Tim Dorsey Collection #1

by Dorsey, Tim

  “Don’t worry about me,” Crease shouted back. “You just make sure you get all this on tape!”

  Honeycutt hoisted the video camera onto his shoulder and prompted Crease: “Readyyyyyyy, readyyyyyyy…three, two, one…now!”

  Crease tossed the dropsonde underhand toward the open hatch. Flying up in the air, end over end, the twirling instrument looked like a nice shiny stick, and Toto leaped out of his pouch, took two steps and jumped. Toto caught the dropsonde in his mouth at the top of the baton’s arc.

  Crease’s eyes bulged as Toto and the dropsonde hung suspended in the air for a split second, and then both fell through the hatch and disappeared into the hurricane.

  “Ahhhhhhhhh!” Crease yelled in terror. He spun and lunged for the video camera on Honeycutt’s shoulder.

  “What are you doing?!” said Honeycutt.

  Crease didn’t answer; he pressed the eject button, grabbed the tape and gave it a quick push-throw toward the open “bomb bay” doors like a two-handed shot put. He pulled his hands back fast as if it had been a hot potato.

  “Good. Nobody ever needs to see that footage.”

  He looked back at his cameraman. “I’ll do my best to get you off the hook, Honeycutt, but it’s going to be difficult explaining how you could have let such a brainless thing happen.”

  Honeycutt knocked him cold.

  23

  C. C. Flag pulled up to Hammerhead Ranch in a snow-white Hummer. He had full, pleated pants, a loose Australian bush shirt and a “USA” America’s Cup baseball cap.

  An hour later there was a curt rap on the door of Flag’s motel room.

  “Coming,” said Flag.

  But Zargoza didn’t wait and opened the door with his own key.

  Flag now wore a bloused white-cotton Banana Republic shirt, beige slacks and amber shooter’s glasses. He had a crystal bourbon decanter in his hand and a svelte Asian-American call girl on his lap. Flag pushed the hooker up off his knees and gave her a light spank. “Got some business, baby. Why don’t you wait at the bar? I’ll be done soon and then me love you long time.”

  “Whatever,” she said in an accent more American than Flag’s. She lit a Tiparillo and strolled sensually out of the room, leaving Zargoza and Flag in her exhaust cloud of arrogance and contempt that made both of them hate her guts and want to marry her.

  “Bourbon straight with ice-water chase?” Flag asked as he poured.

  “We’ve got problems,” said Zargoza. “You gotta get back out to the nursing home.”

  “But I went yesterday.”

  “You have to go again,” said Zargoza. “I just heard a TV crew is starting an investigative series.”

  “I thought they only did sex scandals,” said Flag. “Since when are they reporters?”

  “I know, I know. You can’t count on anything these days,” said Zargoza. “I got enough on my plate with the stolen beepers and cocaine…”

  Flag stuck his fingers in his ears. “I didn’t hear anything. I’m a respectable businessman.”

  “Shut the fuck up!” said Zargoza. “You’re worse than any of us. You’re a slimy salamander with gonorrhea, a pustulating sea slug, a mucous-tracking gastropod in a construction site Porta-Johnny! You’re a—”

  “I get the picture,” said Flag. “What do you want from me?”

  “Glue a smile on your face and go meet the TV crew. Put a sympathetic face on this thing. America trusts you, God help ’em.”

  “I speak to their wants and dreams….”

  “Bullshit!” said Zargoza. “They’re zoned out! A little old lady is blown to bits and all anyone can think about is this TV dog that wears funny clothes.”

  “Aren’t you connected to the people who killed the old lady?” asked Flag.

  “That’s not the point,” said Zargoza. “I’m talking about the big picture here. This is a terrible comment on our society.”

  An old but reliable Ford Fairlane chugged across the bridge to the barrier islands of Tampa Bay, hot on the trail.

  Paul, the Passive-Aggressive Private Eye, wished it was the forties. He carried everything he needed in a fifty-year-old dark-checkered suitcase. When he checked into a motel, he pretended he was Philip Marlowe getting a room above a greasy spoon where the night manager was a junkie who looked like William Burroughs, and there was a harsh red neon sign flashing through his window all night. He’d shave with a porcelain cup and brush, pack his piece and go down to the greasy spoon for a short-order slice of meat loaf and a cup of joe and imagine he was in an Edward Hopper painting.

