Clownfish Blues

by Tim Dorsey

  “Who’s calling now?” asked Serge.

  She checked the display as it continued to ring. “I don’t recognize the number.”

  “Aren’t you going to answer it?”

  “Hell no!”

  “You better.” He checked the advice of the Eight Ball. “You don’t want to vary your routine and have some idiot wandering over here.”

  “Okay.” She held it to her head. “Hello? . . . Let me check . . .” She covered the phone and whispered. “It’s for you.”

  “Me?” said Serge. “Who is it?”

  Shrug.

  Serge snatched the phone. “Talk . . . Oh, it’s you . . . But how’d you get this number? . . . You found a business card for Madam Bovary? . . . Where’d you find it? . . . Could you repeat that last part again? . . .” He slowly closed his eyes. “No, I think I’ve pretty much got the full picture. I’ll be there as fast as I can . . .”

  Smooth hands grabbed his arm. “You can’t go anywhere. Don’t leave me with him!”

  Serge glanced around the room in thought. “Okay, you’ve had enough trauma already . . . Coleman?”

  “I’m up for the day!”

  “Coleman, stay here and watch the ex-husband,” said Serge. “Even Houdini couldn’t escape from all those ropes and knots, but just in case, here’s a gun.”

  “Where are you going?”

  “Back soon.” Serge took Trish by the hand. “Plus, I need to do some psychic shopping for Gil anyway . . .”

  . . . After a two-hour stretch of high-speed back-road driving, a silver Corvette pulled up to a handmade cabin on the outskirts of Sopchoppy.

  Lightning bugs led the way as Serge and Trish headed for the porch.

  Jasper flung open the door in advance. “Thank God you came! We’re in a real mess! They say they’re going to the police and pin a murder on us with their TV film!”

  “What’s the status?” asked Serge.

  Willard gestured inside. “Take a gander for yourself.”

  They entered the homestead to find a reality-show producer and his cameraman in captivity.

  Trish leaned to Serge. “Does every room in your life contain people tied to chairs?”

  “Pretty much.”

  “We didn’t know what to do,” said Jasper. “We were trying to bury the body so you wouldn’t get in trouble . . .”

  “And they snuck up on us with their camera,” said Willard.

  “Everything will be fine now.” Serge paced across the cabin floor. “I just need some time to think . . . Explain again exactly how you were able to track me down.”

  “These two fellas were talking a blue streak when we were tying them up,” said Jasper. “I asked how they’d come to be in our neck of the woods, and with such frightful timing. They said they were working with a psychic on a murder, and he led them right to the spot.”

  Serge smacked himself in the forehead. “My bad. I’d completely forgotten about you guys . . . These Route 66 episodes have so many moving parts that I probably need to buy some Post-it notes.”

  “We watched the tape in their camera and saw that the psychic was actually you,” said Willard. “Then I was searching them and found the business card for Madam Bovary in one of their pockets. Figured I’d give it a try.”

  “First, the most important thing,” said Serge. “Do they know where this place is?”

  “Doubt it,” said Jasper. “We blindfolded them.”

  They heard a car screech up. Fast steps on the porch. Lou Ellen burst through the door. “I came as fast as I could—”

  She cut herself off. There was a dramatic pause in the room as Lou Ellen stepped forward. Her alarm would have been the normal reaction to the presence of a pair of bound prisoners . . . Normally . . .

  Lou Ellen and Trish pointed at each other. Almost an echo as they spoke at the same time: “Who the hell is she?”

  Serge smacked himself again. “I’m definitely buying Post-it notes.”

  The women sneered and began to circle each other around the hostage chairs. The men actually thought they heard hissing sounds.

  “Stop!” yelled Serge. “This is way too many moving parts! We’ve got some major untangling to do here, so right now it’s time to prioritize and not fixate on itty-bitty misunderstandings that can easily be fixed with candles and soap.”

  “He’s right,” said Jasper, stepping in front of his sister. “Let’s you and me go and waits by the cars and give’n him some elbow room.”

  They went outside to a chorus of cicadas.

  “Now then . . .” Serge faced the captives. There hadn’t been any need to gag the pair. Once tied up inside the cabin, they became oddly quiet. “Let’s take a look at this film you shot.”

