Tim Dorsey Collection #1

by Dorsey, Tim

  Sure enough, they drove from the causeway over Biscayne Bay all the way to Miramar in zero traffic.

  “We gotta ditch this car,” Serge said. “It’s getting too hot.”

  At the stadium, almost everyone was already inside. The national anthem played over the loudspeakers and the night air glowed from floodlights. The only parking left was on the south side, but Coleman and Serge had gotten off on the darkened north side, where wasn’t a person in sight. Except for a scalper in a Dr. Seuss hat waving two last stubs.

  “Look!” yelled Serge. “Our tickets!”

  He accelerated the Lotus, jumped the curb, and hit the scalper thigh-high, breaking both legs. The scalper bounced across the hood and rolled up the windshield like a ramp jump. Serge and Coleman ducked as the scalper flew over their heads, landing dead in the backseat. In fright, the scalper had tightened all his muscles and he still clutched the tickets.

  The Lotus continued up the sharp incline of a grassy hill, spinning and slinging sod until it slammed sideways into the stadium.

  Serge plucked the tickets from the scalper’s hand, grabbed his gym bag and abandoned the Lotus, and he and Coleman walked around the corner and through the gate. Three minutes before the first pitch, he and Coleman took their seats in the right-field stands, Section 433, Section 24, Seats 3 and 4.

  “Sodas! Get your ice-cold sodas!”

  A man in a white linen suit held up three fingers, and Sean, David, Serge and Coleman passed money down the row to the vendor and the three Cokes back up the row.

  “Excuse me, excuse me,” said Dar-Dar, a souvenir World Series baseball cap covering the scar tissue on his forehead. He squeezed past Sean’s and David’s knees, carrying a cardboard tray with a hot dog, a bag of peanuts and a beer. “Pardon me, excuse me”—passing Serge’s and Coleman’s knees. He wore a Marlins T-shirt over his black tunic. “Coming through, sorry, excuse me”—passing the Latins, who twisted sideways in their seats to guard their sodas.

  The Cleveland Indians took a two-zero lead in the third inning, and the Marlins remained lifeless through the seventh-inning stretch. In the bottom of the inning, Bobby Bonilla crushed a home run into the center-field stands, and the night sky over Dade County filled with screams.

  Charles Saffron, sitting in a luxury skybox, was yelling too. He was yelling into a cellular phone. He clapped it closed. The Costa Gordans were calling from the right-field stands, wanting their money.

  Saffron flipped the phone open again and punched a number.

  “Grenadine, where the hell are you! Where’s the money!”

  Grenadine was outside the stadium. He held the small magnetic homing device he had just removed from the crashed Lotus. A dozen police cars were up on the grass, and blue and red lights swept across Grenadine’s face as he talked to Saffron. The back of the coroner’s van was open, one body already inside. A detective with latex gloves popped the trunk and motioned for the evidence techs.

  “We’re staying on South Beach, the Metropolis,” Serge said, making friends with Sean in the next seat. “Incredible place. Preservation people did a great job.”

  Coleman had bought a World Series helium balloon and tied it to a box of popcorn, weighing it down.

  “Where are you guys staying?” asked Serge.

  “Don’t know yet. Guess we could try South Beach,” David said. “We drove straight in from Palm Beach.”

  “We just came from Palm Beach too!” said Serge. “Stayed at the Breakers.” He looked intensely into Sean’s face, tilting his head off-center like a basset hound. “Have we met? You look familiar.”

  “Don’t think so,” said Sean.

  Coleman ate popcorn until the box and the balloon were in weightless balance. He pushed them forward and they floated out over the field at a constant altitude of forty feet. An umpire called time out as they floated over second base, and a sharpshooter ran on the field and knocked the balloon out of the sky with a BB rifle.

  “Those are really cool hats,” Sean told Serge.

  As time continued running out on the Marlins, a depression settled over the crowd like morning fog. Serge had to pace. He went out on the concourse, searching for souvenirs, and spotted Miami humor columnist Dave Barry in the liquor line.

  Serge ran up to him hyper and insane-looking, and Barry took a step back. Awfully jumpy, Serge thought, must have some kind of nervous condition. Serge asked to get his ticket autographed, and he carefully wrapped it in three hot dog napkins, put it in a special compartment in his wallet, and ran away.

