by Tim Dorsey
“I’ve got your back.”
“This is crazy.”
“Make you a deal,” said Serge. “Just tell him what you told the rest of us at the meeting, and we leave. Nothing will happen.”
“That’s it? Swear?”
“My word of honor. I’m just going to stand in the back of the room and observe. You have the floor.” Then, waving the gun at the rest of the group: “Get up there and give your friend moral support.”
The gang tentatively surrounded the bed. Serge began going through a dresser on the other side of the room. Jim adjusted his Bashful mask so the eyeholes lined up. “Uh, I kind of want you to, you know, give back the stuff you stole.”
“I didn’t steal from anybody!”
“That didn’t come out right,” said Jim. “I’m not accusing. Maybe you were confused. It’s just that my wife’s necklace—”
“Wait a second. Now I know you!” The man jumped out of bed. “You’re that wimp who reported me at work!…”
Serge removed a necklace and watch from the dresser.
“…You almost got me fired with that bullshit!” He stepped forward and poked Jim hard in the chest. Jim and the rest of the group backed up in unison. “You think missing jewelry is bad? Wait till you see what I do to you for breaking into my trailer!…” He poked Jim again. The group retreated another step.
In the background, Serge leaned against the wall, shaking his head.
“…You’re going to regret ever setting eyes on me!” The poke became a shove. Then another. “I know where you live! I’ll burn down your fucking house with your whole fucking family!”
The members had backed up all the way to the door. Serge pushed his way through the group. “Okay, this isn’t going exactly how I’d imagined. Study my technique.” The butt of his pistol smacked the skull much harder this time, opening a spurting gash. Serge grabbed the dazed man under the armpits and dragged him into the bathroom. “Guys, I’ll just be a minute.” The door closed.
A violent symphony: Porcelain smashed, then a mirror. Horrible screams. “You’re killing me!…” Gurgling from the toilet.
“You don’t go near Jim or his tenth cousin!” yelled Serge. “You’ve already forgotten where he lives!”
“Who’s Jim?”
More toilet splashing, followed by desperate gasps for breath.
“Have I made myself clear?”
“Yes! Yes! Anything! Please!…”
The door opened. The gang recoiled at the ghastly sight of Bodine.
Serge jabbed him in the back with the gun. “Now apologize!”
“Where is he? I can’t see with all the blood in my eyes!”
“Three steps forward.”
“I’m really sorry about stealing your stuff. You’ll never see me again. Just keep that lunatic away from me!”
Serge began pulling him back toward the bathroom.
“What are you doing?” said Bodine. “I told him what you wanted.”
“Remedial instruction in case you begin to forget later on.”
“No, I’m begging.” The man went limp. “I’ll make you a deal.”
“You can’t make a big enough deal.”
“Yes I can. Just give me a chance to show you. I’m begging!”
Serge turned to Jim. “What do you think?”
“I want to go home.”
“He’s trying to make amends,” said Serge. “Let’s at least hear his offer.”
Bodine nodded hard. “It’s a great offer!” He rushed to his suitcase and reached under some clothes.
“Freeze!” said Serge. “How do I know you don’t have a weapon in there?”
He backed away. “Check for yourself.”
Serge kept his gun on Bodine as he walked sideways and reached into the luggage. He pulled out a heavy clay object. “Statue?”
“Pre-Colombian,” said Bodine. “Priceless.”
“How’d you end up with it?”
“Smuggled. There’s a huge black market with all these artifact collectors. The guys in Cozumel said I’d increase my investment tenfold when I sold it to these dealers coming over tonight. That’s who I thought you were at first.”
Serge tossed the statue up and down in his palm. “They lied.”
“What do you mean?”
“It’s Chac-Mool.”
“What’s that?”
“The most common souvenir in all the Yucatán. Every street corner has ’em. It’s like coming back from New York with a plastic Statue of Liberty.”
Coleman reached for the reclining clay figure. Serge slapped his hand. “You’ll drop it. You’re drunk.”
“But you said it was worthless.”
“Still a tacky souvenir, which to me is invaluable.”
“The statue guy looks stoned,” said Coleman. “What’s with the bowl in his lap?”
“It’s a replica of the famous figure atop that pyramid in Chichén Itzá. The bowl is where they put still-beating hearts of human sacrifices…. Hey, Jim, how’d you like a cool statue?”
“I want to go home.”
“But we’re having fun.”
“You’re insane!” Jim gestured around the bloody room. “How is any of this fun?”
“Someone crossed one of my friends, so I got to pistol-whip him senseless, destroy his bathroom, give toilet-snorkeling lessons and leave with a cheesy souvenir. Everything I love in life. Want the statue or not?”
Jim buried his hands in his pockets.
“This is your revenge,” said Serge. “Take it or we’d don’t leave. Cops might be on the way.”
“Darn it!” Jim grabbed the statue from Serge. “Now can we go?”
Dwarf masks filed out the front door. Bodine waited until it closed. Then he ran around the trailer in a panic meltdown, flinging clothes at his suitcase. “What have I done? I lost the statue. They’ll kill me for sure!”
Bodine zipped the luggage shut, ran to his front door and opened it.
