Tim Dorsey Collection #1
Page 74
“Hey, guys,” said Lenny. “It looks like I’m not needed here. I’m free to go, right?”
Everyone: “No!”
“Shit-eating dogs!” said Tommy.
“Yeah, yeah, yeah,” said Serge, he and Tommy pointing guns in each other’s faces a foot apart.
“Open the trunk!” said Tommy.
“You lost the race,” said Serge. “Bite me.”
“The race is under protest,” said Tommy.
“You think this is NASCAR?” said Serge.
“Interference with another driver.”
“No way,” said Serge. “These are Ben-Hur rules.”
Nobody spoke for a solid minute, guns still leveled.
“Next time!” snapped Tommy, and he started walking backward to the Audi. The other Diaz Boys followed his lead, and they slowly climbed inside, still aiming guns.
Tommy started the engine. He began pulling away and stuck his head out the window. “You’re dead! You’re all fucking dead!”
“No, you’re the ones who are fucking dead!” shouted Zargoza.
“No, you’re fucking dead!” yelled Tommy, pulling into traffic.
“No, you’re fucking dead!”
“You’re dead!”
“You’re dead!”
“You are!”
“You are!”
“Fiddlebottom!”
“Don’t call me that! It’s Zargoza!”
“Fiddlebottom!” yelled Tommy, his voice trailing off in the distance.
“Come back here—I’ll kill you!”
Some guns were fired in the air as the Audi disappeared around a bend.
Serge turned to Zargoza. “I take it there’s some history here.”
“Fuckin’ tradition,” said Zargoza. “We’ve been racing for years. Before that we were in a bowling league, but they won’t let us play anymore.”
“Go figure.”
21
Shortly after Serge and Lenny had set up their bunker in room one, City and Country showed up at Hammerhead Ranch, unable to find the two guys they were supposed to meet from Daytona. They considered it a plus.
City and Country loved Hammerhead Ranch the second they drove up. Between the beach and the open-air bar and the pool and freezing air-conditioning in the room, they had everything they needed for a much-needed vacation.
They didn’t leave the motel grounds for the first two days except to walk across the street to the Rapid Response convenience store. Actually it was more of a run. They were barefoot, and the sun had turned the pavement to hot coals. It started out: Wow, this hurts a little, and then, How fast can I move and still be ladylike? By the time they hit the shaded sidewalk in front of the store, they were both in gangly, loping gallops, and when they got inside they made fun of each other.
It was a regulation Florida convenience store. A man talked to invisible people at the newspaper boxes as a drug deal occurred by the car vacuum. There was a quiet aridness to the place, like a dusty tumbledown gas station with a squeaky metal sign swinging in the sagebrush outside Flagstaff, except with a row of bright beach rafts out front. No shortage of crap inside, either. Inflatable rings with horsey heads, umbrellas, sunscreen, novelty cans of Florida sunshine, suggestive postcards, beach towels with unicorns and Panama Jack and Jamaican flags, and a tall spinning rack of paperbacks next to the Great Wall of Beer. City opened the cooler and stuck her face in with eyes closed, and a cloud of frosty air fogged the glass. City grabbed a four-pack of passion fruit wine coolers. The clerk looked seventeen with fresh row crops of acne. A healthy self-image prompted him to shave his skull, grow a goatee and tattoo his neck with barbed wire. He installed what looked like tiny trailer hitches in his pierced eyebrows and smoked sub-generic cigarettes.
A police officer walked in and tipped his hat. City and Country tensed up and looked away. The cop bought a Wild West gunfighter magazine and caffeine tablets and tipped his hat again and left.
“How are you ladies today? Finding everything all right?” the clerk asked with a smile that revealed another trailer hitch in his tongue. The accent was Scottish.
City and Country put the wine coolers on the counter and grabbed two ice cream bars from the minicooler by the register. City smiled back at the clerk. His name tag said “Doom.”
“Hope you’re having a wonderful time on our island,” he continued. “We pride ourselves on the peacefulness out here.”
He took a horrific double drag on his cigarette and scratched his cheek rapidly like a mouse.
