Triggerfish Twist

by Tim Dorsey

  “Give me a break!”

  “Oh, man!” said Coleman. “If you don’t understand the secret box, you don’t understand anything about Serge.”

  “It’s a box. So what!”

  “A 1905 Ybor City master cigar-maker’s box,” said Coleman. “Those matches are from his favorite places in Florida. Half of them have been torn down. And you’ve just been going through them to light cigarettes? He’s going to shoot us both!”

  “He’s not gonna know,” said Sharon. “He’s got so much shit in that box I couldn’t believe it. I mean just crap! Swizzle sticks, lapel pins, ticket stubs, bar coasters, ashtrays, old hotel-room keys. He’s never gonna miss it.”

  “Oh, he’ll miss it all right,” said Coleman. “I’ve seen his ritual, packing everything away in its special place and locking the box each night in the fireproof safe under his bed…We are so dead.”

  “Just drive, blockhead!”

  Coleman drove. He wore a T-shirt with a rum ad, cutoff shorts and dirty sneakers with no laces. He was on the pudgy side with a circular head that was a little too big for his body, and he didn’t like it when Sharon called him blockhead or That Funny Round-Headed Kid. His driver’s license was suspended for multiple DUIs. He opened another Schlitz.

  “You’re driving too slow! Step on it, you blockhead!”

  “Sharon, please don’t call me that.”

  “Fuck off, Charlie Brown!”

  Sharon Rhodes, exotic, tall, high cheekbones and a full, moist mouth that caused men to let go of the controls and fly their lives into the sides of mountains. Easily the hottest stripper on Dale Mabry Highway when she got the incidental ambition to actually show up at work. She was on probation for Jet Skiing topless next to the Courtney Campbell causeway.

  They pulled into a dark apartment complex behind Busch Gardens. A crescent moon peeked through the top of the Montu roller coaster. Sharon got out.

  “Don’t spend it all on crack this time,” said Coleman. “Get some powder, too. Crack is bad for you.”

  “I’ll get what I fuckin’ want!” She put out her cigarette on the Impala’s upholstery.

  “Hey!”

  As soon as she was out of sight, Coleman slammed the gear shift in reverse and lunged backward, spinning ninety degrees. He threw the car in drive and floored it, leaving rubber. He raced around the block and came up on the back side of the apartments just as Sharon ran into the street. She winced when she saw the Impala. “Damn.”

  Coleman parked at the curb and jumped out. “Nice try. I’m not letting you out of my sight.”

  They went back in the apartments and knocked lightly on a peeling second-floor door.

  There were shuffling sounds inside, then a quiet “Who is it?”

  “Sharon and Blockhead.”

  Coleman elbowed her.

  “Don’t ever elbow me!” She grabbed him by the hair and went to smash his head into the door, but it opened.

  Their host wore an orange-and-black silk Kabuki robe, and he turned without speaking and walked back into the dark room lit only by a dozen Bic lighters. People sitting and lying on the floor, gaunt, palsied. Trash everywhere. Glass and metal pipes and spent wooden matches lying in burn marks on the carpet. A rat scampered across tufts of shredded Brillo pads. There was a TV stand, but no TV. On an empty bookcase, one of those novelty static-electric lightning globes from Spencer’s Gifts. A naked, emaciated woman with deflated tits walked through the room in a trance and disappeared into the kitchen. Nobody paid attention. A stereo was going somewhere, The Very Best of Tom Jones.

  Sharon handed money to the man in the robe, who went in another room and came back with a baggie of little butterscotch cubes.

  “…It’s not unusual to be loved by anyone…”

  “Let’s get out of here,” said Coleman. “Everyone’s weird.”

  Sharon ignored him. She dropped to the floor and began breaking up the cubes and cramming them in a glass pipe. The naked woman walked back through the room and disappeared again. Coleman put his hands on the static-lightning globe. “Cool.”

  The naked woman drifted back through the room, stopped in the middle and burst into sobs. Nobody cared. Sharon flicked the Zippo, pulled hard and held the smoke. The naked woman cried louder.

  Sharon exhaled a cloud. “Will someone shut that bitch up! She’s pissing in my buzz!”

