by Dorsey, Tim
Marlon took a seat at a table in the back of the store and was soon signing books at a furious pace. The people were gracious, requesting a variety of inscriptions to themselves, relatives, friends and pets.
“Make it out to ‘Debby, the hottest account representative I’ve ever laid my eyes on.’”
The line went on forever. People smiled and shook his hand and heaped on the compliments. A man in a camo hunting cap handed Marlon a book. His T-shirt read FLORIDA MILITIA JAMBOREE ’99. He patted Marlon on the back and winked. “Good to see you’re with us!”
Marlon looked up puzzled. “Oh, right. Sure thing.”
There was a commotion at the front of the store. An Orthodox rabbi had broken through the police line and burst in the doors. “I can’t believe what you wrote about the Holocaust!” The police caught him from behind and wrestled him back outside.
Marlon grabbed Escrow by the arm. “What did I write about the Holocaust?”
“I’m gonna get you some more pens,” said Escrow, pulling away. “You never know when you could run dry.”
TRAFFIC was insane as the Orange Crush rolled down Interstate 95 after the book signing. Not the volume. The people. Every fourth driver speeding and weaving like a maniac, darting between other cars with barely enough room, starting in the far left lane and cutting across three vehicles for the exit ramp. Ahead of them, Marlon saw a gun momentarily pointed out the window of a Camaro, a traffic gesture which, due to its frequency in Florida, is ignored.
Marlon took exit 51.
“Where are we going?” asked Escrow.
“West Palm airport. Have to pick up someone for Jenny.”
“That reminds me,” said Escrow. “You never told us about your day.”
And he wasn’t going to.
He had left Jenny in the Winnebago most of the morning but kept an eye on it through the motel window. At noon, he picked up a sack of fast food and knocked on the RV’s door. No answer. He went inside. She was still in the back, so he left the bag on a fold-down table.
Back in the motel room, he dialed the phone.
“Belvedere and Associates,” said the receptionist.
“Elizabeth Sinclair, please.”
Marlon was told she was no longer with the firm. “I’m not supposed to do this,” said the receptionist, and she gave him a new number.
Marlon dialed it.
“Sinclair and Associates. This is Elizabeth Sinclair.”
“Ms. Sinclair, this is Marlon Conrad. I’m in Vero. I’d like you to join the campaign.”
“Thank you very much, Mr. Conrad, but we’re completely booked with clients.” She was lying. She had only a couple of small local candidates and was wondering how she would pay the electric bill.
“Name your price. We really need help.”
“I appreciate it, but I’m sorry…” She started to hang up.
“Look, I know how I used to be. This isn’t like that. I have an emergency and I don’t know who to talk to.”
Marlon told her about Jenny.
“This is out of my league,” he said. “You’re the only mature person I know.”
“You don’t even know me.”
“There are five Learjets at the Tallahassee airport and five corporations just drooling to give me one. I’ve called ahead and said you’re our top campaign adviser. They’ll do anything you say….”
“I don’t know.”
“Please do this and I’ll never bother you again. We’ll pick you up at West Palm International.”
A Learjet from Big Pharmaceutical landed after dark at the executive hangars in West Palm Beach. It had a giant gelcap on the tail.
Elizabeth Sinclair stood at the top of the stairs and looked around for her ride, but all she saw was this goofy Winnebago. Then she saw Marlon, Escrow and Pimento get out. They were all in shorts and rumpled T-shirts. Escrow’s shirt had a pointillist rendering of Newt Gingrich’s face above a motto: GO NEGATIVE EARLY!
God, she thought, is it too late to go back?
Marlon ran to the bottom of the stairs. “Thanks for coming…. She’s in the Orange Crush.”
“In the what?” asked Elizabeth, climbing in the back of the RV. Marlon drove off the runway and picked up Southern Boulevard.
Fifteen minutes later, Elizabeth came up front and flipped open a cell phone. She interrupted a college friend at the Royal Poinciana Playhouse. It was an emergency. The friend left her date and climbed in her black Jag.
They met Sinclair’s friend, a world-class psychiatrist, at her Mediterranean home on the north end of Palm Beach, near the inlet. The Orange Crush was rousted twice by police in the swank neighborhood before it pulled through the twelve-foot box hedge that formed an arch over the driveway.
