by Tim Dorsey
A blue light flashed.
It was the glint off a rising meat cleaver that caught the TV’s reflection. The blade came down heavy through the middle of the biggest photo, splitting McSwirley’s face and wedging into the drywall. The man walked back across the room and sat again in the chair. Gloved hands reached down and tightened Velcro straps on his sneakers.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
TAMPA BAY TODAY
Copies of the latest letter sat in front of each chair around the conference table. Nobody spoke.
Dear Jeff,
I’m very disappointed in you. I thought we were friends. But you have been stupid, Jeff. You are more interested in publicizing the weak, hollow, absurdness of this pretender you call Serge. That makes me angry, and you don’t want to make me angry, do you, Jeff? I know you don’t, so I am now forced to instruct you. I don’t want to do what I have to next, but this is all your fault, Jeff. You leave me no choice. Before the moon reaches its final quarter, my full power will be revealed in all its glory.
—The Eye of the Storm
“We have to take him off this story,” said Tom.
“Nothing doing,” said Max. “In fact, we need to get him rolling on this letter right away.”
“I can’t.”
“That’s an order!”
“No, I mean I really can’t,” said Tom. “He’s not available.”
“Why not?” asked the maximum editor. “Where is he?”
“You know.”
“Still? I thought that was just one day.”
“No, it’s not just one day!” said Tom. “I told you we needed to do something.”
“Then do it.”
The metro editor sat across a table from McSwirley. A Plexiglas divider between them. A small speaker in the middle.
“Get me out of here,” said Jeff. “I don’t like jail.”
“Easy, kid. We have our best lawyers working on the subpoena.” Tom gave the reporter a quick once-over. “Jesus, you look like hell.”
“I’ve barely slept. I got this creepy cellmate. Every time I nod off, I wake up and he’s standing over my bed watching me. I ask him what’s going on. He doesn’t say anything and just climbs back into the top bunk. I doze off and wake up, and there he is again….”
“It’ll be over soon.”
“…At mealtime, they take my food. I’m not even thinking about a shower.”
“The attorneys say they can get a hearing. They’ll release you until then.”
“That’s it? That’s all the paper had to do?”
Tom nodded. “You’ll be out in an hour.”
“You could have done this the first day?”
“Max…”
McSwirley put his head down on the table. “I can’t take it anymore.”
One hour later, downtown Tampa was filled with news trucks and TV cameras, all pointing at the front entrance of the jail.
“There he is!”
Cameramen pounced. Editors shielded McSwirley and fought their way through the mob. The Party Parrot jumped in the background.
“Has the serial killer contacted you again?”
“Will you reveal your secret source?”
The metro editor pushed away microphones. “Please! He’s been through a lot!”
“Are you next on the death list?”
They rushed Jeff across the sidewalk to a waiting sedan and shoved him inside. Doors slammed. Cameras converged on the back window.
“Why are you crying?”
The sedan sped off.
Yet another emergency budget meeting was under way when Jeff and his editor burst into the newsroom.
“McSwirley’s safe,” said Tom.
Everyone cheered.
“Glad to hear it,” said the maximum editor. “We need to get him back on the story.”
“He just got out of jail!”
“It’s the damn Tribune and Times,” said Max. “Have you seen their websites teasing to tomorrow’s editions? Both have scoops on Serge and an accomplice applying for jobs. They’re running sample columns he wrote.” The editor stood and began pacing. “Why didn’t they apply here? What are we, chopped liver?”
“Actually,” said Tom, “I think they did.”
Max slammed both palms down on the table. “What!”
“Week ago. Pretty sure it was them. One was nuts and the other was drunk. Had security throw them out.”
“Damn it! You should have hired them!”
“Just when I think I’ve heard everything…”
“At least we’d have writing samples to counter the competition,” said Max.
“They did give us writing samples.”
“They did?”
“Two columns. Pieces of paper folded in tiny squares. But it was just babbling.”
“Please tell me you kept them in their application file.”
“I didn’t keep an application file. I told you, they were crazy.”
“You threw the columns out?!”
“I didn’t say that. Security has ’em red-flagged in their ‘future threat’ file in case we ever have to turn anything over to police.”
The maximum editor snapped his fingers. “Get me security.”
Five minutes later, a uniformed guard arrived with a manila folder. Max removed a heavily creased page. “This is the ‘God Talk with Serge’ column the Trib’s running. We can’t use it.” He tossed it aside and grabbed a second sheet. His lips moved as he read. “Say, this isn’t half bad.”
“Now I have heard everything.”
“No, really,” said Max, slowly rotating the page to follow the writing in a circle around the margins. “You’re right: It’s rambling, but in a good way, like Kerouac…. What’s this hurricane road-trip business?”
“Said he wanted to do a Kuraltesque profile each week showcasing sites of historic Florida landfalls.”
“Well, we’re definitely into hurricane coverage, so it’s relevant.”
“You’re not actually thinking of running it as a real column.”
“We’ll pull our human-interest guy for tomorrow,” said Max. “He’s through anyway. Did you read that thing about his dog?”
