by Tim Dorsey
“I love watching live police chases on TV,” said Serge. “You usually have to live in California.”
“They have more helicopters out there,” said Coleman.
“But our Channel Seven whirlybird is staying right with him,” said Serge. “Down the Eighteen Mile.”
“What’s that?”
“The name for the empty stretch of road through the limbo of mangroves from the bottom of Florida City until the bridge to Key Largo.”
Coleman pointed. “He’s crossing the bridge . . . The cops are right behind.”
“It’s the big new bridge,” said Serge. “Takes you right across Lake What-the-Fuck.”
“Is that another real name?”
“No,” said Serge. “That’s what I call it. It’s really named Lake Surprise. But surprise is usually something good that provides delight, like winning the lottery or reaching in the back of the fridge and finding an unexpected jar of olives. But this lake got its name because it pissed people off.”
“How’d it do that?”
“Another funny story. When Henry Flagler started the Overseas Railroad down the Keys, he looked for the route with the most land, because bridges over water cost more. So he sent out surveyors, and they began laying tracks south from the mainland of Florida, across some little islands and an isthmus to Key Largo. And I can’t believe they built that far before realizing that right in the middle of a big chunk of land was this giant lake, and now they have to build an extra bridge that wasn’t in the budget.”
“I guess the guys at the lake didn’t yell, ‘Surprise.’ ”
“That’s why history gives me a woody.” Serge nodded toward the television. “Even recent history. Like this bozo heading our way.”
“The TV people said the Corvette was stolen in Coconut Grove.”
“He’s coming off the bridge,” said Serge. “The rocks will start soon.”
“Rocks?”
“It’s local tradition, and another reason I love the Keys.” Serge stood and put on his sneakers. “It’s our version of when those people went out to the overpasses and waved at O. J. Simpson during the slow-motion chase. Except in the Keys, when there’s a high-speed pursuit on TV heading south, the locals line the road and wait for the car to come off the bridge to Key Largo. Last time was around Christmas.”
“You’re right.” Coleman pointed at the TV again. “They’re lining the side of the road. They’re throwing rocks.”
“And we’re at Mile Marker 105, so that gives us about three minutes.” Serge tightened the Velcro straps on his shoes. “Let’s go throw rocks.”
“Cool.”
They went outside.
“Is this a good rock?” asked Coleman.
“I think that’s a hardened piece of poo.”
“Righteous,” said Coleman, tossing the brown oval up and down in his palm to gauge heft. “I’ll bet nobody else is throwing this at the car.”
“My wild guess is you’re probably right,” said Serge. “Man, look at all the freakin’ people out here. There’s barely room for us.”
“It’s like a parade, only better.”
A drumroll of pinging sounds came up the road toward them. Pieces of gravel and brick ricocheted off the Chevrolet frame.
“There he is now,” said Serge.
“He’s swerving all over the place,” said Coleman. “And the car’s completely beaten to shit.”
“That’s why it’s always better to be at the front of the rock line.” Serge fingered a smooth stone in his pitching hand. “Here’s the secret to enjoying this moment in history: In World War Two, ten percent of the pilots got ninety percent of the kills, and most were from southern states where they did a lot of hunting.”
“What’s that got to do with it?”
“They learned to lead their targets,” said Serge. “But you’re inexperienced. So stand ten yards on the far side of me, and when you see me throw, you let her rip. Your marijuana reflexes will build in the necessary time lag.”
The pinging sounds grew louder.
Serge stretched his right shoulder in a circular motion. “People in the Keys don’t hunt, so even if you’re not at the front of the rock line, they usually still leave you the prize.”
“Which is what?”
“The driver’s window.”
“Here he comes!”
“Readddddddyyyyy . . .” Serge wound up. “Now!”
Serge let fly.
Coleman did, too.
Smash.
“You got the window,” said Coleman.
“And I think your shot went through the opening I created. Good teamwork.”
“He’s fishtailing,” said Coleman. “He’s losing control.”
