The Big Bamboo

by Tim Dorsey

  Not the penthouse.

  The living room had dark paneling, made even darker by the thick curtains that were drawn tight. A framed parchment certificate hung on the wall: HONORARY DEGREE. A big-screen TV was replaying the 1978 Crimson Tide championship game.

  A diminutive man who looked like Rick Moranis sat on the couch, mouthing along with the play-by-play that he knew by heart. He was wearing a dark red football helmet that was too big for his head. He had wood.

  The phone rang.

  “Damn.” The game was paused. “Hello?

  You’ll have to speak up

  Louder

  Because I’m wearing the helmet

  Screw it! Hold on

  ” He took the helmet off. “This better be good. I was in the middle of the Sugar Bowl

  What do you mean they’re dead?

  What kind of accident?

  Flew through a guardrail? What the hell am I paying you for?

  No, I will not calm down! You guaranteed they could handle anything, and they can’t even drive!

  You’re damn right you’re going to try again

  I want you to send in The Fullback

  I know he’s the last resort

  I know he gets messy. That’s the whole point. This mess needs a mess

  Okay, one more chance, but that’s it. If you can’t wrap this up soon, I want The Fullback!”

  The phone slammed.

  The helmet went back on. The game resumed. The man mouthed along with the announcers. He reached without looking for the petroleum jelly.

  ** Chapter 23

  THE STANDARD HOTEL

  Coleman felt warm water raining on his face. “Where am I?” He opened his eyes and struggled to pull himself up in the shower. “Whoa. That soap dish came right off.”

  Wet feet stepped on a bath mat. Coleman’s brain was splitting. He reached inside the mini-fridge and grabbed a can of the dog that bit him. Down she went in one long, frosty guzzle. He adjusted his eyes. Natural light streamed from the bedroom, so it was still day. He smiled at his luck. Another double shift of partying. He opened the fridge again.

  The rest of room 222 had a palpably cheery vibe when Coleman came around the corner. He walked to the dresser, where Serge was making some kind of list on a notepad.

  Coleman pointed at the bed. “What’s she doing?”

  Serge glanced over his shoulder at Ally, cross-legged and humming. “Getting her chakras centered.”

  “What’s the list for?”

  Serge thought a second and wrote something else. “Since we had sex, I figured we could take the next step and go shopping together.”

  “I thought you said we couldn’t leave the room.”

  “I know, but she was incredible— weakened me by using Florida movie lines. Besides, I’ve been going bonkers in here myself. We’re surrounded by all these historic spots, and I haven’t been able to hit a single one. Figured we’d alternate, her stores and my movie sites.” Serge began talking to himself as he proofread the list: “

  Tofu, mega-vitamins, dermal-abrasion body mud, herbal supplements frowned on by the FDA, ice tea brewed to support oppressed peoples, chemical strips that pull the shit out of your nose pores, pesticide-free vegetables where they instead disorient the insects with ultrasonic transmitters, two cases of Demi’s Ambivalence Spring Water

  Honey, am I forgetting anything?”

  “Did you remember the ionizer?” said Ally.

  “Why do we need an ionizer?”

  “You have any idea what’s in the air in this room?”

  “No.”

  “For one thing, Coleman.”

  “Huh?”

  “The studies. More than half of all dust and airborne particles is exfoliation.”

  “Dead skin?”

  “You clean yourself pretty good, but your friend

  ” Ally glanced toward Coleman. “If I’m going to stay cooped up in this room, I can’t be breathing him all the time.”

  “Coleman! Have you been molting in here?”

  “Didn’t mean to.”

  Ally unfolded her legs and got off the bed. “You share an apartment with him back in Florida, right?”

  “Yeah?”

  “I’ll bet there’s at least two pounds of him in the ductwork.”

  “Jesus!” said Serge. “Why did you have to say that? Now it’s all I’ll be able to think about the rest of my life.” He added ionizer to the list and made an emphatic circle.

  A terrible scream.

  Serge and Ally jumped.

  Coleman was looking in the bathroom mirror. “Something’s wrong with the side of my face! It’s fucked up! I think I have one of those flesh diseases where everything falls off the bone!”

