Tim Dorsey Collection #1

by Dorsey, Tim

  The shooting finally stopped. The room was still except for thumping German music. Nothing but a thick cloud of smoke, the smell of cordite, a spraying faucet and a swinging lamp that finally snapped and crashed. Almost everyone dead or dying. Ivan was left with just a flesh wound in the thigh, under a pile of dead Russians in the closet. He pushed them off, one by one, like sandbags, and finally pulled himself free. He fell through the closet door into the room.

  There was a moan from the middle of the loft. One of the Jamaicans was coming around, pushing the fallen lamp off his head. Ivan limped toward him. The Jamaican saw the Russian coming and tried to get up, but couldn’t. He dragged himself across the floor, begging. Ivan kicked him in the stomach, then the head. He picked up the Jamaican and slammed him into the door that connected the apartment with the adjacent artists’ loft. The door gave way.

  The Jamaican came crashing into the unit next door, distracting the crowd from a man in a pope costume defecating on the Sinead O’Connor CD box set.

  Ivan entered the room next, kicking the Jamaican across the floor. He snatched a steaming fondue pot off the table.

  “Pull your pants down! Now!”

  The crowd applauded.

  31

  Eugene Tibbs knew he was past the fail-safe, his life forever changed. He couldn’t return to his apartment. He had to get out of town right now, no looking back.

  But which way? La Guardia, JFK, Newark, Grand Central Station? Every pore in his skin wide open. A clock ticked in his head.

  Penn Station was the closest. Eugene made his way into Chelsea and north on Seventh Avenue, people pushing racks of clothes across the street. Eugene spun around. What was that? Everywhere he looked, he saw enemies. Is there something odd about that guy feeding the pigeons? That woman eating a sandwich in the park? The man pushing a shopping cart with a ten-foot ball of aluminum foil? His legs felt like lead; he forced them to carry him to Thirty-fourth Street.

  Tibbs entered the train station and began browsing brochures. Where to go? It had to be far, far away. California? Arizona? Oregon? He found an attractive pamphlet with palm trees and went to the Amtrak window.

  Serge was on stakeout across the street from Tibbs’s crib.

  He kicked himself for losing Eugene’s trail. This was his only chance. All he could do was hope that Tibbs came back, but he knew his chances were slim. He sat on a bench reading an article in the Post about Mariah Carey’s secret source of inner strength. Serge turned the page and looked up at the SoHo loft. He still couldn’t believe the police hadn’t arrived yet. He had expected the place to be crawling, TV trucks, gawkers, the unit sealed off. All that gunfire—hadn’t anyone called the cops? Actually, they had, but it was to report loud German party music that had drowned out the shooting.

  The cops weren’t anywhere to be seen, but Serge soon realized he had other company. Watching the apartment from the corner across the intersection were Ivan and a Jamaican, nursing hangovers. The pair were the newest toasts of the avant-garde art community, and the revelry had lasted till dawn. They even scored. Now they were paying for it, huddled in the cold over Starbucks.

  The Jamaican’s name was Zigzag, and he and Ivan had just gone into business together. With everyone else dead, there was no point continuing to fight. The deal was sealed when Ivan got the dawn phone call: The Colombians had just assassinated Mr. Grande by placing a bomb in his riding mower.

  Serge had never been good at waiting. He was pacing manically now, and Ivan and Zigzag picked him up on their radar. Serge finally came to the end of his rope. He ran across the street, cars honking. He marched right up the stairs, kicked in the door and started going through Eugene’s stuff as if the room wasn’t full of bodies.

  Ivan and Zigzag looked at each other.

  “Come on!” said Serge. “There’s got to be a clue where he’s going! An address book with relatives! Anything!…”

  The phone rang. Serge stared as the answering machine clicked on. “You’ve reached Big Apple Urinal Guys…”

  Beeeeep.

  “This is Amtrak calling to confirm your reservation on The Silver Stingray, departing for Miami tomorrow at noon…”

  Serge casually walked back down the stairs, feigning an expression of futility. He sauntered around the corner until he was out of sight, then took off sprinting.