  “That’s my sister,” said the man in the silk robe. He leaned down and lit his own pipe.

  “Then you shut the cunt up!”

  He wanted to slap Sharon, but he was holding his smoke. The naked woman sobbed louder.

  “…What’s new pussycat? Whoa-ooo, whoa-ooo whoa-ooo…”

  Sharon stood up, and screamed in the woman’s face. “Shut the fuck up! Shut up! Shut up! Shut up!…”

  The sobbing got even louder.

  Sharon grabbed the static globe out of Coleman’s hands and bashed it over the woman’s head. Glass, blood and sparks flew in the darkness; the crying stopped. The woman hit the floor.

  The crack hit the robed man’s bloodstream, and his dilated eyes shifted conspicuously to the pistol-grip shotgun under the couch next to Sharon’s feet, telegraphing his intentions. Sharon intercepted the pass. The man jumped up and ran for the couch, but Sharon dropped and got there first. She came out with the twelve-gauge and rolled on her back just as the man was about to pounce.

  “…She’s a lady. Whoa, whoa, whoa…”

  The man left his feet and dove for Sharon, the silk robe opening in the air like a monarch butterfly. The buckshot caught him in the stomach in midair and yanked him back the other way.

  Nobody cared.

  Sharon and Coleman ran out the door to the sound of air rushing through glass.

  They cut across town on Twenty-second Street for the sanctuary of their crib, an Ybor City shotgun shack, one of the quaint little casitas built for the Cuban cigar rollers at the turn of the century that Serge had purchased for almost nothing and restored to original historic condition. Sharon was out of the car and running for the house before Coleman had the ignition off. When he came in the front door, she was already at it again on the floor with a pipe.

  “Save some for me!”

  Coleman plopped down on the throw rug and grabbed the pipe and was halfway through a hit when Sharon grabbed it back. She fired it up and had just started toking when he grabbed it again, and they fought back and forth for ten hectic minutes. Then it was all gone.

  “We have to get some more!” Sharon yelled.

  “I’m not going anywhere. That’s the rock talking.”

  “I want more!”

  “I’m too wired,” said Coleman. He grabbed his face. “I’ve forgotten how to blink…I need a beer to take the edge off.” He went to the fridge. Empty.

  When he came back, Sharon was crawling on the floor, pawing through the rug. “I think we dropped some! Help me look!”

  “We didn’t drop anything. You’re just really fucked up. I’m going out for beer.”

  It was 3:10 A.M.—ten minutes after local cutoff for alcohol sales—so Coleman picked up a sixer for seven bucks through the burglar bars of a speakeasy in a war zone off Nebraska Avenue.

  He killed the first bottle on the way back to the car and stuffed the empty under the driver’s seat. He placed the rest on the passenger seat, started the car and began taking in the Tampa night. He killed the second passing the football stadium and stuck that bottle under the seat as well. He drained the third circling the airport.

  The beer finally counterbalanced the cocaine, and Coleman’s head was full of happy pop rocks. He cruised along the waterfront on Bayshore Boulevard, the wind in his hair and the last beer in his hand. He untwisted the top.

  The Rolling Stones came on the radio. Coleman loved the Stones. He cranked it up.

  “I know…it’s only rock ‘n’ roll…but I like it!…”

  Coleman began singing along. He was having a moment. Everything was perfect. All the drugs were jelling, and
he was in a convertible with excellent tunes. The twinkling Tampa skyline across the water seemed to be personally winking at him. Coleman decided the smartest thing to do at this point would be to drive standing up. He hit cruise control.

  Coleman cranked the Stones as loud as it would go. The steering wheel was at his waist and he piloted the Impala like he was on the bridge of a ship. He had the beer in his right fist and he punched it into the night air. “Wooooooo! Stones rule! Woooooooooo!”

  He turned onto Gandy Boulevard. “Woooooooo!” He made another turn, and another.

  “Woooooo!”

  When he turned onto Triggerfish Lane, an empty beer bottle rolled out from under his seat and lodged beneath the brake pedal. Coleman looked down. “Uh-oh.”

