Tim Dorsey Collection #1

by Dorsey, Tim

  The man whimpered a couple more times, then stopped and looked side to side at the little mangrove crabs dancing around the shore, darting in and out of their sand holes as each wave from the bay advanced and retreated on the rising tide. The insurance man looked up at Nikita. “That’s it?”

  “Don’t even try asking for mercy!”

  “Okay,” said the man.

  “Why isn’t he scared?” Ivan asked Nikita.

  “He’s so scared he’s in shock!”

  Ivan bent over and picked up one of the little crabs, which repeatedly pinched his thumb and forefinger.

  “Watch out!” said Nikita. “Built to scale, those claws have the crushing power of a great white shark!”

  The crab continued pinching Ivan. “I barely feel anything.”

  “Maybe it sliced clean through your nerve endings.”

  “It’s not doing anything.”

  “That’s because it’s just one,” said Nikita. “They’re like piranhas. It’s all in the numbers. Imagine hundreds of those crabs!”

  Ivan stared at his hand. “It’s just leaving little red marks.”

  “But imagine hundreds of little red marks!”

  Ivan smacked Nikita in the back of the head. “You idiot! They’re the wrong kind of crabs!” Ivan pointed at the insurance man. “And he knows it. He lives around here.”

  “What now?”

  “Break into the insurance office,” said Ivan, handing Nikita his car keys. “Get the Mercedes.”

  “Right.” Nikita jumped behind the wheel as the others waited on the side of the mangroves.

  They noticed the Mercedes’s engine was racing, but it wasn’t going anywhere.

  “Does he have it in neutral?”

  “I don’t think so.”

  The Mercedes was backed too close to the boat ramp, and the rear tires were spinning on algae.

  “Nikita! Give it more gas!”

  Nikita gave it more gas.

  “I think he’s starting to go backward.”

  The others watched curiously as the sedan slowly slid down the boat ramp and into the water. It was three-quarters under when the panic hit—Nikita struggling in the dark bay with his safety harness and the shorted-out child-safety locks. Then a gun started firing out the roof, letting the air pocket escape, and down she went.

  “Well,” said Ivan. “That was certainly different.” He turned to the adjuster. “You know the way back to town?”

  He nodded.

  “Untie him.”

  “I promise I won’t tell anyone,” said the adjuster, tied up again, this time to an office chair in the headquarters of Buccaneer Life & Casualty in downtown Tampa.

  The Russians didn’t answer. They dumped out desk drawers, pulled paintings off walls, smashed vases and cut the stuffing out of couches and chairs.

  “What are you looking for? Maybe I can help.”

  No answer. They ripped acoustical tiles from the dropped ceiling and pulled up carpet. They checked the toilet tanks, unscrewed wall sockets. They gouged the drywall with a fire ax. They used an acetylene torch to cut into the plumbing and electrical conduits.

  “No use,” said Igor, wiping insulation dust off his shoulders. “It’s not here.”

  “What’s not here?” asked the adjuster.

  “The file on the five million you paid out in September.”

  “In the filing cabinet.”

  Ivan looked sternly at the others. “You didn’t check the filing cabinet?”

  They removed their hard hats and shrugged.

  Ivan walked over to the cabinet and retrieved the thick file. It had everything—names, dates, addresses, bank accounts. Then it ended abruptly.

  Ivan walked back to the adjuster. “It’s not complete. Just stops cold. There’s no current address for the guy.”

  “I know. He fled. He was last seen at a local bank. Witnesses told police he made a withdrawal and stuffed the money in a silver briefcase.”

  Ivan cursed under his breath and turned to the others. “I thought you interrogated him!”

  “We did.”

  Ivan looked at the adjuster again. “Where is he now?”

  “Six feet under. They never found the briefcase.”

  “When did this happen?”

  “Couple months ago.”

  “Where?”

  “In a motel room in Cocoa Beach.”

  “You wouldn’t happen to know which motel, would you?”

  “The Orbit. Room two fourteen.”

  “And you just happen to know all this because…?”

  “It was in the papers.”

  Ivan dropped his head in exasperation and closed his eyes. He slowly looked up again. “Why didn’t you tell us this down at the boat ramp? You could have died!”

