Tim Dorsey Collection #1

by Dorsey, Tim

  Serge scratched the spot with his finger. “This was one of my best shirts.”

  There were more tire sounds up the street. They turned and looked.

  “I can’t believe it,” said Serge. “He’s coming back.”

  “And look. There’s Jim right behind him.”

  “Maybe I can stop them both, and we can all sit down and have a civilized talk.”

  Jim Davenport was heading home from the grocery store in the Suburban when he pulled up at a stop sign behind a ’76 Chevy Laguna. The Laguna turned left onto Triggerfish, and Jim turned left behind him. The horn honked.

  Jim saw brake lights on the Chevy. The driver got out and ran back to the Suburban. “Don’t you ever blow your fucking horn at me!”

  “I wasn’t—”

  Before Jim could finish, the Laguna’s driver had opened the door and pulled him into the street.

  Serge and Coleman jumped to their feet: “Road rage!” They sprinted for the corner.

  The driver was sitting on Jim’s chest, delivering a flurry of punches.

  “Hey! Get off him!”

  Scorpion looked up and saw Serge and Coleman running down the street; he jumped in the Laguna and took off.

  They got to Jim and sat him up. “Are you okay?”

  He was not okay. His shirt was torn. Gravel filled his hair, and blood and mucus ran down his neck. His lower lip was split and both eyes were starting to swell.

  “Let’s get you to the house,” said Serge.

  They helped Jim up the porch and into the living room. Serge and Coleman ran around frantically for ice cubes, peroxide and Band-Aids.

  Jim stared at the floor. Serge returned with a washcloth full of ice.

  “Look up,” said Serge.

  Jim didn’t look up.

  “You’ll have to look up.”

  Jim was breathing hard. “I don’t want them to see me like this.”

  “Nobody’s going to see you like anything,” said Serge. “I’m going to fix you up like new.”

  “Are you kidding?” said Coleman. “With shiners like that?”

  “Shut up, Coleman!”

  Serge turned back to Jim. “I have to see where to put the ice.”

  Jim slowly raised his face. He looked worse than Serge had expected. He bundled up the ice and showed Jim how to hold it against his eyes.

  Jim’s lowed lip started to vibrate.

  “No!” said Serge. “Don’t! You better not!”

  The vibrations increased.

  “Stop it! Stop it right now! Don’t you dare!”

  Jim couldn’t stop.

  “I’m warning you! Stop it this second!”

  Jim leaned forward and put his forehead down on Serge’s shoulder and began shaking with quiet sobs.

  Serge took a deep breath and put his arms around Jim’s back and began patting him lightly. “There, there. It’s going to be all right.”

  A HALF HOUR later, Serge tried to open the Davenports’ front door as quietly as possible and sneak Jim inside, but Martha was waiting.

  She screamed when she saw Jim’s face. She ran up to Serge and began pounding him on the chest with her fists. Serge let her.

  “What have you done to my husband! I never want to see you again! Get out of here!”

  Serge opened his mouth to say something, but he changed his mind and left.

  TWO A.M. Floor buffers hummed inside the twenty-four-hour Home Depot. Serge pushed his shopping cart down an empty aisle in the electrical department. He grabbed a box of security lights off the shelf.

  A stock clerk came up. “Finding everything all right?”

  “Got a question,” said Serge.

  “Shoot.”

  Serge held out the box. “Is this right? Only nineteen-ninety-five for a motion-detector floodlight?”

  “The bulbs are extra,” said the clerk.

  Serge put two boxes in his shopping cart. “Where are the bulbs?”

  “Aisle three.”

  “Glass cutters?”

  “Two kinds. What kind of glass are you looking to cut?”

  “Floodlight bulbs.”

  The clerk looked at Serge.

  “Just tell me where both kinds are,” said Serge.

  “Aisles seven and eight.”

  “Gas cans?”

  “Twelve.”

  “Orange vests for highway construction sites? Reflective signs?”

  “Thirteen and fifteen.”

  THREE A.M. The driver of a Chevy Laguna flicked another cigarette out the window and bobbed his head to the stereo. A baffled expression appeared on his face. Something shiny in the road up ahead. He turned off the stereo and leaned over the steering wheel.