  It didn’t dispel the illusion a bit that Paul was staying at the Toot-Toot Tugboat Inn on St. Pete Beach and dining at The Happy Clam. Paul took a mug shot of Art Tweed with him everywhere and showed it to everyone.

  While good with inanimate objects, Paul was inept and annoying when questioning people about Art. His relentless passive-aggressive inquisition merely bugged some, while others called the police and alerted the media.

  On his third day in Tampa Bay, Paul was showing the mug shot to a woman who rented cabanas on the beach. She shook her head no. Two squad cars arrived and the cops asked Paul what he was doing.

  Paul told them the whole story until the cops said he was getting on their nerves and they left. As the cruisers pulled away, a silver van that had been waiting on the side of the parking lot pulled up. It had sprigs of antennas and a rotating dish. On the side, in giant letters: “Florida Cable News.” Underneath was a smiling portrait and a script banner: “Featuring Blaine Crease.”

  The side panel of the van slid open and Crease climbed out wearing Desert Storm camouflage. He walked purposefully to Paul.

  “I’ve been doing some checking up on you,” said Crease. “You’re a private investigator. Your name’s Paul. My sources tell me you’ve been showing a photograph all over the beach—you’re tracking some kind of desperado.”

  Crease grabbed Paul’s hand and shook it hard, then looked away. “The cops ain’t giving me shit. But I figured it out. It’s because they don’t have shit.”

  “There’s nothing for them to have,” said Paul.

  Crease held up a hand for Paul to stop. He leaned closer and whispered, “Between you and me, you’re the man! I can tell by the way you hold yourself. You’re running circles around the cops. You probably have the whole thing figured out already—just tying up loose ends now. I heard a rumor it’s a hit man. That true?”

  “That’s the stupidest thing—”

  “Don’t try to be modest,” interrupted Crease. “You’ve got a style. Reminds me of…” Crease tapped his head like he was on the edge of recollection. Then he opened his eyes wide. “Philip Marlowe! That’s it! You’ve got this whole Robert Mitchum quality goin’ on.”

  Paul blushed and looked at the ground.

  “So, tell me, who are you tracking? Who’s the bad guy?” Crease said, rubbing his palms together. “Come on. I’m dying to know.”

  “You’ve got it wrong. I’m not after a bad guy,” said Paul.

  “Great! Love it! An equivocal story—the amoral universe!” said Crease. He made two Ls with the thumb and forefinger of each hand and put them together in a square to frame an imaginary picture in the air. “The mass murderer with a heart of gold! Finally, a villain we can root for in the new millennium!”

  “No, that’s not what I mean—”

  “Paul, it’s me! Blaine!” Crease thumped his palm over his heart.

  “Really,” said Paul. “I don’t know where you’re getting this stuff.”

  Paul told him all about Art Tweed and the mixup at the hospital and being hired to track Art down and give him the good news. “Art Tweed is no hit man.”

  “Right. I gotcha,” said Crease, and he gave Paul a knowing wink.

  A black Jeep Eagle raced through the unsettled countryside east of Tampa. The Jeep was plastered with Boris and Blitz-99 bumper stickers, and it sailed through a red light at the Four Corner intersection of State Road 674 in the phosphate mi
ning depot of Fort Lonesome. The radio was on full blast.

  “So remember: Vote yes on Proposition 213!…because they have weird accents!”

  “Now that guy is focused!” said the Jeep’s driver. “He’s the only one with the guts to stand up for people like us!”

  “Amen!” the two passengers said in unison.

  The driver had shoulder-length blond hair in dreadlocks, the front passenger’s head was shaved, and the guy in back hanging on the rollbar wore an F Troop cavalry hat with a plastic arrow through it. The three high school students dressed in punk rags from the Salvation Army and talked about being oppressed by minorities, but in fact they all lived in two-hundred-thousand-dollar houses in the sleepy bedroom suburb of Brandon.

  After Boris’s show ended, the driver tuned to a salsa dance station, which was advertising the Latin Heritage Festival that weekend in Ybor City.

