by Dorsey, Tim
Mrs. Ploomfield spit on the floor with disdain and shuffled toward the kitchenette.
Everyone in Calusa Pointe knew Mrs. Ploomfield and they avoided her. Just the opposite in the bar next door at Hammerhead Ranch, where she made lots of friends. One of her drinking buddies was Guy Rockney, the weatherman for FCN, who owned a penthouse at Calusa Pointe.
Rockney told Ploomfield he had a problem. He had come up with this great idea at the station for Toto the Weather Dog. The station gave him a raise but also made him take care of the pooch, which was running and peeing all over the penthouse and chewing up his shoes. He tried everything. Books, videos, obedience school. No matter what he did, he just couldn’t get the dog to behave. Could Toto live with her? He’d pay.
“Of course,” she said. “I love animals.”
Mr. and Mrs. Ramirez returned to Calusa Pointe from the drugstore and found a small Chihuahua wearing a Florida Gators cheerleading outfit, pompoms tied to its paws, sitting quietly in the corner.
“Stay!” Mrs. Ploomfield commanded, and the dog stayed.
The mayor of Beverly Shores was shrinking.
This much was confirmed when he was fingerprinted and photographed for attempted murder with a lawn dart, which was dropped to simple assault. The news vans converged on Calusa Pointe again. Malcolm Kefauver had lost at least an inch since the last news story. He was now only five foot two, and his clothes had become so baggy they were in style.
The judge told Malcolm he expected more from a mayor, even if it was just the smallest incorporation in three counties. In addition to the lecture, Malcolm got probation and a hundred hours of picking up litter on the beach, which he accomplished by attaching a lawn dart to the end of his cane.
Malcolm Kefauver was up for reelection. The city’s vote total each year averaged one eighty-eight. Elections at Beverly Shores were wonderful occasions. Rows of folding plastic chairs filled the community rooms of the condominiums, and red-white-and-blue banners covered the walls and the podiums like the cabooses of whistle-stop trains. There was always a strapping turnout at candidate forums because of the likelihood they would degrade into talk-show donnybrooks.
Kefauver approached the podium. He was running for mayor as a Republican. The mayor and the city council did little more than argue over trash pickup, pool hours and the weight limit of pets. This didn’t stop Kefauver from issuing a tirade against the intangibles tax, foreign aid and the cultural elite in Hollywood that was conducting a systematic campaign to undermine the God-fearing values that built the condominiums of Beverly Shores. The crowd applauded politely.
As the clapping died down, someone in back yelled, “What about your arrest, Manson!”
Someone else: “Yeah, Dillinger, will your criminal enterprise be part of your administration?”
Laughter and hooting.
“Lies!” retorted Kefauver. “The distortions of commies and fags!”
“What are you talking about? You hit Mr. Goldfarb in the butt with a lawn dart. He’s a retired Army major with ten grandkids!”
“That’s right!” another woman yelled. “And why did you try to evict my dog, Muffins?”
“Oh shut up!” replied another heckler. “Your dog’s a mangy bitch!”
“She is not!” the woman responded. “But your wife has four martinis with lunch, not including the flask in her purse.”
“What are you saying!”
“She’s a lush…and she swims out to troop ships!”
“Why you…!” The man started climbing over rows of folding chairs until others restrained him, and someone gaveled an emergency adjournment. Everyone decided definitely not to miss the next meeting.
Normally, Kefauver’s arrest would have ensured the election would be his personal Waterloo. However, the Democratic candidate was a woman named Gladys Hochenburger. At the next meeting, Kefauver attacked the Black Caucus in Congress and the U.S. military policy of not using its bombs more. Then Gladys took the podium. She shuffled papers and adjusted her reading glasses. She pointed at Kefauver and said, “This man’s an impostor! The real Malcolm Kefauver died in the middle of last term and has been replaced by a man from New York named Danny DeVito. That’s why his clothes don’t fit and he looks like he’s shrinking!”
The crowd started buzzing.
“Danny DeVito the actor?” someone yelled out.
“Who?” asked Gladys.
“The actor.”