  “What the hell?”

  The driver hit his high beams. He thought he was seeing things. Someone was sitting in the middle of the road in a lawn chair. He wore an orange vest and held up a crossing-guard stop sign.

  The Chevy rolled up slowly, and the man in the vest came around to the driver’s window.

  “What are you, some kind of lunatic!” said Scorpion.

  “Yes,” said Serge, sticking a forty-four Magnum in his face. “Now tuck in your fucking underwear.”

  FOUR A.M. Scorpion was standing in the middle of an aluminum shed in a darkened backyard. It was the shed behind the college rental, used to store tools to take care of the yard. Nobody had been in it for months.

  Scorpion’s wrists were bound tightly, and another rope stretched his arms up over his head and tied the wrists to an eyebolt in the shed’s ceiling. His mouth was duct-taped.

  Serge sat cross-legged at the man’s feet, tongue sticking out the corner of his mouth in concentration, wiring the motion detectors. He had one detector on each side of the man’s feet, eighteen inches away, facing outward.

  Serge looked up at Scorpion and smiled. “These new low-watt bulbs are incredible. The filaments will burn almost forever in the inert gases inside…”

  Serge continued scratching away with the glass cutter until he had made a complete circle. Then he held the bulb upside-down over his head and tapped the circle lightly with the butt of the cutter. The round disk broke free.

  “Of course, if the bulb’s filament is exposed to the oxygen in the atmosphere, it’ll sizzle and burn out in seconds.” He screwed the modified bulbs into the motion detectors. Then he unwound the security lights’ power cords and plugged them into the shed’s utility socket.

  Serge reached behind some plywood and pulled out a hula hoop.

  “You know who invented summer?”

  Scorpion didn’t move a muscle.

  “The Wham-O Corporation.”

  Serge held the hula hoop in one hand and the gun in the other. “Step into this.”

  Scorpion lifted one leg, then the other. Serge raised the hoop up to the man’s waist. He pressed the Magnum to his nose.

  “If I give this thing a spin, do you think you can shoopshoop hula hoop?”

  Scorpion nodded.

  “Marvelous. You seem a lot more cooperative than when I talked to you before. I knew I had caught you on a bad day. That’s my motto: Don’t be quick to judge others.”

  Serge gave the hula hoop a healthy spin, and the man began moving his hips.

  “Hey, you’re a natural! You should see some of the kids around here with these things. You’d think they had them in the womb…Oh, but I already told you about all the kids we have playing around here. Remember? When I was saying how cars really should go slow? And while we’re on the topic, Debbie’s way too young for you. What’s the matter with women your own age?”

  The hoop continued rotating, and Serge continued pointing the gun.

  “Let’s see how long you can keep that thing going,” said Serge. “I remember when I was a kid, the neighborhood record was like two hours.”

  Serge grabbed a metal five-gallon gas can and slowly poured the contents across the shed’s concrete floor.

  “If the hula hoop falls, the motion detector
will pick it up and turn on the floodlights. But they’ll only be on a moment. That’s how long it’ll take for the filaments to ignite the gasoline vapor. It’s the vapor you gotta watch out for, you know. The stuff explodes like you wouldn’t believe.”

  Serge sniffed the air.

  “In fact, it’s starting to smell pretty powerful in here right now. I better get going. By the way, concrete is porous, so there’s a slight chance that if you can keep the hoop going long enough, the gasoline will seep in and the fumes dissipate. It’ll take hours, but it’s theoretically possible. And I wouldn’t try to kick the detectors out of the way because that will set them off instantly…Well, toodles!”

  38

  THE MCGRAW BROTHERS ran out of the Florida National Bank in Clearwater with $2,375 in a fast but sloppy heist. The bank had a double set of entrance doors with locks that could be activated by any of the tellers. As the McGraws fled, one of the tellers hit her lock button, trapping Ed between the doors.

  He banged on the glass for his brothers to come back.

  They were halfway across the parking lot when they heard the racket. They turned and saw Ed pull a large pistol, preparing to blast his way out.

  “He can’t be that stupid,” said Rufus McGraw.