“But this is highly unethical!”
“Look,” said Max, “we won’t say it’s an official column. We’ll just run it in the column position and let the public decide.” The maximum editor snapped his fingers again and handed the page to a news clerk. “Type this into the system. Slug it for Jerry’s space.”
“What title should I give it?”
“Use the one it’s already got.”
“Yes, sir.” The clerk walked across the newsroom, planted himself at a computer and began tapping:
The Art of the Night Tour
© by Serge and Coleman, all rights reserved. This means you.
Hi. Serge and Coleman here. Our first column—boy are we excited! They finally let us graduate from Letters to the Editor, and it couldn’t have come soon enough. We were sharing the page with a bunch of kooks! I met this one guy who used to work for an editorial page, and he said the big inside secret is how many turds they get in the mail. I’m thinking metaphorically, and he’s says no, real logs. Some are gift-wrapped for surprise effect, others just squeezed off into the box. Most don’t include letters or notes because, I’m guessing, you know, “Enough said.”
So let’s get to it!
Am I proud to be a Floridian! Storm-resilients! Practically the whole state’s been hit, so I thought we’d make a round-robin and start geographically in Pensacola. Coleman and I had a chance to visit after the last hurricane. FYI: Even though I’m doing all the writing, don’t sell Coleman’s contribution short. He’s like my muse—cracks me up all day long! You know that one friend we all have? Coleman’s that guy, exponentially. Like, how some idiot will get his hand stuck in a jar? Coleman got his head stuck in this big glass candy bowl. I’m reading a book on the sofa and hear him come in the room, and I say, “Hey, Coleman”—without look
ing. He says, “Hey, Serge,” but his voice has reverb like it’s coming out of a toilet. I turn around. “Coleman! What are you doing with your head in a big glass bowl?” “I don’t know.” “How can you not know?” “I woke up, and there it was.” He goes in the kitchen, and I’m reading my book again, and he comes back and asks to borrow my car keys. Then he’s gone a half hour and returns with three bags from the grocery store, and there’s a tap on my shoulder. “Serge, I can’t get it off.” I say, “What?” He says, “I tried ignoring it, but I need it off now.” Thanks again, Coleman. The book had just gotten interesting: This guy’s been stabbing people with icicles, so the murder weapons melt. I’d mentally blocked off the afternoon to make icicle molds for the freezer, because it’s Florida and the book’s in Alaska. I tell Coleman to sit at the kitchen table, hold still and close his eyes. He says, “What are you doing with that hammer?” Then it’s a big chase around the house, and somehow he slips out the front door, and we’re running down the middle of this busy street in downtown Pensacola. We’d driven up there after Ivan, staying with one of our few friends who still had a roof, doing what little we could to pitch in. The mettle of that place! People think St. Augustine is the oldest city, but it’s just the oldest continuous city. Pensacola was founded earlier, except there was an interruption. You guessed it: hurricane. And here they were, persevering once again, days without sleep, shoveling debris, and then Coleman and I go running by with a glass bowl and a hammer. Apparently this was just the comic relief they needed. The whole street broke up! We ran around this tree several times until someone took pity and mashed sticks of butter up into the bowl, and it popped right off. The sun was setting, and before I knew it, they’re all chanting “Night Tour! Night Tour! Night Tour!” Said they want to show us the real Pensacola. Coleman’s head is still lathered with butter, and we tell him where he can meet us later, but he doesn’t want to get left behind, and another friend breaks out a case of these special beers we didn’t recognize. Maudite, La Fin Du Monde. Coleman asks, “What’s this?” The guy just grins. “It’ll kick your ass.” Turned out to be triple-strength import beer, and Coleman had like four right away, and we drove across town to Sluggo’s, an ambitiously subterranean dive that shunned profits and catered to artists and anarchists. Coleman’s getting free beer at the bar because they think he’s an expressionist working in dairy products, and I get talking to the regulars, who say the dunes are up to your nipples in the Flora-Bama Lounge, and people are going snow-blind from sand drifts. I explain that Pensacola sand is so bright because of a geological break with the mainland, which is Georgia red clay, but the barrier islands are quartz. Trivia bonus: Because those pristine beaches are such tourist cash cows, there’s actually a law against transporting red clay across the bridges. I laugh about it, because where’s the profit in that crime? Then another friend yanks me off my stool and says, “You gotta see the Knoll Room.” I say, “What?” but he just drags me into this back room with ripped Naugahyde cocktail booths and flickering Twin Peaks fluorescent lights. And you know how if you’re in a supermarket and see something out the corner of your eye and freak a half second because you think someone’s snuck up on you, but you spin around and it’s just a life-size cardboard guy advertising something? That’s this room on steroids, giant cutouts everywhere. Then it hits me. Those grainy home movies of the Kennedy assassination. This is the cast from the Grassy Knoll: Funny-Sunglasses Lady, Mother and Daughter, Umbrella Man, Windbreaker Dude, Overpass Guy. My friend says some artist kind of got into the JFK thing. I say, “Some story.” He says, “That’s not the story. During