Tim Dorsey Collection #1

by Dorsey, Tim

“This signature,” said the adjuster, “it doesn’t match the one in our records.”

  “For heaven’s sake, look at the man’s hand!” said Serge. “I signed it. I have power of attorney.” And he produced a power of attorney document from a folder and handed it to the adjuster. “Of course, I had to sign that too.”

  The adjuster gathered up the papers and shook them into alignment.

  “Obviously an unusual case, but everything seems to be in order,” he said, actually thinking that nothing about any of this seemed to be in order. The client was making chattering noises like a woodchuck, and his high-strung interpreter sat there with a Cheshire grin and took his picture.

  On the other hand, sitting across the desk from the adjuster was some of the most irrefutable evidence of grotesque mutilation he had ever seen. Sometimes people would try to defraud the insurance company by snipping off the end of a digit at the knuckle closest to the tip; nobody did this.

  I don’t get paid enough, thought the adjuster. He stamped “approved,” shooed the two out of his office and left for a two-hour lunch.

  Over the next few weeks, the paperwork wound its way through the corporate rat maze of New England Life and Casualty, and five million dollars was deposited into the account of George Veale III.

  Serge and Coleman had been calling every day to see if the money was in, and Veale kept them at bay by prescribing synthetic heroin for Coleman’s impacted wisdom teeth. Then one afternoon in late October—opening day of the 1997 World Series—Veale called Serge and said he had good news, and they set up a meeting in the revolving bar atop the Palm-Aire Hotel on St. Pete Beach.

  Veale rode the glass elevator on the outside of the hotel, breathing in a paper bag, telling himself to get it together. The sun had set a few minutes earlier. As the elevator ascended, Veale first saw over the fences of the waterfront homes and into living rooms glowing blue with televisions. A couple of floors higher he could see Boca Ciega Bay and the running lights on sailboats, and higher still, across the peninsula, a cruise ship lit up on Tampa Bay like a birthday cake.

  He got out of the elevator and took forced steps, carrying a black leather toiletry bag jammed with packs of hundred-dollar bills. Serge and Coleman’s cocktail table had rotated clockwise so it faced south toward the pink Don Cesar Hotel. To the left, spotlights illuminated the yellow triangular supports of the Sunshine Skyway bridge. Down on Gulf Boulevard they could make out blue, red and green light from an Eckerd’s, a Burger King and a Publix.

  Veale arrived at the table the same time as the waitress and ordered a triple Jack Daniel’s before sitting.

  “Another Perrier,” said Serge. The waitress gave a dirty look at Coleman, facedown on the table. “Nothing for him,” Serge said.

  Veale sat and didn’t move for several minutes as their table rotated until it was facing west toward the Gulf of Mexico. Veale discreetly lowered the toiletry bag to the floor and slid it slowly over to Serge with his foot.

  Serge stared at Veale and raised his hand, talking into a make-believe wrist radio: “Agent Iguana to Captain Cavity. The Eagle has landed.”

  He grabbed the bag off the floor, turned it over and dumped the money on the table. Veale looked like he would stroke. The waitress arrived with their drinks, saw the money and said “Shit” under her breath.

  “Oh, I’m sorry,” Serge said and pushed the money aside to make room for the drinks. He peeled off a hundred, gave it to her and looked back down in the bag. The waitress opened her mouth to say something but left quickly instead.

  “Where’s the rest of it?” he said to Veale.

  “What?”

  “The rest of the money. I mean, this is a real sweet gesture, George, but when do we get the main money?”

  “What do you mean?” said Veale, gulping for oxygen. “It’s all there, fifty thousand.”

  “You’re right. This is fifty thousand. But our share is three point three five million. Where is it?”

  “Wha—?”

  “Five million three ways. Coleman and my shares come to three point three five. This”—nodding at the pile on the table—” this rounds the outstanding balance to three point three.”

  “But you said fifty thousand!”

  “When?”

  “On the way to the hospital.”

