by Tim Dorsey
“I don’t mind,” said Max. “There are some movies I want to watch.”
Another roar over the hotel. Metro Tom looked up at the ceiling. “Who picked this place?” He pulled back the curtain. A string of headlights on the Courtney Campbell causeway. One light was higher than the rest, an inbound Southwestern. Another rumble as it flew over. The editor closed the curtain.
“How’s he going to get any sleep with all that racket?”
They looked back at the bed: Jeff snoring, letter opener still in hand.
“Think we should turn down the covers?”
“Let him sleep.” Tom gently slid the letter opener from his fingers and set it on the nightstand.
The editors left the room and said good night to the police officer. The cop took a last look inside and closed the door.
Four A.M.
A TV glowed in the dark: MSNBC replaying excerpts of the McSwirley interview on Florida Cable News. Hands in latex gloves clicked the remote control over to CNN. McSwirley again. Fox. McSwirley. It was like that all night, every channel.
An interviewer held out a microphone. “Does the Eight Ball tell him to kill?”
A fist punched the wall. The gloved hands reached down and tightened Velcro straps on a pair of sneakers.
CHAPTER FORTY-TWO
THE NEXT MORNING
A JetBlue flight roared overhead.
Jeff sprang up in bed. The room bright as noon.
The noise passed. McSwirley sought his bearings and remembered where he was. He threw legs over the side of the bed and trudged for the bathroom. Something on the dresser stopped him. A single sheet of hotel stationery with large, forceful handwriting. He picked it up.
Think you can hide from me? Are you enjoying all the attention I should be getting? You just don’t learn. So I’m forced to teach you another lesson. Have a nice day.
Jeff began trembling so badly he couldn’t read the sign-off: Eye of the Storm.
Banging on the door. “Police!”
Jeff jumped and dropped the note.
The door crashed open. In they poured with guns drawn. Body armor and black helmets. “On the floor! Now!”
They didn’t really give him the chance. Jeff ’s face ate stain-resistant carpet. His arms were twisted behind his back for the cuffs.
“What are you doing?” yelled Jeff. “What’s going on?”
“You’re under arrest!”
TAMPA BAY TODAY
The newsroom was a hive of morning industry. People running in conflicting directions. Photographers in flak jackets grabbed shoulder bags. Reporters broke out extra emergency scanners and laptops. Editors raced back and forth with already obsolete bulletins. They posted a news clerk full-time at the big washable map of Florida. Someone handed him a note; he drew another dash with his Magic Marker.
Murmuring department heads took seats at the conference table.
“Where’s Max?”
“Still at the hotel.”
Metro Tom took charge. “Just have to start without him. This is too big.” He turned toward the wire editor. “Those numbers still holding up?”
“No. They’re higher. Latest update from Coral Gables just reclassified it.”
“But how is that possible?” said Tom. “It was just a tropical depression yesterday. Supposed to sputter out near Eleuthera by the weekend.”
“This weird weather cycle the last few years,” said the wire editor. “We’re in uncharted waters.”
Tom looked across the newsroom at the washable map. From the Gulf of Mexico, a series of red dashes placed category-three Gaston on a dependable northeastern track across the state. The news clerk moved to the other side of the map and made a new set of northwest dashes, straightening out the wobbling path of a previously aimless system, now Isaac. Projected to slice across the state from the opposite direction.
Tom took off his glasses and rubbed the bridge of his nose. “Two hurricanes at once?”
“Still anyone’s guess where they’re going to cross,” said the wire editor.
“What happens when they do?”
“Nobody knows.”
Another news clerk ran up to the conference table. “Sir, the first storm. We have landfall in Port Charlotte. It’s on TV.”
Tom replaced his glasses. “I’ve seen enough landfalls.”
“You haven’t seen this.”
Department heads rushed downstairs to the main control room of Florida Cable News. The crowd was already four deep at the monitors.
“Oh…my…God…!”
The roomed hushed. Just swirling wind from the audio feed. And that image on the screen, the same one seen in homes and businesses across the state.
