Cadillac Beach

by Tim Dorsey

  “Lenny, gimme a hand,” said Serge, dragging Keith’s body out of the car by the ankles.

  “You’re just going to leave Keith in a Dumpster?” said Rusty.

  “That’s what they’re there for. And while we’re here, let’s clear some of the trash out of the backseat. It’s starting to look like a pigsty.” Serge rounded up some mustard packets and Tony’s smashed McDonald’s soda cup and threw them in the Dumpster.

  Then Lenny and Serge grabbed Keith by the hands and feet and got a swinging motion going. “On three!…”

  Keith went into the bin with a deep metal thud. Then Tony.

  Then an argument, the guys debating whether to make a run for it or stay with Serge.

  “He’s gotten us this far!”

  “He’s insane!”

  “But we don’t know this city! He does!”

  “I’d love to stay and chat,” said Serge. “But right now we have to get this car off the street and hole up somewhere until the doctor arrives and we can figure a few things out. Everyone back in the limo.”

  “Serge,” said Brad, “the car looks awful. We can’t keep driving like that.”

  Serge stepped back and rubbed his chin. “You really think so?”

  “Serge!”

  “Okay, if it’ll make you feel better. You’ve been pretty cooperative up to now, considering everything.”

  He took off down the alley on foot and turned the corner.

  “Don’t leave us!”

  He was back a few minutes later with a shopping bag from a Cuban sundries store on Washington. He pulled out masking tape and Glad trash bags, which he ripped into sheets and taped together to cover the limo.

  “How are we going to drive it like that?”

  “That’s not for driving,” said Serge. “That’s to buy time. Stay here.”

  “Don’t leave us!”

  Serge left them.

  “The guy’s a psychotic!” said Doug. “Let’s get out of here before he comes back. Now’s our chance!”

  “And go where?” said Brad, holding a blood-soaked towel to his shoulder.

  “The police.”

  “Tell them what?”

  “It was an accident.”

  “I’m more afraid of the mob,” said Brad. “Let’s stick with Serge until we can get out of town. Then we dump him.”

  “He’s a lunatic!” said Doug. “Just ask his friend!”

  They looked at Lenny. Lenny nodded.

  “I’m with Doug on this one,” said Rusty. “The guy’s certifiable. This can only get worse. We have to get you to a doctor.”

  “I’m the one who’s fuckin’ shot!” yelled Brad. “And whose brilliant idea was that? Who said, ‘Let’s get even with Dave. It’ll be a barrel of laughs’? If you didn’t notice, they were shooting at us back at the airport! With real bullets! The only reason we’re still alive right now is Serge!”

  “Okay, okay, since you want to play the I’m-the-one-who’s-shot card, we’ll do it your way for now,” said Rusty. “But the next thing that goes wrong—”

  A motorized roar came down the alley. They turned. Serge raced up on a Kawasaki 500, a shopping sack from a hardware store in his lap.

  “Where’d you get that?”

  “They rent these top-line bikes now, especially in youth destinations like Miami Beach.”

  “You rented it?”

  “Way too expensive. Hot-wiring is much cheaper.” Serge dumped the shopping bag’s contents on the plastic-covered hood of the limo. Scissors, black spray paint, chrome car-bumper touch-up paint, pencils, ruler, stapler. He went to the Dumpster and pulled out some cardboard boxes. He sat down on the ground and drew templates on the boxes with the pencils and ruler. He picked up the scissors.

  The others gathered around as Serge snipped away in concentration. He finished cutting and began folding, talked to himself: “Insert tab A in slot B, fold flap C…”

  “What the hell’s he doing?” asked Doug.

  “Going completely crazy,” whispered Rusty.

  “I heard that.” Serge finished folding and stapling his creation. Then he made a second one. He set them down in the alley and rattled the can of black spray paint, giving each two full coats. He pulled a newspaper out of the Dumpster, cutting shapes and taping them to the cardboard for detail work with the chrome paint. When he was done, he gestured proudly. “Ta-da!”

  “That’s not going to fool anyone,” said Doug.