“No,” said Gladys. “Danny DeVito the replicant. I heard about him during The X-Files. Agents broke in on a special frequency that only I could hear.”
Kefauver was back in the race.
But it would still be close. Despite Gladys’s interesting bearings, she immediately inherited the built-in Jesse Ventura constituency in every precinct as the yahoo/sabotage candidate.
Until now, reporters never considered covering the Beverly Shores campaign. With Malcolm and Gladys in the race, every network had a mobile transmitting van outside the polling station at the Calusa Pointe condominiums.
On election night, Gladys took the lead on early returns, and Florida Cable News broke in from coverage of the governor’s race. But as the absentee snowbird votes were tabulated, Malcolm pulled off a narrow, four-vote victory. When the TV camera lights went on, Malcolm pledged conciliation. “I will reach across the aisle in my administration for bipartisan cooperation to work for the common good of the people of this great city.”
After the speech, Malcolm Kefauver set about identifying exactly who among his neighbors had voted against him and how he would prepare his cold dish of revenge.
The next morning at Calusa Pointe Tower Arms began with a hard knock on the front door of unit 1193.
A second firm knock. “I know you’re in there!”
Mrs. Ramirez opened the door and smiled. “It’s Mayor Kefauver, from 2193, right above us. How nice to see you, Mr. Kefauver! Congratulations on the election!”
“Knock off the bullshit. I know you voted against me. How dare you!”
“But…but…how do you know how we voted?” asked Mrs. Ramirez. “It’s supposed to be secret. The sanctity of the ballot box.”
“Sanctity, shmanctity,” said the mayor, stepping into the living room, uninvited. “Guess what? We peeked! We have to do things like that because you immigrants are sneaky. You think you can just fall off the banana boat and start voting in secret?”
“But that’s what they taught us in citizenship class. We would be regular Americans. We could vote and have constitutional rights and everything. We just couldn’t be president.”
“But we could be in the cabinet,” added Mr. Ramirez, “like the great Mr. Kissinger.”
“Save it for the next load of greaseballs!” interrupted the mayor. “You’re all a bunch of friggin’ wetbacks as far as I’m concerned, and we don’t want your kind here! I’m going to make your life a living hell until you…”
Mrs. Ramirez felt someone grab her from behind and shove her out of the way, and Edna Ploomfield stepped up to the mayor.
“Wetbacks? Greaseballs? You don’t even know your racist geography. Your slurs missed by a whole goddamn continent both times, you ignorant fuck!”
She gave him a fast, two-handed shove in the middle of his chest and he stumbled backward. Ploomfield advanced and stood up to his chest again.
“You wanna dance with someone, cocksucker?” She gave him another hard shove and he stumbled back again, too surprised to know what to do.
She shoved him again, and he stumbled again. On a bookshelf she saw the rocks glass of scotch she’d been drinking, and she grabbed it.
“You sonuvabitch!” She threw the scotch in his eyes. Since the mayor had been shrinking, he was now right at Mrs. Ploomfield’s eye level, and she smashed the glass into his forehead, opening a large cut over his brow. He fell in the doorway and pressed his hands against his head to stop the bleeding, and Edna jumped on his back. She grabbed him by the hair and bounced his head on the sidewalk until t
he Ramirezes pulled her off.
When the police arrived, Kefauver was sitting up holding his forehead and screaming about the psychotic old lady who attacked him. He reeked from the booze splashed on his face and shirt.
Edna Ploomfield hobbled to the door and a young policeman helped her by the arm. “Oh, my, my. Thank heavens you’re here, you nice officers,” she said in a delicate, creaking voice. “That terrible man threatened us. Ohhhh, I’m just a sweet little ol’ lady, and he was mean to me. He fell and hit his own head because he was so crazy and drunk…”
“You’re putting on an act, you old bag!”
“…just like that,” Ploomfield said, and pointed.
“We’ve heard enough,” said the sergeant in charge, and they handcuffed the mayor and took him away in a patrol car, but not before the TV crews arrived and pointed cameras in the back window and yelled in unison, “Why’d ya do it?”
