by Tim Dorsey
Coleman used a single finger to scratch a furry head. “Mr. Zippy, you don’t like algae blooms, do you?” He looked up at Serge. “He says he doesn’t . . . Ow, damn!” He quickly yanked his finger back. “Mr. Zippy just bit me!”
“What kind of sickness did you inflict on him?”
“Nothing, I swear.”
“Did it draw blood or was it just a little nip?”
“Just a nip.” Shaking a finger. “Still hurts.”
Serge nodded in understanding. “The guy at the pet store explained it to me. If they’re scared or pissed off, they can really bite, but if it’s only a nip, it’s because they’re so smart.”
“How is biting me smart?”
“Their intelligence requires constant mental stimulation, and they let you know it. That’s what is known as their I’m-bored-as-shit-please-entertain-me bite.”
Coleman looked down at the pouch, wiggling silly fingers next to his ears and sticking out his tongue. Mr. Zippy squeaked. Coleman petted him.
“He bit me again.”
“Here,” said Serge, passing his smartphone across the front seat. “Let him watch some stuff on YouTube.”
“Like what?”
“Zany ferret videos. There’s like a thousand for every occasion. One thing YouTube has taught me is that other people are drilling deep into ways to waste their lives.”
“Okay, let me try . . .” Coleman got a video going and held the phone to the pouch. “I think it’s working. He’s getting into it.”
Serge glanced over. “What’s it playing?”
“There’s a ferret in a sweater, and now two more are losing their minds in a pile of packing peanuts, another one is rolling a watermelon across the kitchen, another is riding on the back of a house cat like a jockey, one just crawled completely inside an empty tube of Pringles . . . I had no idea they were so talented.”
Serge got out of the car and stood gazing across a stunning vista. “Time to take in one last sunset look from the top of the dike before we proceed.” He unhitched a camping canteen from his belt and slugged cold coffee.
A minivan came up the access ramp and parked nearby. The vehicle’s sliding door opened, belching out children, who promptly began screaming as they ran in pointless circles. Exhausted parents climbed down from the front seat.
“A family!” Serge quickly chugged and capped the canteen. “People still care! I must congratulate and share the good news!”
The parents leaned against the minivan’s bumper, soaking up the view and eating granola bars. Serge blustered over, jumping like he had a pogo stick. “Thank God you made it! You don’t see anyone else up here. That means you’re special for caring!” He bobbed on the balls of his feet. “You just have to visit the mass grave next, I insist. Your thoughts on the algae bloom? Seen it from space? That lake is our moon.” Serge tapped the side of his head. “Let it set in. Did you know that the top of this dike is part of the thirteen-hundred-mile Florida National Scenic Trail? My faithful pal here is Coleman, and that’s Mr. Zippy, my service animal. Mental condition, nothing you need to worry about. Others, maybe.” He pointed at the kids, still running randomly and screaming. “Children have the best sense of hearing, and yet they’re always shouting at the top of their lungs at each other, especially in motel pools. Could never figure that one out. On the other hand, kindergarten is my religion. The children will lead us . . . Coleman, you ready?”
“I’m in.”
The pair began running aimlessly around the top of the dike, screaming shrill gibberish to mimic the children: “Wa-wa-wa-wa-wa! . . . Yi-yi-yi-yi-yi! . . . Blobidy-blobidy-blobidy! . . . Coleman! Tag! You’re it! Can’t catch me! . . . Can’t catch me! . . . Try to catch me!—”
A panel door slammed shut. Serge stopped and watched the minivan race back to the highway. “Man, they must really want to see that cemetery . . .”
Chapter 23
Four Years Earlier
“I fell down some stairs.”
The doctor glared at Captain Crack. “Only if the stairs then got up and fell on your head. Someone clearly beat the crap out of you. Probably more than one.”
“How much longer?” snapped Crack, butterfly bandages across his eyebrows and cheeks. “I have to get back to work.”
