by Tim Dorsey
Brook told herself she was thinking too much: Just do it. She closed her eyes and counted to three, then jumped from around the corner into the den’s open doorway with shotgun aimed high.
Sure enough, there he was, stretched out in a La-Z-Boy, watching TV with his back toward her. Just the top of his head showing. For some reason, she had pictured him with hair.
She took a forceful step forward. “Get up, motherfucker!”
The plan was for him to spring up from the chair in a freak-out. But he just continued lounging there smugly watching his cop show. What an asshole.
Brook began circling him in a wide arc, the aim of the twelve-gauge never leaving its target. She got halfway around to his profile and realized he wasn’t ignoring her; he was asleep.
She picked up an ashtray—“Wake up!”—and hit him in the chest.
That’s when . . .
Gasp.
Blood trickled out of the far side of his mouth. More blood in a circle on his shirt, just above the lung.
“He’s . . . dead? . . . Oh God! Oh, Jesus!”
Thoughts pinwheeled, eyes shooting everywhere. She noticed something on the floor. Whoever killed him had been going through his stuff, scattering manila folders, computer disks and a disgorged wallet.
Brook slowly retreated in terror. “No! No! No! No! No! . . .”
Back down on the floor, the wallet had fallen open to display a silver badge.
“Dammit, they got the addresses mixed up!” Brook gulped air. “It’s the real DEA agent! I couldn’t be any more fucked!”
Not yet.
Then more perspiration, a slippery finger, and ignorance on how to properly clear a chamber.
Boom.
The shotgun exploded with a direct hit on the late Rick Maddox.
Brook had never fired a weapon in her life, and true to the gun dealer’s word, it kicked like a stallion, flying backward right out of her hands before crashing through a window and landing somewhere out in the yard.
Now the pounding chest and unsteady legs were becoming a serious barrier to getting out of the house. Brook was going into shock. She hyperventilated and stumbled down the hall to the front of the house.
The doorbell rang.
Brook screamed.
The person at the door thought it was just another TV show. He rang the bell again.
Brook somehow managed to get to the peephole and look outside. What the hell? Just a bunch of feathers. It looked like some guy . . . in a chicken suit?
The bell rang again.
From the other side of the door: “Cluck, cluck, cluck. Chicken-gram . . .”
Brook severely fainted.
Outside on the porch, the man in the chicken suit grabbed a rubber mallet and turned to his assistant. “Coleman, apply force on the knob while I use the bump key.”
“Serge, it’s already open.”
“Crap, still haven’t gotten to use the bump key.”
“And there’s a babe on the floor,” said Coleman. “Is she dead?”
Serge bent down for a pulse. “No, just passed out.”
Brook woozily came around. She looked up. “The chicken!” And passed out again.
Serge removed the chicken head from his costume and scratched under his left wing. “She’s acting really weird.”
Coleman leaned in for a closer look. “Is she the one we were following?”
Serge nodded. “Pretty sure. Brook Campanella. Mahoney showed me a client photo he’d enlarged from her driver’s license, but you know how those things look.” Serge lightly tapped her on the cheek. “Where’s the dude who lives here?”
No answer.
Serge pulled out the pistol tucked under his suit. “Stay here with her while I check the rest of the house.”
“Roger.”
A beer cracked open.
Serge crept down the hall toward the sound of a television . . .
Out on the street, five houses away, a driver sat in a quiet Beemer and slipped on leather shooting gloves. A dead, straight line of a mouth as he stared ahead at a Firebird that had somehow limped across the city with a steaming radiator and was now parked behind Brook’s Ford. On the Beemer’s passenger seat sat the black-and-white photo of Serge that Enzo had positively matched to the driver who had exited the damaged vehicle moments earlier. As he unzipped a cushioned leather satchel and removed a silencer, memories drifted back to the last time he visited Miami. Enzo was a steady one, but it still stung that he had been assigned backup behind that ass who couldn’t carry his water. What did he do to deserve cleanup duty? And it wasn’t a small mess. First the clown with the rifle who couldn’t get out of the way of his own dick. Then:
Felicia.
And now:
Serge.
At least he was the primary on this sanction. But what a pesky gnat that Serge was. Enzo could easily have taken him out with Felicia at that totally exposed sidewalk café on Ocean Drive. Except the only actionable target is the one you’ve got clearance for. That’s the cardinal rule in a need-to-know business, or someone will be given clearance to take you out. Everything is compartmentalized, so for all Enzo knew, Felicia’s lunch companion might have been someone on his own side who was helping set her up by drawing her into the open. You never knew.
And now here he was, sent back to Miami for more mop-up. One thing for sure, he wanted a raise . . .
. . . Back inside the house, Coleman sat on the floor drinking a Schlitz and cradling Brook’s head in his arm. “Time to wake up, sleepyhead.”
Serge came running back into the room. “Coleman, we’ve got serious problems. There’s a dead guy in the den with his head blown completely off. I’m thinking Rick Maddox.”
“Can I see?”
“Yes,” said Serge. “I’m not doing this for your pleasure, but we need to sanitize the room for our client’s sake.”