  “I can’t believe it!” the driver exclaimed. “They’re holding a party for these people when they should be tossing ’em back over the border!”

  “And it’s the same night as our Proposition 213 rally!” said the one on the rollbar. “What an insult!”

  “Tell you what we should do,” said the driver. “Go listen to Boris at the rally, get pumped, and then drive over to Ybor and crack some heads.”

  “Amen!” they said again, and they raised their fists together in a Pearl Jam pose.

  The three teens had yet to come up with an official name for their little think tank, but their classmates already had: the Posse Comatose.

  24

  Behind Hammerhead Ranch, just beyond the line of stuffed sharks, was the bar. It predated the motel. Originally built as a small beach house during the Florida land boom of the mid-twenties, it was gutted and renovated as a tavern during the forties. The building was wooden and sturdy, and over the years many of the beams had petrified and nails couldn’t be driven into them anymore. The cracker architecture stayed intact—floor raised on stilts and a vaulted pyramid ceiling open to the joists for ventilation. It smelled salty and looked like a shipwreck. The floor was uneven with a thousand cigarette burns and stains upon splotches on top of splatters. Small blue neon letters went up in 1963 over the entrance facing the Gulf. “The Florida Room.”

  It hadn’t resisted change as much as change had rejected it. No crab pot buoys made into lamps or thick rope glued around the edges of the tables. The Bahama shutters were double-thick and held up with chains. There was no AC. It stayed hot so that when there was a breeze, it reminded people that they liked it.

  The Florida Room would begin filling up in the next hour. But for now, Lenny and Serge had it to themselves. Serge took wide-angle photos from each of the bar’s four corners. Two sets—one flash, one natural light. The bartender wiped glasses and kept an eye on them. Serge and Lenny went back to the bar. It was quiet except for the squeaking of the bartender’s wash rag and the tumbling daiquiri machine. Serge had an olive burlap shoulder bag in which he stowed camera gear, notebooks and any souvenirs that got caught in his dragnet: matchbooks, postcards, keychains, ticket stubs, brochures, swizzle sticks. He decided that now was a good time to spread the contents on the bar, reorganize and repack.

  Lenny ordered a draft, Serge another mineral water.

  “You ever been to the John Ringling Museum down in Sarasota?” Serge asked the bartender.

  “Heard of it,” he said, and continued wiping glasses.

  “It’s unbelievable,” said Serge, turning to Lenny. “There’s all the circus stuff you’d expect from his days with Barnum and Bailey. But there’s also this incredible artwork, like he was trying to overcompensate for the bearded ladies and the fat guy they had to bury in a piano.”

  “I think you have the fat guy mixed up with the Guinness book,” said Lenny.

  “You sure?” asked Serge, looking up at a ceiling fan to concentrate. “Maybe I’m thinking of the guy born with his face upside down.”

  The bartender stopped wiping, eyed them a moment, then resumed. He was forty-eight and a Vitalis man. He had a toothpick in his mouth and all the answers.

  “They also have the Clown College down there,” said Serge. “Heard of that?”

  The bartender nodded, kept wiping.

  “It’s a historic institution,” Serge told Lenny. “The circus needed a school to keep their talent pool stocked, and since the Ringling Brothers crew wintered there, it was the natural place. The college takes it very seriously, just like a regular campus. Dorms, library, cramming all night, finals. It’s still there, even though they almost closed it down after some trouble back in the sixties.”

  “What happened?” asked Lenny.

  “Antiwar demonstration. The National Guard came in with Plexiglas shields. Horrible scene. Clowns running everywhere through clouds of tear gas; cops beating them with batons, the clowns kicking back with big, floppy shoes. At the administration building the guardsmen set up a barricade, and thirty students rammed it in a tiny car…. Got a lot of bad press. Few days later there was a news conference showing unity for the antiwar movement—a long conference table in front of the cameras: a couple of Black Panthers, some SDS, the Weathermen, Leonard Bernstein, three clowns…”

  The bartender stopped wiping and studied Serge again.

  City and Country finished a rejuvenating swim in the Gulf and bounced into the bar full of spunk. At high tide the waves rolled twenty yards from the back door, even closer after storm erosion. A heat wave still hadn’t broken, and the water was filled with swimmers in numbers unusual for December.

