SS 18: Shark Skin Suite: A Novel

by Tim Dorsey

  “Electrolytes are that important?”

  “Damn straight. You can actually kill someone with too much constipation relief remedy.” Serge stopped and tapped his chin. “Note to self . . .”

  “Look!” Coleman pointed at the man flopping around in front of an oak tree. “Now he’s tearing off all his clothes and running around the porch screaming.”

  “Must really be into Cool Hand Luke,” said Serge. “Some people are way too obsessed with movies. I don’t get it.”

  “He’s stopped moving,” said Coleman. “What’s that mean?”

  “Either he’s performing the Paul Newman death scene or it’s my first success as a fixer.” Serge mashed the gas pedal. “Let’s find something else that’s broken.”

  Chapter TWENTY

  FORT LAUDERDALE

  Shelby Lang swiveled on the steps. “What are you stopping for?”

  Brook stared up at the Broward County courthouse. She took a shallow swallow of air and pushed ahead.

  Shelby emptied his pockets for the metal detector. “You sure you’re okay?”

  “I’ll be fine.”

  They were by far the earliest to arrive in the courtroom. Before the next soul appeared, all was ready at the plaintiff’s table. Files, notepads, water. Brook nudged a pen that was a half inch out of alignment.

  After a nervous spell of stillness, the bailiff entered, followed by the court stenographer and a cast of local residents unconnected to any case who came to the courthouse each day because it was better than TV.

  The double doors in the back of the courtroom swung open again. Brook turned around and gulped. In marched four strikingly handsome men in identical black suits and black hair. Yale, Brown, Dartmouth, Harvard. Blue tie, red tie, blue tie, red-and-blue. The imposing legal team of Riley and company took seats and opened briefcases in unison. An assistant wheeled in a handcart of file boxes. Someone else set up a giant easel for oversized, dry-mounted exhibits.

  Brook elbowed Shelby. “Were they raised in test tubes?”

  “Yes.”

  Finally another door in the front of the room opened. From the judge’s chambers emerged a burly man in a black robe, a shade over six-five.

  “What do you know about him?” whispered Brook.

  “Judge Kennesaw Montgomery Boone?” said Shelby. “Let’s put it this way: We couldn’t have gotten a worse draw from the rotation. Totally sympathetic to corporations.”

  “That bad?”

  “He didn’t think the Supreme Court went far enough in Citizens United. Get ready to be overruled.”

  They sat without talking. A single rhythmic sound bounced off the walls, Brook clicking a pen open and closed. She noticed Shelby staring. “Sorry . . .” Then curiosity: “Where’s the jury pool?”

  “Won’t be one today,” said Shelby.

  “Why not? Trial’s supposed to start.”

  “It’s been delayed,” said Shelby. “Motion hearing. Just got a text.”

  “What kind of motion?”

  Shelby told her what he expected.

  “But they were supposed to do that a long time ago. It’s unheard of at this stage.”

  “Anything to disrupt us,” said Shelby. “Welcome to the opening shot in the psychological war.”

  A gavel banged. “I’m ready to hear motions.”

  A man stood at the defense table and told the judge what he wanted.

  Shelby jumped to his feet. “Objection!”

  “Overruled.”

  “May I cite precedent?”

  The gavel banged. “Court is in recess.” The black robe disappeared into chambers. Four men at the defense table simultaneously snapped briefcases and marched out of the courtroom with North Korean military precision, followed by a handcart of unopened boxes and an easel of unexhibited exhibits.

  “That could have gone better,” said Brook.

  “Short and sweet.” Shelby gathered stuff from their table. “Nothing I didn’t expect.”

  “What do we do now?”

  Shelby stood with his own briefcase. “Gas up the car.”

  A newspaper reporter in the back of the courtroom watched Shelby and Brook depart. He opened his cell. “ . . . Boone granted the motion. I’m going to need some travel expenses approved and at least a week— . . . What? Another mandatory meeting? . . . But I have to hit the road . . .”

  A half hour later, a blue Datsun entered the company lot.

  Reevis spotted a trio of crusty journalists heading back from lunch. “Guys, wait up!”

  Three men on the opposite sidewalk stopped and turned. Ill-fitting jackets and threadbare shoes. Bilko wore his trademark porkpie hat. Danning’s jacket featured a bunch of thin blue-and-white vertical stripes like a southern lawyer. Mazerek had Brylcreem stains on his collar.

  Reevis trotted across the street and caught his breath. “Going to the meeting?”

  “It’s mandatory.”

  The quartet strolled for the elevator. Danning stopped and pointed at a side door. “Let’s take the stairs.”

  As they headed across the lobby, an unnaturally large number of colleagues began funneling toward the stairwell.

  “What’s going on?” asked Reevis.

  “The roach,” said Bilko.

  “Roach?” asked Reevis.

  Danning entered the stairwell. “You’ll see . . .”

  In the latest wave of austerity, Reevis’s paper had cut two-thirds of the janitorial staff because shareholders never set foot in the building. Filth grew like weeds. Then came the roach . . .

  Reevis trudged up the steps. “I still don’t know what’s going on.”

