by Tim Dorsey
“Drop it! Now!” Zargoza shouted. Everyone flattened on the floor.
Serge froze in front of Tennessee ’s picture. Just as he realized Zargoza had gotten the jump on him, other voices began yelling.
“You drop it, Fiddlebottom!” It was the Diaz Boys, aiming TEC-9 submachine guns.
Zargoza dropped his weapon. “I asked you not to call me that,” he said demurely.
“Where’s the five million?” shouted Tommy Diaz, standing with his back to the big-screen TV. “We know you’ve been holding out on us!”
“What five million?” said Zargoza.
“Don’t play simple!”
On the other side of the room, Serge furtively slid the TV remote out of his back pocket. He knew Key Largo by heart. At the right moment, he pressed the volume button.
“Drop it or I’ll blast ya!” yelled Edward G. Robinson.
The Diaz Boys bolted upright. They dropped their guns.
“Now kick ’em away,” said Robinson.
They did, and the guns skittered across the wooden floor.
Almost as soon as they did: “Freeze!”
Serge turned and saw Zargoza had gotten his gun back and was pointing it at him.
“But I just helped you!” said Serge.
“Helping yourself to my money is more like it!” said Zargoza.
“What are you talking about?” said Serge.
“You know damn well…” By the end of the sentence, Zargoza was talking to himself and pacing, waving the gun distractedly, and Serge and the Diaz Boys ducked each time he did.
Tommy Diaz heard more dialogue behind him and he turned his head and peeked. “Hey! That was just the TV set! Foul! We get our guns back!”
Zargoza squeezed off a shot into the roof and mocked Tommy. “Foul! We get our guns back! Where’d you learn to be a hood? Everything’s inbounds!”
“That big gun in your hand makes you look grown up-you think!” said Barrymore. “I’ll bet you spend hours posing in front of a mirror.”
“Turn down that fucking TV,” Zargoza shouted over his shoulder, and Juan Diaz leaned and held down the volume button on the TV console until all the yellow bars marched to the left of the screen.
When Zargoza turned back around, he found Serge chatting socially with Art Tweed.
“Hey! This is a no-talking zone! Knock it off and move over there!” Zargoza motioned to Serge with the gun. “I thought we were pals, but you double-crossed me! You are so dead!”
“No, you’re dead!” said Serge, pointing a finger at Zargoza.
“No, you are!”
“You are!”
“No, you are!”
The other motel guests glanced at each other in terror, Serge and Zargoza still yelling in the background-“You are!” “No, you are!”-Here we go, a bloodbath.
“No, you are!” said Zargoza.
“Behind you!” said Serge.
“You already used that trick! It’s the oldest in the book!”
Serge reached behind his back and pressed the volume button on the remote.
“Drop the gun now!”
Zargoza turned around and saw Humphrey Bogart on TV. He yelled at Juan Diaz again. “Turn that fucking thing down!”
Juan marched the little yellow bars across the TV, and just as he was done, Serge pressed the remote and marched the yellow volume bars back the other way.
“What do I care about Johnny Rocco, whether he lives or dies?” said Bogart. “I only care about me-me and mine. I fight nobody’s battles but my own.”
“I said, turn that goddamn thing down!”
Juan turned it down, and Serge turned it back up again.
“Please, God, make a big wave, send it crashing down on us. Destroy us all if need be, but punish him!” said Barrymore.
“Jesus Christ!” yelled Zargoza. “I’m the one with the gun. That counts for something!”
“No it doesn’t,” said Serge.
“WILL YOU SHUT UP!”
“Uh…no.”
A new voice: “Drop it!”
Everyone turned.
It was Aristotle “Art” Tweed, trying to look mean. He had a gun and he wasn’t afraid to die.
Zargoza dropped his pistol. “Where’d you get the piece?” he asked Art.
“It’s the gun Serge tossed away. There, under that table”-Art pointed to a spot a few feet to his right. “Serge whispered for me to get ready. He was going to make you look at the TV, and when you did, I was to grab the pistol.”
Zargoza snapped his fingers and winced. “Fell for the oldest trick in the book.”
