by Tim Dorsey
“That’s stupid.” Serge stood and brushed off his arms. “By definition, obstacles are things you avoid. Can’t believe nobody thought of that yet.”
They just stared.
Serge retrieved his canteen from a table. “Which one’s my trophy?”
“You didn’t do any of the obstacles.”
“We already went over that,” said Serge. “I think that’s the problem. You’re enlisted. I’m obviously officer material…”
Farther up the beach, a large group of students circled some kind of attraction. In the middle, Coleman sat on the sand with a tangelo and syringe. He stuck the needle in the fruit and drew back the plunger.
“The key is to extract an identical cubic centimeter volume as the agent you intend to introduce. That’s the most common mistake: Excess alcohol dribbles down your shirt, the authorities smell it and you’re history.” He squirted juice in the sand, then filled the syringe from a bottle of vodka and injected the tangelo. They heard yelling up the beach behind them.
“Let go of me!”
“What’s all that noise about?” asked Coleman, removing the hypodermic.
One of the students stood and shielded his eyes against the sun. “Looks like those army guys are throwing some dude out in the water.”
“Here’s another trick,” said Coleman. “One of the most important turbo-partying tools that everyone overlooks. Only ninety-nine cents.” He reached in his pocket and dramatically held aloft a serrated orange plastic device.
Students took a closer look. “Isn’t that a kid’s citrus sipper from those roadside souvenir stands?”
Coleman carefully twisted the cutting edge into the tangelo. “Most people try to suck the doctored fruit through an unsecured aperture. Mistake number two. Big mess and more heat from the Man.” Coleman stuck the sipper in his mouth and squeezed the tangelo to a flat peel. “Ahhhh! That was refreshing. And not a single valuable drop lost.”
Murmurs rippled through the crowd.
“… Amazing…”
Behind the last row of onlookers, a trophy-less Serge walked by, filming.
“Coleman?” Another direction: “Coleman? Where’d you go?” Shuffling down the shore. “Coleman?”
BOSTON
Bedlam at the airport.
The blizzard was over. At twenty-six inches. Plows worked the runways.
Travelers pitched heated battles with ticket agents. Their win-loss record: zero to infinity. Others stared up in defeat at overhead departure screens. Status columns flashed.
All flights delayed.
Unless they were canceled.
The low-pressure front finally passed, but planes that had already taxied from the terminal were stacked twenty deep at de-icing machines by the foot of each runway.
At every gate, rows of vinyl chairs connected in single racks. All taken. A stress farm. Babies wailed, complainers complained, others phoned relatives to whine in different time zones. Candy bars, laptops, handheld video games. Some tried catching winks on the floor.
In a remote corner of the airside, a rare patch of empty seats, where agents formed an alert perimeter around Patrick McKenna, sitting with a floppy hat pulled down over his face. The sign at the gate’s departure desk: ANCHORAGE.
Ramirez paced with a cell phone to his head. University administration in Durham. On hold.
Another agent walked over. “Any luck?”
“Campus security turned up something,” said Ramirez. “Found one kid at the dorm feeding pets.”
“Didn’t Oswalt already talk to that guy?”
“Something new-” He returned his attention to the phone. “Yes, Sergeant, I’m still here… Under sedation? What’s he doing in the infirmary?… I see. Did he say anything before-… One second…” Ramirez flipped open a notebook and clicked a pen. “Fire away…”
Other agents strained for a glimpse as Ramirez scribbled in unrecognizable shorthand. “Thanks, Sergeant. I owe you.”
The rest were waiting: “Get the name of the hotel?”
“And the room. Holiday Isles, registered to one Kyle Jones.” He stuck the notebook in his pocket. “We’re splitting up. Johnson, Malone, Polaski: You take McKenna. The rest of us are going to Florida. Hatfield, check with the airlines.” He opened his phone again.
“Who are you calling now?”
“We’re not going anywhere soon with this snow. I’m getting some local people to that hotel before Madre’s crew can beat us there.”
Travelers grumbled. A plow went by the windows. Agent Hat-field finally returned, waving three electronic tickets. “Last seats, Atlanta.”
“Atlanta?” said Ramirez.
“Everyone’s rebooking. It’s the closest I could get without waiting till tomorrow.”
“Aren’t any of the bureau’s own planes available?” asked another agent.
“They all are,“ said Ramirez.”Stuck in snow.“ He looked at the Georgia tickets.”At least we’re out of here in six hours.”
“Gate’s at the other end of the terminal,” said Hatfield.
The agents began walking.
At the other end of the terminal: “Atlanta?” said Guillermo.
“Closest they had,” said Pedro, waving tickets. “Everyone’s trying to get out.”
“Which is our gate?”
“That one.”
They took seats, facing dim windows.
Guillermo was back on his cell. “Yes, I’m trying to reach Andy McKenna, room five forty-three… He hasn’t checked in yet?… But five forty-three is his room number, right?… Thanks for your help.” Click.
“Do we even know what the kid looks like?” asked Raul.
“Saw him once with his dad.” Guillermo stuck the phone in his jacket. “Back in the day.”