The Diaz Boys held an emergency meeting right after watching the mayor of Beverly Shores being driven off in a squad car on the nightly news. Tommy Diaz told Rafael and Pedro to take the shotguns, and he gave them a map to Calusa Pointe, unit 1193.
“How do you want it handled?” asked Rafael.
“Just knock on the door.”
“Then what?”
“Shoot whoever answers.”
14
Three weeks into December, the meteorologic tragicomedy known as El Niño produced two markedly abnormal conditions in the Lesser Antilles. The trade winds exceeded the annual average by five miles per hour, and the water temperature rose two degrees. The changes were imperceptible to the islanders living in the region. But they made the critical difference when the remnants of a barely organized and forgotten storm system limped into the area. Overnight, Rolando-berto roared back to life and came ashore on one of the Leeward Islands, where the residents did not possess a prescient dog, but instead relied upon a goat wearing an Ohio State sweater bestowed as a peace offering in 1977 by a shipwrecked alumnus who mistook the natives for cannibals.
Before the goat could ring the bell on its neck, Rolando-berto promptly dispatched the animal through the side of a quaint and gaily painted barn, and entire villages were leveled without warning.
News of the death toll in the Leewards whipped Florida into action and cranked up the state’s Hurricane Industrial Complex. Commemorative “I survived Rolando-berto” T-shirts were printed in advance, and shelves were stocked with packing tape, weather radios and splatterproof party ponchos. Water was bottled, plywood nailed, and candles and batteries shipped in by tram. TV advertising time was purchased to demonstrate two-hundred-dollar panes of miracle glass that could withstand coconuts fired from special cannons. Florida Cable News bought a new wardrobe for Toto.
News of the hurricane was playing in hi-fi in the Lexus, and Sammy Pedantic changed the station to techno-dance.
“Those were great guys,” Joe said as they drove through Orlando on I-4. “What a deal—just drive their car across the state to Tampa Bay and give it to their cousin and we get five hundred bucks.”
“I’ve heard about this before—rich people actually pay someone to drive their cars city to city. It’s like house-sitting. Except there’s no house.”
“Plus a free weekend on the beach!”
“And chicks, too!” Sammy turned around and saw City and Country driving eight lengths back in their maroon Mercury Cougar. He popped two beers and handed one to Joe. “Now, this is living.”
They concentrated on drinking for a moment, then threw the empties onto the leather backseat. Joe burped first, then Sammy, then it became a contest.
“You know anything about the Gulf Coast?” asked Joe.
“Are you kidding? It’s ten times better than the East Coast. And Miami has nothing on Tampa. We’re lucky we fell into this deal.”
“How do you know all that?”
“Those guys told us, remember?”
“That’s right.”
“There is a God,” said Sammy.
“And he has plans for us,” said Joe.
On the way through Orlando, Joe and Sammy began hearing a peculiar sound inside the dashboard, but it didn’t seem to be affecting the car’s performance. They continued southwest on Interstate 4, past a collision of money and architecture. Castles and resort hotels and imperial pagodas. Wild West sets and Polynesian discos. Artificial beaches and heliports. Down both sides of the highway, like the master growth plan of a small, oil-producing state. Pirate ships and towers of terror. Giant Las Vegas signs: “Buffet $4.99.” Reptile petting farms, go-cart tracks. Fun World, Fun Mania, Fun ’n’ Sun. And it wasn’t even Disney yet. The Great White Shark was still ahead; these were just the remoras and trash fish that clean its teeth and suck the scales for sidestream commerce.
They hit heavy traffic, then construction, and the boys lost City and Country just past the American Gladiators Dinner Theater.
“Where’d the girls go?” asked Sammy.
“Shhhh!” said Joe, trying to listen to the engine.
They noticed the engine sound growing louder as they drove through Lakeland. It was a rhythmic noise, a whap-whap-whap like a baseball card in the spokes of a bike. Joe leaned toward the dash.
“I’ve heard engines about to go, and this doesn’t sound the same,” said Joe. “We’re pretty close to Tampa. We’ll make it.”
