by Tim Dorsey
“If I go under, just stop where you are. I’ll be right back. I can get out easily, but if we go in together, it’ll be too interesting.”
More splashes. A cottonmouth wiggled away in the water. Getting darker. Tree frogs, tree snails, algae, lily pads. A soft-shelled turtle on a rotting log.
Coleman looked back. “Serge, the sound’s getting closer.”
“Good.” The ground sloped up. The GPS said another twenty feet. Serge trudged through saw grass to a small dry hammock of land with a cluster of hardwoods. He checked the number on the small screen and stopped.
So did the sound behind them.
Serge looked at his feet. “Here we are.”
“Where?”
Serge squatted down and brushed away leaves and twigs. He began digging. But not for long. Six inches down, fingertips hit a flat surface. He ran his hands across the top until he found the edges of a large rectangle, then dug a trench around the sides. “Coleman, I need your help. There’s a handle on that end.”
“What is it?”
“Just lift.”
Out it came. Coleman wiped his hands on his shirt. “Heavier than it looks.”
Serge crouched in front of the old steamer trunk. He flipped a pair of latches. “It’s unlocked. We’re in luck.”
“Luck just ran out!”
They turned around.
Someone with the wrong shoes for the job splashed toward them. Pointing a gun. “Step away from the trunk.”
“Let me guess,” said Serge. “You drive a Beemer.”
“Smart guy.” He waved them aside with the pistol. “But I’m smarter. I knew you’d lead me right to it.”
“Serge,” said Coleman, trembling. “Is he going to kill us?”
“Kill you?” The man walked sideways toward the trunk, keeping the gun aimed. “Don’t be ridiculous. I’m a respectable attorney.”
“Brad Meltzer,” said Serge.
“So you know.”
“I know you swindled my grandfather’s old gang.”
A devious smile. “Those were legitimate billable hours. But I deserved more. They knew about this chest but played dumb . . .” The smile dissolved to red-faced anger. “They owed me a cut! After all those years! Keeping them out of jail, setting up their measly estates! Now I get it all!” He bent down in front of the steamer and took a deep breath. “No, I don’t have to kill you because who are you going to tell? You got a million warrants and every cop in south Florida after you. If you’re real nice, I’ll give you a head start before I call a tip line that you were at Lucky’s place.” He reached for the latches.
“I wouldn’t do that if I were you,” said Serge.
“Oh, you wouldn’t?”
“This was all a setup to get you out here,” said Serge.
“You’re only saying that now because I’m holding the gun.”
“Think about it,” said Serge. “Those letters. The confidential one you opened that mentioned me finding the map in my late grandfather’s possessions. Bank account numbers and instructions to deposit. There never was a map.”
“Really?” said Brad. “And yet you led me right to this old chest. I suppose that’s an illusion, too.”
Serge raised his palms. “People always think I’m lying when I’m telling the God’s honest truth.”
“Shut up!” said Brad, reaching again for the latches. “No more talk!”
Serge shook his head. “I wouldn’t open that.”
“I’m not you.”
Serge whispered sideways to Coleman. “Start backing up . . .”
Chapter Forty-three
Behind Capone’s
The attorney smiled again. “It’s Geraldo time!” He flipped the latches and raised the lid . . .
. . . Which triggered a quick aerosol burst of spray in his face and chest.
“My eyes!” He dropped the gun and began wiping. As he did, little bumping sensations from his waist to the top of his head.
Serge winked at Coleman. “I attached a little booby-trap string.” Then he turned back to Brad. “Don’t worry. It’s non-acidic, won’t hurt your vision—in the long run.”
Brad blinked in blurriness. “What is this shit?”
“Just attracts them—and makes them aggressive, courtesy of Lucky.”
“Makes who— . . . Ow!” The first sting of pain. Then dozens came in waves. The lawyer’s vision began clearing, and he found his head in the middle of a swarm of honeybees. “Jesus! Mother!” Arms flailing, running in circles. More stings. “Get them off me!”
