by Tim Dorsey
The Riptide Ultra-Glide
Tim Dorsey
Dedication
For Dave York
Epigraph
It would be a bitter cosmic joke if we destroy ourselves due to atrophy of the imagination.
—MARTHA GELLHORN
The early bird gets the worm, but the second mouse gets the cheese.
—STEVEN WRIGHT
Contents
Dedication
Epigraph
Prologue
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-one
Chapter Twenty-two
Chapter Twenty-three
Chapter Twenty-four
Chapter Twenty-five
Chapter Twenty-six
Chapter Twenty-seven
Chapter Twenty-eight
Chapter Twenty-nine
Chapter Thirty
Chapter Thirty-one
Chapter Thirty-two
Epilogue
About the Author
Also by Tim Dorsey
Credits
Copyright
About the Publisher
Prologue
FLORIDA
The hookers were slap-fighting a Hare Krishna up at the intersection when the bullet came through the windshield.
Until then, the tourists’ rental car didn’t have a mark and would have passed the damage inspection back at the airport, but this was unusually hard to overlook.
It was shortly after eleven on a hot Thursday morning, and the hole in the glass was neat and small, just above the steering wheel, with a tiny circle of cracks indicating a high-velocity round. The Chevy Impala continued straight for almost a block before the horn blared from the driver’s forehead. Then it veered over the centerline and clipped an oncoming Nissan. Both cars spun out in opposite directions, sending other traffic screeching toward curbs and sidewalks and hookers.
Finally it was still.
Two surviving tourists in the Impala stared at each other in shock. “What just happened?”
Then it was unstill.
The driver’s-side windows exploded from more gunfire, this time a MAC-10 submachine gun preferred throughout the metropolitan statistical area. The tourists ducked in a spray of glass. A twelve-gauge blasted open the trunk. The pair spilled from the passenger door, onto the burning pavement, and scrambled on hands and knees up the middle of U.S. Highway 1.
More bullets raked the car; others took chunks from the street around the fleeing tourists. The attack came from a black Jeep Cherokee with all the fog-light trimmings. It had skidded up sideways behind the crashed Nissan. Overloaded with passengers, an armed clown car, leathery men in cowboy hats and plaid shirts. Jumping out and firing as they advanced, as if it were completely normal behavior in South Florida. They had a point.
They were along a stretch of U.S. 1, also called Federal Highway, between Fort Lauderdale and Miami. No-man’s-land. A gritty corridor of strip malls, service stations, old mom-and-pop motels and new bank branches.
Calls flooded 911 operators. Stray rounds shattered glass at a pizza place and nail salon. Another vehicle arrived. A silver Ford Explorer with Kentucky plates cut the corner through a Citgo station and stopped half over the curb at a Walgreens. More men with guns. Blue jeans, T-shirts, boots. The newcomers began firing on the gunmen from the Jeep Cherokee. Two immediately got hit, MAC-10s twirling and shooting the sky as they went down. The rest ran back behind their car and returned fire on the Ford. Both groups occasionally turned to squeeze off shots at the Impala and the tourists.
A police helicopter swooped over the scene, looking down at the geometry of a Wild West corral: the Jeep on the east side of the street, the Ford on the west, and to the south, the Impala, forming a tight triangulation of fire. The tourists were on the far side of their car, desperately crawling low down the centerline. They would have headed for the side of the road, but the positions of the other vehicles was placing fire along both edges of the street. The helicopter saw them and got on the radio.
The first patrol car screamed north up the middle of the highway. He saw the tourists and swung around the couple, placing his cruiser between them and the bullets. The officer jumped out and opened the back door. “Get in!”
The tourists began standing up.
A concentrated salvo from the Jeep blew out two of the patrol car’s tires and most of the windows.
“Get down!”
The officer joined them on the pavement.
“What do we do?” asked the woman.
“See that copy shop?” said the officer. “We need to get around the corner.”
“I feel safer here,” said her husband.
The cop shook his head. “Some of those rounds are armor piercing.”
The woman couldn’t command her shaking legs to move. Tears. “I can’t do it.”
A bullet came through the door of the police car and chipped the pavement near her head. She took off like a track star, shots pocking the street around her feet. The men were right behind.
They made it around the side of the building and flattened against a wall, plaster from the storefront spraying behind them. The officer grabbed his shoulder mike to radio their position.
“What on earth’s going on?” asked the man.
“Probably find out on the news tonight,” said the officer. “Do you know any of those people?”
Two heads shook. “Never seen them before.”
“What about the dead driver in your car? . . .”
A thin, wiry man in a tropical shirt stood on the second-floor balcony of one of the mom-and-pops.
