by Tim Dorsey
“Any sign of Serge?”
“Who?”
“Isn’t that why you’re here?”
The corporal shook his head. “Stolen vehicle report.” He looked toward an empty parking slot. “Guy got up to go to work, no Impala.”
“Need the full description and tag,” said White. “Fast.”
“What’s going on?”
“No time . . .”
Agent White jumped back in the Crown Vic, typing on the laptop mounted between the front seats.
“So Serge got away in a stolen car?” said Lowe.
“Shhh!” He accessed the Department of Motor Vehicles database. The Impala came up. A few more security-code keystrokes. A page with live streaming data appeared. “Yes!” The detective threw the sedan in gear. “Our luck has definitely changed.”
“Why do you say that?” asked Lowe.
“Car had a SunPass unit on the windshield—transponder that automatically pays tolls.” Dawn began to break as they sped out of the parking lot. “DOT shows a hit shortly after the cabdriver dropped them off. Toll plaza just south of here.”
Coleman lay across vinyl, smiling with eyes closed. Another happy, recurring dream. He had a multi-day ticket at a beer theme park. The smile broadened as he hit the bottom of the log flume and suds splashed over him.
Serge shook his shoulder. “Rise and shine!”
“Wha—?” Coleman sat up in the backseat of an Impala with a riot of uncombed hair.
“It’s morning.” Serge clapped his hands sharply. “Need to flee again. Ain’t this great?”
Coleman looked out the windows. “Is someone about to catch us?”
“No, fleeing’s just fun.” He chugged a thermos of coffee.
Coleman looked at his wrist and remembered he didn’t own a watch. “How much sleep did I get?”
“Maybe an hour.” Serge killed the rest of his coffee.
“An hour!” Coleman put his head back down and covered it with his backpack.
“Fugitives aren’t allowed to sleep, except for cat naps with one eye open.”
“Never?”
“Who knows? Life on the run is all about changing time patterns, and tomorrow’s fugitive might have to crash and burn till nightfall.”
Coleman pulled an airline miniature of vodka from his backpack. “How long till tomorrow?”
“One day.”
“Will you keep track for me?”
Serge wiggled a screwdriver.
“What are you doing now?”
“Buying us some time.”
“And we’re not being chased?”
“No, but the next time we are, this will put us a few minutes ahead.”
Chapter Fourteen
Below Tampa
A Crown Vic raced south through Hillsborough County. Agent White’s attention divided between the road and the laptop.
“Damn!”
“What is it?” asked Lowe.
“Another SunPass hit back at the same toll plaza. He double-backed north on us.”
The sedan made a skidding U-turn across the highway through an “authorized vehicles only” break in the median. Half the convoy followed; the rest clogged behind a semi that jackknifed and had to make a nine-point turn to get through a tight break in the guardrails.
Forty-five minutes later, the toll plaza came into view. The laptop screen in the Crown Vic updated. “What the hell?”
“Another SunPass hit?”
“He’s heading south again.” Agent White’s head jerked around. “You see an Impala?”
“Nope.”
Another U-turn across the median.
Another forty-five minutes.
White punched the dashboard. “Mother—”
Lowe leaned toward the laptop. “He’s going north again.”
White cut the steering wheel . . .
Ten miles south, Serge and Coleman stood on the side of the road by an Exxon. Waving.
A cab pulled up.
They got in. The driver turned around. “Your call said Clark Road?”
“Correcto-mundo,” said Serge.
“You got it.”
The taxi pulled away from the dusty shoulder.
A Crown Vic sat next to the toll plaza office, just beyond the overpass with the booths.
The manager sat inside at a video monitor. “Want to see it again?”
“If you don’t mind,” said White, checking his notebook against the SunPass time records of the Impala, almost exactly forty-five minutes apart.
The manager rolled back the plaza’s surveillance tape, and fast-forwarded again, stopping at each clock stamp that matched White’s computer records. Each time, no Impala in any lane.