  “Your guys never asked,” said the adjuster. “They just kept saying, ‘Tell us what you know!’ What the hell does that mean?”

  Ivan looked at the others. “Do we have to go over this every time?”

  “I think it’s a trick,” said Igor, putting his goggles back on and firing up the acetylene torch again. “Pull down his pants. I’ll find out what he really knows.”

  “Igor! Turn that thing off before you hurt yourself!”

  Leonid stepped forward holding the live electrical conduit. “I think Igor’s right. It sounds like a trap. Let me attach these wires to his nuts, just to be safe.”

  “Bend him over,” said Pavel, squeezing the trigger on the concussion drill.

  “I can’t believe you guys!” said Ivan. “You’re the most perverted bastards I’ve ever met! Leonid, what’s with always wanting to put wires on a guy’s nuts?”

  Leonid grinned and blushed. “I’ve never seen it done before.”

  “Can I use the torch if I’m extra careful?” asked Igor.

  “No! No! No!” yelled Ivan, pounding his fist on the file cabinet. “We kill him normal! Nothing fancy! Nothing sick! He keeps his pants up! That how all the trouble started last time.”

  The men sagged with disappointment.

  “Igor. Shoot him,” said Ivan.

  “All right,” Igor said reluctantly. He turned the valve on his acetylene torch. Only he turned it the wrong way and a flame shot out and caught some drapes on fire.

  “Sorry.”

  They stood and watched the curtains burn.

  “Is somebody going to put that shit out, or do I have to do everything?” said Ivan.

  Igor grabbed the fire hose off the wall and hit the drapes with a stream of water. He also hit Leonid, holding the five-thousand-volt electrical conduit, who departed the planet in a bright flash and a shower of sparks.

  19

  “We’re in Cocoa Beach,” Ivan said in his cell phone. “We’re at the motel right now, Mr. Grande.” He slid bills through a slot in thick Plexiglas.

  “Yes…. Yes, sir…. As smooth as can be expected, except we lost two men…. No, it couldn’t be helped….”

  Jethro and Paul locked up their motel room and headed out with their silver briefcase. They walked past the office window of the Orbit Motel.

  “I don’t think I can make it,” said Paul. “I’m gonna crack up for sure.”

  “Relaxation,” Jethro said as they reached the edge of A1A. “That’s what golf is all about.”

  The traffic let up and the pair started across the street for the driving range.

  Ivan held the cell phone with one hand and stuck a paper cup under the water cooler with the other. “…Yes, sir…. Yes, sir, Mr. Grande….”

  Pavel tugged on Ivan’s sleeve and pointed out the window.

  “…Yes, sir…. Hold on a second, sir….”

  Ivan covered the phone. “Not now!” He nodded with importance at the phone in his hand. “I’m talking to You Know Who!”

  He uncovered the phone. “No, sir…. There’s no problem….”

  Pavel kept looking out the window and kept tugging. Ivan swatted him away.

  Serge and Lenny locked up their
motel room. They ran past the office window.

  Pavel tugged harder. Ivan covered the phone again. “What is it?”

  Pavel pointed again. Jethro and Paul were halfway across the highway with the briefcase, followed by two other guys they didn’t recognize.

  “That’s them!” yelled Ivan, dropping the phone.

  Three Russians ran out of the motel office.

  “We’re home free,” Jethro said as they reached the other side of A1A and the miniature golf complex. “Nothing can go wrong now.”

  Paul heard footsteps. He looked back and saw Serge and Lenny.

  “Run!”

  They sprinted for the Japanese footbridge over the lagoon by the driving range.

  Serge stopped and grabbed Lenny by the arm. He pointed at hole number five, the pink elephant on the surfboard. “Split up! You go that way! We’ll ambush on the other side!”

  “Right!” Lenny ran for the elephant, and Serge took a hard left at the T Rex.

  Jethro and Paul looked back as they reached the bridge. The two guys were gone, but now there were three others, way back, their colorful shirts visible through the trees. Jethro and Paul started up the bridge. Serge had made a complete circle and was closing fast on the far end of the span for the ambush, but Lenny was tired from all his pot smoking and had to sit for a moment on a plastic turtle.