“Cool!”
Brook had started coming around again, but Coleman got up and let her head hit the floor.
They went into the den and Serge turned down the volume on Matlock, which had resumed in its entirety following the game.
“So that’s Rick Maddox, the fake DEA agent?” asked Coleman.
“Yes and no.” Serge wiped down surfaces. “The scammer is using the name Maddox, which he lifted from a real agent in Miami.”
“That’s quite a coincidence.”
“Not really.” Serge picked a shotgun shell off the floor. “The grifter began his scheme somewhere else, but when victims and law enforcement started closing in, he migrated to Miami for cover.”
“How’s that cover?”
“Since the real Maddox had a legitimate address, the schemer was hoping his adversaries might be thrown off course by a false flame.” Serge held up a wallet he’d found on the floor.
“Is that a real badge?”
“The cover worked: Mahoney got the two addresses scrambled.”
“You’re blaming Mahoney for the dead guy?”
“Not his fault,” said Serge. “He doesn’t know what his clients will do with the info—and he took extra precautions with this gal, even though the last thing she appears to be is a killer. But right now time’s the new enemy.”
He ran back into the foyer, tossed the badge on a table and shook Brook hard by the shoulders. “You have to wake up right now!”
“W-what?” Her eyes weakly opened.
“We work for Mahoney, so don’t faint on us again.” Serge propped her into a sitting position. “We’re here to help you.”
She looked around. “Dear God, I’m still here. It’s not a dream.”
“Or a novel,” said Serge. “But right now you have to tell me as quickly as you can what happened here.”
“Just scare him! I, he, TV on. Rum, badge, Dad, La-Z-Boy, shotgun, karma . . .
”
“Okay, not that fast,” said Serge. “Take deep breaths.”
Outside, a Beemer started up, but the headlights remained dark. It rolled so slowly you could hear bits of broken beer-bottle glass from teenagers who had moved on to a vacant lot. The sedan stopped directly across the street from the Maddox place. The driver checked his ammo clip one last time and racked a hollow-point bullet into the chamber. He looked up and down the street a final time and opened the door of his car . . .
Inside the house, Brook caught her breath. “I swear he was already dead when I got here! You have to believe me!”
“We do,” said Serge. “Someone blew his head off with a shotgun.”
“I did that,” said Brook.
“But I thought you told me—”
“He already had a gunshot wound in his chest. Then I got the shakes and my finger slipped.”
“That’s not good.” Serge stood up. “But there’s still time to get my arms around this. I’ve sanitized many a crime scene . . . Tell me, where’s the gun?”
“I don’t know.”
“How can you not know?”
“It flew out the window. I think it went over the fence and landed in the neighbor’s yard because I heard their dogs barking.”
“That’s also not good,” said Serge. “But you didn’t touch anything, did you?”
“Yeah, the whole wall down that hallway. I was having trouble standing up.”
“So we’ve lost control of the weapon and left prints everywhere,” said Serge. “But that’s it, right? I mean you didn’t leave any other evidence that might be helpful to police, like a DNA sample?”
Brook promptly jackknifed over and threw up.
“And that completes the hat trick.”
“I don’t think I can handle this,” she said.
“You have to.” Serge pointed at a table. “See that badge? You got the real agent mixed up with the fake one.”
“But I didn’t kill him.”
“Right now that means less than nothing.” Serge turned to Coleman. “Go out back and look for that gun in case it didn’t clear the fence.”
“How do I get there?”
“I don’t know. Take a stab at that thing over there called a back door.”
Halfway across the front yard, Enzo crept with a pistol pressed against his thigh. No ambiguity this time. The junta had given him total clearance for any eventuality, which meant two immediate taps to the chest of everyone found at the house, to drop them, followed by two more in the back of the head on the way out. Enzo reached the bottom porch step and eased his weight onto the wood.
Suddenly he was lit up and blinded in a blaze of high-beam headlights from several vehicles that converged on the residence. “What the hell?” He sprinted back to the Beemer and sped away as more cars arrived. Tires screeched and braked to a stop at various angles on the lawn.
Inside, Brook leaped at the sound of squealing rubber. “The cops!”
Serge ran to the window. “No, not the police. They’ve got drinks. But who the hell are they?”
A swarm of almost twenty people in identical T-shirts spilled out of the vehicles and headed up the walkway with an unmistakable air of torches and pitchforks.
“This looks like trouble,” said Serge. “Especially the guys wearing Pittsburgh and Mets jerseys. We better get ready.” He put the chicken head back on.
Heavy pounding on the front door. “Open up! . . . We know you’re in there! . . . Give us our money back!”
Serge opened the door. “How can I help you?”
The gang was prepared to unleash a merciless dialectic blitz on whoever answered. But the sight that greeted them created a confused pause.
“You’re . . . a chicken?”
“Correct,” said Serge. “Next question.”
“Are you the guy going by the name Rick Maddox?”
“Not today.”
“Do you know where he is?”
Feathers pointed. “In the den.”