“Hold on, just need to finish taping up these ribs.”
Crack didn’t really have to lie. It was one of those off-the-books doctors, the kind you call for a GSW—that would be gunshot wound—when you want to avoid the mandatory reporting to police that the law requires. Every city’s got a few, and all the shady types have them on speed dial.
The doctor finished treating the captain underneath a stuffed wahoo, and left Crack’s office. Captain Nasty had some more people on speed dial who didn’t advertise in the yellow pages. He punched buttons on his cell phone.
“Fallon, it’s me, Crack,” said the captain. “I know you probably don’t remember, but we met a while back through a mutual friend. Vic Carver . . .”
The people the captain was contacting were consummate professionals, the kind he’d like working for him on his boats, but he couldn’t afford their price tag for that sort of long-term employment. On the other hand, it might be for the better, because he wouldn’t look forward to having any kind of business dispute with these cats.
“. . . The reason I’m calling is I have a job for you. . . . No, I’m calling from a burner phone. . . . Okay, check me out with Vic and then we’ll meet . . .”
The next day, Captain Crack stood on the side of the Flagler Bridge over the Intracoastal Waterway to Palm Beach. It was one of those old, low concrete drawbridges that the people who couldn’t afford boats fished from. The fish were apparently biting because the bridge was unusually full. Mainly blacks and Latinos. Straw hats. Someone reeled in a flopping catfish and tossed it in a pail. There was talk, time and again, over on the wealthy island about passing some kind of law to get rid of the people on the bridge, but it never really worked out.
Captain Crack cast a lure out into the water and began reeling. The midday sun was a challenge, even with his ventilated fishing shirt, and patience wasn’t among his virtues. He kept checking his watch. He looked one way toward the modest skyline of downtown West Palm Beach, and then the other toward the tony waterfront mansions with Spanish barrel tiles and royal palms. He heard someone next to him and turned.
Another fisherman set a bait bucket down on the cement next to Crack’s bucket. Both pails were orange and white. The new arrival then cast a line in the water without speaking. He was a head taller than the captain, thinner, more muscular in a formfitting black T-shirt that matched his black hat and jet-black wraparound sunglasses. A formation of pelicans glided along the bridge’s ancient railing. A cheap radio somewhere was playing Cuban salsa music.
“It’s all in the bait bucket,” said Crack. “Instructions, money, just like you told me on the phone.”
The taller fisherman stared down at Crack with unseen eyes behind the sunglasses. It meant: The instructions also were not to talk to me. What did he not understand about standing next to a stranger on a bridge and simply switching identical bait buckets?
“Sorry,” said Crack.
The man brusquely picked up the captain’s bucket and left the bridge.
A white blop of pelican poop hit Crack’s arm.
The sun had just gone down behind an emaciated gas station. The horizon was low and clear over the cane stalks from all four corners of the intersection. Someone walked out of the station scratching an instant lottery ticket with the edge of a dime. Someone else uncapped a bottle in a brown paper bag. The social circle on the stoop was more animated than usual.
“Jamal, if I have to hear about that stupid pass reception one more freaking time, I swear to God I’ll slit my wrists.”
“But it was an ESPN highlight moment!”
“In your dreams maybe.”
A low-riding Datsun sat nearby with purple neon glowing underneath. All the doors
were open for the listening pleasure of an over-powered stereo with the new Grenade sub-woofer. The song changed to Hendrix.
“. . . I went down to the crossroads . . .”
The traffic light changed, and a Dakota thumped to a stop in the intersection. Hank Williams blasted out the open windows.
“. . . Kaw-Liga! . . .”
The light turned green. Someone waved out the driver’s window. A middle-finger salute. “Suck my dick, porch monkeys!”
One of the trio stood up from the stoop. “I don’t believe my own lyin’ eyes.”
“What is it?”
“That son of a bitch is at it again!” said the tight end.
“You’d think he’d learned his lesson,” said the wide receiver.