  In the bottom of the ninth, the Marlins, piece by piece, assembled a tiny rally. A pop fly scored the tying run, and the crowd came apart.

  The seventh game of the World Series was going into extra innings.

  In the bottom of the eleventh, the Marlins loaded the bases with two outs.

  David and Sean were talking about what hotel they wanted to stay at, South Beach, Biscayne Boulevard, the Holiday Inn at the racetrack.

  “That reminds me,” said Sean, “I still have to cancel the reservation at the Purple Pelican in Key West, unless we want to run into that Veale guy I told you about.”

  Through the roar of the crowd, the words “Purple Pelican” and “Veale” came unexpectedly to Serge and he turned and studied Sean’s profile. Serge’s face suddenly lengthened with realization.

  Just then, Marlin Edgar Renteria singled up the middle, driving home the winning run of the World Series, and the stadium exploded. Fans leaped on each other and onto the field. Fireworks shot from the scoreboard behind the outfield stands. Coleman hugged Serge and lifted him off the ground.

  David and Sean bounded down the aisle steps two at a time toward the exit, trying to beat the traffic.

  “Put me down! Put me down!” Serge yelled at Coleman. “They’re getting away! It’s those guys! They were here the whole time!” Serge pounded on the top of Coleman’s head with his fists, but Coleman kept hugging him.

  After Serge finally got through to Coleman, they charged into the aisle. A beer-wobbled Coleman missed the edge of a step and fell into the back of Serge’s legs, taking him and three other people down.

  The people wanted an apology but Serge pushed them back down on the steps instead. “Come on, Coleman!”

  Dar-Dar jumped around, double high-fiving two of the Latins. Through the cheering, he heard Serge screaming for Coleman, and Coleman yelled back, calling Serge by name.

  Coleman? Serge? The targets Saffron had telephoned him about? A fire erupted in his soul. Dar-Dar climbed over two rows, fighting and shoving his way toward the aisle. “Satan’s vengeance is nigh!”

  Some of the Marlins ran along the outfield wall, smiling and waving up at the crowd. A stage was erected in the infield for televised presentation of the championship trophy.

  The tallest Latin said to the others, “Let’s wait till the traffic clears.” He sat down in his stadium seat and sipped his soda.

  By the time everyone reached the concourse, rivers of people snaked out of the gates in all directions, and nobody could find anybody else.

  “Let’s get back to South Beach,” Serge told Coleman. “They said they might stay there. We’ll comb the strip.”

  Grenadine knew his only hope was for Serge and Coleman to leave by the same gate he’d seen them enter. Mo thought he’d never spot them in the mob, but there was Coleman, yelling “Woooooooooo!” and thrusting a finger in the air: “We’re Number One!” Serge reached back and grabbed him by the shirt and pulled him along.

  They chose a yellow ’72 Corvette in the VIP lot. People streamed by both sides of the car as Serge shattered the steering column; some noticed what he was doing but ignored it—there was a traffic jam to beat. Grenadine crouched behind the bumper, placed the magnetic homer and walked away against the tide of people.

  Serge beat most of the pack, but when they turned onto the MacArthur Causeway, he merged with a new crowd. Partyers who had watched the game on TV and were heading to South Beach for postgam
e celebration. Some carried bail money.

  The traffic exceeded eighty across the causeway, honking horns and flashing lights, people hanging out windows waving Marlins and Cuban flags. Coleman saw this and began climbing out his own window, still yelling “Woooooooooooo!” As Coleman started falling out of the car, Serge reached across the passenger seat and hooked his fingers into the elastic waistband of Coleman’s underwear, jerking him back inside.

  Soon, Serge himself was tripping on Miami. On the left, little bridges spurred from the causeway for Palm, Hibiscus and Star islands. “Al Capone lived on one of those islands when he had cooties,” said Serge. On the right, the illuminated downtown skyline gave him goose flesh. Serge imagined he was in all those great movie and TV chases over the same bridge. He looked over at Coleman, who was pretending to pick the foam Marlin’s nose, and it broke the spell.

  “Look at that building lit up all green.” Coleman pointed at the skyline. “How do they do that?”