  “One more flight,” said Mazerek.

  Few had ever used the stairs until now. Foot traffic became thicker and thicker until it clogged to a stop on the third landing.

  “I can’t see,” said Reevis. “Too many people.”

  “They’ll move on,” said Danning. “It’s well worth the wait.”

  It was. Other journalists satisfied their curiosity and resumed their ascent toward the meeting.

  Reevis wormed his way to the front for a view. “What the hell? When did this start?”

  Mazerek stared down at an overturned bug. “Reliable reports pin the roach’s death about a week ago, but nobody can be sure because the only people who take the stairs are the ones on diets.”

  “A sports guy started it,” said Bilko. “He realized he’d seen the same roach for three straight days. And since it was so big, he couldn’t believe it hadn’t been cleaned up . . .”

  “ . . . Then he remembered most of the janitors were let go,” continued Mazerek. “So the next day he made a tiny little cross for the roach. Journalists are already a strange lot, and sportswriters even stranger . . .”

  “ . . . The next day he came back to see if the roach was still there, and someone else had left flowers,” said Danning. “Word started getting around and more and more people began taking the stairs. Next came some little candles, and the crime-scene tape went up. That was a week ago, and now we have this”—waving his hand over a bed of roses and baby’s breath.

  Reevis bent down to look at a tiny framed tribute photo of the roach in happier days. “Looks like a mini version of that outpouring for Princess Di.”

  “Frustration vents in weird ways,” said Bilko.

  “These are fucked-up times for our business,” said Danning.

  Mazerek pointed his cell-phone camera. “This time they’ll have to believe this is going on at a major Florida newspaper.”

  “Better get to that meeting . . .”

  They exited on the next landing and found the conference room. Smaller than the other venues, maybe thirty seats.

  Bilko jerked his thumb. “Get a load of this too-cool-for-school punk.”

  At
the front of the room, a lean young man fiddled at another easel. Skinny jeans, loafers with no socks, untucked black dress shirt, spiked hair.

  “Looks like some spoiled movie director’s nephew,” said Mazerek.

  “Got the whole L.A. thing going on,” said Danning.

  “That’s our consultant?” said Reevis.

  The easel held a giant flip pad. The consultant folded the first page over the top. “If you will all take seats, we can begin . . .”

  They started with a fever chart comparing revenues of various newspapers. Far below the rest was a dotted line tracking their own paper’s dismal performance. Another large page flipped over: a bar chart of anemic company stock. Another page: a pie chart from depressing ad sales . . .

  Reevis whispered out the corner of his mouth, “What’s this got to do with reporting? I thought the consultant was supposed to teach us the latest journalism techniques, like advanced computer public-record searches.”

  Danning leaned back smugly and folded his arms. “The whole object of this travesty is to shame us.”

  “No, seriously . . .” said Reevis.

  “Seriously,” said Bilko. “Just in case we get any headstrong notions about the added workload, they sling these belittling statistics at us.”

  “The irony is that a prime job requirement for newspaper reporters is ultra-sensitive bullshit detectors,” said Mazerek. “And then they send in these bozos with see-through turds.”

  “And notice how they’ve chopped us up into small groups?” said Danning. “Studies show that larger audiences risk a group contagion of mutiny. So just sit back like everyone else and let this jerk talk himself out about how we’re supposed to be doing our jobs, and then we can go back to the real job of putting out a paper.”

  “Excuse me?”

  The guys in the back of the room looked up.

  The consultant was staring at them. “Am I boring you? Is there something you’d like to ask?”

  “No,” said Mazerek. “We’re fine.”

  Reevis’s hand went up. “Actually, I do have a question.”

  Three heads in the back row snapped toward him. “What are you doing? Just shut up.”

  “What’s your question?” asked the consultant.

  “You make a lot more money than us, right?” said Reevis. “And you’re explaining how we need to be better journalists?”

  The consultant couldn’t have been happier with the challenge. He grinned condescendingly: I am going to put this twerp out like a wet cigar. “Are those real questions or just rhetorical?”

  Mazerek elbowed Reevis. “Will you shut up already?”

  “Those were rhetorical,” said Reevis. “Here’s my real question: What’s an inverted pyramid?”

  “What?” asked the consultant. He was the only person in the room who didn’t know where Reevis was going.

  “An inverted pyramid,” the young reporter repeated. “What is it?”

  The rest of the audience knew two things: One, they loved this. And two, Reevis was knotting his own noose.

  The consultant grew red-faced. “I don’t have time for this nonsense.” He turned back to the easel. “Now, if you’ll take a look—”

  “You don’t know, do you?” said Reevis.

  Bilko covered his face. “Jesus, just drop it.”

  “No!” snapped the consultant. “Why don’t you tell me what it is?”

  “How to prioritize facts for the most basic news story,” said Reevis. “It’s one of the first things they teach in your freshman year of J-school.”

  The consultant took a deep breath and exhaled hard out his nostrils. “Are you finished?”

  “No,” said Reevis. “What’s New York Times v. Sullivan?”

  Danning smacked himself in the forehead.

  The consultant placed his hands on his hips. “Why don’t you tell me?”

