by Dorsey, Tim
“Ow, shit! What the hell? Ouch! Fuck!” yelled Sharon.
“Uh, damn,” said Johnny, “fuckin’-A, farts…”
“No! Shit!” she said. “This isn’t part of the sex! Something’s biting me! Damn! Ouch!”
Neither Sharon nor Coleman nor even Serge had realized that caimans are cold-blooded, and when frozen they go into suspended animation. Serge’s caiman had thawed out in his luggage and scampered around the trunk, settling in Sharon’s beach bag.
Sharon leaped off of Johnny and looked down to see the foot-long reptile with no tail and a death grip on her ankle, trickles of blood running onto her foot.
Back on the dock, Serge watched through the binoculars as Sharon ran around the cigarette boat, Johnny chasing her and shooting at her feet with a fire extinguisher. “That’s a new one,” said Serge.
She dove over the side and the caiman let go and swam away. Johnny drove the boat alongside Sharon, pleading for her to get back in, but she ignored him and swam the entire way to the pier.
Back at slip F-18, Sharon demanded, “Gimme your coke!” Johnny submissively handed it over, and Sharon went back to the car, having nothing more to do with him. He stared down sadly at his swim booties, thinking his losing streak would never end.
Serge gave Johnny a one-armed hug around the shoulder. “Consider yourself lucky,” he said. “That woman is bad news with a four-inch headline.”
Johnny remained pitiful.
“This’ll cheer you up,” said Serge. “Coleman’s got a joke for you. You like animal jokes?”
After an inland loop to get around Port Everglades, Serge drove down to Miami Beach and the stretch of new condo construction on Collins Avenue.
They turned onto Ocean Drive. Serge said, “Hey, there’s the Carlyle. That was one of the opening scenes in the Miami Vice pilot. Don Johnson and Jimmy Smits stood right there!”
Sharon threw a cigarette out the window and into a gold Cadillac Eldorado parked with its top down. She thought, If I kill these guys, I can keep all the money. And if I do it soon, I won’t have to go to the stupid World Series.
Serge was thinking that game seven was only a few hours away. He’d have to kill Sharon soon if they were going to enjoy baseball at all tonight.
Serge said the Metropolis Hotel on South Beach was an architectural treasure, but Coleman thought it looked like tutti-frutti ice cream. Shell white trimmed with raspberry, lemon and lime sherbet. Five stories and curved windows on all corners. The name on the hotel was backlit with blue neon and bookended by bronze sailfish.
The hotel’s patio was one in a series of trendy sidewalk cafés, where tedious weirdness passed for style. Two men with pierced nipples connected by jumper cables. That sort of thing.
“Al Pacino shot that guy in Scarface right there!” said Serge.
“Look at all the wedgies,” said Coleman.
Valets worked the curb like pit crews at Daytona. Serge jumped out of the Lotus and tossed his keys in a Kareem Abdul-Jabbar skyhook, but they sailed over the valet’s fingertips into a twenty-dollar salad.
“Sorry,” said Serge, waving at Jumper-Cable Men.
Bellhops rolled up with a luggage cart. Sharon was in her Kevlar body armor. She attracted two body builders from Caracas who rushed up to perform synchronized pectoral popping.
The lobby of the Metropolis was an art deco orgy. Twin rows of bromeliads flanked a line of domino tables with lacquer inlays. The terrazzo floor was a coral-and-alabaster checkerboard. With the two bellhops and a femme fatale in tow, and another Man Friday parking his Lotus, Serge strode through the hotel like The Great Gatsby.
Coleman had detoured to the bar, hewn from coquina rock and lit by a bronze Charles Atlas holding a glowing orb on his back. The mauve, stiltlike chairs were aesthetically grand and orthopedically suspect. Coleman tried one out and decided he was a bean bag man. He ran to catch the others at the elevator.
