by Dorsey, Tim
The owner slid up to the cashier and whispered out of the side of his mouth, “How are you keeping the books with the cocaine separated from the others?”
“How am I doing what?”
Ralph stepped to the front of the chairs. “Good evening and thanks for coming. I’d like to start by reading one of my favorite passages—”
“What the heck’s this?” interrupted a woman in back, holding up a little white baggie.
“There’s one in my book, too,” said a man on the other side of the room.
“Me, too!”
“It looks like cocaine.”
“What’s going on here?”
The owner stood on a chair in the corner, holding a match up to an emergency sprinkler head.
“Come on! Come onnnnnnnnn!”
Teresa leaned over the steering wheel of the rented Grand Marquis. “I think I can see the bookstore on the next block. I told you we’d make it.”
“Why are all those police jumping out of those vans?”
15
Collins Avenue.
The BBB lounged behind dark sunglasses and recovered with morning coffee on the front patio of the Hotel Nash.
Sam stared into her decaf.
“Sam, were you listening?” asked Rebecca.
“What?”
“I was saying you missed all the fun.”
“Where’d you run off to?”
“After missing the book signing, I decided to head back to the room and call it a night.”
“It was because you didn’t want to skinny-dip with us in that hotel pool, wasn’t it?”
“I can’t put anything over on you.”
“We only did it for ten seconds,” said Maria.
“Just long enough to check it off the list,” said Rebecca.
“We were careful,” said Teresa. “Slipped our clothes off, held them in our hands, slipped ’em back on again. No big deal.”
“It was the alcohol,” said Sam.
“Of course it was the alcohol,” said Teresa. “That’s the whole point of alcohol.”
Sam pointed at their rented Grand Marquis, parked at the corner. “What’s wrong with our car?”
“What do you mean?”
“The back end’s riding low. And dripping.”
Maria stood up and smiled. “I was going to surprise you. Come on.”
They walked over to the car and Maria popped the trunk. A mountain of ice cubes covered dozens of beer cans and mini wine bottles.
“I discovered something new about rental cars,” Maria said proudly. “The trunk is a self-draining cooler.”
They went back to their spot on the patio and looked up as the shadow of an inbound 747 crossed Collins Avenue and their table. Men sat at other tables, behind Porsche sunglasses, leering at the book club. The café society was in full swing, everyone aloof, clandestinely checking each other out, posing, trying to get laid by acting like people who got laid way too much. The bouillabaisse of sexual tension caused those least likely to have sex to play their stereos at top volume, and the street was quite noisy. But the designers at Mercedes-Benz had anticipated this, and the interior of a white Z310 was virtually soundproof as it rolled north up the avenue, the air conditioner set at a nippy sixty-six. A red light stopped it outside the Nash. Five dark-haired men in tropical shirts filled the Benz, two in front, three in back, eating ice-cream cones, nodding heads slowly to easy-listening hits. Its trunk was also dripping, holding five soggy cartons of paperbacks.
“Boss, what are we going to do about all those books?”
“Shut up!” said the driver. “I don’t want to hear about books right now.”
The light turned green; the driver prepared to go. Before he could, a horn blared and a purple Jeep Wrangler whipped around the Mercedes and passed in the oncoming lanes. The Benz’s driver hit the brakes. He felt something cold and stared down at the ice-cream cone squashed on the front of his tropical shirt.
The Jeep accelerated toward the intersection at Hispañola, but it got boxed in behind a slow-moving Oldsmobile. The light ahead turned yellow, plenty of time to make it, but the Olds slowed to a crawl and stopped.
“Motherfucker!” screamed the Jeep’s driver, punching the roll bar. He and his three passengers were muscle-bound from constant weight lifting and creamy protein shakes, and they experienced considerable difficulty turning their torsos to exit the Jeep. They walked toward the Olds, arms swinging well out from their bodies because trapezius muscles were in the way. All four were in their early twenties, wearing baseball caps and T-shirts from a “world-famous” little-known sports bar.