The quarterback angled his neck forward in the growing darkness. “And it looks like he’s got another little kid with him!”
It was déjà vu all over again. The Datsun blasted out of the parking lot like before, except this time they took it careful not to overrun a detour down a cane road. For whatever reason, the driver of the Dakota made it hard to miss his vehicle. He drove the speed limit and left his high beams on, lighting everything up like a prison break. He turned into a cane field.
“There he is!”
“I ain’t going to worry about killing him like last time!”
The Datsun raced down the dirt road following Crack’s headlights. When they pulled up, they figured Captain Nasty would take off running and shitting his pants. Instead, they found him leaning against his driver’s door, calmly smoking a cigarette. “What’s up, boys?”
“You took another kid!” shouted the wide receiver.
“What kid?” Crack took a deep drag. “I don’t see any children around here.”
“In your pickup cab!” yelled the tight end. He ran up to the passenger window. “What the heck?”
“What is it?” asked the quarterback.
“A small mannequin.”
“What?”
The young man pulled the straw-stuffed human figure from the car and walked back with it for all to see. “He tricked us!”
“But why?”
They were off-balance, staring back at the pickup truck with confused eyes.
Crack Nasty chuckled and snubbed out his cigarette. “Nice knowing you.”
Suddenly a dark, windowless van crashed through the sugarcane in front of them. The side panel flew open and four men in black jumpsuits leaped out. There was no Hollywood final banter. They simply opened up with ridiculous firepower from the latest battlefield mercenary weapons.
At least death was quick.
Helicopters and TV trucks converged on the field the next day. Police found a burst-open bag of cocaine in the Datsun, and more residue on the bodies. The three victims had no criminal records. But they were known to be young, black and hanging out with no employment. Everything pointed to a drug deal gone south. Locals weren’t buying it. They brought in the larger outside law enforcement agencies, and a joint task force went in front of the TV cameras, swearing they would never rest until their investigation brought the killers to justice. But given the area and the evidence, not really.
Captain Crack Nasty was getting away with it again.
Chapter 24
Cow Country
A gold Plymouth Satellite headed up U.S. Highway 98. A Styrofoam takeout dinner box sat on the back seat.
“One thing that should be mandatory on every Floridian’s bucket list is to drive completely around Lake Okeechobee.”
A ferret ran from one of Serge’s shoulders to the other.
“I think Mr. Zippy wants to know why,” said Coleman.
“Because it will recalibrate your sense of place. That’s what we’re doing now. One hundred and twenty miles of dynamically changing culture and landscape. And this empty section between Pahokee and the city of Okeechobee is one of the coolest!”
“He nipped me again,” said Coleman. “He needs more stimulation.”
“It’s like channel-surfing inland Florida,” said Serge. “We’re on the east side, where the highway hugs the rim of the lake, through flats with sabal palms and heron swooping over the road. Moss-draped oaks, bogs and marsh, grassy straightaways with just that looming dike. Plus it continues following the thread, which I will recap for Mr. Zippy: Rawlings to Stetson to Zora to the West Palm Beach cemetery in her book to the Port Mayaca mass grave, and now circumnavigating the lake with more interrelated stops. And people think I’m just winging it . . .”
A deep horn blew.
Serge quickly checked his mirrors and skidded off the road.
“What are you doing?”
“Waiting for the train to catch up,” said Serge.
“Huh?”
Another horn blast.
“Along the east side of the lake, the old train tracks that carried fresh produce up north almost a century ago still have traffic, and they lie in that short strip of easement between this road and the Hoover Dike. You haven’t lived until you’ve raced a train up Lake Okeechobee . . . Here we go!”
Tires spun, black smoke, screeching. The Plymouth hit the road as if shot by a slingshot.
A yellow-and-black locomotive gained quickly from behind, and Serge pressed his right foot down all the way. He began honking and waving. One of the engineers glanced over. Serge leaned out the window, making a pumping gesture with his fist for the engineer to blow his horn.