He froze. “Wait! No!—”
TWENTY-THREE
GULF OF MEXICO
Danielle shook Johnny Vegas’s shoulder. “You okay?” “M-m-m-m-m-…”—pointing up at the captain’s hat. She reached for the top of his shirt. “Now I undress you….”
“B-b-b-b-b-…”
Danielle finished the last button and licked his stomach down to the belt buckle. Then the zipper.
“Whoa! Guess you do like the hat.” Johnny moaned and involuntarily arched his back. A rousing dance beat pounded down from the ballroom directly over them.
She saluted again. “Captain, permission to come aboard.”
Finally! The day he’d been waiting for his entire life! Lucy wasn’t going to pull the football away from Charlie Brown this time!
The sophomore squealed as she prepared to wiggle on down. Something blurred at the edge of her vision. Danielle’s head snapped toward the balcony. “What the hell was that?”
“I didn’t see anything. Go back to what you were doing.”
“What do you mean you didn’t see anything? Something huge flew past the window.”
“Oh, that,” said Johnny. “Just one of the Brimleys.”
“Someone fell overboard?”
“The ship’s barely moving.”
“You’re the captain!”
“I’m off duty.”
Danielle ran naked onto the balcony and leaned over the railing. “He’s screaming for help.”
“I’m sure someone else will hear him.”
She jerked a life ring off the outside wall and slung it with accuracy.
Johnny joined her at the railing and watched the bobbing man hook his arm through the float. “Problem solved. Now where were we?”
“You’re a pig!” She ran back into the suite and practically jumped into her clothes. “I’m out of here!”
The door slammed.
A deep, long horn sounded. A powerful spotlight pierced the fog. A mile ahead, flashing red warning signs. Two more loud blasts a
s the train clacked toward another rural intersection without crossing-guard arms.
The engineers peered out the diesel’s windshield, looking for another fool driver trying to beat the odds. The frequency still amazed them.
But no idiots this time. The engineers relaxed as they sailed through the crossing and back into the empty night. Conversation returned to sports.
“They’ll never trade him because of the salary cap.”
“His knee goes out every year like a clock.”
These were the cliché milk runs. Another empty cargo backhaul. The rest of the state had its share of rail traffic, but nothing like the central Gulf coast, stuck in the golden age of the iron horse. The reason was phosphate, an essential fertilizer ingredient, and this particular part of Florida was the world capital. Giant cranes called draglines quarried vast tracks across Hillsborough and Polk counties. The industry was so weight-intensive that trains were the only viable method to get it to port. They also found a ton of prehistoric fossils down in those pits. They called it Bone Valley.
The diesel’s horn blew through another intersection.
“At least we get to play Green Bay at home in December.”
Taped below the instrument panel was a faxed bulletin from Miami. Central Florida may still be in the golden age, but Miami had just revived the era of the Great Train Robbery.
Another ungated crossing. The crew concentrated. Safely through again.
A rookie engineer pointed at the bulletin. “Should we be worried? I mean, we don’t have weapons or anything to defend us.”
The others laughed. “You new to Florida?”
He nodded.
“Whole ’nother world down Miami way,” said an older engineer. “They can’t even keep utility lines from getting dug up for copper and aluminum, and now junction boxes are disappearing from street corners. These morons don’t know anything about those boxes except they fetch fifty bucks in South America.”
The rookie peeled the bulletin off the control panel and read it again: Bandits hanging concrete blocks from overpasses at windshield level. Engineers saw them and stopped, or didn’t and shattered the safety glass and then stopped. Either way, thieves hopped aboard and robbed the crew.
Another crossing. Flashing red. Doppler effect: Ding-ding-ding-ding-ding…
The rookie taped the bulletin back on the panel. “I’d still feel better if we had a gun.”
“I told you: That’s just Miami. Before concrete blocks it was voodoo chickens.”
“Chickens?”
“Few years back, we started noticing unidentifiable debris on the tracks. Turned out to be a bunch of smelly voodoo shit: chickens and goat heads and little dolls. The iron rails represented some kind of connection to dead relatives. The low guy on the train’s totem pole had to clear the mess off the tracks. Until they realized the ceremonies involved stuffing valuable jewels in the chickens. Then the top guy got the shovel….”
The train was on a long, dark stretch of track near the county line, far between crossings. Nothing to worry about.
“If it’s just Miami,” said the rookie, “why’d they send us the bulletin?”
“Insurance. The whole state got them—”
“Holy Jesus!” The rookie pointed out the windshield.
“What the hell’s that doing out here?”
“Hit the brakes!”
Screeeechhhhhhhhhhhhhhh.
“Oh my God!”
The train continued grinding and sparking down the rails. Hearts pounded. No time to stop before hitting the convertible Trans Am parked across the tracks.
“Grab something!” Everyone braced. At the last second, the car scooted out of their path and down into a ditch.
Everyone exhaled with relief.
Crash.
Windshield impact. They ducked after the fact, but the safety glass had held. They slowly stood back up as the train squeaked to a halt.
“What on earth?”
They all leaned for a closer view of the blood splatter. “Is that an eyeball?”