A mighty cheer went up in the electronics section of a department store. “I’ve never seen anything like this!”
Stranded fliers in a Gold Member lounge. “He’s really getting into it!”
High fives in a sports bar across from the hockey arena. The reason was on the overhead sets: A man in a parrot costume staggering across the beach, swinging a fifth of Jim Beam by the neck. He tilted his head way back and jammed the bottle into the beak.
“Man, when the Party Parrot parties, he goes all the way!”
The bird stumbled a few more steps toward the surf and defiantly flung the bottle into the gray storm. The bottle flew back and bounced off the costume head with a small explosion of feathers.
“What’s he doing now?”
“Not sure. Looks like he’s reaching down for something.”
“I think it’s his zipper, or what ever those costumes have.”
“No, he can’t!…He wouldn’t!…”
“He is!…”
It became the defining image of an era, a single iconic moment releasing years of latent hurricane frustration from an entire region.
“He’s waving at the storm with his—”
Another breathless news clerk ran up to the metro editor. “Sir…”
“Not now.”
“But it’s McSwirley.”
“What about McSwirley?”
FIFTEEN MINUTES LATER
Sedans screeched up to an executive hotel north of the airport. Suits sprinted past the valets.
The tenth-floor hallway:
McSwirley’s arms remained fastened behind his back. Rugged police hands pinned his neck against the wall. “Don’t move.”
Jeff could see into the next hotel room, because the door was open. And not because maids were cleaning. Police photographers, fingerprint dust, blood. On the floor, protruding from behind the bed, two legs.
A detective crouched and stepped under the crime-scene tape across the doorway. He held a clear Baggie to Jeff ’s face. “Recognize this?”
“My letter opener. Where’d you find it?”
The detective’s head swung toward the open door. “That guy’s chest. Return to sender.”
“Max is dead?” said McSwirley.
“You ready to confess?”
“I didn’t do it!”
He grabbed Jeff by the front of his shirt. “Why, you slimy—”
A jet roared. Elevator doors opened at the end of the floor. Expensive shoes walked briskly down the hall. Mayor, police brass, editors.
“Uh-oh.” The detective released Jeff and began reading his rights.
“What the hell’s going on here?” yelled the chief. “Why is that man handcuffed? You’re supposed to protect him, not—”
“Sir,” said the detective. “There’s been another murder. We found his letter opener in the victim’s heart.”
“I didn’t do it!”
The detective raised the Baggie again. “Got a good set of prints. Bet it matches our guy here.”
“Of course my prints are on it,” said Jeff. “I handled it last night.”
“That’s right,” said Tom. “I saw him. There’s got to be an explanation.”
“There is,” said McSwirley. “Go look in my room. There’s a—”
Anot
her officer came out of Jeff ’s suite with another clear evidence bag. Inside: a single sheet of hotel stationery.
“That’s it!” said McSwirley. “That’s the note! It’s from the killer! He’s framing me! He was in my room!”
“That’s not possible,” said the first detective. “We had a guard posted all night.”
The police chief looked at a uniformed officer standing quietly in the background. “You were here all night?”
“Yes, sir.”
“See anyone?”
“No, sir.”
“And you’re sure you didn’t leave? Not even for a second.”
“No, sir. I mean, yes, sir. I mean I took a smoke break. A couple of ’em. But just for a minute. There’s no way—”
“You’re suspended pending dismissal! Get out of my sight!”
The officer left quickly. The chief turned toward the detective with the note. “Let me see that.” He read it quickly and handed it back. “You just found this?”
“It must have slipped behind the dresser…” said the detective.
“…when I dropped it,” said Jeff.
“Uncuff him!” shouted the chief. “Now!”
“Yes, sir.”
The bracelets came off. McSwirley rubbed his wrists.
“Find another hotel,” said the chief. “Triple the guard.”
“Yes, sir.”
CHAPTER FORTY-THREE
PEANUT ISLAND
Coleman moaned and raised his face from a cold, unfamiliar concrete floor. Like most mornings.