  “Not if they’re perfectly still and you’re standing right over them, like we are now,” said Serge. “But check this out….” Serge put one of the contraptions on his shoulder and mounted the motorcycle. He took off to the end of the alley and turned around. Then he raced back and passed the group. He made another skidding spin at the other end of the alley and returned.

  “What did you think?”

  “Not a chance,” said Rusty.

  “It looked real to me,” said Brad. “I bet it works.”

  “Of course it’ll work.” Serge yanked the plastic sheets off the car. “Lenny, I’m going to need you to climb up and lie right here. Doug, are you okay to drive?”

  Doug nodded.

  “Good. Everyone else in the car.” Serge kick-started the Kawasaki. “Let’s get this show on the road!”

  TOURISTS ALONG COLLINS stopped and pointed. Others took snapshots. Police up ahead saw what was going on and wondered why they hadn’t been informed. They cleared pedestrians from a crosswalk.

  The bullet-pocked, blood-flecked limousine continued a steady thirty miles an hour up the street, people running to the curb for a better view.

  Serge rode alongside the limo on the motorcycle, aiming in the driver’s window with his shoulder-mounted, twin-reel, professional Hollywood movie camera. Made of cardboard. Lenny was on his stomach on the limo’s hood, aiming his own camera through the windshield.

  22

  F BI HEADQUARTERS, MIAMI, Florida. White shirts, black ties.

  Special Agent Miller was under fire. He had been responsible for taking Tony Marsicano into protective custody, and the business at the airport now hung over his pension like a midway mallet.

  Files and teletypes covered Miller’s desk, the corkboard on the wall full of overlapping index cards and photos. Agents began arriving for the morning shift in fresh shirts. Miller and Bixby had never left. Ties hung loose, hair mussed, perspiration stains in the middle of their backs. Cold Maxwell House in the bottoms of FBI coffee mugs.

  Twelve hours earlier it had looked hopeless. No leads, just two bodies in a Dumpster and the magnetic signs on the limo, which were obviously fake. The mob was always disguising their vehicles like plumbing and cable-TV trucks. They checked the phone-book anyway. No “Serge & Lenny’s,” just as they’d suspected.

  Then the big break. A routine search of local newspaper archives on the Internet.

  “Come quick!” yelled Bixby. It was the article on the new offbeat travel service. “The guy in this photo looks familiar. And the article mentions the gems.”

  Agent Miller came over and stared at the grinning picture of the two men. “I don’t believe it.”

  “What?”

  Miller knocked over coffee running to the filing cabinets. He thumbed manila folders until he came to one with PALERMO on the tab. Miller dumped the file on the desk. Black-and-white photos flew everywhere. Bixby picked two off the floor. “What is it?”

  Miller riffled through the pictures. He picked one up, stared at it a second and slapped it down hard on the desk. “I knew it!”

  Bixby picked up the picture. “Hey, it’s one of the surveillance photos we took at Rico Spagliosi’s funeral.”

  “That’s why he looked familiar. Because he is! That’s the same guy who got into it with Tony. I told you that was no coincidence.”

  Miller and Bixby kicked a junior agent off the computer with the new facial-recognition software. They scanned in the surveillance photo. It was a grainy, long-range shot. The search came back with two
thousand possible hits. “Incomplete data.”

  “What about the license from the Cougar at the funeral?” asked Bixby. “We ever run that?”

  “Shit.” Miller raced back to his desk and retrieved his notebook. He typed the tag into the computer. Registered to one Lenny Lippowicz, last known address: a burned-down shotgun shack in Tampa. Miller logged on to the website for the Hills-borough County property appraiser and input the street address. Owner of record: Storms, Serge. Then he cross-searched the name with the two thousand possible hits off the photo.

  Forty seconds later a single hit from the FBI database in Quantico. An old arrest mug of their boy popped up on the screen. Serge A. Storms, suspect in four South Florida homicides, wanted for questioning in nine more. The computer spit out a thick rap sheet.

  Miller flipped the pages. “Holy Mary!”

  “All those murders…” said Bixby.

