Tim Dorsey Collection #1

by Dorsey, Tim

  “Hello? Hello? Anybody home?” asked Zargoza.

  Serge snapped back to the present. “Sorry. I was in Miami.”

  Zargoza took a step back and gave him a wary look, but they were interrupted by a loud mechanical noise. They both turned and looked up the inlet. It was a growing buzzing sound, high-rpm engines like dirt bikes. Or Jet Skis.

  There were four of them. Lots of colors, expensive swimwear and shirts with designer markings. Luxury dive watches on their wrists even though they weren’t divers. Huge scuba knives strapped in spring-loaded scabbards on their calves even though they never had any use for them. They did doughnuts in their personal watercraft, accompanied by “Wooooooo!” and “Yahoooooo!” Then another flat-out run in formation across the mangrove flats and toward the jetty. A rapidly approaching jackass armada.

  “No nautical training, no understanding or respect for maritime courtesy,” said Serge. “Everyone with a boat knows the unspoken code you live by. The waterways were the last refuge of honor.”

  Zargoza nodded gloomily. “Now I know how the outlaw bikers felt when these dingleberries started showing up on Harleys.”

  On the first pass, the Jet Skiers snapped two fishing lines. Then they had the courtesy to come back and snap three more. By the third pass, they had driven every fish out of the inlet. People on the jetty slammed down their poles. The Jet Skiers whipped around the end of the jetty, and only providence saved them from the submerged boulders they didn’t know existed. They ran over the swim ropes and through the family bathing area, forcing a mother to snatch her two-year-old out of a blow-up turtle and dive toward the beach. They passed between shore and the small boy in the swim mask with his head down in the water.

  The Jet Skiers stopped up the beach and one pulled a small fabric cooler off his shoulder. He opened it and tossed beers to his buddies. They killed them fast and chucked the empties in the water.

  “Did you see that?” said Zargoza. “They almost ran over that kid. And they littered.”

  Serge walked over to a garbage bin and pulled out a few soda cans and filled them from the faucet at the fish-cleaning table. He walked back and rejoined Zargoza out on the rocks. They could hear the high whine of the engines on their return trip. The Jet Skis rounded the end of the jetty one by one.

  “I love Florida sunsets,” said Serge. “Every time the sun goes down it gives me renewed hope for tomorrow.”

  Serge made practice swings with his arm, gauging the weight of the can. He lobbed the aluminum cylinder in a practice shot and it splashed ten yards out from the rocks. “Now you try.”

  Zargoza made practice swings of his own to get the feel.

  Serge studied his stance and motion. He pointed at the Jet Skiers yelling and doing more doughnuts at the end of the inlet. “What’s happening to this country?”

  “No sense of sacrifice,” said Zargoza. “They live right up to the edge of their means, buying Jet Skis they ride two days a year. Fancy cars, Rolexes, all show. They eat their seed corn.”

  “In Texas, they have a saying for people like that,” said Serge. “Big hat, no cattle.”

  Zargoza got ready with the soda can. He reached his arm back.

  “Say, you hear anything about the cursed five million dollars that’s in the papers?” asked Serge.

  Zargoza became unnerved and bricked the shot ten feet off target.

  Serge walked over and grabbed Zargoza’s arm like a golf instructor, and he swung it in a slow pendulum to demonstrate technique.

  “The mistake people often make is to try to add too much velocity. That way you lose accuracy,” said Serge. “What you want to do is put all your effort into aim. At the speeds they’re going, they’ll supply all the velocity you’ll need. Finesse it. Air it out in a nice arch like Rip Sewell’s old ephus pitch for the Pittsburgh Pirates.”

  Zargoza reloaded with another can. The first Jet Skier approached, and Zargoza let it fly. The skier didn’t notice as it missed wide and long.

  The next Jet Skier was about to go by. Serge tossed the can in a two-handed lob from between the legs—a basketball free throw out of the fifties. The sound was a sickening thud as the can broke across the bridge of the man’s nose and knocked him backward off the Jet Ski like a horseback rider hitting the bottom branch of a tree.

  The jetty broke into laughter.