Sinclair introduced everyone, and then they left Jenny and the psychiatrist in the house and waited in the Winnebago, playing the Florida version of Monopoly.
The psychiatrist came out of the house two hours later as Escrow was putting hotels in the Everglades.
“Rory, can I talk to you a minute?” she asked Sinclair. They walked back to the porch.
Marlon and Pimento looked at each other. Rory?
“She’s traumatized,” said the psychiatrist. “She shouldn’t be going anywhere, but I can’t get her to cooperate. She says she’ll run away if I try to take her off that bus or whatever it is. She’s developed a dependence on those guys.”
“She is messed up.”
“Something happened back there on the road, but she won’t say what. I’ve written a prescription in case she becomes agitated. You’ll have to keep the bottle—she’s in no condition to self-medicate.”
“Hold on. I’m not riding with those guys!”
Her friend gave her The Look.
Marlon watched the two old college buddies hugging in the driveway, and Sinclair got back in the Winnebago. The governor looked at her as she settled in the passenger seat. “Rory?”
“Nobody calls me that!”
As the psychiatrist watched the Winnebago pull out through the shrubbery arch, she thought she could hear the men inside chanting something.
“Ro-ry! Ro-ry! Ro-ry!…”
25
DETECTIVE MAHONEY’S WIFE hadn’t taken him back, and he was paying by the week at the Gulfstream Inn on Biscayne Boulevard.
The Gulfstream had three stories, and Mahoney was on the second. The first was taken up by the Sailfish Diner, a smoky short-order grill favored by cops and cabbies on the lobster shift, and the staircase was next to the cash register. On the wrong side of the water from Miami Beach, the Gulfstream was one of the few art deco holdovers that hadn’t been renovated. It had a white, curved, streamlined facade with window AC units and rust streaks. There were clusters of filthy glass blocks and a buzzing green GULFSTREAM neon sign. The F flickered.
Mahoney’s room was in back, with a view of the alley. It was a tiny dump, but he made himself at home as best he could. He brought a black-and-white TV, a portable hi-fi record player and a stack of jazz records on the old Verve label. He put a photo of Broderick Crawford on the dresser.
Mahoney sat at the modest writing desk watching TV in a white tank top. Also on the desk was an open can of Vienna sausages and a large jar of Mr. Mustard with a butter knife sticking out. There was a glass of straight bourbon, no ice. He lit a Chesterfield and set it in a plaid beanbag ashtray.
The TV showed a huge wave rolling toward a beach, and the theme music to Hawaii Five-O came on. Mahoney smiled for the first time all day.
“McGarrett, Five-O!” Jack Lord barked into a phone. Mahoney grabbed a case file off the bed and opened it in his lap.
Mahoney had been obsessed with the case for years. He studied the smiling mug shot for the thousandth time and read the name on the fingerprint card: Serge A. Storms. It was the biggest fugitive case in Florida that nobody had ever heard of. Serge was a suspect in several murder cases, including two at the 1997 World Series in Miami. Mahoney had once tracked him down to a r
ental home on Triggerfish Lane in Tampa, and there had been a chase and a showdown. Serge escaped.
Mahoney had gotten so close to the case that he’d developed a grudging admiration for the guy. Serge was a regular encyclopedia of Floridiana. It was one of the many ways he was a genius and insane at the same time. Storms traveled in low-life circles, and his victims were mostly dirtballs, scam artists and predators. The people started rooting for him. Everywhere Mahoney went looking for witnesses, he found people who revered Serge like a folk hero, a tropical D.B. Cooper. At one point, Mahoney began getting postcards from the guy. He expected the usual taunts a detective receives when a criminal learns he’s on the trail. Instead, he got travel tips and a suggested reading list. Mahoney checked all the books out of the library, in case there were any clues. But all he found was a bunch of novels that were now on his all-time favorites list. Willeford, MacDonald, Buchanan, Garcia-Aguilera—Florida crime fiction supreme. Right after he arrested the guy, he was going to thank him and borrow some books.