The pair left the store, and Doom watched through the glass as they bounded across the street. He looked down and kicked the ribs of the tied-up and gagged clerk stuffed under the counter.
“Where’s the goddamn safe?”
City and Country put the wine coolers on ice and took paperbacks out to the bar. They grabbed a table in the corner by the ocean. It was midafternoon, siesta time, and the bar was empty. Fine by them. Everywhere they ever went, men flocked. They ordered a fad Mexican beer because they wanted to play with the lime slices. They set the beers on the windowsill and leaned their chairs back and began reading. It was shift change on the beach—the last of the morning people packing it in, the afternoon people setting up.
When the wind was still, they heard the yells of high school kids throwing Frisbees in the surf, and when it wasn’t, they heard the bar’s license-plate wind chime. Then they heard this odd, sucking sound that they couldn’t quite place. It was near. They put the books down and looked around but couldn’t locate it. They stuck their heads out the open window and it grew louder. They looked straight down. Lenny Lippowicz sat on the ground with his back against the side of the bar, glancing around nervously and rapid-fire toking on a roach he had curled up in his hand.
“What are you doing?” asked City.
“Aaaaauuuuuuuu!!!” Lenny yelled.
The roach joint went flying and Lenny spun and ended up on his back in the sand.
“Don’t ever sneak up like that!” he said. “Oh man, now my head’s in a bad place, and I have to get my heart rate down…. Can I have a sip of your beer?”
Country handed him her bottle and he killed it.
“Hey!” she yelled.
“Sorry, I’ll pay you back,” he said, sifting through the sand for his roach and coming up with cigarette butts and a diamond ring.
“Damn! It’s lost!” he said. “Now I have to go back to my room for another. You wanna join me?”
“To smoke marijuana?” asked Country.
“That’s the plan, and I’m the man.”
She looked at City and shook her head. “We can’t!”
“Definitely not!” said City.
“I’ve never done it, and I’m never going to,” said Country.
“Me neither!” said City.
Five minutes later they were cross-legged on the floor in Lenny’s room, smoking a fattie.
“We shouldn’t be doing this,” said City.
“We’re so bad,” said Country.
“Don’t talk—hold the smoke,” said Lenny.
“What’s that music? It’s so great!” said City. “It’s the best music I’ve heard in my whole life.”
“I think it’s ABBA,” said Lenny.
Country tried to talk but each time she opened her mouth, she broke up laughing. “What I’m trying to say…”—helpless laughter—“…I don’t know why it’s so funny…”—more laughter—“but I’m starving!”
“Me too!” City giggled.
“I don’t have anything, just a moldy old box of Cheese Nips in my suitcase.”
“Give it to us!” Country shouted. They didn’t wait for an answer before tearing apart the luggage and attacking the orange box.
“Got anything else to eat?” City said with a dry mouthful of masticated crackers.
“You guys are so stoned!” said Lenny.
“No we’re not!” said City.
“You are too!”
“I don’t feel a th
ing,” said Country.
“First music, now food,” he said. “That’s two out of the Big Three.”
“What’s the third?” asked City.
Lenny was about to respond when Country slammed into him on the blind side like a crack-back block. She knocked him to the floor and ripped open his belt and zipper.
“City, quick! Help me hold him down!”
“I’m not resisting!” said Lenny.
City came up behind Lenny and knelt over his head, pinning his arms with her knees. Country pulled off his pants and then hers and mounted him. Fifteen minutes later, she and City switched places.
An hour later City and Country were back at their regular table in the bar. Four fresh empties lined the sill, and they drank Bloody Marys, chewing the celery stalks as if they were smoking cigars. Their eyes were red and glazed. The bartender arrived with a platter of Hurricane Andrew Nachos—tortilla chips fanned out in the circular swirling pattern of a cyclone and smothered with picante and melted cheese. They devoured it without the aid of utensils. Halfway through the nachos, with mouths full, they waved the waiter over and ordered smoked mullet. When that arrived, they asked for the dinner menu.
Lenny walked like a zombie into the bar.