  “Must be a button man for the Palermos,” said Miller. “They had him whack Tony.”

  “We have to inform the local police,” said Bixby. “This now goes way beyond the Marsicano case.”

  “Not a chance,” said Miller. “Do you know what kind of embarrassment this would be for the Bureau? The protection program will lose all credibility. Besides, this is Miami. Who knows what police are on the Palermo payroll?”

  They dove back into the case with renewed vigor. Miller worked the phones, Bixby the computer. Another pot of coffee. The sun started coming up. Arriving colleagues hung jackets on hangers.

  “Another all-nighter?” asked one agent.

  “Shhhh, he’s concentrating,” said another. “He’s rereading the part in the manual that says we’re supposed to protect witnesses, not kill them.” They walked away laughing.

  “Miller!” yelled Bixby. He pointed at the computer screen. “They have a website.”

  “Must be for coded communications.”

  “It’s got lots of cool pictures…. And there’s a number to call for reservations.”

  “So there is,” said Miller, flipping open his notebook.

  The fax machine started up.

  “I’ll get it,” said Bixby.

  He came back to Miller’s desk with a torn-off piece of thermal paper. “You’re not going to believe this.”

  “What is it?”

  “A personal letter from Serge.”

  “Let me see that.” Miller put on his glasses and snatched the fax, a copy of a red-flag letter the Secret Service had just turned over to the Bureau:

  Dear Mr. President, The Mac Daddy W, Scourge of the Axis of Evil etc., etc.

  The White House

  1600 Pennsylvania Avenue

  Washington, D.C.

  What a first term! Fuck! I thought I was watching Independence Day there for a while. And who would have thought you’d rise to the occasion after all those things they said about you? What the hell did they mean, “not smart”? Don’t they understand that’s the crucial part of your genius? The United States has lacked a credible deterrent for too long. Until you came along. And a brilliant strategy it is, giving off the impression you don’t think things through all the way. Guess what? It’s working! Even our allies are jittery. Well, I say, take it up a notch! Next time one of those pissant potentates starts with the saber rattling and bad-mouthing us like he even has a country for any reason other than we let him—storm into the pressroom and pound the podium, yelling that he’s embarrassed you in front of your squeeze (Laura) and must apologize and disarm immediately. If that doesn’t do it, start struggling with the National Security guy who carries the nuclear football in his briefcase. They’ll be shitting themselves for weeks. Of course, it will all be carefully orchestrated, and Colin and Condoleezza will restrain you while Rumsfeld dives in the audience, attacking reporters (“Look what you’re doing to him!”). Then you break free, run to the microphone, and point menacingly into the CNN camera: “How’d you like me to pour you a nice big cup of Shock and Awe, motherfucker?!”…Right, I know what you’re thinking. You can’t say “motherfucker.” But why not? These are crazy times demanding new ideas. And I’m just the guy. I know you’ve been disconnected from the street your entire life, so that’s where I come in. This is about primal posturing, and nine out of ten alpha males from my ’hood prefer “motherfucker” to “evildoer.” It’s simply a matter of proportion. After all, we drop those 10,000-pound daisy-cutters that immolate the primary radius, suck all the oxygen out of the air and kill everything else by rupturing individual cells with sonic concussion. (By the way, how do those things work? I’ve been slapping together my own home version but can’t get past the trigger mechanism.) So, in conclusion, if invasions and assassination are back in play, I think you can say “motherfucker” a few times. Think about it (but not too much, ha ha ha)…. I know, I know. You’re worried about the press. They’ve been so unfair. You let me take care of that. A few well-placed “visits” will quiet that kind of biased talk in a hurry, because it’s hard to type with two thumb casts. As you can see, I have lots of fresh proposals that you’re probably not hearing from your oil-gorged yes-men. I’m down here in South Florida patrolling the perimeter, conducting my own counter-espionage sweeps of the drug-binge motels on U.S. 1 and hanging out at Miami International looking for all those strangers offering to pack our luggage. But I can be up there at a moment’s notice. I’ll understand if you don’t think we should be seen together, so I’ve been studying satellite photos and various websites and have discovered a tiny fissure in White House security. I can slip in undetected and meet you late some night in the Lewinsky Room. Meantime, always remember: You’re a Bush. That still carries a lot of weight, even for Jeb, who especially needs it with his weeny-aggressive disorder and that weird-shaped head. And just think: After your upcoming landslide reelection, only four more years until you’re barred by the Constitution from another term and free to get back to full-time heavy drinking. Heaven knows you deserve it. I knew you were one of us when I read about the DUI. The press got all wadded up again, but America understands. I’m riding down Collins Avenue right now and my driver is drinking. Smoking dope, too. I heard about the coke, so I’m just assuming you’re into weed as well. I’ll have Lenny bring the good stuff when you call. Until then…you da man!