“Fifteen years ago?”
“Right, we have no idea what he looks like. That’s why I just made that phone call. Ensure we have the right room.”
“But if we don’t know what he looks like, how can we be sure we get the right one?”
Guillermo gave him the same look he’d gotten just before they’d gone in that convenience store.
“Oh.”
A row away, three agents settled into seats with newspapers and magazines.
“So Madre’s people already visited the campus?” asked Hatfield. Ramirez nodded. “That kid who feeds the pets was pretty shaken. Means they’re close.”
“How close?”
Behind them, Raul offered an open foil bag to Guillermo. “Chex Mix?”
A TV hung from a bracket between the gates.
The G-men and Guillermo’s crew looked up.
“And for those of you snowed in back in Boston, we bring you another day of Red Sox spring training from sunny Florida…”
Chapter Nineteen
PANAMA CITY BEACH
Behind one of the beach motels, another massive event at a swimming pool. Hundreds of plastic beer cups. Students rimmed the patio ten deep.
A loudspeaker: “… our next contestant. Please give it up for Coleman!”
Thunderous applause.
Coleman wobbled to the end of the diving board with a pilot’s scarf around his neck. He licked an index finger and raised it to gauge crosswind. Then he bounced twice and sprang into the air.
Enormous belly flop.
A row of judges marked scorecards for style, splash height and stomach redness.
Four blocks away, on the other side of the road from the beach, a pastor walked out of a church activity hall. He reached the edge of the street and rubbed his chin. “Where’d they go?”
He returned to the building. Leaning against the outside wall: four free-pancake signs.
“Holy…”
Serge stopped behind the Holiday Inn SunSpree to empty sand from his sneakers.
Church kids took seats around him on the ground. “What else do you have?”
“Well,” said Serge, putting his left shoe back on. “There’s Casey Kasem’s American Top Forty. You know where the
oldest lyrics ever to be heard on his show came from?”
Heads shook.
“Book of Ecclesiastes.” He stood. “Adapted for the Byrds’ mega-hit ‘Turn! Turn! Turn!’”
“Cool.”
Serge moved west up the beach, and his flock followed.
Heading the other direction, farther toward the waterline, a growing procession followed Coleman. “… This is the Boardwalk Beach Resort, headquarters of MTV… And that’s La Vela, largest nightclub in the entire United States. Afternoon special: all the beer you can drink, twenty bucks, but the catch is, unless you pay extra for a jumbo plastic mug and rights to the VIP filling station”-he held a thumb and finger slightly apart-“you get these tiny cups and have to wait forever…”
They approached the club’s entrance. Beefy guards checking drivers’ licenses from twenty states. One of the kids quickly produced a wallet to pay Coleman’s cover.
Pounding music greeted them on the massive party patio. The students got in a seemingly endless beer line. Another wallet came out, buying Coleman a giant mug and VIP-line status. All around: hooting and hollering. In the middle of the pool stood a concrete dance-contest island connected to the patio by a small bridge. A driving beat boomed from a 360-degree sound system as a parade of young women strutted onto the island and jiggled their rears.
Coleman found an empty table in back where the previous occupants had left empty cigarette packs and a pile of giveaway sample condoms. Students quickly cleared the surface to make space for Coleman’s beer mug. It was promptly empty. He began getting up.
A student’s hand on his shoulder. “Sir, we got it…”
“I’m never leaving this town.”
For the next three hours, proxy students made perpetual trips to keep Coleman’s mug full.
At the four-hour mark, Coleman and his new friends were all in the pool, lining the edge of the dance island, surrounded by hundreds of other tightly packed students holding identical orange plastic cups. As many more kids hung over balconies wrapped around the patio.
“Woooo!…”
“Shake it, mama!…”
A new contest on the island. One girl lay on her back with a balloon in her mouth. Another climbed on top, trying to pop it with her tits.
“How do they possibly think of this clever shit?”
Music started again for the next competition. An emcee whipped the crowd into a sexual froth with double entendre. Then he looked at a list in his hand and introduced the first contestant, a drop-dead biology major from the Tar Heel State, who began a grind that would shame most pole dancers.
“Coleman!” said one of the students. “What an excellent place! Thanks, dude!”
Another stunning series of the hottest coeds pranced around the island with skimpy swimsuits and contortionist moves. Illinois, Ball State, Duke. The audience roared.
“Coleman! You rock!… Coleman?” The youth turned to a friend. “Where’d Coleman go?”
The second student looked around. “I don’t know. He was just here.”
A junior from Nebraska finished her butt wiggle, and the emcee came back out. “Let’s give a huge hand for Missy!… And now our final contestant…” He checked his list, and his voice became a question. “… Coleman?”
His followers erupted as Coleman strutted out. He interlaced his fingers behind his head and began thrusting his sunburnt belly.
Students banged cups on the edge of the island. “Shake it, Coleman!…”
Coleman hit the concrete stage and rocked back and forth on his stomach like John Belushi.
Everyone came unglued.
“The dude parties without a net!…”
SIX BLOCKS AWAY
An FBI team from Tallahassee swarmed a room at the Holiday Isles Resort.