Jethro Maddox, swinging in his parachute harness, was half stupid from repeatedly slamming into the trunk of the palm tree. He heard a ripping sound again and looked up. “Uh-oh.”
“I finally decided what I wanted to do with my life before I committed suicide,” said Art Tweed. “I was trying to figure out who was the worst human being I could kill and make the world a better place. But that DJ got himself burnt up before I could get to him. Guess who that leaves?”
Art stretched out his arm and aimed the gun at Zargoza. “Get ready to meet your maker, shithead!”
“Ahem? Excuse me?” Another voice. Everyone turned.
It was the short, thin man in a charcoal suit and black fedora who had checked into the motel two days ago. He had a brown leather briefcase in one hand and a piece of paper and a fountain pen from the forties in the other. He took a few steps into the middle of the room.
“Mr. Tweed,” said Paul, the Passive-Aggressive Private Eye. “I’ve been looking all over for you.” Paul looked down at Art’s gun and then at Zargoza. “I thought I’d better say something before it’s too late. I’m a private investigator representing Montgomery Memorial Hospital up in Alabama, and we seem to have had a little problem.” He forced a chuckle. “It’s really quite embarrassing. You see, the daughter of one of our employees, she sort of played a little prank. The bottom line, Mr. Tweed, is that you’re not going to die. Pretty good news, wouldn’t you say? Now, if you’ll just sign this disclaimer releasing the hospital of all responsibility and liability…”
There was a terrible crashing sound as Jethro Maddox smashed through one of the Bahamian shutters, landing on top of Art Tweed. “Galanos!”
“That settles that,” said Zargoza. He quickly picked up his pistol off the floor and aimed it at Serge and the others. He ordered two goons to push one of the cabinets from the kitchen in front of the broken shutter. The generator failed for a second and the lights dimmed. Zargoza jumped. “What was that?”
“You don’t like it, do you, Rocco? The storm?” said Bogart. “Show it your gun, why don’t you? If it doesn’t stop, shoot it.”
“Will you turn that fucking movie off!” said Zargoza. “My nerves are shot as it is!”
Zargoza reached over and swiped the remote control from Serge. “Gimme that thing!”
As he did, he heard a new voice from behind.
“Drop it!”
Zargoza rolled his eyes at the ceiling. “Now what?!”
It was C. C. Flag, aiming a pistol. He grabbed a small boy from the group of innocent visitors clustered by the bar and used him for a human shield.
“I’m gonna walk outta here real slow, and nobody’s gonna move a muscle or the kid gets it,” said Flag. He turned to Zargoza. “I know you’ve been planning to use me as the fall guy. I can’t go to jail!”
“You’re talking crazy!” said Zargoza. “It’s the storm. It’s making you crack.”
“Fuck everyone!” said Flag as he backed out of the room, pressing the gun harder up under the boy’s chin.
“Coward!” shouted Zargoza.
“Dung-weasel!” shouted Serge.
“You won’t get away with it, Rocco!”
C. C. opened the door. The hurricane’s eye was just making landfall and the winds calmed. He backed out the door and across the beach behind Hammerhead Ranch and the neighboring Calusa Pointe condominiums.
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sp; Everyone put aside their differences and ran to the door, worried about the boy. C. C. walked backward, a hundred yards away, with the gun still to the boy’s head.
Suddenly, a desperate scream erupted from C. C., and he dropped the child. He stumbled in a circle, grabbing his neck and hollering, suffering the abrupt onset of a mystery affliction. The boy ran as fast as he could toward the bar. But C. C. still had the gun, and he fired in all directions as he spun.
Everyone hit the deck as slugs splintered through the walls and door; one pinged off the antique cash register and knocked a wahoo to the floor. The gunfire seemed to go on forever. The pistol had a hundred-cartridge rapid-feed jumbo banana clip heavily stocked in weapons boutiques across Florida in the NRA’s continuing crusade to level the playing field for duck hunters. The boy’s little legs were not making good time, and from the spray of suppression fire C. C. was laying down, it was clear the boy was riding blind luck.
Nobody knew what was happening to C. C.; everyone in the bar was just yelling for the boy to run.