The three squinted when the bellhop opened the room. The elevator had been ancient, slow and dark, and the hallway a catacomb. But the room faced Miami Beach and the large wall of glass that wrapped around the corner of the hotel poured in the light. Serge took a deep, satisfied breath; he placed the tackle box on one of the beds and disgorged the contents onto the spread. Coleman popped a Coors. Sharon, excited, pressed her hands against the window. Old coconut palms lined the concourse across Ocean Drive, and along the shore was a row of brightly colored lifeguard shacks shaped like flying saucers. The Atlantic was dark blue and choppy, but the sky clear and warm. It was a world overrepresented by sex, twelve-step programs and unnecessary surgery. Sharon’s world.
Serge shaved in the bathroom mirror and scripted Sharon’s demise. He’d bait her into going out of the room, maybe say he was going out too, and double back to prepare the trap. Lay out the polyurethane tarpaulin to catch the blood and stuff.
“I think I’m gonna head to the beach and take some pictures,” Serge said, sticking his head out of the bathroom. “Probably be gone at least two hours.”
Perfect, they’ll be separated, Sharon thought as she lit one cigarette with another. I’ll double back and kill Coleman, then set the trap for Serge.
“What are you gonna do?” Serge asked Sharon.
“I think I’ll do some shopping, maybe lay out on the beach,” she said. “Probably be gone a couple hours.”
Perfect, Serge thought.
They left at the same time, both overacting casualness. Sharon got in the elevator and Serge said, “I think I’ll take the stairs for exercise.”
“Good for you,” said Sharon. “Well, see you later.”
“Have fun.”
Sharon hid on the mezzanine and Serge hid in the stairwell.
Serge returned to the room first and found Coleman clicking a remote control at an unplugged TV set.
He heard a key in the door. “Shit, she’s back. Don’t tell her I’m here,” and Serge ran in the bathroom.
He heard quiet talk and then nothing for an extended period. Eventually there was a whimper and more quiet talk, and Serge peeked around the corner.
Coleman was on his stomach on the bed. Sharon sat on his back, straddling him and holding the.380 automatic with a straight-armed, two-handed grip. Pointed at the base of his head.
“I’m gonna blow your brains out and there’s nothing you can do about it,” she said in a husky voice, breathing heavy. “Gonna shoot you in the skull in less than thirty seconds, send your brains out your eyes and nose.”
She barked through clenched teeth: “Can you feel it coming? Huh, can you? Think about what it’ll be like….”
She pushed the barrel against his skull, Coleman weeping now.
“Here we go. Time to die. Ten seconds left….”
Serge was unprepared; he had no weapons and it was too far to get the jump on someone with a gun.
“Cry, fucker, cry!” Sharon tormented him. “Tick-tock, tick-tock, tick-tock. Time’s up!”
Serge grabbed the only thing he saw on the bathroom counter and charged the bed. Sharon heard him and spun. It became a split-second race. Sharon raised the barrel and Serge planted his feet.
The only alternative had been a hairbrush, so Serge had grabbed the miniature World Series souvenir bat. He had it in both hands and swung for the fences. Sharon fired.
The bat broke in two across Sharon’s forehead as she pulled the trigger. The shot flew by Serge’s left ear, and Sharon fell backward off the bed unconscious.
Serge looked around and picked up his tackle box.
Sharon drifted back from the ethereal, and her brain hung in a shroud as she opened her eyes halfway. She could feel some kind of tube running down her throat. Serge was kneeling over her and there was a hissing sound, like an aerosol can.
When the hissing stopped, Serge pulled the tube out of her throat and held a can up to her face.
Sharon read the label, “Fix-a-Flat,” as she felt the rubber cement sealing up the inside of her lungs.
She mo
uthed without a voice: “No fair.”
Twenty
“Tonight’s the night!” read the outbreak-of-war headline atop the Miami Herald. Sean turned to the sports section and threw the rest in the backseat, joining the Styrofoam cups, napkins, burger wrappers, coffee lids and an empty quart of oil. David took Southern Boulevard to the Palm Beach International Airport and turned south on Interstate 95.
Two virgin Thirst Mutilators perspired in the cup holders.
“I remember the first time I went to Miami,” said David. “I was a little kid. We went to the Seaquarium and I got a white plastic dolphin from one of those injection-molding machines under a see-through dome. It was supposed to be Carolina Snowball, the famous albino.”
