The Riptide Ultra-Glide (14 page)

Chapter Thirteen

U.S. 1

T
he '76 Gran Torino sped away from Ralph's Stand Up Bar and cruised south from Jupiter, down through the most golf-rich terrain in the country, where top-flight courses take up as much real estate as the homes. Mirasol, Old Marsh, Turtle Creek, Frenchman's Creek, River Bend, Tequesta, Loxahatchee, and the granddaddy of them all, PGA National.

“I used to play golf,” said Serge. “It's a frightening game. Forget football or even NASCAR.” He whistled in awe. “Golf takes it to the brink.”

“That bad?”

“It's the mental component. They try to hush it up, but the game can destroy the strongest men. Every year, dozens of ugly psychotic breaks. Frustration builds over a lifetime until a tee shot lands in the water of a sadistic island hole, and then a hedge-fund manager hurls all his clubs like tomahawks at the other guys in plaid knickers before stripping off all his clothes and making ‘snow angels' in a sand trap, prompting a special unit from the pro shop to hustle him away through secret underground doors. Fortunately, I have the perfect emotional composition to excel at golf.”

“You don't seem the golf type,” said Coleman.

“That's what the other players said until they saw me in action.” Serge uncapped a thermos of coffee and chugged. “Let's face it, golf is a slow sport. Which isn't good for my constitution, so I tried to spice it up. First, since it's called a sport, I'd run all the time, sprinting up fairways, hurdling small water hazards, hitting a nine iron and racing the ball to the pin, until they asked me not to run. So I got a golf cart and hung out the side with my club, playing like polo, but they didn't dig that either. Finally I decided to aim for all the sand traps, because they're like beaches and blasting out of one is the most dramatic shot in golf, but I made it even more dramatic. Instead of a sand wedge, I used a driver, just exploding with this massive one wood like an artillery shell had hit the trap. Of course, it took me seven or eight shots since it was the wrong club, and then they asked me to leave because I was allegedly ‘putting an insane amount of sand on our greens.' See, that's the thing about golf, a lot of technical rules you'd never think of.”

“Why'd you quit?”

“Because I love Florida golf courses too much.” Serge took a left on PGA Boulevard and swigged more coffee. “We're different from clubs everywhere else in the world. Even if you don't play the sport, do yourself a favor and fork over the fees just to walk our great courses, especially the ones that incorporate the state's raw beauty. I was constantly dizzy from natural intoxication: All manner of palms and palmettos and banyans, birds of paradise, crape myrtles, water lilies in the wetlands, reeds, and alligators, coral snakes, newts, geckos . . .”

“Serge . . .”

“ . . . Different geckos, herons, spoonbills, ibis feeding in the rough, gopher tortoises crossing cart paths . . .”

“Serge?”

“What?”

“Sounds like the opposite of a reason to quit.”

“That's the thing about obsessive disorders.” He finished the coffee and capped the thermos. “Either all focus or none. Take basketball, no problem. I excelled because I could practice the same shot a hundred thousand times in a row. No distractions: just me, the ball, the basket, the sun repeatedly setting and rising. But golf, the majesty of the landscape, too much competition for my attention. Take that cloud, for example . . .” He pointed up through the windshield. “Shaped like Hemingway, but from the back. I didn't realize how dirty this windshield was, but beach season is also love-bug season. My advice? Don't let them bake on or it could eat the paint, so scrub gently with fabric-softener squares you throw in clothes dryers, which won't scratch the coating of your vehicle.” Serge nodded to himself.

Coleman blinked a few times. “What about golf?”

“What? Oh, right. Golf is like falling asleep,” said Serge. “You can never pinpoint the exact moment it happens. One minute I'm chopping away in a sand trap, and the next I'm wandering the woods following a cute little rabbit. Other golfers thought I was looking for a lost ball, but then I climbed down from a cart bridge and started skipping stones across the pond and catching lizards, and they sent one of the staff after me: ‘Are you catching lizards?' ‘Who? Me?' Then I opened my hand and there was a lizard. ‘Sorry, got a little distracted.' So I climbed back up to the course and grabbed a club. Played a little golf, chased a couple lizards, some more golf, saw a
really
cool butterfly, and by the way, I've met a lot of butterflies. But the staff was understanding and gave me a ride back to the clubhouse, even though I'd come screaming out of the woods: ‘Guys! You've got to see this fucking butterfly!' . . . For some reason, I've never been able to finish a round.”