  “Green lightbulbs,” said Serge.

  On South Beach, young people danced and disrobed in the back of pickup trucks cruising Collins Avenue. Five guys ran around an intersection with a giant Cuban flag. Serge’s mind was on the money. He walked from the Park Central Hotel to the Clevelander, crossing to the beach side of the street, and waited for Sean and David. He sat on a bench with an open view of sidewalk traffic in front of the hotels and cafés. The Colony, the Beacon, the Avalon, the Starlite, the neon colors so evenly varied Serge thought they must have had a meeting.

  Coleman bounded into the street. He grabbed a corner of the Cuban flag and ran around the intersection, picking up the chant, “Cuba Libre!”

  Mo Grenadine sipped decaf at an outdoor table at the News Café watching Serge and Coleman and reading an overseas paper. It was after midnight, but people were still lined up nearby for souvenir flash photos in front of the Versace estate.

  Twenty-one

  When the Lotus was found, police appealed to the press for publicity. Blaine Crease immediately went on Florida Cable News, hanging from a blimp over the stadium, describing the killers as the criminal geniuses of the nineties, masters of disguise and escape.

  Only three cars were stolen outside the World Series, a BMW, a Mercury Marquis, and a yellow Corvette, and police were looking for all of them.

  Susan Tchoupitoulas of the Key West Police Department opened a briefcase at the kitchen table on Olivia Street, and pulled out a sheaf of paperwork. In the bundle was a bulletin from Miami. Murders at the World Series, complete with vehicle descriptions and suspect profiles. It said they were last seen heading south.

  Susan made a few notes on a legal pad.

  Former Hillsborough County deputy sheriff Samuel Tchoupitoulas wheeled himself into the kitchen of his Olivia Street home in Key West. He’d heard his daughter, Susan, come home from work.

  “Hey, Sergeant,” he called out with a smile, wheeling through the doorway.

  “Hi, Daddy,” said Sergeant S. Tchoupitoulas, putting the paperwork back in the briefcase. She got up and walked over and gave him a hug.

  He tried to decipher the look on her face.

  “Any problem with the Bubbas today?”

  “Nothing I couldn’t handle,” she said.

  The Bubbas on the force persisted as a small but definable number of ill-tempered and unprofessional officers. Through seniority and the inbred, small-palace politics of Key West, they bullied residents and tourists alike with impunity.

  It was the cross all the good cops in Key West bore. Sergeant S. Tchoupitoulas had an additional challenge. Although she could run a six-minute mile and do every last duty of a police officer better than most of the department, she was still a woman. Which meant she had to put up with a strain of sexual innuendo that Susan found more lame than crass. Offend me, she thought, but at least make me laugh.

  Friends and relatives didn’t understand why Susan couldn’t complain or file a sexual harassment suit. Her father knew exactly why, and asked her to quit the force. But he told her he’d be proud whatever she wanted. She wanted to be a cop. Like her dad. And cops didn’t sue cops.

  So that afternoon, when a Bubba escalated from unclever remarks to a hand on her breast, she didn’t complain. She bent his pinky until she heard the sound of a piece of chalk snapping.

  She chose not to tell her father about the incident, and the officer with the pinky splint sure wasn’t talking.

  Susan gave her father a second hug. “I have to go back in the office.”

  It was an outside chance but one that her responsible nature wouldn’t let her leave uncovered. The suspects were southbound, and the permutations were endless. There was Homestead, or they could head into the Everglades or the migrant camps in Immokalee. They could always double back.

  Or they could come to the Keys.

  Her starting point would be tracking the yellow Corvette, but she assumed it had already been ditched. Maybe they were working their way through a series of cars.

  Back at the department, Susan logged into a network of law enforcement computers and ordered spreads of all vehicles stolen in the last twenty-four hours south of the turnpike junction at Florida City.

  Several spit out. A Ford Tempo, a Chevy Cavalier, a Coupe DeVille, a panel truck from Glotski’s Bakery, a LeMans and the Oscar Mayer Wienermobile, which was on a promotional tour in the Keys when it was taken for a joyride over the Seven Mile Bridge by four high school students in Marathon.

