by Tim Dorsey
Sirens reached the Sandbar, a rustic stilt-top lounge poking out of the mangroves on Little Torch Key. Customers ran to the cross-breeze windows overlooking South Pine Channel and the bottled-up ambulances unable to cross the bridge. The gang at Boondocks heard a whap-whap-whap-whap and looked up at the runners of a sheriff’s helicopter called in by the stranded emergency vehicles.
The Mercury with the raised hood had since caught fire, and the tiki bar crowd at the Looe Key Reef Resort appreciated the uncomplicated entertainment value when it reached the gas tank. A fishing guide with sun-cracked skin set his Miller on the bar. “This is worse than general. I have to make Boca Chica this afternoon.”
“Why don’t you call Foley?” asked the bartender. “See if it’s reached.”
A cell phone rang inside the bar at Sugarloaf Lodge.
“Foley here. Hold a sec, let me stick my head out…. No, road’s clear here. Traffic’s fine—” Crash. “Check that. A dope boat just rolled…because I can see the bricks in the street…Yeah, people are grabbing them and running away….”
More whap-whap-whap. Another chopper cleared the roof of the No Name Pub, a 1935 roadhouse hidden in the banana trees on Bogie Channel.
The customers wandered out the screen door and up the road, where a helicopter hovered over the bridge. Loudspeakers cleared the fishermen below, and the aircraft set down, scattering bait pails.
The rotors stopped. One of the pilots in a green jumpsuit got out and took off her helmet.
A bar patron approached. “What’s going on?”
“Car fire caught the brush on Summerland and jumped the road. Need a place to rest the engines.”
Three more patrons leaned against the bridge’s railing. The oldest was a well-read biker from north Florida named Sop Choppy who had relocated to the Keys under hazy circumstances. Bob was the middle in age. He operated a very seasonal accounting firm on the island and closed in the summer to run a customerless tour service with his personal pleasure craft for tax reasons. The youngest was also named Bob, a shirtless construction worker who hammered roof trusses by day and had dreams but no workable plan to become a dragster mechanic for Don Garlits. Two regulars named Bob made things complex, so the other customers called him “Shirtless Bob.” He had to wear a shirt in the bar.
The trio didn’t possess a single common reference point but were welded into a fragile axis of daily bar chatter by the necessities of tourist hegemony. They gazed across the water at the Spanish Harbor viaduct, where a frozen line of cars stretched down the highway as far as they could see. A tiny driver stood on his roof for vantage.
Their heads suddenly jerked back as a fireball went up in the direction of Ramrod. They sipped drinks as a mushroom of black smoke dissipated in the wind.
“Ever watch Monster Garage on the Discovery Channel?” asked Shirtless Bob. “Last week they converted a PT Cruiser into a wood chipper. You jam logs through the open back window and twin sprays of chips go flying up from two secret hatches in the roof.”
“Why?”
“Because it’s Monster Garage.”
Barely audible in the distance: Bang. Bang. Followed by: pop-pop-pop-pop-pop, a small under-the-armpit smuggler’s machine gun.
“They’ve got to do something about that highway,” said Bob the accountant. “Too vulnerable. Least little thing and it all craps out.”
Sop Choppy looked down in his empty drink, then up at the road. “Wonder how it started this time.”
How it started: before dawn
THE WORLD LOOKED weird to Coleman. It was curved in a fisheye through the peephole of room 133 at the Royal Glades Motel. A single raindrop on the outside of the small glass bubble distorted the crime lights on Krome Avenue. This was up on the mainland, south of Miami, across the agricultural flats with pesticide musk and giant industrial sprinklers that were still at this hour. Coleman toked the roach beginning to heat his fingertips and kept an eye to the door. Downtown Homestead. Not a soul.
Coleman was at the threshold of forty-something and crouched against the bong-hit ceiling of eighth-grade maturity. His honeydew head was too big for his body. Coleman was never up before dawn, except now. Because he needed to make the Great Escape.