They reached the front door of the Oldsmobile and began kicking it, causing the tiny old man behind the wheel to turn up his hearing aid and look around. He got the Beltone adjusted in time to hear, “Come out of there, you fuck!” The Oldsmobile’s door was jerked open and the old man dragged into the street. They threw him to the pavement and began stomping him in the stomach. People froze in horror. An elderly woman dropped groceries on the sidewalk and screamed.
“Where’d you learn to fucking drive!” Kick.
Tires screeched. The Jeep guys looked up. Four doors opened on a Mercedes; ice-cream cones flew out. Easy-listening music piped into the street.
“…On the day that you were born, the angels got together…”
The Jeep’s driver stopped kicking and began laughing. He turned to his pals. “Look at the funny guys with ice cream on their shirts!”
The Mercedes’s driver walked up to the Jeep and saw a baseball bat sticking out of the back. He grabbed it.
The young driver loved his Jeep, with the Fold-and-Tumble rear seat and legendary off-road prowess. His smile dropped. He pointed at the vehicle, then at the man with the baseball bat. “Don’t even think of messing with it!”
He didn’t. He walked past the Jeep and swung with a sharp uppercut, catching the driver under the chin. Teeth scattered across the intersection like a broken pearl necklace on a wooden dance floor.
The other punks fled, but the slowest was caught from behind and swarmed. The tropical shirts knocked him to the ground and formed a tight circle for synchronized groin-kicking.
Mr. Grande sat alone in the mountain hideaway of the Mierda Cartel, tapping his fingers on a wicker desk, gazing out the window at fruit trees. A cockatoo strutted across the porch. It was quiet except for the ceiling fans and a gibbering monkey somewhere in the hills that Mr. Grande had come to believe was personally mocking him.
The phone rang. It was the cartel in Colombia, and they wanted to know where their submarine was.
“There’s been a setback,” said Mr. Grande.
“Setback? It sank with your whole fucking cartel! You’re an embarrassment to the industry!”
“I just need a little more time.”
“You’ve got a week. Then you know what happens.” Click.
It had been a rough year for the Mierda Cartel. It hadn’t started out that way. They had been riding high with five million in the black, all laundered through a Tampa insurance company called Buccaneer Life & Casualty. To make the insurance company appear legit, they employed legit, unsuspecting adjusters, who accidentally paid out all of the cartel’s money in a fraudulent disability claim.
Mr. Grande had dispatched every cartel member to Florida to get the money back, but they were all dead now, the money last seen in a briefcase in Key West. Mr. Grande had replaced the deceased cartel members by recruiting a handful of trusted smugglers, and he had intended to send them back to Florida for the money, but they were now all at the bottom of St. George’s Bay in a modified septic tank. Turnover was getting to be a problem for Mr. Grande, who could no longer get anyone to underwrite group health except Buccaneer Life & Casualty in Tampa.
Complicating matters was the language barrier. The Mierda organization was the only cartel that wasn’t Latin. It was Russian. Following the collapse of the Soviet Union, mobsters from Moscow and Leningrad flooded south Florida
and the Caribbean, which was a good thing. It infused the region with fresh blood and new ideas. Plus, everything of value in the former republic was being dismantled with cutting torches, crated up and shipped to the West for quick sale. You could buy absolutely anything—suspension bridges, nuclear triggers. The Russians quickly became valued partners. But, as they say, ten percent of all college students graduate in the bottom tenth of their class, and the same held true for the new wave of criminals. Mr. Grande had to take what he could get.
The timing of that last phone call from Colombia was not good. What the hell did they expect him to do, buy a sub?
