Tim Dorsey Collection #1

by Dorsey, Tim

  There was a tremendous crash. A shower of broken glass sprayed the Russians, who ducked and shielded their faces as a moon buggy flew through the shattered window, sailed over their heads, and began bounding away. The Russians started shooting, but the vehicle had already made it to the edge of the Merritt Island Wildlife Sanctuary and disappeared into the swamp grass. The Russians ran for their Mercedes.

  The moon buggy may have been a tourist attraction replica, but it was fully functional, with the same big moon tires and moon suspension—about the only vehicle around that could handle the spongy bog terrain of the sanctuary. The Mercedes’s back wheels spun into the muck before it had gone twenty feet.

  Two EMTs loaded an empty stretcher and closed the back doors of an ambulance parked in front of an emergency room in Titusville.

  A moon buggy pulled up.

  “Can you give Major Nelson here a hand?” said Serge, getting Lenny out of the rover. “He usually sees Dr. Bellows.”

  The EMTs helped Lenny through the automatic glass doors. One of them came back out as Serge started up the moon buggy. “Hey! Wait a minute!”

  “Big problem at the Cape,” said Serge, waving and pulling away. “They need me.”

  The Moon Hut restaurant, “Where the Moon People Dine,” is a Cape Canaveral institution.

  Built in the Sputnik era, the small-town diner sits near the ocean at the bend in A1A where the road swings west from Cocoa Beach toward the Kennedy Space Center. It opens before dawn every morning, when NASA workers and civilian contractors jam the place. The neon sign out front depicts a thatched hut sitting on the Sea of Tranquillity. The diner has two themes. Space flight and country arts and crafts. The traditional American menu has an unexplained number of Greek dishes. Everyone eats at the Moon Hut. Astronauts, politicians, movie stars.

  A waitress led five big men and a briefcase over to a table.

  Ivan took a seat next to a blastoff photo. Dmitri sat down under a spinning loom.

  “Be right back with your water.” The waitress left.

  Ivan peeked over the top of a laminated menu, then ducked back down. “That’s Annette Bening.”

  “Where?” asked Dmitri, turning around.

  Ivan smacked him with his menu. “Don’t look!”

  “Why not?”

  “Everyone looks!”

  “What’s she doing here?”

  “Getting coffee to go.”

  “If that’s Annette, where’s Warren?”

  “Must be in the car with the kids. They’ve settled down, you know.”

  The five men were peeking over the tops of their menus when the waitress returned.

  “Is it too early for the flaming Greek cheese?” asked Ivan.

  She shook her head no.

  “Flaming Greek cheese. Five,” said Ivan. “And five coffees.”

  She collected the menus.

  “Excuse me,” Ivan whispered. “Is that Annette Bening?” He tilted his head slyly toward the register.

  “I don’t know,” said the waitress. She turned to the front counter. “Hey, Annette!”

  The woman at the register looked around.

  “That’s her,” said the waitress.

  Coffee arrived, then cheese. A phone rang. Ivan flipped it open.

  “Good morning, Mr. Grande…. Yes, I have good news…. That’s right, we’ve got the you-know-what.…We’re at the Moon Hut…. No, the Moon Hut…. No, you get breakfast here…. Because it’s America…. Excuse me a minute, they’re setting the cheese on fire…. No, I haven’t been drinking….”

  The waitress came to refill coffee. Ivan put a hand over his cup.

  “…No, that won’t be a problem, Mr. Grande…. A submarine?…Yes, I’ve seen them…. No problem, ask for Yuri. I’m writing the name down now…. That’s in New York, right?…I understand completely…. We won’t let you down….”

  Ivan closed his phone and stood up. “Waitress? We’ll need this to go.”

  In the very back of the Moon Hut, in the history room, a waitress prepared to refill a glass of ice water. “That won’t be necessary,” said Serge, standing up and taking out his wallet.

  27

  It may have been December 30, but nobody told Palm Beach.

  The mercury hit eighty by noon. The BBB was using a Krunkleton paperback again as a bar-hopping guide. They nursed ten-dollar drinks in the back of the Breakers.