  Ivan and Zigzag looked at each other again and shrugged.

  Serge loping across the garment district. Thirty-seventh Street, Thirty-sixth, Thirty-fifth, flying through racks of clothes being wheeled across the street, people yelling and shaking fists. He ran past a pretzel wagon stand, which exploded, throwing a Bruce Willis stunt double through the air and into a parked car.

  Serge stopped and helped him up. “Are you okay?”

  “Cut! Cut!”

  Serge took off again, charging down the steps at Penn Station and running to the Amtrak window.

  “Miami, please.”

  Serge carefully tucked the ticket in his wallet and went over to the main concourse to check out the giant schedule board with the latest arrival and departure info.

  “What do you want to do tonight?” asked Maria.

  “It’s Monday,” said Rebecca. “Woody’s playing clarinet at the Carlyle.”

  “That’s a great idea!” said Teresa.

  “I’m not sure I want to see Woody Allen,” said Sam.

  “Why not?”

  “Because of what he did to Mia.”

  “We don’t know Mia,” said Rebecca. “What’s she ever done for us?”

  “He slept with her daughter, for heaven’s sake!”

  “It’s not a sex show,” said Teresa. “He’s just going to play the clarinet.”

  “Mia went with the Beatles to see that Maharishi guy,” said Rebecca. “And she married Sinatra and played the on-screen mother of Satan.”

  “So?” said Sam.

  “The whole thing was shaky.”

  “There it is,” said Maria. “There’s the schedule board.”

  The BBB walked across the Penn Station concourse and stopped in front of the big board.

  “That’s our train, The Silver Stingray,” said Teresa. “Leaves in twenty hours. Let’s find the departure platform so we’re not late when it’s time to go.”

  “What about Woody Allen?” asked Rebecca. “Are we going or not?”

  “Excuse me,” said a man’s voice. “Did I hear you say you’re going to see Woody Allen?”

  A limo pulled to the curb on the seven thousand block of Park Avenue.

  The Café Carlyle doorman had a smile and white gloves. “Good evening, ladies.” The women checked their coats and the maître d’ led them to a table under muted frescoes. He bowed and left.

  “Look how intimate the seating is,” said Rebecca, gesturing at an empty chair beside a piano just feet away. “He’s going to be sitting right there!”

  Sam leaned and whispered to Teresa: “I can’t believe we let him come along.”

  “Shhh! He’ll hear you.” They looked over and smiled at Serge, who was setting up a miniature digital recorder under a napkin to bootleg Woody.

  A round of drinks arrived. Then a few more.

  “Let’s check out guys,” said Rebecca. “Oooo, I like that one over there.”

  “Which one? The overaged hippie?”

  “No, the business type in the turtleneck. I’d sleep with him.”

  “You would?”

  “Sure, if I knew I wouldn’t catch anything and wouldn’t get pregnant again, and knew that he would still respect me and call, but not call too much and get cloying and possessive. And if he doesn’t have a wife, and doesn’t lie to me if he does, because I wouldn’t want to wreck another woman’s home, and…”

  “In other words, in some fantasy astral plane in a parallel universe,” said Teresa.

  “Right,” said Rebecca.

  “Okay, Rebecca’s an easy lay. Who else?”

  “I’d do that guy over there,” said Maria.


  “The cheap Tom Selleck?”

  “That’s the one.”

  “Same terms as Rebecca?”

  “Except that he also can’t smell bad after an hour or two. Or bob his head in the car to some song that he tells me perfectly captures the kind of person he is. Either of those two things, and it’s no Big O for Maria.”

  “Are you talking about Charlie?”

  “How’d you know?”

  “I warned you not to go out with him, but did you listen?”

  “Yuk is not a warning.”

  “I’m starting to not want to date anyone who’s eligible,” said Paige.

