Tim Dorsey Collection #1

by Dorsey, Tim

  “Sure,” said Pimento. He looked down at the puppet. “But I think you fucked up Charlie McCarthy there dragging him through all those plates of beef Wellington.”

  “All I need are some socks.”

  “You got it!”

  Escrow awoke from a sound sleep when Pimento and Babs came in the room and turned on the lights.

  “What’s going on?”

  “You wanted to go see that late movie at the all-night theater.”

  “What theater?”

  “Am-scray!”

  The next thing Escrow knew, he had been shoved out into the hall in his bare feet and his Watergate pajamas. He turned around and took a step back toward the room, but a pair of shoes came flying out the door, and it slammed shut.

  For the next half hour, they sat up in bed, Babs entertaining Pimento with a sock on each hand, cocking her head side to side as a different character spoke. Ten minutes later, the lights were out and there was a pile of clothes on the floor. Pimento was sliding toward the foot of the bed.

  He was greeted by Howdy Doody.

  And he liked it.

  It was Pimento’s secret fantasy to talk dirty politics in bed.

  “…And then two members of the Hillsborough Country Commission were indicted!” Pimento told Howdy Doody.

  “Were they bad boys?” asked Howdy.

  “Oh, they were very, very baaaaad!”

  On the other side of the wall, Marlon began losing his virility.

  “What’s wrong, baby?” asked Elizabeth.

  “I don’t know,” said Marlon. “I thought I heard a voice…. Naw. Can’t be.”

  “…AND then the judge threw out Xavier Suárez’s victory in the Miami mayoral race.”

  “Tell Howdy all about it.”

  “Oh, he was very, very baaaaad….”

  “THERE’S that voice again!” said Marlon. “But there’s no way…I’m starting to have sonic hallucinations. I think I have some kind of permanent sexual hang-up.”

  “We need some music to get your mind off it.” Elizabeth bounced out of bed, and Marlon watched her pert silhouette move across the room in the half-light. She flicked on the stereo under the TV set and tuned it until she found a station she liked.

  “Perfect,” she said.

  “Black Sabbath?” asked Marlon.

  “Back in the seventies I could fuck all night to Sabbath.”

  Marlon was simultaneously aroused and frightened as Elizabeth ran back to the bed with bounding steps like she was making the runway approach to a vaulting horse. He sank back in the pillows with a startled look on his face, and Elizabeth growled as she pounced.

  32

  THE NEXT MORNING there was a knock at Marlon’s door. He opened it, and his jaw fell.

  “Who is it, Marlon?” Elizabeth called from the bathroom.

  It was Babs.

  “I’m sorry to break this to you,” she said, twirling her hair with a finger, “but I’m going to have to call off our engagement. I’m in love with someone else…. Well, see you around.” And she skittered away.

  Marlon closed the door with his mouth still open.

  “Who was that?” asked Elizabeth, coming out of the bathroom rubbing her hair with a towel.

  Marlon threw his arms up in triumph. “Yaaaahhhhooooo!!!!!!”

  Everyone had agreed to meet for breakfast in the hotel restaurant. Escrow and Jenny arrived first and got a table by the window. A paddleboat steamed up the Intracoastal. A hundred-foot yacht from Rome fueled at the marina.

  By the time Marlon and Elizabeth arrived, there was a small line waiting to get autographs from Jenny.

  “You were the greatest!” “Where have you been?”

  They ordered waffles. Pimento arrived with a giggling Babs snuggled on his arm.

  Marlon’s mouth fell open again. “Him?”

  “Try not to make a scene,” said Babs. “I’m sure you’ll find someone nice yourself someday.”

  Elizabeth cracked up.

  “What can I say?” offered Pimento. “I’m soft for artists.”

  A crowd had gathered on the street, looking in the window and pointing at Jenny.

  A local TV crew entered the restaurant and started filming Jenny eating breakfast until Elizabeth stood up and put her hands on the lens.

  People from the network arrived. Suits, briefcases, contracts. A man with a ponytail and stubble pulled a chair up.

  “Jenny, I’m sure you know what’s going on in Miami this weekend. Normally this would be way too late to get you in, but after all, you’re Jenny Springs. We can bend the laws of physics.”