  Paige stared down at an angelfish swimming under her napkin. An orange-and-purple damsel swam the other way through coral. “I’ve heard of bars that had aquariums, but I’ve never been in one where the bar actually is an aquarium.”

  “The Kennedys used to jog over there,” said Teresa, looking out the huge windows behind the bar as sea foam rolled in from the Atlantic.

  “What a beautiful day,” said Maria.

  “Just one more day left until the new year,” said Rebecca, raising her drink. “Here’s to a new year with old friends.”

  Glasses clinked.

  “What are your resolutions?” asked Maria.

  “You know what? I’ve had it with resolutions!” said Rebecca. “No more resolutions!”

  “That sounds like a resolution.”

  “I have an idea,” said Teresa. “Let’s make antiresolutions.”

  “I want to eat something fat at midnight,” said Paige.

  “C’mon, let’s think big,” said Teresa.

  “Let’s do something crazy,” said Rebecca.

  “Yeah,” said Maria. “Really irresponsible.”

  Teresa stood and grabbed her purse. “Come on.”

  “Where?” said Maria.

  “I don’t know yet.”

  They headed back through the hotel lobby, stopped by the front desk and began going through the rack of tourist brochures. Teresa picked up and put down pamphlets. “Dreher Park Zoo, nope; Norton Gallery, nope; Clematis Concert Series, nope; Polo Club, definitely nope…”

  “Wait a minute,” said Maria, slowly opening a brochure with a silver Amtrak train on the cover. “Look at this.”

  “What is it?”

  “A mystery train. New York to Miami. Departs New Year’s Day.”

  “What’s a mystery train?”

  “You know, they act out whodunits, passengers participate.”

  “Oh my God!” said Maria, folding over the pamphlet and holding it out to the others. “Look at the book they’re going to perform.”

  “The Stingray Shuffle!” said Teresa. “That’s too much of a coincidence.”

  “We’re meant to get on that train,” said Rebecca. “We’ll kick ourselves if we don’t go.”

  “It’s only two days away,” said Sam. “We don’t have tickets, we don’t have plans…”

  “Exactly,” said Teresa. “It’s so impulsive. We’ll get oneway plane tickets, see the ball drop in Times Square like we always wanted, then take the train back the next day.”

  “Hold everything,” said Maria, pointing out something else in the brochure. “Look at this list of celebrities onboard.”

  “No way!” said Rebecca.

  “That seals it,” said Teresa. “Now we really have to go.”

  Teresa fished in her purse for the valet ticket. “So we’re finally going to catch up with him.”

  “I still can’t believe we’re actually on this plane,” said Maria.

  “Look at that sunset,” said Rebecca.

  They all leaned and stared out the left windows as the sun left a scarlet stripe across the bed of clouds. They could see another jet, miles away and tiny, moving across the horizon in the same direction.

  Seat 24B in that other plane was ticketed to passenger Serge A. Storms, who leaned across the businessman traveler in the window seat next to him to take twenty pictures of the setting sun. Click, click, click…

  The sun finally disappeared and Serge sat back in his seat. “Thanks for letting me do that. I think I got some great shots. It’s important to record every sunset I can.”

  The busin
essman looked at Serge a second, then went back to his book.

  “Yes, sir! Flying to the Big Apple! Goin’ to Gotham! Matriculatin’ to Manhattan! New York, New York, the city so nice they named it twice…”

  The man took a deep breath and put his book down.

  “I love flying but I hate airlines!” Serge told the man. “Who can keep all the fares and discounts straight? Frequent flyer miles, three hundred and nine dollars if you order fourteen days in advance, two fifty-nine if you stay over a Saturday, one nineteen provided you don’t get off the plane…”

  The man looked at Serge another moment, then picked up his book again.

  “Oh, trying to read, eh? Don’t let me distract you.” Serge faced forward for thirty seconds. “So what are you reading?”

  The man turned the book over and showed Serge the cover.

  “Ralph Krunkleton?” said Serge. “I love Ralph Krunkleton. Read all his stuff back in school. Personally, I think that’s his best book, balances surrealism with traditional murder mystery machinations. But don’t worry, I won’t give away the ending.”