Cash was low, and Coleman had slept—make that remained unconscious—through checkout the previous day. The front desk had been phoning ever since. “Coming up in a minute to pay.” “Be right there.” “Eating dinner now, but immediately after that.” Then knocks at the door. “No clothes on—be over in a sec.” The night manager finally opened up with a passkey. Coleman lay snoring in his BVDs, empty beer cans randomly strewn around the room like spent artillery shells in a busy howitzer battery. The manager decided his salary didn’t cover social work. He closed the door and left a note in the office for the morning person.
Most recently, Coleman had been living on the couch of a party buddy’s apartment in Port Charlotte. Then, cultural differences. His friend had a job. And the evenings of brainless bingeing curiously began to seem like evenings of brainless bingeing. Coleman was asked to move on, enticed by some free pot for the road. His host considered it a high-yield investment.
The Royal Glades Motel was halfway back to Coleman’s rusty trailer with rotten floorboards on Ramrod Key. He’d headed south on I-75 and soon reached the edge of the Everglades at the bottom of the state’s west coast.
People with a few dollars in turnpike money preferred to cross the swamp on Alligator Alley, a safe, divided, four-lane interstate with fences on both sides to keep wildlife out of traffic. Those who couldn’t scrape up tollbooth change were forced to drive farther south and take the Tamiami Trail, a harrowing two-laner with no shoulders next to deep canals. Depth perception in the Everglades was always tricky. Stupidity even trickier. People were always trying to pass, and there were many spectacular head-ons.
It was worse at night.
But there was little traffic at four A.M. when Coleman entered the Glades. No light or sound either, just stars and the cool air coming in his open windows. Coleman hadn’t seen anything but black marsh for fifteen miles, when he passed the silhouette of a Miccosukee Chickee hut and a peeling billboard of a falsely cheerful Indian giving airboat rides to Eurocentrics. Then nothing again for a half hour until an auburn first-quarter moon on the horizon toward Miami. His headlights bounced off a panther-crossing sign. There was a small glow to the south: something burning down one of the gravel roads to a water-filled quarry. Coleman was driving a gold ’71 Buick Riviera that dripped oil. The maintenance money had been spent on the car’s furry steering wheel cover and Playboy shift knob. This was Coleman’s version of the economy.
The Buick passed a closed restaurant that served frog’s legs, then the locks of a dam where they had diked for this road way back. Coleman was lighting a joint and trying to get something on the radio when another set of headlights made him look up. “What’s that guy doing in my lane? Wait, what am I doing in this lane?” Ahead: A Datsun had come to a complete stop, its passenger compartment and the driver’s open mouth filled with Coleman’s high beams. Brakes squealed. At the last second, Coleman veered around the other car. He glanced back over his shoulder at the Datsun, then turned around to find a twelve-foot gator in the mist of his headlights. He stiff-armed the steering wheel and slammed the brakes again. Thump. The squish-grease made the tires lose traction, and the Buick slowly rotated sideways down both lanes until it completed a perfect three-sixty. Coleman came out of the spin back in his own lane, still speeding east. “This road is way too dangerous. I need a beer.” He reached under the seat. On its own, the radio picked up a weak station fading in and out. Steely Dan. Something about a weekend at a college that went awry. Coleman imagined a wooden shack and a lone radio tower with a blinking red beacon, personally transmitting to him from an island in the middle of the swamp. He slouched and settled in for the rest of the drive. Fate. It was meant to be. God was watching out for him, Coleman thought, or he never would have made it to this ag
e.
He couldn’t have been more right.
APB #1: the brown Plymouth Duster with Ohio plates
BACK UP THE Tamiami Trail, a light grew brighter, the one Coleman had seen down the gravel road. The fire was really involved now. An Oldsmobile with a body inside.
A brown Plymouth Duster with Ohio plates sat nearby. The trunk lid went up. Hands in leather gloves placed a metal gas tank inside and slammed the hood.
The Duster began driving out the gravel road, branches scraping the windshield. Gravel became tar as the car turned onto the Tamiami Trail, leaving behind the burning Oldsmobile with the sticks of dynamite that soon sent a chute of flame and evidence skyward.