Wait, that’s it! Soviet subs were all over the place. The Cali gang had tried to buy one a couple years ago, but they had gone about it all wrong. Mr. Grande was Russian. He knew all the right people, where every pitfall lay. He wouldn’t make the same mistakes. What was a sub going for these days, anyway? Mr. Grande checked the Blue Book. Ski lift, styptic pencils, subatomic centrifuge…Here it is: Submarine, like new, never fired, five million dollars, firm. Call Yuri, afternoons. Hmm, thought Mr. Grande, that’s the same amount of money we lost in Florida. That sure would come in handy now.
Mr. Grande flipped open his address book, then picked up the phone.
The old man who had been driving the Oldsmobile regained consciousness in the middle of Collins Avenue. He moaned and grabbed his stomach and fought his way to his feet. The tropical shirts saw him staggering, and they steadied him by the arms and walked him over to the punk from the Jeep.
“Go ahead,” said the tallest.
The old man began kicking. “You ungrateful little prick! I fought in the Big One for you!…”
A phone rang.
The Mercedes’s driver pulled a cell from his pants. He cupped a hand over it and turned to his colleagues. “I have to take this.” He stepped onto the sidewalk and covered his other ear to block out the screaming.
“Mr. Grande, an honor, sir…. I’m sorry, but you’ll have to speak up. Miami Beach is pretty noisy this time of day…. I see…. I see…. No, that won’t be a problem…. Thank you for the opportunity, Mr. Grande. You won’t regret this….”
The driver closed his cell phone and turned back to the street. “We have to go.”
Police sirens grew louder as they piled back in the Mercedes and sped away.
The old man was still kicking when the cops arrived. The first officer realized what was happening and jumped out of the squad car. “No! Stop!” he yelled, running toward the old man and pulling his nightstick. “Here—use a baton.”
16
An astronaut in a pressure suit heard his own amplified, labored breathing as he slowly navigated his moon buggy over the treacherous terrain.
The buggy rolled past a man in a tropical shirt, banging the side of his handheld global tracker.
“What’s it say?” asked Lenny.
“The vector’s gone haywire,” said Serge. “Must be jammed by all the space transmissions here.”
“In a tourist attraction?”
“No, but the attraction is in the middle of a working launch complex, and next to a pair of classified Air Force installations.”
“What’ll we do?”
“We simply have to start canvassing,” said Serge. “There’s the gift shop.”
“You just want souvenirs.”
They pushed open the glass doors. No briefcase in immediate sight. Serge walked rapidly down the aisles, spinning display racks of pins, magnets and key chains. He picked up a stack of official launch photos and discarded them one by one: “Already got it, got it, got it, got it, got it…” He scanned the rows of personalized NASA coffee mugs, Adam to Zelda. “They never have Serge.”
“I think that last joint is wearing off,” said Lenny.
“Hang on. I just found something I don’t have.” He grabbed it off the wall, paid at the cash register and went into the rest room. He came out ten minutes later wearing a royal blue astronaut jumpsuit. “How do I look?”
“Babe magnet.”
“It’s not about sex. It’s about the human spirit,” said Serge, tucking his folded Life List in a zippered utility pocket on his shoulder.
“I thought it was about sex,” said Lenny.
They left the gift gantry and began combing the exhibits. It was a thorough, time-consuming search, from the IMAX theater to the walk-through space shuttle. The crowd was heavy, getting autographs from authentic NASA astronauts who were assigned public relations duty on a rotating basis. One of the astronauts zipped by on a replica moon buggy. A family from Minnesota flagged him down for photos. Other families stopped Serge in his royal blue jumpsuit, asking him to pose with their kids.
“Come on!” yelled Lenny.
“Hold up,” said Serge. “I cannot deny the children.”
They worked their way through the Gallery of Manned Spaceflight, taking a break to peer down into a dimly lit bulletproof display case.
“That moon rock looks awfully familiar,” said Serge.
“I need a joint,” said Lenny. “I’ll crouch down behind the lunar module.”
“I’ll stand guard,” said Serge.
