by Tim Dorsey
“But the ship’s leaving.”
“Regulations.”
“This is bullshit. I want to talk to someone in charge.”
“I’m in charge.”
“Can’t we work something out? What do you want?”
“I want you to be quiet.”
The executive stewed. Wicks caught something muttered under his breath: “…woman…”
“On second thought,” said the agent. “When was the last time you had a Coast Guard inspection?”
“Last month. We’re not due again until January.”
“New program. Additional random checks.”
“You’re making that up.”
“I’m sure she’ll pass with flying colors. Only takes three or four days, unless there are violations. Then who knows?”
“You can’t do this!”
She opened her cell phone and hit a stored number. “Captain Greene, this is Wicks—”
“Okay, wait. Stop. I’m sorry. Anything you want.”
“Have to call you back…” Wicks closed the phone. “Anything?”
“Name it.”
“I’d like you not to say another word, go back in your office, close the door and don’t come out until I say.”
The executive vanished.
Another agent had waited respectfully in the background. He stepped up. “Ship’s completely secured, just like you ordered. Won’t be going anywhere.”
“Yes, she will,” said Wicks. “I want her sailing thirty-six hours max.”
“But didn’t I just hear you tell that guy?—”
“Everything needs to return to normal as soon as possible. I want whoever’s behind this to think nothing’s out of the ordinary.”
“What do you have planned?”
“We’re going fishing.”
A commotion rippled through the crowded living room of the Wainscotting residence.
“Heads up!” yelled Coleman, carrying one end of a trimmed-down door.
“Coming through!” shouted Lenny, holding the other.
They entered the den.
A local affiliate TV truck sat outside the port. The cameraman pressed his right eye to the rubber viewfinder. They were going live.
“…So if you have cruise reservations out of Tampa, plan arriving early for long lines at the temporary Customs tent until the emergency asbestos removal is complete. At the Port of Tampa, this is Jessica Thompson for Action Eyewitness News 7.” She lowered her microphone and her smile. “We good?”
The cameraman nodded.
Farther along the curb, more news trucks: “…Get here extra early for expected Customs delays…” “Officials advise arriving at the port at least two hours…”
Agent Wicks was in a surprising moment of contentment. Rarely had a campaign of media disinformation gone so smoothly.
A white Lincoln pulled to the curb. A woman in an equally white business suit got out with a briefcase. “Agent Wicks?”
“Yes?”
“Madeline Joiner, Caribbean Crown Line.”
“How can I help you?”
“By letting me apologize for Stan. He can be a little rough around the edges.”
“Stan?”
“The guy who’s afraid to come out of his office.”
“He’s still in there?”
“Whatever you said scared him witless.”
“I didn’t mean to…”
“In Stanley’s case it’s a good thing. But he really needs to go to the bathroom.”
FORTY-FOUR
WAINSCOTTING RESIDENCE
A fight broke out by the pool. A clown crashed through a sliding glass door. Two mimes jumped on him.
Serge sensed something was wrong.
The living room listed out of balance, the crowd’s center of gravity near the doorless den. Partygoers were abuzz as Serge pushed his way through.
“It’s absolutely incredible.”
“I’ve never seen anything like it.”
“Must be some kind of world record.”
“Their names are Coleman and Lenny.”
The disorganized mob tapered quickly into a single-file waiting line that ran along the living room’s north wall and through the den’s entrance. Serge went inside, the smoke haze even soupier than before. He reached the front of the line.
Coleman prepared to flick his lighter again. “Now serving number forty-three!”
The next person handed Coleman a ticket and bent over to suck a plastic pipe.
“Hey, Serge,” said Lenny.
“Great news,” said Coleman.
“Our bong…”
“…It works!”
The line moved slowly but efficiently. People walked away holding full lungs; the next lucky contestant stepped up.
“That’s a bong?” said Serge.
“Biggest I’ve ever made,” said Coleman. “Lenny, take the lighter….”
