Tampa Bay Noir

by Colette Bancroft

  “Fall backward in love?”

  He laughed and laughed and reached for the champagne, filling it nearly to the top of his plastic cup with a University of Florida Gators logo. Chomp. Chomp. “Yes,” he said. “Exactly. I guess I’m just like this old house. A real fixer-upper.”

  The house was big and empty, with a few broken windows, but so many bedrooms and bathrooms, seeming like the kind of place an old movie star could live. She could make that work. The palm trees and the beach made the old stucco, the empty swimming pool, and all that just fine. She could be happy to sit up here on the second floor and drink cheap champagne and watch the fishing boats come and go, feel the wind on her face, smell the salt air. This was at least something. This was something to work with. Eating Suki Hana alone at the International Plaza was a torture she’d rather not endure.

  He smiled at her and reached for his pill bottle. Downed a little blue one. “Tallyho.”

  * * *

  When the police came, the first time, she didn’t even know he was gone. She was asleep in the master bedroom, a brand-new Sealy Posturepedic king they bought on sale on the floor, a swirl of blankets and sheets. Two bottles of Korbel and an empty prescription container scattered nearby. The policewoman shined a flashlight into her eyes and asked her for some identification.

  “Excuse me,” Debbie Lyn said, pushing herself up and covering her bare chest. “You can’t just come in here. Bust in the door and hassle people. Just what in the hell’s going on?”

  The cop looked at her partner, a burly man, and didn’t say a word, just clicked off the flashlight, the room filled with early morning glow right before sunrise.

  “The neighbors called about squatters,” she said. “You do know you can’t just break into any home in Florida and set up shop. Come on, lady. Get some clothes on. Get your stuff. Let’s go.”

  “It’s not mine,” she said. “It’s his. This place is his home. He bought it at auction. We’re fixing it up.”

  “And who exactly is he?” the cop asked.

  Debbie Lyn looked up as the cop tapped the flashlight against her leg, the room filled with that bluish-gray predawn glow. Her head throbbing from the night before, more Hawaiian martinis at a tiki bar on Treasure Island. Him doing a silly little dance, forming a conga line with some bikers down from Mississippi. Debbie Lyn touched a Tiffany bracelet he’d given her and twirled it on her wrist. “I don’t really know,” she said. “My God. How stupid does that sound? I really have no idea.”

  * * *

  “I knew you would come to your sense,” Delores said, speeding across Tampa Bay on the Howard Frankland Bridge in her battered little coupe, Harry Connick Jr. coming through the speakers. “The Way You Look Tonight.” Rain pinging her windshield, her wipers tick-tocking.

  “He left me there,” Debbie Lyn said. “I was arrested but they let me go. I told them everything I knew about him. I’m not sure they believed me. I think they thought I was nuts.”

  “And he take your things?”

  “Yes, he took my stuff. Boxes of my things. Some of my clothes. My television. He took my brand-new television. And my stereo and my CDs. My UB40. Meet Me in Margaritaville.”

  “No one cares about CDs no more,” Delores said. “I play this man on my iPhone. This man, Harry Connick Jr., sing from his heart. He’s a real man. He know what it is like to love and feel. I see him on TV and he says such things.”

  She pounded at her chest as she drove with her left hand, right wrist covered in an assortment of bracelets. Debbie Lyn felt at her wrist for the gift he’d given her. She pulled off the silver bracelet and held it up. “Do you recognize this?”

  “Yes, yes,” Delores said, taking the exit downtown. “That’s mine. You keep it. It’s yours. You earn it. I tell you what we do. First we find him. And then we kill him. You okay with that? He take your TV, your music, personal soundtrack to your life, and my bracelet. That man, Jack Russell. He take his tobacco pouch made from the tiger’s privates. That’s what we do. We kill him and take his pouch. I make a coin purse out of it. Not for big change, no. But for nickels and dimes. Small things to buy Chiclets and gumballs. He small time. He nothing to me.”

  “I couldn’t kill a man,” she said. “I couldn’t kill him.”

