by Tim Dorsey
“But, baby, the people who stayed here before us must have made the ice cubes . . .”
Fawn slowed on her way out of the room. She turned around. “You know, you’re right. We just checked in. You wouldn’t have had time.”
“Exactly,” said Johnny.
“Maybe I was a little hasty.” A mischievous grin returned to her face.
Johnny sat up with renewed optimism.
Fawn began a slow, sexy grind dance in place where she stood. She tucked a finger in her mouth and sucked it as her hips swayed to the music in her head.
Johnny gulped: Yes! My luck has finally changed, especially since the streak ends with one that I was sure had gotten away. The floodgates will now open and I’ll probably score twenty times by Sunday.
Fawn continued grinding as she slowly pulled the moist finger from her mouth and put it . . .
Johnny practically choked on his tongue.
“Oh, you like that?” she said with a husky bedroom voice.
Johnny concentrated to remember how to nod.
Another wicked smile crossed Fawn’s face as her other hand slid lower. Her eyes and mouth formed an expression of pure lust.
Then her face changed. She felt something tickling the back of her bare feet. Whiskers.
“Eeeeeeeek!”
Fawn ran out the door.
Johnny looked down. A small mouse disappeared though a perfectly semi-circular hole in the baseboard. HOME SWEET HOME.
The weeping started as barely audible peeps, then rose up through his chest in loud, body-racking sobs as Johnny cried into his own drink.
Blooooosh!
Chapter Twenty-Five
STRANGE BEDFELLOWS
Serge sat and smiled.
The man on the other side of the desk smiled back. He wore a white dress shirt and red tie. His jacket was over the back of his chair. Twenty-nine years old, tops. He tapped the eraser end of a pencil to indicate he was a man of action.
“So you want to volunteer?”
“Absolutely,” said Serge.
“That’s great,” said the man. “We can always use more good people.”
“More is good.”
“But you didn’t bring a résumé?”
“Résumés can come back to bite you,” said Serge. “Paper trails and all.”
“Ahhh, yes.” The staffer nodded with understanding. “By that comment, I see you must have had a lot of experience.”
“Definitely,” said Serge. “I’ve been an American my whole life, and I’m ready to get to it!”
“No, I mean working on political campaigns.”
“I once beat up a flag burner.”
“Well, we don’t actually condone that, but nobody here is going to hold it against you,” said the staffer. “You were provoked . . . So tell me, what makes you want to volunteer for the Miami Republican Party?”
“I’m tired of activist judges.”
The staffer nodded. “Couldn’t agree more. Un-elected, activist judges are always overturning the will of the people.”
“Like the ones who elected George W. Bush,” said Serge.
The staffer stopped and stared. “No, activism became wrong after that.”
“It was a joke,” said Serge.
“Oh.” He leaned over a printed form. “So back to what you mentioned earlier. You’re in favor of our proposal to ban flag burning?”
“Thousands of patriots died to defend that flag.”
“Great. I’ll mark the ‘yes’ box in the litmus test.”
“No,” said Serge. “The flag stands for freedom of speech.”
The staffer raised his pencil in puzzlement. “Are you saying you wouldn’t attack the flag burner if you had it to do over again?”
“Actually I’d probably beat the piss out of him even harder.” Serge sat back and crossed his legs. “The flag also stands for my freedom of expression.”
The staffer leaned back in his own chair. “I’m getting a half-and-half take from you.”
“Good,” said Serge. “I hate to be predictable. Next question?”
The staffer appraised Serge for a moment, then leaned over his form again. “How do you feel about guns?”
“Love ’em! Can’t get enough.” Serge formed his index finger and thumb into a pistol and fired at the ceiling. “It’s like my hand isn’t complete without a pistol in it.”
“Excellent, that’s an easy one.” He hunched over the page. “I’ll mark the box that you’re against handgun control.”
“No, I’m for it,” said Serge, blowing invisible smoke off the end of his finger. “There’s a massive handgun epidemic in America. You’d be blind not to see it.”
“That’s contradictory. What about your guns?”
“I’m part of the problem.”
“So your guns should be taken away?”
“Fuck no! From my cold, dead hands! . . .”
. . . Across the street stood another office. Red-white-and-blue banners strung over the parking lot. On the reception desk were help-yourself baskets of American-flag lapel pins and candidate buttons.
Like Serge, Coleman was sitting across the desk from another partisan staffer.
A pencil tapped impatiently.
Coleman fidgeted and stared at the ceiling with his mouth open.
“Am I boring you?”
“Starting to,” said Coleman.
“I thought you wanted to volunteer for the Miami Democratic Party.”
“That was my friend’s idea,” said Coleman. “He’s across the street volunteering right now.”
“He’s volunteering with the Republicans but sent you here? That makes no sense.”
“Says he wants to stop all this bickering in America and unite the red and blue states so it’s purple mountain majesty.”
The staffer went into we’ll-get-back-to-you mode and shuffled papers. “I’m not sure we have something for you today, but appreciate you dropping in.”
“Great, I was afraid I’d have to do some work.” Coleman glanced around. “Want to burn one?”