  Ed fired a quick burst from the automatic pistol. But the glass was bulletproof, and bullets began ricocheting and whizzing back and forth, the rest of the McGraws watching in amazement as their younger brother was slowly cut down in a hail of his own gunfire.

  AGENT MAHONEY ARRIVED in south Tampa just before noon. The crime scene was fresh. He could smell Serge.

  A sergeant was guarding the scene. Mahoney walked up and pulled a toothpick from his mouth.

  “If it isn’t my favorite state agent,” said the sarge. “We have to stop meeting like this.”

  Mahoney didn’t like small talk. He didn’t like the sergeant. He didn’t like this whole stinking case. He stared down at a chalk outline on the still-smoldering ground. “What have we got here?”

  “Aluminum shed flattened in some type of explosion,” said the sergeant. “The corrugated roof was found on the next block. Pieces of melted hula hoop everywhere.”

  “He was here. I can feel him.”

  “Who?” said the sergeant.

  “Serge.”

  “Never heard of him.”

  “He never heard of you.”

  “I guess that makes us even.”

  “What do you have behind your back?”

  “Nothing.”

  “Yes you do. You’re hiding something.”

  “Nonsense.”

  “Your hands are behind your back.”

  “No they’re not.”

  “Yes they are. Look!”

  “Don’t be silly.”

  “Let me see!”

  “No!”

  Mahoney reached his arms around the sergeant, and they struggled briefly. Mahoney snatched something from the sergeant’s left hand. A ruby red stiletto pump high heel.

  “You sure have a lot of hobbies, sergeant.”

  “Tried building eighteenth-century schooners out of Popsicle sticks. Didn’t do it for me.”

  “Hobbies are funny that way.”

  Mahoney reached through his car window for The Good Book, and flipped to the back.

  “What’s with the Bible?” asked the sergeant. “Daily inspiration? Comfort at grisly crime scenes?”

  “No. I’ve been getting into the Book of Revelations,” said Mahoney. “And it’s all coming true. We’re entering The End Times. The signs are all around us. The nations of Gog and Magog. The cashless society. Soon they’ll be tattooing a UPC code on your nuts…”

  “I’ll call in sick that day.”

  “…After that, it gets strange. The raging battle between Christ and the Antichrist. Seven-eyed beasts. The blood of the Lamb. Demons and archangels fighting in the sky. Born-again people raptured right out of moving vehicles, improving the quality of their driving. And finally, total Armageddon.”

  “I didn’t know you were religious.”

  “I’m not. I’m looking at it as a major law-enforcement headache. We can barely handle the crowd at the Gasparilla Parade.”

  “Armageddon,” said the sergeant, shaking his head. “Try getting any backup that night.”

  “There are going to be a lot of battlefield promotions,” said Mahoney. “Why not me?”

  The radio in Mahoney’s Crown Victoria began to squawk. Mahoney reached in the window and grabbed the mike.

  “Mahoney here.”

  “You son of a bitch!” said Lieutenant Ingersol. “Where are you?”

  “I’m—”

  “Never mind! I know you’re looking for Serge. You get back on the McGraw case right now. They just robbed Florida National in Clearwater. Ed McGraw’s dead.”

  “Clearwater is in striking distance of Tampa,” said Mahoney. “You have to let me warn the Davenports!”

  “We’re too close,” said Ingersol. “We’re about to tighten the noose. Now drop this Serge thing and get over to the bank.”

  “Sir, I think I can find both Serge and the McGraws—”

  “Forget it!” yelled Ingersol.

  “Lieutenant, you’re breaking up.”

  “…Mahoney, you’re a loose cannon! You’ve gone rogue!…”

  Mahoney changed the radio to easy-listening jazz.

  39

  H. AMBROSE TARRINGTON III awoke the next morning to the sound of a woodpecker tapping on a dead cabbage palm outside his window. Ambrose didn’t know it yet, but this was going to be the day that would change his life forever. Before it was all over, he’d make the national news and get married on the Today show.

  Ambrose polished off his Pop-Tarts, put on a three-piece suit and inspected himself in a full-length mirror. Then he packed swim trunks and a Polaroid camera in his briefcase and headed out the front door of 918 Triggerfish. He walked three blocks to a cement bench advertising bail bonds, sat down and waited for the Number Eight.