  Delores shrugged, laughing but not with much humor, following Armenia toward Bayshore, past an old cigar factory and lots of restored bungalows and new trendy restaurants. She let down her window and lit up a cigarette. “You know where he go? He go where he always go. He go to that house where they make that TV show about a zoo. You see that zoo house where he feel safe and comfortable? Like an animal behind glass. That zoo house where he woo a woman, take her to bed for the first time. That man liking to do it in the Jacuzzi like a lizard, like a reptile at the Busch Garden.”

  * * *

  Debbie Lyn found him in back, skimming the pool naked, a hefty blond woman in a cheetah-print swimsuit sprawled out in a lounge chair. He had his little stereo with him, playing her CDs. “Red Red Wine,” just like from before. The woman passed out or asleep, gently snoring, not even lifting her head as Debbie Lyn came around back of the mansion. She had noticed a For Sale sign staked in the front lawn that she’d never seen before.

  He stopped skimming and looked up. Son of a bitch. From the looks of it, he’d just taken the pill.

  “It’s not what it looks like,” he said, dropping the skimmer and raising his hands. Debbie Lyn marched right up to him, tearing off the bracelet and tossing it toward him. “So many leaves at this time of year. And I hate tan lines. It’s so much healthier for the skin, getting all that vitamin D.”

  “And her?” Debbie Lyn jacked her thumb at the hefty blonde. “Who is she? Did you fall in love with her too? Did you ask that she join in your adventure? Is she going to help you roam the beach for surprises and dive for pirates’ treasure?”

  “Where is Delores?” he said. “She put you up to all this. She filled your head with lies. Made you crazy. I told you that she’s not well.”

  “She’s calling the police,” Debbie Lyn said. “They woke me up this morning. You asshole. You stole my fucking TV. And my music. It’s my personal soundtrack. Not yours.”

  He stretched his hands out wide, looking in the harsh afternoon light like a tribal elder from a National Geographic film, all those folds and wrinkles like a hand-crafted wallet or a tobacco pouch.

  “I was moving us,” he said. “Over here. It’s so much better over here. On this side of the bay. We can take long walks on Bayshore, gaze into God’s sunset. I just didn’t want to wake you this morning.”

  The blond woman, about Debbie Lyn’s age or perhaps older, stirred, flipping over on her back and showing off the plunging neckline of the cheetah suit, a pair of ginormous breasts. “Honey?”

  “And who is she? Or did she come with the property?”

  “Nobody,” he said. “She was just helping me with a few items of business. Don’t let the nudity fool you. It’s all very European. Don’t let those Midwest morals your mother taught you cloud your mind.”

  And at that very moment, Debbie Lyn did think about her mom, up in a nursing home in Hamtramck watching reruns of The Newlywed Game and Frank futzing around their old house, cursing her for stowing away his tools. And she thought about those high school boys laughing at her at International Plaza when they got her to talk about stroking it. She looked at him, standing there on the diving board, and thought, Gee, that old bastard could really use a shave. The white whiskers made him look crummy as hell. She fumbled around in the purse slung over her shoulder and found Jack Russell’s gun, closing one eye and aiming it right toward the right side of his face. You always started with the right, pulling your skin taut with the left hand, then started into a downward stroke. She would stroke that smile right off his face.

  “Come on,” he said.

  “No, no, no!” Delores called out behind her. “I was kidding! I kid. Come on. He no worth it.”

  But he was so
very worth it. He was worth every damn penny she’d spent on hamburgers and martinis and self-respect. Just a nick, just a quick shave. That would scare the living daylights right out of him. No more Debbie Lyn to woo and cajole and lie to, his penis erect and mocking like an angry finger pointed right at her.

  Blam. Blam. One shot to the right cheek and another to the left.

  And damn. She knew she’d screwed up when he toppled off the diving board, a dark-red period showing right between his eyes, his bony old body landing with a hard splash. Delores was screaming. The hefty blond woman was screaming. Debbie Lyn lowered the gun. She placed it in her purse.

  She took a long, easy breath and smiled. Good. That was done. She’d done good, right?

  Walking around to the other side of the pool, Debbie Lyn stopped the music and pulled out the CD. She placed it in the purse right next to the gun.