“And now the other rock people are scattering to make room for him sliding sideways into that mailbox.”
“The police are slowing down,” said Coleman. “But they don’t seem to know why.”
“Here’s where they pull him out through the window by his hair. Let’s listen . . .”
“Ow! Ow! I’m not resisting . . . Someone hit me with poo. Who throws poo?”
“Welcome to the Keys,” said Serge.
“It’s hot,” said Coleman. “Let’s go back inside.”
MEANWHILE . . .
A blistering afternoon on U.S. 1.
People fanned themselves under the shade of a bus-stop shelter. Several had inexplicably massive amounts of worthless possessions in a variety of unsturdy containers that symbolized the earth’s history of evolutionary dead ends. The bus finally came, and the driver wouldn’t let someone on because he had a George Foreman Grill, even though it wasn’t lit. Alongside the bus, someone else in a safari hat drove a riding lawn mower through a thin strip of grass in front of an outreach ministry. The bus pulled away. A man stayed behind on the bench and considered the downside of being able to suddenly barbecue with little warning.
But it was best not to think too hard about this strip of hot tar below Deerfield and Pompano. Which put it in Broward County, between Palm Beach and Miami-Dade. Shop after shop in endless miles of scrambled economy: ceiling fans, patio furniture, Oriental rugs, barbers, psychics, Pilates, a massage parlor on the up-and-up, herbs for the pretentious, used car lots for customers with radioactive credit, carpet remnants for people who didn’t give a shit anymore, a karate studio run by a prick, and one business that simply said LASER.
The traffic was typically heavy and frequently slowed by countless school zones. People in orange vests escorted children across the street. A school bus drove by. A man in a gorilla suit stood on the corner, twirling a sign advertising divorce representation.
More school buses. Regular ones, short ones, public, parochial. And one that looked like the others, except upon closer inspection. All males, all adults. The license plate read: THE BLUEGRASS STATE. The bus cleared a school zone and accelerated a few more blocks before pulling into a shopping center that was busier than the others. A lot busier, cars everywhere, no parking at all on the south end. A psychic came out of her shop and wondered what was going on. The bus pulled around back.
Inside, a waiting room spilled into another waiting room, every chair taken, overflowing outside onto the front patio, where people fiddled with cheap radios and cell phones. Except the wait was surprisingly short, and people moved chair to chair like they were turnstiles. A platoon of nurses called names from manila folders and continuously funneled the clientele into a series of individual examination rooms that ran the length of a hall. A single doctor emerged from the last door, came down the hallway and started again at the first. The loop took twenty minutes, even if someone was chatty. Because most of the patients spoke Spanish, and the doc had no idea what they were saying.
“What seems to be the problem?”
“¿Qué?”
“Soun
ds like gout. Take this and see the nurse out front.”
Patients stacked up again at the checkout window. But not to settle accounts. This was exclusively prepay. And one size fits all. Each person picked up an identical single small square of paper that the doctor had filled out ahead of time and stacked in a tall pile. The only chore left was for the nurses to fill in the names. Back pain, knee pain, migraine, toothache, general blahs, didn’t matter: The nurse handed over a script for ninety tablets, eighty-milligram oxycodone, the greenish-blue ones.
“And here’s the address of the pharmacy. Make sure you go to that one . . . Next, please! . . .”
Palm Shore Pain Associates, Inc.
The back door opened and the men from the school bus filed in. They had an express-line arrangement; nurses took them directly to the doctor’s personal office in groups of fifteen. And they didn’t look too good. Missing front teeth and that sallow, ruddy complexion that says no permanent address. As the men filed past the reception desk, the driver forked over four hundred dollars a head, which was a hundred more than everyone else waiting behind them.
An hour later, the sixth and last group of fifteen left the office and climbed back on the bus. The driver collected a prescription from each, just as he had done on all of their last eight vacations to Florida. Of course, they would get them back at the pharmacy, but then they’d have to turn over their pill bottle upon rejoining the bus, or it would be a long walk back to Kentucky, and no three hundred bucks for their trouble.
