Lunatics

by Dave Barry

  “By the way, where are we?” asked Maria.

  He smiled and said, “Cuba.”

  CHAPTER 28

  Jeffrey

  I’ll say this: When you hijack a cruise ship, you eat well.

  Of course, you eat well even if you’re a regular passenger. They feed you, like, eight times a day, which is why cruise people always look like hairless water buffalo wearing sneakers.

  But when you take over a ship with a bomb threat, you really go first-class. Whatever Sharisse and I asked for, it got delivered to us right away—steak, lobster, shrimp, chocolate mousse, you name it. We washed it down with a couple of bottles of Dom, and then—this was Sharisse’s idea—we both steered the ship for a while. Lutefisk didn’t like that, but fuck him, he didn’t have the remote control.

  Another thing we did to pass the time while we were waiting for the money helicopter was make announcements over the ship’s PA system. I’d get on there and say, “Emergency! We’re about to tip over! Everybody run to the left side of the ship!” And then a little while later, Sharisse would get on there and say, “We are now going to have a mandatory penis inspection. We want all the men to line up on the poop deck according to length.” And the thing was, those morons actually did it.

  But the funniest thing we did—this was also Sharisse’s idea—was to make the officers strip down to their underwear, then march down to the ship’s theater and put on costumes. The main show was South Pacific, so we had Lutefisk and his men wear grass skirts and coconut brassieres. They looked like total douchebags. For me, that really lightened the tension of being a wanted international terrorist.

  While we were at the theater, we saw that the headline entertainer on the ship was Charo, so we told the crew to go get her. She didn’t want to be there, and at first she refused to perform for us, but she changed her mind when Sharisse fired a warning shot through her guitar. That got her up on stage pretty quick, and she sang a song, which was in Spanish, so I don’t know what it was about, except she seemed to be singing it mainly to Sharisse and it had a word that sounded like “poota” in it a lot. When she finished, Sharisse gave her a five-dollar tip, which I thought was hilarious, but Charo was definitely pissed. She’s getting old, and when you look at her up close, her eyes are a little too close together, but I’ll give her this: she still has a nice rack.

  The point being, Sharisse and I actually had a pretty good time that night, considering the situation. I was starting to really like Sharisse as I got to know her as a human being instead of just a lawyer/hijacker; she definitely showed her fun side. I’ll be honest: I was starting to think maybe she and I might have a future together, seeing as how Donna would probably never take me back after all this, and Sharisse’s husband was shark chow.

  We stayed up all night, thanks to some pills we got from the ship’s doctor. The next morning, just like Sharisse predicted, the helicopter came. We went up to the helipad deck with Lutefisk, just the three of us, Sharisse making sure the chopper guys could see she had a gun pointed at Lutefisk. She had the whole thing figured out. When the chopper touched down, she told the crew to stay inside and toss the money out. They heaved a couple of duffel bags out.

  “Open them,” Sharisse told me.

  I unzipped the duffels and looked inside. They were both jammed with packets of hundred-dollar bills.

  “Is it all there?” Sharisse asked.

  “How the fuck would I know?” I said.

  She laughed so hard, she banged the gun barrel into Lutefisk’s head. We were definitely developing a rapport. “Good point,” she said.

  “I’ll tell you this,” I said. “There’s definitely a shitload of money.”

  Sharisse signaled the chopper to take off.

  “All right,” said Lutefisk. “You got your money. Now you will give me my ship back.”

  “Sven,” said Sharisse. “You don’t give the orders. You’re a schmo wearing a coconut bra. We give the orders on this ship.”

  I liked that, the way she said “we.”

  “This is unacceptable!” said Lutefisk. “We have done everything you asked!”

  “And you’re going to keep doing everything we ask,” said Sharisse, “or Jeffrey and I are going to get into a lifeboat and blow up this crate, and you’ll be famous forever as the captain who lost his ship while dressed like a hostess at Trader Vic’s.”