“Ten-four.”
Coleman cut through the line and stood beside Serge, pointing out respective groundbreaking features. “We sawed the door for a perfect fit, then squeezed a continuous bead of silicone bathroom caulk around the edge and pressed it down on top of the hundred-gallon aquarium for the crucial airtight seal. We also predrilled two holes for the PVC inhale pipe and the three-quarter-inch galvanized shower stem….”
“Shower stem?”
“That’s the water you hear running in the other room. We’ll put it back when we’re finished. The stem holds the bowl, which is the bottom half of that beer can containing a full quarter ounce of radioactive Gainesville furry bud. Takes ten people to finish a single hit.” Coleman folded his arms and glowed with pride. The line ticked forward to another person.
Serge leaned to look inside the tank. The aquarium’s electric aerator bubbled at one end, the dope bowl at the other. “Those fish look awfully crowded.”
“Lowered the water level to optimize smoke-chamber volume ratio.”
“The angelfish are swimming sideways.”
“They’re getting fucked up, too, gills filtering tetrahydrocannabinol, or THC, from the pot bubbles…. Watch this….” Coleman returned to the front of the line and held up the next person. “Just be a sec.” He grabbed a cardboard tube of fish food and tapped it into the plastic inhale stem. Then he put his mouth over the end and blew in the opposite direction. Food flakes shot into the tank. A frenzy.
“Like piranha,” said Serge.
“Fish munchies,” said Coleman. “Another revolutionary feature. Their thrashing changes the gas-distribution model and increases dope potency, like those new tornado-carburetors that super-charge V-8 engines.”
“Coleman,” said Serge. “How can you be like you are the rest of the time and yet so smart about this pointlessness?”
“What do you mean?”
On the opposite side of the living room, a lone person returned from the bathroom. He stood apart from the crowd, filling a paper plate with crackers and scooping the center of a cheese ball to avoid the nut coating. A Wheat Thin went in Jim Davenport’s mouth. He looked out the glass doors at the pool, where a knot of sports fans by the keg blocked his view of an immense man with no left hand working his way through the property on search-and-destroy. Jim looked another way and became curious about the commotion on the other side of the living room. He popped a final cracker in his mouth, dusted his hands and walked over to the back of the line snaking along the wall. “What’s going on?”
“Some dudes made a radical bong from an aquarium!”
“Really? Wow. What’s a bong?”
A glass door to the pool slid open. Cowboy boots clomped onto glazed Mexican tiles. Tex had acquired the target. He moved in a wide circle around the edge of the living room for a flanking assault.
Jim was on tiptoes, straining to see into the den.
Tex McGraw silently eased along the north wall. He closed to within twenty feet. A .44 revolver came out from under his shirt. Fifteen feet, ten…The target was still oblivious, lea
ning against the same wall, just on the other side of a door. McGraw stepped in front of the door and extended his arm. The barrel of the pistol neared the back of Jim’s head. Point-blank. McGraw grinned wickedly. He began pulling the trigger. He paused and sniffed the air. What’s that funky smell? Memories of his meth-country roots. He turned toward the slats of the closet door next to him. It smells like…ether…
Ka-boom!
The house’s foundation rocked. The shock wave knocked the closest people down like candlepins. Serge ran out of the den. “What the fuck was that?”
The ex-Steeler’s free-basing explosion in the closet had blown the door to pieces. It just missed Jim, but sent McGraw tumbling across the room. Splattered chemicals triggered a flash fire. Smoke detectors chirped painfully. Flames licked the ceiling, and panicked guests ran screaming with singed eyebrows.
“Serge,” said Coleman, picking up his spherical TV. “Does this mean the party’s over?”
“You idiot! Come on!”
They joined the multidirectional stampede for any exit that wasn’t blocked. People collapsed coughing on the front lawn. Sirens whooped up the street. Hoses unrolled. Firefighters raced in with axes. A side door flew open, banging against the house. Tex McGraw stumbled out and limped away in shredded clothes.
