by Tim Dorsey
“Hear me out,” said Serge. “I know you got the money the other night.”
“We have no idea what you’re talking about,” said Otis.
“The night of the blue moon when you ran into the sheriff out at Peter’s place,” said Serge. “And what happened is fine by me. Because there’s more money. A lot more.”
That got their attention. “This is still all nonsense,” said Vernon. “But go on.”
“Peter didn’t keep all the money in one spot. I know where he stashed the rest of it,” said Serge. “I can take you there right now.”
“You’re piling it up pretty deep,” said Vernon. “If you know where this so-called money is, why didn’t you just get it yourself? Why come to us?”
“The money is at Peter’s house, which is still a crime scene, and there will be a lot of exposure getting to it. A lot could go wrong. But since you’re the law around here, everything’s kosher if we go together.”
They appraised him with skepticism.
“Look,” said Serge. “All I want is what Peter stole from me. Everything else is total profit for you. It’s a win-win.”
Vernon raised a finger. “Give us a moment.”
Serge took a bite of his corn dog. “I’ve got all the time in the world.”
The gang gathered off to the side.
“What do you think?” asked Jabow. “Should we trust him?”
“Hell no,” said Vernon. “He’s definitely up to something. Have you forgotten that Peter was an innocent dupe we used as a fall guy? He never laundered any money in the first place, so this guy’s already lying about that.”
Otis looked over at Serge. “Then what should we do?”
“Play along for now,” said Vernon. “He says he knows where there’s a lot of money, and there’s no harm taking a peek. Meanwhile, we’ll find out what his game really is and deal with him in our own way.”
The huddle broke and the gang returned to the line of scrimmage. “We still have no idea what you’re talking about,” said the mayor. “But since you’ve reported a possible crime, it’s our obligation to check it out.”
“I understand the need to maintain deniability.” Serge popped the last bite in his mouth. “Meet you out there.”
The chopper was already parked and waiting by the house when a pair of pickups came barreling up the dirt road.
Coleman slapped a love bug on his arm. Serge typed on his cell phone and hit send: WE’RE ON.
The trucks disgorged their bucolic contents. “All right,” said Vernon. “Time to show your cards.”
“Right this way.” Serge led them through the front door. “Cold, cold, warm, warmer, hot, hotter, you’re burning up!”
Vernon and his kin stopped at the edge of the master bedroom and glanced down in the sinkhole. “So where is it?”
“When everything went sideways and all the cops and deputies were swarming this place, Peter had to move the money,” said Serge. “And what’s the one spot nobody would ever think of looking?”
They shook their heads.
“Right down there.”
They took another gander into the earth.
“Bullshit.” Jabow pulled a .44 on Serge. “Time to start telling us the truth. And you don’t have much time.”
Serge raised his hands. “Yikes! What’s going on? I thought we had an agreement.”
“We don’t know what it is you do know, but clearly it’s too much,” said Vernon. “Otis, grab that rope in the corner.” He seized Coleman and marched him to the side of the room.
“Wait, wait, wait!” said Serge. “I got a flashlight in my pocket. Just let me show you before you blow a fortune.”
“Don’t move a muscle! . . . Jabow, keep him covered.” Vernon reached out and dug into Serge’s pocket, expecting a weapon. “It is a flashlight.”
“Can I have it?” asked Serge.
“You got exactly thirty seconds.”
“No problem.” Serge shined the beam down the southern wall of the sinkhole. “See that right there? The shiny spot? If you look close, it’s bundles of hundred-dollar bills wrapped in plastic.”
“Well, I’ll be,” said Vernon. “It is.”
Jabow kept the gun on Serge. “Are you shitting me? He was telling the truth?”
“Not by a mile,” said Vernon. “But money’s money.” He looked around the room. The scaffolding, ropes and pulleys were all still there. Even the harnesses. Vernon took the gun from Jabow. “I’ll keep him covered. You guys go retrieve it.”
“Why do you get to stay up here?”
“Because I’m the mayor!” said Vernon. “You go first, Jabow, then Otis and Slow . . . Where’s Slower?”
“Living up to his name,” said Jabow, strapping on the harness.
“And you!” Vernon briefly swung the gun toward Coleman. “Stay seated against that wall!”
“I’m happy.”
It was clumsy and laughable, and crisis was averted only because Vernon pressed Serge into service manning the pulley ropes. The last of the gang reached bottom.
Vernon called down into the hole. “Dig slowly around the package. We don’t want more of this falling in.”
As soon as fingers began clawing into the dirt, something fluttered down.
“Son of a bitch!” yelled Jabow.
“What is it?” asked Vernon.
“Only a small piece of plastic and some Monopoly money. There is no package. He tricked us!”
Just then, Vernon felt a cold metal barrel in his spine.
“Don’t move,” said Steve, reaching around for the .44 in the mayor’s hand. “And I’ll take that.”
“You have no concept what you’re doing.”
“I have every concept.” Steve gave a quick shove, and Vernon fell into the pit with a shriek.
Yelling of questionable negotiating strategy came up from below: “You bastard!” “You’re a dead man!” “Get us out of here!”