He heard music. Different from what he was used to at this hour. A military sound, drums and bugles. He sat up and took off the parrot head. “Serge?…”
Coleman thought it was Serge, but he couldn’t be sure, because Serge was backlit by the portable hurricane spotlight that he had set up to backlight himself. It was next to a boom box on top volume: “Hail to the Chief.” Serge’s hands were on his hips. He wore a leather bomber jacket.
“Serge, is that you?”
“Shhhh! I’m letting the moment build. I’m almost there.”
“Almost where?”
“Nineteen sixty-two.”
The ceiling was a low arch of corrugated government metal. Coleman pushed himself up from the floor and looked around. Row of lockers, utilitarian desk, cylindrical escape tube leading deeper somewhere else. The place had a cave quality, like they were underground, because they were. Serge stood in the middle of an official design painted on the floor.
The seal of the President of the United States.
“What the hell is this place?”
“Another perfect spot to ride out a hurricane,” said Serge. “I know them all.”
“Looks like some kind of shelter.”
“JFK’s nuclear bunker from the Cuban Missile Crisis. We’re on an old fill island in the middle of Lake Worth inlet, just a few hundred yards from the shore of Palm Beach, where the Kennedys used to winter. They secretly built this place after he was elected.”
“But I don’t understand,” said Coleman. “If this really was the president’s shelter…I mean, the security. How did we possibly get in here?”
“Easy. And it’s not the first time.” Serge tuned a portable TV to storm coverage. “Used to camp out here with my Little League team in the early seventies. Back then, the bunker was literally abandoned. Bunch of rust, broken locks. We snuck in all the time and told ghost stories in the tunnel. A few years later, some of the kids replaced the ghost stories with marijuana.”
“Doesn’t look abandoned now.”
“They finally realized the history they were about to lose and fixed her up. But it’s still just a little exhibit with nothing really to steal, so there isn’t much security to speak of. Even less since it’s still temporarily closed after damage from Hurricane Frances.”
Coleman tried to reattach tape to the parrot’s beak, but it drooped again. Serge turned off his music. “We’ll wait for the eye, then make our break.”
“Serge?”
“What?”
“How did I get down here?”
“I carried you again.”
“Thanks.”
Serge pointed at the tiny TV and its twin, split-screen radar sweeps. “Don’t thank me yet.”
TAMPA BAY
Hotel number two. Actually, motel. It was on the Gulf of Mexico, one of the old roadside deals being drooled over by condo developers. Single story, vintage aqua neon, art deco office with wraparound corner window. Middle of the Treasure Island strip. The Surf, the Sands, the Satellite.
McSwirley checked the closets and under the bed. He locked the locks a tenth time. He tested the makeshift length of broomstick the motel’s own er employed to burglar-proof sliding windows since the state had taken the downturn. He looked out the glass at foaming waves, hovering gulls and the ancient ruins of a shuffleboard court. He closed the curtains tight, then unlocked the locks and went outside to make sure nobody could peek in.
Three cops reclined in patio furniture and sipped coffee. “What are you doing?”
“Checking to make sure nobody can peek.”
Laughter. “Relax, kid.” The cops weren’t in uniform. Instead, they wore undercover tropical shirts and shoulder holsters to fit in with Florida.
Jeff went back inside. Locks bolted. He sat on the foot of the bed and listened to his heart. That just made it louder. He turned on TV for distraction. Law & Order. Maid finds a body in a motel room. He changed the channel. A phone rang. He leaped from the bed. “Jesus! I can’t take it!…Okay, breathe slowly. It’s just your cell…. Hello?”
“Jeff, it’s me, Serge…”
“Aaaauuuhhhh!!!”
“Jeff! What’s the matter?…”
Two police officers with headphones sat in a van across the street. “This is the call. We got him now.”
Jeff slammed the phone down.
One of the officers in the van took off his headphones. “Did he just hang up?”
Across the state, Coleman looked at Serge. “What’s the matter?”