“Remember the one time you took me golfing?”

“Unfortunately.”

“Can't believe you're still sore about that,” said Coleman. “A lot of the rich dudes were drinking, too. And right out in the open, big bottles of Johnnie Walker in their carts.”

“Coleman, it wasn't just that you were drunk. You snapped the flag stick in half on number seven.”

“But nobody else saw me,” said Coleman. “I was able to toss the bottom part in the lake and stick the rest of the flag back in the hole.”

“Coleman, you didn't think they'd get suspicious?”

“Was it that noticeable?”

“The flag was knee-high, like miniature golf.”

Coleman shrugged and uncapped a pint of Jim Beam. “Your fault. You told me to tend the flag while you were hitting out of another sand trap. But I warned you my balance was playing tricks on me again. Maybe I should have my ears checked.”

“It wasn't just the flag,” said Serge. “Remember the stunt you pulled when we caught up to that foursome on the twelfth tee?”

“That was supposed to be a joke.” Coleman took a slug of whiskey. “After all, they called that thing a ball washer. Get it?”

Serge placed a hand over his eyes. “I was so embarrassed. Nobody should ever have to see something as disturbing as that.”

“I thought it was funny.”

“Run it by me first next time.”

Coleman stared out the passenger window. “Look at that freakin' guard shack. It's like a military base.”

“Landmark alert,” said Serge. “That's Lost Tree Village, home of the legend and adopted Florida favorite son Jack Nicklaus.”

“Jack Nicklaus lives back there?” said Coleman. “I wonder what his house is like.”

“Ask me.”

“You've seen photos?”

“Negative,” said Serge. “I've been inside.”

“No way,” said Coleman.

“Way,” said Serge. “The foyer's got these floor-to-ceiling glass cases flanking both sides with all his trophies, and one shelf is just the Masters, a whole row of sterling silver replicas of the Augusta clubhouse that look like a bunch of shiny Howard Johnsons.”

“When the hell were you inside Jack Nicklaus's house?”

“When I was a kid, his oldest son and I were in the same golf league. My friend Kenny also lived in Lost Tree and got me into the car pool, and they were totally regular folks, Jack's wife driving us around in a station wagon, taking us to McDonald's afterward, and then we'd spend the afternoons playing pool in the den and watching Jack's cable movies, which was a big deal back then.”

“Wow, you actually played golf with Jack Nicklaus's son?”

“No, I said I carpooled,” replied Serge. “There were eight divisions in the youth league based on talent. His son was in the first; I was in the last.”

“So where to now?”

“We obviously need to stop in my hometown of Riviera Beach, and then on to our score in Fort Lauderdale.

“Fort Lauderdale?”

“I just have this weird feeling,” said Serge. “But here's my favorite part about golf: It's got some of the greatest nicknames in all of sports. The Golden Bear, the King, the Goose, Lefty, Merry Mex, Champagne Tony. Even my youth league had nicknames.”

“What was yours?”

“Lizard Catcher.”

FORT LAUDERDALE

W
e need to hurry,” said Pat, running for the escalator at the end of the terminal.

“I needed to get something for my stomach.” Bar hurried and munched from a bag of chips. “All they had on the plane were those little peanuts.”

“I know,” said Pat. “I just don't want our luggage to be sitting there out in the open.”

“I thought you said crime wasn't bad?”

“It isn't.” Pat walked down the steps of the moving escalator. “You know my overcautious paranoia.”

They hopped off at the bottom in baggage claim. Giant, framed posters on the walls of beach attractions being enjoyed by tanned people with perfect teeth. The McDougalls jogged past carousels of moving luggage from Pittsburgh, Memphis and Birmingham. The rest of the passengers from their flight were already waiting at the last station. A buzzer sounded and a red light blinked. There was a mild bubbling of impolite human nature as people aggressively jockeyed to get near the front of the belt because it was unimportant.

“See?” said Bar. “The bags are just starting to come out.”

Big ones, little ones, hard-shell cases for golf clubs and musical instruments, cardboard boxes wrapped with twine, backpacks, identical duffel bags for a college softball team. A lot of the luggage had colorful ribbons tied to the handles to avoid confusion. A small woman tried to grab an extra-heavy bag that was already past her, and it pulled her onto the belt. So she had to let it go for another lap. An announcement on the PA: “Many bags look alike . . .”

