Tim Dorsey Collection #1

by Dorsey, Tim

  People let out sighs. They gave Serge eye contact, nodding in agreement as he spoke—Serge reining in their hysteria, getting the runaway stagecoach back under control.

  Zargoza leaned against the cash register, arms crossed, still holding the .44 in one hand. He thought: This guy’s good.

  A small boy raised his hand.

  Serge pointed to him. “We have a question in back?”

  “What’s the difference between a hurricane and a typhoon?”

  “I’m glad you asked that, son,” said Serge. “You see, both hurricanes and typhoons are cyclonic storms. Hurricanes occur in the Atlantic Ocean, and typhoons in the western Pacific region, often in the South China Sea. Did you know that cyclonic storms turn counterclockwise in the northern hemisphere but clockwise in the southern?”

  “Wow!” said the boy. “No, I didn’t.”

  “Want to see something neat?” said Serge.

  “Sure do!”

  He followed Serge into the bathroom. Serge raised the lid of the toilet and flushed.

  “See?” he said. “It flushes counterclockwise, just like a hurricane. That’s because we’re in the northern hemisphere. You go down to Argentina or Chile, and all the toilets flush clockwise.”

  “Wow!” said the boy.

  They walked back into the main bar area. Serge looked over at the goons and the Diaz Boys, and he noticed Zargoza was having a rough time keeping a lid on them.

  “Will you listen to the man!” Zargoza pleaded. “He was right about this building, wasn’t he? It’s holding up like a missile silo! Not a creak.”

  He caught Serge in the side of his vision. “Serge! Hey, come here! You talk to ’em. You’re good with that sort of thing. Tell ’em there’s nothing to worry about.”

  “He’s right,” said Serge. “Everyone’s going to be okay. This your first hurricane party?”

  The Diaz Boys and the goons nodded.

  “Good, good,” said Serge. “Nothing to it. I was telling Lenny about my first hurricane party back in ’65. That was Betsy, killed seventy-four. Donna, back in ’60, killed one forty-eight, but I wasn’t born yet. Then there was Okeechobee in ’28, killed eighteen hundred out at the lake, but the big one was Galveston in 1900, six thousand perished.”

  The men turned a whiter shade of pale.

  “Oh, I’m sorry,” Serge said with an awkward laugh. “Getting off-track. Like I was saying, you want to keep thinking good thoughts. My first hurricane party was a blast. We were over on the east coast in Riviera Beach, just above West Palm. When she started to blow, we cut the power in the house so there wouldn’t be a fire. We lit candles and played Monopoly in the hallway. We had a big metal drum of Charles Chips and we listened to our little transistor radio for the mounting death toll down in Fort Lauderdale and Miami…”

  The goons went green.

  “Oops, sorry again,” he said. “How about a movie? The VCR still works ’cuz of the generator and I just happened to bring some great Florida flicks.”

  He held up a gym bag full of videocassettes.

  Serge got the VCR going and popped in a tape. “The important thing now is to keep your minds occupied, not to think about your situation.”

  Serge hit play and they began watching Key Largo, the story of a group of criminals riding out a hurricane in a Florida motel.

  Everyone in the bar fell quiet as the wind roared around The Florida Room.

  Edward G. Robinson was getting nervous on the screen, asking Lionel Barrymore about the hurricane.

  “Hey, old man, how bad can it get?”

  “Well, worst storm we ever had was back in ’35,” said Barrymore. “Wind whipped up a big wave and sent it busting right over Matecumbe Key. Eight hundred washed out to sea.”

  Zargoza looked worried. He turned to Serge. “They’re kidding about that hurricane, aren’t they? I mean, that’s just Hollywood movie fiction, right?”

  “Oh, no,” said Serge. “It was the real thing—the only force-five hurricane ever to hit the state.”

  Serge let it sink in. The building was solid, but the wind hummed all around, and now that they were in an elevated structure, it blew under them too. The shutters held fast, but when the wind was at the right pitch, they resonated with a loud rat-a-tat.

  Zargoza stared at Serge with eyes that had stopped blinking.

