by Tim Dorsey
Near the sidewalk, a man in a hat sat on a park bench feeding pigeons.
Scooter Escobar ran across the boulevard. He took a spot on the bench and stared straight ahead. They exchanged newspapers. “You wanted to see me?”
“No,” said the man, code name Raúl.
“Then why’d you set up the meet?”
“You’re the one who called me. Are you still doing coke?”
“Yes.”
Someone took a seat on the other side of Escobar. He smiled. “How are things at the consulate?”
“Who the hell are you?”
“Malcolm Glide, your newest best friend. I hear we’re supposed to exchange newspapers.” Glide set a folded Herald in Escobar’s lap.
Scooter looked back and forth at the two men. “This was a mistake. I have to go.”
He began to stand, but Glide pulled him back down. “Why the rush? It’s a beautiful day. Old and new pals enjoying themselves. That’s what life’s all about.”
Scooter wept in his hands. “I can’t take it anymore.”
Malcolm leaned forward for a view of Raúl. “Is he always like this?”
Raúl shrugged. A pigeon strutted for a piece of bread.
Malcolm put an arm around Escobar’s twitching shoulders. “I’ve heard great things about you.”
“You have?”
Malcolm nodded extra hard. “You’re going to go far. Maybe work for us someday.”
“Really?”
Another emphatic nod. “So when I hear someone as talented and dedicated as you might have a problem, I can’t just stand by and not help.”
“Problem?”
“Raúl filled me in. It’s why you set up this meeting.” Malcolm smiled warmly. “I mean, anyone can accidentally fire a grenade launcher.”
“That’s what I kept telling him,” said Scooter.
“Telling who?”
“My uncle.”
“That’s right, the general. You let me have a little chat with him.” Malcolm held two fingers together. “We’re tight.”
“It’s too late.” Weeping again. “I know they’re going to send me home. They’ve already sent a replacement spy.”
“You mean Serge?”
Scooter’s head sprang up. “So it’s true?”
Malcolm laughed. “Not remotely. Except I do need to talk to you about that. I’m scratching your back, but I have an itch, too. That’s what friends are for. So I want you to go back to the consulate and act like everything’s normal, and find out everything you can about Serge.”
Scooter sniffled and wiped tears off his cheeks. “But I thought your government assigned him to us.”
“Well,” said Malcolm. “Things are a little confusing right now, especially with the assassination plot against Guzman.”
“What!” said Scooter. “Someone’s going to kill our president?”
“Oops, I shouldn’t have mentioned that.” Glide leaned closer and whispered, “Forget you heard anything.”
“No problem.”
Glide released his grip on Scooter’s shoulders. “That’s my boy! . . . Now let’s all get back to work.”
They exchanged three newspapers again and left in different directions.
Downtown
Serge and Coleman continued west on Flagler.
It was slow going from perpetual stops; Ted Savage constantly twirled on the sidewalk and crisscrossed the street. Everywhere he looked, every face, every vehicle, every office window, suspicion lurked. That man at the cash machine? The woman selling roses on the corner? The mother with the baby stroller? Two teenage boys in white T-shirts running past him with a purse? The screaming restaurant owner chasing them? That plump guy a block back pointing at Ted . . .
“Put your arm down!” Serge snapped at Coleman. “He’ll see you pointing.”
“He started running.”
“He saw you. Move!”
Coleman was soon a distant second to Serge. Two streets later, he caught up and fell back panting against a sandwich shop window. “Why are you stopping?”
Serge fed quarters in a slot. “To buy newspapers.”
“But he’s getting away.”
“No, he’s taking the stairs to the Metro Mover. The last one just left, so we have time.”
“To read newspapers?”
“Not read.” Serge let the spring door on the box slam shut. “We’ve been spotted, which means we need to take surveillance to the next level. We’re going to employ one of the most sophisticated Cold War techniques . . .”
Serge explained the procedure as they climbed the public transit platform and reached the top just as another automated monorail car slid up on the tracks.
