Atomic Lobster

by Tim Dorsey

  “Holy God!” Vinny waddled across the street in silk warm-ups. “I saw what happened. Is he okay?”

  Coleman brought up the rear. “Anything broken?”

  Jim, tiny voice: “Please leave me alone.”

  “Understand perfectly,” said Serge. “You’re having marriage issues and can’t think straight about ladder safety.”

  “What kind of issues?” asked Vinny.

  “She bought a vibrator,” said Serge.

  “Martha?” Vinny’s head snapped back. “Doesn’t look the type. How big?”

  “Like a Polaris,” said Serge.

  “Jim, Jim, Jim,” said Vinny, shaking his head. “You gotta jump on top of that. Broad gets a taste for electricity, and suddenly you’re spending entire weeks by yourself with the curtains closed and a stack of Hustler.”

  “Yeah,” said Coleman. “It’s great.”

  Serge reached for his wallet. “I need to make amends for the other night.” He handed Jim a folded-over wad of cash. “Take Martha out this evening. Great bistro on the other side of the island.”

  “No. This has to stop.” Jim pushed the money back; Serge pushed harder the other way. “I insist.”

  “Jim?” asked Vinny.

  “What?”

  Vinny was staring up the street. A brown truck at the curb. “Remember you said you were going to frame one of the pictures you took of——by the pool and mail it to him?”

  “I sent it two days ago.”

  “Was Mandy in the photo?”

  “Yeah.”

  “How’d you send it?”

  “UPS.”

  “Holy shit!” said Vinny.

  “What’s the matter?” asked Serge.

  “That’s his wife’s car in the driveway.”

  “Wife,” said Jim. “You told me he was divorced.”

  “She’s not supposed to arrive for another month,” said Vinny.

  “Wife?” said Jim.

  “Is that her?” asked Serge.

  “Where?”

  “The woman at the door signing for a package…Jesus, Vinny, you’re white as a sheet.”

  “You don’t understand. His wife’s fuckin’ crazy. She frightens me.” He dabbed perspiration off his forehead. “I wouldn’t be surprised if she also came after Jim for this.”

  “Me?”

  “Then we’ll just have to get the package back,” said Serge.

  “But how?” asked Vinny.

  “Go as a group,” said Serge. “There’s four of us. We can easily create a diversion and grab the box.”

  They began walking up the street.

  “I’m not kidding about his wife,” said Vinny.

  “You’re worrying in advance about what’s never going to happen,” said Serge. “This’ll be child’s play.”

  They reached the house and stopped at the end of the walkway.

  “You’re right,” said Vinny. “I think it might work.”

  “Of course it’ll work,” said Serge.

  “In a few minutes we’ll all be laughing about this,” said Vinny. “I mean, how fast can she open that package?”

  Bang, bang, bang.

  They looked at each other. “Gunfire?”

  Bang, bang, bang. Splinters exploded from the front door.

  “Run!”

  They scattered in various panicked directions. Except Jim, who ran in a circle in the street until Serge grabbed him by the shoulders and lined him up with his house. “Straight ahead. You can’t miss it.” Then he and Coleman dashed back to their own pad.

  Coleman reached under the bar for a bottle. “I must have heard eight gunshots.”

  “If it’s like my relationships, they’re already in the middle of makeup sex.” Something on the counter caught his eye. Serge picked up a flyer.

  Coleman came over with a tumbler of rum. “What is it?”

  “A pamphlet the police dropped off,” said Serge. “This neighborhood’s getting hit by frogmen burglars. I saw something about it in the paper.”

  “Burglars?”

  “And the perfect cover for attack. The most direct, undefended route to another Davenport home invasion.” He crumpled the notice. “Since these divers have made the news, I’d bet anything it’s given McGraw the idea.”

  “Why do you think that?”

  “It’s what I’d do.”

  THIRTY-FOUR

  THAT NIGHT

  The house was dark.

  A large-screen TV provided the only light. Dramatic, teletype theme music.

  An anchorwoman filled the screen.

