Tropic of Stupid

by Tim Dorsey

  “Dad, it isn’t about the money. You wouldn’t know how much my work means to me because you don’t know anything about me.”

  “Can you do me a favor and hold tight and ride this out?”

  Click.

  Sparrow had that wind-knocked-out-of-him feeling in his gut. From Grayson, no less. What an oaf. The attorneys had always written the campaign checks with a smile, then secretly wondered how such idiotic clowns could fool the public. And now Sparrow wondered even more how one of them was getting the best of him.

  The conference room door opened. “Sorry to intrude,” said Nash. “But we have to get going if we want to make it.”

  The bank of microphones was waiting on the courthouse steps.

  “Nathan, are you all right?” asked Reinhold. “You seem a bit lost.”

  “I’m fine.”

  “You can always sit this one out,” said Nash.

  “Let’s just get it over with.”

  A cell phone rang. Three men checked pockets.

  “That’s mine,” said Sparrow. Another number he didn’t recognize in the display. “Hello?”

  “Is this Mr. Sparrow? Nathan Sparrow?”

  “Yes, who’s this?”

  “The Nathan Sparrow who graduated from Miami Jesuit?”

  “Yes, I told you! Now, who is this?”

  “Mr. Sparrow, I’m one of the school’s trustees.”

  “Oh, you’re from Jesuit,” said Sparrow. “Sorry for my tone, but it’s been one of those days. What can I do for you?”

  “I’m sure you remember Father Al.”

  “This is about Father Al?” The attorney’s mood lifted. “How is he?”

  “Mr. Sparrow, I’m afraid I don’t have good news . . .”

  Moments later, the TV lights came on. “Guys,” said Sparrow, “I have to go.”

  And he ran down the courthouse steps.

  Chapter 20

  Fort Myers

  Serge sped through the city, facing the passenger in the back seat. “Hey, Spaceman, I got an idea. Know what we should do?”

  “Watch the road?”

  “Naw, I know what I’m doing. Anyway, smile!”

  “What?”

  Click. “I just had to get a photo of the special day I got to meet the Spaceman,” said Serge. “Now if you lean forward, I can take a selfie of the two of us.”

  “Watch out for that truck!”

  “Would that make you happy? I’ll turn around.” Serge settled back normally into the driver’s seat. “There, another good deed from the Sermon on the Mount. I’ll even grip the wheel at the approved ten and two o’clock positions. See? Because that’s my recent epiphany on the meaning of life: I’m here to make you as happy as freaking possible. And that’s how I got this great idea of what we should do before we head across the state to that rib joint. You know what today is?”

  “Thursday?”

  “The first day of spring training! Florida’s Grapefruit League!” Serge slapped the dashboard. “Technically it’s still winter, but that’s another story, like what the hell is going on in Vermont? The only bigger tragedy of a state is Arizona, which stole a bunch of our spring training teams to play in their silly Cactus League, where fans get to watch their favorite players while having all the moisture sucked out of their eyeballs. But not the Grapefruit League! Humidity is our brand!”

  “The road?”

  “I saw that bus. Missed it with inches to spare. Anyway, I’m sure you’re well aware that the Red Sox play spring training in Fort Myers at a special field that is a mini replica of Fenway Park in Boston, Green Monster left field wall and all, except no Citgo sign. We just have to go!”

  “Actually, that is a good idea,” said Lee. “I’d like that.”

  Serge slapped the dashboard again. “Here to make you happy!” They drove past an economy motel, and Serge did a double take as they went by. Then glanced up in the rearview. “Mr. Lee, can you help me with something?”

  “As long as you keep your eyes on the road.”

  “Deal.” Serge focused ahead like a laser, chugging a jumbo travel mug of coffee. “Can you get the word out to the Sox Nation, and the whole baseball world for that matter?”

  “What are you talking about?”

  Serge hung his head. “It’s the Curse of Spring Training.”

  “Curse?” said Lee. “Like the Sox and the Bambino, or the Cubs and the billy goat?”

