by Tim Dorsey
“…In the middle of this stretch is a small, easily missed concrete building set back from the road in a nest of palms and island vegetation. Above the front door, in Tahitian lettering: BAHI HUT. What do you say we take a peek inside?…”
“Serge, we’re already inside. You’re talking to yourself at the bar.”
“…The lounge’s interior was aggressively dark and Polynesian. Wicker, bamboo, tiki gods, wooden surfboards. The kind of place criminals might hatch schemes in early episodes of Hawaii Five-O. I advised Coleman to try the hut’s signature drink. He ordered two….”
Ten minutes later Coleman had paper umbrellas in his hair over both ears. He caught the bartender’s attention and held up an empty glass. “Another mai tai.”
“Sorry, you’ve already had two.”
“So?”
“That’s the rule.”
Coleman turned. “Serge…”
“Shhhhh!” He was hunched over a newspaper. “I’m concentrating.”
“But the bartender cut me off, and I only had two drinks.”
“Were they mai tais?”
“Yeah.”
“That’s the rule.”
“What?”
“You’re in the venerable Bahi Hut.” Serge scribbled. “Most people drive right by. A lot of the locals don’t even know, but it holds a dear spot in the hearts of all knowledgeable Floridaphiles.”
“What’s that got to do with the rule?”
“Also affectionately known as the Bye-Bye Hut, from the potency of their infamous mai tais. Hence the self-imposed two-drink ordinance.”
Coleman grabbed one of the umbrellas from his hair, opening and closing it. “What’s so special about them? I don’t feel a thing.”
Serge turned the newspaper upside down and marked something else. “Give it time.”
“What are you doing?”
“Being interrupted.” Serge rotated the paper and made another mark.
Coleman leaned over Serge’s shoulder. “Another letter from the killer?”
“This one’s in code. Police are stumped, so they’re asking the public’s help.”
“But if the police aren’t able to solve it, how can the public?”
“That’s how they cracked the Zodiac Killer’s letters. The solution came from a married couple in California. They sat around the kitchen table one Sunday morning and tried to figure it out as a lark instead of fiddling with the crossword.”
“How’d they do it?”
Serge unfolded a Florida road map and aligned it over the newspaper page. He held both up to a dim lamp above the bar. “The teachers assumed the guy was a megalomaniac, so the first symbol had to be ‘I.’ They also correctly guessed that the word ‘kill’ would be big, and they looked for symbols that repeated twice. Sure enough, the symbol for ‘I’ preceded most double characters. Now they had three letters, which they plugged in everywhere else, and it quickly unraveled from there.”
“That’s what you’re doing?”
“Don’t need to. I’ve already cracked it.” Serge used the lamp as a guide and carefully slid the map across the newspaper. “Now I’m just working on this big symbol at the end.”
“How’d you solve it so fast?” asked Coleman.
“The second I saw it, I immediately recognized the length of each stanza. Of course you’d have to be a state-history buff.”
“What are stanzas?”
“What this thing’s written in.” Serge stood. “Get your shit together. We have to head back to Tampa.”
“What for?”
“Start our new jobs tomorrow. I promised my psychiatrist.”
“I don’t want to work.”
“I don’t want to work either, but we need some mad money for the next storm.” Serge threw a couple of fins on the bar.
There was a meaty thud. Coleman picked himself up from the floor. “Whoa, the drinks…” Coleman waved for the bartender again. “What was in those things?”
Serge and the bartender in unison: “It’s a secret.”
TAMPA BAY TODAY
A news clerk ran into the budget meeting. He waved an envelope. “Sir, one of our readers cracked the killer’s code!”
“Let me see that,” said Max.
“Drop it on the table!” yelled Mahoney. “Nobody touch it.” The tweezers again.
Everyone crowded around. “Well, I’ll be,” said Metro Tom. “It’s the state song.”