Hawaii Five-O ended and the news came on. Mahoney put down the file and adjusted the antenna. The first story was about the string of bodies turning up with a bunch of pithy slogans written on them with Magic Markers.
The anchorman dubbed them the Bumper Sticker Murders.
“Great,” said Mahoney. “Here come the copycats.”
Sure enough, over the next few days stiffs would start turning up all over the state with clichés scribbled in Magic Marker. A road rage victim in Jacksonville: FORGET ABOUT WORLD PEACE…VISUALIZE USING YOUR TURN SIGNAL! A hooker in Pensacola: SEX IS LIKE PIZZA. WHEN IT’S GOOD, IT’S REALLY GOOD. WHEN IT’S BAD, IT’S STILL PRETTY GOOD. A psychiatrist strangled by a patient in Sarasota: DOES THE NAME PAVLOV RING A BELL?
Mahoney went over to the window. He cranked it open and stuck his head out into the alley. Down the north end of the street he had a glimpse of the skyscrapers in the Miami skyline. His new sidekick, a stray cat he’d named Danno, jumped up on the sill, and Mahoney gave him a Vienna sausage.
Mahoney stared down the alley at the city lights and petted the cat.
“Book ’em, Danno!”
THE roadways were getting cluttered. Political posters and signs on sticks everywhere—roadsides, front yards, tacked on utility polls, hanging from overpasses.
The marketing techniques were getting refined. There had been a trend away from conventional political consultants and the traditional campaign philosophy of “getting our message out to the people.” Surveys showed the people were allergic to messages and refused to listen, even if the president was on TV saying the water supply was radioactive and giant spiders were running the government.
The strategy shifted from “the message” to brand recognition after it was learned that most campaigns were decided during the selection of color scheme, typeface and logo. Campaigns began aggressively headhunting at Coca-Cola and Procter & Gamble. They spent heavily on focus groups and test markets. Conference rooms full of average citizens ate potato chips and pickle spears while campaign workers auditioned fonts and swatches.
It was discovered that simple equaled good. A maximum of two colors, and icons less complicated than a trapezoid. Also gone were the slogans. Now just one word, usually nonsense, that bypassed the conscious and treble-hooked the brain stem. Candidates saw their polls rocket.
Gomer Tatum and Jackie Monroeville were a day behind Marlon, driving down US 1 in a limo. They had just entered Indian River County. Tatum stared at the political picket fence in the median.
A green-and-white sign. Garamond typeface. A starfish. JACKSON FOR MAYOR! SHAZAM!
A blue-and-yellow sign. News Gothic type. A musical note (b flat). VOTE O’MALLEY! FARFEGNÜGEN!
A red-and-black sign. Bodoni sans serif. Bowling pin. REELECT WILLIAMS! BIBBIDY-BOP!
Between debates, Tatum was on a frenetic schedule of rubber-chicken gigs and impromptu drop-ins.
They crossed the Vero Beach city limits.
“What’s this coming up?” said Jackie. “Stop here!”
Tatum’s driver pulled into the parking lot of Vista Isles East, and Gomer got out with a fat, cheerful expression. The residents recognized the magnetic TATUM signs on the door, and the limo was pelted with rotten fruit and smooth landscaping stones.
“Unfriendlies!” yelled Tatum. He dove back in the limo as a fetid eggplant splattered on the tinted window.
“LOOK at you!” Jackie shouted at Tatum in the backseat of the stretch, smacking him in the gut. “No wonder they’re throwing produce! We need to bad-ass your image!”
They continued down the coast on A1A. Jackie saw a sign. JENSEN BEACH DEAD SLEDS. “Stop here!”
The driver pulled into a dusty parking lot, and Tatum got out.
Two men emerged from a dilapidated aluminum building, a four-hundred-pound biker named Tiny and a rail-thin speed freak named Fats.
“Hi, fellas—”
They grabbed Tatum by the collar and lifted him off his feet, pinning him against the side of the limo.
The chauffeur turned back to Jackie. “Want me to call the police?”
“I’ll handle this,” she said, quickly changing into leather hot pants. “These are my people.”
The bikers were pushing a lug wrench up Tatum’s nose when Jackie’s door opened. Two slender, taut legs swung out of the limo. A pair of white cowboy boots settled in the dust. Jackie stood up in her shorts and a fringed suede vest, and she put her hands defiantly on her hips.