  “No, not the game,” said Serge. “Fan safety. It’s about our motels.”

  “What about them?”

  “Wellllllll, here’s the problem: Many fine fans of the game come down here for a couple weeks to enjoy these hallowed rites of spring-ish winter. And through no fault of their own, they have limited funds and stay at a budget motel.”

  “Is there a point you’re going toward?” asked Lee.

  “There’s a precise science to budget motels, and I hold an endowed chair. I’m a professor of dive accommodations,” said Serge. “And I pity the tourist who comes down here and not only isn’t a student of budget motels, but doesn’t even know the science exists.”

  “Uh, okay.”

  “The problem is that in Florida we suffer from an embarrassment of riches.” Serge swerved to miss a dump truck. “Up north, it’s painfully obvious what cheap joints not to stay in: ‘Yep, that’s a place where I’ll be robbed with a bowie knife in the middle of the night by the prison escapees staying in the next room.’ But down here in Florida, spring training fans arrive and all they see is sun and palm trees, and think a motel is paradise without noticing the prison escapees hiding behind the azaleas.”

  “I’ll pass that along,” said Lee.

  “And by ‘Curse of Spring Training,’ I don’t mean to put a pox on Florida’s magnificent role in the national pastime. I just coined the phrase as a convenient catch-all, but it’s the whole tourism industry. Whether it’s baseball or theme parks or beaches, wherever you find a high concentration of visitors trying to stretch their vacation dollar, there’s a whole cast of bad actors conducting surveillance. Sometimes they don’t even wait for visitors to return to their rooms. At one theme park—and I won’t mention it by name, but you’d recognize it—two miscreants climbed the fence and robbed a couple at gunpoint at a souvenir kiosk. The park reacted by topping the fences with spools of razor wire, but local officials made them take it down because they said it projected the wrong image.”

  “That’s really true?”

  “I’m dead serious, with the emphasis on dead,” said Serge. “One baseball fan came down a few years ago and picked the wrong place and got targeted by crack addicts who befriended him, and . . . it didn’t end well. A number of tourists have flown down here in coach, and flown back in a box in the belly of the plane.”

  “Jesus,” said Lee. “It’s that bad?”

  Serge nodded hard. “I can handle it because of my trademark tactics of packing a special safety set of bum clothes: the rattiest, stained, torn stuff you can find to make you the least tempting person to rob. In my case, that’s a redundant layer of safety because I’m already the least likely to get robbed, for factors that I’m not at liberty to reveal. Sorry . . . But tourists, hoo-wee! There’s a whole industry of criminals waiting by airport exits to follow rental cars, or they specifically look for baseball team pennants hanging in budget motel windows near spring training parks.”

  “I thought we were on the way to the game,” said Lee.

  “We are.”

  “Then why are you circling the block around this motel?”

  “Just feel like it.” Serge grew more distracted as he observed a Red Sox flag in a window. “Always looking for a future bargain . . . Anyway, that’s why I need you to go back to Vermont or whatever ridiculousness and tell the people.”

  “Tell them what precisely?”

  “Because of our deceptive splendor, they must be extra discerning when selecting their temporary abodes in the sun. There are safe budget places and unsafe ones. And
even the safe ones are unsafe, so they have to employ strategy. Like after dumping luggage in the room, move your car to the closest spot in view of the all-night front desk so it won’t be broken into.” Serge chugged the travel mug dry. “I was at one of the safest motels I knew and went out to move my car and ended up on the TV show Cops. Totally true. Walked out the door with my keys and saw all these cats at the corner of the building in black helmets and Kevlar vests, German shepherds and assault rifles. As soon as I cleared the sidewalk, the SWAT team went flying by! Half of them took up a semi-circular armed perimeter with guns drawn toward the door of this one room, using guests’ parked vehicles as shields—and by the way, I don’t think they asked permission—and suddenly this super-bright light comes on right behind me and some guy’s yelling, ‘Get out of the way! Get the hell out of the way!’ . . . Guess who? Right, the film crew from Cops. I’ve always been in awe of how the camera guy carrying all that heavy equipment can run so fast and keep up with the chase, and this guy was now sprinting straight for me like a linebacker, not stopping for anything, and I’m about to get creamed, so luckily I was able to high-step it backward just in time and he goes flying by, too. But here’s the best part! They were knocking down the motel door with the battering ram just when I blocked the shot, so they couldn’t edit me out, and I made the show! Always wanted to be on an episode but for the right reasons. If you’re ever watching it and hear the camera guy yelling, and see some joker in a tropical shirt flailing to get out of the way, that’s my fifteen seconds of fame.” Serge turned around and grinned big.