  “The most important libel case ever decided by the Supreme Court,” said Reevis. “Established standards of public figures and ‘absence of malice.’ Also taught freshman year.”

  “What’s your point?”

  “Just wanted to clarify something for myself,” said Reevis. “I picked the two easiest questions that even the worst journalists in America could answer. Please, continue telling us how to do our jobs better.”

  The consultant stared at Reevis with a squint of rage, then knocked over the easel and stormed out of the room.

  Danning raised both eyebrows high as he stood. “Didn’t know you had it in you.”

  “Kid, you got a pair of brass ones,” said Mazerek.

  Bilko grabbed his porkpie. “Lunch is on us tomorrow.”

  Like most newsrooms, the Journal’s was a large, wide-open space with columns holding up the ceiling over the sea of crammed desks. No cubicle walls, so reporters didn’t have to get up to shout to each other. Because it was the news biz. Along the south wall ran a series of glassed-in offices for upper editors. They had a view of the parking lot. The paper was approaching the early deadline for zoned neighborhood editions. Phones rang, keyboards clattered.

  Three veteran reporters typed with urgency. They kept glancing over the tops of their screens toward the final office at the end of the floor, which belonged to the managing editor. Seated inside with his back to the glass was Reevis. The veterans shot silent glances at one another.

  The door at the end of the room finally opened. They couldn’t get a read on the young reporter’s face as he returned to his desk.

  “What happened?” asked Mazerek.

  “They put a note in my file.” Reevis sat down at his computer. “And told me not to bother the consultants anymore.”

  “That’s not so bad,” said Bilko.

  “We admire what you did,” Danning said with a chuckle. “Just try to keep a lid on it at the libel class this Friday.”

  Chapter TWENTY-ONE

  SOMEWHERE ELSE IN THE MIDDLE OF THE STATE

  Oak trees ran the town; the people just lived there. They grew everywhere, forming shade canopies over roads and obscuring buildings. Anyplace you walked, massive lengths of Spanish moss draped from overhead branches like an endless cavern of ZZ Top beards.

  The moss hung in front of the barbershop, the wood-shingled railroad warehouse, a trading post, the Garage Café and a short row of early brick buildings that formed main street, which was called Cholokka Boulevard. Four elegant white Corinthian columns held up the two-story southern veranda of a plantation-style mansion.

  Except for the late-model SUVs and coupes parked in front of the antiques shops, it could have been 1898. The mansion was now a bed & breakfast.

  An arm extended from the driver’s window, snapping photos as the ’76 Ford Cobra headed north. The arm came back inside. “I can never get enough of Micanopy! It’s the oldest inland town in Florida, and also the oldest overall that was settled by Americans, as opposed to the Spanish in Saint Augustine.”

  “What’s it named after?”

  “The Indian chief who had to move to Oklahoma.”

  The Ford continued north toward Gainesville on U.S. 441. Serge toyed with his ammo magazines as he drove. “And for those playing along at home, we have a new number one for the oxymoron files: death benefits.”

  Coleman took a big hit. “That’s messed up . . . Can I have the extra ammo clip? I’ve got a cool idea.”

  “But I need it.”

  “You already have one.”

  “What if I’m up against more than thirty people?”

  “I just thought it would be a cool place to hide my dope.”

  Serge lit up in thought. He quickly passed the clip across the front seat with a sly grin.

  Coleman glanced warily, then began packing it. “What changed your mind?”

  “You know what a fan of irony I am,” said Serge, turning off th
e highway. “I’ll give it to you under one condition. If you’re arrested for possession you have to plea-bargain, and during your allocution, you must say this to the judge: ‘I admit I was the guy who removed all the bullets from the assault rifle’s extended magazine and then filled it with pot. But now I realize that was wrong because marijuana is dangerous.’ ”

  “Righteous.”

  “Make no mistake: I’m all about guns! I just love the legal incongruities our national discourse has spawned, like I can buy a shotgun any time of day without a serious background check, but if I need something for my sniffles, it’s six forms of ID and complete school transcripts. The government has essentially created a system where if I want to clear a head cold, the easiest cure is to blow my brains out.”

  Coleman looked around the thickening woods. “Where are we?”

  “Paynes Prairie.” Serge parked the car near a trail sign. “To the observation tower!”

  Serge ran ahead and bounded up the steps. “I’m all about observation towers! I climb them even when they’re not technically for observation, like billboards, cellular relays and lighting structures at high school fields. Because the key to achievement in life is not letting others define your towers.” He looked down from an upper landing. “Coleman, what’s taking you so long?”

  Coleman was bent over a railing, wondering if he was going to retch, and wondering if that would be a better thing.

  “Coleman!”

  He stood and grabbed his stomach. “How much farther?”

  “Look up!” Serge yelled down through the middle of the pressure-treated staircases. “To the top!”

  “Crap.” Coleman resumed slogging a step at a time.

  Serge reached the observation deck and stood paralyzed in a balloon of his own intoxication. A whisper: “It’s beautiful . . .”

  Coleman clomped up the last few steps and collapsed on the planks.

  Serge looked toward his feet. “What are you doing down there?”