by Tim Dorsey
Coleman stared at the dashboard. The head of a small plastic figurine wobbled to road vibrations. “Serge?”
“Yes, Tonto?”
“What’s that?”
“You’ve never seen a dashboard bobble-head?”
“Many times. It looks like a baseball player.”
“Used to be Derek Jeter.”
“But you taped his legs together and painted his uniform into a dress. And glued cotton all over his helmet.”
“Correct,” said Serge. “I knew we were coming to the Everglades, and whenever they don’t sell what I want, I have to make my own.”
“Own what?”
“Marjory Stoneman Douglas bobble-head.”
“Why did you paint her eyes red?”
“To shoot laser beams.”
“. . . Amos Moses was a hell of a man . . .”
“I remember this song,” said Coleman. “Don’t think I’ve heard it in thirty years.”
“About a fugitive in the swamp,” said Serge. “Good omen.”
“Who sings it?”
“Another Sunshine State six-degrees-of-separation bonus: Jerry Reed.”
“Roadkill. Unknown.”
Another swerve. “Reed was in all three quintessential Florida fugitive films, the Smokey and the Bandit trilogy, starring none other than Florida favorite son Burt Reynolds. Filming locales included Jupiter, Indiantown, West Palm, Clearwater, Silver Springs and the Seaquarium, to name but a few.”
“I dug the cop in those movies.”
“. . . Gonna getcha Amos! . . .”
“Sheriff Buford T. Justice, played by Jackie Gleason, who had moved his TV show to Miami Beach. Coincidence? I think we both know the answer.”
“Remember Sally Field in those movies? She was hot back then.”
“Still is,” said Serge. “But I blanch at her new commercials. The heartbreak of the bandit’s squeeze pimping bone-loss supplements . . . which reminds me, another degree of separation that brings us full circle.” Serge grabbed his iPod and dialed another song, striking up a wicked fiddle. “One of our state anthems, ‘The Orange Blossom Special,’ was on the Smokey sound track.”
“. . . Hey, look a yonder comin’ . . .”
Thirty miles back, a Crown Vic turned south on Highway 29. “Mahoney, you really think he came this way?” asked White.
“Hophead on the heritage pipe.”
“Where do you think Serge is right now? . . .”
. . . Serge looked out Coleman’s window as a side road went by. “We’re getting close. That’s the entrance to Fakahatchee Strand.”
“I can’t believe you’re not stopping there. I mean, the book you mentioned at the sanctuary place. You always stop.”
“Once you’ve seen a ghost orchid, the rest of your horticulture life is an ever-blackening downward spiral into lesser flowers. If I don’t put a shit-stop to that right now, I’ll find myself outside the nursing home in my power scooter with a watering can and strained-prune spit-up on my shirt.”
“You’re always planning ahead.”
“Fuck that geranium nonsense.”
They reached the intersection with the Tamiami Trail, one of the only traffic lights in the Everglades. Across the street, a police substation and tourist information center, where five wild boars sniffed the ground and people stood on top of cars taking pictures.
Serge pushed on.
Three miles later, the Barracuda cleared a bridge and cruised through the flat, open landscape of Everglades City.
“Over there,” said Coleman. “That’s the bank we stayed in during the hurricane.”
“And here’s the country church, Rod and Gun Club and Seafood Depot—in an actual railroad depot back when the trains ran wealthy northerners down a century ago.” They entered a roundabout that circled a radio tower. “The museum’s open!”
Brakes screeched.
Serge grabbed a thermos of coffee, chugged and tossed it to his buddy. “Wait here.”
“Serge, you’ll take forever,” complained Coleman. “It’s a museum.”
“This is just a gift-shop blitz. I know the museum inside out, but they may have updated their product line. I check every time.”
“Have they ever updated?”
“No.”
He ran inside and lunged at the woman behind the counter. “New products? Hold nothing back! I already have everything! Maybe a scale model of the Walking Dredge that carved out the Tamiami. Or original blueprints and I’ll build my own full-size job.”