Serge turned to Steve. “I see you got my text.”
“I don’t know how you pulled this off, but it’s a thing of beauty. We should work together again.”
“Something tells me this is a one-off.” Another quick push, this time from Serge, and into the hole went Steve.
Serge shined his flashlight, illuminating a standoff: Steve’s back against one of the walls, aiming his pistol, and Jabow with his recovered .44, aiming from the other side.
“How’s it going down there?” yelled Serge. “Looks like you’re in a bit of a pickle.”
“Fucker!”
“Hold that thought,” said Serge. “Coleman, you know what to do.”
Serge waited patiently until hearing several gas engines behind the house start up in succession. He went to the kitchen and found a thick outdoor extension cord snaking through the window. It had a switch in the middle. Serge walked backward, unrolling the wire until he returned to the pit.
“What’s that noise?” yelled Vernon.
“The generators,” said Serge.
“Why do you need generators?”
“Because geology is a fascinating science,” said Serge, sitting on the floor with his feet hanging over the edge of the hole. “I got to talking with Peter this morning and he taught me so much, like how they do inspections to determine if the ground is stable enough to lay a foundation. Have you noticed those new metal rods stuck all around the perimeter of the hole near your feet?”
“What are they?”
“I came in this morning and installed them,” said Serge. “I know, trespassing. Guilty as charged. But science can’t wait for the law to catch up. Anyway, one of the inspection tests is soil resistivity. Here’s the fun part: Dirt is highly resistant to voltage, so you need a whole bunch of electricity just to get a half-decent reading. But electricity also is quite
lazy and constantly looking for alternate paths of least resistance. Did you know a human body contains so much water and salt and other electrolytes that it’s a rather good conductor?”
Serge grabbed the cord and flicked the switch. Electricity did what it does best.
Screams of agony echoed out of the pit. Then:
Bang, bang, bang, bang, bang . . .
Steve and Jabow were vibrating like robots gone haywire, involuntarily emptying their guns with spasming arms. The pistols wildly missed their marks and sprayed unstable dirt walls that began to give way.
“Yowza!” Serge quickly yanked his legs up. “Didn’t see that coming.”
He took off running as an aggressive dust cloud chased him out the front door.
Coleman came trotting around the corner from the backyard. “What happened?”
“Another cave-in,” said Serge. “Glad I tested to see if it was safe.”
Chapter THIRTY-SEVEN
MAIN STREET
Clowns twisted balloon animals. Contestants sat with hands behind their backs, facedown in blueberry pies. Raffle tickets were sold to win a year of oil changes. Tubas sparkled in the sun as a high school band marched past Lead Belly’s. Followed by a chopper.
“Parading without a permit!” exclaimed Serge. Then a boyish smile. “I’ve always wanted to say that.”
The motorcycle pulled over to the sidewalk, where the Pugliese family was waiting after getting the all-clear phone call back at the motel. “Didn’t I tell you everything would turn out fine?”
“What happened?” asked Mary.
“You don’t want to know.” Serge dismounted and locked up his helmet. “But you’re totally safe now.”
“Are you sure?” said Peter. “I mean, is it wise for us to be out in public like this so soon?”
“Absolutely,” said Serge. “It would be a crying shame to miss the rest of Founders’ Day. I love small-town jamborees. It’s the perfect thing to get your minds off what you’ve gone through.”
“We’re just relieved our son’s safe.” Mary gave him another too-tight squeeze, and Matt had the expression of a small dog tolerating overaffection.
“Yes,” said Peter. “Thanks for looking after Matt.”
Coleman pointed. “Beer tent.”
“Well . . .” Serge waved as he headed off behind his friend. “Got to keep an eye on this one. Enjoy yourselves.”
They did.
Candy apples, guess your weight, throwing Ping-Pong balls into goldfish bowls. Overhead, an aerobatic plane performed somersaults to the delight of the crowd. Workers began loading a platform of fifty vertical tubes for the evening’s fireworks display.
The afternoon wore on. A clown chased Coleman out from behind a face-painting booth, but his big shoes wouldn’t let him keep up. “If I catch you smoking dope again . . . !”
Volunteers loaded pigs into starting gates. Serge leaned against the railing near the finish line.
“And they’re off! . . .”
Coleman arrived out of breath and collapsed against the fence.
“What just happened to you?” asked Serge.
Coleman grabbed his heart and panted. “There are good clowns and scary clowns.”
A herd of pigs ran by.
“Serge . . .”
He turned around. “Mary. Is everyone having a great time?”
“Have you seen Matt?”
“No, why?”
“He’s been gone since lunch.”
“It’s a fair, and he’s a kid,” said Serge. “The whole object is to avoid your parents.”
“I’m just worried because it’s so soon after . . . you know.”
Serge nodded. “You’re a good mother. I’ll find him for you. I’m guessing his phone is GPS enabled?”
She nodded.
“Do you know his password?”
“I think he uses mpugliese for just about everything. Lowercase, no spaces.”
Serge tapped it into his own cell and hit Find My Phone. “It worked. I’ll be right back.”