  Jethro and Paul hit the crest of the bridge. Jethro was still looking back, but Paul faced forward again.

  “Aaauuuhhhhh!”

  Serge was charging full speed. Paul panicked. He threw the briefcase as hard as he could up in the air. They all stopped and watched it sail end over end, tumbling weightless at the top of the arc, reflecting in the sunlight, then falling again, over the bridge’s railing and splashing next to the scuba diver collecting golf balls.

  There was some yelling from behind a cluster of palm trees. Russian accents. “I think I saw them go over there!”

  Everyone started running again. Paul and Jethro continued down the far side of the bridge, away from the tropical shirts. Serge kept charging in the opposite direction, up the bridge, letting them pass, concentrating on the briefcase. He never slowed as he reached the top of the bridge, swan-diving over the railing into the murky lagoon.

  The scuba diver had mistaken the briefcase’s splash for a feeding alligator diving into the pond, and he surfaced and jerked his head around, standing at the ready with his bang stick. Just then, another big splash, some guy diving into the water next to him.

  “What the hell?”

  It had been a long footrace, and the Russians were spread out along the path according to endurance. Pavel was the fastest, the only one who had made it around the last bunch of palms at the base of the bridge in time to see Serge dive over the railing.

  The scuba diver stared dumbfounded at the rippling water where Serge had gone in. Serge stayed submerged for the longest time, and the diver started thinking he might have drowned. Just then, Serge broke the surface of the water with an irrepressible smile, holding the briefcase over his head like the Stanley Cup. “I got it! I finally got it!”

  From the top of his vision, Serge saw the fastest Russian dive off the bridge. “Uh-oh.”

  Boom.

  The Russian belly-flopped on the end of the upright bang stick, and a shower of red hamburger rained on Serge and the scuba diver.

  From down the path: “They went that way!”

  Serge grabbed the scuba diver by the arm and pulled him under the Japanese footbridge. He put a finger over his lips for the diver to be quiet as feet clomped across the wooden boards above. The footsteps faded. Serge looked up at the slits of sunlight coming through the bridge. “I think the coast is clear.”

  He looked back down, but the scuba diver was already scrambling up the far bank of the lagoon.

  Fog rolled in from the ocean. A deep steam horn sounded from across the dark, night water. A cruise ship headed for the Bahamas.

  Paul was not on it. He was strapped to a lawn chair at the deserted end of the Port Canaveral jetty.

  “Where’s the briefcase?” said Ivan.

  “I told you, I threw it in the lagoon!”

  Ivan backhanded him across the face. “We already checked. I’ll ask you again. Where’s the briefcase?”

  “That’s where I threw it!” said Paul. “Someone must have grabbed it!”

  Slap.

  “All we found was Pavel floating facedown, his lunch in the trees. Where’s the briefcase?”

  “I don’t know!”

  Slap.

  A new Mercedes drove up, with dealer stickers still in the windows, headlights slicing through the fog, shining in Paul’s eyes. Igor got out and unlocked the trunk. He took the blindfold off Lenny and dragged him to the front of the car.

  “Where’d you find him?” asked Ivan.

  “Hiding in the windmill.”

  “Any sign of the fat one with the beard?”

  Igor shook his head. He tied Lenny to a second lawn chair next to Paul.

  “Where’s the briefcase?”

  “I never saw the briefcase,” said Lenny. “Can I go?”

  “Sure thing,” said Ivan. “And would you like some cab money?”

  Lenny smiled. “Yeah.”

  Slap.

  “We can do this all night,” said Ivan. “I don’t have to be anywhere.”

  “I do,” said Lenny.

  Slap.

  “Let me pull his pants down!” said Igor, holding up a cage of scorpions.

  Ivan smacked the cage out of Igor’s hand. “What is wrong with you? I mean it! You’re not normal!”

  Igor pointed at the ground. “They’re getting away! Give me a piece of paper or something to scoop them up.”

  Slap. “Forget about the scorpions!”