  He tried to kick the bottle free with his foot, which made him go off the road and jump a curb. He tried to steer as he plowed across a lawn, crashing through a picket fence and into the next yard. He hit an inflatable kiddie pool full of water in front of 897 Triggerfish Lane and spun out. Coleman tumbled into the backseat. The Impala kept going. It ripped across the front yard at 887 and tore up a rosebed at 877 before hitting a metal sculpture at hip level, the top half of Lady Bird shattering the windshield and bouncing over the car. The Impala came out of the spin and stalled out in a hedge under a bedroom window, a FOR RENT sign wedged in its grille.

  Coleman stuck his head up from the backseat and looked around like a groundhog. He climbed into the front and turned the key. The car started on the first try.

  COLEMAN MADE IT back to Ybor City. He was a hundred yards from his home when the FOR RENT sign in the grille wiggled out of its rupture hole, and the radiator spewed antifreeze and wheezed to death. He walked the rest of the way.

  When he opened the front door, Sharon was still on her hands and knees.

  “Have you been at it the whole time I was gone?”

  She just kept clawing at the rug.

  “There’s nothing there!” said Coleman. “You’re stoned out of your mind!”

  “Look! I found something!” Sharon held it in her palm.

  “That’s not crack!”

  “Then what is it?”

  “Some unidentifiable shit in the rug.”

  “I’m gonna smoke it anyway!”

  Sharon stuck it in her pipe and flicked the Zippo a few times but couldn’t get the substance to ignite.

  “It won’t light!”

  “It’s not crack!”

  “It’s the lighter. I need a better one!”

  “Stop it! You’re flipping me out! I thought I was coming down, but I’m not! I think I OD’d or something.”

  Sharon ran in the bedroom and came out with a little propane torch she had bought at a head shop. “Let’s freebase it!”

  She tried to get the torch going but her hands were sweaty and shaking. “Give me a hand with this thing! I think it’s defective!”

  “Then will you leave me alone?”

  “C’mon!”

  Coleman swiped the torch away from her. “We need better light.” They went to the window to operate in the glow of the yellow crime lamps outside.

  “I don’t think you punctured the top of the propane canister. That’s why nothing’s coming out,” said Coleman. He screwed the valve down hard on the disposable pressurized tank, and the entire odorless contents silently seeped out.

  “There. That should do it.” He flicked the lighter.

  The fireball knocked Coleman and Sharon to the ground, and the curtains went up like gasoline-soaked toilet paper. The flames lapped at the parched ceiling boards.

  “Far-fucking-out,” said Sharon.

  “This night just doesn’t quit,” said Coleman.

  A minute later, fire-engine sirens.

  “Cops!” Sharon yelled. They ran out the back door.

  The all-wood house was gone in minutes. Then the fire started jumping roof to roof down the tight row of nineteenth-century cottages. All the firefighters could do was try to contain it. But there was a stiff wind, and embers blew to the next street, and the next. In less than an hour, three blocks were fully involved, sending flames fifty feet into the night, which drew reporters and rubberneckers on Interstate 4. The fire made it to a construction site, where a fuel tank blew on a forklift-crane, which would later get blamed for the blaze.

  Coleman and Sharon regrouped behind the fire trucks. She looked at her watch and tugged on Coleman’s shirt. “We can still get some more.”

  4

  A TALL, DASHING MAN in a tuxedo sat at a poker table, discreetly peeling up corners of cards as they were dealt. He placed the cards facedown, sat back in his chair and stared across the table at his rival. In his jacket pocket was a long-empty prescription bottle.

  A crowd had gathered around the table at the Seminole Bingo Palace just east of Tampa, marked by a water tower with a red arrow through it. The man in the tux calmly pushed a pile of chips to the center of the table. The crowd gasped at the boldness of the wager. They swung their gaze to his nemesis, a four-hundred-pound woman with a gray beehive smoking long brown cigarettes and petting a dachshund on her lap. All the other players had been vanquished or suffered loss of nerve as the stakes climbed. The woman straightened her rainbow pile of winnings, protected by a carefully placed perimeter of lucky stuffed animals. She made an opening between the felt monkey and octopus and pushed through a stack of chips to see his bet.