  “Coleman

  ”

  “Look how it’s already eaten away! Those little squares

  ”

  “Coleman

  ”

  “They’ll have to scoop out half my face. Children will point!

  ”

  “Coleman! It’s just tile marks where you passed out in the shower.”

  Ally put her hair in a ponytail and tucked it through the back of a plain black baseball cap. She slipped on dark sunglasses.

  “That’s not much of a disguise,” said Serge.

  Ally picked up her purse. “It’s the standard actress disguise. All my friends wear it when they want people to know they’re actresses.”

  A team of ominous-looking men in hunting vests exited the Holiday Inn on Highland. They marched in rhythm across the parking lot and climbed on six identical yellow ninja bikes. The motorcycles blasted off down the street, popping wheelies.

  A valet eased a Sebring convertible up to the entrance of the Standard Hotel. Serge climbed in and gunned it onto Sunset. He took the first right and drove fifty yards down a steep hill. An inbound jet roared overhead. Serge tapped the horn.

  A fire door opened on the side of the hotel. Two heads poked out. One in a black baseball cap. The coast was clear except for a couple of residents on mountain bikes.

  “Hurry up!” yelled Serge.

  Coleman and Ally jumped in the car. The bicyclists stared as the rental raced by.

  “Wasn’t that Ally Street?”

  Serge had done his map homework. He zipped around town with geographical efficiency, hitting stores and sights in quick succession, ripping through their mutual lists. Ally was up front, next to Serge, sipping her water. Coleman was in the backseat reading a tabloid.

  “Serge, check out this story. ‘OJ shocker: I want to be buried next to Nicole.’ What do you think?”

  “Only if we can do it now.”

  The Chrysler sped west on Hollywood. Serge suddenly hit the brakes and skidded up to the curb, next to a man sitting on the sidewalk under an umbrella. A hand-painted sign leaned against the chair: STAR MAPS—$10.

  Serge opened his wallet and leaned across Ally. “One map, please. Ten dollars is a lot for a piece of paper, but I must have it. Sure wish they had these in Florida, but the guys on the corners down there just wash your windshield against your will.”

  The man stepped up to the car and held out a map. Serge pulled back his money. “Wait a second. Is this a legitimate map? Who regulates you guys? These are real stars, right? Not a bunch of has-beens and never-weres. I better not find Gene Rayburn, Totie Fields or Mason Reese. Nobody from Love, American Style or Here Come the Brides, and definitely not the Hudson Brothers or any other secret square.” Serge held out the ten-spot again. The man grabbed the bill, but Serge wouldn’t let go. Serge grabbed the map; the man wouldn’t release. They struggled

  The man finally stumbled backward with the ten. Serge recoiled into the driver’s door with the map.

  “Weirdo.”

  “I heard that,” said Serge. “You’ll never do lunch in this town again.”

  The man’s face changed. “Wait. I recognize her. Don’t tell me

  ” Snapping his fingers. “

  That’s Ally Street!”

  “No, it’s not.”

  “Sure, it is

  Don’t move.” The man ran to the side
walk and reached under his chair. He dashed back to the car and handed Ally a thick stack of paper. “A guy who sells maps witnesses the murder of a CIA research assistant and traces it back to the president

  ”

  Serge blasted away from the curb. They rolled into Beverly Hills. A map was spread across the steering wheel. “Our first stop, the Get Smart house.”

  Coleman bent down and lit a joint. “Remember the cone of silence?”

  “They also had a portable cone,” said Serge. “That clear plastic dumbbell

  . Dun-dun-naaaaaaa-duh! Dun-dun-naaaaaaa-duh!

  ”

  Coleman joined in the humming of the theme song. They turned down a residential street.

  Serge grabbed his heart as they approached the address on the map. “I can’t believe our luck!”

  “What?”

  “That guy with the gray hair opening the mailbox. It’s Don Adams!” They drove by, Serge pumping a fist in the air. “Wooooo! Tennessee Tuxedo motherfucker!”

  A man with a handful of envelopes turned around as a rental car made a squealing left at the end of the block.

  “Now we know where Don Adams lives,” said Serge. “We own him.”