  He picked up the camera and watched the preview screen. “Nice composition, good jiggling, and I see you subscribe to the visual rule of thirds. Unfortunately all this grave digging must hit the cutting room floor. Steals too much from the denouement.” Serge pressed delete. “If you have an opening for an editor, my hours are flexible. What do you say?”

  Nothing.

  “Come on!” said Serge. “Where’s all that spunky pushiness I saw back at Madam Bovary’s?”

  The producer and his cameraman just stared into headlights.

  “Serge,” said Jasper. “First they was yappin’ like their regular nature, then around the time we broke out the rope and they seen my banjo in the corner, they started whispering somethin’ ’bout Deliverance till they was a-trembling and quiet as church mice.”

  “I understand,” said Serge. “Deliverance is a classic—”

  “Seventies movie . . .” Jasper reached for a book on the fireplace mantel. “Based on this here novel by James Dickey.”

  “Wait,” said Serge. “You mention Deliverance and most people default to Smokey and the Bandit and hillbilly sex, because Burt Reynolds starred in that movie, along with Ned Beatty, who . . . well, what’s done is done . . . But you know Dickey? You even have the novel?”

  “Dad-gum right I know Dickey, Southern literary lion and poet loreeee-ate.”

  Serge regretted the off-guard surprise in his voice. “But that’s high literature.”

  “Not quite uppin’ to Faulkner, but good nuff.”

  Serge shook his head like a cartoon character. “You can read Faulkner?”

  “’Course I can read. Thinks I’m ’literate?”

  “Didn’t mean it that way at all,” said Serge. “I mean, Faulkner . . . He’s impenetrable. I could read him, but there’s so little time in my nutty schedule and then there’s the attention issue. Faulkner’s like Finnegan’s Wake in Mississippi.”

  “Joyce did have one powerful spell on Billy. Found scribblin’ in the books on his shelves in Oxford.”

  “You also know James Joyce?”

  “No, Dr. Joyce Brothers.” A laugh. “’Course I’m talkin’ ’bout that lace-curtain Irish mick. Here I was thinking you was smart.”

  “How embarrassing,” said Serge. “And I’m the one who keeps telling others not to stereotype.”

  “No need,” said Jasper. “Wants to hear my banjo?”

  Musical twanging began, and the captives thrashed.

  “Finally.” Serge turned toward them and snarled. “Ready to talk?”

  They froze again.

  “Good grief.” Serge pulled a pistol from under his tropical shirt. “I usually have to get this out when people won’t stop talking.” He jammed the barrel to Nigel’s forehead. “I’m trying to be friendly and start a dialogue here. Work with me.”

  “. . . I have to pee . . .”

  “Don’t we all,” said Serge. “File that thought. Now, what exactly do you think is going on here? . . . I’ll know if you’re lying and there won’t be a second chance. Ask the others, except you can’t.”

  The words came haltingly. “You’re no psychic.”

  “Ouch, that hurts,” said Serge. “What makes you think that?”

  “The directions you gave were
too specific, and the murder hadn’t been reported yet,” said Nigel. “So the only logical conclusion is that you did it.”

  “Give the man a cigar!” Serge tucked the gun away.

  “Please don’t kill us.”

  “That hadn’t occurred to me,” said Serge. “But it would eliminate some moving parts and bring a clean end to this episode.”

  “We’ll do anything!” pleaded Nigel. “Name it!”

  “Okay, if we let you go, what are your plans? Broad strokes will do.”

  “I swear we won’t tell anyone,” said Nigel. “We’ll destroy all the rest of the tapes from Cassadaga and forget we were ever here . . . Isn’t that right, Günter?”

  Emphatic nodding.

  “Really?” said Serge. “I can trust you?”

  “Totally!” said Nigel. “You have my word!”

  Serge thought a moment, then shook his head. “No good. You’ll say anything right now to get out of this.”

  Nigel crunched his lips and whined desperately. A puddle formed under his chair.

  “Ewwww,” said Serge. “All right, all right, I’ll make you a deal. I know I can’t trust you, so after I release you, go ahead and air what you filmed of me in Cassadaga. Or at least what I haven’t deleted yet. I know you’re just itching to.”

