by Tim Dorsey
“Bang! Bang!”
White turned from the counter. “What’s all that yelling?”
“I’ll check,” said Lowe, walking out the rear door to the deck over the bay. He got an obscured view through the trees. “Nothing. Just some guy playing cowboys and Indians with his kid on the beach.” He came back inside, and the three agents huddled.
“What do you suggest now?” asked White.
Mahoney picked up a jar of gum balls. “Serge ain’t flashed marbles on the trifecta trip.”
“And the translation?”
“Probably on his way here, so we should hang tight.”
“Okay, you were on with the other museum,” said White. “So we’ll wait.”
They walked around, entranced in the time capsule, even White.
“Mahoney,” said Lowe. “I’ve been meaning to ask: Why do you talk like you do?”
“Dancing gums to slant the flimflam grease-lick jackaloo.”
“That’s what I thought . . .”
Outside, Mikey strained on his leash all the way back to their car.
“Another excellent re-enactment,” said Serge.
Coleman opened the passenger door. “Look at all these other vehicles.”
“History’s catching on.” Serge started the engine and grabbed his iPod. “Fugitive tunes!”
Whitecaps slammed the side of the causeway as the Barracuda sped north.
“. . . Go on, take the money and run! . . .”
They reached the bottom of Everglades City and skidded into a parking lot.
“We’re going to eat at the Oyster House?” asked Coleman.
“No, climb the observation tower.” Serge pointed up at what looked like an old forestry service fire-watch platform. “I must climb all observation towers for the total picture.”
Serge and Mikey reached the top. Coleman took a bit longer.
“Look at the bay! And Ten Thousand Islands! And the Everglades! . . .” Serge slowly pirouetted with his camera, taking another set of overlapping shots. “. . . And Chokoloskee! And the airstrip! And the big convoy of vehicles coming down the causeway! I want to fly like an eagle! . . .”
“What’s up with all those cars?” asked Coleman.
Serge continued turning. Click, click, click. “The blackwalls on the sedan up front mean it’s G-men, which means they’re probably after some bad dude.” Click, click, click. “Reminds me of Operation Everglades in 1983, when they arrested half the town.”
“Reminds me of Orlando last week,” said Coleman. “When they arrested Snapper-Head Willie.”
The convoy passed and Serge lowered his camera. “I have the big picture. Now we can hit the bar.”
“Bar?” said Coleman. He was the first down from the tower.
They walked next door to the convenience store. Motorcycles and pickups and an old Fleetwood. The store also served as a bait shop, liquor outlet and motel office for the nearby nest of cedar fishing cottages. On the south end of the building sat a large, open room. It was under the same roof but only screened in.
Serge opened the door, and Coleman ran for a stool. “Whiskey! Double.”
“Bottle of water.” Serge looked down. “Mikey, what would you like?”
The child pointed.
“Red Bull it is.”
Jack Daniel’s arrived. “What a cool bar,” said Coleman.
“One of the coolest,” said Serge. “The Rock Bottom—absolutely screams Everglades and lawlessness. The screens make it. Keeping out mosquitoes but letting in a bayou breeze. And I love the crusty regulars!”
Crusty regulars turned.
Serge spun on his stool and sat with his back to the bar, reliving fond memories from the interior: jukebox, pirate flag, ceiling fans, a single pool table under beer lamps, and an arcade game with a real punching bag.
Coleman waved for another bourbon and read signs behind the bar: Cash Only, Live Country Band Saturday, Pit Bull Puppies For Sale and a warning that it’s a federal crime to mess with someone else’s crab traps. Where you’d expect a sink were two green buckets hand-labeled Bleach Water and Rinse Water.
Mikey ran in circles and bit the chain.
“Think he needs to burn off some of that Storms family energy,” said Serge. “Come on, Mikey!”
He led the boy across the bar, hoisted him up at the waist and let him go to town on the punching bag.
“Die! Die! Die you bastard! . . .”
“Mikey!” said Serge. “Where did you learn to talk like that?”
“It’s what Mommy says when she stabs your pictures with knives.”