The bartender recognized him and pointed over at the women. “Hey, check those two in the corner—they’re eating me out of the place…. Lenny?…Lenny?”
Lenny didn’t answer. He staggered through the bar and walked out the back door, where he sat down in the sand with a dazed smile until the sun went down.
The next morning, Lenny opened the door to go out for a paper and City and Country were already standing there. They each held out a five-dollar bill. Country said loudly, “Can we buy ten dollars of pot?”
“Shhhhhh! Jesus!” Lenny replied. He looked around quickly and yanked them into the room, then closed and bolted the door.
An hour later, City and Country were down the street at the International House of Belgian Waffles. They sat at the semicircular corner booth with a fire-rated capacity of eight. Covering the table were blueberry flapjacks, silver-dollar pancakes, sunny-side-up eggs with steak, French toast, scrambled eggs and hash browns, a side order of link sausages, a small bowl of whipped butter and pouring jars of maple and boysenberry syrup.
Back at the hotel, Lenny lay in his jockey shorts spread-eagle on the bed, unable to move. He was in love.
22
Major Larry “Montana” Fletcher of the 403rd Air Wing pulled up to the guard shack at Keesler Air Force Base in Biloxi, Mississippi. There was a long line of cars ahead and some type of commotion at the front. Montana stuck his head out the window to see what was going on.
One of the guards jumped back from the car at the head of the line and pulled his gun on the driver. The driver exited his vehicle with his hands up. He was decked out in nonregulation combat fatigues, flak jacket and helmet, a press pass clipped to his breast pocket. Another guard went to the passenger side of the car and removed a small cage holding a dog.
Montana laughed. He got out of the car and walked to the guard shack. He checked the name on the press pass and turned to the guard. “It’s okay, fellas. He’s with me.” The guards saluted.
“Mr. Crease, it’s a pleasure,” said Montana, extending his hand. “I’ve been expecting you. I’m a big fan. Why don’t you pull your car up to that building and I’ll be right with you.”
A half hour later, Montana and Crease shouted back and forth over the propeller noise as they walked across the tarmac to the mobile staircase waiting at their plane.
It was a magnificent silver Lockheed-Martin WC-130 Hercules. Montana’s particular plane was nicknamed The Rapacious Reno.
“I named it after Janet Reno,” Montana shouted as loud as he could. “She’s a native of Miami, the home of the National Hurricane Center.”
Crease stopped and was shaken at the sight of the World War II-style nose art on The Rapacious Reno. Instead of a cheesecake pose, Reno had flying tiger jaws with pointy teeth dripping blood, and Crease recognized the reading glasses and smart haircut of the seventy-eighth attorney general of the United States. Behind the flying tiger head was a mural depicting Reno’s life—courtroom scenes, childhood memories of south Florida.
“I painted it myself,” shouted Montana. “I’m a big admirer of hers—a classic Florida pioneer. She gets a lot of criticism and bum raps from people who don’t know anything about her.”
“What’s she doing in this part of the mural?” asked Crease.
“Building a log cabin.”
“Did she ever build a log cabin?”
“I dunno,” Montana said, and ran up the staircase.
The planes of the 53rd Weather Reconnaissance Squadron had an additional staff position. It was the instrument operator—technically known as the dropsonde operator—and on The Rapacious Reno that job fell to William “The Truth” Honeycutt. The dropsonde is a small metal cylinder sixteen inches long and three inches wide containing a microprocessor, a radio transmitter and a small drogue parachute. The dropsonde operator’s primary responsibility is to release the electronic tube into the eye of the hurricane to measure temperature, humidity and pressure. Through triangulated telemetry with ground stations, the device also registers wind speed and direction. Under intense pressure from the Air Force public relations office, the 53rd Squadron reluctantly conferred the position of “honorary dropsonde operator” to FCN correspondent Blaine Crease.