“The line went dead. Our pal must be in trouble!”
“Try him again.”
“Already dialing.”
The other officer in the van pressed headphones to his ears. “Hold on. Got another incoming call.”
Jeff apprehensively opened the phone.
“Jeff! It’s me, Serge! Are you in danger?”
An officer took off his headphones. “He fuckin’ hung up again!”
Rrrrinnngg!
“Jeff!” said Serge. “What ever you do, don’t hang up!”
Click.
Headphones went flying across the van. “Son of a bitch!”
Jeff paced feverishly. An idea stopped him midstep. He grabbed the handle of his overnight bag and hoisted the Samsonite onto a bed. Manic digging through socks. There it was: one of the camcorders Gladstone Media had issued all its reporters for intrusive tragedy footage. He found the adapter and plugged it in—“Please, please, please…”—still worked. He set the tape speed on superlong play and looked around the room until he saw it. The perfect spot. He slipped the video camera under a spare blanket at the top of the closet. He hit “record” and left the door ajar. There. If he didn’t die, at least he was going to have some answers.
Jeff turned off his cell phone and crawled under the covers. Sleep came like dental gas.
CHAPTER FORTY-FOUR
SUNRISE
The Gulf of Mexico had hurricane sky.
A sharp knock on a motel room door. “You okay in there?”
Jeff sat up quickly and looked around. How long have I been out? His checked his watch.
Another knock. “Jeff, answer me!” Then muffled conversation: “Think we should go in?”
The door opened a crack. The cops turned and broke off discussion. “There you are. We were worried.”
Jeff rubbed his eyes. “I’m fine.”
“Okay. Tell us if you need anything. We’re ordering later. Me
xican place.”
Jeff stretched and yawned. “I’ll let you know.” He closed the door and shuffled toward the bathroom. He froze.
A sheet of paper on the dresser.
I thought we were friends….
Jeff dropped it without reading the rest. He ran to the closet and reached under a blanket. The camcorder was still there, undetected. Jeff rewound the tape and began watching the tiny monitor. Just an empty room except for McSwirley lying still in bed. He skipped forward through the tape. Nothing, nothing, nothing—stop! What was that? He rewound. The part he’d been looking for. Someone entered the frame and began writing a note on the dresser…. Grainy, low light. Hard to identify. Jeff slowed the tape and brought the monitor closer to his face. There we go, come on, please turn around…. The person in the tape turned around. Terrified recognition flooded Jeff ’s body. Legs buckled. He grabbed his cell phone and turned it on to call the paper. It rang in his hands.
“Jeff, it’s me, Serge. We have to meet right away. I know they’re listening, so I’ll speak in code. Remember that fail-safe contingency place I always talked about?—”
The phone broke apart on the terrazzo. Jeff ran out the door.
“Jeff,” said one of the cops. “Where are you going?”
Jeff kept running toward the beach.
The cops looked at each other. “What’s he doing?”
“Think we should chase him?”
“If we like our jobs.”
They leaped from patio chairs and took off across the sand. “Jeff! Wait up!”
ST. PETE BEACH
St. Pete Beach used to be called St. Petersburg Beach, but the name was too long for certain government computers, which lopped off “Beach” and sent subsidy checks to the nearby municipality of St. Petersburg. So they shortened it to “Pete,” an idea that didn’t sit with the locals.
Another idea they hadn’t warmed to was the closing of the Pelican Diner. The vintage chrome eatery sat a seashell’s throw from the Gulf of Mexico, one of the last authentic 1940s nighthawk joints. It was dispiriting to see the diner empty and decaying. There hadn’t been a customer in years. Until today.
Agent Mahoney sat alone in the last booth reading the morning paper. He knew he’d been inside Serge’s head a little too long, and his gut told him to back off, but Serge was so close! He could feel it in his bones like the approaching weather. Mahoney took a swig of coffee and checked his slender Elgin wristwatch with the alligator strap. Time to make the final plans. He studied the newspaper’s latest tracking chart and added some notes with a fountain pen.