by Tim Dorsey
The next morning, Lenny opened the door to go out for a paper and City and Country were already standing there. They each held out a five-dollar bill. Country said loudly, “Can we buy ten dollars of pot?”
“Shhhhhh! Jesus!” Lenny replied. He looked around quickly and yanked them into the room, then closed and bolted the door.
An hour later, City and Country were down the street at the International House of Belgian Waffles. They sat at the semicircular corner booth with a fire-rated capacity of eight. Covering the table were blueberry flapjacks, silver-dollar pancakes, sunny-side-up eggs with steak, French toast, scrambled eggs and hash browns, a side order of link sausages, a small bowl of whipped butter and pouring jars of maple and boysenberry syrup.
Back at the hotel, Lenny lay in his jockey shorts spread-eagle on the bed, unable to move. He was in love.
22
Major Larry “Montana” Fletcher of the 403rd Air Wing pulled up to the guard shack at Keesler Air Force Base in Biloxi, Mississippi. There was a long line of cars ahead and some type of commotion at the front. Montana stuck his head out the window to see what was going on.
One of the guards jumped back from the car at the head of the line and pulled his gun on the driver. The driver exited his vehicle with his hands up. He was decked out in nonregulation combat fatigues, flak jacket and helmet, a press pass clipped to his breast pocket. Another guard went to the passenger side of the car and removed a small cage holding a dog.
Montana laughed. He got out of the car and walked to the guard shack. He checked the name on the press pass and turned to the guard. “It’s okay, fellas. He’s with me.” The guards saluted.
“Mr. Crease, it’s a pleasure,” said Montana, extending his hand. “I’ve been expecting you. I’m a big fan. Why don’t you pull your car up to that building and I’ll be right with you.”
A half hour later, Montana and Crease shouted back and forth over the propeller noise as they walked across the tarmac to the mobile staircase waiting at their plane.
It was a magnificent silver Lockheed-Martin WC-130 Hercules. Montana ’s particular plane was nicknamed The Rapacious Reno.
“I named it after Janet Reno,” Montana shouted as loud as he could. “She’s a native of Miami, the home of the National Hurricane Center.”
Crease stopped and was shaken at the sight of the World War II-style nose art on The Rapacious Reno. Instead of a cheesecake pose, Reno had flying tiger jaws with pointy teeth dripping blood, and Crease recognized the reading glasses and smart haircut of the seventy-eighth attorney general of the United States. Behind the flying tiger head was a mural depicting Reno ’s life-courtroom scenes, childhood memories of south Florida.
“I painted it myself,” shouted Montana. “I’m a big admirer of hers-a classic Florida pioneer. She gets a lot of criticism and bum raps from people who don’t know anything about her.”
“What’s she doing in this part of the mural?” asked Crease.
“Building a log cabin.”
“Did she ever build a log cabin?”
“I dunno,” Montana said, and ran up the staircase.
The planes of the 53rd Weather Reconnaissance Squadron had an additional staff position. It was the instrument operator-technically known as the dropsonde operator-and on The Rapacious Reno that job fell to William “The Truth” Honeycutt. The dropsonde is a small metal cylinder sixteen inches long and three inches wide containing a microprocessor, a radio transmitter and a small drogue parachute. The dropsonde operator’s primary responsibility is to release the electronic tube into the eye of the hurricane to measure temperature, humidity and pressure. Through triangulated telemetry with ground stations, the device also registers wind speed and direction. Under intense pressure from the Air Force public relations office, the 53rd Squadron reluctantly conferred the position of “honorary dropsonde operator” to FCN correspondent Blaine Crease.
Honeycutt was supposed to coach and supervise Crease. Instead, Crease made Honeycutt carry his TV camera and follow him around the plane to film him performing important-looking tasks. Crease was beside himself with joy; his only regret was that he had to carry Toto everywhere in a kangaroo-style nylon pouch on his stomach. Crease sat in the copilot’s seat and at the navigator’s table, the reconnaissance post and the weather console. Honeycutt had to keep filming and refilming Crease because crew members constantly leaped into the picture to grab Crease’s arms before he threw levers and switches he knew nothing about.