The crowd began thinning as people wheeled belongings toward ground transportation.

“There's one,” said Bar.

“Got it,” said Pat, hoisting it off the belt.

“There's another . . .”

They stood with two bags by their feet. Watching the belt go round and round.

Half the people from their flight were already gone. Then it was down to a dozen. Then just the McDougalls and an empty, rotating belt. A buzzer sounded, and the belt stopped.

Patrick's mouth fell open, and his hands went out helplessly. “Where's the rest of our stuff?”

“I'm sure it's coming along,” said Bar.

“The belt's stopped.”

“That doesn't necessarily mean anything.”

“It means the belt's stopped.”

“Maybe they're just delayed,” said Bar.

“But we brought three more bags,” said Pat. “I only got the smallest two. And that's just because we checked these at the gate because they said the overhead bins would be full. There's just toiletries and travel books and my laptop in these. We're stuck with the clothes on our back. This could ruin our vacation.”

“Please try not to worry so much,” said Bar. “We always talk about blessings.”

“You're right,” said Pat, pressing a spring-loaded button and extending the telescoping handle on a tiny carry-on. “I just wanted everything on this trip to be perfect for you.”

“It is. We're together.” She snuggled into his arm. “There's the luggage information office . . .”

They walked inside.

“Our luggage didn't come off the belt,” said Patrick. “And then the belt stopped.”

They were given forms. They filled them out.

“Thank you,” said the attendant, making marks on the form in the grayed-out, official-use-only corner. “We'll send the bags to your room when they arrive . . . Where are you staying?”

“The Casablanca Inn.”

The attendant reflexively looked up and stared.

“Something wrong?” asked Pat.

“Uh, no.” She looked back down. “Is this your cell-phone number?”

“Yes,” said Pat. “When do you think we'll know when our bags are here?”

“Probably already on the next flight in from Atlanta.”

“ ‘Probably'?” said Pat. “Don't you scan bar codes on the bags? Can't you tell exactly where they are right now?”

“Yes,” said the woman. “But my computer is down.”

“Is your phone down, too?”

“What's your point?”

“Can you call someone whose computer isn't down and see if they know where our bags are?”

“Yes.”

“So can you pick up the phone?”

“No.” She picked up her purse. “Office hours just ended. Please step outside while I lock up.”

Chapter Fourteen

RIVIERA BEACH

T
he Gran Torino wound south on Singer Island along Jack Nicklaus Drive. They passed through John D. MacArthur Beach State Park, a prime loggerhead-turtle nesting ground, and emerged along a thin mangrove isthmus overlooking Lake Worth.

“This is the A-drive,” said Serge. “Most people take Blue Heron Boulevard over to the island, but this back road is one of the state's hidden jewels, thanks to John D., who donated the park. Coleman disagrees, of course, but screw that drooling pothead stupidness . . .”

Coleman rolled a joint in his lap. “Hey!” He looked up and saw Serge filming himself with the camcorder. “Oh, our fake feud. Cool.” He looked back down.

“So for those of you playing at home: Remember to take PGA east from U.S. 1. Peace out.”

“Finally,” said Coleman. “The beach.”

“Coleman, grab the camcorder and start filming to capture the return of the native. My mom used to set up my playpen right out there.” The Torino slid into a parking slot on Ocean Avenue. The pair got out as Serge pointed north. “And over there is where all the surfers used to catch radical breaks off the wreck of the
Amaryllis,
which ran aground during Hurricane Betsy in 1965—”

From behind:

“Coleman!”

The pair turned around.

A gang of skater punks zipped toward them on large boards. “Is that you, Coleman?”

Coleman nodded.

“Righteous!” said a sandy blond. “Hey, dudes. It's Coleman!”

The skaters took turns high-fiving him. “You're my hero.” “I want to be just like you.” “It's an honor.” “You give us hope . . .”

“Uh, thanks?” said Coleman.

Serge whispered sideways. “What's going on?”

Coleman shrugged. “No freakin' idea.”

One of the skaters kicked up his board and tucked it under his arm. “Listen, man, I know you're mega-busy and all laying down your scene, but could you slide me a piece of advice from the mountain?”

Coleman shrugged again. “Why not? What do you need?”