  Igor rubbed his sore cheek. A foghorn blared. “Is that a cruise ship?”

  “Probably,” said Ivan. “They go out of here all the time.”

  “Ever been on one?”

  “What?”

  “Ever taken a cruise?”

  “A couple times.”

  “I heard you can eat all you want all the time, that they keep refilling the buffet twenty-four hours.”

  Ivan stared at him.

  “Do they really do that? If they do, that’s a pretty good deal.”

  Ivan put a hand to his own temple and closed his eyes. “Don’t talk anymore. I have a headache. Just turn the car around and we’ll stick them in the trunk and handle this later at the motel.”

  “You got it.” Igor hopped back in the Mercedes and started the car.

  Ivan cupped his hands around his mouth and yelled over the engine: “Remember, you have trouble with English…R is for—”

  Igor ran over Paul.

  “…reverse.”

  Igor put the car in reverse and backed over Paul. He got out and walked around the front of the car. “Is he okay?”

  “Absolutely. Ready to dance all night.”

  “But he looks dead.”

  Slap.

  “He is dead! You ran over him! Twice!”

  Igor picked up a crumpled lawn chair and tried to unbend it, then turned quickly. “What was that?”

  “What was what?”

  “That noise. I heard something.”

  “We’re outside in a park. There’s a million squirrels and birds.”

  Igor stepped forward and peered into a palmetto thicket. “I could have sworn I heard someone.”

  Two Russians still alive. Ivan and Igor. They drove back to the motel in silence.

  “What do you want to eat?” asked Ivan.

  “I don’t know. Something different.” Igor turned on the radio.

  “It’s after midnight. We only have so many options.”

  Igor thumbed through his CD wallet. “But we always go to the same place.”

  “It’s a good place.”

  Mosquitoes buzzed around fluorescent lights. Outdoor speakers played faint Muzak. A deep, rhythmic pounding
came up the street, quiet at first, but getting louder. A white Mercedes Z310 came around the bend on A1A. The tinted windows were down, Igor’s head bobbing.

  “…Everybody Wang Chung tonight…”

  Lenny tried to adjust his eyes in the jet-black trunk. He screamed and he banged. The car came to a stop and Lenny listened carefully. The engine turned off. Lenny started screaming and banging again.

  The trunk lid suddenly opened, bright light. Lenny shielded his eyes.

  “Seven-Eleven,” said Igor. “What do you want?”

  Lenny crunched his eyebrows in thought. “Jumbo dog…no, chicken salad. And a cookie. But if they don’t have chicken, don’t get the tuna—”

  The trunk lid closed.

  Ivan and Igor hit the chips rack, then the beer case. Hiding Paul’s body in the underbrush hadn’t been easy, and they still had quite a bit of blood on their shirts, but no more so than the other customers.

  “Coors good?” asked Ivan.

  “It’s all right.”

  “You want me to get it or what?”

  Igor scanned the rest of the display. “Have you had the new Killians with the pressurized ball in the can for real draft taste?”

  “Come on! We’re fogging up the door!”

  Coors it was. They moved on to the deli. Ivan grabbed the first sub he saw. Igor picked up three in succession, put each back. He waved at the cashier. “Are these salads fresh?”

  “Made this morning.”

  “What time?”

  Ivan grabbed a salad and jabbed it in Igor’s stomach. “Take it and let’s go!”

  They dumped their purchase on the counter. The cashier began ringing.

  “The slot for the little bags of croutons was empty,” said Igor. “I don’t think I should be charged full price for the salad.”

  “I have to charge what the label says.”

  “But I didn’t get my croutons.”

  “We’re out.”

  “I know.”

  “All I can do is void it.”

  Ivan smacked the back of Igor’s head again. “Pay the man and get in the car!”

  Further into the night. A1A became deserted, the last decent people straggling home. Traffic lights cycled through their colors with no cars. Next shift. A hooker rode to work on a bike with a banana seat. A police cruiser slowly rolled by, shining a search beam down each alley. A pack of wild dogs came out from behind a muffler shop, fighting over a large piece of unidentified meat, scattering when headlights hit them and a Mercedes turned into the parking lot of the Orbit Motel.