  The man smiled politely and went back to reading. Serge stared forward another thirty seconds. Then he leaned over and whispered the ending.

  The man dropped the book in his lap in exasperation.

  “What?” said Serge. “I just did you a favor. That’s the big mistake people make reading Krunkleton. They get all caught up in the suspense plot. Now you can concentrate on the prose, lyrical language selection and social nuances. And don’t forget the five million dollars that’s floating around. You’ll never guess who gets it…. Oh, I just told you. Sorry.”

  The man put the book away.

  “Good idea,” said Serge. “They’re preparing the serving cart. You wouldn’t want to spill anything.” Serge lowered his tray and folded his hands on it and smiled. Then he started tapping his fingers. He stuck his head out in the aisle. “What’s taking them so long?”

  He reached up to the overhead console and twisted a nozzle. A blast of cold air began blowing the man’s hair around. He turned slowly toward Serge.

  “Whoops, wrong one.” Serge twisted the nozzle shut and twisted another, then closed his eyes and stuck his face up in the chilly stream. The man picked up an airline magazine.

  Serge opened his eyes and turned off the vent. He pressed other buttons. Lights flashed on and off the magazine the man was trying to read.

  “Need a reading light?” asked Serge. “Don’t want to ruin your eyes.” Lights continued flashing on and off.

  “Here comes the cart! I love the cart!” said Serge. “All the choices—so hard to decide. There’s the spicy Bloody Mary mix and orange juice and soda. They only pour half the can in those little cups, but you can ask them to leave the whole can. That’s what I do.”

  Serge leaned into the aisle and looked forward toward Row 11. The sleeve of a tropical shirt and the bandaged foot were still there. He leaned back.

  The attendant came to their row, and the businessman handed her eight dollars. “Scotch. Double.”

  “Coke,” said Serge. “Please leave the can. And can I have one of those huge, huge bags of peanuts—I haven’t eaten in days! Ha, ha, ha, ha…”

  He turned to the man. “Oh, a drinker, eh? It’s weird how times changed about that. One day you’re Mr. Sophistication, and the next you’re a social leper with a stigmatizing disease….”

  The man chugged his scotch and set the glass on his tray next to two empty airline miniatures.

  “You might want to go easy on that stuff,” said Serge. “I don’t mean to preach, but there are all kinds of new federal aviation rules about in-flight behavior. You don’t want to annoy other passengers.”

  Serge stood and got a box down from the overhead compartment. He sat and placed it in his lap. “Want to see my trains?”

  Serge opened the box of model railroad equipment. “See? That green-and-orange engine there is The City of Miami. I painted it myself. Here, hold this….” Serge rummaged through the box, cabooses, tracks, water towers. “…There she is! This baby is precisely to scale. It’s Flagler’s personal car, the Rambler. Built her from scratch. Hold this….” More rummaging. “And this is the observation car from The Silver Stingray. That’s one of the great trains that take the snowbirds to Florida. Hold this….” He picked up a passenger car, looked in the windows, put it back down. “You should have seen them at the X-ray machine when this baby went through. About ten people crowded around the screen. They took the box off to a special area and had a dog sniff it.” Serge grinned impishly. “It was partly my doing. I arranged some of the metal tracks and trains in the shape of a machine gun, just to keep them on their toes. I have to make sure I’m safe when I fly…. Darn it, did I remember to pack my diesel?…” More rummaging.

  The man spoke for the first time. “You know, the rest rooms on these things have all kinds of levers and buttons and secret compartments.”

  Serge stared at him a moment, then quickly grabbed all the trains from the man’s arms, repacked the box and returned it to the overhead. He got up and trotted toward the back of the plane.

  Twenty minutes later, a stewardess had Serge by the arm and escorted him back to his seat over his protests. “I told you, I wasn’t trying to disable the smoke detector. I was exploring….”

  Serge reluctantly sat down. He thought a second. He reached under his seat for his camera.

  The businessman was typing on his laptop. He could feel Serge’s eyes drilling into the side of his head.

  “Listen…” said Serge.

  The man sighed and closed his laptop.