  Jenny looked down at the floor in embarrassment.

  “Please, leave her alone,” said Elizabeth. “Give her some privacy.”

  “Stay out of this, grandma!”

  Jenny spun around to the ponytail, and just like that she was a blast furnace.

  “I’ll d-d-d-d-do it!” she said and reached out and poked him in the eye with a stiff finger.

  “Ow! Jesus Christ!” He grabbed his face. “What they said about you is true!”

  The other suits helped him away from the table.

  “Look!” said Pimento, pointing at the restaurant’s entrance. “Ned made it!”

  Ned Coppola smiled and waved. He came over to the table wearing shorts and a double-stitched photographer’s vest with seventy-four Velcro pockets. He clapped his hands. “Let’s get this show on the road!”

  IT was a big day at Wacky Waldo’s Guns and Explosives on US 1 in Hallandale. Strings of colorful pennants flapped in the breeze over the parking lot. A large inflatable .44 Magnum was tethered to the roof. A dancing chicken served hot dogs.

  The parking lot was jammed. A red Ferrari with a vanity tag backed out as a rented yellow Mustang pulled up. The driver wore a Miami Heat jacket.

  Inside, low-grade swimsuit models circulated with trays of bacon-wrapped Cheetos and champagne flutes of Coors and Busch. It was elbow-to-elbow at the glass display cases. People in trench coats, hunting jackets, rubber waders, Top Gun jumpsuits, bomb-disposal armor and a T-shirt: 3RD ANNUAL MIAMI ARMAGEDDON PAINT-BALL DEATH MATCH AND BAKE-OFF.

  A thin young woman from Brazil was at the counter examining the sights of a Tango-51 just out of the crate. She dry-fired it.

  “Music to my ears,” said the salesman.

  The woman shook her head in disagreement. Something was off. She calmly but swiftly disassembled the rifle. She located a small spring and stretched it to restore the memory, then reassembled and dry-fired again in under two minutes.

  The adroit demonstration caught the attention of several customers. A trench coat nudged a Top Gun. “That just gave me a woody.”

  The woman was satisfied with the new sound. She paid with consecutive hundreds, never saying a word. She left the store and placed the rifle in the trunk of her rented yellow Mustang. The Mustang pulled out of its parking slot, and a 1931 baby-blue Stutz Bearcat roadster pulled in. The driver stepped out wearing a long scarf and a monocle.

  Von Zeppelin went inside and approached a salesman. “I’d like to see something in a long-range sniper rifle, maybe a Tango-51. And I’d like to get an unassuming travel case for it—something I can sneak into a place with a lot of people.”

  “No problem,” said the salesman, taking a rifle off the wall. He handed it to Helmut and smiled. “Must be something big planned. I’ve already sold two today.”

  THE Orange Crush was in the high-occupancy lane on I-95 when they first glimpsed the skyline.

  “Miami!” yelled Pimento, pointing out the windshield. “I love driving into this city. I get all goose-bumpy!”

  Marlon passed the Palmetto Expressway and kept going, deeper. The traffic became thick and Darwinian. Unlike northerners, who learn to drive on ice, Miamians have no genetic familiarity with surface traction. There had been a light rain, and cars sat crunched into the median’s retaining wall every few hundred yards. The skyline grew closer.

  “There’s the Ce
ntrust Building!” said Pimento.

  The Orange Crush kept on going, all the way to the crumbling spaghetti interchange at exit 5, where Marlon took the Venetian Causeway to Miami Beach. They turned onto Meridian Avenue.

  “What’s that?” asked Escrow, pointing at the top of a giant green hand sticking up out of the palm trees.

  “That’s where we’re going,” said Marlon. “Pimento told me about it.”

  They pulled over at Dade Boulevard and filed out of the RV into the hot, quiet afternoon. They started walking, and the hand grew larger. It was a big oxidized-bronze sculpture, the centerpiece of the Holocaust Memorial. They stopped and looked at it across a still pool. Escrow was a little restless, checking his watch, but he knew it was a place to show manners. Then they went around the back to the memorial wall, to all the photos and the names and the sculptures of the children, and even Escrow felt like he was having trouble getting enough air.

  Marlon looked at him at one point. “Hey Escrow, are you about to cry?”