A shorter, plumper man hid behind him and peeked around his side. “They’re shooting down there!”
Serge smiled and continued filming with his camcorder. “I love the beach season.”
“Where is the beach?”
Serge aimed an arm east. “About a mile and another world away, magnificent sand and surf, with the postcard-ready Highway A1A running along the shore. Most tourists take root out there and never get dick-deep into the underbelly. That’s why I love U.S. 1!” Serge shouted the last part loud enough for one of the shooters to look up. Serge waved back. “Humid yet dusty at the same time, harsh egg-yolk tints, devoid of vegetation except for the most determined wild palms fighting their way up between the pavement and concrete blocks. And the foot traffic, a rudderless rhythm of the same bad choices and narrow appetites, trudging the streets at all hours like the undead . . . But every now and then, a fortunate tourist will confuse U.S. 1 with A1A, and accidentally book a room out here and get to dig it like a native!”
A bullet clanged off the balcony railing near the stairs.
Coleman tugged Serge’s shirt. “Maybe we should go back inside.”
“And miss this great footage? We’re going to be famous!”
“But you’re already famous, sort of,” said Coleman. “All those murders. The cops call you a serial—”
“Shut up.” Serge winced. “I hate that term. Serial killers are losers.”
“How are you different?”
“A victim of circumstance.” Serge zoomed in on the Jeep. “What are the odds all those assholes would cross my path?”
“So you’re filming another documentary like the one you shot at spring break?”
“No, I’ve got a new hook.” He panned to the Explorer. “I misjudged the market for that last project. I went for the non-market because nobody tries to reach them.”
“Non-market?” asked Coleman.
“The people who never watch TV or movies, so I figured it was wide-open territory. But no takers, not even a nibble.”
Another bullet hit their building two rooms down. Coleman took a swig from a pint of Jim Beam. “But I liked your spring-break documentary. It had topless chicks, frat boys funneling beers and me burying my vomit in the sand.”
Serge shrugged. “Documentaries are too intellectual for the general public.”
“Then what’s your new hook?”
“I already explained it to you, and we’ve been filming for over a week. Were you high?”
“Yes, tell me again.”
“A reality show,” said Serge. “I was surfing the channels, and you wouldn’t believe the dreck the cable people are putting out these days. Not even good reality. We come home at the end of the day and turn on the tube and watch the bullshit parts of what we just came in from: people cooking, working on motorcycles, trying to lose weight, getting fired, getting tattoos, getting their car repossessed, going broke and pawning World War One gas masks, suing ex-boyfriends in small claims over the power bill, couples stressed out because they had ten kids, speeders making excuses to cops, truckers driving on bad roads, guys rummaging through abandoned storage units, a dude who does a bunch of jobs that cover him with filth, a game show in a taxi, interventions for people who hoard trash, families getting their kitchens remodeled against their will.”
Coleman took another slug of whiskey. “What about Cupcake Wars?”
“That one sounded promising,” said Serge. “So I tuned in one night, and no fighting at all. Just a lot of frosting. What the fuck?”
“Who do you think will buy your show?”
“Probably MTV.” Serge swung his camera toward more arriving police cars. “Our reality show will beat those Jersey Shore mooks like a gong. They even had the gall to set their second season on South Beach, but that was an antiseptically controlled environment. They’d never survive the real Florida. Inside a week, Snooki would be blowing winos for cigarette butts.”
“I’d watch that,” said Coleman.
“And that’s why everyone will definitely watch our show.”
“I’ve got the title,” said Coleman. “Scumbag Shore.”
Serge nodded. “I’ll run it by the suits.”
“The only thing I don’t understand is you’re just filming other people at a distance.” Coleman killed the pint and fired up a jay. “If it’s our reality show, aren’t we supposed to be in it?”
Serge pulled a nine-millimeter pistol from under his tropical shirt and headed for the stairs. “That’s what we’re going to do now.”
“But they’re still shooting.”
“Good, I was afraid we’d get left out.” Serge waved his gun vaguely at the street. “Let’s go down there and interact with our peeps.”
Coleman tossed the nub of his joint off the balcony and jogged to catch up. “Who are we going to interact with?”
“Thought we’d start with those two tourists who were crawling on their hands and knees through gunfire up the middle of U.S. 1.” Serge racked the chamber of his pistol. “Most visitors could stay here for days without experiencing that kind of genuine Welcome-to-Florida zeitgeist. Since they’re probably thrilled with their beginner’s luck, we’ll hook up and I’ll take them on a behind-the-scenes tour of the Sunshine State that will trip their minds. I have a hunch they won’t forget this vacation.”