  “You must have been delirious,” said Serge. “Why would I settle for one percent? Is this going to get contentious, George?”

  Veale felt hot surges of panic in his chest and neck. Serge packed the money back in the bag. As their table rotated to the north, the waitress pointed them out to her coworkers lined up at the end of the bar gawking.

  George saw them looking. He ducked down and whispered, “We’ve been spotted!”

  Serge looked up and waved to them. He pointed at Veale and yelled, “George Veale the Third, everyone, let’s give him a big hand.” He clapped robustly.

  George fainted.

  Serge splashed Perrier on the two men facedown at his table. Coleman looked around, disoriented, then Veale.

  “George. Twenty-four hours!” Serge said, and he and Coleman left with the toiletry bag.

  Ten

  The sky was orange marmalade over Tampa Bay as the sun fell below the St. Petersburg skyline. The underlight caught some cirrus clouds, glowing pink-red.

  Happy hour was under way at the bar Hammer-Time on the Courtney Campbell causeway. A typical Friday after-work Tampa crowd. Lots of Trans Ams in the parking lot. The bar’s name was bent in red lights over the door. Just below it was a stuffed hammerhead shark wearing sunglasses and painted with electric-lime tiger stripes.

  Souvenir T-shirts covered the ceiling, and the tables were old surfboards. The owners had bought up dozens of taxidermied fish—wahoo, cobia, amberjack—painted them wild like the shark out front and stuck them on the walls. A standing clientele coagulated traffic around the bar, and waitresses circulated with racks of test tubes filled with shots.

  David Klein had been at the window table for two hours, before the crowds, because he liked the view. He had a Coke and was halfway through a paperback.

  David saw two sailboarders and the news helicopter doing traffic reports, and his mind drifted the way it did before sleep.

  He thought back to the case he’d finished prosecuting that afternoon, another ATM stickup, open-and-shut, jury out twenty minutes. Where were they all coming from? Wave after wave of assailants. Carjackers, rapists, muggers, child abusers and people who’d simply decided it was time to start shooting. He averaged three death threats a month.

  He thought back to Tampa High. David was seventeen, driving a carload of football players out into the county after another win. Out to the bootlegger on the Hillsborough River.

  The sheriff’s deputy was aware of the bootlegger, and when he saw the football players at that hour on that county road, he knew the reason.

  He summarily pulled them over, found the moonshine and arrested everyone. He also charged David with reckless driving.

  David’s teammates laughed, but only as much as was polite, when David said he’d be their lawyer. He spent hours alone in the courthouse library.

  In court, the prosecutor and judge were irked that the teens pushed for a trail instead of paying the misdemeanor fines. David’s four teammates sat at the defendant table, two in letter-man jackets. Fourteen other players and cheerleaders sat in the wooden pews.

  David asked the judge to combine all the defendants, but to separate his reckless driving charge into a separate trial.

  The judge looked at the prosecutor, who shrugged. No objection.

  The prosecutor put the deputy on the stand, and he described David driving over the center line, which everyone knew was a pretext for a search, but one that held up every time.

  “Your witness,” the prosecutor said, patronizing David.

  “Was I speeding?” asked David.

  “No.”

  “Were any other cars present?”

  “No.”

>   “Did you stop me for any other reason?”

  The deputy lied about the moonshine suspicions. “Nope, just driving over the center line.”

  “No further questions,” said David.

  “The state rests,” the prosecutor said with a smugness that made it clear this was beneath him, a game of legal putt-putt golf.

  “The defense requests a directed verdict of acquittal based on the 1948 precedent of Penrod v. Florida in this circuit…” David handed copies made in the courthouse library to the judge and prosecutor. “…in which the judge ruled that driving down the center of a county road is a generally accepted safety measure in rural Florida, and without any other evidence is not in and of itself sufficient to support a charge of reckless driving.”

  The judge finished reading the court opinion and looked up at the prosecutor. “The state have anything?”

  “But he was weaving too!” said the prosector.

  “Too late,” said the judge. “You had your chance on direct, and you rested…. Case dismissed.”