  The other three Jet Skiers circled and grabbed their friend out of the water. One skier pulled him aboard, and then the other two moved toward the rocks where Zargoza and Serge stood. They went for their scuba knives. Zargoza produced a pistol, and the men beat a panicked retreat, leaving the fourth Jet Ski bobbing nose down in the water.

  “You know,” said Zargoza, tucking the pistol back in his waistband and turning to Serge, “you’re a lot of fun to be around.”

  “That’s because I’m a people person.”

  18

  Wild green parrots squawked and flew in circles against the bank of clouds that glowed orange and violet at dusk. They swooped in front of the condominium and settled atop one of the tall Washingtonia palms that lined the road, evenly spaced like streetlights.

  Edna Ploomfield watched the parrots at sunset each evening from her back porch at Calusa Pointe. Or she watched the herons. Or the oystercatchers, kingfishers, skimmers, stilts and plovers that strutted at low tide.

  But tonight she ignored them because she was being interviewed on Florida Cable News with Toto about her shooting of one of the infamous Diaz Boys.

  “Tell us again how Toto handled all this,” said correspondent Blaine Crease.

  “He was fine,” Ploomfield said in her little ol’ lady voice. “So then I went for the gun on the wall—”

  “And where was Toto?”

  “On the floor somewhere. So I grabbed the gun and spun—”

  “What was Toto wearing?”

  After the camera lights were turned off, Mrs. Ploomfield said good night and went into her kitchen and freshened up her scotch. She shuffled to her bedroom and set the glass on the nightstand. She climbed into bed, propped herself up with three pillows and watched a M*A*S*H rerun. She turned off the TV with the remote. Then she looked over at the lamp on the nightstand and clapped twice, and the light went out.

  But unknown to Mrs. Ploomfield or anyone else at Calusa Pointe, there was a second clapper in the room. It was under her bed, wired to blasting caps and fourteen pounds of dynamite, and a millisecond after the lamp went out, Mrs. Ploomfield was blown straight up through the ceiling and into the condominium of the incredible shrinking mayor of Beverly Shores.

  Zargoza was sitting in the bar behind Hammerhead Ranch when a tremendous explosion at the condominium next door rocked the place. Liquor bottles rattled and two wineglasses at the edge of the sink fell and broke. Zargoza remembered that two hours earlier he’d seen someone who looked vaguely like Rafael Diaz run out the back of Calusa Pointe and up the beach.

  “Fuckin’ Diaz Boys,” Zargoza grumbled to himself. “I want those beepers out of here!”

  Zargoza got up from the bar and went back to room twelve, where his boiler room operation was winding down from its dinner-hour fever pitch. He gathered his goons away from the telephones, and he half-sat against the side of his oversize desk. He read from a leather organizer, giving the day’s rundown of business and who wasn’t up to quota.

  As Zargoza spoke, a bright red laser dot slowly traced along the wall behind him and settled on his forehead. The goon standing closest to Zargoza tackled him to the ground. Another ran to the window and peeked out. “It’s coming from one of the motel rooms.”

  When the door crashed open in room one of Hammerhead Ranch and four men with automatic pistols burst in, Serge was on the far bed, packing the moon rock into his toiletry bag. Lenny was lying on the other bed, having just stuck the keychain laser in his hip pocket. His head was toward the foot of the bed, and he bent his neck backward and looked upside down at the four men sticking gun barrels in his face.

  “What
I do?”

  Serge and Lenny sat handcuffed to chairs in room twelve as Zargoza paced and talked to himself and his men played cards. He slugged down sour mash and marched around the room and cursed.

  “You back-stabbin’ chickenshit!” Zargoza yelled at Serge. “We had all that fun with those Jet Skiers—pretending to be my friend and everything—and the whole time you were planning to kill me! Someone sent you after the five million, didn’t they? Well, I don’t have it!”

  Zargoza paced some more, and he grabbed a bag of potato chips away from one of his goons and began chomping.

  “Look how jumpy I am—I’m gaining weight!” He threw the bag of chips back at the goon. “What am I gonna do with these guys? If I can’t handle this, how will I ever keep the Diaz Boys in line?”

  He was interrupted by a loud voice from the back of the room.

  “Fuck the fucking Diaz Brothers!” Serge shouted, veins bulging. “Fuck ’em all! I bury those cockroaches! What did they ever do for us?!”