  That shut Sven up. I really had to admire Sharisse: The woman had balls. She was so convincing, I had to remind myself that we didn’t actually have a bomb.

  “All right,” said Sharisse. “Let’s get this money downstairs, and Sven here can get this ship pointed toward Havana.”

  “What?” said Sven and I, pretty much simultaneously.

  “We’re going to Havana,” said Sharisse.

  “We are?” I said.

  “But we cannot go to Havana!” said Lutefisk. “The Cuban government—”

  “The Cuban government is expecting us,” said Sharisse, giving me a look that said No more questions.

  And so we went to Cuba. It took us six hours, with CNN, Fox, and the rest of the news networks covering every second. They were showing aerial shots of our ship, and you could see that there were big U.S. navy vessels surrounding us, just out of sight over the horizon. Also there reportedly were submarines in the area, including some from China and Russia. There were all kinds of Terrorism Experts on TV, and they were going nuts, throwing out theories about what was happening, what our plan was, what the U.S. should do, what would happen next. Everybody agreed that tensions in the Caribbean had not been this high since the Cuban Missile Crisis. Sharisse and I had a couple more bottles of Dom.

  When we got close to Havana, it seemed like the entire Cuban navy came out to meet us, plus a bunch of fighter jets. We went into the harbor and dropped anchor. A bunch of Cuban navy boats came alongside, and in a few minutes the ship was swarming with soldiers carrying machine guns. Sharisse and I waited on the bridge, with our money and the officers. A group of soldiers came in and looked over the situation, and when they decided it was safe, they gave a signal, and a tall officer came in.

  “I am Major Nunez, of the Cuban Revolutionary Armed Forces,” he said, speaking English with a very slight Spanish accent. “Who is the captain of this ship?”

  “I am,” said Lutefisk. He stepped forward, and as he did the left side of his coconut brassiere slipped down, revealing his left nipple. He shoved the coconut back into place. He didn’t want to look unprofessional.

  Lutefisk pointed at Sharisse and me. “These people are criminals,” he said. “They have placed a bomb aboard this ship. That man has a detonator.”

  Major Nunez looked at me and said, “Is this true?”

  “Give it to him,” said Sharisse.

  I reached into my pocket, pulled out the remote control and tossed it to him. He caught it, looked at it, and tossed it to Lutefisk. Lutefisk caught it and looked at it for a few seconds. Then he said something I didn’t understand, which I’m guessing was Norwegian for “motherfucker.”

  Nunez smiled a little.

  “Mr. Peckerman, I presume?” he said.

  I nodded.

  “And this is Mrs. Fricker?”

  Sharisse smiled and made a little curtsy.

  “Welcome to Cuba,” said Nunez. “The comandante is expecting you.”

  CHAPTER 29

  Philip

  The man’s name was Ramon. His spider-bitten son was Ramon Jr. His wailing wife was Ramona.

  “I wonder if they ever get confused,” I yelled to Maria.

  We were sitting next to each other in the backseat of the jeep that was taking us to their home. But even by yelling we could barely hear each other over the grunting of its engines and the noises the tires made as it sped along the top of a primitive road.


  “Why would they get confused?” she yelled back. “To them, they are Mom, Dad, and Junior. I don’t see a problem.”

  I had never been in the backseat of a jeep before. Or in the front seat. So I guess you could say this was my first time in a jeep.

  “What about mail?” I asked. “What happens when a letter comes to the house and it’s addressed to Ramon, but the sender meant for it to go to Ramon Jr.?”

  My arm was around her. And when I pulled her closer so she could hear me, her head stayed on my shoulder.

  “In that case, when Ramon realizes the mistake, he hands the letter to his son and simply says, ‘This is for you.’” She was smiling. “You okay now, Philip?”

  “I think so.”