The Plymouth continued east. The driver could make out major power lines against the moon, the first wisps of Miami. A tiny traffic light flashed in the distance. It took ten minutes to get to it. The crossroads. The Duster made a lazy right, then a half-hour straight shot south through migrant tomato fields and palm tree farms.
It turned in the entrance of the Royal Glades Motel.
2
West Palm Beach, near the airport: five A.M.
A DOZEN POLICE cars with flashing lights filled the parking lot of a small brick medical complex that looked like a strip mall. There was crime tape and a sheet-covered body. Little numbered markers sat on the pavement next to each bullet. Evidence cameras flashed. The head detective was on the phone to the home of the police chief.
“I think we just solved that tourist robbery at the motel…no, not an arrest, a body…yes, the victims just made a positive ID….” He glanced toward the traumatized retired couple from Michigan clutching each other. The man had bandages on his chin and nose. “…No, I don’t think a press conference is a good idea right now…. I know you’re getting a lot of pressure from the mayor’s office because of the tourism angle…. Because I don’t think we know what we’re dealing with yet. Something’s not right…. Six bullet wounds…right, but they’re all exit wounds…. No, someone didn’t stick a gun up his ass or down his throat. The medical examiner has confirmed the trajectory. These are all straight through, three in the stomach and three in the back, like someone was firing a gun inside him. I’ve never seen anything like it….”
A uniformed officer approached the head detective, who covered the phone. “What is it?”
The officer told him.
“Thanks.” The detective uncovered the phone. “Sir, we have a second crime scene. Someone broke into one of the clinics in the medical complex…. Yeah, it’s related. I think we just figured out those exit wounds. You’re not going to believe this…. No, we definitely want to hold off on that press conference….”
The previous evening
A LANKY MAN in a flowing tropical shirt raced down Southern Boulevard on a ten-speed ultralight aluminum racing bike. He passed the airport, a steak house, a medical complex, some gas stations, budget motels…. Suddenly, his senses perked up. Something was out of place. He squeezed the brake levers on the handlebars.
A RENTED GRAND Am with its doors open sat in front of room 112 of the Golden Ibis Motel. Hank and Beatrice Dunn from Grand Rapids carried luggage inside. Beatrice began unpacking a suitcase on the sagging king bed. Hank locked up the car and went in the room. He hung the DO NOT DISTURB sign on the outside knob and started closing the door.
The door flew back open, knocking Hank to the ground. A burly man with sores and crazed, crack-head eyes ran in the room. “Where’s your money!”
Beatrice screamed. The man went to punch her.
Hank grabbed his arm from behind. “Don’t hurt us. We’ll give you everything.”
So he spun around and punched Hank. He was going to do more damage, but saw the wallet and jewelry on the dresser. Then he tore through a purse on the bed. When he was satisfied he had just about everything, he turned to Beatrice. “Give me your wedding ring!”
She clutched her hand to her chest. “No!”
Hank was still woozy on the ground with a torrential nosebleed, trying to get up. “Honey, give him the ring!”
“Shut the fuck up!” The man seized Beatrice’s arm and yanked on her finger. The ring didn’t budge. He pulled and pulled. No luck.
“It’s stuck,” said Beatrice. “I never take it off. Please!”
The thug unsnapped a leather holder on his belt and flicked open a jackknife. “It’ll come off now!”
“No!” yelled Hank, grabbing the man’s shirt from behind. He got another punch in the face and hit the floor again. The assailant turned back to Beatrice and forced her hand down on the sink counter for a cutting surface.
He heard a click behind him and felt something cold and metal against the back of his head. A new voice: “What do you say we let her keep the ring?”
The couple was dizzy from the swing of events. First the motel invasion and now this mystery man in a tropical shirt holding their assailant down on the bed and tying his hands behind his back with the cord from the curtains.
When he was finished, Serge jerked the man up off the mattress and turned to the retirees: “I just want you to know this isn’t what we’re about down here. I’m very sorry about the inconvenience. Welcome to Florida!”