  “He’s our bitch,” said Coleman.

  “Carson’s next, bless his soul.”

  “They got Carson’s house on that map?”

  “Not exactly. His ex-wife’s.”

  “Which one?”

  “Number three.”

  Serge glared at the home as he drove by. “God, I hate her!”

  “Why?”

  “Because Johnny did. That’s where I take my orders.”

  The Chrysler hooked south.

  “Who’s next?” asked Coleman.

  Serge tapped the map. “Ed McMahon.”

  “In the same neighborhood? What a coincidence.”

  “Must have grown up together,” said Serge. “Probably rode their bikes on this very street.”

  Coleman took another hit. He had mastered talking while holding his breath. “Ed would be cool to party with.”

  “You know it! Johnny was always ribbing him about getting tanked.”

  Coleman exhaled. “Think he smokes weed?”

  “Well, he knows Doc, so he’s already got a connection.”

  “What about my list?” said Ally. “We’re supposed to alternate.”

  “We are.”

  “You just did Don Adams, Carson and now Ed. That’s three in a row.”

  “They’re near each other,” said Serge.

  “So are my stores. Come on!”

  “When you’re right, you’re right.” He turned at Pico.

  It started in the organic-food palace. Ally turning heads. Two leotard people whispered by the alfalfa. At the skin-care salon, a seaweed-packed woman sat up. “Are you Ally Street?”

  The same thing outside. Every few blocks, people on sidewalks pointing excitedly as the Chrysler drove by, trying to fish Instamatics from oversize purses with sequins spelling out the Hollywood sign. Then the ionizer store, where a woman from Baltimore ran up with an autograph book. “Could you sign below Hasselhoff?”

  Ally smiled and accepted the pen.

  “No! No! No!” yelled Serge, snatching the pen and pushing the book away. “You’re thinking of someone else!”

  The woman followed them to the car, picking up more autograph-seekers on the way. “We love you, Ally!” “We’re praying for your safe return!” “Please sign!”

  “It’s not her!” Serge peeled out of the parking lot.

  Three blocks later he checked the empty rearview and let off the gas. They passed through an intersection with six bright-yellow bullet bikes at the corner.

  “That was close.”

  Suddenly, a mechanized thunder all around the car. The motorcycle formation split in two, a trio of bikes pulling along each side of the car. Serge punched the gas again, tearing out of the Hills and up to Bel Air. Fifty, sixty, seventy miles an hour. The ninja bikes stayed with him. Each had two riders— a driver and a passenger in back— all of them dressed in yellow riding suits with matching yellow helmets and opaque black visors. The passengers took aim at the Chrysler.

  “Uh-oh,” said Serge. “The worst-case scenario.”

  “Assassins?” said Coleman.

  “Photographers.”

  Serge began weaving. The motorcycles backed off to avoid collision, then accelerated and closed again. Serge activated the cruise control and cocked his .45. “Steer!”

  Ally grabbed the wheel from the passenger side.

  Serge turned around and knelt in the driver’s seat, firing a full clip into the asphalt around the cyclists, who peeled off in retreat like a squadron of Spitfires.

  ** Chapter 24

  TEN MILES SOUTH OF SYLACAUGA , ALABAMA , HOMETOWN OF JIM NABORS

  Seven camouflaged men marched single file up a steep trail in the part of the state where the convenience stores advertise shells, and they mean shotgun. The mountain was heavily forested. The men had olive-and-black face paint and carried rifles over their shoulders. Streams of tobacco juice flew with musical rhythm.

  “Huge” didn’t begin to capture the man at the front of the hunting column. He outscaled the others like a separate species. Every muscle group a caricature. Shoulders that looked like shoulder pads.

  The Fullback.

  He actually had been a fullback, too. Red-shirt freshman at a division II school. The kind of player coaches love. Mean. Knees were his specialty, but he also liked spearing, clothes-lining, helmet-to-helmet contact, leg whipping and breaking fingers at the bottom of a fumble pile. Once someone accidentally got a hand inside his face mask and he bit off the pinkie above the last knuckle. Only one problem: All this was against his own team in preseason scrimmage. The coaches hated to cut him, but he was like a prize thoroughbred you couldn’t break. Championship speed but unridable. So he bounced around pumping gas before falling in with a mountain gang that ran moonshine, untaxed cigarettes and slot machines. Otherwise, they kept to themselves and were left alone because of the heavy lifting they occasionally did for the Redneck Mafia.