  The jeep pulled off the dirt road and onto a potholed paved one that was just as bumpy. We looked out, and on either side what we saw could only be described as squalor. Run-down stores, abandoned gas stations with bone-dry pumps, white curtains in the windows of decrepit buildings attempting to make things look homey. And when we turned off that road into Ramon, Ramon Jr., and Ramona’s neighborhood, we entered what was basically a suburban version of the shabbiness we’d just seen.

  “I hope you like quesadilla de harina de yuca rellena con camarones y queso,” said Ramona as we walked on a gravel path from the driveway to the front door. “That’s what I make for dinner every Monday.”

  I was hungry. Famished, in fact. So hungry I could eat a quesadilla de harina de yuca rellena con camarones y queso no matter what that was.

  The inside of the house was somewhat more cheerful than the outside, thanks to the good intentions of the colorful rugs and threadbare furniture sitting on them. And to the framed pictures of a smiling Ramon, Ramona, and Ramon Jr. in formation on top of end tables. And to Nacho, a frisky mutt that needed approximately five more pounds on him to be considered scrawny. And to the rumba melodies coming through the single speaker on a triangular shelf nailed into the corner where two walls met.

  Yes, it was home sweet home to a happy family protected by the statuettes of a watchful Jesus deployed about the room. And by the arsenal of machine guns that were stacked from floor to ceiling in their kitchen. And bathroom.

  “I just flushed the toilet and almost shot my ass off,” I whispered to Maria.

  “What’s this all about?” she whispered in response.

  “Don’t let this number of weapons throw you,” said Ramon, who’d obviously taken notice of our reactions. “There’s plenty more in the shed out back. Grenades, too.”

  “Oh, good,” I heard myself saying. “I was worrying there wasn’t enough firepower.”

  “What the hell are you talking about?” Maria whispered to me.

  “I’d just humor him,” I whispered back. “He may be dangerous. By the way, I can’t remember the last time I whispered this much.”

  “We are a happy family, but it is time for us to become happier,” said Ramon as the smell of what I could only assume was quesadilla de harina de yuca rellena con camarones y queso came wafting from the huge tray Ramona was carrying into the dining room.

  “Now is the time for my family and all the other families who’ve been under the heels of this man to live the lives our fathers died for,” Ramona continued.

  “What man are you talking about?” asked Maria.

  “The Premier,” he answered. “In 1959, his own father led the revolution and then became a worse dictator than the one he overthrew.”

  “The average Cuban today lives on twenty dollars a month and relies on government ration cards,” said Ramona, who was now setting the table.

  “This will soon change. And we’ll discuss this all at dinner,” said Ramon. He then added, “Those quesadilla de harina de yuca rellena con camarones y queso sure look good,” while trying to grab one off of the huge tray.

  “You’ll spoil your appetite!” said Ramona slapping her husband’s hand away. “He really loves my quesadilla de harina de yuca rellena con camarones y queso,” she told us. “If it were up to him, he’d have quesadilla de harina de yuca rellena con camarones y queso every meal. Sometimes I think he married me because of my quesadilla de harina de yuca rellena con camarones y queso.”

  They both laughed as if this was a joke they always shared. Maria and I felt it right to laugh as well. Like idiots. It was about then that I noticed how many place settings Ramona was putting on the table.

  “I wonder if other people are joining us for dinner,” I said to Maria.

  “Well, there’s you and me, the two of them makes four, and if Ramon Jr. has recovered enough to join us it makes five.”

  “Okay, but the table’s set for eight,” I said.

  “Let us celebrate,” said Ramon, who then took a bottle of wine out of a cabinet and took the cork out with a knife he pulled from a sheath attached to his belt.

  “To our son’s good health,” said Ramona, with a nod in our direction.

  “And to the coming revolution,” Ramon said, while pouring.

  Maria and I looked at each other, but said nothing, as he handed his wife and the two of us our filled glasses. And as the four of us lifted them, he completed his toast.

  “And to the Lord for delivering you to us at this exact time, Señor Horkman.”

  Before I had a chance to react, the front door opened and the other dinner guests arrived. A tall man we would come to know as Nunez, followed by, of all people, Peckerman and Sharisse Fricker, who were as shocked to see us as we were to see them.