“He’s gonna make us crash! We’re all gonna die!” screamed Milton “Bananas” Foster.
“Get that limp-dick the fuck out of here!” yelled Lee “Southpaw” Barnes.
Pepe Miguelito sat in the corner weeping as he listened to “Breaking Up Is Hard to Do” on his personal radio.
“Now, now. Everyone settle down. Everything will be all right,” Montana said in a steady, calming voice. “Honeycutt…Honeycutt?…”
Honeycutt stopped shadowboxing in the back of the cockpit. “What is it, sir?”
“Honeycutt, why don’t you take Mr. Crease back in the hold and teach him about the dropsonde?”
“Yes, sir,” said Honeycutt.
At zero nine hundred hours Zulu, the Hercules entered the Tropic of Cancer. At nine hundred thirty, the crew crossed the twenty-second parallel three hundred miles west of Havana. The plane was buffeted as the WC-130 entered the edge of the cyclonic system. More than three weeks after forming near the Cape Verde Islands, the hurricane was tracking across the Caribbean Sea, threatening the Gulf of Mexico.
“We’re all gonna die!” yelled Foster.
Marilyn Sebastian grabbed him by the collar and shook him violently. “Get a grip on yourself! Be a man!” She slapped him. She was about to kiss him when Honeycutt grabbed her. “This is for Baton Rouge,” he said and took her in his strong arms and their mouths met. Montana coolly banked left, into the clockwise rotation of the hurricane, to minimize the crosswinds. He edged his way back right, flying closer and closer to the eye of the storm.
“Look!” said Baxter, pointing out of the cockpit. There was a sudden break in the clouds. “Check that eye wall. What incredible stadium effect. This one has to be at least a three on the Saffir-Simpson Scale.”
“It’s a four,” said Montana. “Hold on. I’m going to take it through and come back for another pass. The plane punched into the eye wall on the other side.
Back in the cavernous cargo hold, Crease listened to the entire lecture Honeycutt gave about the dropsonde and paid absolutely no attention.
“Yeah, yeah, okay, okay,” Crease said impatiently. “So where is the little tube? Where’s the door I throw it out?”
“I just told you,” said Honeycutt. “It’s dropped by hydraulics from an automatic external hatch. You never see the thing. All you do is press a button.”
“That’s not good television,” said Crease. “You mean there’s no bomb bay that opens up dramatically above the terrible eye of the hurricane?”
“Nope.”
“Can you at least open some kind of window so my hair will blow?”
“What?”
“Never mind. Listen, do you have any kind of door or something that opens up in the floor here?”
“We have a small, auxiliary instrumentation hatch…”
“Great! That’s wonderful! Let’s call it the bomb bay,” said Crease.
“But it’s not-”
“I know television!” said Crease. “Now say it!”
“It’s the bomb bay,” Honeycutt said sarcastically.
“Good! Now here’s what you’re gonna do. You’re going to go get the little drop-thingie and open the bomb bay, and then you’re going to film me as I bravely walk to the opening-wind swirling up from the horrible storm-and release the doodad through the hole in the floor. What d’ya say?”
“No way.”
Crease marched up to the cockpit and spoke urgently with Montana, who called back to Honeycutt over the intercom headsets. H
e explained that while Crease’s request might seem unorthodox, in the larger scheme of things it was what headquarters wanted to improve the image of the air base. And it kept Crease out of his cockpit.
Honeycutt went back into the bowels of the plane, opened a panel and retrieved the dropsonde. The thunder of the engines and the storm roared all around. He handed the silver baton to Crease.
Honeycutt got down on the deck and opened the instrumentation hatch, and both men were chilled by the rush of air.
“Now remember,” Honeycutt shouted above the wind, “don’t release the dropsonde until I tell you we’re over the eye.”
“Don’t worry about me,” Crease shouted back. “You just make sure you get all this on tape!”
Honeycutt hoisted the video camera onto his shoulder and prompted Crease: “Readyyyyyyy, readyyyyyyy…three, two, one…now!”
Crease tossed the dropsonde underhand toward the open hatch. Flying up in the air, end over end, the twirling instrument looked like a nice shiny stick, and Toto leaped out of his pouch, took two steps and jumped. Toto caught the dropsonde in his mouth at the top of the baton’s arc.