The manager swiveled around in his chair. “Don’t know what to tell you.”
White pocketed his notebook. “That’s odd.”
They went outside so White could inspect the plaza layout. “And there’s no way anyone can get around the booths and pass through out of camera range?”
“Not a chance.” He gestured up at the monitors. “See? Full view of everything.”
White scratched his head. He walked to the overpass railing next to the last booth. “How on earth could Serge have—”
He looked down. Then smacked his forehead.
“Are you all right?” asked the manager.
White pointed. “What’s that down there?”
The manager looked over the side at a graded route of gravel, stones and steel cutting thirty degrees under the plaza. He looked back up at the detective. “Train tracks?”
“I know. I mean, what line? Who uses it?”
“A lot of people—CSX, Amtrak, phosphate, the museum.”
“Museum?”
“Gulf Coast Railroad out of Parrish. They operate old train trips for tourists and history buffs.”
“How far?”
“Maybe twenty miles up the road.”
“No, I mean how long is the tourist trip the train takes?”
“Through two counties,” said the manager. “I rode it once, pretty cool. Round-trip’s an hour and a half.”
“Or forty-five minutes each way?”
The manager looked south down the tracks. “Speaking of which . . .”
A train whistle blew. White saw a restored army diesel round the bend. He ran to his car.
Another deep blast of the horn.
The agent watched his laptop as vintage passenger cars rumbled beneath. The SunPass screen registered a dollar toll. He grabbed his police radio. “. . . That’s right, railroad frequency. I need a train stopped . . .”
A checkered cab wound through southern Manatee County.
“Why’d we ride that train back there anyway?” asked Coleman. “Didn’t take us very far.”
“But far enough,” said Serge. “Remember my fugitive rule of constantly changing transportation modes? Plus I’ve always wanted to take that train.”
“It was pretty cool,” said Coleman.
“The coolest.” Serge opened a wilderness map. “Forty-four-seat Union Pacific coach built in 1950, not to mention the 1929 Texas and Pacific caboose, number 12070. And there was a bonus reason to ride the train.”
“I’m kind of turned around from all the travel,” said Coleman. “I have no idea where we are.”
“That’s normal in a chase movie. Here’s the Sarasota line.”
“What’s in Sarasota?” asked Coleman.
“Myakka.”
Meanwhile, thirty miles north. “Found it,” said Lowe, climbing down from the coach car. He held out a SunPass unit with torn duct tape. “Stuck on the outside just above a window.”
Agent White stood next to the tracks with the engineer. “Where does this train end?”
Chapter Fifteen
Sarasota County
The checkered cab continued south. Shopping centers and manicured sprawl. It took the last Sarasota exit.
“Coffee!” said Serge. They hit a 7-Eleven and turned inland. Modern
life gave way to cattle country. Egrets pecked cows’ backs; blue herons worked the standing water on the sides of Highway 72.
A few miles farther west:
“Pull over there.” Serge drained his Styrofoam cup. “Just drop us by the road.”
The taxi stopped on one of the highway’s few paved turnoffs.
Coleman read a wooden entrance sign. “Myakka River State Park?”
“Fifty-eight square miles of undisturbed Florida majesty,” said Serge. Click, click, click. “Sloughs, marshes, palm hammocks, and a rockin’ treetop suspension footbridge through the canopy.”
A ranger parked a pickup just outside the main guard shack.
Serge leaned over from the backseat, paying the cabbie. “. . . And here’s a little something extra for yourself because you never saw us. Pay no attention to what I just said. It’s only the Fugitive Tour—not like we killed a bunch of people. What’s the appropriate tip if we had killed a bunch of people? But then I guess at that point you’d be satisfied just getting out alive. Rule Ninety-two: Pump taxi drivers for information generally not available elsewhere. Like if a passenger did kill someone, what’s the best way to conceal it from an unwitting getaway taxi driver? Act confident and casually drop ‘shallow graves’ into the discussion to show you have nothing to hide? By that look on your face, probably talk sports instead. Here’s another twenty to forget this whole conversation. I got the super-big coffee. Are we cool?”