Honeycutt was supposed to coach and supervise Crease. Instead, Crease made Honeycutt carry his TV camera and follow him around the plane to film him performing important-looking tasks. Crease was beside himself with joy; his only regret was that he had to carry Toto everywhere in a kangaroo-style nylon pouch on his stomach. Crease sat in the copilot’s seat and at the navigator’s table, the reconnaissance post and the weather console. Honeycutt had to keep filming and refilming Crease because crew members constantly leaped into the picture to grab Crease’s arms before he threw levers and switches he knew nothing about.
“He’s gonna make us crash! We’re all gonna die!” screamed Milton “Bananas” Foster.
“Get that limp-dick the fuck out of here!” yelled Lee “Southpaw” Barnes.
Pepe Miguelito sat in the corner weeping as he listened to “Breaking Up Is Hard to Do” on his personal radio.
“Now, now. Everyone settle down. Everything will be all right,” Montana said in a steady, calming voice. “Honeycutt…Honeycutt?…”
Honeycutt stopped shadowboxing in the back of the cockpit. “What is it, sir?”
“Honeycutt, why don’t you take Mr. Crease back in the hold and teach him about the dropsonde?”
“Yes, sir,” said Honeycutt.
At zero nine hundred hours Zulu, the Hercules entered the Tropic of Cancer. At nine hundred thirty, the crew crossed the twenty-second parallel three hundred miles west of Havana. The plane was buffeted as the WC-130 entered the edge of the cyclonic system. More than three weeks after forming near the Cape Verde Islands, the hurricane was tracking across the Caribbean Sea, threatening the Gulf of Mexico.
“We’re all gonna die!” yelled Foster.
Marilyn Sebastian grabbed him by the collar and shook him violently. “Get a grip on yourself! Be a man!” She slapped him. She was about to kiss him when Honeycutt grabbed her. “This is for Baton Rouge,” he said and took her in his strong arms and their mouths met. Montana coolly banked left, into the clockwise rotation of the hurricane, to minimize the crosswinds. He edged his way back right, flying closer and closer to the eye of the storm.
“Look!” said Baxter, pointing out of the cockpit. There was a sudden break in the clouds. “Check that eye wall. What incredible stadium effect. This one has to be at least a three on the Saffir-Simpson Scale.”
“It’s a four,” said Montana. “Hold on. I’m going to take it through and come back for another pass. The plane punched into the eye wall on the other side.
Back in the cavernous car
go hold, Crease listened to the entire lecture Honeycutt gave about the dropsonde and paid absolutely no attention.
“Yeah, yeah, okay, okay,” Crease said impatiently. “So where is the little tube? Where’s the door I throw it out?”
“I just told you,” said Honeycutt. “It’s dropped by hydraulics from an automatic external hatch. You never see the thing. All you do is press a button.”
“That’s not good television,” said Crease. “You mean there’s no bomb bay that opens up dramatically above the terrible eye of the hurricane?”
“Nope.”
“Can you at least open some kind of window so my hair will blow?”
“What?”
“Never mind. Listen, do you have any kind of door or something that opens up in the floor here?”
“We have a small, auxiliary instrumentation hatch…”
“Great! That’s wonderful! Let’s call it the bomb bay,” said Crease.
“But it’s not—”
“I know television!” said Crease. “Now say it!”
“It’s the bomb bay,” Honeycutt said sarcastically.
“Good! Now here’s what you’re gonna do. You’re going to go get the little drop-thingie and open the bomb bay, and then you’re going to film me as I bravely walk to the opening—wind swirling up from the horrible storm—and release the doodad through the hole in the floor. What d’ya say?”
“No way.”
Crease marched up to the cockpit and spoke urgently with Montana, who called back to Honeycutt over the intercom headsets. He explained that while Crease’s request might seem unorthodox, in the larger scheme of things it was what headquarters wanted to improve the image of the air base. And it kept Crease out of his cockpit.
Honeycutt went back into the bowels of the plane, opened a panel and retrieved the dropsonde. The thunder of the engines and the storm roared all around. He handed the silver baton to Crease.
Honeycutt got down on the deck and opened the instrumentation hatch, and both men were chilled by the rush of air.
“Now remember,” Honeycutt shouted above the wind, “don’t release the dropsonde until I tell you we’re over the eye.”