“I remember the last time,” Sean said. “A squad of squeegee guys held my car hostage after midnight on Biscayne Boulevard. Then I got lost in the Omni parking garage. Car burglar alarms were going off all over the place. The only open door led into the mall and it was empty and dark and this guy started shadowing me. I had to run around like The Fugitive.”
David tried the radio. “Fight the Powers That Be” came on and the two began to chicken-neck as they passed the Lantana exit.
“I love Public Enemy,” said Sean. “Remember that Florida State student who did mushrooms and barricaded himself in the capitol demanding to talk to Flavor Flav?”
“You know, you still snore,” said David. “I mean bad.”
“Why do we still live here?” asked Sean. “The crime is crazy. Kids who think they’re vampires and serial killers from Ohio…”
A Buick passed in the left lane with C-4 explosives and two bodies in the trunk.
“A personal question?” asked Sean. “You gonna have kids? I mean it’s just incredible. The way it changes you…”
“Is this trip gonna turn into a chick movie?”
“Sorry. I just can’t get the theme from Muppet Babies out of my head.”
Dave saw the black limousine coming up in the rearview and fly past in the far left lane doing a hundred.
“Seriously, why do we stay in this state?” Sean asked.
“Co-dependency,” said David.
“Look around,” said Sean. “A lot of people don’t seem right. Like that guy.” Sean pointed at the Honda next to them. “That’s one scary-lookin’ dude. We don’t have any idea what he’s up to.”
“You’re coming unwrapped,” said David.
Every ten seconds the guy in the Honda threw a chunk of concrete down the embankment, each piece containing ground-up bits of corpse.
“I mean, you ever think how many undetected murderers drive down this road, past this very point every day?”
The answer was seventy-three. While they were talking, they passed seven graves just inside the woods along the interstate. Only two would be discovered in their lifetimes.
A Lincoln raced by on the inside lane. Mo Grenadine looked down in his lap at the homing monitor and followed it south.
The three men in white linen suits disassembled and cleaned automatic pistols in their laps. With one hand, the driver worked on the Walther laid out on a towel across his legs. He got a searching look on his face and turned to the man in the passenger seat. “Call it!”
The passenger looked up from his gun parts, apologetic. “Air biscuit.”
The head of the man in the backseat shot up in alarm, and all three rolled down their electric windows with military precision.
Fifteen seconds later, the driver yelled, “Clear!” They simultaneously rolled up the windows and faced back down at gun parts.
The driver finished reassembling his gun and tapped on the wheel along with a Spanish radio station. The announcer came on at the bottom of the hour. The driver heard something that caught his attention. “World Series!” he yelled. “El Series Mundo!”
“Series Mundo! Series Mundo!” the others shouted.
The driver had taken the antikidnapping driving course in Bogotá during Cartel Safety Week. He hit the brakes and twisted the wheel, putting the Mercedes in a spin. The gloss-black limousine slid sideways across three lanes of traffic and into the median. Other cars sideswiped and ran off the shoulder.
“Series Mundo! Series Mundo!”
When the Mercedes was halfway across the median, the driver pulled the wheel back and pressed the gas pedal to the floor. He crossed to the opposite side of the interstate and headed toward the turnpike, to the baseball stadium.
The radio’s volume was beyond its capacity for fidelity, and the speakers rattled like castanets inside the Yugo. A wall of fast, untuned guitars and lyrics about religious desecrations and infanticide.
Dar-Dar, lead singer for the Crucifixion Junkies, switched to the outside lane. He jerked his head violently, and his sweaty hair swung and slapped on the dashboard. He punched the armrest over and over. “Die, motherfucker! Meet Satan in all his killing glory! Bow down for the slaughter!”
The DJ announced there would be plenty more music-without-hope still coming up on World Series Death Jam Weekend!
Dar-Dar stopped pounding. “World Series?”
He came upon a massive pileup on the interstate, where police were taking statements about a black limousine. Dar-Dar drove the Yugo slow down the breakdown lane and took the exit, working his way around Opa-Locka until he was pointed at the baseball stadium.