He followed the tracking program up the street like a divining rod. The blue dot on his small screen brought him to the sidewalk in front of Lead Belly’s. He went inside. A roomful of happy diners in bibs. No Matt. He went through the employees-only swinging doors to the kitchen.
“You can’t come in here!”
“Orders from the mayor,” said Serge. “I’m looking for a missing child.”
“Haven’t seen one.”
Serge check his phone again. “Is this the whole restaurant?”
“Yeah, I mean there’s a storeroom, but nobody’s been in there today.”
“Thanks.” Serge wandered out behind the kitchen and down a hallway. He checked the men’s and women’s rooms. Nothing. By process of elimination, he arrived at a final door. Locked. But flimsy. He put his shoulder into it, and the wood easily popped open.
“Matt, what are you doing back here?”
“Serge . . .”
“You’ve got your mother worried sick!”
“Serge . . .”
The door closed behind them, and Serge turned around.
A man in a button-down oxford shirt pointed a gun.
Serge rubbed his chin. “Did I forget someone again? Why do all my adventures end like this?”
“It’s Senator Pratchett to you.”
Serge smacked himself in the forehead. “Of course!”
“I got a call from the mayor on his way to Peter’s house, and when I didn’t hear back, I drove out there myself.” Pratchett stepped closer and stiffened his arm. “You’ve ruined everything!”
“We can talk this out,” said Serge.
“Too late for that!”
More balloons hung atop a sign on the north side of town.
WELCOME TO WORLD-FAMOUS WOBBLY SPRINGS.
Children shrieked and laughed as families splashed in the town’s highly touted attraction. The cave divers not so much.
Ripples filled the water as small arms flailed. The ripples got bigger. Then a shaking sensation. Parents looked up and saw small rocks crumble from the walls of the grotto.
“Everyone out of the water!”
The last child was pulled to land as larger rocks crashed into the spring. Then a massive shudder.
Underneath the sinkhole, a huge slab of limestone collapsed all the way to the aquifer, and joyous cave divers were sucked deep into the earth.
The tremor was felt all the way to Main Street, but it was mixed in with so much else that nobody gave a thought. Soon it couldn’t be ignored. The festivities ceased as revelers stopped where they stood, mumbling to each other.
A heavy lurch silenced everything.
They all waited and wondered.
Then a tremendous jolt.
“Look! The barbershop!”
It sank in slow motion, red-striped pole and all, until there was nothing left. Followed in equally slow cadence by the pharmacy, hardware store and Shorty’s Garage.
The crowd was no longer quiet or still. They ran screaming past Lead Belly’s, where boxes fell off shelves in the storeroom.
“What the hell’s going on?” yelled Pratchett.
“It’s a sinkhole,” shouted Serge. “We’re going down! . . . Matt, come on!”
“Don’t move another inch!” said the senator.
“You can shoot me outside,” said Serge. “But we’re all dead if we stay here!”
“Wait up!”
The senator chased them into the pandemonium of the street, fighting against the oncoming human tide. “I’ll shoot!”
“Matt, this way!”
Pratchett quickly gained ground because he didn’t mind shoving children and pregnant women. A clear shot was about to open up . . .
The stampeding crowd screeched to a halt and reversed direction. “Pigs!”
The senator’s finger began pulling the trigger just as he was overrun, first by people, then swine. He got up. “Where’d they go?”
Another fireworks shell went off. All the explosives technicians leaped off the platform and ran for cover. The remaining forty-eight cannons fired in unison at random angles, blanketing the sky with brightly colored explosions.
Up in the wild blue yonder: “What on earth?” An aerobatic pilot flew into an unexplained storm of chromatic flak.
The earth swallowed a red caboose. A parachute popped open as a smoking aircraft did loop-de-loops on the horizon. Pigs circled the block, from their race training, chasing people back the other way.
Pratchett spotted Serge and Matt again, hiding behind a row of newspaper boxes on the corner. A sadistic grin as he headed across the street. “I can seeeeeeeee youuuuuuuu!”
He stood in the middle of the street with a wide-open shot behind the boxes. Serge arose with his hands in the air.
“Can you find it in your heart? For Founders’ Day?”
Pratchett aimed the pistol again as a deafening buzz fell over the street.
The senator looked up—“Ahhhhhhhh!”—straight into the propeller end of a nose-diving stunt plane.
It finally became still as Serge surveyed the dusty, flaming post-apocalyptic wasteland.
“Just like I planned.”
Epilogue
DELAND, FLORIDA
A quaint two-story bungalow with ample acreage sat on the outskirts of a non-scandalous small town. A woman in the kitchen set a rhubarb pie on the window sill and thought of Norman Rockwell. The home had recently been purchased with an insurance settlement over a sinkhole. She heard someone coming up the driveway.
The front door opened.
“Honey, I’m home.”
Mary Pugliese trotted out of the kitchen wiping her hands on a towel.
She gave her husband a quick kiss. “I see you have a guest.”
“I’d like you to meet Billy,” said Peter. “And this is my wife, Mary.”