Joiner walked along the dock with Agent Wicks. “Mind if I ask something else?”
“You want to know when the ship can leave?”
“Actually that was my second question, if the first went well.”
“Shoot.”
“A bunch of passengers want to cancel their trip. Can we let them off?”
“They’re almost finished with the temporary tents.”
“But they just went through Customs yesterday to get on, and never left port.”
“Doesn’t matter. Remember the Chilean crew smuggling heroin paste? We clear everything that comes off the ship, but not the ship itself. Once passengers step back aboard, they’re recontaminated. Might as well have walked into another country.”
“Understandable…”
In the background, shouting from the promenade deck, breaking glass, shrill sobs.
“…But we need to do something,” said Joiner. “Delayed passengers don’t have a good shelf life.”
Crash. Bang. Motherfucker!
“I’m in a real jam here,” she continued. “The home office will decide within the hour whether to cancel the whole cruise, not to mention the next incoming ship that’s doing circles at sea.”
“Cancel?” Wicks hid her concern at the possibility of the ship not sailing.
“It’s almost a done deal,” said Joiner. “If those disgruntled passengers get off, occupancy drops below the break-even point for fuel.”
“Wait,” said Wicks. “I have an idea to turn this around and make everyone even happier than before all this started.”
“How?”
“My department will subsidize your fares for the trouble we’ve caused. You offer fifty percent discounts to the passengers already on board and get back some of those cancellations. Then phone previous customers who live locally and offer vacated cabins at the same rate. Raffle whatever’s left to the public.”
“But that’ll cost a fortune. How can you afford it?”
“We’re the government. Remember after Katrina when we booked an entire fleet of ships at full price to stay in the New Orleans port for temporary housing? Next to that, this is a drop in the bucket. Promise to have you sailing by tomorrow afternoon.”
“I don’t know what to say.”
“It’d be a great publicity stunt. And you’ll probably end up with even higher occupancy than you started with. Can’t hurt casino and bar revenue.”
“You know too much about our business.” Joiner smiled. “Who do you have to clear this with?”
“I don’t.”
“Look at the career on you!”
“Then it’s a deal?”
“Deal.”
Wicks looked toward the end of the dock. “That last news crew hasn’t packed up yet. Might get good play if you catch them.”
“Want to go on camera together?”
“Can’t. Go ahead and take credit.”
“Sure?”
“I insist.”
“I owe you.” Joiner headed for the journalists.
Wicks watched the camera lights come back on. Excellent, she thought, the perfect cover to get Foxtrot onboard.
One hour later. Serge and Coleman stood among a hundred rubber-neckers staring across Lobster Lane at a smoldering empty lot.
“Serge, look, the blast fixed my TV. What luck.”
Serge bit his lip.
Coleman noticed something in the grass. “Cool.” He reached down and picked up an unbroken Heineken thrown clean of the house.
“What the hell do you think you’re doing?” said Serge.
“Releasing the pressure so it won’t foam.”
“No, I mean how can you drink at a time like this?”
The bottle hissed and shot suds. “Celebrating my crowning achievement.”
“Coleman! The house we were supposed to protect burned to the ground!”
“I know,” said Coleman. “When you throw a blowout and it ends with the whole place leveled, it means you left everything you had on the partying playing field! You had nothing more to give! Just wish Lenny were here to see it.”
“Dear God! You don’t mean he’s…”
Coleman nodded. “In big trouble. Left the house without telling his mom. Had to rush back.”
FORTY-FIVE
PORT OF TAMPA
The cut-rate cruise promotion was a smashing success.
Thousands had assembled in front of the terminal by the time officials began calling out winning raffle numbers. News helicopters swooped overhead. A series of joyous cries erupted at random points throughout the crowd. “Yippee! I won!”
A megaphone rose again. “Six-two-nine.”
“Over here!” Another raffle stub flapped in the air. “That’s me!…”
“Seven-four-eight.”