Traffic backed up to the turnpike. Lines at the stadium entrance gates were long and chaotic. A Latin man in a white suit peeled hundreds off a roll and said “Three” to a fast-talking scalper in one of those big, floppy Dr. Seuss hats. The Latins walked off to the gate and, next in line, a young man with an inverted cross on his forehead stepped up to the scalper. He raised an index finger and smiled. “One, please.”
David and Sean didn’t budget enough time for traffic. It was nearing first pitch when they made the exit at Northwest 202nd Street. David turned the wrong way and ended up on the side of the stadium where the parking lots were full and closed. Sean saw the Dr. Seuss hat first. It was on top of the only person in sight, and he was waving them over with a hand that held four tickets.
“Ask him how much,” David said, pulling to the curb.
Sean rolled down the passenger window. “How much?”
“Homes, a buck each. Box seats behind home plate.”
A buck, thought Sean, wow. This guy must not be having any luck; he’s totally disgusted with the whole process. But Sean could see himself doing it, practically giving away extra tickets he couldn’t sell minutes before the game, saying, “Aw, just give me a dollar.” Sean pulled two single George Washingtons from his wallet and held them out to the scalper.
The scalper looked at Sean like a foot had sprouted from his forehead.
Sean might as well have pissed on the scalper’s shoes. Here, homeboy, two fucking dollars, bite me! The insult was so aggressive the scalper was taken by surprise. He didn’t know whether to go for his piece or run. He studied Sean for a clue but the little guy was ice cold, like James Bond. Probably had a gauge below the window.
The scalper suddenly laughed. “No, man, a buck is a hundred dollars!”
David leaned over. “A buck for both.”
The scalper cringed for effect and quickly made the exchange.
“Shrewd negotiating strategy,” David told Sean as they drove off. “Knock him off balance. Let him think there’s no reasoning with us…”
“Shut up,” said Sean.
“I mean, why even try to act street-wise when you can go for the much more intimidating surreal farce.”
“I said shut up.”
They asked the first security guard they saw where to park.
“Just keep driving around the stadium until you see someplace where cars are still parking,” said the guard.
“Thanks,” said David. “For a second I was worried there was no procedure in place.”
They left their car somewhere in Broward County and hiked back to the stadium. Their seats were seven rows from the top
of the stands behind the right-field foul pole, Section 433, Row 24, Seats 1 and 2.
“Hey, these are nowhere near home plate,” said Sean. “That guy wasn’t telling the truth.”
David gave Sean the same look he had gotten from the scalper.
“How are we gonna get her body out of the room?” Coleman asked. “We’ll have to go through the lobby!”
“Relax,” said Serge. “We’re in Miami Beach. Everything’s backward. To get away with this, we need to try to attract attention, and then we’ll be ignored…. I gotta go to the store.”
Serge ran a fast errand to a specialty shop on Washington Avenue. Back at the room, he dumped a sack out on the bed.
Sharon was still wearing her Barbarella body armor, and Serge left it on. He fastened a handcuff around one of her wrists. He put a zippered leather hood with a Spider-Man design over her head and covered her crotch with a strap-on fluorescent wiener.
“She’s ready,” announced Serge, and phoned for the valet. They hoisted her up and carried her slouched between them like a drunk buddy, one of her arms around each of their necks. They headed for the elevator.
Serge and Coleman carried Sharon through the middle of the sidewalk café, ignored except for one of the jumper-cable men, who said to the other, “I want to party with those guys.”
The valet held the passenger door of the Lotus open and helped Serge sit Sharon upright in the middle of the backseat.
“We’re going to the World Series,” Serge explained and handed him a hundred.
“Go Marlins,” said the valet.
Serge waved and accelerated the Lotus into traffic as a fire engine headed the other way toward a fully engulfed Cadillac.
Serge whipped the Lotus around two sharp rights and into an alley, and they threw Sharon in the trunk. He checked his Indiglo watch. “We’re late,” said Serge. “Excellent timing.”
Serge’s philosophy was to arrive at the absolute last second for any big event, when everyone else had already parked, the roads were clear, and scalped tickets cheap.