Someone couldn’t resist a little singing. “Way down upon the Suwannee River…”
“And this thing at the end wasn’t a logo at all,” said Max. “It’s a location.” A tiny cut-out square from a Florida road map was taped over the symbol. “See? He used the edges of the paper as compass points and looked for a spot where the Suwannee crossed a bridge at that angle. Even the bends in the river match up…. It’s signed ‘Serge.’”
“One killer cracked the other’s code?” said Max.
“There is no other killer,” said Mahoney. “The guy’s coming apart, writing letters back and forth to himself.”
“How can you be so sure?” asked Tom.
“You think this is all a big coincidence?” said Mahoney. “What are the odds that nobody could decipher the code except the other lunatic sending us letters?”
“Now that you mention it…But what does the message mean?”
“My gut says the location of the next body.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
TAMPA
I hate work,” said Coleman.
“That’s why they call it work,” said Serge.
The buddies had gone blue-collar. The collars were attached to uniform shirts with red cursive stitching over the pockets. Coleman’s said “Eddie.” Serge’s said “Willie.”
They walked across the parking lot toward a convenience store. It was one of those places where the architecture and shape of the sign told you it used to be a 7-Eleven. But the neighborhood had evolved, and not in a direction sought by the 7-Eleven people. So it was now one of those freelance convenience stores that sold Hustler and rolling papers and was called something like Zippity-Grab-N-Dash.
They had been on their new job for twenty minutes, and Coleman had been griping for thirty.
“Why do I have to push the handcart?”
“Because I have the clipboard.”
“Why do you get the clipboard?”
“Because I’m the supervisor.”
“Says who?”
“Whoever has the clipboard gets to be the supervisor.”
Coleman pushed the cart a few more feet and stopped. “Wait…. Are you saying that if I had grabbed the clipboard this morning, I could have been the boss?”
“Yes, but the question’s academic. That’s the difference between us. You didn’t know to grab the clipboard; I did. It shows I have managerial skills.”
“It’s just a clipboard.”
“Therein lies the irony. You can buy them anywhere, but they possess magic powers. It’s like a camera. Walk around an airport or bank lobby taking lots of pictures and people lose their minds. They think you’re up to something unauthorized, and then it’s confrontation time again in Serge World. A clipboard’s the same but different. You attract an equal amount of attention, except this time the employees keep their distance because a clipboard means you could be someone important from The Home Office.”
“Sounds like bullshit.”
“Try it sometime. If you ever need a psychological edge, walk into a place and start writing on a clipboard. Messes up the staff. Their minds retreat to the fear corner: Are they cutting back on personnel? Did they see me take that money from the register? Sometimes a bolder employee might come up and ask rhetorically if he can help you. You say no, then read his name tag and write it on the clipboard.” Serge opened one of the glass entrance doors to the convenience store. “After you.”
Coleman pushed the handcart inside. “How’d you first discover the power of the clipboard?”
“By a
ccident.” Serge stopped to inhale crisp air-conditioning. “Started carry ing one around all the time because I was constantly having breakthroughs that would slip my mind before I could reach a writing surface. Was in a Kwiki Lube getting my oil changed, and I’m staring absentmindedly and jotting stuff. The manager walks up and asks, ‘Can I help you?’ I say, ‘You already are. You’re changing my oil.’ He points: ‘You have a clipboard.’ I say, ‘Correct.’ He says, ‘What are you writing?’ I say, ‘Societal observations.’ He says, ‘What kind of observations?’ I say, ‘Like, people who work in lube shops get all the supermodels.’ He says, ‘What are you? Some kind of wise guy?’ So I wrote down his name and snapped his picture. Then I was asked to take my business elsewhere. I said, ‘Fine,’ and walked away.”
“What about your car?”
“Oh, I wasn’t really getting my oil changed. I was casing the place for a robbery.” Serge approached the convenience store’s front counter. An immense woman with drawn-on eyebrows and ten piercings around the rim of each ear restocked an overhead cigarette rack while talking on her cell phone.
Serge smiled big.
The woman purposefully looked away and laughed into the phone.
“Greetings!” said Serge. “Hate to interrupt a business call!”