  Two goons turned their guns on Serge. “We should waste him! Teach him to shut his mouth!” one said. Then, talking to Serge, “For your information, it’s the Diaz Boys, not Brothers.”

  “No,” said Zargoza, “that’s not it. He’s doing Pacino from Scarface. I love that movie!”

  “Say hello to my little friend!” said Serge.

  “Did you see Miami Blues?” asked Zargoza.

  “Ever been in a lineup?” asked Serge, making a tense Fred Ward face. “You own a suede sports coat?”

  One of the goons was patting down Lenny, and he found the personal laser in his hip pocket. “Z, look at this.”

  Zargoza shook his head and started laughing. “Uncuff ’em. They ain’t hit men. I haven’t figured out what they actually are, but it ain’t assassins.”

  “I’m supposed to be Don Johnson,” said Lenny.

  19

  It was two A.M. when Zargoza, Serge and Lenny walked out of Zargoza’s office at Hammerhead Ranch. Serge retrieved his camera bag from room one, and they all got in Zargoza’s roomy BMW M3, Serge riding shotgun and Lenny in the middle of the backseat.

  Serge immediately began fiddling with the fur-lined handcuffs dangling from Zargoza’s rearview mirror.

  “I can’t believe I met you guys,” said Zargoza. “It’s like we’re all tuned in to the same Florida wavelength.”

  They drove east, back onto the mainland and across the St. Petersburg peninsula until they came to the Gandy Bridge leading to Tampa. As the Beemer headed over the water, Zargoza called up a CD on the stereo, “Abacab” by Genesis.

  “This is one of my favorite things, one of those little pleasures you have to make for yourself,” he said.

  Zargoza looked over and noticed Serge and Lenny leaning forward in anticipation, waiting for him to continue.

  “Oh—I love driving across the Tampa Bay bridges after midnight, playing my music. Sometimes I’ll make loops and go over the different bridges and sometimes I’ll go all the way down to the Skyway if I’m really jazzed. Say, you hear someone dressed like Santa jumped the other night?”

  Lenny said yes and Serge said no.

  “I remember crossing this bridge years back in my Jag. Piled it into a cement truck. Seems like a lifetime ago.”

  Zargoza looked at Serge, and then back at Lenny sitting in the backseat with an unlit Lucky Strike in his mouth.

  “You need a light,” Zargoza said, reaching for the dash.

  “Don’t smoke,” said Lenny.

  Zargoza gave Lenny a double take, then went on. “These bridges are wonderful at night. They’re practically empty, and the views over the bay are mesmerizing.”

  Zargoza opened a console between the seats and thumbed through a dozen CDs. “The hardest part is picking the right tune. For the bridges, I prefer haunting music.”

  “Haunting?” asked Lenny.

  “Yeah,” said Zargoza, “music that touches something preternatural inside. You can’t quite put your finger on it, but it awakens a nonverbal sense of horror in your unborn soul.”

  “Like the Spice Girls?” asked Serge.

  “I’m trying to be serious!” snapped Zargoza. “I’m talkin’ about Peter Gabriel, Pink Floyd, Jeff Beck…”

  Lightning forked in the distance toward Plant City, and it inspired Zargoza to pick Bad Company’s “Burnin’ Sky” for the next tune. He increased the volume and everyone stopped talking and grooved, letting the moment happen.

  Zargoza saw the flashing red and blue lights in the rearview mirror. “Damn!” he said. “That’ll kill a buzz!”

  Zargoza stood next to his car in the breakdown lane as the officer studied his driver’s license. He looked up at Zargoza. “We clocked you at ninety.”

  Inside the car, Serge got the homing signal receiver out of his camera bag. It began flashing as soon as he turned it on. He panned it around and the flashing light went solid when he pointed it at the Beemer’s trunk.

  Zargoza stood silent outside the car as his ticket was written, but he finally lost it. He made two fists and pounded them on the roof of his car and yelled. His radar detector was stuck onto the left side of the windshield with suction cups, and he reached into the car and tore it loose. The officer went for his gun, but when he saw Zargoza come up with only the detector, he left the Glock holstered.