“Do you want to visit the museum?”
“No, this is a lightning strike. Always hit the gift shops first, in case some jerk gets the last Walking Dredge. Sometimes only hit the gift shop, like now if I’ve done the museum a dozen times. Check your old guest books: My visits are well documented. I’m the guy who needed several pages for the comment section, taking up slots for sixty other guests.”
“You’re the one who messed up our books?”
“I tried to write tiny, but so much needed to be said.”
“You wrote nearly the whole history of the town. And a list of grievances to Congress.”
“And asked for a new product line,” said Serge. “What have you got?”
“Well, there’s this plastic cup commemorating the eightieth anniversary of the Tamiami.”
“Sold!” Serge began singing. “‘There’s a trail that’s winding through the Everglades’ . . . That’s from the 1926 song ‘Tamiami Trail’ on the Victor label. You have a vinyl copy in the museum.”
“We know.”
Serge turned and grinned wide. “I see . . . a guest book! . . .”
A Crown Vic crossed the bridge to Everglades City.
“Where should we start?” asked White.
Mahoney cut a deck of cards. “The museum.”
Chapter Thirty-six
Everglades City
A Crown Vic sat in front of a small museum.
Agent White approached the desk with a mug shot. Before he could get an answer:
“Just hoofed.”
White turned and saw Mahoney with the guest book. “Let me see that . . .”
“ ‘Serge A. Storms, Tampa, FL. Gift-shop blitz: See attached comments.’ ”
White looked at the museum employee. “What are these tiny holes?”
“Said he was in a hurry.” She held up typed pages. “And stapled these to the comment section.”
“Let me see.” He began reading. “Printouts from his website . . . and complaints to Congress?”
“He also left this,” said the museum clerk. “To add to our product line.”
Lowe squinted. “What happened to Derek Jeter?”
Meanwhile . . .
“Another windy day in the Ten Thousand Islands. The number is not hyperbole. Many have become hopelessly lost in the maze of mangroves stretching from Marco Island below Naples all the way under the state to Florida Bay and Cape Sable. Not a few of the lost were law enforcement officers chasing locals running bales of pot—affectionately known as ‘square grouper’—in shallow-drafting skiffs.
“The locals never got lost.
“But that was almost thirty years ago. The end came at 5:17 A.M. on the morning of July seventh, 1983, when two hundred federal agents blockaded Highway 29 and stormed the town in a massive dragnet.
“The Miami Herald dubbed Everglades City ‘the town that dope built.’ But today’s another story and a cleaned-up community image. Nature lovers kayak down a well-marked route through the islands, sometimes pitching tents on elevated platforms in the water called chickees—at least until the first time they see a fourteen-foot gator lounging on top of one. There’s a tiny airstrip on the south end of town with whispered ties to the contraband—and which now draws private planes of the ultra-rich who fly in just for lunch at the ‘Stone Crab Capital of America.’ But rumors still circulate about PVC pipes crammed with hundred-dollar bills that were buried under freshly poured concrete driveways to wait out th
e statute of limitations . . .”
“Serge,” Coleman said from the passenger seat. “Talking to yourself.”
“No I wasn’t.”
Coleman shrugged. “Don’t make no difference here. You just asked me to tell you when you were doing it, so I did.”
Serge turned around. “Mikey, was I talking?”
Mikey nodded, furiously jiggling the disconnected door handle.
“What was I saying?” Serge asked Coleman.
“The only part I caught was ‘dope.’ ”
“That’s right. We’re in the most fugitive-rich part of the state, a national reputation as outlaw country and the perfect garnish for my Web presence. It’s important to be relevant. I personally don’t think so, but when store clerks ask me, ‘How am I doing?’ and I say I don’t understand the appeal of that Sham-Wow guy or TV ads for medicine with a side effect of increased urges to gamble, well, that’s the reaction I get . . . There goes the airport on the right. And here comes the famous Oyster House restaurant and observation tower, which means we’re leaving Everglades City.”