The laughter stopped. Into the phone: “Hold on, someone wants something…. No, someone else…. I know, it never stops…. Yeah, I’m at work….”
Serge continued smiling and tapping fingers on the counter.
“…No, he’s not going away….” She reached up and slammed the plastic Winston rack shut. “Give me a sec….” She covered the phone and gave Serge an inconvenienced look. “Who are you?”
“The new guys.”
“I haven’t seen you before.”
“We’re new.” Serge looked back at Coleman. “Take note. That’s why she’s behind that counter.”
“What’d you say?”
“I was telling him I can see how you got to be back there.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“It’s a neutral statement, personally subjective, like a psychiatrist’s butterfly inkblot. If you feel bursting with success, take it as a compliment. If not, consider it a cultural intervention.”
She squinted with cranial discomfort. “What are you talking about?”
“Exactly. And that’s the question you have to answer for yourself.” He set the clipboard on the counter. “I need you to sign this.”
“What is it?”
“I don’t know. They just said you’re supposed to sign it. You don’t have to, but then I’m forced to tell them you wouldn’t cooperate.”
She scribbled her name. “I don’t want any trouble.”
Serge took the clipboard. “Sometimes it just finds you.” He headed toward the back of the store. Coleman pushed the handcart past an end-cap display of two-liter Mountain Dews. “Where am I going?”
Serge rounded the last aisle. “Over there.”
Rubber wheels squeaked across the unwaxed floor.
“Why do we have to work anyway?” said Coleman. “We were doing just fine.”
“Only six more shopping days till the next hurricane,” said Serge. “I’ve had my eye on a number of things…. I’ll tilt this back, and you slide the cart underneath. On three: one, two…”
Coleman placed his right foot on the handcart’s axle and pushed the bottom lip forward. “You sure are buying a lot of gadgets lately…and guns.”
“I know where you’re going.”
“Up this aisle?”
“No, the age thing again. This spending spree has nothing to do with that. There’s just a bunch of stuff I’ve been holding off on until I was mature enough to control my spending…. I’ll push and you tip the hand truck back until the weight’s balanced on the wheels. On three…”
Coleman tilted the cart.
“Serge…it’s heavy.”
“You got it?”
“Not really.”
“Watch out! You’re going to drop it!”
“…Help.”
Serge grabbed the handles just before Coleman was pinned to the floor. “Here, let me. You have to find the center of gravity. Hold it at this angle and let the cart do the work.”
Coleman got the hang of it and began pushing. “I’m not criticizing. You deserve your new stuff….”
“We’re back on that?”
“I’m just amazed at it all. You got the limited-edition shotgun, the limited-edition pistol with engraved velvet case, the Glock, the derringer, the Mauser, the new laptop with DVD and GPS, a digital camera that also takes movies, a movie camera that also takes photos, a BlackBerry cell phone that takes photos and movies, a satellite radio, a Taser, another iPod when the old one was still perfectly good—”
“The new model has twenty more gigs. I require maximum memory allowed by law.”
“Plus all your hurricane stuff: titanium flashlights, crank-operated weather-band radio, fifty-in-one pocket tool, personal executive defibrillator, foot-pump siphon in case you need gasoline from someone else’s car—”
“Hold up. How can you remember all that?” asked Serge. “And you’re over your syllable limit.”
“I’m higher than a fuck.”
“Wonderful. You’re going to be a real prize to work with. Why’d you go and do that when I told you what we had to do today?”
“Because you told me what we had to do today. I always get high before work. I hate work. It makes it go easier. For the first minutes. Then it intensifies how much I hate it for the rest of the day. You know anything with five-minute shifts?”
“West-side blow jobs.”
“I hate work.”
“Everyone hates work. That’s why they do it. They think the more they work, the sooner they get to stop. But it’s all a big lie because they don’t figure inflation. And someone keeps raising the Social Security age. But I’m under no illusions about my deal with the devil. I need stuff, therefore I work. It’s a paradox beyond my control.”
“What’s a paradox?”