  “Good evening and welcome to Eyewitness 7 Action News at eleven. We begin tonight’s broadcast with the latest shocking developments in the near-fatal shooting of former Pittsburgh Steelers great——, who was wounded in a firefight with his wife earlier today and is currently listed in serious but stable condition at Tampa General. Meanwhile, police continue unraveling details of the bizarre shooting, which apparently was triggered when Mrs.——arrived unexpectedly at the Hall of Famer’s winter home and intercepted mail containing photographs of a compromising nature with former cheerleader Mandy Steam, who was sunning herself on the back patio at the time and escaped gunfire by diving off the seawall, but fractured her skull on a kayak. Police theorized that the photos were part of an elaborate extortion plot masterminded by this man….”

  The TV switched to long-range footage of detectives questioning Jim Davenport just outside his front door.

  “…But after further interrogation, authorities dismissed him as just another obsessed fan. In Pittsburgh, however, regulars at one popular sports bar said not so fast on calling off the rush to judgment. From our sister station, News Action 4…”

  Screaming drunks in Steelers jackets and Afro wigs crammed their faces in the camera. “…That [bleep]hole is [bleep]ing dead!…” “Yeah! [bleep]ing dead!” “He’s [bleeped]…” “Steelers [bleeping] rule!…”

  The broadcast switched back to Tampa. “In other news, our Action 7 Investigative Eye on Florida Team has turned up additional developments on the controversial new series of Internet videos that make Bum Fights look like Teletubbies. As reported earlier, an anonymous individual has struck a chord across the entire nation, which experts attribute to a political backlash against the French. Meanwhile the tapes continued selling like wildfire on eBay before the popular auction site shut down all bidding just before noon. But not before our own Action 7 investigative reporter Bannister Truth was able to obtain a copy and track Web sales to a computer at the downtown Tampa library.”

  The TV switched to a newsman dramatically thrusting a video box toward the camera. CLOWNS VS. MIMES VOL. III, THIS TIME IT’S PERSONAL! “The tape is too disgusting to watch!” said the reporter. “Let’s take a look….”

  The broadcast cut to a clown slamming a car door on a mime’s head.

  “Breaking news!” the anchorwoman interrupted. “Police are just now responding to the site of a grisly discovery in the bay…”—the screen showed a night view from the Channel 7 chopper—“…where the disfigured body of a scuba diver was found banging against a seawall on Davis Islands…”

  Serge finished watching the news from the couch in Gaylord Wainscotting’s living room. The set clicked off. He walked to the back of the dark house and saw a helicopter spotlight sweep over the water.

  Three houses up, a squad of detectives combed Jim Davenport’s backyard.

  “What kind of monster?…”

  “I’ve never seen anything so horrible….”

  Police divers were in the water. They finished securing the corpse to a special litter. One gave the thumbs-up. Others began hoisting.

  A uniformed officer approached the detectives in charge. “Just got an ID. McGraw, Lyle.”

  They watched the body come over the wall.

  “Anyone who’d do such a thing is a complete psycho,” said Sadler.

  “I’m not even sure what I’m looking at,” said Mayfield.

  “A fl
oater. They all bloat like that.”

  “Not like that,” said the coroner, bending down for a closer look at the human puffer fish. “He hasn’t been dead long enough for gases to build up from decomposition.”

  “Then what caused?—”

  “I know what it looks like,” said the coroner, “but there’s no possible way.”

  Silence.

  The coroner looked up. They were waiting.

  “At least I hope it’s not what I think.” The coroner stood. “You heard rumors about terrorists planning to use scuba divers to attach magnetic bombs to the hulls of our ships?”

  A few nods.

  “Then you may also have heard those leaked reports about classified military programs training dolphins to patrol our ports, because their sonar is better than our most advanced hydrophones.”

  “But we don’t have any dolphins around here like that,” said Sadler. “Right?”

  “That’s where it gets tricky,” said the coroner. “The Navy denies it, but there’s word of a special training facility in Key West.”

  “And?”

  “They came up a couple dolphins short after Hurricane Wilma.”