  “They sent a train down from the mainland to evacuate those in the path,” said Serge. “But it got a late start, and the engineer decided in Miami to turn the train around. He said, ‘I ain’t goin’ down there and loading up a bunch of people and then back out of a force-five hurricane. When I’m leaving, I’m gonna be balls-out, facing forward.’ So he puts it in reverse and heads on down, and the train gets to Snake Creek, which divides Plantation Key from Windley Key, where they now have that Tropical Isle place. You’ve been there, haven’t you? It’s like if Disney had a spring break exhibit. But before it was like the Florida I remember as a kid.” The lack of medication floated Serge in a sea of memories. “…just-mowed lawns on a Saturday afternoon, splitting coconuts open on the sidewalk, catching stingrays…”

  “What about the hurricane?” snapped Zargoza.

  “Oh, yeah. So the train picks up a bunch of people at Snake Creek. The front edge of the storm is already over them, blowing like mad, and the barometer is something insane like twenty-six inches. It’s solid monsoon conditions, but the engineer presses on. There are more helpless people up ahead in the Matecumbe Keys. The hurricane thickens when they get to the last stop, and the engineer loads up the rest of the stranded residents. Then he stokes his engines and fires them full speed, back to Miami.

  “They only get a few miles when the meat of the unnamed hurricane slams the islands. The Keys aren’t any more than six or eight feet at their highest elevation, and the railroad trestles aren’t any higher. They were wide open….”

  Serge took another sip of water. He studied Zargoza; the hook was set.

  “As the train races out of the Keys, the passengers are petrified. The train seems big and heavy and safe, but outside the wind is building to two hundred miles an hour. Nobody knows what the passengers might have seen—maybe a thirty-foot wall of water coming at them at fifty miles per hour. Or maybe they had no warning at all—the next thing they knew, the train was slapped off the tracks like a toy….”

  Zargoza’s mouth had gone dry from hanging open.

  “They couldn’t dig graves fast enough so they set fire to big mounds of bodies back at Snake Creek. The sky was black with the smoke. The islands were flat, and every tree was uprooted or snapped. There was one family who survived because the hurricane knocked their whole house off the foundation in one piece and it surfed the storm surge out into Florida Bay.”

  “…And for months afterward corpses were found in the mangrove swamp,” said Barrymore.

  The Diaz Boys began talking excitedly among themselves.

  Serge pointed at the TV. “Hey, you’re missing the movie.”

  31

  Jethro Maddox awoke in his parachute harness in the middle of a hurricane, twisting and swinging wildly from the tallest palm tree behind Hammerhead Ranch. Every third or fourth swing, he hit the tree trunk. “Owww! Galanos!” He heard a loud, ripping sound and looked up.

  “Oh, Mr. Temple, you’re hopelessly old-fashioned,” said Bogart. “Your ideas date back years. You still live in the time when America thought it could get along without the Johnny Roccos. Welcome back, Rocco, it was all a mistake….”

  The Diaz Boys listened intently to the movie, and Zargoza began thinking about the briefcase. It wasn’t safe in the storm—he had to move it. No, that was more risky. No, move it. Don’t. Move it. Don’t. It was driving him insane. He stood and grabbed the back of a chair for support until he calmed down. Then he started walking slowly around the bar in a state of utter paranoia.

  “Yeah, that’s me, sure! I was all those things—and more!” said Edward G. “When Rocco talked, people shut up and listened.
What Rocco said went. Nobody was as big as Rocco!”

  Serge picked up Zargoza’s vibe. Rope-a-dope was working. Serge’s gut told him it was time to make his move. Serge stuck his pistol inside his belt and covered it with his untucked tropical shirt. He turned the sound down on Key Largo and stuck the TV remote in his back pocket, and he began a wide circle around the bar, tracking Zargoza.

  Zargoza picked up Serge in his peripheral vision. So that’s it! He’s the Judas! Zargoza patted his lower stomach, making sure his Colt was secure. He began counter-circling Serge.

  Serge and Zargoza continued their pas de deux until each had circumnavigated the inside of the bar three times.

  “All right!” shouted Zargoza. “Fuck this noise!”

  He pulled the Colt and leveled it at Serge, who simultaneously went for his own piece. Except that Serge had become distracted by a historic photo of Tennessee Williams on the wall, and Zargoza beat him to the draw.