“Excuse me?”
“You know . . .” Coleman held a thumb and index finger to his mouth in the international toking sign.
“Well . . .” The staffer checked his watch. “It is almost lunch.”
“Excellent. Let’s rock.”
They ended up sitting on the ground with their backs against the rear of the building just behind the Dumpsters.
Coleman passed the nub of a joint. “The Democratic Party is cool! You guys do weed!”
“Just some of us younger ones.”
“So what happens after lunch?” said Coleman. “Let’s get abortions and give a bunch of condoms to some kids. They’ll think we’re cool!”
“That’s not exactly what our party—”
“Can I meet some hot chicks on the pill?”
“I don’t think you understand—”
“Want to burn another?”
“Sure.”
The metal loading door opened into the alley with a loud grinding noise.
Coleman and the staffer whispered back and forth to each other.
“Shhh!”
“Put it out!”
“I’m putting it out!”
A young woman stepped into the alley and sniffed the air. “I recognize that smell . . . Roger? Are you out here?”
“Oh, hey, Susan. We’re behind the Dumpsters.”
She walked around the bins and smiled coyly. “I know what you guys are doing.”
“Hubba, hubba,” said Coleman. “Are you on the pill?”
“What?”
“Coleman’s a little unpolished, but he’s got some killer weed. Want to join us?”
“Sure.” She took a s
eat on the ground . . .
. . . Back across the street, the staffer named Jansen leaned over a litmus test with a freshly sharpened pencil. “Death penalty?”
“Love it in theory; hate it in practice,” said Serge. “Screws the poor.”
Jansen set his pencil down again for the last time. “Please don’t take this the wrong way, but are you sure you have the right place?”
Serge pointed at a sign out in the hall. “ ‘Republican Party Headquarters’? Hell yes! You don’t think I’d go across the street where I sent my friend to volunteer?”
“You sent your friend to the Democrats? Why would you do that?”
“Because he’s more their flavor. And I’m more Libertarian, so I’m in line with your platform of a smaller government that needs to get its nose out of our bedrooms, except that’s the opposite of what you actually do. And since I’m sure those are typographical errors, I thought I’d help proofread.”
Jansen shook his head. “We always need extra hands on our campaigns, but I have no idea how to use you.”
“Why?”
“We’ve had a lot of people volunteer over the years, but I’ve never met anyone quite like you. Half the time you’re enthusiastically in favor of what we stand for, and half the time you’re not. And often on the very same issue.” Jansen crumpled the hopelessly inconclusive litmus test. “In fact, just about everything you’ve said contradicts itself. There’s nothing consistent.”
“That’s no accident,” said Serge. “Consistency is the natural enemy of compromise.”
“Whoa, back up. Did you say ‘compromise’?”
Serge smiled and unbuttoned his tropical shirt to reveal the custom-made T-shirt underneath:
I LOVE MY OPPONENTS.
Jansen’s eyes bugged in alarm. “What in the hell’s the meaning of that?”
“It’s obvious,” said Serge. “I’ve got lots of friends who think I’m Satan’s elf and will burn in hell. In turn I make wisecracks like ‘Gay marriage threatens the sanctity of Newt Gingrich divorcing his next bedridden wife,’ and yet we still all get along and have lots of chuckles over Bloomin’ Onions at Outback . . . See, the brilliance of my plan is its simplicity. There’s only one thing holding America back from realizing her full glory. Ready? You want to write this down? No? Okay, here it is: We need to stop taking ourselves so seriously.”
“Uh, why don’t you leave your phone number and we’ll get back to you when something comes up. My assistant will lead you out.”
“Sounds great.” Serge stood and shook hands and was escorted through an office floor that was a hive of industrious activity. Staffers feverishly worked the phones and computers and practically crashed into one another running to and from the copy machine.
Serge crossed the street and entered another building. He looked around the empty reception desk. “Hello? Anyone here? . . .” He banged the little bell. “Helloooooo? . . .” Leaning over the desk: “Anyone behind there . . . ?”
Serge bypassed the reception area and opened a door to the main office. He stopped and surveyed dozens of neglected phones and computers. Everyone was clustered in a circle in the center of the room. Serge approached with curiosity. There was laughter and people throwing pencils into the ceiling.
Serge drew closer, but stopped in surprise when he noticed who had their attention in the middle of the group.
“Coleman?”
“Oh, hey, Serge . . . Everybody, this is my friend Serge that I was telling you about . . . So how’d it go across the street with the other party?”
“Not so good.” Serge pulled up a chair. “They said they would call me back, which means they’ll never call back.”
“Really?” said Coleman. “They all love me here!”
Everyone nodded with bright smiles.
“So what is this?” asked Serge. “Some kind of afternoon break?”
“No, we’re working,” said Roger.
“Working?” Serge looked around an office of abandoned desks and ringing phones.
“We work in theory,” said another staffer. “Very high-concept stuff, such as what wind farms will look like in the twenty-third century.”
“Serge, this kind of work is cool!” Coleman threw a pencil that stuck in the ceiling.
Someone else nudged Coleman. “Tell us again about the chicken bong.”