Paul and Jethro stopped in front of the Astronaut Memorial with their Cocoa Beach travel guide and silver briefcase.
“I can’t take the stress anymore,” said Paul, gazing up at the polished granite monument. “We’ve got a whole twenty-four hours before our ship leaves.”
“Character is grace under pressure,” said Jethro. “Consider the early astronauts. Those were the days of giants, when destiny did not choose men, but men chose destiny.”
Paul and Jethro heard shouting in the distance. They turned and saw a security guard chasing two men—one in a royal blue jumpsuit—away from the Gallery of Manned Spaceflight. But the guard was in mall-cop weight range, and he quickly became winded and broke off pursuit.
Serge peeked out from behind a ticket booth. “I think we lost him.”
“I’m fairly sure I have the munchies now.”
Serge began gently rubbing all the official space patches on his shoulders and chest.
“Must have snack,” said Lenny, feeling his tongue with his fingers. “And beverage.”
Serge unzipped and rezipped the dozen utility pockets on his thighs, knees and forearms.
Lenny grabbed his throat. “Parched!…Can’t…breathe!…”
“Don’t embarrass me.” Serge zipped a pocket.
“Life…functions…terminating…”
“Okay, let’s get a bite.”
“Cool.”
They entered the Launch Pad Café. Lenny got a chili-cheese dog. Serge sat across from him in his jumpsuit, eyes closed, sucking on a foil pouch of astronaut ice cream.
“Serge…” said Lenny.
“Shhhh! Don’t talk. I’m having a moment.” Serge stuck the metallic pouch back in his mouth and squeezed it dry. He opened his eyes. “Okay, what is it?”
“Isn’t this the best chili-cheese dog you’ve ever seen in your life?”
“I’ve never felt comfortable about any cheese that comes out of a condiment pump.”
“I need another joint.”
“You’re too high as it is.”
“That’s what I mean,” said Lenny. “I need to smoke myself down.”
“It’s all in your head,” said Serge, unzipping a pocket and pulling out his Life List. “You have to learn how to master your quirks.”
Lenny chewed and pointed with his chili dog. “You left off with time travel.”
“Let’s see, what’s next? Ride Shamu, tend the Jupiter Lighthouse, dive the Atocha, perform my one-man salute to Claude Pepper at the Kravis Center, become a surf bum in Jensen, join the harvesting of the oysters at Apalachicola, take a billfish on flyrod, double-eagle at PGA National, ride with the Blue Angels from Pensacola, deliver peace and justice to my Cuban exile community…”
“I didn’t know you were Cuban.”
“Lenny, my name’s Serge.”
&nbs
p; “So you’re part of the Miami Mafia?”
“No, Tampa Cuban, different gang, much earlier. We’re the group that came up by way of Key West when they opened the cigar factories in the 1880s. My great-great-grandfather was the noble Juan Garcia. Used to be a reader in Ybor City.”
“Reader?”
“They sat in tall chairs and read stuff, newspapers, magazines, so the workers wouldn’t get bored rolling stogies. Then he started reading D. H. Lawrence, Lady Chatterley’s Lover. Production increased, but the owner didn’t like the idea. Then he bounced around a bit and ended up working the bolita games by the time of the big trouble.”
“What’s bolita?”
“The old Latin street lottery. Illegal but winked at. They put a bunch of numbered ivory balls in a sack and Juan would reach in and pick one. No way to cheat, right? Wrong. The crime bosses would tell Juan which number they wanted, and he’d freeze that ball in an icebox. At drawing time, he’d just feel around in the bag for the cold ball.”
“You said there was trouble?”
“One Friday he thought they said thirty when they actually said thirteen. Froze the wrong ball. It got ugly. They had stacked their bets, and a fortune was lost. They decided to ice him.”
“They shot him?”
“No, they stuck him in an icehouse. One thing about Cubans—we love our irony.”
“Froze to death,” said Lenny, nodding. “I hear it’s like going to sleep.”