TWENTY-FOUR
BEFORE SUNRISE
The fifty-car phosphate train would not be on time this morning. Nor would all the others stacked up for miles behind the crime scene.
A detective’s face glowed in the flickering string of railroad flares. His name was Sadler. “Let’s go over it one more time.”
“What’s to go over?” The engineer sat on a pile of spare wooden ties next to the tracks. “We saw the car. Then, out of nowhere, splat.”
They looked back. An evidence team on ladders tediously scraped the locomotive’s front glass. More investigators down in a ditch, swarming the Trans Am.
The engineer wiped his forehead with a bandanna. “Any idea what happened?”
Sadler jotted in a notebook. “Still trying to figure that.” He stopped writing when he noticed a familiar FBI agent standing off to the side. “Bureau taking over the case?”
“Just observing.”
“This wouldn’t have anything to do with those other nine unsolved deaths….”
The FBI agent gave him a look that said the subject was off limits.
Sadler’s partner, Detective Mayfield, was down at the sports car. He climbed back up the embankment and walked along the edge of the tracks between the train and the flares.
“Anything?” yelled Sadler.
“Yeah,” said Mayfield, looking back at the Trans Am. “Sickest thing I ever seen.”
FOUR HOURS EARLIER
Three men in spotless linen suits walked across a dark yard of weeds and dirt.
The last one gestured with his Uzi toward the driveway. “Bodine’s car’s gone.”
“For his sake, he better not be in it.”
They reached the front of a rotting mobile home in southern Hillsborough County. The leader was about to knock when he noticed the door ajar. He pushed it open. “Bodine?…”
The three split up.
“He’s not in here….”
“Not in here either….”
They regrouped in the bedroom.
“What a mess.”
“Where’d all this blood come from?”
One picked up a deck of playing cards. “Here’s his crap from the cruise ship.”
“Statue?”
“Nope.”
“Damn,” said the leader. “Find that statue. Tear the place apart!”
The leader circulated through the trailer in deep thought. Around him: dresser drawers and ceiling tiles in flight, cabinets cracking off walls, pillows sliced, mattress disemboweled.
The leader worked his way back to the bedroom. He swatted floating feathers away from his face. “Stop.”
The destruction was too loud.
“I said stop!”
The others became still. “What’s the matter?”
“It’s not here. Either Bodine’s gone into business for himself, or someone beat us to him.”
“What do we do now?”
“Find Bodine. Or whoever took the statue.”
“Hold it.” One of them reached down next to the dresser. “Look what I just found.”
“What is it?”
“A sticky note. Says, ‘Get Davenport.’”
“Think it has anything to do with the statue?”
EIGHT MILES AWAY
Coleman drove through the empty countryside on an unmaintained dirt road. At least he thought it was still a road, but the passage through the woods had grown narrower and bumpier. He’d long since lost orientation, except for the taillights of the car Serge was driving up ahead.
They were another ten minutes deeper into nowhere when Coleman saw the Trans Am’s brake lights come on. He watched the Firebird angle up a steep incline before easing to a stop.
Serge leaped out of the car. “Make it snappy!”
Coleman walked up with coils of rope over his shoulder. “Serge, you’re parked on railroad tracks.”
“Just hand me the rope.”
“I forgot where I left it.”
“On your shoulder.”
Serge took the line and walked to the front of the car.
Coleman pulled a joint from behind his ear. “How’d you know about this road?”
Serge stared straight up. “I poke around a lot. Been planning this one for years, and there couldn’t be a more perfect spot.” He heaved the rope into the air. It fell back without results. “Just never found the right transgressor. Didn’t want to be unfair and have the punishment not fit the crime.” He gathered the rope and threw it hard again.
Coleman flicked his lighter. “How’s this the perfect spot?”
The rope fell impotently at Serge’s feet. “That sturdy tree branch. Usually they cut ’em back over the tracks but this is too remote…. Maybe if I stand up here.”
Serge climbed onto the hood. He heaved again. This time the rope made it over the branch. “There we go.” He caught the other end as it came back down, and fashioned an intricate knot.
Coleman exhaled toward the stars. “Choo-choos ever come this way?”
“All the time. That’s why we have to hurry.” Serge finished his knot and removed the Trans Am’s smoked T-top. He darted to the back of the car, gun in one hand, key in the other.
The trunk lid popped and hands instantly went up in surrender. “Please! Don’t! Whatever you’re thinking—”
“Get out of the fucking trunk!”
A leg went over the side. “What are you going to do to me?”
“Oh, you don’t want to miss this.”
Fifteen minutes later, Serge was in the zone.
“I’m begging you!” said Bodine, bound in the driver’s seat. “There’s still time to stop!”
“Should have considered that before you threatened Jim’s family.”
“But I thought we settled it with the statue.”
“That was just for Jim’s sake. His stomach isn’t built for this.”
“I’ll never go near him!”
“You’re just saying that because I’m here, and you’re sitting there, like…what’s the technical term? Oh, yeah, completely fucked. But I can’t always be around Jim in case you change your mind.”
“I take it all back! I swear!”
“Sorry,” answered Serge. “You said burn up his whole family. That threat’s out there forever. It’s a bell you can’t unring.”