The driver started up the bus and pulled out of the alley behind the pain clinic.
Suddenly: “What the hell?”
A single whoop of a siren. Before anyone knew it, the SWAT team was everywhere, black helmets and Kevlar vests, M16 rifles pointed at the windshield, storming aboard.
Patients waiting on the patio in front scattered across the shopping-center parking lot and were tackled under running sprinklers.
The shrill yelling outside brought nurses running into the waiting room, just in time for more officers to crash through the doors. Someone in the bathroom stopped up the toilet trying to flush prescriptions.
More M16s. “On the ground! Now!”
Every chair emptied in the waiting areas. Officers pulled others from examination rooms. Another member of the tactical unit came in the back door, pushing the doctor ahead of him. “Tried to climb out his window.”
Another pulled a nurse with wet arms out of the bathroom. The crackdown required several bags of those plastic wrist cuffs. Finally, everyone was lying stomach down and heard their Miranda rights in two languages.
“Secure,” said the officer in charge. “Let ’em in.”
Lights! Cameras! . . . The TV gang from all the local affiliates poured through the door.
“Can you hold up the money and those prescription pads again? . . .”
One of the stations went live from the parking lot as officers paraded suspects toward corrections vans.
“In a highly coordinated and dangerous operation, authorities have just raided one of the largest South Florida pill mills illegally dispensing oxycodone, which has contributed to record numbers of overdoses not only in Broward County, but as far away as West Virginia. Officials report they even seized a bus that out-of-state traffickers were using to transport homeless people from Kentucky, and today’s arrests should seriously disrupt the Interstate 95 pipeline of so-called Hillbilly Heroin . . .”
Behind the TV correspondent on U.S. 1, dozens of weary street people stared out the windows of an unnoticed school bus that had just left a different medical clinic three blocks away and was headed back north on Interstate 95.
Chapter Two
KEY LARGO
Throwing rocks at cars is cool!” said Coleman.
“Another quote for the ages,” said Serge.
And another typical afternoon in paradise in the Florida Keys. Empty, bright, baby-blanket sky. Shimmering emerald water all around the Long Key Viaduct with its century-old arches. Heavy, happy traffic heading both ways, including a clown-fish-orange 1976 Ford Gran Torino SportsRoof, with the Magnum 500 wheels, laser stripe and 429 cubic inches of V-8 madness.
A foot hit the clutch, and a hand slammed the shift into top gear. The Torino swerved across the centerline and passed six cars, swinging back at the last second as a van full of sheet-white people passed in the other direction.
“Hot damn!” Serge reached over from the driver’s seat and punched Coleman in the shoulder.
“Ow.”
“I’m so jazzed!” Serge bobbed in his seat. “I love the beach season!”
“What’s the beach season?”
“Comes right after the season, otherwise known as tourist season or snowbird season, starting after Christmas, when people migrate to Florida to escape the cold. Then they walk along the beach at sunset with sweaters tied around their waists. I respect the lifestyle choice, but I can’t hang with it. What’s the point of Florida if you don’t get in the fucking water?”
“I remember on New Year’s Day, you were the only one splashing around out there.”
“That was my annual polar-bear plunge,” said Serge. “But how can it count if you’re living in Florida? Except in Jacksonville, where the Parrot Head Club makes it interesting by drinking tequila before sunrise. And I mean way into the bottle, before jumping in the surf at a sunrise that is blocked by a frigid gray sea mist, and they leap back out with half of their wacky foam hats left drifting out to sea, then finish the tequila, sleep twelve hours and dance that night at the local moose lodge. They’re very focused.”
Coleman lifted a cheek to sneak one. “The time I’m thinking of, you were yelling at the people on shore.”
“What was I yelling?”
“ ‘Get in the fucking water!’ ” Coleman dropped a tab of ecstasy. “But they ran the other way instead. Oh, you were also waving a gun. Then the beach was empty and covered with sweaters.”