Art Tweed broke from the back steps and sprinted and met the child halfway on the beach. He scooped him up and turned and shielded the boy with his body and ran back to The Florida Room. There was a big cheer when Art bounded up the steps. Lots of back-slapping, even Zargoza.
Everyone’s attention went back to the beach. C. C. was clicking an empty gun now, still twirling and grabbing his throat with his free hand. They could make out something stuck in his neck, and blood running down his shirt. The foreign object was big and colorful.
The wind picked up again all at once, gusting hard, like when the hurricane had begun.
“The eye’s passing,” said Serge. “We’re getting the backside now. Everyone take cover!”
In the midst of the gale, they noticed someone else was now out on the beach, moving from the condo toward C. C. Flag.
“You sonuvabitch!” the new person yelled as he approached Flag. “You stay the hell offa my property!”
Malcolm Kefauver, the incredible shrinking mayor of Beverly Shores, had just nailed Flag in the throat with his last lawn dart.
The dart had missed Flag’s major arteries, but he was getting light-headed from the sight of his own blood. He twirled out into the water and fell to his knees. Waves crashed over him, and he rolled in the shallow surf like a porcupine fish.
The mayor of Beverly Shores advanced toward the water, taunting him. Flag’s wound wasn’t mortal, but his buoyancy was now a problem. He was in danger of being carried off by the surf. Flag was on his back, losing the fight, and another wave crashed over him and dragged him farther off the beach. He was in only two feet of water, but he was tossed like a cork. With a last, great effort, Flag rolled onto his stomach and dug his fingertips into the sand. Thus anchored, Flag slowly clawed his way back toward safety.
Flag was most of the way out of the water when the incredible shrinking mayor ran right up to him at the edge of the surf and resumed shouting. He yelled in a measured cadence-one word to emphasize each time he stomped on Flag’s fingers-“Let…go…of…my…beach!”
Flag shouted and pulled his hands back to his chest in pain. A large wave knocked the mayor on his back and swallowed Flag.
Flag was quickly a hundred yards out, and his cries were sucked into the growling wind as he bobbed steadily toward Mexico. The mayor turned and headed back to the condo. The wind gusted harder, and the mayor had to lean at an acute angle. He made it to the stage set up on the beach for the Proposition 213 rally and grabbed one of the corner lighting poles for balance. He tried to rest a second. The wind kept picking up, eighty, ninety, a hundred miles an hour. The mayor had continued shrinking since his election and his suit was baggier than ever, catching an enormous amount of wind. Hundred and ten. Hundred and twenty. The Proposition 213 banner over the stage tore loose and flew away.
The guests in The Florida Room had to shut the door again, but Serge and Zargoza took turns watching through the hole where Zargoza had shot through the lock.
When the wind hit one-thirty, the mayor’s feet went out from under him, but he held on to the lighting pole with both hands-flapping horizontally like a yacht club pennant.
At one-forty, it was too much. His baggy suit was fully deployed, and the mayor lost his grip. He sailed out over the Gulf, never touching the water, dipping and lifting and looping like an autumn leaf carried up and away in a strong breeze.
“Look, he’s flapping his arms,” said Zargoza.
“That’s only making it worse,” said Serge. “It’s giving him more lift.”
There was a long moment of quiet, and Serge continued staring out the hole in the door until the mayor faded to a speck and disappeared. When Serge finally turned around, he saw Zargoza pointing a gun at him again.
“You realize this is a cry for help,” said Serge.
“Shut up! I’m tired of your talk!” snapped Zargoza. “I’m taking the money and getting out of here… Sorry…”
Zargoza leveled the revolver at Serge’s heart and thumbed back the Colt’s hammer. He stiffened his arm and began squeezing the trigger.
There was a bang and Serge clenched his eyes shut. But he didn’t feel anything. He slowly opened them and inventoried his body. Nothing. He looked up and saw Zargoza with a silly grin on his face. Serge’s eyebrows twisted in puzzlement. Zargoza was still grinning as he fell forward and hit the floor.
When he did, it revealed Country, standing directly behind him with one of the TEC-9s the Diaz Boys had kicked away.
“What have you done?” Serge yelled.
“I thought you’d be happy,” said Country.