“Serge,” said Coleman. “What’s to stop them from attacking us next?”
Serge watched calmly with folded arms. “One thing that calms them down is smoke.”
Coleman lit a joint.
Brad ran screaming, straight into a tree. He fell on his back.
Serge cupped his hands around his mouth. “In the water! Roll around in the water! It’s only a foot deep.”
Brad dove and rolled.
“Snake!” said Serge.
“Ow!”
“The bees are flying away,” said Coleman.
“Because they’re not Africanized killer bees. They only swarm to protect the hive.” Serge walked over to the steamer trunk, where a few stragglers buzzed around a beekeeper’s honey tray. He closed the lid.
Coleman strolled up, puffing his joint rapidly for added protection. He looked at Brad, panting at the base of a tree, scratching his body. “So the stings are going to kill him?”
“No,” said Serge. “Just make him unattractive.”
“His face,” said Coleman. “Yuck. It’s all covered with bumps.”
“But he probably is going to die.”
“Cool!” said Coleman. “You brought one of your really complicated death contraptions?”
“Yes.”
Coleman looked left and right. “Where is it?”
“All around us.”
“I don’t see anything.”
“It’s the Everglades.”
“The swamp?”
Serge spread his arms. “The glades are an infinitely complicated mechanism of life far more elaborate that anything I could rig together.” He knelt and looked in Brad’s eyes, swelling to slits. “The stings won’t kill him, but he’s going to get a fever and become pretty disoriented.” Serge looked up. “And this far from the road, with that kind of tree cover, compass directions will be tricky for a city boy . . .” He leaned over Brad. “Tried to warn you. But I forgot: You’re so smart. Now do you believe it’s all a bullshit myth?”
Brad started to sob.
Serge leaned closer. He reached behind his back and pulled a large brown legal envelope from his waistband. “I just have a few documents for you to sign.”
“Th-th-then will you let me go?”
“Absolutely.” Serge held out papers and pen. “Just scribble next to the little stick-on arrows.”
“I can barely see.”
“Let me help you.” Serge stuck the pen in his hand and positioned it at the appropriate spots. “. . . And sign here, and here, initial here . . . you’re doing great, just a few more pages . . . and here, and here, more initials, one last baby here, annnnnnd—we’re done! Now, that wasn’t so hard, was it?”
“I—I—I can go now?”
Serge leaned even closer. “Boo!”
“Ahhhh!” The attorney jumped up and took off running.
“Wrong way,” Serge told Coleman. “See what I mean?”
“He just bounced off another tree.”
Brad spun around. “Where are you? I’ll make a deal. Someone bribed me to help them find you. I’ll tell you who it is if you get me out of here!”
“Who?” said Serge.
“It was— . . . Ahhhhh!” Brad took off running again.
“Some of the bees didn’t leave,” said Coleman.
Serge leaned against a tree for viewing pleasure. “If I was a betting man, I’d say he’ll soon become more familiar with the Evergla
des than most of us will ever get the chance.”
“I was hoping for something with a lot of sharp, rotating blades.”
“Because you just watched that Saw movie,” said Serge. “This is the thinking man’s contraption.”
“I like blades.”
Screaming trailed off to the south.
“Brad sure is a nervous type,” said Serge. “That isn’t good for his blood pressure.”
“I can barely hear his yelling anymore.”
The attorney disappeared into a thrashing of cattails.
“Show’s over.”
They left.
Behind them, Brad continued plunging forward toward what he thought was the way back. He used his fingers to keep his eyelids pried open. “Yeah, my car should be right up here . . .”
Onward: wildlife hooting and cawing. Snapping sounds, plunks in the water. Brad’s head swiveled around, getting jumpy and feverish, tripping and hitting more trees as vision continued to diminish. Another step . . .
Down he went, water over his head.
Bubbles.
Brad broke the surface with a gasp for breath. “Gator hole!”
He went under again, just his hands flapping above the water.
Then up again. “Help!”