  “What? I don’t understand.”

  “The number one rule in life is to promise everyone they can have everything they want at all times. Our whole presidential cycle depends on it,” said Serge. “Of course you can’t actually deliver on most of the stuff you promised, but in the short term, people you lie to are less douchey.”

  “Uh, there isn’t any catch?” asked the producer.

  “Oh, there’s definitely a catch.” Serge grinned big. “The TV segment will put the cops on my trail, but I can take care of myself. The catch is you have to leave all of my friends here out of this. Not a peep.”

  “You got it.”

  A cell phone rang. “That’s mine.” Serge put it to his ear. “Oh, hi, Reevis. I was just thinking about you.”

  “Serge, thank God I was able to find you. I would’ve sworn this number wouldn’t work, but this is an emergency!”

  “Are you okay?”

  “Fine. My station just finished downloading some digital footage, but luckily I was able to intercept it.”

  “What’s it of?”

  Reevis was whispering now: “You’re in some fortune-teller’s place describing the location of a body.”

  “Is that all?” Serge laughed.

  “How is this funny? These new reality guys are a nightmare!”

  “How so?”

  “They’re ruining my life! They keep putting me in danger!”

  “What! They’ve threatened you?” Serge exclaimed. “Say no more. And put a hold on that tape.”

  “No, not threatened—”

  Serge hung up and stared at the pair.

  “We’re ready,” said Nigel. “Let’s go.”

  Serge shook his head. “On second thought, change of plans . . . Willard, blindfold them.”

  Chapter 18

  Meanwhile in Miami

  The clattering noise was loud and machinelike and nonstop. All across the city, it was the same, a mesmerizing rat-a-tat at thousands of locations.

  Lottery machines spit out tickets at a feverish pace to feverish people. News stations kept breaking in to update the record number of sales. Lines wrapped around 7-Eleven.

  A group of serious men from South America fanned out across the metropolitan area and beyond, in an equal division of land, like precinct captains. It was a process that had begun a couple of days earlier. It involved school buses. Now it was Saturday night, and the official Ping-Pong ball drawing was precariously near.

  The biggest crowds of all came at the last minute because people bad at math also weren’t on time. One particular line wound down a sidewalk on Biscayne Boulevard. A school bus arrived. An intimidating Latino with a thick mustache waited on the sidewalk as the migrant workers filed off. He gave each of them a five-dollar bill as promised, plus an envelope with more cash and pre-filled lottery forms.

  Once the bus was empty, he led his assemblage inside the store, passing the rest of the customers who had been waiting forever. He cut to the very front of the line with predictable reaction. Shouts, a polyglot of cursing, and overt threats of physical harm.

  All the man had to do was turn and look with those dark, bottomless eyes. The reaction changed: By all means, be my guest.

  Identical scenes played out at various other locations as buses drove into Fort Lauderdale and West Palm Beach.

  At 11:01 p.m., the gang of five collected the last of their tickets and regrouped in the luxury suite of an extended-stay hotel near the airport. Mr. Pelota was waiting. He never had to speak loud. “How much?”

  They compared tallies. “Half the board. We hit every store we could within the time possible.”

  “That’s ten million dollars, fifty-fifty shot,” said Pelota, his pulse predictably steady according to the Hare PCL-R psychopathy index for low reaction to high risk. Response to negative outcomes was another matter.

  The TV neared the end of the local news. The room went silent as a pink flamingo logo appeared, followed by a game-show host in a sports coat. The night skyline of Miami was projected in the back of the studio as Ping-Pong balls frolicked deliriously in some kind of clear-plastic vortex bin before being suctioned up six tubes and read off: 48, 39, 53, 51, 43, 46.

  “What’s with all the high numbers?” asked one of the lower-ranking men, prompting a sharp poke to his ribs.

  The suite had floor-to-ceiling plate-glass windows with a view of the skyline that matched the one on television. It efficiently shattered, left to right, and the shards rained down into the storm-water retention pond behind the hotel. Mr. Pelota calmly re-holstered his TEC-9 machine gun under a white jacket. He headed for the mini-bar, hair whipped up in a crisp new open-air breeze off Biscayne Bay. He uncapped a nine-dollar miniature of Patrón and picked a sliver of glass off his shoulder. “Juan, go down and pay the man at the front desk.”