“I had everything under control,” said Serge. He got down on the floor and rolled Zargoza onto his back. He slapped Zargoza’s cheeks lightly. “Wake up! Wake up!”
Zargoza barely opened his eyes.
“Look! I turned the TV down like you asked. Can I get you anything?”
Zargoza smiled calmly and started to close his eyes.
“Wait! Wait! Don’t go yet! Listen, buddy, since we got to know each other so well, why don’t you tell me where the money is-so I can make sure it gets to your favorite charity.”
Zargoza smiled a little broader and said in a weak voice, “You always did make me laugh.”
When Zargoza closed his eyes that last time, Serge’s yell of anguish shook the heavy wooden shutters of The Florida Room.
A fter Zargoza died, Serge, Art and the Diaz Boys sat down at the tables, guns all over the floor, not having the spirit to fight each other. There was a bond from the common goal of saving the boy, and of the ordeal that still lay ahead. The storm was back up to full strength, whipping around and under the bar again.
They looked over each other’s faces with resignation.
Art floated the question. “What do we do now?”
Serge picked up the remote control and hit the volume button. “We watch the rest of Key Largo.”
Time went by in exhausted silence until the sound of the wind outside wasn’t as loud.
“Storm’s passing,” said Lauren Bacall.
“A torn shutter or two, some trash on the beach,” said Bogart. “In a few hours there will be little to remind you of what happened tonight.”
Epilogue
Hurricane Rolando-berto was more remarkable for its insurance totals than loss of life. Prompt evacuation warnings by all but one of the local media outlets averted certain tragedy. Several stretches of the beach roads remained impassable for a week. Tow trucks dragged palm trees out of the streets, and the state flew in snowplows from New England to clear sand drifts. The Department of Insurance threatened to freeze the assets of six companies that tried to pull out of Florida.
In the hours immediately following Rolando-berto, a rookie police officer who lived on the island and owned an all-terrain cycle responded to the 911 distress call from Hammerhead Ranch. Everyone had decided not to mention Country’s shooting Zargoza. The officer wrote diligently in his notebook f
or five minutes before he shouted for everyone to stop talking at once.
“Hold it. Hold it!” he said. “Let me see if I understand. The motel owner was really a gangster. A guy named Lenny was pretending to be Don Johnson. The short fella over there wants to be a private eye from the forties. And this guy thinks he’s Hemingway. Do I have all this straight?”
Everyone nodded.
“What kind of a crazy motel is this?” asked the cop. “Is there anyone here who’s what they’re supposed to be?”
“I am,” said Serge, raising his hand. “I’m a one-hundred-percent, made-in-Florida, dope-smugglin’, time-sharin’, spring-breakin’, log-flumin’, double-occupancy discount vacation. I’m a tall glass of orange juice and a day without sunshine. I’m the wind in your sails, the sun on your burn and the moon over Miami. I am the native.”
And with that he grabbed two of his special bags and dashed out the door.
The remaining guests unlatched the shutters and propped them open. It was getting light out as sunrise approached. The air was still and cool and sandpipers scurried along the edge of the water. A dorsal fin moved offshore in the calm surface. The generator still had plenty of fuel, and, like at all good parties, everyone eventually ended up in the kitchen. They raided the refrigerator to cook breakfast.
The mother of the boy Art saved continued to profusely thank him. Said her name was Sally and it was so hard raising a boy alone. Tommy Diaz started the CD jukebox and picked the Rolling Stones, Let It Bleed, cuing up the whole album. “Gimme Shelter” boomed through the bar, making everyone jitterbug and jive as they walked around.
E mergency-management officials set up a triage center at the old Coliseum in St. Petersburg to handle an unusually large number of cut and bruised old men found wandering the streets in a confused state in the wake of the hurricane.
About half were ultimately identified as nursing-home patients who had apparently strayed from their facilities. The other half were members of an entertainment troupe who had parachuted out of a WC-130 shortly before the storm.
Five Look-Alikes were sent against their will to geriatric care at Vista Isles, where they were soon placed under psychiatric guard and sedated with Thorazine for demanding they be allowed to travel to Pamplona. Five Alzheimer’s patients went on a tour of Europe and performed flawlessly for the centennial celebration of Ernest Hemingway’s birth.