“Okay, I opened the fridge . . .”
“Excuse me,” said Serge, working his way into the circle and taking Coleman by the arm. “We have to be somewhere.”
The disappointed staff: “Auuuuuuuuu . . .”
One of them suddenly pointed at Serge’s chest. “What’s that?”
“What?” said Serge, opening his tropical shirt and looking down. “This?”
I LOVE MY OPPONENTS.
“What’s that bullshit supposed to mean?”
“Are you some kind of troublemaker!”
“Nazi!”
Coleman raised his hands to the group. “Everyone mellow out. Serge is cool.”
“If you say so, Coleman.”
“Take care, Coleman.”
“Hurry back . . .”
ACROSS TOWN
A load of untaxed cigarettes sailed up the Miami River.
A man in a porkpie hat watched from a second-story window of an all-but-abandoned office building. He tossed the hat on an antique rack in the corner and propped his feet up on the desk next to three fingers of rye in a dirty glass.
A rotary phone rang.
The man glared at it. Possibilities rattled his noggin: a busty divorcée with a framed brother in Sing Sing, another floater in the bay, or—dare he hope—a break in the 1947 Black Dahlia case?
He grabbed the receiver on the ninth ring. “Mahoney here. Gargle in the soup can.”
“What?”
“Talk in the phone.”
“Oh, well, Mr. Mahoney, my name is Brook Campanella, and I want to hire you to find who tried to scam my father—”
“Where’d you scarf my digits?”
“What?”
“How’d you get my number?”
“You came highly recommended from an Internet chat room,” said Brook. “Some people hired you to track down a fake DEA agent who swindled them.”
“Itchin’ to parlay your chips straight to the hard eight?”
“Uh . . . huh?”
Mahoney sighed. “You want to team up?”
“No, I don’t want to go in with the other people,” said Brook. “In fact, I’d rather they not know I’m involved at all.”
“Dangle the angle.”
“Whatever information you’re reporting to them, I also want you to give to me,” said Brook. “I’ll pay double.”
“Deuces wild.”
HIALEAH
Tiny white rocks rumbled under the tires of a black Firebird as it drove down an industrial road next to the expressway.
“Shouldn’t take it so bad,” said Coleman. “At least the Democrats dug me.”
“I don’t want to talk about it.”
Coleman looked over into the backseat. “I get what you did with the cigars, but how can that other thing you just bought possibly fit in?”
“Watch and learn.” Serge cut the steering wheel.
A cell phone rang. Serge sagged. “I wish Mahoney would get off my back.” He checked the display and looked at Coleman.
“What is it?”
“Not Mahoney. And I don’t recognize the number.” He put it to his ear. “Hello? . . . Oh, Sasha, how’s it going? . . .” He rolled his eyes at Coleman. “. . . Of course I was going to call you back . . .” Coleman began giggling uncontrollably, and Serge punched him in the arm. “. . . No, that was the radio . . . Listen, I’m kind of busy right now and— . . . What? Where’d you hear this? . . . Yeah, I got a pen. Go
ahead and give me the address . . . Thanks . . . I am not trying to avoid you. I haven’t been answering my phone because I’m in and out of a lot of places where there’s no signal . . . Of course I’ll call . . . I got to run . . . I really got to run . . .” Serge looked over at Coleman in exasperation and stuck a finger in his mouth like a gun, then pretended to blow his brains out. “. . . No, it wasn’t just physical . . . Of course I’ll call . . . I don’t know when . . . I promise . . . I said I promised . . . Something’s on fire!” He hung up.
Coleman looked around. “There’s nothing burning.”
“I know. It’s an efficient way to end a call with a woman. Another is to yell, ‘Snakes!’ ”
“What was her problem?” asked Coleman.
“It’s a delicate battle that’s going on right now all over the world,” said Serge. “Women have sex control; guys have phone control.”
“I never knew this.”
“But there’s an upside.” Serge hit the gas to make a yellow light. “She just gave me a lead on the next scam. And perfect timing, too. A chance to test out my newest inspiration.”
The Trans Am turned through the gate of a tall chain-link fence topped with barbed wire. It proceeded across a parking lot of disabled vehicles and stopped outside a metal warehouse with a faded wooden sign: ALFONSO’S SCRAP METAL, RECYCLING & LOUNGE.
Alfonso emerged from an aluminum door, wearing a hard hat and an incredulous expression. “You didn’t even call this time!”
“Hey, Alfonso,” said Serge, jumping down from the driver’s seat. “What’s shaking?”
“What’s shaking is that I’m out of the favor business.”
Serge placed a hand over his heart. “That hurts. You think the only time I want to see you is when I need a favor?”
“Yes!”
“Fine, then.” Serge slid his driver’s seat forward and reached in back. “I’ll just set it up myself.”
“Set what up?”
“No, I don’t want to bother you.” Serge grabbed an industrial handcart leaning against the outside of the warehouse. “Never mind me. Because friendship is my number one priority, and I’m not about to do anything that would seem presumptuous. I’ll just find an empty spot in the warehouse and mind my own business.”