Ted was too focused on getting inside the sanctuary of the car to notice anyone else. He waited at the front of the platform, inches from the closed doors—“Come onnnnnnn!”—until they hissed open. Ted jumped into the futuristic pod, plopped down on a seat, and let his head fall back with a big exhale.
Others stepped in from the platform and filled the rest of the car. Business commuters, students, tourists, street urchins, fishermen. The car lurched, then quietly glided out of the station on twin elevated rails.
Multilingual conversations.
The tram swung south, sailing through an architecturally funky square cut in the middle of a condo tower.
“I took too many pills,” said Coleman. “We just went through a building.”
“That was real.” Serge worked with his newspaper. “Just don’t forget our stealth technique.”
The route curved around Bayfront and north by Miami-Dade College. Stop after stop, people on and off. A black SUV following as best it could from streets below. Ted pulled another miniature from his pocket, waiting to use the distraction of the upcoming stop at Freedom Tower Station. He checked oncoming passengers and those already seated, then sucked the tiny bottle in his fist. Tension sheeted off Ted as his eyes wandered until they reached the bench seat at the opposite end of the car, where a couple of riders sat obscured by the newspapers they were holding up.
Ted suddenly choked on saliva and pounded his chest.
Staring back at him were two sets of eyes, each peering through a pair of circles cut in the newspapers. Ted jumped to his feet and ran to the front doors, trying to pry them open before the car had come to a stop at the next platform.
“He’s on the move again,” said Serge.
Newspapers flew. A race down the station stairs.
“Is this the chase part?” asked Coleman.
They ran diagonally through honking traffic on Biscayne. Under the overpass with I-395. Scrambling up the embankment, Serge closing in, Savage perpetually glancing over his shoulder. “Who are you guys?”
“Pay no attention to us,” yelled Serge. “Just keep doing what you’re doing.”
“Get away from me!”
Serge reached the top of the overpass. “I remember now!” He stopped and cupped hands to his mouth.
A chain-link retaining fence ran along the highway. Savage leaped up onto it like a house cat hearing a garbage disposal.
From the rear. “Ted! . . . Ted Savage!”
Chapter Nineteen
Interstate 395
“Leave me alone!” yelled Savage, clinging to the highway fence.
“Ted!” shouted Serge. “I’m on your side!”
“Go away!” Ted yelled back. “You’re . . . Wait, how do you know my name?”
“I’m a big fan.”
“Bullshit! You’re with the Company!” His fingertips went red to purple. “I know how this ends. You’re walking along on a spring day, and a car pulls up. Maybe it’s someone you know, someone you trust, and they ask if you want a ride . . .”
“This ain’t that movie, Ted. Come on down.” Serge took a step back to defuse the standoff. “You’ve been through a lot.”
Coleman struggled up the rest of the embankment and lay down in the dirt. “I don’t like the chase part.”
&nb
sp; Ted really wasn’t looking forward to climbing the fence. He dropped and fell to his knees. Serge helped him up.
“Thanks,” said Savage. “So if you’re not in the trade, how do you know my name?”
“I didn’t say I wasn’t in the trade, just not with the Company.”
“Then who are you?”
Serge clicked the heels of his sneakers together and gave a quick salute. “Serge A. Storms, patriot-in-waiting.”
Coleman pushed himself up from the ground and walked toward Ted. “You need to mellow out. I have some coke.”
“You do?”
Coleman poured a generous bump on the back of his hand and Savage vacuumed. He snorted deep with zooming eyes.
“Dammit.” Serge steadied Ted. “He was spastic enough before.”
“It’s what he needed,” said Coleman. “I know this territory.”
Ted nodded. “Right, Miami. Should have known. World capital of ex-spook, paramilitary, soldier-of-fortune, dummy-front-corporation, back-channel, plausible-deniability, invisible-ink, yabba-dabba-doo . . .”
Serge smiled patiently. “Why don’t I buy you a drink and bring you back down?”
