The Riptide Ultra-Glide (7 page)

LATER THAT NIGHT

I
t always seems to be a full moon in the glades.

The sugarcane flowed like an ocean, waves of stalk in the wind. Million acres to the horizon in every direction. Whitecaps where the light reflected just right.

The lonely road south from the lake passed through a vacant crossroads called Okeelanta, Florida's version of the crop-duster scene from
North by Northwest
. Then emptiness. Just a long, desolate drive—one of the longest in the state—with no public turnoffs or safe harbor to pull over for three counties, unless you wanted to take your car swimming in a drainage canal.

Nothing but an elevated causeway of limestone and fill dirt that gave a nice crow's-nest view over the landscape, first the agricultural tracts, then the glades in full force. Just swamp and gators for another long run until hitting some truck stops on the outer outskirts of Miami.

It was cool and breezy up in the livestock bed of a cattle truck that crossed the railroad tracks in South Bay. Standing room only for the migrants packed in the back. They had to hold their bladders. Nobody spoke.

Up front in the cab, the driver turned on the radio, and the passenger turned it off.

“What's the deal?”

“Shut up,” said the passenger. “I'm trying to think.”

“About what was on TV today? The intercepted buses and raided clinic?”

No answer.

The driver stared ahead. “Maybe we should cool it until after the crackdown.”

“You idiot,” said the passenger. “How do you think the
policía
knew where to go?”

The driver shrugged.

The passenger simply held up an untraceable cell phone.

The driver did a double take. “
You
tipped off the cops? But why?”

“Those fucking hillbillies. This is our territory. They think they can just come down here and take what's ours?” He spit out the window.

“So you're trying to drive them out of business?”

“No, I want them in business.”

The driver turned with a questioning look.

“As our customers,” the passenger explained. “First I cut off their source. No more of this going straight to the clinics themselves and smuggling it out on buses. Then
we'll
be the only source, and they'll have to do business with us.”

“I don't think they'll go for that.”

“They won't have a choice. They'll have to pay a lot more, but they'll still make a bundle on the back end.”

“But the police have been hitting our clinics, too.”

“That's why we have to change tactics. They're looking for packed parking lots, and sending undercovers to look for lobbies jammed with people.”

“Is that why we got those motel rooms on U.S. 1?”

“Don't talk anymore.”

The passenger stared out the window at the moon. Gaspar Arroyo. Immigrant story. Crossed over at Laredo in '98, then hooked around the Gulf Coast from Louisiana to Biloxi. Worked the Florida farm circuit in Immokalee, then east to La Belle and Belle Glade. Nothing to show for it. The farms overcharged for food and claimed everything for housing, which was usually little more than a termite-ridden, clapboard barracks. It was either that or an INS jail cell awaiting deportation. The only migrant who made anything was the one whom the farm gringos deputized to keep each barracks in line however he saw fit. They picked the most sadistic.

Five years ago, Arroyo took his first beating from the barracks captain. The next morning, the captain couldn't be found. That afternoon he turned up in the blades of a harvesting machine. There was talk, but nothing more. The gringos put Arroyo in charge of the barracks. He wanted more.

Through a series of whispered circumstances, Arroyo became the only illegal immigrant with an executive's title and salary at one of the largest cane processors in Florida. He never went in the office, and everyone was happy about it.

Gaspar had bigger dreams as he gazed off the side of the causeway at the moonlit cane.

“Pull over,” he told the driver. “I have to take a leak.”

The truck stopped on the road, because there was no shoulder. Gaspar walked to the edge of the canal and trickled into the water. He zipped up. “José, get over here. I see something.”

“What is it?” yelled the driver.

“I hope it's not what I think. Hurry!”

José hopped down from the cab and ran to the bank. “What's the tire iron for?”

“In case of snakes while I'm peeing.”

José turned his head toward the swamp. “Where am I looking?”

“In the reeds on the other side of the canal.” Gaspar crouched and pointed. “At the waterline.”

“Still don't see it.”

“Are you blind? It's right there.”

José leaned closer. “You mean
that
? It's just an empty milk bottle bobbing.”

“You're right,” said Gaspar.

José straightened up. “This weird lighting played a trick on your eyes.”

Gaspar stepped behind him. “No, I mean you were right about a lot of our clinics getting hit. Someone's been talking.”

Gaspar swung the tire iron with all he had, smashing José at the base of his back and sending electric jolts both ways through his spinal cord.

A horrible, high-pitched scream emptied into the sugarcane.

José fell onto his back, limbs bent weird. “Oh God! I can't feel my legs!”

“That's the whole idea,” said Gaspar, leaning over him and brandishing the iron. “You thought I wouldn't find out that you're ratting on me?”

“No, Gaspar! I can explain—”

The next swing hit José's right elbow. Another scream, then another elbow whack, and so on.

Gaspar finally dropped to his knees and rolled José onto his stomach. “This is what you get for fucking me!”

“Whatever you're thinking, please! . . . I still can't feel my legs . . .”