Serge marched his prisoner toward the door.
“Uh, what are you?” Hank called after him. “Some kind of undercover cop?”
“No, a historian.”
THREE BLOCKS AWAY Serge was still marching his prisoner down a series of alleys. He had the gun in one hand and was walking his ten-speed bike alongside him with the other.
“That’s far enough,” said Serge. They were behind a medical complex. Serge went to work with a lock-pick set. “What’s wrong with you? When I was growing up, the criminals had a code. No kids, old people or cripples. Now they’re the first ones you guys go for.”
The back door of a clinic popped open and Serge flicked on the lights. He waved the gun, ordering the man inside.
The man looked around, confused. Serge reached in his pocket and pulled out a handful of bullets. He raised them to the man’s mouth. “Swallow these.”
“Fuck you.”
Serge held his hands out like scales, the bullets in the left, the gun in the right. “Your pick. Bullets are going in your mouth one way or the other.”
The man didn’t answer. Serge forced the barrel through his teeth. The man started yelling and nodding.
Serge removed the gun. “Good choice.” He fed the bullets one by one, even fetched a paper cup of water from the cooler when the going got rough after number three.
“That wasn’t so bad, was it?”
The man didn’t know what the hell was going on.
“Now come over here and lie down on this table.”
The man didn’t move.
“You were starting to cooperate,” said Serge, poking the gun in his ribs. “Don’t make this go worse than it has to.”
The man reluctantly lay down on the table. Serge pulled some extra curtain cord from his pocket and tied the man’s ankles. The table was narrow. It was on some kind of rolling track. Serge pushed the table until the man began sliding headfirst into a tight tube in the middle of a gigantic medical contraption.
“I know what you’re thinking,” said Serge, pushing the bottoms of the man’s feet until he was completely inside. “What the hell is this thing? Well, I’ll tell you. And it’s really amazing stuff. This is an MRI. That stands for Magnetic Resonance Imagery. Huge leap forward in medical diagnosis! And since Florida has so many old people, they’re conveniently located all over the place, lucky for me.”
Horrible screaming echoed out of the tube.
“Quiet down. I can’t think.” Serge walked behind the control panel and began throwing switches. “Now, how do we get this baby going?…” More switches and dials. “These machines use a powerful magnetic field to produce three-D X-ray-type images. And when I say powerful, I’m not kidding. This is an absolutely true story: One hospital learned the hard way it couldn’t mount fire e
xtinguishers in the MRI room. They were in the middle of scanning a patient, and the extinguisher snapped out of its wall holder, flew clear across the room and stuck to the side of the machine. That’s why they can’t use this thing on anyone who has metal plates or pins—rips them right out your body…. Okay, I think this is the right switch…. Are you ready? I sure am! This is going to be so great!…”
Downtown West Palm Beach: the wee hours
A POLICE CRUISER rolled quietly toward the waterfront. A spotlight swept storefronts and alleys. There’d been numerous reports of a suspicious person in the vicinity of Clematis. He matched the description the Michigan couple had given of the vigilante in their motel room.
The patrol officer was bored. He turned at the end of the block and backtracked on Daytura, just to be thorough.
Okay, this is definitely a waste of time. He clicked off the spotlight. Just as he did, a silent form shot across the end of the street. At least he thought he’d seen it. He clicked the light back on.
Nothing.
The patrol car accelerated and whipped around the block. The spotlight scanned the street. Empty except for a skinny cat darting under a van with four flat tires.
Five blocks away, a dark form flew down Dixie Highway. It zoomed under a street light. A lanky man in a flowing tropical shirt on a ten-speed ultralight aluminum racing bike. Leaning way over in aerodynamic wedge, legs like pistons, no wasted motion.
The bike took the next corner in a graceful arc and zigzagged through a grid of streets near the train tracks. It raced south on Tamarind Avenue. Knife-fight territory. A juke joint had its door open to the street, blue light and arguments spilling out, then the next corner, two guys waiting for business. One saw the bike coming and pulled a pistol. “Give it up!”