  “Oh no, no, no. I…have something in my eye.”

  They got back in the Orange Crush and nobody felt much like talking right away as they headed across town.

  Another ten minutes, another universe. Ned stuck his camera out the window as they entered Little Havana and turned onto Calle Ocho.

  The Orange Crush pulled over and they called a cab. Pimento and Babs had decided it would be best if she went back to Tallahassee until the campaign was over. Pimento promised that he wouldn’t wait a second longer before rushing back for another puppet show. Until then: “Where I’m going, you can’t be any part of.”

  “My hero,” she said, waving out the window as her cab pulled away.

  Ned Coppola ordered an espresso at a lunch window, and Pimento joined him. Marlon ate yellow rice and bean soup at an outdoor table, next to a pair of old Cuban men playing dominos. Ned pointed his camera at a building with a religious mural of Elián and dolphins. He pulled a second camera from a shoulder bag and handed it to Pimento, and they both began filming Marlon from artsy angles. Marlon had finished his food, so Ned told him to imagine the best meal in his life and pretend to eat.

  “Stop fooling around!” Escrow yelled from the doorway of the Winnebago. He pointed at his clipboard. “All this filming is making us fall behind schedule.”

  “Tension on the campaign trail!” said Ned. “I’m getting it all!”

  They drove through residential neighborhoods until all the homes began to have the same exquisite orange barrel-tile roofs and tropical landscaping. Even the modest ones had killer yards of coconut palms and bougainvillea. Lots of old stucco and Spanish flourishes.

  “Where are we?” asked Ned, half out the window with a camera.

  “The Gables,” said Escrow. “We have a book signing at noon. It’s biggie.”

  “Gotcha,” said Ned. “I’ll reload.”

  They turned the corner a block off the Miracle Mile, and it was bedlam. A line of people with books snaked around the historic building. Police held back protesters across the street.

  Marlon parked at the curb and jumped down.

  “A pleasure to meet you,” said the store’s owner. “You’re all set up inside.”

  Marlon sat at a table and began signing again.

  An old man in a guayabera crawled under the police barricade and charged into the store. “I can’t believe what you wrote about the Cubans!” The cops jumped him and dragged him out.

  Marlon grabbed Escrow. “What did I write about the Cubans!”

  “I think I forgot to feed the meter.”

  NEXT UP: Liberty City, then Overtown, a couple of the most blighted and dangerous neighborhoods in the nation. The rare times politicians visited was after riots andbefore elections. Marlon told the media he was going to one church—then went to another instead. He remembered the tactics of the Rolling Stones security and sent the Orange Crush out as a decoy.

  A limo pulled up in front of a small, eighty-year-old clapboard Baptist church. Marlon went inside with Ned and Pimento filming all the way; Escrow stayed behind and hid in the limo.

  Marlon addressed the congregation and spoke of compassion and unity. The residents had heard it all before, but they listened anyway. Soon Marlon was talking about his admiration for the civil rights movement. He knew all the references. The Sixteenth Street church bombing, Andrew Young and Julian Bond, the earthen dam in Mississippi, SNCC, Malcolm, Stokely. The Lorraine Motel. He finally moved them by quoting at length from “Letter from Birmingham jail.” It wasn’t the sort of thing you could fake with last-second cramming.

  Marlon was still shaking hands with the congregation when he and the minister opened the front door of the church. Outside, a mob was rocking the limo back and forth up off its wheels.

  The crowd was dozens deep—no way for Marlon and the preacher to reach the car. They overheard conversations in the back of the crowd. Some white guy in the limo had been playing John Philip Sousa too loudly on the stereo.

  A gold Cadillac pulled up to the curb across the street, and the Overtown Posse got out. Word swept the crowd, which hushed and parted. The posse walked through them and up the church steps, got Marlon and escorted him back to the limo.

  Two of the posse got in the limo with Marlon, and the other two said they’d follow in the Caddy until they were safely away.

  Marlon, Ned and Escrow crowded into the backseat. Pimento sat with the two Overtowns on the facing seat and exchanged complex handshakes. The Overtowns noticed Escrow, curled and shaking in the corner. “What’s with him?”

  “He’s keepin’ it real,” said Pimento.