A long blare followed, and the train pulled away.
Serge fell back in his seat with an afterglow. “It doesn’t get any better!”
“Then why that frown?”
“Incoming thought,” said Serge. “What’s the deal with sales receipts these days?”
“Are we playing another round of tangent?” asked Coleman.
“I’ll go in a darn CVS or Walgreens drugstore to buy a single toothbrush, and I get a receipt that reaches to the floor. You can’t be doing that to people. It’s a drugstore, so they have to know a certain wedge of their clientele have disorders. And now the pressure is on me to read the whole fucking thing because you never know. But it’s always a bunch of coupons for back-to-school supplies or feminine products that make me blush. On the other hand, the receipts at gas pumps are these teensy-weensy little bastards you can barely read. We regulate the size of eggs, but where’s the quality control on this one?”
Coleman nodded. “Half the long receipts seem to have a pink stripe somewhere.”
“This is what I’m talking about!” said Serge. “And another thing: Society now has something called ‘revenge porn.’”
“Is that where someone steals all your porn?”
“So you’d think,” said Serge. “But I just heard through the grapevine that in the middle of a sixty-nine, people are pulling out their cell phones.”
“This is really going on?”
Serge nodded. “You’d think a quaking orgasm would get a thank-you, but no, now it has to be in high def.”
“What do they do with it?”
“Save it for the breakup,” said Serge. “And it’s never pretty: ‘You know how you said I could trust you and ask the most embarrassing thing that you’d like me to do in bed? Well, I have a request . . .’ And the next thing you know, a bunch of coworkers are in their cubicles glued to a text video involving handcuffs and a zucchini.”
“Ouch.”
Serge shrugged. “If those people are going to judge me on that . . . I mean, it was someone else.”
The Plymouth began curling around the northwest shore of the lake. A roar came up from behind and whipped past in the opposite lane.
Coleman’s head spun as he grabbed the dash. “There must be twenty motorcycles!”
“It’s a popular touring route for them,” said Serge. “Which means we’re on the right track. Bikers are a noble breed, stripping away pretense to live in the now. You can always count on them to bird-dog the finest scenic byways.”
More wetlands and vines and scrub brush went by.
Drivers in other vehicles wearing camo baseball caps and pulling airboats.
“Now we’re talking!” said Serge. “Florida’s bayou country, the whole area like a Credence Clearwater album!”
He fumbled to start a boom box.
“. . . Comin’ up around the bend . . .”
The scraggly vegetation gave way to wild palms surrounding the first wisps of the mobile-home parks.
Serge nodded to himself in contentment. “Lake Okeechobee is Florida’s heart, and its beat ripples a pulse far and wide.”
“I thought the lake was the moon,” said Coleman.
“Since when are you listening to me?”
The road wound past more evidence of population hugging the edge of the lake. RV dealerships and RV parks. Bass boats, a country store, a honky-tonk bar, a swamp buggy on tank treads. Signs for gravel and cremation. Then the trailer parks. Trailers on wheels, trailers on blocks, trailers on slabs. Trailers with screened porches, hot tubs and gazebos. There were flowerpots with no flowers, decorative stone turtles next to real ones, and a mailbox shaped like a lighthouse. Someone was casting a fishing line on his front lawn, and someone else walked by on the side of the road in shorts, sandals and a Santa Claus hat, indicating the breadth of the human condition.
Then the local economy. Big Lake Eye Care, Big Lake Bail Bonds, the Big “O” Flea Market.
American flags everywhere.
Another roar came up behind the Plymouth. Coleman turned around. “A bunch more bikers.” They began streaming by the Plymouth. “Except these are all the three-wheel kind. Why are they riding separate from the others?”
“Probably unresolved tension between the groups that goes way back to an incident nobody can remember now,” said Serge. “Most likely a few too many longnecks on a Sunday afternoon, and then one guy started some shit about the number of tires, threats were made, women disrespected. Best to let them sort it out among themselves.”