  Lee pointed. “The road.”

  “Right. Ten and two o’clock.”

  Coleman belched. “What happened?”

  “To what?” said Serge.

  “The show Cops.”

  “I just told you.”

  “No,” said Coleman, “what the police were doing.”

  “Oh, after knocking down the door, they dragged out two handcuffed dudes not wearing shirts.” Serge nodded. “That’s a rule on that show: The guilty guys are the ones not wearing shirts. So I’m standing in the parking lot watching the patrol cars come pouring in with lights flashing, and they load the guys into the back seat, and all that excitement made me famished, and I decided to celebrate my new stardom by going to the Waffle House next door, which is like a zoning law down here that there has to be one within a certain radius of an economy motel. This particular joint was up on a little hill, positioned for a perfect view of all the action. And I’m trudging up the grass for the door, and I noticed that the place is packed, except nobody is sitting and eating. And I swear this part is also true: All the customers were lined up at the front windows, swaying back and forth in unison, singing ‘Bad boys, bad boys.’ That’s the beauty of our state! In Florida, Waffle Houses are like luxury sky boxes for the show Cops. Eat a sausage link, watch a live episode. And as soon as I went inside a few people said, ‘Hey, you just came from one of the rooms over there. What happened?’ And I said, ‘They grabbed the guys without the shirts.’ And they said, ‘Naturally.’”

  “Uh, Serge,” said Lee. “We’re still circling the same block.”

  “Sorry, derailed train of thought.” Serge slowed and pretended not to be inspecting the motel again. “Let’s get to that game!”

  Traffic thickened as they neared the park, and streams of faithful fans wearing red poured in from all directions. Serge pulled up to the curb near the ticket office, and turned around in his seat. “Listen, a last-minute business thing just came up, and I regretfully can’t make the game.”

  “We drove all the way here, and we’re not going inside?” said Lee.

  “Oh no, you and Coleman go on and enjoy yourselves,” said Serge. “I need to run an errand, and I’ll meet you right here after the ninth inning.”

  The pair got out, and Lee stared dubiously as Serge drove off . . .

  Chapter 21

  Miami

  A statue of Jesus with his arms spread stood in one corner. The Virgin Mary stood in another. Nathan Sparrow sat in a chair.

  “The funeral is tomorrow,” said a solemn prep school trustee. “Sorry for the short notice, but we had a large number of people we needed to locate. I’ll tell my secretary to provide you with the details.”

  “How—how did . . . ?”

  The trustee held up a hand. “In his sleep. Very peaceful.”

  Nathan nodded with his head down.

  The trustee formed a sympathetic smile and opened a desk drawer. “I didn’t realize how close you two were until we went through his effects in the chaplain’s office.”

  “What do you mean?” asked the lawyer.

  “We found an envelope with your name on the front. There was a note attached. In the event of his passing, we were supposed to give it to you.” He handed it across the desk. “It hasn’t been opened.”

  Sparrow tucked it inside his jacket. “Thank you.”

  “Sorry for your loss.”

  Nathan just nodded again and left.

  Nathan Sparrow’s walk-in closet was larger than most bedrooms. Rows of suits and blazers and pants and dress shirts for all occasions. Racks of silk ties, and shelves of Italian shoes.

  His funeral attire was in the back. He stopped and held the envelope in his hand. Still unopened. He set it on one of the shelves. He slid the hangers of several black suits before making his choice.