  “Damn piece of no-good cheap crap,” he said, rapidly winding the coiled wire around the detector. “Frickin’ four hundred dollars of unreliable shit!” He wound way back like Carl Yastrzemski and let the detector fly out into the bay, and it made an unseen splash somewhere in the dark water.

  The police officer pointed toward the sky. “We got you with the airplane.”

  After the officer pulled away, Zargoza tossed the ticket out the window and sped toward south Tampa. He hit the mainland and cued “Biko” and fired up a brown onyx pipe of Aztec design. “Opium, anyone?”

  “Trying to cut down,” said Serge.

  “Don’t mind if I do,” said Lenny.

  They drove through the back streets under the Lee Roy Selmon Expressway, named after the Tampa Bay Hall of Fame football star.

  “What’s going on over there?” asked Serge.

  “They’re tearing down the aquarium,” said Zargoza. “Making way for the new one.”

  “But it’s brand new,” said Serge.

  “They must know what they’re doing.”

  The BMW cruised by the hockey arena, closed and dark, but the marquee was still lit. “Dec. 17: Southeast Figure Skating Finals/Dec. 18: Lightning vs. Rangers/Dec. 19: Nuremberg Trials on Ice.” Zargoza turned west on Kennedy Boulevard, in front of the old Tampa Bay Hotel.

  “Stop!” yelled Serge.

  Zargoza hit the brakes. “What? What?”

  But Serge had jumped out of the car with his camera and taken off running into the trees in Plant Park. Zargoza and Lenny peered into the darkness but couldn’t see anything. Suddenly there was a quick series of bright flashes.

  “Someone’s shooting!” said Lenny.

  “I didn’t hear anything,” said Zargoza. “Must be the camera flash.”

  Serge reappeared out of the trees and jogged back to the car.

  “What was that about?” asked Zargoza.

  “I’ve been meaning to get that one for a while,” said Serge. “There’s a big oak tree down there where Hernando de Soto held talks with the Indians in 1539.”

  Zargoza stared at him. “Where do you get this stuff?”

  Serge stared back. “Doesn’t everybody know that?”

  A half hour later they were in Ybor City. Serge was quickly out of the car again without warning.

  “I wish he’d stop doing that,” said Zargoza.

  “Best not fight it,” said Lenny, watching xenon strobe flashes light up the street around the corner at Café Creole. “When he’s in his zone, you get out of his way or you get trampled.”

  Serge jumped back in the car, all smiles.

  “What this time?” asked Za
rgoza. “Indian shell mound?”

  “Don’t be silly,” said Serge. “The geology’s all wrong. That used to be the old El Pasaje restaurant, where José Martí stayed last century while planning to kick some butt in Cuba. He’s my role model…. This is also where the Buffalo Soldiers went on their rampage. Remember them? The highly decorated military units? They were staying in Tampa, getting ready to ship out to Cuba for the Spanish-American War. Elsewhere they were received like heroes, but here the innkeepers and bar owners discriminated against them ’cause they were black. Here they are, ready to go fight for America, and these locals are acting like bozos, so the Buffalos tore the place apart. Good for them.”

  “Are you set? Can we go now?” Zargoza said rhetorically.

  “Ooops,” said Serge. He was out of the car again, running across Ninth Avenue and up Fifteenth Street, and Zargoza was forced to follow slowly in the car.

  “I give up,” said Zargoza.

  “Be glad you weren’t his parents,” said Lenny.

  “Good point.”

  Serge leaped back in the car and Zargoza looked at him without speaking.

  “Cigar factory established by city namesake V. Martínez Ybor circa 1885,” said Serge. “Recognized it from an old Burgert Brothers print.”

  “I’m putting a shit-stop to this,” said Zargoza. He reached down by his left side, throwing a switch that activated the BMW’s child-safety locks.

  They drove off and Serge played with the radio. A jazz station, an all-night Lightning hockey postgame show, and Blitz-99.

  “Hey, boys and girls, this is Boris the Hateful Piece of Sh—AHH-OOOO-GAH! reminding you that the big vote on Proposition 213 is only days away…”

  “That’s that stupid anti-immigration amendment again,” said Zargoza. “Everyone’s pissed ’cause we’re going bilingual.”