Before going down the third time, Brad found a grip on something hard and pulled himself up. He stood shin-deep next to where he had just been splashing.
Thinking: That’s weird. Maybe it’s not a gator hole after all.
He got on his knees and felt under the water. Rows of old, rotten wood planks. His hands probed farther and discovered the hole in the boards where his legs had broken through. He easily pulled up one of the snapped pieces with bent nails on the end. When he did, something floated to the surface. He grabbed it with his left hand and propped an eye open with his right. “Holy shit!” He frantically ripped up more planks and splashed with both arms. More and more hundred-dollar bills floated up. He couldn’t see it, but none were dated later than 1929.
Then, reckless exuberance. Brad broke off the rest of the wood, removed his shoes and slipped down inside, legs first, feeling around with his feet.
Toes detected something. Brad’s head went under the water, and he came back up with a small gold bar in his fist.
“Yes! I found it! I actually found it!”
Lucky’s pickup returned to the compound off the Loop Road.
“God loves me!” said Coleman. “Check the ass on that naked chick in the road!”
A killer redhead in a six-shooter belt. Lucky on the other side with his camera.
“That’s Cynthia,” said Serge. He stopped the pickup at the end of the driveway and got out. “Hey Cynthia!”
She turned around.
Serge jumped back. “Molly!”
Molly drew the revolvers and aimed them at Serge.
Serge raise his arms. “I— . . . We— . . . What are you doing out here?”
Lucky smiled from behind. “Molly had an appointment next week, so I bumped it up. Thought it would be a nice surprise getting you two back together.” He raised the camera and resumed shooting. “I’m a hopeless romantic. I’m sure you guys can work something out . . .”
Molly cocked the hammers on both pistols. “You bastard!”
Lucky slid sideways. Click, click, click . . . “Molly, excellent action shots. Keep it up . . . Serge, could you step left. You’re in the frame.”
Serge kept his arms up. “I don’t think she wants me to move.”
Another rugged laugh from the photographer. “She’s playing around. Those are just prop guns. They’re not loaded.”
Molly pointed guns at the sky and began firing away like the Frito Bandito.
Lucky lowered his camera. “Molly, where’d you get the bullets?”
She didn’t answer. Just leveled the pistols again.
Serge took a slow step forward. “But baby . . .”
“Don’t ‘but baby’ me. And don’t come any closer!”
Serge froze. “I thought everything was mellow. I’m taking care of Mikey for us. We’re having loads of fun!”
“I’ll bet! I knew what dropping him on you would do to your life.” She cocked the hammers again. “Doesn’t mean I haven’t forgotten everything you did to me. It’s payback time!”
“But that’s what you told me back at the motel,” said Serge. “I thought the payback was Mikey.”
“Just an appetizer.” She stretched out both arms. “This is the main course.”
Serge looked over her shoulder. “Thanks, Lucky.”
“I thought this would go a little better . . . Uh, Molly?”
“Shut up!”
“Sweetie,” said Serge. “How about we get away? I’ll take you to this nice secluded place, very special, like a second honeymoon.”
“So I can watch Coleman throw up all weekend?”
“Coleman can’t come with us?”
Her arms stiffened. “You’ll never change.”
“Okay, no Coleman,” said Serge. “How’s that for change? A place on the ocean, just us—what do you say?”
“Then you’ll ditch me in the room and run all over God knows where taking a million pictures, collecting brochures and bursting in at midnight to stash stuff in the toilet tank and tell me that if the police ask, you were with me all day.”
“That’s not good either?”
She stepped forward with dead aim. “This is farewell.”
Serge winced and poised like a soccer goalie before a penalty shot—ready to anticipate the trigger pull. But which way should he jump?
Molly put her thumbs on the hammers and carefully set them back in the safe position.
Serge’s muscles uncoiled. He slowly lowered his arms. “You’re not going to kill me?”