An agent came through the door and handed front-desk phone records to his supervisor.
The guest sat on a bed. “I’m telling you, I don’t have any idea what’s going on.”
“Your real name’s Kyle Jones?” asked the agent in charge.
He nodded.
“And you say you only got one phone call? From room service?”
Another nod.
“Just stay seated.”
Other agents pulled luggage apart, opened every drawer. His cell phone was checked for recent activity.
An hour later, the lead agent pulled out his own phone, dialing a number that rang in Logan Airport.
“Agent Ramirez? This is Baxter from Tallahassee. The guy you asked us to check out is clean.” He flipped a notepad. “Kyle Jones, real estate broker from Oshkosh. Not even here for spring break. Said he has no idea who McKenna is or how they got his name.”
“Something’s not right,” said Ramirez.
“I agree,” said Baxter. “He’s forty-three and never went to Boston College. And that business about charging champagne to his room? The hotel has no record, refunded or otherwise.”
“What about the call from room service?”
“Never happened. The hotel has record of just one incoming to his room. We traced it to a prepaid disposable.”
“Hold him till I get there.”
“When will that be?”
“Don’t know. With the drive from Atlanta, probably tomorrow morning.”
“But I said he came up clean.”
“Just hold him,” said Ramirez. “He might be lying and working with the people on the other end of that phone, which means he was waiting in that room to ambush our guy. If not, someone’s using him as a red herring. Either way I want to know the connection.”
“Anything else?”
“Do a full background workup, the whole nine yards, like he’s applying for Secret Service.”
“You got it.” Baxter closed the phone.
“Excuse me,” said Kyle. “Can I go get dinner now?”
“No.”
SUNSET
Serge had his favorite light for documentary filming.
Three church youths stood in the background as their mentor interviewed a Michigan State Spartan. The student smiled big. “I’m really going to be on CNN?”
“Haven’t gotten all the bids yet,” said Serge. “Please stick to the questions. You’re from a prestigious university, so what on earth can you be thinking?”
The youth contemplated his answer when a fellow Spartan whispered in his ear.
“He’s doing what?”
“Hurry up,” said the second student. “It’s about to start.”
“Sorry,” the interviewee told Serge. “I gotta run.”
“What’s happening?” asked Serge.
The student hopped up. “Man, if you’re doing a documentary on spring break, you definitely don’t want to miss this…”
Serge and his disciples followed the Michigan students, who were soon joined by rivers of other spring breakers streaming in from all directions.
They funneled through the back deck of a jumbo-capacity beach bar that was quickly packed beyond fire-marshal code. The chant had already begun.
“… Cole-man!… Cole-man!… Cole-man!…”
Serge pushed his way forward.
On the stage for the nightly band, Coleman lay on his back with a clear tube in his mouth. Three assistants continued pouring a staggering amount of Budweiser into the beer bong.
“… Cole-man!… Cole-man!… Cole-man!…”
“Incredible,” said Serge.
“You know him?” asked one of the church youth. “Unfortunately.” He turned for the door. “Where are you going?”
“Back to my motel room.”
“Can we come with you?”
“Knock yourself out.”
Chapter Twenty
THAT EVENING
Stop-and-go traffic on the strip. A high-mileage pickup with a Florida Gators bumper sticker rolled into town.
“Look at all the babes!” said Cody.
“We need to find a hotel room,” said Melvin Davenport.
“Which one do you like?”
“We just need to find something. All the signs I’m seeing say ‘No Vacancy.’”
“I ignore those.”
“This one,” said Melvin.
He pulled into the parking lot. Then pulled out.
“How about that one?” said Cody.
In and out again.
“Knew we should have gotten reservations,” said Melvin.
“That’s just the first two,” said Cody. “Here’s another…”
Ten motels later: “This isn’t good.”
“You worry too much,” said Cody. “Something will probably open up later tonight.”
“Who checks out at night?”
“Whoa!” said Cody. “Check that ass!”
“I’d rather check into a hotel.” They passed the Alligator Arms.
ALLIGATOR ARMS
Room 534.
Three kids sat on the floor around Serge.
“Never heard of that.”
“It’s true,” said Serge. “Major first-century schism between Paul and Peter. The apostles were divided. Should the new Messiah be just for the Jews, or should the gospel also be preached to Gentiles? Arguably the most critical turning point affecting life as we know it today.”
“How do you know all this stuff?”
“It’s history. How can you not be fascinated?”
“Serge?”
“Yeah?”
“What’s the matter?”
“What do you mean?”
“That look on your face.”
“Sorry. My mind drifted into negative country. Got cheated out of a trophy today.”
“When?”
“At the army obstacle course. Remember? You were there.”
“Oh, you mean when they threw you in the ocean instead?”
“I guess that’s second place. And I wanted it so bad. I’ve never won a trophy for anything my whole life. Been eating at me ever since Little League, and this morning it was so close I could taste it-”
They heard a violent slam against the outside of the motel room door. Then loud talking. Something shattered on the ground. Another crash against the door.
The students jumped. “What the heck’s that?”