  “Our liberators are here!” proclaimed Ramon, pointing to me and Peckerman.

  Nunez raised his fist in agreement.

  “They will lead us to our victory, Comandante.”

  CHAPTER 30

  Jeffrey

  This was definitely not what Sharisse and I had in mind, winding up in some rural Cuban shack in some rural Cuban area with a bunch of rural Cubans. What we had in mind was a whole different scenario, which was this:

  We would land in Cuba with the two hundred mil. We would make a deal with the Cuban government, give them a nice commission for their trouble. Let’s say 20 percent, which is $40 million. Then Sharisse and I would proceed to live like kings, because $160 million goes a long way in a shithole like Cuba, where the average person makes, like, eighty-seven cents a month. We could pay them way better, say five bucks a month, and they’d be like, “Wow! Let’s give them excellent service! Nacho gusto!” (I took some Spanish in high school.)

  This was actually Sharisse’s scenario. When she explained it to me on the ship going to Havana, I had a couple of questions, the main one being: Was she nuts? Why would the Cuban government go along? I mean, they have an army, right? Why not just point machine guns at us and say, “Thanks, but we’ll take the whole two hundred mil. You two can go to prison and survive by eating each other’s toenails.” That’s what I would do, if I had machine guns, and a couple of bozos showed up with a ship they hijacked with a remote control.

  But Sharisse said, “That’s not going to happen.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because you’re a dangerous international terrorist.”

  “But I’m not. I keep telling you that.”

  “And I’m starting to believe you. But the United States government says you are, and the Cubans believe you are. So they’re going to show you some respect.”

  I still had my doubts, but when we got to Havana, everything seemed to go exactly the way Sharisse said it would. Nunez and his men didn’t take the money; they let us keep the duffels as they escorted us off the ship to a convoy of military trucks lined up on the dock. We got into the middle one, us in back, Nunez and a driver in front. Then we took off, like a motorcade, which I assumed was going to the presidential palace. So far, so good. (Or, as the Spanish say, Mi casa, su casa.)

  We drove
through the city for a while, but we didn’t see anything that looked like a palace. After about forty-five minutes, it began to dawn on us that we weren’t going to the middle of the city: We were heading into the suburbs. The roads were getting shittier and shittier, worse even than the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway. Pretty soon we were bouncing along what that looked like a yak path.

  Sharisse tapped Nunez on the shoulder. He turned around and said, “Yes?”

  “Where the hell are we going?” she said.

  “I assumed you knew,” he said.

  “You assumed wrong. Where are we going?”

  He nodded toward me. “To see his comrade,” he said.

  “What?” I said. “What comrade?”

  Nunez smiled. He had those really, really white teeth that some people just naturally have. It pisses me off, because I use whitening strips that cost so much that the drugstore keeps them locked in cabinets, like precious jewels, or nicotine gum. I’ve used enough of those strips to wallpaper my living room, and my teeth are still more or less the color of the margins of the Declaration of Independence.

  What gets me is, I can remember when nobody gave a shit about this. You’d see people on TV, big stars, Johnny Carson for example, or Barbara Eden, and I’m not saying they had ugly teeth, but their teeth were not exceptional. You didn’t notice their teeth, is my point. Their teeth were human. But now, in the entertainment industry, everybody’s teeth are the color of a brand-new urinal. There’s, like, a miniature men’s room in their mouths. When they smile, they’re giving skin cancer to people around them from the reflection. But that’s what we’re all supposed to look like now. That’s why we’re paying forty bucks a box for those stupid strips that probably cost eighteen cents to make and sting the hell out of your mouth. And you still have yellow teeth. And then you see some guy like Nunez, he lives on this shithole island where they don’t even have drugstores, probably brushes his teeth with a sea urchin, and he has teeth like Tom Fucking Cruise. Which is why I was pissed off when he smiled at me the way he did when I said, “What comrade?”