Just fives and tens . . .” He looked up. “Where’d you come from?”
The employee smiled. “Do you need change?”
“No, I better cut myself off,” said Serge. “But thanks.”
The person smiled again and dematerialized behind the column.
“That was weird,” said Coleman.
“I know.” Serge put his wallet away. “Again, behavioral quirks that are shunned everywhere else are aggressively nurtured here . . . And I think I’ve just received my inspiration for dealing with the next scam artist . . . To the gift shop!”
They strolled the aisles with gusto. Coleman poked Serge’s arm and glanced backward: “There’s somebody following us.”
“I’m aware. Just be cool and ignore her.” Serge mentally cataloged the inventory of passing shelves. “I knew this was too good to be true. I’ve pushed our visit into the annoyance zone, and now the hammer is about to come down. But it’s critical that I pick up a few things first before we hit the mailbox.”
Coleman glimpsed back again. “What are we going to do?”
“Stall her long enough before we hear the fatal words—”
From behind: “Can I help you?”
Serge seized up and clenched his eyes. “Damn, so close.” He turned around with a guilty heart. “Why? I wasn’t doing anything.”
“You looked like you could use some assistance finding something.”
Serge glanced oddly at Coleman.
Coleman shrugged.
“Uh, I actually could use a tiny bit of help.”
“Sure, anything . . .”
Seconds later, Serge led the employee briskly down another aisle: “How much is this? . . . How much is this? . . . How much is this? . . . Is this in a different color? . . . Is this in a different size? . . . Can this withstand radiation? . . . How much is this? . . .”
“Serge,” whispered Coleman. “She’s answering every question. And she’s not getting pissed.”
“I know,” Serge whispered back, and headed for the cash register. “Now I get why they call it the Confidence Center: It’s an ethereal never-land of serenity that’s not as much a corporate headquarters as the meditation retreat of a controversial church. I feel such inner peace and unconditional acceptance that I never want to leave.”
They left the building by the giant dandelion.
Serge turned his cell phone back on, and it rang immediately. He began opening it.
“You’re actually going to answer this time?” said Coleman.
“Since I now have my inspiration, our appointment schedule just opened up.” He placed it to his ear. “Hey, Mahoney, what’s shaking? . . . I know you’ve been trying to call. My phone went dead and had to be recharged, and when I turned it back on I saw all the times you tried to reach me. Must be awfully important . . . Sure, we’re free to come back to Miami to get in position. Be there in a few hours. Later . . .”
Serge and Coleman walked off into the sunset with brimming Tupperware shopping bags in each hand.
FORT LAUDERDALE
Floral arrangements continued arriving.
All shapes. Ovals, horseshoes, a bunch of roses supposed to look like a fireman’s helmet.
They sat on easels along the front wall. The flowers kept coming because people didn’t. Couldn’t break away from New York or afford the trip in the economy.
Brook Campanella sat in the first row of a room full of empty folding Samsonite chairs. The casket was open for the viewing. The funeral director solemnly stood off to the left side near the door. His hands were clasped in front of him, and his face was a long, sad countenance of deepest empathy. He was thinking about an upcoming fishing trip.
Brook had set her cell phone on vibrate, but what did it matter?
It vibrated.
She flipped it open. “Hello?”
“Ms. Campanella, this is Ken Shapiro of Shapiro, Heathcote-Mendacious—”
“I know,” said Brook.
“I’m calling because I have great news. Upon further inquiry, I ultimately received a press release faxed from the DEA about a fraud alert on someone impersonating one of their agents in a phone scam. If your father had been present to answer the call, he would have been told of pending charges against him that could be dropped if a civil fine was immediately paid through Western Union. It was all a hoax.”
“What?”
“After getting the news release, I did an online search and found several chat rooms where all these furious people want to strangle the fake agent. Apparently the guy was good, and some victims paid up to six thousand dollars. The chat rooms tell almost identical stories of being on the phone with him, shaking uncontrollably and almost having heart attacks. One Internet bulletin board is even making progress tracking him. He’s hit Maryland, Tennessee and is now believed to be in Florida.”
“But—”
“I know your next question. The common denominator was that all his marks had recently had their credit-card data compromised. Did that happen to your father?”
“I . . . uh, have to go.”
> “Okay, but I knew you’d want to know right away. Aren’t you happy?”
She hung up.
Brook sat quietly alone for the rest of the viewing.
At the end, she heard someone clear his throat. The funeral director.
“Yes.”
“I’m very sorry for your loss.”
Brook dabbed her eyes. “Thank you.”
The director smiled with practiced sympathy. “But you’ll have to move on.”
She nodded—“I know. My father would want me to”—and got out another tissue.
“No, I mean you have to go.” The director pointed toward the doorway and two employees standing in the hall. “They need to wheel in the next casket. The family’s already starting to arrive.”
Brook got up without reaction and drove home in a ten-year-old Ford Focus. If electrode pads had been attached to her head, they would have detected brain activity on the level of a major thunderstorm.
She pulled into the driveway, went up to the condo and opened the door.
Brook stopped with an open mouth.
On top of the TV stand was a lot of air. Her eyes went to an empty shelf where the stereo had been. She roamed room to room. The silverware stuck deep in the closet was gone, including the cake knife from her parents’ wedding. They’d gotten Ronald’s watch and favorite cuff links.
The police were exceptionally polite, taking notes and offering condolences. They had been encountering more and more burglary victims wearing black.
Brook fought tears at the kitchen table. “What are the odds my father died because of a scam . . . ?” She turned generally toward the living room. “. . . And then this.”
“I’m afraid it probably wasn’t a coincidence,” said the lead detective, still jotting on a pad.
Brook looked up quickly. “What do you mean, not a coincidence? Are you saying that the person who left the phone message also robbed us?”
The detective shook his head. “What I mean is you put a funeral notice in the newspaper, right?”