Serge and Coleman climbed out.
The taxi sped off.
Just the sound of wind. Three people solemnly appraised each other at a range of twenty yards—Serge and Coleman by the edge of the road, and the ranger at the gate.
Then Serge broke into a smile and a trot. He closed the final distance to the pickup and threw his backpack in the bed. “Coleman, I’d like you to meet a good friend, Jane . . . Jane, this is Coleman.”
She shook his hand. “Heard a lot about you . . .” Then, with an irrepressible grin at Serge: “I’d ask what you’ve been up to, but I don’t think I want to know.”
“Listen,” Serge said in a lowered voice, “you haven’t mentioned this to anyone—”
Jane put up a hand. “Stop. I can’t be an accessory. You’re just another park visitor.”
They climbed into the pickup’s cab.
Jane drove like a rancher. And cursed like one. Nature Jane. No makeup, brown ponytail halfway down her back. Black-rimmed glasses because she didn’t have the guile for contacts. Heavy on the freckles. A tall Sissy Spacek. She and Serge kept glancing at each other. Been five years. Or was it six? They first met when Serge was down by the dam with his camera. It was summer flood stage, and Serge had taken the knee-deep hiking trail in scuba boots. He perched precariously on the slippery spillway.
Jane paddled up in a canoe. “Are you crazy?”
“Crazy about this park!” said Serge.
“There’re alligators all around you.”
“I understand their habits.”
She sighed with contempt. “Get in the boat, you fool.”
Jane was never meant to work anywhere other than a park, but rescuing bozos was not in her ambition set. Just wanted to get him back to the airboat launch as fast as possible, less talk the better.
“Let’s talk,” said Serge. And he was off and running. She formed a determined mouth and paddled faster.
Halfway back, a sea change, drifting with paddles in the bottom of the canoe. Other guys wanted in her pants. Serge wanted the names of flora and fauna. Click, click, click . . . Then she noticed those ice blue eyes . . .
“. . . And that’s a snowy egret,” said the ranger. “You can tell—”
“That one I know,” said Serge. “Colors switched. Yellow feet, black beak . . . Can I ask you something?”
Great, here we go.
“Always wanted to stay in one of your log cabins, but they’re always booked. I love those cabins.”
“Why?”
“Depression-era built by the Civilian Conservation Corps.”
“You know that?”
“Who doesn’t?”
“I think one might be free. We’ll check at the station.”
They picked up paddles.
Back on shore: One indeed was available by cancellation. She handed him the key. Who was this guy? At first glance Serge represented the cocky masculine type she normally found repulsive, but everything he did made that impossible. She actually caught herself about to smile and say it was a pleasure meeting him.
“It was a pleasure— . . . where’d he go?”
Serge sprinted full speed through the woods, waving a key over his head. “I got my cabin! I finally got my cabin!”
And a great cabin it was. “Cobbled from cabbage-palm trunks and hand-hewn pine, held tight with tar and sawdust.” Serge kissed the front door. “Roomy yet cozy, fireplace for rare Florida cold snaps . . .”
Just after midnight, a knock at the door.
Serge looked up from his Audubon Field Guide and got out of bed. “Who can this be? . . .”
. . . Yes, it was six years ago. Serge barely aged in all that time. And now he’d finally popped up out of the blue and returned to her park. Jane looked across the pickup’s cab and punched Serge in the shoulder.
“Ow.”
“Cocksucker! You could have called.”
“Swear I must have picked up the phone a hundred times.”
“The cabin was empty when I woke up the next morning. Not even a note!”
“I . . . had appointments.”
But she wasn’t the long-burning emotional kind. “Got the same cabin. Want to go there first or—”
“Deep Hole,” said Serge. “Still no check mark on my Life List.”
“Should have figured.” She quickly cut the wheel. “When you get your little heart set.”