“What about you?” asked Serge. “Any interesting background?”
“Not really,” said Lenny. “Born in Pahokee. Family never kept up with their roots, so I didn’t hear much. Did a little bit here and there. Worked in an airline parts depot in Opa-Locka because I got to fly around the country for free. I’m a Jets fan but the games aren’t broadcast here, so I’d fly up to La Guardia or Newark every Sunday to watch them in the airport lounge and fly right back after the game. Then one Wednesday I’m at the airport here. I’m driving the parts van on the edge of the runway and I hear yelling. ‘Stop him! Stop him!’ I see some guy in a silk shirt and gold chains running from a Cessna being chased by a Jack Webb type. So I blocked him off with my van at the corner of a building. The guy reaches in his pants. I think he’s going to blow me away, but he pulls out a kilo bag and throws it at my window and it explodes in this white cloud and I can’t see anything. The federal agent tackles the guy from behind and his face comes through the cloud and smashes up against my window, a big blood streak where his nose hit the glass and dragged down. The agent cuffs him and starts yelling his head off, punching the guy in the liver: ‘Don’t…you…ever…make…me…run!…’ They haul the guy off and he’s shouting that he’ll come back and get me, and the other employees said I should leave town, so I head to Broward and get a job cleaning the inside of cop cars because of all the drugs you find where handcuffed suspects stuff them in the backseat crack. I moved again when my dad died and the will gave me a little condo they used to rent out in Kendall. I was up visiting some friends in Georgia one weekend, and I’m coming home at sunset on a Sunday and the other side of I-95 is jammed with cars heading north, barely moving. But there’s absolutely nobody on my side of the highway. I mean nobody. I must have driven a hundred miles without seeing another car. And the people crawling along in the northbound lanes are pointing at me. I’m thinking, That’s odd. Is there something going on I don’t know about? But I dismiss it and keep going. I get to my neighborhood and it’s ghost town. Even the twenty-four-hour convenience stores are closed, plywood on the windows. Now I’m thinking, Okay, something’s definitely up. I turn on the TV, and they’re talking about this Hurricane Andrew. I try to find some sports or cartoons, but every channel is the hurricane. So I figure screw it—I’ll go work on my car. Which is real drudgery unless you’re high, so I’m out there at midnight laying on the ground, blowing a fat one and draining my oil pan, and the wind starts to pick up and I begin getting this sideways rain under the car, really hard, stinging like hundreds of little pins. But I’m thinking it’s just really good dope. A fence picket tears loose and hits the car, then something else breaks the passenger window. I finally put two and two together—can this Hurricane Andrew be what all the hoopla’s about? I make a mental note to start reading the papers. I head to the house, but there’s no power and my sliding glass doors have buckled, but luckily I’ve got two twelve-packs in the fridge. So I sit down and start drinking. But after a while it’s not fun anymore. With the sliding doors down, there’s way too much wind in the room, and everything’s flying around and hitting me. I start to take a real beating. My beer can collection, CDs, Playboy videos. I’m getting my butt kicked by my own shit. I don’t need it. I say, Fuck this, and I go out in the stairwell. It is one of those sturdy concrete jobs with a padlocked storage area underneath for bicycles and lawn mowers. I crawl in there with the rest of my beer and a radio and a candle. I’m not sure exactly when I passed out, but the next morning the only thing left standing was that stairwell. The insurance company paid for everything, and I spent the money on a six-month kick-ass cocaine party. I’ve never had so many friends. Then I was living in my car for a while. I got like a million parking tickets, and I was towed once while passed out in the backseat. They must not have noticed me. I woke up, climbed over into the front and drove out of the towing yard when they opened the gate for one of the trucks. Did you know you can get all your parking tickets canceled just by mailing in your death certificate? Doesn’t matter how many you have—they erase every one. But after I died three times, they got really upset. So I had to leave town again….”