“I thought that’s where we were staying in Everglades City.”
“We are, but there’s one more stop at the end of the line that’s the most remote of all . . .” A ’69 Barracuda headed across a long, winding causeway. Airboats zipped by, aggravating a flats skiff of fly casters. “Next stop: Chokoloskee, hanging off the bottom of Florida like a dingleberry. Before they built this causeway, it was an even more isolated frontier town, surrounded by water and built on another ancient Indian shell mound . . . I have to check in with Ben.”
The Barracuda could go no farther. Because Florida didn’t. Serge reached the southern shore of Chokoloskee at a bay by the same name and parked on a bed of pine needles.
Car doors opened. A stout breeze off the water cut into the ninety-eight-degree afternoon. Mikey pulled them toward the only structure in sight, a long wooden building atop sturdy stilts. Painted a dark, burnt red. The back deck overhung the water.
“What is this place?” asked Coleman.
“The beginning of time.” Serge snapped a photo of a historical plaque. “Smallwood Store, named after Ted Smallwood, who built it in 1906. Indians would come in canoes to trade furs, and conch shells were blown to signal mailbags arriving by boat from Forts Myers.”
“It’s still standing?”
“Hard to believe since this location is total hurricane fodder, but the pioneers could teach today’s developers a thing or two. Operated continuously until 1982, now a museum.”
They went up the steps and through a patched screen door.
Oak barrels. Lanterns and kitchen pots hung from cluttered rafters. A Pan Am calendar over the postal window was frozen on July 1955.
“Ben!”
A man looked up from a newspaper. “Serge! We can’t keep you out of this place, can we?”
“I’m required to stop in.”
“Are we going to have to get a restraining order?”
“It’s happened before.”
“So whatcha been up to?”
“I’m on the run.”
Mikey strained at the end of the leash for something large and breakable. Serge yanked the chain.
Ben leaned over the counter. “Who’s the little guy?”
“My son.”
“Life caught up with you?”
“Wife caught up with me.”
“So what brings you around?”
“Need info. How’s the Loop Road?”
“You’re not seriously going out there.”
“Might come to that. Capone’s spirit is strong. Never seen his old place, or the Gator Hook. I know only the foundations are left, but . . .” He raised his camera and grinned.
“Don’t shine me,” said Ben. “You’re chasing the myth.”
“Never believed that garbage.”
“A lot of people do. They’ve been digging all over the place out there for years.”
“What’s the word on the road?”
“Heard park service filled gaps from the wet season with marl. It’s passable, but who knows how long?” said Ben. “Serge, I wouldn’t go. I live here, and no place scares me like the Loop. I’m not ever going back.”
“What happened?”
“Nothing. Just the hair on the back of your neck.” He shook with the creeps. “This feeling that someone’s watching you, like Deliverance.”
“My favorite comedy,” said Serge. “But it can’t be that bad.”
“Serge, everyone who lives around here has a story. Half the time it’s just warning shots from the unseen woods. Other times, faces briefly appear in the brush, then dart off in a rustle of branches, like The Hills Have Eyes.”
“Another great comedy,” said Serge. “Speaking of movies, I brought you a present. Here . . .”
“A dvD?”
“Bootleg off the Internet from 1958: Wind Across the Everglades. Dubbed a second disc for you.”
“Whoa! I’ve wanted this for years but could never find a copy.”
“You’ll love every minute. Way-ahead-of-its-time conservation movie filmed on location starring Burl Ives. It’s set at the turn of the century when poachers decimated the glades bird population for their plumes, because chicks on Park Avenue used to wear those screwed-up hats. There’s even a cameo by real-life swamp legend Totch Brown.”
“Totch is in it?”
“But here’s the part where you’re going to crap: This Audubon guy takes the train down to Miami to fight the poachers. But because it was filmed in the fifties, Miami looked much different, so Everglades City was its stand-in.”