Chapter One
ONE MONTH EARLIER
A fisherman found the body in the mangroves just before dawn. Actually, tiny crabs found it first. The tide had ebbed from an inlet near the top of the Florida Keys, and the muck began to give off that funk. The homicide was what authorities like to call a classic case of overkill. But they were still stumped about the specific cause of death because of the way . . . well, it’s complicated. And all this didn’t happen until tomorrow. Right now the victim was still very much alive, and the residents of Key Largo had their attention on something else . . .
* * *
At the very bottom of the state—below Miami and the zoo and the Coral Castle and everything else—sits the tiny outpost of Florida City. Last stop. Nothing below on the mainland but mangroves and swamp.
There was some agriculture and migrants on the outskirts, but mainly it was just a short tourist strip where the end of the state turnpike dumps motorists into a cluster of economy motels and convenience stores: a final gas-up, food-up and beer-up before the long, desolate run to the Florida Keys.
Sportsmen bashed bags of ice on the curb in front of a Shell station, college students toted cases of beer, and a ’72 Corvette Stingray flew south doing eighty. It ran a red light and was pushing a hundred by the time it passed the last building—the Last Chance Saloon—and dove down into the mangroves.
The driver looked in the rearview. Faint sirens and countless flashing blue lights a mile behind. He floored it.
Coleman leaned back and shotgunned a Schlitz. “Serge, do you think we’ll ever be caught?”
“ ‘Caught’ is a funny word,” said Serge. “Most criminals catch themselves, like getting stuck at three A.M. in an air duct over a car-stereo store, and the people opening up in the morning hear crying and screaming from the ceiling, and the fire department has to get him out with spatulas and butter. If your arrest involves a lot of butter, or, even more embarrassing, I Can’t Believe It’s Not Butter, then you actually need to go to jail, if for nothing else just some hang time to inner-reflect.”
“Those cops are still chasing,” said Coleman, firing up a hash pipe.
“Where did they all come from?” Serge leaned attentively. “There was nobody following, and then, bam! The road hits Florida City and suddenly it’s like a Blues Brothers chase back there.”
“Florida City?” Coleman dropped a Vicodin. “So that’s what that string of motels is called?”
Serge nodded. “Actually a funny story. Used to be called Detroit.”
Coleman swigged a pint of Rebel Yell. “Now you’re making fun of me because I’m wrecked.”
“Swear to God. You can look it up,” said Serge. “I wouldn’t shit you.”
“I know,” said Coleman. “I’m your favorite turd.”
“And naming it Detroit wasn’t even an accident, like the other times when two pioneer families set up shop in the sticks and there’s no one else around to stop them, and they’re chugging moonshine by the campfire, ‘What should we call this place?’ ‘Fuck it, I already spent enough effort today running from wild pigs,’ and then you end up with a place called Toad Suck, Arkansas—you can look that up, too. Except modern-day Florida City started as an ambitious land development with hard-sell advertising and giant marketing geniuses behind the project. Then they had the big meeting to concoct a name: ‘I got it! What do people moving to Florida really want? To be in Michigan!’ ”
“Bullshit on Michigan,” said Coleman.
“That was pretty much the universal consumer response back in 1910,” said Serge. “But I still can’t wrap my head around that management decision to name it Detroit. The brain wasn’t engineered to deal w
ith that rarefied level of dumbness.”
“Sounds like they were all on acid,” said Coleman.
“Exactly,” said Serge. “So here’s what I think really happened: The top guy mentioned the name, and everyone else obsequiously nodded and went along with the idea like they do around Trump, and then months later they take the train south, and the main cat sees the signs at the city limits: ‘You idiots! That was sarcasm!’ ”
“The cops are still back there,” said Coleman.
“Chasing is in police DNA memory, like Labradors running after sticks,” said Serge. “They probably don’t even know why they do it. They just put the lights on and go, and a while later the partner who isn’t behind the wheel says, ‘Why are we stopping?’ ‘Something inside just told me to because there’s a really cool crash up ahead. It’s weird; I can’t explain it.’ ”
“I hope we never get caught,” said Coleman.
“That would be my choice,” said Serge. “Unfortunately, a lot of people are looking for us, and heading down to the Keys is never a good call when you’re on the run.”
Another Schlitz popped. “Why?”
“Geography. There’s just one road in and no way out, so it’s a fool’s move,” said Serge. “Except in our case, because I can line up some boats. I know these guys.”
“The cops are getting closer.”
Serge gestured with the book he was reading. “Turn up the volume on the TV.”
Coleman twisted a knob. “That Corvette is really flying.”