The Mets jersey pushed through the pack. “Well, if you’re a friend of his and know what’s good for you, you’ll step out of the way.”
The others: “Yeah, don’t try to stop us! . . .”
“We’re coming through! . . .”
“Stand clear! . . .”
Serge raised his wings. “I wouldn’t go in there if I were you.”
“Fuck you, chicken! . . .”
They shoved him aside and charged down the hall, running into the den, yelling profanities that even a sailor never heard.
The shouting unexpectedly halted. They slowly paraded out of the room with alabaster faces.
The shaken mob thought it couldn’t get any worse than the horrific scene they had just discovered. Until one of them saw something on a table in the front room. “What’s this?”
“What is it?” asked Silicon Valley Sally.
Wasted in Margaritaville held it up. “It’s a DEA badge.”
“But how is that possible?” said Lucy. “Unless . . .”
“The addresses got mixed up,” said Mets Jersey.
“It’s not the impostor,” said Shitless in Seattle. “It’s the real Rick Maddox.”
“You!” The Pirates fan pointed at Serge and took a step back. “You killed him! You killed a real federal agent!”
“Now wait just a second,” said Serge.
The gang looked around at one another. Nods and murmurs. “The chicken killed him! . . .” “He’ll fry for this! . . .”
“Everyone needs to take it easy,” said Serge. “I going to make myself a drink of rainwater, and the rest of you help yourself to whatever you like.”
Panic only increased. They screamed more accusations as they backed up en masse toward the front door.
Coleman returned from the backyard with a big smile and a sawed-off. “I got it!”
Boom.
A chandelier fell.
The witnesses all raced out of the house and down the steps for their cars.
“You killed him! . . .”
“You blew his head off! . . .”
“We’re telling! . . .”
Chapter Thirty-Three
BISCAYNE BOULEVARD
The number and condition of the budget motels along U.S. Highway 1 meant there would always be vacancy.
A black Firebird was parked in front of the one called the Coral Arms.
There were only two beds in room 17. So Serge assigned them to Coleman and Brook Campanella, while he slept on the floor.
The clock radio reached three A.M., and Brook still hadn’t been able to nod off. Adrenaline from all the trauma. She just clutched the pillow and stared over the side of the bed at Serge, sleeping like a newborn with his own makeshift pillow of balled-up clothes.
Brook thought she had chosen the lesser evil by agreeing to leave with him. The only other options were to hang out at a murder scene with her fingerprints or drive herself back to the condo and wait for the cops to slap the cuffs. And those weren’t options. So she got in the Firebird.
Brook was no babe in the woods. These guys were dangerous. Well, maybe Coleman was only a danger to himself, but definitely Serge. She totally expected to have to make a break for it at some point. Her mind reeled in terror of rape, or worse.
But there hadn’t been any opportunity to get away. The Trans Am was a two-door, so there was no chance of escaping at a red light. And Serge didn’t make any stops on the way to the motel.
Police cars were always going by on the boulevard. Brook could take off running in the parking lot and flag one of them down. And then say what? Okay, maybe try a cab or a Good Samaritan. But then she was suddenly at the point where they were at the motel. Decision time. Serge was already out of the car telling her to follow them into the room. Brook didn’t kn
ow why she allowed herself to do it, but she went inside.
The first few minutes were the twin terrors of murder-scene memories and now being cornered in the room with Serge and Coleman.
It was an utter surprise when Serge made the bed assignments. It had to be a trick. She’d get all snug in bed, and then . . . She blocked off those thoughts.
But instead of taking advantage of her, Serge just grabbed some T-shirts from a duffel bag and slipped them under his head on the floor.
There was something about him, especially asleep. Some qualities like her father and brother had. She found herself unable to stop watching him curled in the corner.
He turned over in his sleep. Then Brook heard some mumbling. Couldn’t make it out, even though it was steadily getting louder. He began rolling back and forth on the floor, slamming into the wall, over and over. Until finally:
“Felicia! Noooooo! . . .”
Brook sprang from bed and shook him. “Serge, wake up! You’re having a nightmare!”
“Felicia! . . .” Now with tears.
She shook harder. “Wake up!”
Serge came around with slowly blinking eyes. “Felicia?”
“No, I’m Brook. Who’s Felicia?”
“It’s not important.” Serge bunched up the clothes and wiggled his head into a comfy position. “I’m fine.”
“No, you’re not.” She took him by the hand. “There’s plenty of room in the bed. And you need a good night’s sleep, so forget the floor.”
Serge climbed into the sheets, staying as close to the opposite edge of the mattress from Brook as possible without falling off the side. Brook lay there watching him. Serge was on his back, staring wide-awake at the ceiling.
“Serge, who’s Felicia?”
“Just somebody.”
“Tell me. You were having a really bad nightmare.”
Serge shook his head.
“I want you to tell me.”
Serge shook his head again, but started talking anyway. Then the whole story gushed out, right up to the part about the fake DEA agent working for the person who was responsible for Felicia’s murder. That’s why he had hopes going to the house that night, but it didn’t pan out.