The sun faded behind the mangroves. Neon flickered at the Captain’s Table motel and the Seafood Depot. The Crown Vic returned from a run to the Tamiami, where White had checked in at the sheriff’s substation, but no leads.
“Better find a place for the night.” They rolled up to a large wooden building with yellow-striped canvas awnings.
White rang the bell at a reception desk with a mechanical cash register and antique rifles over mail slots. The cast from the rest of the vehicles formed a line behind him.
“What an old place,” said Lowe. “And dark. Look at all the mahogany.”
“It’s the Rod and Gun Club,” said White, filling out a registration card. “Built in the 1800s.”
Mahoney and Lowe strolled the lobby, staring at walls covered with game trophies. Deer, hogs, pompano, cobia, barracuda, gator hides, turtle shells.
White held up a key. “Guys, let’s go. We got another big day.” He headed for the front door.
Lowe pointed back at the staircase. “Aren’t we going up there? That’s where the rooms are.”
“No, got a cottage,” said White. “They don’t let anyone stay in the main building anymore.”
“Why not?”
“Too historically valuable and too wooden. One forgotten cigarette, and the whole place goes up like a tinderbox.”
They reached a cottage with an egret on the door and went inside.
Three detectives stared at two beds.
“Where’s the sleeper sofa?” asked Lowe.
White opened his suitcase on a chair. “I love this job.”
Night fell and Rock Bottom rocked. Music, dancing, spilled drinks.
“Serge,” said Coleman. “Check it out! Naked babes!”
Serge came over, and they looked up at a roof beam with a row of framed black-and-white photos. Women posing in the swamp.
Serge covered Mikey’s eyes. “I recognize these pictures. You can’t mistake the style.”
“Yeah, they’re naked,” said Coleman.
“No, I mean I know the photographer.” Serge walked to the end of the row and the final picture: a husky, bearded man straddling a motorcycle, dressed all in black and topped with a black cowboy hat. The ultimate outlaw.
“I knew it!” said Serge. “This guy has hot babes from all over the world come down and pay him to photograph them nude out in the Everglades. He’s Lucky.”
“I should say so.”
“No, that’s his name, Lucky. Lucky Cole. And here’s a phone number . . .” Serge went to the bar for a scrap of paper. “I need to get back in touch.”
“He’s a friend of yours?”
Serge nodded and headed with Mikey for the door.
“Where are you going?”
“We need to find a place to stay.”
“But the sun just went down a minute ago. And I’m still drinking.”
“You don’t want to get stuck out here without a room.” The screen door slammed behind them.
Coleman chugged. “Wait for me!”
Serge pulled into the parking lot.
“Look at all the cars,” said Coleman.
“That’s why I said we needed to get a room.” He went inside and rang a bell. The manager appeared.
“Vacancy?”
“One cottage left.” He grabbed a key off a hook.
“Man, this place is freakin’ old!” said Coleman. “A
nd dark!”
“It’s the Rod and Gun,” said Serge, filling out the registration card. “Teddy Roosevelt stayed here. And Nixon, so it’s a wash.”
Mikey led them across a lawn and up the steps of a cottage with a heron on the door. They went into the room as another door opened.
Three state agents stepped outside and stretched under a full sky of stars.
“This isn’t half bad,” said White, getting out a crick in his neck. “I could lose a lot of stress out here.”
“I’m hungry,” said Lowe.
White spotted a tiny neon sign up the street and began walking. “Let’s get some fish at that depot place.”
Back in the heron cottage: Serge unpacked socks and gadgets. Coleman lined up liquor miniatures atop the dresser. “Let’s go out. I saw a tiki bar at the depot.”
“Other plans.”
“What other plans? It’s only eight o’clock.” Coleman unscrewed three bottles. “And we’re out in the middle of nowhere.”
“We have to hole up for website research.” Serge ran cables from his laptop to the TV. “Let’s watch The Fugitive. I got the complete first season boxed set.”
“Serge!”
“Just one episode. Then maybe we’ll do something.”
“Okay, but only one.” Coleman reluctantly sat on the edge of the bed next to Serge. “What are we watching?”