  “I know what you mean,” said Maria. “It’s like availability automatically disqualifies them. If they’re single and never been married, they’re either playboys or have some kind of psychological defect that prevents them from forming healthy relationships, like a private sexual ceremony you only find out about when you’re innocently going through his dresser and find the baby pacifiers and vibrating butt plugs and he accuses you of spying…”

  “Charlie again?”

  “Did I use any names?”

  “And if they’ve been married and gotten divorced, what did they do to deserve it?” said Paige. “You don’t want to hire someone who’s just been fired…”

  “And if she was the bad unit in the marriage, then his judgment is suspect…”

  “The only decent ones are married, and if they fool around, what does that say?…”

  “That means the only guys worth considering are widowers…”

  “And you can’t go out with them because it’s way too depressing. Every few minutes some little thing reminds them of their dead wives, like a certain brand of perfume or a car horn, and they either stare off for an hour or cry real loud in a crowded restaurant.”

  Sighs.

  “So,” Sam said to Serge with overt contempt. “What’s with the tape recorder?”

  “Preserving the show for future historians.”

  The chemicals were undergoing a tidal shift in Serge’s head. He was now a man of mystery, currently involved in some kind of high-stakes smuggling game with the Russians. And these women…well, a good female agent will use any weapon at her disposal; Serge was determined not to let any of them lure him into the classic espionage “honey trap.”

  Sam snickered. “You’re a historian?”

  A historian was as good a cover as any. Serge nodded.

  A tipsy Rebecca leaned toward Serge, brushing her shoulder against his. “Wow, a historian. I’ll bet that takes years of study and hard work.” Rebecca looked around at the others, and she could see it in their eyes: Slut!

  This Rebecca could be the Mata Hari, thought Serge. But then, so could any of them. Watch your step.

  A small redheaded man took the stage. Serge pressed a button on his recorder.

  The Dixieland jazz began whimsically and slow but built with reckless precision. At one point, Serge had an uncontrollable urge to ask if he could sit in on trombone. Why not? It was a chance of a lifetime. But that would risk his cover because he didn’t know how to play the trombone, and national security had to come first.

  Rebecca leaned cozily into Serge again. “Can you believe what this is costing?”

  “Believe it,” said Serge. “You got your sixty-dollar entertainment charge, eighteen dollars for the appetizer if you want to cheap out, drinks, cab fare, coat check, tips. It never ends! Russell Baker was right. In New York, you hemorrhage money!”

  The women smiled and tapped along with the music. With the exception of Sam, they were all starting to fall for Serge, so dashing and charming and funny—no clue he was crazier than a whirligig beetle—sitting there bouncing jauntily and playing the “air clarinet.”

  An hour later, the room erupted in applause as Mr. Allen packed up his instrument and left the stage. White noise of conversation filled the room. Serge asked where the women were from, and they told him.

  “Really? I’m from Florida, too!” he said. “What about family?”

  “Most of our kids also go to school there,” said Teresa, “but a couple are out of state.”

  “You have kids?” said Serge. “Pictures!”

  Teresa opened her wallet and handed it to Serge. “He’s a fine one!…Okay, the rest of you!”

  The others dug out wallets except Sam, who finally got moving after an elbow from Maria. Serge carefully lined the photos up on the table like a collection. “That sure is a blue-ribbon crop. You must be mighty proud parents! What do your husbands do?”

  “We don’t have any.”

  “Not anymore.”

  “Irresistible women like yourselves?” said Serge. “Available?”

  “Please!” Sam said under her breath.

  “So you’re all single moms?” asked Serge.

  They nodded.

  “What the heck is this, a club or something?”

  They nodded again.

  “Well, you got all my respect. Single moms are my heroes. No tougher or more important job in America today, that’s a fact! I was raised by a single mom. I didn’t really think about it much at the time, but looking back—what she must have gone through! You may not know it to look at me today, but I was quite a handful.”

  Sam muttered again.

  “Did you say something?” asked Serge.

  She smiled. “Nope.”

  “Anyway, hats off to you. The country can’t do enough—Congress should come up with a medal!…”

  His stock with the gals was going through the roof. “…If it was up to me, you’d get hazardous-duty pay, yes sir!…”

  Rebecca looked at the others. “He has to come with us!”