“It was probably getting late for them anyway.”
“Then you came charging out of the water,” said Coleman. “At first I thought you were running after them like the other times, but you jumped in the car and turned on the heater.”
“Because the water was way too goddamn freezing to get in.” Serge shivered at the thought. “What was I thinking? That’s why I love the beach season! Instead of fleeing the cold, people get in the water to escape the heat. That’s my crowd, keeping it Coppertone real. And it all builds to the huge climax on the extended Memorial Day weekend. I can’t wait! I love the beach season! That’s why I bought a ton of toys at that Home Depot on Vaca Key.”
“Home Depot has beach toys?”
“Better.” Serge reached for a bag in the backseat and pulled it onto his lap. “Hurricane toys! Hurricane season starts the first of June, which means hurricane preparation begins the same time as beach season . . .” Serge glanced back and forth from the road to the bag, steering with his knees and pawing inside. “Here’s the crank-powered emergency weather radio and compass, the floating diode flashlight that needs no batteries and runs on the Faraday Principle, a laser-guided compass with GPS, the solar survival blanket developed by NASA, a big-honkin’ all-purpose tungsten hunting knife with compass and flashlight . . .”
“All this stuff will help us survive a storm?” Coleman asked nervously.
“Heck no.” Serge flicked the laser on and off at approaching traffic. Someone in a Mazda skidded down the shoulder into sea grapes. “There ain’t going to be any hurricanes this year. I just like to play with this crap during beach season. Did I mention I love it?”
“Where have I seen those other boxes before?” asked Coleman.
“Military MREs, or Meals Ready to Eat, distributed by the National Guard to storm victims. Got them at a surplus sale this morning. The cool part is the heating element: This clear plastic pouch with what looks lik
e a tea bag in the bottom, and you add just a little water to start a chemical reaction that generates a ferocious amount of heat. I’m going to have some fun with those.”
“Now I remember,” said Coleman. “You used the heating pouches on that price gouger we captured a few years ago after that hurricane. But you never like to use the same thing twice. You said it shows lack of imagination and disrespect for your contestants.”
“That’s right!” Serge opened one of the boxes on his lap. “But true imagination is squeezing a second, totally unrelated use from the same item. This time, an ignition source.”
“Ignition?”
“Read about it on the Internet.” Serge pulled a plastic bag from a meal, containing plastic utensils and condiments. “Here’s the key . . .” He pointed at a tiny, one-serving foil packet of Tabasco sauce.
“Why do soldiers have Tabasco sauce?”
“Because war requires spicy food.” Serge stowed the bag. “Anyway, back to the plot: Some cadets from West Point were on survival training, and one of their tasks was to start a fire.”
“How hard can that be?”
“They took away their lighters and matches.”
“Oh.”
“So this one cadet gets the idea to substitute hot sauce instead of water in a heating pouch and—shazam!—fire. Who would have thought? . . . But I still haven’t figured out how to use it as an instructional aid.”
“Can I have some of the freeze-dried ice cream?”
“Knock yourself out.” Serge tossed a foil packet sideways across the front seat. “But the most excellent purchase of the day is in the trunk, courtesy of the construction wholesaler I hit after Home Depot.”
Coleman sucked foil. “When I was in the bar next door?”
Serge nodded and spread his hands. “Been looking all over for these ever since I first saw them on the Internet when Hurricane Wilma slammed Fort Lauderdale: instant sandbags. Just add water.”
Coleman stopped sucking. “I thought sandbags were supposed to stop water.”
“These are special. Each bag weighs only two pounds dry because they’re filled with these lightweight, scientifically developed crystals. But soak them in water, and a half hour later each feathery sack has inflated into a thirty-five-pound rock-hard bulwark of flood protection. Perfect for the hurricane survivor with a hectic schedule.” Serge jerked a thumb back over his shoulder toward the trunk. “Picked up thirty of ’em for hours of entertainment and education.”