  “Okay,” said the prosector, “now on the moonshine charges…”

  “Your honor,” interrupted David, “defense moves the alcohol charge be dismissed as it is the fruit of a search without probable cause, based upon the deficient traffic citation.”

  “The fruit?!” exclaimed the prosecutor. “Really, your Honor, do we have to—”

  The judge stopped him by holding up his hand. “He’s right. Dismissed.”

  The judge looked at David and let a smile slip on his lips. “It’ll be interesting to see which way you’re gonna turn out.”

  A voice popped the daydream. “What are you reading?”

  David looked back from the bay and saw Sean, who pulled out the empty chair across from him at Hammer-Time. David looked down at the book he’d forgotten he was holding. He turned it over to show Sean the cover. A drawing of a giant bug with a coke spoon hanging from his neck and submachine guns in its six arms under the title The Cockroach Bay Story.

  “I remember that case,” said Sean. “It was like the typical eighties Florida crime story. Every cliché you ever heard about the Wild West cocaine frontier.”

  “That’s it.”

  “Book any good?”

  “I guess,” said David. “Most of the facts are right. It’s got the parts about the accidental coke drop and that big free-for-all when all those people found it.”

  “Isn’t it amazing that’s the same place we go fishing?”

  “I know. I’m now at the part where everyone starts dying like grassy-knoll witnesses.”

  “It looked like you weren’t at any part, looked more like staring out the window to me.”

  “Trying to forget work. These animals. They’re like a different species.”

  David knew what Sean was going to say next. The state was rapidly dividing into two types of people. Those who made parents worry for their children, and those who didn’t. David ascribed it to the fact that Sean had little kids. He also knew he was right.

  “Now back to business,” David said.

  “Right,” said Sean. “The annual fishing trip.”

  “The same one we have not been having for years. The tradition continues.” Every year the same thing. Big talk. The big fishing trip. And then the big canceled fishing trip. Always something. Wedding, car accident, births.

  “But this year…”

  “Absolutely,” said Sean.

  “All the way to the Keys,” said David. “I know a skiff rental place.”

  “I know these out-of-the-way cabins.”

  “It’ll be a roadtrip.”

  “Easy Rider.”

  “Route 66.”

  “Lewis and Clark.”

  “Jack Kerouac.”

  “Thelma and Louise.”

  David stopped and looked at him.

  “Can I be Thelma?” said Sean.

  “Okay, here’s the plan before we cancel it again this year.”

  “We’re not gonna cancel it!” said Sean.

  “It’ll be the A-tour of Florida,” said David. “We drive over to Cape Canaveral for a space shuttle launch. The next day we head south along the coast to Palm Beach, and hang there for a day. Then the same thing the next day in Miami Beach…”

  Sean finished the thought: “And finally we drive all the way to Key West and break some fishing records…”

  “Most Bait Wasted, Career,” said David.

  Laughter distracted them.

  It was girls’ night out at the next table. Five secretaries sipping stadium drinks, rum and Coke. They giggled and one took her bra off under her shirt to win a bet. One of the secretaries, the one with medium-length wavy black hair, saw David looking and held up her drink toward him and smiled. David smiled back and turned away to gaze at the pelicans skimming the bay. Two men on the make walked up to the secretaries. The women gave them good-natured patience, let ’em make their pitch. David heard the women groan at a punch line before the men were dispatched.

  Another suitor approached the table. Green down vest and pointy cowboy boots. This one was getting a brisk rejection from the woman with the black wavy hair. He grabbed her wrist and she pulled it away. He took a step back and appeared to relax, ready to leave it alone.

  But instead he grabbed her arm again, twisting it behind her back and pushing her head down to the table.

  “I’ve had it with you, bitch!” the man yelled. Everyone froze. The only sound was the man’s voice and U2 on the sound system, “Where the Streets Have No Name.”

  “You’re fuckin’ him! I oughtta break your fuckin’ neck!”