  “Holy mother…”

  “I don’t understand,” said Mayfield. “Even if a dolphin detects a scuba diver, how does it stop him, let alone cause this kind of mess?”

  “The dolphins are fitted with a special weapon,” said the coroner. “Believe me, it’s one of the last ways you want to go.”

  “What kind of special weapon?”

  EARLIER THAT NIGHT

  “Serge,” said Coleman, “my arms are getting tired.”

  “Just keep rowing.”

  “Why can’t you row?”

  Serge scanned the water off the starboard side with a night-vision monocular. “Because I’m on lookout—and I have to operate Serge’s New Secret Weapon. It’s a lot to deal with in a canoe.”

  Oars splashed in the moonlit bay. “I still don’t understand how that thing works. All I know is you destroyed my laughing-gas dispenser.”

  “Your sacrifice for the community is duly noted.”

  “But it cost me ten bucks at a Bourbon Street head shop.”

  “It only made you fall down a lot.”

  “That’s the whole point.”

  “Shhhhhhhhhhh!”

  Coleman stopped rowing. “What is it?”

  Serge peered over the side. “We have activity.”

  For the last hour, their canoe had slowly made its way east from a boat launch across the harbor at Ballast Point, until they were now fifty yards off Davis Islands. In the green glow of Serge’s nightscope, a figure in a black wet suit silently swam toward the seawall behind the Davenport residence.

  The scope following a trail of bubbles. “Row to the right…. A little more…Okay, stop.” Serge reached into the bottom of the canoe. “Almost over the diver. We’ll drift the rest of the way with the tide.”

  “Can you see him?”

  “Perfectly.”

  “What’s he doing?”

  “Stopping. He knows we’re here.”

  “So your plan’s ruined?”

  “Naw, he just thinks it’s a coincidence. Couple of health nuts out at night in a canoe. He’s trying to remain undetected until we pass.”

  Serge grabbed his New Secret Weapon.

  “What’s he doing now?”

  “Looking up at us. Good. Otherwise this thing might glance off the scuba tank…. Come on, just a little farther…. Almost over him…alllllllmost…Now!”

  Serge quickly raised the harpoonlike device and thrust it down into the water with his right hand. His left grabbed a short, makeshift length of PVC pipe that rose three-quarters of the way up the spear’s shaft, and gave it a fast twist.

  Coleman cracked a Schlitz. “Where’d you get the idea for that thing?”

  Serge maintained a firm two-handed grip as the pole jerked wildly. “Top-secret U.S. Navy program. Training dolphins in Key West to patrol ports for scuba-diving terrorists.”

  “But dolphins are so nice,” said Coleman. “Would they actually attack a terrorist?”

  “Not remotely,” said Serge, still gripping the pole. “So they make a game of it by teaching dolphins to playfully tap their handlers in the chest with a small cylinder attached to their snouts.” He jerked the weapon out of the water and laid it back in the bottom of the canoe. “The cylinders are empty during training. But during live patrol, they’re loaded with a capsule of highly compressed gas and fitted with a spring-loaded needle. Very effective. And messy, one of the worst ways to go…”

  The bloated diver bobbed to the surface like a cork, quivering next to the canoe.

  “…Chest cavity inflates with a massive amount of air, rupturing whatever internal organ took the needle and slowly crushing surrounding ones….”

  “I think he’s trying to yell.”

  “Going to be hard with collapsed lungs.”

  Coleman finished his beer and watched the diver twitch with after-tremors. “But how did you make one of those secret Navy weapons from my nitrous dispenser?”

  “You know how you stick the whip-it canisters inside the dispenser and twist it to puncture the seal, filling those balloons you suck to get high?”

  “In my sleep.”

  “I just substituted one of those carbon-dioxide canisters they use in paint-ball guns. Same size. And where the balloon usually goes, I welded a glue syringe from The Home Depot. Then I mounted the whole thing on the end of a broomstick, and slipped a length of PVC plumbing pipe over it so I could twist the puncture mechanism from a safe distance….”