The four-by-four truck left the public section of the park and rattled down a bladder-bouncing path through a restricted area accessible only by special permit.
Coleman grabbed the dashboard, but his head kept hitting the ceiling anyway. “So what’s Deep Hole?”
“Better wait till we get there,” said Serge. “It’ll only freak you out.”
Miami
A small gathering in the back bedroom of a hacienda.
Chi-Chi rested comfortably.
Except when they made him laugh. Old stories from the sixties heyday. Then things ached under his ribs.
“Sorry,” said Tommy Junior. “Didn’t mean to get you riled.”
“No, I’d rather hurt that way,” said Chi-Chi, grabbing his left side. “What a memory: the deadbeat asshole in my trunk escaping by popping the hood with the tire jack.”
“That was priceless,” said Coltrane.
“Yeah, it’s funny now,” said Chi-Chi. “You didn’t get the repair bill.” He began coughing.
“Just relax,” said Roy the Pawn King. “Guys, no more jokes.”
Tommy happened to look toward the doorway. “How long has she been there?”
Then they all looked.
A demurely dressed woman in her late sixties. One of Chi-Chi’s granddaughters stood next to her: “Says she would like to have a moment.”
“What’s this about?” asked Roy.
The woman took a respectful step inside. “Sorry to bother at such a time . . .”
“Do you know Chi-Chi?” asked Coltrane.
She nodded. “But I knew Sergio better.”
“You knew Sergio?” said Roy.
Chi-Chi’s head lay sideways on the pillows. “Wait, I recognize you now. But I don’t remember where . . . I’m sorry.”
“That’s all right.” She walked closer. “It was just in passing a number of times.”
“Hey,” said Coltrane. “I recognize you, too.”
“Come to think of it,” said Roy, “you do look familiar. What’s your name?”
“Mabel.”
The guys looked at each other.
“Don’t know a Mabel,”
said Coltrane.
“You wouldn’t,” said the woman. “I’ve just been sort of keeping track of the gang.”
“Keeping track?”
She nodded again. “Since the late sixties.”
“Like stalking?” said Tommy.
Roy walked over until they were a foot apart. In a hushed but firm voice: “He’s very weak. Let’s go outside and you tell me what this is really about.”
“It’s about Serge.”
“You mean Sergio?”
“No, his grandson.”
“Roy,” said Chi-Chi. “Did I hear her say ‘Serge’?”
“You need to rest.”
He shook his head. Another cough. “Bring her over here.”
Tommy offered a chair. “Thank you.”
Chi-Chi turned his head. “Now, what do you have to tell us?”
A long story. She took a deep breath and began . . .
Almost an hour later, she finished. Everyone sat around in silent shock.
“We need to get word to them,” said Roy.
“But how?” asked Coltrane.
Chi-Chi raised his head slightly. “Tommy, what about your sons?”
“Uh, they’re out of town on business.”
“Can’t we call them?”
“They hate cells—into this whole freedom-of-the-road thing, like when Peter Fonda threw his watch away at the beginning of Easy Rider,” said Tommy. “Have to wait for them to call in on a pay phone.”
“This won’t wait.” Roy rubbed his face. “And no offense, Tommy, but this is as sensitive as it gets—maybe not the best fit for your sons. I think I know someone.”
“But we can’t just—” Tommy began. “I mean it needs to be handled right. We probably should bring all the parties together in one place first or it could be messy. It’ll require a specialist.”
“Take my word,” said Roy. “This is the guy for the job.”
“Who?”
A smile. “First name starts with an M.”
“You don’t mean the Undertaker?”
Deep Hole
A park ranger truck slid through a sand turn, then accelerated across an open palmetto prairie.
“Come on,” said Coleman. “You can tell me.”
“Okay,” said Serge. “Little-known but infinitely stunning natural Florida feature. Giant sinkhole. Scientists measured as far as a hundred and forty feet down with a remote probe, but who knows the real depth because nobody’s going diving.”