  In times of duress, when others might be nonplussed, David went to a different place. He stopped thinking verbally and began thinking in numbers. Not literally numerals. But distances, time, odds, spatial relationships, computer-modeling, assigning weights to outcomes, coefficients of opportunity. Extremely fast. It was what had made him such a successful quarterback. His effectiveness, however, depended on factoring out emotion. That was a challenge this time because the woman with her face pressed to the table was his sister, Sarah.

  “You slut!” the man yelled, twisting her arm.

  “Let me guess,” said David, standing. “You were never very bright, even as a child.”

  Everyone looked at David like he had lost his mind. This guy was Paul Bunyan.

  “What did you say?” the man growled.

  “Oh, nothing,” said David. “Just that it must be difficult going through life always the least intelligent person in any group.”

  “What?”

  “But there’s always hope,” said David. “They have specially trained chimpanzees that can help you with daily tasks. I hear they’re really smart.”

  The man let go of Sarah’s arm and walked toward David. “I’ll kill you!”

  The man stepped right up to David, chest to chest, to scare the hell out of David before flattening him. The man pulled back a fist, but as he did, David gave a quick lean forward and head-butted him in the mouth. Bip! David got a little cut in the forehead, but it smashed the man’s teeth up good. Hurt like the devil.

  The man was ready to kill for real now. But instead of punching with his pulled-back arm, he reflexively went first to his injured mouth. That gave David time to pull his own fist back, and he piston-punched the man in the kidney. The man was off balance, his central nervous system telling him that things were going very badly on two fronts.

  While the man was busy sorting it out, David didn’t even have to be imaginative about the end. He picked up a chair and swung it sideways. In the movies, the chair splinters. In real life, bones splinter. The man put up an arm to shield himself, and it broke in two places before it was deflected away. The chair went on through and fractured his skull and collarbone. David wasn’t done. He was down on top of the man, punching away. Would have killed him too if Sarah and Sean hadn’t pulled him off.

  After seeing David’s gold assistant state attorney badge, the c
ops treated him like royalty. They cuffed the unconscious lumberjack.

  Sean was driving. He looked over at David in the passenger seat and back to the road, then looked at David again. “Sometimes you scare me.”

  David was nonchalant. “Animals. Where do they keep coming from?”

  “Let’s go fishing,” said Sean.

  Eleven

  Veale was at the dining room table with his wife and daughter, going over plans for the daughter’s wedding in two weeks. He looked over his wife’s shoulder at the TV in the other room and pregame coverage of the World Series.

  “George, are you paying attention?”

  George nodded.

  He started hearing the voice before they did, the one calling him.

  Then they all heard it: “Calling Captain Cavity!”

  As his wife got up to investigate, Veale felt an oncoming four-wheel-drive panic attack. He had missed the twenty-four-hour deadline.

  “George, there’s two scary-looking men in our yard,” said his wife. “Get rid of them!”

  George and his daughter got up and joined her at the window.

  Through the iron gate, the three saw Coleman out on the sidewalk, wearing army boots, skimpy silk running shorts and no shirt. He stood with legs apart and arms akimbo like Superman, and fixed a threatening mug on his face. Behind him, Serge leaned against a rusted-out Barracuda parked in the street.

  Most intimidating was the giant tattoo on Coleman’s chest that they could read even from the house: “Crucifixion Junkies.” It was the name of a local death metal band, but the Veales didn’t know that. They thought he was another bay-area devil-worshiper.

  “We want our money,” yelled Serge.

  “George, do you know these men?!” asked his wife.

  Veale said, “Hide me,” but his voice was so high only dogs could hear it.

  “George! Do something!” his wife yelled.

  “Yeah, George, do something!” Serge yelled from the street.

  So George got down on the floor and made himself into a ball.

  “I’m calling the police!” his wife announced.

  Serge and Coleman told the police that they were George’s friends and only wanted to see if George could come out and play. “Isn’t that right?” Serge yelled to Veale, who was hiding behind the stump of the Canary Island date palm.