“Okay, man, like we got this killer Tallahassee weed that's resin-city, except it's way too sticky, but we don't want to dry it out and make it brittle.”

“Obviously,” said Coleman. “That unbalances the equilibrium from the nuanced high of a fresh bud.”

“Man, like I
knew
you'd say that! So the problem is we're not getting a full blaze in the bowl and there's a big waste factor of a lot of blackened, slow-burn shit left over. The weed is a buck-twenty for a one-finger bag, except we cop four and sell three so our shit's free, but still our sweat . . . Coleman, please tell us: What can we possibly do?”

“Got you covered.” Coleman stepped forward and gestured as he held court. “First, go to any of the finer men's fashion stores. The cotton on the collars of expensive dress shirts gets worn and frayed from dry cleaners, so they sell these special fabric shavers that smooth it down. But be specific because even a lot of longtime workers at these places don't know about them. The devices have removable collection compartments inside to capture the blowby, so just shave down your buds, which retains resin but renders a fine, more smokable yield. And these devices are battery-powered to conveniently pursue the stoner lifestyle while taking the higher road.”

“Oh, thank you, man! Like fuckin' radical genius, man! Nobody would have fuckin' thought of that but you!”

The next skater asked for Coleman's autograph on his board. “Like you're The Man, man!”

They finished their good-byes and the kids rolled away, an enthusiastic conversation trailing off:

“That was so excellent.”

“I know, man. But where do you buy a dress shirt?”

“I don't know.”

“Should we go back and ask him?”

“No, man, it's Coleman. He's a very busy dude . . .”

Serge raised his eyebrows toward his sidekick. “You've never met these guys before?”

“Not that I remember.” Coleman raised a paper bag to his mouth. “But that doesn't mean anything in the drug culture. This happens all the time.”

“Strangers come up and call you a genius?”

“No, but there's a universal recognition among my people, and yet a lack of
specific
recognition, even if you grew up together, if that makes any sense.”

“I'm with you.” Serge popped the trunk and pulled out a heavy orange canvas bag from Home Depot. “To the beach! . . . Are you filming?”

Coleman pressed a red button. “I don't see my nose this time.”

Serge began trudging through the sand barefoot with a load over his shoulder. He glanced back at a row of uniformly tasteful pastel structures with Key West awnings and new Old Town light posts. “When did these buildings pop up on the beach strip? I can remember two generations back: They replaced the buildings that
replaced
the buildings when I was a tyke. There was this one little hot-dog shack with a wind meter on the roof—you know, those three-ice-cream-scoop things spinning like a propeller. And Coca-Cola in bottles and everyone with something new called a transistor radio, playing Beatles—”

Serge's canvas bag suddenly went flying. He was knocked hard, blindsided in the ribs, taking him off his feet. He adjusted, midair, like a cat, and did a somersault to bleed off the landing impact.

Coleman ran over. “You okay?”

Serge propped himself up to assess the cause of his tumble.

A young but unusually large muscle-boy smirked and tossed a football up and down in his palm. Huge pecs from daily workouts and an anabolic needle. Blond crew cut. “Watch where you're going, Pops. You could get hurt.”

“Me?” said Serge.

“Yeah, you got in my way. Just be more careful.”

A second such youth took off running in the sand along the shore.

“Joey!” he yelled back to the first guy. “Post pattern!” He waved a hand in the air as he ran past bikini bunnies. “I'm open! Hit me!”

The quarterback slapped the ball with his free hand, then unleashed a perfect Doug Flutie spiral for the end zone.

Serge stood next to Coleman, watching the ball sail in an exquisite arc. “Why do I feel like I'm in a Charles Atlas comic-book ad from the fifties?”

“Because you are?”

“Keep filming.”

The receiver left his feet, making a circus fingertip catch but clipping the corner of a playpen with his knee. Fortunately, it was empty. The mother hustled her children away, and the father folded up their umbrella.

“That could have been my playpen,” said Serge.

Coleman fetched the orange Home Depot bag. “This is pretty heavy.” He pulled out a steel masonry trowel. “What's all this stuff for?”

“Our reality show.” Serge reached in the bag and pulled out an industrial-strength trenching tool. “The number one item on our beach activity list: build a sand castle.”

Coleman handed Serge the bag and filmed as they continued toward the water. “I thought building sand castles used plastic children's buckets and shovels. Bright red and yellow, and plastic castle forms.”