“Now you’re talking!”
“Me, too?” asked Coleman.
Serge seized his collar. “No more rocket dust for him.”
“But he likes it.”
“That’s the problem.” Serge straightened out his pal’s shirt. “I’ve got a rare chance to pick the brain of a famous spy, and I can’t have you turning it to hamburger.”
Ted walked over. “So where are we going?”
“I know the perfect place.” Serge led them back to Biscayne Boulevard and hailed a cab. “Just a mile or so down the road, but another world away.”
“Where?” asked Ted.
“Churchill’s,” said Serge. “Heard of it?”
“Heard of it? I could have bought the place with my tabs.”
A taxi pulled over.
“Churchill’s?” said Coleman. “What’s that?”
Serge and Ted looked at each other and laughed as they all got in.
The pastel Paradise taxi sped north. A small plastic palm tree stood on the roof. The driver jabbered nonstop on a cell phone in Swahili. A pine-tree air freshener on the rearview battled the jerk-chicken upholstery. The radio on “Classic Mo-Bastic Reggae! 107.5 FM, Miami!”
“So where do you know me from?” asked Ted.
“The news. I watch it all the time. Even when I don’t watch it. I leave CNN on at night for white noise, but you know how you hear something in your sleep and it infiltrates your dream? And then Larry King is chasing me through a misty forest while Tori Spelling reveals all.” Serge shook with the willies. “I can’t leave it on anymore. Anyway, that’s when I heard about your case. How you were ‘outed.’ ”
“They betrayed me.”
Coleman raised his hand. “I don’t know what’s going on again.”
“You gave them your whole life,” said Serge.
They turned left off Biscayne onto Fifty-fourth. Jimmy Cliff from the radio:
“. . . The harder they come . . .”
“Then they got that TV prick to disclose my classified status.”
“. . . The harder they fall . . .”
Serge swayed to the music. “You’re with friends now.”
“. . . One and all . . .”
“Serge.” Coleman nervously tapped his shoulder. “Where are we?”
“Little Haiti. We’re putting another distinct Miami district into play.” Serge leaned over the front seat and handed the hack a twenty. “Let us out here.”
“But we’re still a few blocks from your stop,” said the driver.
“I like to take in the neighborhood on approach. Here’s another ten.”
“It’s your funeral.” The cab screeched off.
Coleman looked around an arid landscape of sunken-eyed scavengers milling outside barricaded buildings. He clung to the nearest arm: “Serge, that guy coming toward us on the sidewalk is swinging a giant machete.”
“Are other people around?”
“Yes, lots.”
“Does it seem unusual to them?”
“No.”
“Then it shouldn’t to us.”
Onward up Second Avenue.
Coleman pointed again. “There’s one of those double-decker buses from that other country.”
“England,” said Serge. “See the building next to it? Churchill’s, one of Florida’s most venerable watering holes.”
“Seems a little out of place in this neighborhood,” said Coleman.
“Totally out of place,” said Serge. “A British pub in Little Haiti catering to Goth kids. Non sequiturs rock my world.”
They walked another block and went inside the pub’s corner entrance beneath a large portrait of the former British prime minister and a sign: UNDER OLD MANAGEMENT.
A block back, an SUV with tinted windows pulled up to the curb.
Coleman climbed a stool. “The bar’s empty.”
“An empty bar at midday is the perfect place for spies to meet. No eavesdroppers. And the arrival of any potential adversary can’t go unnoticed.”
They didn’t notice two men in off-the-rack suits arrive at a table up front.
Ted looked around. “Where are the Goth kids you mentioned?”
“They only come out at night.”
Bartender: “What can I get you fellas?”
“Bottled water,” said Serge.
“Whiskey,” said Ted.
“It’s on me,” said Serge.
“Make it a double.”
The woman returned with drinks.
“Thanks.” Serge twisted off the plastic cap. “Can I take pictures?”