“You’re kidding.”
“That’s still not the best part,” said Serge. “The guy checks into a hotel, and it’s this place! I recognized it immediately from the way your counter slopes back underneath to accommodate hoop skirts, and the notches along the top for measuring pelts.”
Serge pointed toward the watery view out the store’s open back door. “Can you tell me where the spot is?”
“You ask every time, and I tell you every time.”
“Because I have to get it exact for the record.”
Coleman tipped over a jar and set it back up. “Didn’t break. I’m not responsible . . . What spot?”
“The killing spot,” said Serge. “On the beach next to this store. A fugitive named Edgar Watson was under suspicion for several murders, so he came down here and claimed a spread on Chatham Bend. Then more murders around here. Finally, Watson bought some bullets in this very store, saying he was going to kill someone else, and the town finally had enough. Practically everyone turned out to mow him down on the shore.”
“It’s all in the Peter Matthiessen books,” said Ben. “Okay, twelve paces west from the third palm tree.”
“Thanks! . . . Mikey! You’ll love this!” They ran for the door. “We have to find a stick that looks like a rifle! . . .”
“Oh, Serge.” Ben held up the dvD. “Don’t know how to thank you.”
“How ’bout you never saw me?”
Chunky clouds blew in from Miami, casting patches of shade across the open panorama of the swamp. A few in the distance had dark shafts of rain angling down at palm hammocks.
A Crown Vic circled the few streets of Everglades City, where five hundred people live on a square mile of island. Past city hall and the sportsman’s club, a grocery, fishing guide office, airboat ticket stand, up and down the neighborhood lanes of Copeland, Hibiscus, Gardenia. Small, tin-roofed homes and whitewashed bungalows with bent aluminum awnings dotted largely empty residential blocks that never had quite taken. Original palm trees ran high along roads like lampposts.
“Just missed him at the museum,” said White. “How far could he have gone?”
“Maybe he left and went back,” said Lowe.
“Nega-tory,” said Mahoney in the backseat, making a cat’s cradle with a yo-yo. “Serge is close, real close. Bumpin’ brass tacks.”
They swun
g east onto School Drive, winding along the docks at the edge of the Collier River. Stacks of encrusted crab traps and faded Styrofoam buoys, Johnson’s Seafood, Island Seafood, City Seafood, Camellia Street Grill (seafood), back past the convenience store that sold three-pound bags of stone crabs for twenty dollars. Lowe looked out the rear window at their unshakable company of vehicles. The motorcade was long enough, and the city small enough, that as the detectives finished another surveillance loop, they almost caught up with the last vehicle following them.
“That’s about all we can do for now,” said White. “Three rounds. Covered every street in Everglades City.”
“In Everglades City,” said Mahoney.
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
Mahoney’s yo-yo walked the dog. “Chokoloskee.”
“Choko-what?”
“I see it on the map,” said Lowe. “Even smaller place, this little teardrop island below here down a dead-end causeway.”
“With a museum,” said Mahoney.
“There’s a second museum?” said White. “Why didn’t you tell me?”
He hit the gas and headed south.
Chapter Thirty-seven
Chokoloskee
“Shoot me!” said Serge.
Mikey and Coleman aimed sticks.
“Bang! Bang!”
“Arg!” Serge grabbed his heart and collapsed on the beach.
He jumped up. “Shoot me again! . . .”
On the other side of the Smallwood Store, a caravan led by a Crown Vic parked under pine trees.
Three agents ran up steps.
Ben smiled as the screen door creaked.
White rushed toward him with a mug shot. “This guy been in here.”
Ben leaned and faked non-registration. “Nope, never seen him. Who is he?”
“Name’s Serge. Take another look. It’s very important.”
The other agents wandered the store for clues.
Lowe was overcome by how old everything was. To Mahoney, it was contemporary. He nodded at the 1955 Pan Am calendar. “The future.”
“. . . Shoot me! Shoot me again! . . .”