  She requested fingerprint results, and she filed them and cross-filed and tapped into the FBI computer and found a match with a murder scene at the Orbit Motel in Cocoa Beach. Roaming police computer systems was like surfing a secret Internet, except it was much, much slower and utterly disjointed. Susan kept making keystrokes down blind alleys, but the morsels she did find encouraged her to keep going. Three hours of trial-and-error later, she had a positive print match with the panel truck found ditched on the edge of Florida Bay, the room at the Orbit Motel and two small-time goofballs from Tampa. She couldn’t believe the connection hadn’t already been made, but then again she could. In coming years, police agencies would be universally connected for instant identifications. For now, however, the cops were at the mercy of meager local budgets, low manpower to input the data, and incomplete networking. In 1997, it still took days and sometimes weeks to make fundamental connections.

  Her computer was downloading. Two criminal jackets and mug shots came up on her screen.

  The phone tips had started coming into the Key West Police Department minutes after artist’s conceptions of Serge and Coleman first appeared on Florida Cable News that Monday morning. The callers placed them all over the island, at the time when Serge and Coleman were still in Miami. One tip had them giving tours at Hemingway’s House, another overcharging for a transmission near Searstown, and still another said they were on the naval base, training dolphins to plant bombs on the hulls of ships.

  By Monday night, however, the calls began to come in with the cadence of credibility. Two calls put the suspects in a Cuban lunch counter and two more around the corner on north Duval Street.

  Susan alerted the shift commander to what she had found on the computer and made a hundred enlarged copies of the mug shots. She grabbed them and ran out the door.

  Dar-Dar drove with his elbows south on US 1. In one hand was a Bic lighter, and in the other a crucifix stationery stamp that heated quickly in the flame. The light ahead had turned red and he slowed to a stop. He realigned the rearview mirror to see himself and, for purposes of scar maintenance, pressed the heated stamp into his forehead. The smell of singed flesh filled the car and he let out a yodeling scream. Drivers around him responded by leaning on their horns, agreeing that the light was too long.

  Just past the intersection, Dar-Dar pulled into the Rapid Response convenience store. The body of a flabby redneck lay in a pond of blood on the floor and had two hot dog spits sticking out of his chest. Dar-Dar stepped over the body and grabbed a pack of c
andied peanuts. He walked down the chips aisle toward the rest rooms, carrying a small wire cage containing two pigeons.

  Clinton Ellrod was on the phone to the police. He put his hand over the receiver and yelled to Dar-Dar, “Hey you! No biting off the heads of birds in the rest rooms!”

  Dar-Dar turned and stood still for a moment. He put the peanuts back on the shelf and walked back out of the store with the pigeons.

  Twenty-two

  As a child, Coleman probably would have raised his feet up when he crossed the drawbridge at Jewfish Creek, putting him officially in the Florida Keys. Instead, he placed a tiny square of paper with a grinning fiddler crab under his tongue.

  “What’s that?” asked Serge.

  “If it’s Monday, this must be acid,” said Coleman.

  “Oh, you’re gonna be a treat!”

  Coleman saw a mural of triggerfish and fan coral on the side of a building. “Dive trips, $25.”

  “Can we go? Please, can we?”

  The cattle boat cast off from Key Largo for the afternoon snorkeling trip at John Pennekamp Coral Reef State Park.

  The boat ran without wake through cuts in the coral. No margin for error. A deep, narrow channel, and on both sides, bright expanses of rock a few inches under the tide.

  Once in deeper water, it throttled up and ran twenty customers out to the dive site. They anchored at the underwater Christ of the Deep statue, whose face and arms reached upward from the ocean floor, toward shafts of light.

  Eighteen snorkelers in the water. Serge and Coleman in the boat.

  Serge paced and took pictures. Coleman sat on the swim step, feet in the water, drinking from a plastic milk jug containing a batch of screwdrivers. The dive operators, a young man and woman in their mid-twenties, thought Serge was harmless eccentric. Tall and thin, he had short, prematurely gray hair and lancing blue eyes. For some reason he was wearing long pants. And he was driving them nuts with all his questions: local history, marine biology, nightlife, politics. He only stopped asking questions when he was jotting in a leather notebook or taking more pictures.