Serge enthusiastically rubbed his palms together. “Renegades on the road from town to town is a uniquely American TV genre. Branded, Maverick, Kung Fu, Then Came Bronson, Route 66, The A-Team. But of all of them, The Fugitive is the only one that ever came to the Sunshine State: Episode 29, ‘Storm Center,’ first aired April fourteenth, 1964 . . .” Serge started the dvD.
“What happens in the series?”
“Same as my life. I come to a town, act nice to people, they’re not nice back. Except Dr. Kimble doesn’t visit hardware stores before leaving.”
Coleman pointed at the TV. “There’s a hurricane. He’s holed up in Florida.”
“Just like us! Isn’t it great?” said Serge. “Mikey, another Red Bull?”
Wind howled, Kimble’s double-crossed, a mystery revealed, the fugitive escapes. “A Quinn-Martin Production.”
“That was pretty cool,” said Coleman.
“And deeper than people think,” said Serge. “Kimble is tracked doggedly by Lieutenant Gerard, who was patterned after the deliberately similar-sounding Inspector Javert from Les Misérables. Unlike other TV shows, Kimble and Gerard are complex characters who develop a mutual respect, to the point where Kimble saves Gerard’s life a few times, and at other times the lieutenant intentionally lets the good doctor slip away.”
“Kind of reminds me of someone.”
“Me, too,” said Serge. “But I just can’t quite remember who . . . What’s that sound?”
“Mikey’s scratching at the door.”
Serge stood. “Looks like I need to take him for a walk.”
“I’ll get my joint and miniatures.”
Up the street, only a few bites of catfish left. Agent White threw his napkin on the plate. “I’m stuffed.”
“Same here,” said Lowe, tossing in his own napkin.
Mahoney didn’t say anything. He had finished first and was reading a thick, dog-eared paperback.
“Les Misérables?” said White. “I didn’t know you were into Hugo.”
Mahoney turned a page. “Inspector Javert’s aces.”
White smiled and looked out the window into the dark street. “I notice a resemblance . . .”
Coming up the dark street: Coleman tossed a glowing roach in a puddle. “Mikey’s really pulling hard.”
“I think he has to pee,” said Serge. “There’s a place up ahead.”
“The seafood restaurant?” Coleman uncapped a miniature. “Aren’t the restrooms for customers only?”
“Most of the time,” said Serge. “But who’s heartless enough to deny a father with a boy on a chain.”
They walked through the restaurant’s waiting area and into the men’s room as three detectives came around the corner for the register. “I got this,” said White, pulling out a state-expense credit card.
Lowe stared at the giant, stuffed gator by the lobby bar. Mahoney grabbed a handful of toothpicks—“Need to squirt”—and headed into the men’s room. He addressed a urinal, whistling the theme from The Fugitive.
In the closed stall behind him, Serge looked up with faint recognition at the tune, then shook his head and continued helping Mikey with his jammed zipper.
In the next stall. “Whoops, a little trouble here . . .”
Crash.
Serge looked down at Coleman’s face lying on the tiles under the stall’s partition. “What the hell are you doing?”
“Gravity got me again.” He pushed himself up.
Mahoney smirked as he finished his business. “Juicers.” He rejoined the others in the lobby and headed back up the street for their cottage.
Two minutes later, the restaurant’s door opened again. Serge, Coleman and Mikey began walking toward the Road and Gun. Far ahead: three silhouettes on the dim road.
Serge squinted at what looked like the outline of a fedora. “Naw, couldn’t be.”
Chapter Thirty-eight
2:59 A.M.
Everyone asleep at the Rod and Gun. Almost.
Detective Mahoney was a night owl. He sat up in bed reading Dashiell Hammett.
Next to him on the nightstand was a small transistor radio. In the wee hours, when there was less broadcast competition across the dial—and if weather conditions were perfect—he could pick up an atmospheric bounce from a powerful jazz signal out of New Orleans. It was an oldies station, playing nothing later than 1949. Vintage commercials continued the theme: Bromo-Seltzer, Barbasol, “Call for Philip Morris!” It was meant to make people reminisce about the past.