  The two women bellied up to the bar exuding sexual energy. The bartender immediately attached to his glass wiping the importance of a decathlete rosining up his vaulting pole. The women pointed at the daiquiri mixer. “We want two of those,” City said in her British accent. The bartender poured strawberry slush with aplomb.

  The pair took seats next to Lenny and smiled.

  Lenny smiled back.

  “What’s that about?” asked Serge.

  “I’m in love.”

  Serge asked the bartender to turn on the TV. Business began to pick up.

  A Japanese man walked in with a surfboard. Serge raised his water in toast: “Tora! Tora! Tora!”

  The man gave Serge a thumbs-up and smiled. “Yankee go home, shit-eater!” He took the stool next to Serge, and Serge patted him on the back and bought him a beer.

  “I see you’ve been teaching him,” said Lenny.

  “Someone has to build the bridge,” said Serge.

  A Haitian man ran up to the bartender and talked fast in French, gesturing desperately. Captain Bradley Xeno came in seconds later. “There you are!” He threw the bartender a ten, grabbed the Haitian by the collar and dragged him off.

  At a nearby table, a short, squat man was trying to sell letters of transit to a vacationing couple. “Signed by de Gaulle. Cannot be rescinded.”

  Serge wiped perspiration and gazed out the window and saw an armored van backed up to room five. Two men in dark suits and dark sunglasses jumped out the front of the vehicle with riot guns. Two more jumped out the back. The door of room five flew open and four more armed men in suits rushed a Mafia underboss with a beach towel over his head into the back of the vehicle, and it sped off for the next stop in the witness protection program.

  As the van pulled out, a white limo pulled in. On the door were the five multicolored interlocking rings of the modern Olympics. Tampa Bay had placed a bid for the 2012 Summer Olympic games, and, although the Olympic Committee had no intention of awarding the games to Tampa Bay, they had an obligation out of fairness to show up and examine for themselves the level of local graft. Seven men of assorted ancestry got out of the limo and walked toward The Florida Room, followed by Sherpas carrying steamer trunks plastered with travel stickers. “I love Euro-Disney,” “I climbed the Matterhorn,” “Hiroshima is for Lovers!”

  The International Olympic Committee wandered around the bar with confident smiles and expectant eyes,
looking everyone in the face, wondering which stranger was the preordained one who would whisk them off to unimaginable wealth and human titillations.

  “Hey, pencil-dicks! Down in front!”

  The Olympic Committee noticed they were blocking the wide-screen TV, which was on Florida Cable News. Mug shots of City and Country were on the screen, but by the time the Olympic Committee got out of the way, FCN was into the Celebrity Rehab Spotlight portion of the broadcast.

  When Jethro Maddox and Art Tweed first arrived in Tampa Bay, they got gas and Sweet Tarts at a Rapid Response convenience store. Art went inside to ask around the Proposition 213 rally. The clerk gestured to the end of the counter—a stack of bumper stickers and pamphlets with Boris’s smiling face and an old car horn. On the back of the pamphlet was a map with directions to Beverly Shores. Art folded one and stuck it in his back pocket.

  “You have been a noble and proud travel companion,” Jethro said back at the gas pumps, “but we shall sadly depart, for I must once again rejoin my own kind.”

  “What?”

  “I need to drop you ’cause I gotta meet the Look-Alikes for our gig…. Anyplace you want me to take you?”

  Art looked up and saw a billboard and pointed. “Take me there.”

  Three miles down the road, they shook hands again and Jethro dropped Art at Crazy Charlie’s Gun Store. (“Our assault rifle prices are so low because we’re absolutely insane!”) Art went inside and quickly picked out a Colt Python .357, nickel, six-inch barrel.

  “That’s a beaut!” said the clerk, running Art’s credit card. “You can pick it up Thursday.”

  Art looked bewildered.

  “It’s the law. Three-day cooling-off period.”

  Art leaned forward. “No, no, no! I don’t want to cool off! Cooling off is bad! It’ll ruin everything!”

  “You’re preachin’ to the choir,” said the clerk. “Tell it to our commie government.”

  “Isn’t there anything you can do?”

  “Well, if I was a private collector selling one of my own guns—instead of a licensed dealer—there’d be no waiting period.”