  “Drop it! Now!” Zargoza shouted. Everyone flattened on the floor.

  Serge froze in front of Tennessee’s picture. Just as he realized Zargoza had gotten the jump on him, other voices began yelling.

  “You drop it, Fiddlebottom!” It was the Diaz Boys, aiming TEC-9 submachine guns.

  Zargoza dropped his weapon. “I asked you not to call me that,” he said demurely.

  “Where’s the five million?” shouted Tommy Diaz, standing with his back to the big-screen TV. “We know you’ve been holding out on us!”

  “What five million?” said Zargoza.

  “Don’t play simple!”

  On the other side of the room, Serge furtively slid the TV remote out of his back pocket. He knew Key Largo by heart. At the right moment, he pressed the volume button.

  “Drop it or I’ll blast ya!” yelled Edward G. Robinson.

  The Diaz Boys bolted upright. They dropped their guns.

  “Now kick ’em away,” said Robinson.

  They did, and the guns skittered across the wooden floor.

  Almost as soon as they did: “Freeze!”

  Serge turned and saw Zargoza had gotten his gun back and was pointing it at him.

  “But I just helped you!” said Serge.

  “Helping yourself to my money is more like it!” said Zargoza.

  “What are you talking about?” said Serge.

  “You know damn well…” By the end of the sentence, Zargoza was talking to himself and pacing, waving the gun distractedly, and Serge and the Diaz Boys ducked each time he did.

  Tommy Diaz heard more dialogue behind him and he turned his head and peeked. “Hey! That was just the TV set! Foul! We get our guns back!”

  Zargoza squeezed off a shot into the roof and mocked Tommy. “Foul! We get our guns back! Where’d you learn to be a hood? Everything’s inbounds!”

  “That big gun in your hand makes you look grown up—you think!” said Barrymore. “I’ll bet you spend hours posing in front of a mirror.”

  “Turn down that fucking TV,” Zargoza shouted over his shoulder, and Juan Diaz leaned and held down the volume button on the TV console until all the yellow bars marched to the left of the screen.

  When Zargoza turned back around, he found Serge chatting socially with Art Tweed.

  “Hey! This is a no-talking zone! Knock it off and move over there!” Zargoza motioned to Serge with the gun. “I thought we were pals, but you double-crossed me! You are so dead!”

  “No, you’re dead!” said Serge, pointing a finger at Zargoza.

  “No, you are!”

  “You are!”

  “No, you are!”

  The other motel guests glanced at each other in terror, Serge and Zargoza still yelling in the background—“You are!” “No, you are!”—Here we go, a bloodbath.

  “No, you are!” said Zargoza.

  “Behind you!” said Serge.

  “You already used that trick! It’s the oldest in the book!”

  Serge reached behind his back and pressed the volume button on the remote.

  “Drop the gun now!”

  Zargoza turned around and saw Humphrey Bogart on TV. He yelled at Juan Diaz again. “Turn that fucking thing down!”

  Juan marched the little yellow bars across the TV, and just as he was done, Serge pressed the remote and marched the yellow volume bars back the other way.

  “What do I care about Johnny Rocco, whether he lives or dies?” said Bogart. “I only care about me—me and mine. I fight nobody’s battles but my own.”

  “I said, turn that goddamn thing down!”

  Juan turned it down, and Serge turned it back up again.

  “Please, God, make a big wave, send it crashing down on us. Destroy us all if need be, but punish him!” said Barrymore.

  “Jesus Christ!” yelled Zargoza. “I’m the one with the gun. That counts for something!”

  “No it doesn’t,” said Serge.

  “WILL YOU SHUT UP!”

  “Uh…no.”

  A new voice: “Drop it!”

  Everyone turned.

  It was Aristotle “Art” Tweed, trying to look mean. He had a gun and he wasn’t afraid to die.

  Zargoza dropped his pistol. “Where’d you get the piece?” he asked Art.

  “It’s the gun Serge tossed away. There, under that table”—Art pointed to a spot a few feet to his right. “Serge whispered for me to get ready. He was going to make you look at the TV, and when you did, I was to grab the pistol.”