  The Apalachicola

  There’s a good reason that horror movies often choose remote, dark forests at night. They have their own creepy soundtracks. A sizzling buzz of insects with a bullfrog backbeat.

  The moon was full, and wind through the thick tree canopy produced a weird effect of scattered white circles dancing in the dead leaves.

  Nigel and Günter wept like colicky babies as they were prodded forward into the woods. “I don’t want to die!”

  A rifle poked Nigel between the shoulder blades. “Keep movin’!”

  The trail of tears led into a mossy cluster of hardwoods. “Where are we going?”

  “That’s far nuff,” said Willard.

  “Don’t be turnin’ ’round,” said Jasper.

  Then Nigel saw it. “Ahhhhhhhhh!”

  Dirt tumbled from under the toes of his shoes and into the freshly dug grave they had seen earlier. “No! No! No! . . .”

  “Shee-it,” said Willard. “You fellas is more nervous than long-tailed cats in a room full of rockin’ chairs.”

  “Don’t kill us!”

  “Stop pissin’ and moanin’,” said Willard. “We’re letting you go.”

  “Wait, what? You’re not going to bury us alive?”

  “You ain’t worth the trouble,” said Jasper. “No way you can find us or our cabin.”

  “That’s right,” said Nigel. “We’re horrible with directions.”

  “This here’s the part where we skee-daddle,” said Willard. “You know how you always see on TV where they make folks count to a thousand or some such?”

  Nigel nodded with vigor. “We can count.”

  “Heck with countin’,” said Willard. “We want you to work.”

  “And . . . do what exactly?”

  “Bury that stupid body!” said Jasper. “You interrupted us before.”

  Nigel gazed across
the grave. Yep, the dead guy was still there.

  “Two birds with one stone,” said Willard. “We’re getting rid of you and we don’t need to bust our butts filling that damn hole back up.”

  Jasper aimed his own rifle. “Now throw him in and start a-shovelin’. And don’t even think of running out of here before the job’s done. We might be watchin’ or comin’ back . . .”

  The body was in the hole so fast that it startled the brothers. Soil began flying.

  “Y’all behave now, ya hear?” The brothers propped rifles over their shoulders and marched off into the darkness until they seemed to dematerialize like a nightmare that had never existed.

  “What are you doing?” Günter asked Nigel. “Keep shoveling!”

  “They’re gone.”

  “So what?”

  “So right now we’re free,” said Nigel. “We can make a run for it. Every second we spend here, they could be changing their minds.”

  “And if we don’t finish the hole, they will change their minds!”

  “I really think they’re gone.” Nigel strained his eyes into the forest. “Look for yourself.”

  “I don’t see anything.”

  “That’s my point.”

  “Okay, let’s get out of here.”

  Click, click.

  They spun around at the sound of the rifles. “Ahhhh! How’d you get behind us?”

  “Finish the damn hole.”

  Soil flew as if there was a soil-spraying machine.

  A half hour later, they tamped down the top of the not-so-shallow grave.

  “There,” said Nigel. “No way they can say we didn’t finish the job. Let’s get out of here!”

  They prepared to fling the shovels aside.

  Bright lights blinded them. Shouting. A camera in their faces.

  “What are you hiding? Who are you burying out here?”

  “Nothing! Nobody!” Nigel held a hand up to shield squinting eyes. “It was these other people. They made us fill the hole. You have to believe us!”

  “Cut! That’s a wrap.” The lights went out.

  Nigel uncovered his eyes. “You?”

  “Who else?” said Serge.

  “I don’t get it.”

  “Leverage,” said Serge. “Usually my brand of leverage is permanent, but the punishment has to fit the crime, and you’re just buffoons. I wouldn’t want to be accused of going overboard.” He tossed Nigel some car keys. “Your SUV is still parked back at the road where you left it earlier. But remember: Not a word about my friends, or I’ll send this tape to the police. Then it’s prison for life, and your next reality show will have an adult rating.”