  The Redneck Mafia wasn’t really a mafia because it wasn’t organized. They were less a single entity than a class of people, members of the boll-weevil power structure who handpicked politicians and cut sweetheart deals for state contracts in rural counties without news coverage. Their only continuous criminal enterprise was college football recruitment violations.

  But they were still tough as nails— didn’t cotton to people taking advantage of them the way they did others. Like making ’em look the fools in an oil scam.

  The seven hunters continued up the mountain trail until it leveled. The Fullback stopped and raised a fist for them to be quiet. They crouched and unshouldered Remingtons. Silent breathing. Then, barely a rustle. Through a rifle scope, one of the gang sighted the neck and head of a mature buck. Six points, maybe eight— couldn’t tell with the brush.

  “Too far for me.”

  “Me, too. Not even a graze at this range—”

  A rifle clap echoed off the mountainside.

  The buck leaped with a slug high in his hindquarters, normally a worthless shot, only enough to make the deer limp. Except that was The Fullback’s intention. He cleared his chamber and handed the weapon to the man behind him, then dove into the forest.

  The man holding two rifles let another stream of brown juice fly from the incestuous gap in his teeth. “Now the fun begins.”

  The “fun” was nothing less than legend. A limping buck is slow for a deer but more than fast for any man. Most any.

  The left-behind hunters sat on a pair of fallen logs and passed the Red Man. A cell phone rang. “Hello?

  I see

  I understand

  We’re leaving right now.” He closed the phone.

  “What is it?” asked the hunter next to him, digging tobacco.

  “Me and Buford have to head back.” He got up and shouldered his rifle. “Flight tonight from Birmingham.”

  “Where to?”

  “L.A.”

  Two camouflaged men started down the
mountain.

  A half hour passed.

  Something large in the brush. The remaining hunters stood.

  The Fullback muscled his way through the last branches and back onto the trail. Blood all down himself. Over his shoulders, an eight-pointer with a broken neck that no two other men could have carried. He dropped the carcass at their feet.

  The one holding two rifles shook his head. “Damnedest thing

  ” He handed a Remington to The Fullback and turned in the direction they’d come. “Every time I see it, I still don’t believe—”

  The hunter’s words were silenced by a massive forearm wrapped under his chin from behind, crushing the windpipe. The Fullback lifted a teasing three inches, making him struggle to reach for the ground with his toes.

  Another hunter walked up to the one turning blue. He spat and refilled his cheek: “Your mind must be pretty busy right now. I’ll answer the biggest question first. We’re going to show you mercy.”

  Glimmer of relief.

  “Because the worst thing is dying without knowing why.” He leaned nose to nose. “Those slots you reported broken? Counters were tampered. You been skimming.”

  The man desperately wanted to deny, but there wasn’t air. A loud snap echoed inside his head, and he found himself looking in a completely different direction. His chin involuntarily raised toward the sky as every neck muscle seized in total spasm. After five seconds, the muscles sagged all the way for good, his head falling limp to his chest. Arms and legs wouldn’t respond, but his eyes still worked for the next half minute before blood and oxygen ran out, long enough to realize he was bounding back down the path, slung over The Fullback’s shoulders like a buck.

  ** Chapter 25

  DELTA FLIGHT 1654

  Two jowled men in dark suits sat in the back of a jetliner connecting from Atlanta. They were reading Southeastern Conference football magazines bought in the Birmingham airport. The plane began circling for its approach to LAX. The man near the window looked down at the Sunset Strip.

  Coleman chugged a Blue Ribbon on the balcony of room 222. The shadow of an inbound jet swept over the pool. He went back inside.

  “We didn’t get everything I needed,” said Ally.

  “I know,” said Serge, pacing the carpet. “I can’t believe how bad it got out there. Don’t people have lives?”