“Like, ‘We sentence you to death because thou shalt not kill.’”
“I thought you were for the death penalty.”
“I am,” said Serge. “So instead I’m against public displays of the Ten Commandments. I just might be the only person in America with a consistent position on those two.”
Coleman uprighted the cart.
“What are you doing?”
“Taking a break.”
“We just started. You haven’t gone halfway across the store.”
“I’m winded.”
“Shouldn’t have stayed up so late last night.”
“I know, but I got really stoned and started playing with some of your new shit. Now I understand why you dig it.”
Serge became deadly earnest. “You didn’t break anything, did you?”
“No. It was all was working fine when I was done. Especially the Taser.”
“You used my Taser?”
“It’s pretty cool.”
“What on?”
“What do you mean?”
“You said you used my Taser. What did you use it on?”
“What do you think? Myself.”
“You Tasered yourself?”
“I couldn’t find my pot. That’s how I came across the Taser. I was going through your dresser looking for my weed—”
“Wait. Why were you looking in my dresser?”
“You’d have to be a pot smoker to understand. When you lose weed, it could be anywhere. Then I found the Taser. You know me: I’ll try anything once. Zzzzapppp! Good thing I was sitting down. After I stopped twitching, I had to wipe all the foam off the front of my shirt.”
“At least you learned your lesson.”
“Actually, I kind of liked it.”
“And I thought you couldn’t surprise me anymore.”
“Killer rush. Bright flashes, sonic hallucinations…So I decided to give your defi
brillator a whirl.”
“What!”
“Fuckin’ great.”
“But that’s for heart attacks! If you’re not having one, it can cause one.”
“I was responsible. I kept it on the lowest setting.”
“Coleman, you’re special.”
“Really?”
“As in ‘Olympics.’” Serge approached the counter again. The clerk was still on her cell. She saw them coming and turned away toward the window. “…Those boobs are not real. Because I just know…. You’re right, they can’t afford it. But they’d already planned on declaring bankruptcy, so first they maxed out the credit cards on a home theater and tits…. No shit. Pretty sophisticated financial planning….”
“Yoo-hoo!” said Serge. “I’m back.”
She covered the phone. “What do you want now?”
“You have to sign.”
“I signed before.”
“You have to sign again. One in. One out.”
“The old guys never made me sign twice.”
“We’re the new guys.”
She cradled the phone against her shoulder and wrote quickly. Serge took the clipboard and pushed the front door open.
Coleman grunted against the weight of the handcart. “I get the clipboard tomorrow.”
MIDNIGHT
A nondescript pickup drove quietly through the Interbay section of peninsular Tampa, just north of the Air Force base. It turned onto a dark residential street featuring more pickup trucks with bumper stickers announcing political grievance and morning radio preference.
The truck passed the padlocked chain-link fence around a rented two-bedroom ranch house with brown water stains and absentee landlords. The house was dark except for the blue glow from a back window.
The room was a fire hazard. Stacks of yellowed newspapers almost to the ceiling. Under the window was a desk, and in the chair sat a man with surgical gloves. The latex appeared luminous in the dim light of a twelve-inch TV with snowy picture tube and no sound. The hands folded a single sheet of stationery and creased it smartly. It was slipped into an envelope that was already addressed:
JEFF MCSWIRLEY
STAFF WRITER
TAMPA BAY TODAY…
The envelope’s adhesive flap was moistened from a finger bowl and pressed shut. The man stood and walked to the back wall, completely covered, a floor-to-ceiling bulletin board of taped and thumbtacked items. It started with faded newspaper clippings. Hundreds of them. Variety of topics, but one thing in common. The byline. Jeff McSwirley. Most were heavily marked up in ballpoint. Triple underlining, emphatic circles, intense marginalia. The articles progressed chronologically, left to right, eventually reaching the present: Tuesday’s report on Serge. More circles than usual on that one. Then came the photographs. Hundreds again. McSwirley again. The big blowups were from his newspaper tenure, but others went back years, to grade school.