“Which one of you shit-kickers is man enough to strap me on a hog?”
26
BY LATE OCTOBER, the expansion Florida Felons football team had carefully assembled a ten-game losing skid.
During the third quarter of a forty-point ambush by the Redskins, Helmut von Zeppelin’s skybox was gutted by a carbide-tipped firebomb that shattered the shatterproof window and set the polar bear rug ablaze.
For security reasons, Helmut had to view the next game through binoculars from a greater distance. He bought one of Goodyear’s backup blimps, and von Zeppelin watched his team from a zeppelin.
“They can’t touch me up here!” Helmut declared during halftime of a fifty-point drubbing from the Saints, a moment before a rifle shot pierced the dirigible’s skin near the tail.
The pilot heard a hissing sound and checked his gauges.
“I have to take her down.”
“We’ll miss the second half!”
“Sir, I think they’re shooting at us.”
“Amazing,” said Helmut, standing behind the pilot with his binoculars. “What kind of gun can reach us way up here?”
“Maybe a Tac-Ops Tango-51.”
“What’s that?”
“Sniper rifle.”
Helmut leaned with an elbow against the back of the pilot chair and shook his head in respect. “I’ll have to get me one of those.”
The pilot struggled with the controls, but he couldn’t hold the yaw. He checked the gauges again. The blimp had begun to rotate clockwise.
“Hey,” said Helmut. “This isn’t the way back to the airfield.”
“We’re not going to the airfield,” said the pilot, letting go of the steering yoke. “The puncture must be spewing air sideways. Too much torque. I’ve lost attitude control.”
“What now?” asked Helmut.
“Ride it out—nothing else we can do.”
“How long till we’re down?”
“About a half hour.”
“Are we going to crash?”
“Yes.”
“Will we be killed?”
“Possibly.”
Helmut looked out the window. “Hey—I can see my house!”
The impotent blimp swiveled slowly in the breeze across the central Florida landscape as it lost altitude. News vans began to converge from eight counties, forming a convoy behind the blimp’s shadow in the road.
A phone rang in the blimp. Helmut answered. It was from New Jersey.
“You’ll get
your thirty million!” shouted von Zeppelin. “It’s hit some kind of political pothole!”
At 4:37 P.M., a bank of fail-safe computers tripped a sequence of alarms, and corporate jets were scrambled as the blimp crossed into Disney World airspace.
The news vans stacked up at the entrance to buy tickets, then raced to Pleasure Island. A small Japanese child pointed at the sky. Everyone looked up. A giant vulcanized air bladder came flatulating across the treetops in a slow spin.
“You have to give me more time!” Helmut told New Jersey on the phone. “These politicians are a pain in the—”
Helmut heard a low-syllable-count death threat.
“You don’t intimidate me!” yelled Helmut. “I was threatening people when you were—”
The phone call was cut off as the blimp crashed into the side of Planet Hollywood, and Helmut was saved when he was thrown through the ruptured side of the cabin and into a Barcalounger once owned by George Gobel.
In the parking lot, Florida Cable News correspondent Blaine Crease was weeping on live TV.
“The humanity! The humanity!”
27
IN THE HIGH-RISE offices of the Palm Beach Daily Intelligencer-Picayune, overlooking fabulous Lake Worth, the newspaper’s editorial board heard a rumbling sound. It grew to a thundering racket, and they all ran to the window.
Down in the parking lot was the biggest Harley they’d ever seen. The rider set the kickstand and climbed off. A second, larger rider crawled out of a sidecar. They went in the building.
The editorial board turned and watched the elevator and waited.
The doors opened and out stepped Gomer Tatum, head to toe in leather, with a little Prussian helmet perched atop his bulbous head. The editorial board didn’t give a shit. They craned their necks to see around him. Tatum finally moved and Jackie stepped out of the elevator, wearing her cowboy boots and hot pants again. Oh, and she still had her leather riding gloves on. The editorial board liked that.
Tatum shook hands and walked to the front of the boardroom, and Jackie took a seat by the window, propping her feet up on the sill and cracking her knuckles inside the gloves.