  “Yes, you have to!”

  “We’ve got a limo.”

  “How can a man say no to such lovely ladies…”

  “I don’t think that’s such a good idea,” said Sam. “No offense, but we don’t know anything about him.”

  “She’s right,” said Serge. “I’m a complete stranger you’ve just met in New York. God only knows what I’m capable of.”

  “Who are you kidding?” said Rebecca. “You look so normal.”

  “It’s the normal-looking ones you have to worry about,” said Serge. “You’re not going to end up in a sex dungeon because you went off with a wacky-looking guy.”

  Rebecca laughed and put a hand on Serge’s shoulder. “You’re so funny!”

  32

  A small newsstand stood on the corner of Madison and Fifty-fifth. No business. A thin Guatemalan shivered inside the booth and rubbed his hands together in their mittens. A small battery-powered TV sat atop a stack of unsold tabloids. John Walsh walked angrily toward the camera. “Tonight on America’s Most Wanted, we’re on the lookout for a merciless serial killer who has been terrorizing south Florida and leaving a trail of bodies from Tampa to the Keys…”

  The clerk turned up the volume on his little black-and-white set as a stretch limo rolled by on Madison Avenue. Sam sat in the backseat, turning up the volume on the little color TV flush-mounted in the wet bar.

  “…We’re going to get a rare glimpse inside the twisted mind of a psychopath with some astonishing footage that will be shown for the first time anywhere right here on America’s Most Wanted!…”

  Sam listlessly resumed watching TV with her chin in her hands. Her friends were acting like such fools. Look at them, standing up through the moon roof, whooping, hollering and dancing with that Serge guy, their hair blowing in the cool night wind below the skyscrapers.

  “Hey, Sam,” Paige shouted down through the opening in the roof. “Why don’t you join us?”

  “I’ll take a rain check.”

  “…In the next few moments, you will hear the actual voice and see real footage of the suspect from a chilling videotape seized by police in Miami. Pregnant women and those with heart trouble are asked to leave the room…”

  “Come on, Sam!” “Yeah, come on, Sam!” “Don’t be a party pooper, Sam!”


  “Oh, all right!”

  Sam stood up and stuck her head through the moon roof as the image on the TV set switched to a thin, fortyish man sitting on a stool in front of a sky-blue portrait-studio backdrop. There was a banner over his head: SOUTH BEACH DATING SOLUTIONS.

  An off-camera voice: “Ready anytime you are.”

  The man cleared his throat. “Hi. My name is Serge. Serge…uh…Yamamoto. And I’m looking for that special gal out there who enjoys quiet evenings, walks on the beach, fine wine, good conversation, fact-finding missions and exhaustive library research…. You must be fun-loving, have a sense of humor, an open mind, incredible stamina and experience at rapidly loading cameras and firearms under hectic conditions…. Smokers okay, no hard drugs….

  “I’m thirty-five, keep myself in reasonable shape. A spiritual army of one. No hangups that I’m comfortable talking about. Hobbies: genealogy, first editions, conch-blowing, my prize poinsettias, celestial navigation for the car, warning the populace about the impending social collapse. Scotch: Dewar’s.

  “Turn-ons: women who use big words, women who wear glasses, women who work in libraries and state forests, women who perform in theme park marine mammal shows, bedroom role-playing involving the first territorial congress.

  “Turn-offs: women who react to big words like somebody cut the cheese, women who change the color of their hair, women who change the size of their breasts, women who want to change you, women who know the names of MTV personalities, women who go to bars in groups complaining about men while hoping to be approached by them.

  “Turn-ons: growth-management plans, no-wake zones, the annual return of the white pelican, the tangy scent of the orange blossom, Spanish doubloons, Saltillo tiles, Marjory Stoneman Douglas.

  “Turn-offs: the unexamined life, deep-well injection, people who call radio shows and say ‘Mega dittos,’ politicians who pretend to like NASCAR for votes, stupid Floridian jokes, stupid Floridians…”