  Your faithful agent in the field,

  Serge A. Storms

  P.S. Did you recognize my writing style? It’s Lincoln!

  23

  A TEAM OF valets rushed down the driveway of the Sheraton Bal Harbour, hoping for the huge tips that traditionally come from film crews.

  Lenny and Serge quickly collapsed their cardboard movie cameras and stowed them in the trunk as a herd of men in white shorts arrived with the clapping of sneakers on pavement.

  “You’re really shooting a movie?”

  Serge nodded.

  “What’s the title?”

  “Death of a Valet.” Serge handed him the keys. Another kid in shorts got on Serge’s motorcycle. He handed each a ten-spot.

  “Thanks!”

  Serge pointed at the big brass luggage carts by the front door. “We’re going to need a whole bunch of those. Got all kinds of film gear.”

  The hotel staff began unloading suitcases, steel boxes, VCRs, stereos, giant boat coolers and a large green molded plastic case with JOHN DEERE on the side. The luggage-cart convoy followed Serge into the lobby.

  “Know what this place used to be called?”

  Nobody answered.

  “The Americana! One of the most famous spots on the strip…Hey look! They still have the skeleton of the old terrarium in the lobby, only they took out the glass.”

  An Irish flight attendant with strawberry hair and a cute little blue cap sat on the curved couch around the atrium. She smiled when she saw Serge and held up two fingers. Serge nodded. She winked and headed for the reception desk.

  “What’s going on?” asked Rusty. “Who was that?”

  “Bridget. We should be in our room in just a few more minutes.�
��

  “Who’s Bridget?”

  “Our discount ticket. Whenever I’m in town, I call her to check into hotels for me and get the airline-employee discount,” said Serge. “I operate a professional travel outfit. Just because we’re running for our lives doesn’t mean we stop thinking about value.”

  “What was she signaling with two fingers?”

  “Two adjoining rooms,” said Serge. “Or she wants a curveball.”

  Serge walked up to the desk and began talking to the agent handling Bridget’s check-in.

  “Know what this place used to be called?”

  “I just know it’s the Sheraton.”

  “The Americana!” Serge gestured across the lobby at the atrium. “Morris wanted to put monkeys in there.”

  “Uh, can I help you with something?”

  “Yes! Bring back the Today show! Dave Garroway used to film it right over there. I’m already working on that myself, personally writing Katie Couric, but the form letters I’m getting back give me the impression they’re mistakenly throwing my correspondence in the nut pile.”

  Serge turned and pointed at the ceiling, addressing the bellhops forming a line behind him with the carts. “President Kennedy stayed on the top floor after the motorcade brought him here November eighteenth, four days before Dallas. And over there is where they filmed the wedding of Lisa Kudrow and Billy Crystal in Analyze This. Of course, that was much later.”

  The receptionist handed Bridget her magnetic keys. She headed for the elevators.

  “Follow that flight attendant!”

  The bellhops were winded when they finally pushed the carts into the tenth-floor oceanfront suite. Serge handed out more ten-dollar tips. “Here sonny, buy yourself some crack.” He marched across the room and onto the balcony. “What a view!”

  Bridget joined him. She put her arms around his neck. Serge grabbed her wrists and pulled them away. “Control yourself! I’m working!”

  The guys glanced at each other.