“Just wanted you to go through that. Not much fun, eh?” She expertly twirled both guns on her fingers and re-holstered them. “Now you know how I felt while we were living together and I was trying to keep a clean house.”
“Staring down gun barrels? Using guest towels? Call me insensitive, but I think there’s a slight difference.”
“That’s exactly what I’m talking about! Your needs were always more important!”
Serge tilted his head and raised an eyebrow.
“What are you doing?” asked Molly.
He raised his other. A dreamy gaze with those piercing ice-blue eyes.
“Stop that!”
“Stop what?” said Serge, smiling warmly.
“You know precisely what you’re doing!”
“I do?”
“Oh, Serge!” She clomped up the road in cowboy boots and slammed into him. “Take me! Now!”
She ripped open his pants, and they fell entangled to the ground. Serge pulled his shorts to his knees and began thrusting like a Roman centurion.
“Oh yes!” shrieked Molly. “Oh yes!”
Serge closed his eyes and thrust harder. “. . . Nu Bamboo, Cedar Key, Myakka River, Snook Haven . . .”
“Don’t stop! Oh, my God! Don’t stop!”
“. . . Sanibel, seashells, Smallwood Store, Gator Hook Lodge, the Loop . . .”
“Jesus!” said Coleman, glancing up and down the street for cars, then looking at Lucky. “They’re doing it right in the middle of the road!”
“Come on.” Lucky slapped Coleman on the shoulder. “Let’s go back inside the gate. I think they want their privacy.”
Coleman drank Lucky’s beer on the porch and looked at photos. “How’d you get her to pose like that?”
“She wanted to.”
“And this one with the boa?”
“Paid me.”
“You’re my hero.”
An exhausted, sweaty couple walked up the dirt driveway.
Lucky got off his stool and leaned against a porch post. “Well, if it isn’t the two lovebirds. Didn’t I say you could work things out?”
“Let’s not rush,” said Molly, taking off the gun belt. She found her cutoff denim sh
orts and a biker tank top in the corner of the porch.
“Coleman!” said Serge. “Don’t look at my wife while she’s getting dressed.”
Molly zipped up her tight, high-riding shorts and accepted a cold one from Lucky. They all melted into chairs in the sticky, late-afternoon heat.
Back on the Loop Road, a car quietly pulled up and stopped, hidden behind the stockade fence . . .
Molly took a long pull on the chilly Budweiser. “Where’s Mikey?”
“Still asleep in the trailer,” said Lucky.
Serge jumped up. “Can’t tell you how much fun we’ve had! Okay, I’ll tell you! We went to the supermarket—”
“Serge, you’re not the father.”
“And then the hamster ball— . . . What do you mean?”
“You’re not his dad.”
“Of course I’m his dad.”
Molly shook her head. “Needed a break.” She took another big sip. “You have no idea what’s it’s like being a single parent these days.”
“But he’s just like me,” said Serge. “Are you sure there isn’t some mistake?”
“Positive.” Molly drained the rest of her longneck and stood. “Now I need to leave him with his real father.”
“But we were bonding so well,” said Serge. “He was almost ready to go without the chain.”
“It’s not fair to you,” said Molly.
Lucky got off his stool. “I’ll go wake him.”
“No, let him sleep.” Molly set her empty bottle on the edge of the potbelly stove.
Lucky stopped at the trailer’s door. “But you just said you were going to take him to his real father.”
“No, I said leave him.”
“I don’t understand.”
Molly looked at Serge and Lucky. Serge looked at Lucky and Molly. Lucky looked at both.
Coleman opened another beer. “I never know what’s going on.”
Serge walked over and put an arm around Lucky’s shoulders. “I think what’s going on is we have a new winner.”
“But . . .” said Lucky. “How is that possible?”
Molly pointed at the middle of a row of framed photos. “Remember that one? It was taken right after I split with Serge and needed to book out of the Keys because those cops had some funny ideas.”
Lucky put a hand over his eyes. “But it was just one time.”
“You’re a marksman.” Molly trotted down the porch steps.