“Me!…”
And so forth. Until the crowd realized it was getting near the end. An ugliness began to percolate. Profanity, shoving. Someone complained their winning ticket had been muscled away by thugs. Police moved in.
Meanwhile, a second front of robust activity. Dozens of winners who never intended to board the ship conducted a vigorous black-market trade in cruise tickets for premiums of a hundred dollars or more.
Serge walked out of a men’s room, leaving behind a scalper in an Oakland Raiders jacket happily filling his wallet with counterfeit bills.
“Did you get ’em?” asked Rachael.
Serge fanned out three tickets.
“Yes!” Coleman signaled touchdown. “The party continues!”
Back in the men’s room: The man in the Raiders jacket looked up at the sound of an opening door. “Need a ticket?…”
Moments later, an oversized man missing his left hand exited the men’s room with a ticket, a wallet of counterfeit money and a sporty new Raiders jacket.
Outside: The mob became surly as the most-hated people arrived. Cruise officials ushered VIP customers through express check-in.
“Booooo!” “Unfair!”
“Ow!” said Jim Davenport. “Something just hit my arm.”
“They’re throwing trash,” said Martha.
Extra security arrived. Jim pulled two rolling suitcases through the terminal entrance. “Martha, what exactly did the woman from the cruise say on the phone?”
“That they appreciated our previous business, and a special had opened up for local customers. Fifty percent off, plus a free upgrade.”
“Something doesn’t sound right.”
“Jim, you should just be thankful Debbie and Trevor reconciled.”
Jim looked back at his daughter and fiancé wheeling luggage behind him. “They’re really getting married on the cruise?”
“That’s
what they said.”
The Davenports reached the part of the line where the towering ship became visible out the terminal’s windows. Up on the vessel’s fifth deck, four women looked over their balcony at a mass of people funneling onto the gangway.
“Finally,” said Edna. “I thought we’d never get going.”
The Davenports reached the hatch and showed their credentials. In they went. Boarding continued two by two, a Noah’s Ark cross-section of Tampa Bay: blue-collar, button-down, families, swingers, lawyers, defendants, Tex McGraw, Steelers fans, clowns and mimes.
Two kinds of people don’t have insurance. Super poor and super rich. The reason for the former is obvious. The latter is a function of math. Probability and payoff. Some of the wealthiest Floridians don’t insure their homes—especially in the era of skyrocketing hurricane rates—because they can get a hefty return investing the premiums instead.
Gaylord Wainscotting found himself on the wrong side of the gamble. His Jaguar was parked cockeyed across the curb. Gaylord lay, facedown, on his charred lawn, screaming and kicking his feet.
A fire inspector stood over him. “You must have some kind of insurance.”
“None! I’m ruined! I might as well kill myself!”
“You don’t need to talk like that.”
“Easy for you.” He looked up with welling eyes. “The only thing left standing is my mailbox.”
“Please don’t do anything foolish.”
“What does it matter?” Gaylord got back in the Jaguar, ran over his mailbox and drove away.
Three people in a black Expedition pulled up. “Just about to come on the market,” said Steph.
A deep blast of a ship’s horn. The vessel inched away from the dock. Cheerful people lined balconies and waved. Others claimed coveted lounge chairs on the upper deck.
Coleman lay in his stateroom bed and pointed at the waving passengers on TV. “Serge, what DVD of yours are we watching?”
“Titanic.”
A horn blew again, this one much louder. Coleman looked out their balcony. “Are we sailing yet?”
“Coleman, the land’s moving.”
“Sometimes it does that with me anyway.”
Serge stood at their cabin’s entertainment console, precisely arranging his personal collection of cruise DVDs. Titanic, The Perfect Storm, PT-109, Das Boot, The Sinking of the Bismarck, The Sinking of the Andrea Doria, Poseidon, The Poseidon Adventure, Beyond the Poseidon Adventure. Then he lovingly removed his latest guy-gadget from a luggage pocket.