“Knock yourself out.” The woman returned to the end of the bar and took a seat in front of a TV: “Our biggest-ever shoe and handbag intervention. Next on Oprah.”
Serge clicked away with his digital camera, starting at the sailfish over the bar, hung against a faded Florida mural of egrets and gulls on a coastal marsh. It was a narrow joint, barely enough for the row of stools at the front, two end-to-end pool tables, and a small band stage for live weekend jams.
“So, Ted,” asked Serge. “What brings you to Miami?”
“They dumped me.”
“What do you mean?”
“I woke up and here I was.”
Serge nodded. “Burn Notice.”
“At least I think they dumped me,” said Savage. “I was at the bar in New Orleans. Gets fuzzy after that.”
Serge grabbed his water. “What’s the last thing you remember?”
“Stumbling out of Cosimo’s on Burgundy Street; next thing I knew I was waking up on top of the covers in a strange motel in another city and all my credit cards were gone. I had to turn on the TV to find out where I was.”
Coleman tossed back his drink. “Been there, done that.”
“Cosimo’s,” said Serge. “Another famous spy bar. Favorite of Lee Harvey Oswald while running his one-man Fair Play for Cuba Committee.”
“You know your history,” said Ted. “Anyway, looks like I’m stuck in Miami awhile.”
“People should go to jail for what they did to you.” Serge aimed his camera toward the back of the bar. Click, click, click.
One of the men in suits aimed his tie tack. Click, click, click.
“What’s done is done,” said Ted. “No use looking back.”
Two more people came through the open door of bright sunlight. Local residents. The Haitians grabbed a pair of stools on the other side of Coleman.
Coleman turned and smiled. “So you guys live around here?”
The answer came in death stares. Coleman gulped. Murderous mouths, soulless eyes. The closest had a thick scar running from his forehead, over his eyelid, to his cheek.
Coleman managed a crooked grin. “I’ll get back to you.”
Ted reached in his pocket. “Serge, one thing you should know before we ha
ng out anymore. You might be in danger.” He unfolded the note with invisible ink. “JM/WAVE, the old anti-Castro operation. I think they’re planning to set me up for some kind of fall.”
“No, they’re not,” said Serge.
“Seriously, I understand these people. Now that they’ve neutralized me, I’m the perfect scapegoat for some rogue operation.”
“That’s my note,” said Serge.
“Yours? What? Why?”
“Just gettin’ my Serge on.”
Ted felt someone poking his arm. He turned.
Coleman held out his hand. “Want to burn a joint?”
“Sure,” said Ted. “But where? It’s broad daylight. I saw some police cars on the way over.”
“Got it covered.” Coleman climbed off his stool. “I’m an expert at finding hidden places to blow numbers in public.”
Ted hopped down. “What are we waiting for?”
Coleman felt someone poke his arm. He turned. The Haitians. A pair of giant, ivory smiles. “Can we come, too?”
“The more the merrier.”
They went out the front door and circled behind the bar. Coleman found an alley with garbage cans and stacked beer cartons. They crouched.
A black SUV drove off.
South Miami
Building 25. Nightfall.
Station Chief Gil Oxnart grabbed the podium.
“What have we got? Dresden?”
An agent opened a folder on his school desk. “Serge’s previously unknown associate goes by the code name ‘Coleman.’ Picked up surveillance on Flagler Street, where subjects proceeded west on foot until boarding the Metro Mover.”
“Classic move,” said Oxnart. “Difficult to follow the monorail below on the streets.”
“Had a heck of a time. Just about to lose him when they exited Freedom Tower Station, proceeding on foot to the 395 overpass.” Agent Dresden passed a set of eight-by-tens. “Followed taxi to Second Avenue, where subjects exited north.”
Oxnart turned to a city map on the wall, following the trail with his finger. “This route makes no sense, multiple modes of transportation, random pedestrian movement.” He returned to the podium. “No healthy person has a lifestyle like that. We’re obviously dealing with an experienced professional.”