  After all, it was hers.

  THE MIDNIGHT PREACHER

  by Sarah Gerard

  34th Street

  The Victory Motors building was squat and run-down, some of the windows partially covered with thick Styrofoam panels painted electric blue, molding and crumbling. Others were covered in plywood or a crosshatched layer of plastic. A low overhang provided shade. Two long, narrow signs taped near the top of the windows read, IN HIS NAME, in a seventies color palette and retro computer font.

  A sign on the door read, No Trespassing: Violators Will Be Shot, Survivors Will Be Shot Again. Another, illustrated with a human target, read, We Don’t Call 911.

  I was looking for the Live Crusade, particularly for Buck Hill, who used to have his studio in the back office of Victory Motors. The televangelist had disappeared from the airwaves and Internet without a trace two days after the election of Donald Trump, a week prior. I’m a freelance writer, and had convinced the Tampa Bay Times to let me look into his disappearance.

  A stack of printed-out articles and e-mails sat just inside the front window, with a Post-it on it that read, Trump stuff, file. The article on top was dated 2013, and attributed to “Capitalist Evangelist” radio host Wayne Allyn Root, who had variously aligned himself with the Republican, Libertarian, and Tea Parties, and endorsed Trump in the 2016 presidential race. The front door was ajar.

  At the sound of the bell, a tiny, frail-looking old man emerged from the back office. I assumed this was Clive Waters, owner of the car lot, whom I had read about in an old issue of the Times. Waters had donated the office space to Hill, explaining, “I like what he’s doing. One-third of the population is up at that hour anyway. Better they find Buck than temptation.”

  There appeared to be no one else at Victory Motors that day, save for a longhaired cat, asleep on a rolling chair. I asked Waters if Buck was there. It took a moment for him to understand that I was talking about Hill.

  “He hasn’t lived in St. Petersburg or had his office here in several years,” Waters said.

  Indeed, there was no remnant of a production studio in sight. I informed him that Victory Motors was still listed as the Live Crusade headquarters.

  “We collect Buck’s mail for him and send it down to Naples,” he said.

  He looked at me suspiciously. I smiled to reassure him that, as an attractive young woman, I was no one to fear. Usually, a smile was enough to convince people to give me information. “Do you know why he stopped broadcasting?” I asked. I decided to follow this with, “Is he okay?”

  Clive relaxed. “Maybe he’s getting ready to do something big.”

  I looked around the Victory Motors office again. The state of disrepair suggested no one was doing business there anymore. I thanked Clive for his time and left, heat waves warping the asphalt back to my car, crosshairs at my back.

  More interesting than where Buck Hill had disappeared to was why I wanted to know in the first place. I suppose I wanted to come face-to-face with hate.

  * * *

  In the days after Trump’s election, like many, I spiraled. I started drinking again after two years sober. I broke up with my boyfriend, whom I suspected of voting for the wrong side. I locked myself inside a room at the Gateway Motel, which advertised Jacuzzis and free adult movies. I refused to answer the phone. I called in sick to my part-time barista job, claiming I had the flu.

  Whenever I made eye contact with someone on the street, I wondered whether they were responsible for the rise of evil. I ate pickled pigs feet from the gas station, figuring, If they want me to die, then I will. I derived a sick pleasure from imagining someone discovering my body. It rained for days. Thankfully, the Gateway had wireless Internet. I couldn’t tear myself away from the bad news.

  I had never heard of Buck Hill until I saw his name on the Southern Poverty Law Center website. I had gone there trawling for hate groups I could infiltrate and explode from the inside; this delusion had become my lifeline. Live Crusade was listed among the sixty-three active hate groups in Florida. There was the Supreme White Alliance, the Daily Stormer, the Nation of Islam, and the New Black Panther Party. Then there was the Live Crusade, just a mile away from me, listed under “General Hate.” Buck’s anti-Muslim vitriol, racism, and homophobia had earned him the designation.