  The motionless diver began drifting away.

  “…And from there, the science of hydraulics takes over. Wait, not exactly hydraulics because fluids don’t compress like gas. Hey, I just flashed on another installment of Great Moments in Florida Hydraulics History.”

  “Go for it.”

  “Remember when Disney World first opened Hall of the Presidents?”

  “The robots only went up to Nixon then.”

  “Good one, Coleman. Impressed you retained that.”

  “I was on acid, and Nixon’s cheeks turned into a killer octopus.”

  “True fact: The hydraulic fluid they originally used in the robots was red. But soon after the curtains went up on the exhibit, they switched to clear.”

  “Why?”

  “During one of the first shows, Abraham Lincoln is in the middle of his speech, and a hydraulic line busts. All this red stuff starts spraying like a Monty Python skit. Audience is horrified. They thought Disney was doing the assassination.”

  Coleman resumed paddling as the tide banged the diver against the seawall. “Why do you remember stuff like that?”

  Serge grabbed his own pair of oars. “It keeps me happy.”

  THIRTY-FIVE

  COZUMEL

  Another perfect day in paradise. Local merchants began to drool. Ten minutes earlier, an arriving cruise ship had a massive bowel movement of tourists, who would soon clog the streets with American currency.

  The G-Unit was on a roll. The night before, Edna hit two hundred bucks on a slot, and Eunice scored another eighty at blackjack. Time to throw around a little of that cash. They shopped and ate and lounged at a sidewalk café that served margaritas in glasses the size of goldfish bowls. Then more kiosks and haggling into the siesta hours, until it was time to head back. Which meant the duty-free shop.

  Edith hunched over a park bench, jamming vodka deep into a jumbo straw tourist purse with Mexican flags and sun gods.

  From behind: “Edith!”

  “I’m not doing anything!”

  Steve and the other ballroom guys walked toward them with those toothy smiles. “Love the T-shirt.”

  Edith looked down at her oversized tie-dye: 51% ANGEL, 49% BITCH. DON’T PUSH IT. She looked up. “Thanks for the champagne.”

  “Me?” Steve said coyly.

  “What are you doing here?” asked Edna
.

  “Same thing as you. Shopping. Find anything good yet?”

  Edith opened her straw bag. “Just booze.”

  “Have to fix that,” said Steve. “We can’t allow you to leave without a real piece of the Yucatán. I know these great little out-of-the-way shops….”

  An hour later, the women lugged bulky bags crammed with native gifts. A chicken ran by. They entered a deserted store at the end of an alley.

  One shopping bag was lighter than the rest.

  “Why aren’t you getting stuff?” asked Eunice.

  Edith picked up a knight from a hand-carved Aztec chess set. “Haven’t seen anything I like yet.”

  “So what? Those guys are paying.”

  A grinning salesman appeared from nowhere. “You like chess set? Special price. Fifty dollars.”

  She put the knight down. “I don’t play chess.”

  “Special price for new players. Ten dollars.”

  “You just said fifty.”

  “Five dollars.”

  “I don’t know….” She picked up a piece of onyx.

  The salesman smiled. “You like hash pipe? Twenty dollars.”

  Edith set it down.

  “…Three dollars…”

  She nearly crashed into Steve on the way out of the shop.

  He smiled again, arms behind his back. “Pick a hand.”

  “What?”

  “Just pick.”

  “Okay, the left.”

  Steve produced a gift-wrapped box the size of a toaster.

  “For me?”

  “Saw you were having trouble deciding, so I got a surprise. Something I know you’ll love.”

  Edith raised it to her right ear.

  “No!” Steve’s arms flew out. “Don’t shake it!”

  “Fragile?”

  “Very.”

  The other women gathered around.

  “This is so exciting….”

  “Wonder what it could be….”

  Edith grabbed the tail of a ribbon and began to pull.

  “Don’t open it here,” said Steve. “Wait till you’re back on the ship. You’ll have a special treat to look forward to.”

  She held it toward him. “I can’t accept this.”

  Steve sternly pushed it back. “You must.”