He was right. It wasn’t the engine. The problem was the air-conditioning. One of the fan blades was rubbing. Only a little at first. The blade had shifted slightly and began clipping some plastic in the cowling. As the clipping wore on, the plastic became frayed and gave the fan blade more to dig into, which tore up more of the plastic.
By the time they took the exit ramp into downtown Tampa, the puttering sound filled the car. Sammy read the map and said where to turn. Joe made a right on Polk, and Sammy pointed at the bus station a block ahead. “That’s where we’re supposed to meet the guy’s cousin.”
Something they didn’t know: The plastic that the fan blade was clipping wasn’t supposed to be there. It was the tight outer binding of a kilo of cocaine. As Joe and Sammy rounded the corner, the slightest aperture opened through the last bit of plastic wrap and a thin, invisible current of coke blew out the vents.
Sammy sniffed the air. “Smells musty in here.”
The fan now had something to work with. Once that first hole had broken the seal, the blade ripped open the rest in short order like a Christmas present.
Suddenly, the air conditioner blew a swift, solid cloud of white dust that filled the passenger compartment, blinding and choking them. Joe began hitting parking meters and garbage cans all down the right side of the street until he crashed into the back of a van outside the bus terminal.
A police officer ran from a sandwich shop. The electric windows rolled down and a thick cloud of cocaine billowed out. Joe and Sammy opened their doors and fell to the ground, gagging. The officer pulled his gun.
In all, the cocaine in the air conditioner and other parts of the Lexus tipped police scales at just over four hundred and ten pounds, a weight which, under new federal law, required a roomful of politicians to appear at the press conference announcing the arrests. Seven hours into the interrogation of Joe and Sammy, a team of detectives, prosecutors and city officials met secretly in a conference room at police headquarters. Something had happened for the first time in their collective crime-fighting experience. Suspects found in a car full of drugs—actually covered in drugs—appeared to be innocent. But since they had already held the press conference, the two young men would have to be convicted and imprisoned.
While they discussed the case, a corporal walked around the conference table with plastic fast-food sacks, placing a child’s Happy Meal, complete with toy prize, in front of each top official. The embattled and paranoid chief of police looked around the room at a Who’s Who of Tampa’s power structure. He looked down at the Happy Meals in front of them and thought: This is political—someone in the department is
trying to make me look like an idiot. The officials discussed legal and strategic options and made a decision. They would let the suspects go and keep them under surveillance.
The surveillance team, however, lost Joe and Sammy in the heavy traffic of TV and radio vans following the suspects, so they had to break off and track them on live TV back at police headquarters. Outside the command room, a disgruntled police major slipped a corporal a hundred-dollar bill for making the chief look like an idiot with the Happy Meals.
After nightfall, when the news helicopters returned to the airport, Joe and Sammy were kidnapped outside a convenience store in Dunedin by a van with TV news markings. Inside were their new friends from Daytona Beach, the Diaz Boys, three brothers and a cousin.
“Hey, you’re really drug smugglers!” Sammy said as the men gave them injections of sodium pentothal.
They drove to a motel room, where Joe and Sammy were tied to tropical chairs. The men made drinks and got the hockey game on TV. Under the truth serum, Joe and Sammy told them about the police interrogations. A man arrived with a deli tray and chips.
“Did you go by the wedding rental shop?” asked Tommy Diaz.
“I forgot,” said Juan Diaz, still holding the platter of cold cuts and cheeses.
“Better get going before it closes,” said Tommy.
“How come I always have to go?” asked Juan. “It’s because I’m the cousin, isn’t it? The rest of you are brothers, so it’s always ‘Send Juan to do it.’”
“Absolutely not,” said Tommy.
“You know who I feel like?” said Juan. “Norman Durkee.”
“Who the hell’s Norman Durkee?” asked Rafael.
“You don’t know, do you?” said Juan. “He was the guy in Bachman-Turner Overdrive whose name wasn’t Bachman or Turner.”
“He just played piano,” said Tommy Diaz. “The piano guy never counts. In concert, they’re always way over on the side in the dark, with the guy who plays those tall bongos and the three chicks singing backup.”
“What about Rick Wakeman from Yes?” countered Juan. “Or Keith Emerson from Emerson, Lake and Palmer?”