Crease’s eyes bulged as Toto and the dropsonde hung suspended in the air for a split second, and then both fell through the hatch and disappeared into the hurricane.
“Ahhhhhhhhh!” Crease yelled in terror. He spun and lunged for the video camera on Honeycutt’s shoulder.
“What are you doing?!” said Honeycutt.
Crease didn’t answer; he pressed the eject button, grabbed the tape and gave it a quick push-throw toward the open “bomb bay” doors like a two-handed shot put. He pulled his hands back fast as if it had been a hot potato.
“Good. Nobody ever needs to see that footage.”
He looked back at his cameraman. “I’ll do my best to get you off the hook, Honeycutt, but it’s going to be difficult explaining how you could have let such a brainless thing happen.”
Honeycutt knocked him cold.
23
C. C. Flag pulled up to Hammerhead Ranch in a snow-white Hummer. He had full, pleated pants, a loose Australian bush shirt and a “ USA ” America ’s Cup baseball cap.
An hour later there was a curt rap on the door of Flag’s motel room.
“Coming,” said Flag.
But Zargoza didn’t wait and opened the door with his own key.
Flag now wore a bloused white-cotton Banana Republic shirt, beige slacks and amber shooter’s glasses. He had a crystal bourbon decanter in his hand and a svelte Asian-American call girl on his lap. Flag pushed the hooker up off his knees and gave her a light spank. “Got some business, baby. Why don’t you wait at the bar? I’ll be done soon and then me love you long time.”
“Whatever,” she said in an accent more American than Flag’s. She lit a Tiparillo and strolled sensually out of the room, leaving Zargoza and Flag in her exhaust cloud of arrogance and contempt that made both of them hate her guts and want to marry her.
“Bourbon straight with ice-water chase?” Flag asked as he poured.
“We’ve got problems,” said Zargoza. “You gotta get back out to the nursing home.”
“But I went yesterday.”
“You have to go again,” said Zargoza. “I just heard a TV crew is starting an investigative series.”
“I thought they only did sex scandals,” said Flag. “Since when are they reporters?”
“I know, I know. You can’t count on anything these days,” said Zargoza. “I got enough on my plate with the stolen beepers and cocaine…”
Flag stuck his fingers in his ears. “I didn’t hear anything. I’m a respectable businessman.”
“Shut the fuck up!” said Zargoza. “You’re worse than any of us. You’re a slimy salamander with gonorrhea, a pustulating sea slug, a mucous-tracking gastropod in a construction site Porta-Johnny! You’re a-”
“I get the picture,” said Flag. “What do you want from me?”
“Glue a smile on your face and go meet the TV crew. Put a sympathetic face on this thing. America trusts you, God help ’em.”
“I speak to their wants and dreams…”
“Bullshit!” said Zargoza. “They’re zoned out! A little old lady is blown to bits and all anyone can think about is this TV dog that wears funny clothes.”
“Aren’t you connected to the people who killed the old lady?” asked Flag.
“That’s not the point,” said Zargoza. “I’m talking about the big picture here. This is a terrible comment on our society.”
A n old but reliable Ford Fairlane chugged across the bridge to the barrier islands of Tampa Bay, hot on the trail.
Paul, the Passive-Aggressive Private Eye, wished it was the forties. He carried everything he needed in a fifty-year-old dark-checkered suitcase. When he checked into a motel, he pretended he was Philip Marlowe getting a room above a greasy spoon where the night manager was a junkie who looked like William Burroughs, and there was a harsh red neon sign flashing through his window all night. He’d shave with a porcelain cup and brush, pack his piece and go down to the greasy spoon for a short-order slice of meat loaf and a cup of joe and imagine he was in an Edward Hopper painting.
It didn’t dispel the illusion a bit that Paul was staying at the Toot-Toot Tugboat Inn on St. Pete Beach and dining at The Happy Clam. Paul took a mug shot of Art Tweed with him everywhere and showed it to everyone.
While good with inanimate objects, Paul was inept and annoying when questioning people about Art. His relentless passive-aggressive inquisition merely bugged some, while others called the police and alerted the media.