  They pulled up in front of the Miami Arena on Biscayne Boulevard, and Marlon thanked them and shook hands all around.

  33

  AT FOUR P.M., TV sets across the nation began receiving a live feed from the sold-out Miami Arena.

  “Good afternoon, this is Dick Enberg, and NBC Sports is proud to welcome our home viewers to what promises to be an incredible afternoon of women’s tennis. This is just the first year of the Miami Cup, but what unbelievable stories we’ve seen so far.”

  “That’s right, Dick,” said Chris Evert, “but the one story everybody’s talking about is the surprising reappearance of Jenny Springs. She literally came out of nowhere.”

  “The real story is how blind the linesmen are!” said John McEnroe. “I could make those calls from up here wearing a scuba mask!”

  “Jenny easily disposed of her early opponents in an impressing string of six-love matches,” said Chris.

  “But today’s match won’t be anywhere near as easy,” said Dick. “Jenny faces number-one seed Tanya Svenson, the gritty sixteen-year-old wunderkind from Boca Raton, Florida.”

  “Both are products of Nick Boleterri’s tennis academy over in Bradenton,” said Chris. “But the crucial difference is age. Tanya is at the height of her conditioning, but Jenny hasn’t played or even been heard from since she was a fourteen-year-old phenom. That was eight years ago. Now she’s twenty-two, and in tennis that’s almost over the hill.”

  “You should know,” said McEnroe.

  The TV camera panned across the front-row VIP section. Jack Nicholson, Spike Lee, Marlon Conrad. A cheer went up when Jenny walked onto the court carrying her tennis bag. She wore a cute skirt with thigh-length bicycle pants underneath.

  “And there’s Tanya Svenson,” Enberg said as Jenny’s opponent emerged from the opposite side of the court in pigtails.

  “Size is another factor,” said Chris. “Jenny is almost six feet and now carrying a hundred and forty pounds. But Tanya is a tiny five-four, and she should be all over the court like a hummingbird. Then there’s the mental game. Can Jenny handle the intense media onslaught she’s been subjected to all week?”

  McEnroe yawned. “Bor-ing!”

  “Tanya hasn’t been without her distractions, either,” said Enberg. “Her controversial father-coach has been arrested three different times this week, the latest in a
drunken brawl at a Fort Lauderdale sex club…”

  “…But he made bail and is with us here today to cheer for his little girl.”

  The camera zoomed in on Tanya’s father at courtside, shirtless with orange and blue body paint, wearing a gorilla mask and sloshing a jumbo mug of beer. “Wooooooooo! We’re number one! Woooooooo!”

  The two players met at midcourt to shake hands. Tanya beamed her cutest Shirley Temple smile for the camera. Then she turned and smirked at Jenny. Tanya had caught a glimpse of her getting dressed in the locker room. “What’s with the bicycle pants, Scar Legs?”

  That set the tone.

  The first few games were coated with a film of latent violence. Instead of placing shots away, many were hit full force right at the opponent. Both players held service and Tanya won the set on the tiebreaker.

  “The Jenny Springs story has had people buzzing all week,” said Enberg. “Even before she disappeared, it was quite a saga.”

  “That’s right, Dick. Her whole life has been shrouded in secrecy. All we know was that she was adopted by a foster family in Sarasota shortly before she turned pro and was touted as the next me,” said Evert. “Everything before that has been tightly guarded. State law prohibits the release of any information about children placed in protective custody.”

  “There were a few ugly rumors,” said Enberg, “but her family maintained a wall of silence. Not a shred about her before she turned up on the tour. Then a few months later she disappeared without a trace, adding another chapter to the deepening mystery.”

  “I’ll tell you what’s a mystery,” said McEnroe. “Seven bucks for a beer!”

  “Hey! Keep that away from the control panel!”

  The second set started like the first ended, both women tough on service. Tanya was more mobile, but Jenny had the strength, and they were wearing each other down. Tanya would stagger Jenny with baseline shots, and Jenny would come back with a powerful slicing forehand that Tanya couldn’t do anything with but hit into the net. They were drenched in sweat and snarling. Even the home audience could detect the growing venom. Each broke service in the third and fourth games. It took on a boxing flavor, two heavyweights beating each other stupid in the late rounds.