  “It’s sad, it’s always sad when these things happen, whenever people have to die,” he said. I was meditating on my encounter with Clive by combing Buck’s old videos, which I had discovered on YouTube, looking for clues about his move down to Naples. He was a bloated white man broadcasting alone from a darkened room, his thinning, dyed-blond hair gelled into spikes, the camera tilted up at his face, illuminated blue as if from a laptop screen.

  “But then you have to think, four thousand babies die every day in this country and nobody’s upset about that. Nobody is pro-choice. Don’t ever let anyone tell you they’re pro-choice. You’re either pro-life or you’re pro-death,” he said.

  He leaned toward the camera and away from it, eyes darting wildly around the room. I wondered if he might be drunk, like I was.

  “Don’t let them confuse you with this weasel language—call it what it is,” he said. “They’re baby killers.”

  I’d had an abortion the year before. My boyfriend and I were stupid; I was stupid, taking my hormonal birth control pills when I happened to remember. I smirked at Buck and left him ranting in the background while I dove into the black hole of his web history. He had risen to prominence in the early days of the Internet with “the world’s first full-service Christian website.” At its height, he sent free Worship War newsletters out to more than two million readers each day. The newsletters, called “Battles,” were part Live Crusade news and part sermon. Some of the most popular of them were addressed to Osama Bin Laden, Ann Romney, and Oprah. Buck had called Oprah a “new-age witch” and “the most dangerous woman on the planet.” I appreciated his flair.

  In 2012, he told his followers to write in Jesus on the presidential ticket. He equated a vote for Mitt Romney with a vote for Satan. I found this funny. It seemed no one was immune to his wrath. In 2010, he opened a “9/11 Christian Center” at Ground Zero in response to the construction of an Islamic community center nearby.

  I was amazed that I had never heard of this asshole. He had been on the Howard Stern Show three times. He preferred to appear on secular media, he said—as an evangelist, he had been called to reach non-Christians with the Truth of God’s Word. It occurred to me that I was now a part of this secular audience. I opened another Magic Hat and looked at the clock. It was four in the morning.

  * * *

  At first, my interest in Buck was perverse: I enjoyed hating him. I scrolled through old news stories with a sense of awe—that someone who harbored such hatred could call himself Christian; that he had accrued such a following; that he had amassed such wealth as to now live in what I assumed was a shiny mansion down in Naples. Maybe I was jealous.

  I lived alone in a motel on 34th Street, a segment of US-19, a large highway that ran the length of the state north to south. My neighbors were drug addicts and homeless f
amilies paying with vouchers. It was the most I could afford for now, living by myself as a newly single freelancer, if I wanted to have both car insurance and health insurance. There was no Medicaid extension in Florida and I couldn’t find a full-time job, despite having a master’s degree and plenty of student debt.

  I was divorced and had sex outside of marriage. I fell somewhere between spiritual and atheist in terms of faith claim, and I voted Democratic and drank alcohol, so I was everything Buck Hill preached against, and he was everything I preached against.

  And yet, even as I hated him, Buck was familiar. He was a midnight preacher of the kind selling plastic pouches of holy water on late-night television. I’d seen his like while channel surfing through my teenage insomnia. I would land on a broadcast that commanded me to surrender my immortal soul along with my allowance, and the rise and fall of the huckster’s voice would soothe me to sleep on the sofa. It reminded me of my childhood when the only thing to do on a Wednesday night was tag along to a friend’s Bible study. Buck was every pastor who had ever pulled me aside for asking questions, and the sound of the Christian radio station playing in my friend’s mom’s car on the way to school. Most preachers at least tried to disguise their hatred, though. Buck washed himself in it like the blood of the lamb.

  He had been simulcasting daily on his website, YouTube, and the Walk TV until two days after Trump’s election. Now his only signs of life were the Battles he continued to post on his website each day, which I quickly figured out were reproductions of previous Battles. He posted links to the Battles on his Facebook page, which only had a few hundred followers, most of them over sixty; the response was quiet. The posts received a handful of likes. He implored his readers, whoever they were, to “give generously” and “cover the ministry’s past two months of shortfalls,” at $65,000 each. He begged for one “ram in the bush” to cough up the $35,000 he claimed to need immediately, before month’s end.