the fortieth anniversary of the assassination, the artist loads all the cutouts in his car and drives to Dallas, where he sets them up on the knoll in their same positions, and the cops grab him.” I say, “What was the charge?” He says, “I don’t think there was one. Sometimes society just steps in when the weirdness level gets too high.” Then we go back to the main bar, where everyone’s collecting empty paint buckets and assembling search parties to look for red clay, because, you know, they’re anarchists. We grab Coleman and split and find ourselves driving along the railroad tracks in the middle of bombed-out nowhere, and the only light is coming from this bohemian coffee joint called the End of the Line, which is popular on the hobo telegraph, because all these people keep jumping off boxcars and coming in, and on the other side of the tracks is a giant field and the civic center where they hold the big rock concerts, and after gigs Judas Priest apparently likes to walk across fields and railroad tracks, because there’s a picture of them on the wall playing an impromptu set by the cappuccino machine. Everyone in our group but me is completely gassed, shouting “Night Tour!” again, so we leave on foot, and our group has grown by several hobos, and we walk for miles past the cemetery and all the way to Palafox Street to see if anything else might be open. But nothing is. Then: “Where’s Coleman?” We retrace our steps. “Coleman?…Coleman, where are you?” A door opens, and these young people are helping Coleman and one of the hobos keep their footing. “Coleman, where’d you go?” He says he and his newest buddy found the only open downtown bar, where they sat at the counter and ordered beers. The guy behind the counter gave them strange looks but served anyway. Then Coleman notices these two hot chicks on a sofa staring at them. Not in a good way. He looks around, and it’s one of those chic, foo-foo minimalist bars with no cash register and a theme he’s never seen before. It’s almost like…somebody’s apartment. They were so fucked up they just walked into these people’s pad demanding beer. And got it. Then we hitched a ride with unlicensed contractors out to the beach, where police lights flashed and people were getting handcuffed with pails of red clay, and then we’re trying to find a way back, and the gang got scattered, and me and Coleman spot a pink-neon “Open” sign a mile away and finally reach the strip club to use a phone, and there’s only one customer and four dancers sitting around a card table eating pizza. We wait outside a half hour, and when our taxi finally gets there, he drives right by. The lone customer comes out and stands next to us. I say, “I hope you’re not waiting for a cab,” but he says he has his own ride and do we need a lift? Then we’re in a station wagon with his mom, and a cockatoo jumps on my shoulder and starts squawking “Eat me” in Spanish, and we came home the next afternoon. And that’s pretty much the hurricane history of Pensacola.
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
TAMPA
Loud knocking on the door of a motel room across from Busch Gardens. Actually, it wasn’t knocking. Someone was kicking the door. “Open up! It’s heavy!”
Coleman checked the peephole and undid the chain. Serge came in with a giant square of plywood.
Coleman found one of the many opened beers he’d forgotten around the room. “Where have you been?”
“Getting supplies.”
“How’d you find plywood? TV said all the stores were out because of the storms.”
“That’s why I never go to stores. I hate lines. If there’s any kind of wait at all, I last about as long as the pope on the uneven parallel bars. So when I need plywood, I use another of my Florida hurricane-survival secrets.”
“What’s that?”
“Steal it from construction sites. There’s still a line, but it’s shorter.”
Serge ran back out the door and returned with a portable drill and car audio components from the pawnshops. He made another trip, and another, more and more components: amplifiers, equalizers, signal boosters and pieces of speakers.
Serge hoisted the plywood and placed it over the room’s single window. “Coleman, grab this side.”
“But I’m drinking a beer.”
“Coleman! I can’t hold this whole thing and drill at the same time!”
“Okay, okay. I’m coming.” He drained the rest of the can and gripped the edge of the wood. “Heavier than it looks.”
“Had to go with three-quarter-inch, or she’ll crack for sure.” Serge drilled pi lot holes and sank concrete-boring bolts.
; “It’s slipping,” said Coleman.
“Hang on. I’m almost done.”
“Serge, why are we staying in another dump? I understand when money’s tight, but we got all that cash from our new job.”
“You just want a minibar.”
“No, really. I wouldn’t mind staying at a fancy place for once.”
“Me, too. But I’m making a stand against hypocrisy.” Serge revved the portable drill. “Luxury hotels are like keyhole views into the secret world of conservatives.”
“What do you mean?”
“Who owns the most expensive hotels? Who stays there? As a rule, super-rich conservatives.” Another bolt countersunk into the concrete. “And what do wealthy neocons like to do more than anything? Stick their noses in our bedrooms. Wait, that’s number two. Take our money’s number one.”
“What’s that got to do with hotels?”
“They act all sophisticated and elegant in the lobby. Then they get to the privacy of their rooms.” Serge fed another bolt. “You should see the pay-per-view adult movies—not even an attempt to change the titles for appearance.”
“They all watch dirty movies?”
“Only some, but the rest aren’t complaining, even though they know about it. They’re too busy interfering with our sex lives. Remember Ed Meese?”
“No.”