  Sparrow held out the suit and considered it for a moment. He decided to put it back. Then he went to the far end of the closet and pulled aside everything that had concealed something for decades. A well-worn brown corduroy jacket.

  He tried it on. Sleeves a little short, but it would do. He slid the letter in a pocket.

  The next day, the church was packed. Sparrow sat in the back row. When communion time came, the lawyer stayed seated. He didn’t think he should because he hadn’t been to confession since the last time with Father Al.

  The cemetery was also crowded. Father Al had touched a lot of lives. The graveside service began, and it wasn’t like the movies. No gloomy overcast sky threatening rain, and no bare trees with brown leaves on the cold ground. Instead, a hot sun shining down on coconut palms. Sparrow stood at a distance from the rest of the mourners. Didn’t know if he could hold it together.

  Eventually, it was quietly over, and the others left, dabbing eyes with handkerchiefs. Only cemetery workers. Sparrow had his privacy as he approached the recently dug hole. He pulled out an envelope and took a steadying breath before tearing it open.

  He began to read. He began to cry. He needed to sit on the ground in order to finish it. He returned it to a pocket in the corduroy jacket and cried some more. When the sobs subsided, he pulled out his cell phone. Not to make a call, but to check social media. He found the page he was looking for, and as he scrolled down, he found a photo of a child’s birthday party, just like in his law firm’s slick ads. The photo was one he’d never seen before, Boo-Boo blowing out three candles on a cake. Now Nathan began to cry again and smile at the same time . . .

  It was well after dark when he arrived home in Palm Beach. First he just walked around the outside of the house, slowly shifting his gaze across baby spotlights illuminating various tropical plants. He stared eternally into the deep end of the swimming pool before going inside. Sparrow didn’t realize his mouth was slightly parted in a daze, looking at the most expensive kitchen appliances, which much of the populace didn’t know existed. It went on like that, room after room, until finally he sat gently on the end of a bed. He pulled out the letter and read it again.

  Then Nathan got out his cell phone.

  The news broke hard and fast.

  All networks all the time. And not just Florida, but the national cable outfits as well.

  People gathered around TVs as a transcript scrolled up the screen and a shaky video recording played.

  The control of the U.S. Senate might hang in the balance, and everyone with a stake was on the phone. Some screamed that they want
ed their money back; others in damage control.

  It was all about the night of a big fundraising dinner in Palm Beach. News anchors kept referencing the Mitt Romney story from 2012, but that was a love-fest compared to this.

  The Senate campaign scrambled in disarray. How on earth could the recording have been leaked? That’s what Jack Grayson was yelling as he stomped back and forth in his Orlando headquarters. He stopped to berate staffers one by one. “It was your fault! . . . Your fault! . . . You’re a loser! . . . You’re fired! . . . Is everyone incompetent but me?” Until the campaign director arrived and hustled him into an office.

  Then it got worse. Grayson started drinking. He seized the director by the lapels. “How could you let this happen?”

  The director swatted his hands away. “Don’t you ever, ever touch me like that again!”

  “Okay, okay . . .” Grayson started pacing again and grabbed the blue-label bottle of Johnnie Walker. “I just can’t figure it out.”

  “Neither can I.”

  Grayson chugged a swig. “The security guard?”

  The director shook his head. “We stopped him and confiscated his phone.”

  “Who confiscated it?”

  “Sparrow—” The director cut himself off as recognition simultaneously hit them both.

  Grayson punched the air. “I’ll destroy Nate and his whole family! By the time I’m through with him, he’ll wish—”

  “Sir, that’s the kind of thinking that started all this,” said the director. “You just couldn’t help going after his daughter, and now we have this steaming pile. What we need to do now is forget about Sparrow and concentrate on getting out ahead of it . . .”

  Salvaging the campaign still seemed possible. That’s what various pundits were saying on TV. Grayson watched a flat-screen as his director surfed channels with a remote. “See? It’s not that bad. I’ll call some sympathetic commentators and start turning this around.”