  The crowd gasped again and looked back at the man in the tux. He didn’t flinch. He snapped his fingers and a waiter came over with a tray. The bingo palace didn’t have a liquor license, so the man in the tux lifted a carton of chocolate milk off the tray. He knew poker wasn’t a game of bluffing; it was a game of intimidation. He dramatically sipped chocolate milk and squinted at the woman. He heard a voice inside his head: “I am become Death, Destroyer of Worlds.” He took another sip of chocolate milk.

  The woman turned her cards over. “Full house.”

  The man shook his head with disappointment. “All I have is two pairs…”

  She smiled smugly and reached for the chips.

  He turned his cards over. “Two pairs of aces!”

  “Bastard!” She pulled her hands back and scowled and stroked the dachshund.

  The man gathered up his chips, filled his tuxedo pockets and headed for the winner’s window.

  “Hey, stranger,” the woman called out. “Who are you, anyway?”

  The man in the tux turned. “Storms. Serge Storms.”

  Serge left the bingo hall and climbed in his Barracuda. Halfway home he heard a siren; a fire engine sped past. Then he saw the glow on the horizon.

  “What the heck’s burning? Must be big if I can see it this far away.”

  By the time Serge parked the Barracuda behind the fire trucks, he was numb. He stared at the flames with an open mouth and slowly walked up to Coleman and Sharon in the back of the crowd, then collapsed to the ground in anguish. “My house! My archives! The historic district!”

  “Some careless idiot, no doubt,” said Coleman.

  “Where are we going to live?” said Serge. “We’re homeless!”

  Coleman walked over to the Impala, braced his right foot against the front bumper and yanked the FOR RENT sign from the grille. He walked back and handed the sign to Serge. “I think this place is available. Nice neighborhood. Very quiet. I just drove through it tonight.”

  MARTHA DAVENPORT SAT up in bed and shook Jim. He rolled over. “What is it?”

  “Listen to all those sirens.”

  Martha got out of bed and parted the curtains. “There’s some kind of big fire on the other side of town.”

  “You can see flames?”

  “No, but there’s a glow on the horizon.”

  “You sure it’s not a sporting event?”

  “At this hour?”

  “What time is it anyway?” asked Jim. He grabbed his glasses off the nightstand and checked his watch. “It’s almost four o’clock.”

  “Four o
’clock?” said Martha. “I can’t miss this!”

  Jim sat up as Martha padded across the wood floor to the window on the other side of the room and peeked through the curtains.

  “What’s going on?”

  “Remember what Gladys said? Jack Terrier comes out at four A.M. to water his lawn in a commando outfit.”

  “Honey, please get away from the window. You’re acting like a nut.”

  “We never get out…. There he is! There he is!”

  Jim joined Martha at the window. Across the street, a tall figure stood in a camouflaged jumpsuit and black ski mask, holding a garden hose. But the hose wasn’t running. Jack Terrier wasn’t moving.

  “What’s he doing?” asked Martha.

  “Holy cow!” said Jim. “Look at the lawn! Look at all the lawns!”

  “What happened?”

  “Someone must have wiped out in a car. See? Over at 907? There’s where he jumped the curb. And over there—pieces of the kiddie pool. That’s where he really lost control. The doughnuts start and loop all the way across Terrier’s yard and into the flower bed next door. Then it looks like he T-boned into a hedge before driving away.”

  There was a horrific scream. Terrier fell to his knees crying, then went over facedown in the fresh topsoil.

  “What a boob,” said Martha.

  “You can’t help but feel for him.”

  “How can you say that after the way he treated you today?”

  “I know, but still…”

  “What’s he doing now?”

  “He’s turning the water on and running around spraying everything.”

  “That’s not going to do any good,” said Martha. “The yard’s shot. He should know that.”

  “I think he’s going into shock,” said Jim.

  The street suddenly lit up. High beams pierced the darkness from both ends of Triggerfish as eight police cars and vans converged on the middle of the block. A helicopter swooped in with a search beam. The spotlight hit Terrier, who dropped the hose and ran in the house.

  “All this over illegal lawn watering?” said Martha.

  The helicopter spotlight then swung to the house next door. Car doors slammed. Officers drew guns and shielded themselves behind patrol cars. People yelled into megaphones.