On his third day in Tampa Bay, Paul was showing the mug shot to a woman who rented cabanas on the beach. She shook her head no. Two squad cars arrived and the cops asked Paul what he was doing.
Paul told them the whole story until the cops said he was getting on their nerves and they left. As the cruisers pulled away, a silver van that had been waiting on the side of the parking lot pulled up. It had sprigs of antennas and a rotating dish. On the side, in giant letters: “Florida Cable News.” Underneath was a smiling portrait and a script banner: “Featuring Blaine Crease.”
The side panel of the van slid open and Crease climbed out wearing Desert Storm camouflage. He walked purposefully to Paul.
“I’ve been doing some checking up on you,” said Crease. “You’re a private investigator. Your name’s Paul. My sources tell me you’ve been showing a photograph all over the beach-you’re tracking some kind of desperado.”
Crease grabbed Paul’s hand and shook it hard, then looked away. “The cops ain’t giving me shit. But I figured it out. It’s because they don’t have shit.”
“There’s nothing for them to have,” said Paul.
Crease held up a hand for Paul to stop. He leaned closer and whispered, “Between you and me, you’re the man! I can tell by the way you hold yourself. You’re running circles around the cops. You probably have the whole thing figured out already-just tying up loose ends now. I heard a rumor it’s a hit man. That true?”
“That’s the stupidest thing-”
“Don’t try to be modest,” interrupted Crease. “You’ve got a style. Reminds me of…” Crease tapped his head like he was on the edge of recollection. Then he opened his eyes wide. “Philip Marlowe! That’s it! You’ve got this whole Robert Mitchum quality goin’ on.”
Paul blushed and looked at the ground.
“So, tell me, who are you tracking? Who’s the bad guy?” Crease said, rubbing his palms together. “Come on. I’m dying to know.”
“You’ve got it wrong. I’m not after a bad guy,” said Paul.
“Great! Love it! An equivocal story-the amoral universe!” said Crease. He made two Ls with the thumb and forefinger of each hand and put them together in a square to frame an imaginary picture in the air. “The mass murderer with a heart of gold! Finally, a villain we can root for in the new millennium!”
“No, that’s not what I mean-”
“Paul
, it’s me! Blaine!” Crease thumped his palm over his heart.
“Really,” said Paul. “I don’t know where you’re getting this stuff.”
Paul told him all about Art Tweed and the mixup at the hospital and being hired to track Art down and give him the good news. “Art Tweed is no hit man.”
“Right. I gotcha,” said Crease, and he gave Paul a knowing wink.
A black Jeep Eagle raced through the unsettled countryside east of Tampa. The Jeep was plastered with Boris and Blitz-99 bumper stickers, and it sailed through a red light at the Four Corner intersection of State Road 674 in the phosphate mining depot of Fort Lonesome. The radio was on full blast.
“So remember: Vote yes on Proposition 213!…because they have weird accents!”
“Now that guy is focused!” said the Jeep’s driver. “He’s the only one with the guts to stand up for people like us!”
“Amen!” the two passengers said in unison.
The driver had shoulder-length blond hair in dreadlocks, the front passenger’s head was shaved, and the guy in back hanging on the rollbar wore an F Troop cavalry hat with a plastic arrow through it. The three high school students dressed in punk rags from the Salvation Army and talked about being oppressed by minorities, but in fact they all lived in two-hundred-thousand-dollar houses in the sleepy bedroom suburb of Brandon.
After Boris’s show ended, the driver tuned to a salsa dance station, which was advertising the Latin Heritage Festival that weekend in Ybor City.
“I can’t believe it!” the driver exclaimed. “They’re holding a party for these people when they should be tossing ’em back over the border!”
“And it’s the same night as our Proposition 213 rally!” said the one on the rollbar. “What an insult!”
“Tell you what we should do,” said the driver. “Go listen to Boris at the rally, get pumped, and then drive over to Ybor and crack some heads.”
“Amen!” they said again, and they raised their fists together in a Pearl Jam pose.
The three teens had yet to come up with an official name for their little think tank, but their classmates already had: the Posse Comatose.