“That's amateur hour.” Serge handed Coleman a bundle of surveyor's stakes. “This is Xtreme sand castles! Which means aiming for the very top. And in Florida, that can mean only one thing!” He swung dramatically toward the camera.

Coleman tightened the view on his face. “ . . . You don't mean . . . !”

“That's right!” Serge dropped the bag in the sand and fell to his knees. “Castillo de San Marcos!”

Serge lay stomach-flat on the beach, squinting in concentration with one eye closed and his tongue sticking out of the corner of his mouth like an eight-year-old with a slingshot. “The seventeenth-century Spanish fort is the quintessential Florida structure for anyone working in sand. If you're going to build,
build . . .
Coleman, to the left . . .”

Coleman moved a tiny stick with an orange ribbon to the right.

“Your other left,” said Serge, aiming his Jesus-camping compass from his Bible cover.

Coleman obliged.

“Perfect! . . . Hammer it in.”

They repeated three more times, and Serge stood up, admiring a perfectly square, magnetically oriented outline of twine that roped off forty geometric yards on the beach at Singer Island.

The trenching tool dug a deep cut down to the shallow water table for the moat. Serge scooped up beach mud to sculpt a corner fortification. “These bastions are most important, in case the French from Fort Caroline lay siege, then you can shoot back at the ladders they place on the outer walls. Castillo doesn't have a moat, but it should—”

A disturbance up the beach.

“What's that shrieking sound?” asked Coleman.

“A toddler crying.”

“But it's super-loud like an air horn,” said Coleman. “I didn't know small kids were capable of that kind of noise.”

“Unless they're behind you on an airplane.” Serge set down his tools and stood up. “Something must be highly wrong.”

“Look,” said Coleman. “It's those young studs passing the football.”

“One of them trampled the child's sand castle. He's not even apologizing, just flirting with the underage girls on the next blanket.”

“The father's saying something about it.” Coleman pointed. “The bigger stud is coming back. He's standing chest to chest with the dad, glaring down at him . . . Now the dad's retreating and packing up his stuff.”

“The stud's mocking the dad to the giggling beach girls.” Serge shook his head. “And in front of the man's wife and older children no less, but the father just has to take it in silence because it's the responsible move for the sake of the family. Except that dick has wounded the dad's image in their eyes.”

“That's wrong,” said Coleman.

Serge resumed work on his Spanish fort. “I knew I should have bought those cannons ahead of time.”

FORT LAUDERDALE

A
n almost empty cattle truck pulled through the parking lot of a strip mall on U.S. 1. Three men hopped down from the rear bed without waiting for the truck to stop. Three other migrants waiting in front of a store chased the truck across the lot and dove in back. The vehicle sped up again.

Gaspar Arroyo drove a quick half mile and turned into another parking lot.

The truck stopped in front of a twenty-nine-dollar motel room. Gaspar and the others went inside. A couple dozen additional men were already waiting. They all shut up when Arroyo entered.

TV on:
“Breaking news at this hour as another South Florida pill mill has been raided in the latest sweep of prescription-drug trafficking. We take you live to the scene . . .”

The image on the tube switched to a small shopping center, much like the one the cattle truck had just visited. In the middle of the building, sandwiched between two businesses that sold billiard equipment and shampooed dogs, sat a store with no sign and blacked-out windows. A police public-relations officer stepped in front of the cameras.
“Our coordinated multiagency crackdown of illegal pain clinics is clearly yielding results, as such operations are becoming harder and harder to come by. However, there is still much work to be done, as we've received information that some OxyContin dealers are simply switching tactics. Up until now, we've been able to locate many clinics from anonymous tips of inexplicably full parking lots and heavy pedestrian traffic. In today's raid, for example, there were none of the usual telltale signs, and the break came when patrol cars spotted a large number of men loitering in the breezeway of an abandoned office building. Further surveillance revealed that organizers were receiving alerts by cell phone and then ferrying groups of three or four to the clinic to avoid detection. It's the same technique used in the overflow waiting area of popular restaurants where they give you a blinking cocktail coaster . . .”

A cell phone rang. A hand turned down the volume on the TV.

“Speak . . .”

Gaspar listened briefly, hung up and selected three of the men. They followed him out to the cattle truck.