  Zargoza snapped his fingers and winced. “Fell for the oldest trick in the book.”

  Jethro Maddox, swinging in his parachute harness, was half stupid from repeatedly slamming into the trunk of the palm tree. He heard a ripping sound again and looked up. “Uh-oh.”

  “I finally decided what I wanted to do with my life before I committed suicide,” said Art Tweed. “I was trying to figure out who was the worst human being I could kill and make the world a better place. But that DJ got himself burnt up before I could get to him. Guess who that leaves?”

  Art stretched out his arm and aimed the gun at Zargoza. “Get ready to meet your maker, shithead!”

  “Ahem? Excuse me?” Another voice. Everyone turned.

  It was the short, thin man in a charcoal suit and black fedora who had checked into the motel two days ago. He had a brown leather briefcase in one hand and a piece of paper and a fountain pen from the forties in the other. He took a few steps into the middle of the room.

  “Mr. Tweed,” said Paul, the Passive-Aggressive Private Eye. “I’ve been looking all over for you.” Paul looked down at Art’s gun and then at Zargoza. “I thought I’d better say something before it’s too late. I’m a private investigator representing Montgomery Memorial Hospital up in Alabama, and we seem to have had a little problem.” He forced a chuckle. “It’s really quite embarrassing. You see, the daughter of one of our employees, she sort of played a little prank. The bottom line, Mr. Tweed, is that you’re not going to die. Pretty good news, wouldn’t you say? Now, if you’ll just sign this disclaimer releasing the hospital of all responsibility and liability…”

  There was a terrible crashing sound as Jethro Maddox smashed through one of the Bahamian shutters, landing on top of Art Tweed. “Galanos!”

  “That settles that,” said Zargoza. He quickly picked up his pistol off the floor and aimed it at Serge and the others. He ordered two goons to push one of the cabinets from the kitchen in front of the broken shutter. The generator failed for a second and the lights dimmed. Zargoza jumped. “What was that?”

  “You don’t like it, do you, Rocco? The storm?” said Bogart. “Show it your gun, why don’t you? If it doesn’t stop, shoot it.”

  “Will you turn that fucking movie off!” said Zargoza. “My nerves are shot as it is!”

  Zargoza reached over and swiped the remote control from Serge. “Gimme that thing!”

  As he did, he heard a new voice from behind.

  “Drop it!”

  Zargoza rolled his eyes at the ceiling. “
Now what?!”

  It was C. C. Flag, aiming a pistol. He grabbed a small boy from the group of innocent visitors clustered by the bar and used him for a human shield.

  “I’m gonna walk outta here real slow, and nobody’s gonna move a muscle or the kid gets it,” said Flag. He turned to Zargoza. “I know you’ve been planning to use me as the fall guy. I can’t go to jail!”

  “You’re talking crazy!” said Zargoza. “It’s the storm. It’s making you crack.”

  “Fuck everyone!” said Flag as he backed out of the room, pressing the gun harder up under the boy’s chin.

  “Coward!” shouted Zargoza.

  “Dung-weasel!” shouted Serge.

  “You won’t get away with it, Rocco!”

  C. C. opened the door. The hurricane’s eye was just making landfall and the winds calmed. He backed out the door and across the beach behind Hammerhead Ranch and the neighboring Calusa Pointe condominiums.

  Everyone put aside their differences and ran to the door, worried about the boy. C. C. walked backward, a hundred yards away, with the gun still to the boy’s head.

  Suddenly, a desperate scream erupted from C. C., and he dropped the child. He stumbled in a circle, grabbing his neck and hollering, suffering the abrupt onset of a mystery affliction. The boy ran as fast as he could toward the bar. But C. C. still had the gun, and he fired in all directions as he spun.

  Everyone hit the deck as slugs splintered through the walls and door; one pinged off the antique cash register and knocked a wahoo to the floor. The gunfire seemed to go on forever. The pistol had a hundred-cartridge rapid-feed jumbo banana clip heavily stocked in weapons boutiques across Florida in the NRA’s continuing crusade to level the playing field for duck hunters. The boy’s little legs were not making good time, and from the spray of suppression fire C. C. was laying down, it was clear the boy was riding blind luck.