  “I’d like to take some more pictures again when we land. Will that be okay? If it isn’t, I’ll understand. Life is so fleeting I want to capture every moment. I’ll just set the motor drive on automatic and let ’er rip.”

  The Boeing 737 banked over Long Island for its approach. The landing gear went down. Serge leaned across the man again and pressed his lens to the pressure window. Click, click, click. “I’m getting goose bumps.” Click, click, click. “This is just like that U2 song…. You like U2?…Of course! Everybody does!…It was a cold and wet December day when we touched the ground at JFK…” Click, click, click.

  The Boeing taxied up to the terminal. Serge unlatched the overhead bin. “I only take carry-ons. Checking your luggage is playing with fire….” He turned, but the businessman was already halfway up the aisle.

  “Hey!” Serge yelled. “We forgot to exchange phone numbers….”

  28

  New York City. Manhattan. East Side.

  Eugene Tibbs was blue. That was his job.

  He had always been blue.

  He was blue back in his days on the Mississippi Delta, in those cotton fields, and he was blue in Memphis, on Union Avenue, recording for Sam Phillips at Sun Studio. He was blue after selling his soul to the devil late one night at the crossroads. And he was blue because he didn’t sell his soul for talent and fame but for a sandwich. That’s what cheap liquor will do to you. That’s what the blues does to you.

  Tibbs sat in the last car of the 4-5-6 subway line as it clattered and sparked under Grand Central Station. Well after midnight, Eugene was alone in the car, reading a paperback by Ralph Krunkleton. He looked out the scratched window at a group of laughing people in the seedy yellow light on the Fifty-first Street platform. They couldn’t fool him. They were blue, too. He could tell. He knew the blues.

  Tibbs had just returned from Florida. More like fled. He had been let go from a steady run at Skipper’s Smokehouse, the legendary blues joint on Tampa’s north side. His last night there had started blue enough, but there was trouble waiting down the tracks for Tibbs. He sat in a chair onstage, wearing a neat black tuxedo and cradling his faithful hollow-body Epiphone guitar, Gertrude. That’s when trouble walked in the door.

  Eugene performed as Blind Jelly Doughnut, and his sunglasses were so dark he could safely watch a solar eclipse. They made him bump into thing
s, and people thought he really was blind and his music, therefore, the bluest of all. If you were blind and not blue, something was wrong.

  But even with the sunglasses, Tibbs recognized the man who came in the club that night. He’d recognize him anywhere, and it might as well have been the devil himself, wanting to talk about that sandwich. Damn the blues.

  The man came right down to the stage and took a seat at a cocktail table in the front row. He set his glass of ice water down and pulled out a notepad. It was that damn Atkins fellow from Alabama, the blues historian who’d been stalking him for an interview. The man just wouldn’t take no.

  It unsettled Tibbs seeing him sitting there, quietly confident, watching, waiting for a slip—the man could ruin everything. It became a war of nerves. Eugene broke out in a sweat. After the third song, he began to cough. The man in the front row stood and silently offered Tibbs his glass of water.

  “Thank you,” said Eugene, taking the glass.

  The man jumped back and pointed. “He can see! He can see! I knew it!”

  The audience was horrified, houselights came on, a scuffle broke out. Eugene barely escaped, running three blocks and ducking into an adult theater. He peeked out the window at the mob running past the theater with torches and clubs. Don’t mess with the blues.

  Tibbs caught the first flight back to New York. He took a bus to the Port Authority Terminal, then tried to use the subway, but he didn’t have the right change. When you’re blue, you never have the right change. That’s the way it works. Rock and roll gets the limos. The blues makes you walk. It was another dozen blocks across the Village back to his loft apartment in SoHo, next to the nineteenth-century carriage house on Crosby Street where Billie Holiday used to live.

  At times like these, Eugene liked to read himself to sleep with his favorite author. He picked up a paperback, the one with the stingray on the cover. It was his favorite author because his books were always in the bargain bin. Eugene opened the book to a folded-over page and lay down on the cold mattress in his skivvies. But tonight, the book did not make him sleepy. It spoke to him. He got out of bed, dressed, put on his boots. He stuck the book in his back pocket, scratched around a dresser drawer for correct change and headed back to the subway.