  ROCCO SILVERTONE jumped to his feet in the showroom of Tampa Bay Motors.

  “He’s back!”

  “Who’s back?” asked Vic.

  “I didn’t think this chance came twice in a lifetime!”

  Rocco ran to the door to greet Ambrose Tarrington III. They shook hands and exchanged business cards.

  “I’d like to drive the Rolls again,” said Ambrose.

  “But I thought the color didn’t match your house.”

  “Changed my mind,” said Ambrose. “I’ll paint the house.”

  They took the golf cart out to the luxury cars. Ambrose and Rocco got in the Rolls and drove a mile up and down Dale Mabry Highway.

  “Rides like a dream, don’t she?” said Rocco. “A real cream puff.”

  Ambrose pulled back into the dealership. “Don’t like it.”

  Rocco felt like he had taken a gunshot. He had been on top of the world, and in an instant he was back at the bottom again. “What is it? I can probably fix it. The leather? Is it the leather? Gas mileage? I’ll take off the catalytic converter—”

  Ambrose pointed. “I want one of those.”

  Rocco turned and saw a snow-white Ferrari F50.

  My God, he thought, that costs more than the Rolls. He became light-headed from the rapid swings of fortune and steadied himself against a Saab.

  “You all right?” asked Ambrose.

  Rocco nodded. “Wait here.” He zipped back to showroom and grabbed the Ferrari’s keys off the pegboard. He returned and opened the driver’s door. Ambrose climbed down into the Ferrari. There was a pair of brown, open-knuckled driving gloves on the dash. Ambrose slid them on.

  “Let me switch the dealer tags from the Rolls,” said Rocco.

  Ambrose turned on the car, put it in gear and gunned the engine until the tachometer was pegged.

  “Okay, forget the tags.” Rocco jumped in as Ambrose bolted off the lot.

  Ambrose quickly ran through first gear, then second and t
hird, agile coordination of clutch and shift. Rocco leaned over. “Maybe you should be a little easier—”

  Ambrose grabbed the mahogany shift knob with the trademark gold stallion crest, jerked it into fourth and let her unwind. The G-force pasted Rocco into his seat as the Ferrari split Tampa like the Bonneville salt flats. Ambrose let off the fuel and coasted seven blocks.

  Rocco’s color returned. “She’s got some pickup, eh?”

  “But how does she handle in a turn?”

  “I don’t think you should—aaaaaaauuuuuuuu!”

  Ambrose held the wheel left, against the edge of the centrifugal envelope, executing a perfect bullwhip half-spin. After the U-turn, he spun the wheel back to twelve o’clock, straightened her out.

  Rocco opened his eyes. They were still alive.

  “I love it,” said Ambrose.

  Time for the kill, thought Rocco. He sized Ambrose up as an ethnic joke man.

  “A priest and a rabbi walk into a bar—”

  “Ethnic jokes are the last refuge of a bankrupt intellect.”

  Rocco was knocked off balance. “Even the Mexican jokes?”

  “Especially the Mexican jokes.”

  Rocco panicked. Those were his funniest jokes. What now? He thought a second.

  “How about faggots?” asked Rocco. “I can tell butt-burglar jokes, right? They’re not an ethnic group. And everybody hates them…”

  Ambrose pulled the Ferrari off the road. He turned and stared at Rocco.

  “You want me to get out?”

  Ambrose nodded.

  It was a long, lonely walk back to the dealership. Rocco kept telling himself it would all work out. He had broken the rules, but the rules were for losers like John Milton. Nobody ever made it to the top without risks. He’d walk right in the owner’s office and tell him that. Surely he’d understand. Of course he’s not going to understand! Are you insane?

  Rocco made a big walking loop to avoid being spotted. He slipped inside the ice cream hut across the street from Tampa Bay Motors, where he could stake out the dealership until Ambrose returned.

  “Chocolate smoothie, waffle cone, extra nuts.”

  AMBROSE DROVE OVER to Bayshore and put the Ferrari through the paces. He raced up the circular drive of the biggest mansion on Bayshore and got out with a Polaroid camera and snapped a picture.