Mahoney was in the present. He turned a page . . .
Another cottage. Dark, silent.
3:00 A.M.
Beep! Beep! Beep! Beep! Beep! . . .
“What the fuck is that?” Serge threw off the sheets and hit a light switch.
Coleman sat up rubbing his eyes. “What’s going on?”
Beep! Beep! Beep! Beep! Beep! . . .
Serge ran around the bed and smashed the Off button. “Forgot to unplug the clock. Some asshole set our alarm as a prank.”
“Oh, that was me.”
“Idiot!” said Serge. “If you’re gong to be a jerk, at least wait till checkout.”
“I got confused.”
“Thanks. Now I’m totally awake.” He slipped on shorts and sneakers.
“Where are you going?”
“For a walk.” He opened the door with a heron.
At the other end of the Rod and Gun, Mahoney wore a red-and-white-striped nightcap. Cotton in his ears. Lowe snored. It was hard to miss the noise since they were crammed together in the same tiny bed. Agent White had pulled rank and gotten the other to himself.
But now Lowe’s mouth was wide open, snoring like a buffalo. First Lowe had ruined Mahoney’s radio listening, and now he couldn’t even read. He traded in his nightcap for the fedora and decided to take a walk . . .
Serge strolled along the dock behind the club’s main building. In the darkness, a small fish splashed, which meant a bigger fish behind it. Serge didn’t see it because a rare Everglades fog had rolled in from Okeechobee.
Serge loved night fog.
He came around the back of the club and strolled up the street to the town circle. The few lights that were on cast a haunting glow, especially the blinking red one atop the radio tower. Fog thickened. Not a soul.
Serge was content.
He turned around at the old train depot and started back to the Rod and Gun . . .
Mahoney stood on the dock behind his cottage and struck a wooden match to see what was splashing in the water. Fog too dense. He blew it out and continued along the bank. Mahoney loved night fog beca
use it put him in old movies, especially the climactic final confrontation with a nemesis. He formed a sinister smile, running classic flicks through his head as he came around the front of the Rod and Gun. Farewell My Lovely, Notorious, The Big Sleep.
On the other side of the club’s grounds, a foggy shadow appeared, walking back to the cottages from the town circle.
Mahoney smiled wider to himself in the broken solitude. The other night figure completed the detective’s movie fantasy: his adversary, squaring off for the big showdown . . .
Serge noticed the other night stroller. He stopped. So did the second man. Then the distant apparition tipped his hat toward Serge. Serge returned the salutation with a slight nod. The other man went back in his cottage, and Serge returned to his.
He closed the heron door and stretched with a yawn. He slipped back into sweatpants and under the covers.
He turned off the light and shut his eyes.
Silent and dark.
The light came back on.
Serge leaped from the bed. “Everyone up! Coleman! Mikey!”
Coleman lifted a groggy head. “Huh? What?”
Serge shook his shoulders. “We have to split! Now!”
Coleman sat the rest of the way up in bed, watching Serge throw stuff in his backpack. “What’s going on?”
Serge snatched his toiletry bag. “Mahoney’s here!”
“Mahoney? Are you sure?”
“Definitely.” Serge zipped a compartment shut. “Just saw him outside. Took a few minutes for it to click because of the fog.”
Coleman crawled out of bed. “Did he recognize you?”
“Don’t think so. Maybe. Who knows?” He grabbed Mikey and hoisted the backpack. “But I’m not taking any chances.”
“I thought you said nobody was after us—that we were just pretending to be on the run.”
“Dreams come true.” Serge opened the door and looked around. Coast is clear. He looked back. “Be super quiet and tiptoe to the car . . .”
Coleman stumbled over the threshold and crashed on the porch. A light came on somewhere. A tourist peeked out curtains. Dogs barked.
Serge dashed down the steps. “Run! . . .”
Coleman knocked over a garbage can.
Mahoney sat up in bed and turned on a lamp. What’s all that racket?
He went to the window. A trunk slammed, then car doors.