“Whatever I'm thinking? Here's what I'm thinking!” Gaspar gently caressed the back of José's neck. “I'm thinking of one of these cervical vertebrae. Then you'll forget about your legs. You won't feel anything, except your head. You'll be able to smile, frown, blink, even talk, except nothing will come out because your brain won't be able to tell your lungs to breathe . . . Consider it quiet time to mull over what you've done.”

“No! Please—”

Wham
.

The blow would have sounded like a dull thud to anyone standing around, but inside José's skull it was the sharp clap of a rifle shot. Then Gaspar rolled him over so he could face the night sky. His lips moved silently.

Gaspar stuck the tire iron in his belt and climbed the shoulder of the road. He looked up at the truck's bed. Everyone turned away. They were in the middle of forty same-looking miles. Even if they wanted to, there was no way anyone could pinpoint José's location before the alligators did their thing.

Gaspar climbed back in on the driver's side and resumed the trip to Fort Lauderdale.

He turned on the radio.

Back on the edge of the road, José heard a truck driving away as he watched the stars begin to dim.

Chapter Six

KEY LARGO

B
rilliant colors screamed off a two-story concrete wall, where the mural of a giant angelfish directed visitors to nearby snorkeling pleasures.

A mile west, silverware jingled in a suitcase sitting on a kitchen table.

“Dang, the zipper's stuck,” said Serge. He jerked the tab violently and cursed and slammed the luggage against the wall and jumped up and down on it. Ten minutes later: “Okay, that's not working. I'll try finesse . . . Just back the zipper up a little to free that tiny piece of fabric and there! Fixed in five seconds.”

“Why didn't you just do that in the first place?” asked Coleman.

“Don't start talking crazy.”

Coleman shrugged and took a seat at the table, painting a joint with hash oil.

Serge grabbed a chair on the other side. “I think our work here is done. You get all the lightbulbs?”

Coleman raised a shopping bag from beside his chair.

“Good.” Serge opened the local morning newspaper. “Just let me read this, and we'll start loading the car.”

Coleman torched the bone and exhaled a small cloud. “Why are you always reading when nobody's forcing you?”

Serge looked up and stared at Coleman a moment. “That question kind of answers itself.” He looked back down.

Coleman tapped joint ash on the floor. “My teachers were always making me read. I'm talking about
books
. Shit. I swore when I got out, I'd never read another.”

Serge kept his eyes on the paper. “You showed them.”

Coleman took another hit. “Damn straight.”

A rare moment of silence.

“Serge? I saw this cool bar up the street—”

“I'm trying to read. This is important.”

“Why?”

“Because the way things are going, soon you'll only see newspapers in museums, like the Dead Sea Scrolls. Everyone now gets their data off the Internet.”

“So? It's just a computer screen instead of paper.”

“There's a bigger difference. On one hand, the
New York Times,
also known as the Old Gray Lady and the Paper of Record; on the other, Yahoo! headlines: ‘Demi Moore's Style Showdown,' ‘Best Cities for Cats to Live,' ‘Ten Telltale Signs Nobody Likes You,' ‘We Replace Half Our Friends Every Seven Years.' ”

Coleman became worried. “I've known you for fifteen.”

“Don't sweat it. You've got tenure.” Serge turned a page. “Newspapers also provide the local lowdown that would never get on the net. That's how I learned about throwing rocks at cars down here, and cleaning your headlights before leaving bars.”

“Cleaning what?”

“This one cop down here had like the record for DUI arrests before a ton of them got reversed.” Serge flipped to the sports section. “He'd go to bars early in the evening and walk through the parking lot with a bar of soap, marking
X
s on the headlights. Then, after midnight, if he saw some car with
X
s, he pulled them over on some bullshit pretext. So after the news broke, people started checking their headlights. But you'd never know that if you weren't into newspapers.”

“Wow,” said Coleman. “Reading is cool! . . . Let me start with the funnies.”

Serge whipped a page out of the paper and handed it across the table without looking.

Coleman haphazardly folded it over with an unending crinkling sound. “I can't believe I'm reading.”

“The day the earth stood still,” said Serge.

“They still have ‘Family Circus,' ” said Coleman. “Billy's running crazy all over the house again leaving a dotted line . . . I don't understand ‘Doonesbury.' ”

“Newspapers also help me line up takedown scores. They report the most devious, heartless scams perpetrated on the weak and the elderly, and since it's Florida, that's a lot of pages to fill. But it bird-dogs me straight to my pickin' of guilt-free heists. Like this one jackass here: Check out what he did to these retirees . . .” Serge turned the paper around and held it across the table.

Coleman leaned and squinted. “Jesus, that's terrible.”

“See what I mean?” Serge turned another page. “I'd bum-rush these cowards for free. But usually they beg me to take them to an ATM.”

“And then you give that money back to the victims?”

“If they happen to be walking by the ATM at that very moment, sure. But otherwise, no. I'm busy,” said Serge. “And I want to go on the record here: Robin Hood fucked it up for everyone. Is it not enough that I'm punishing these miscreants while the law grinds like a toothless mouth? No, to be a charismatic criminal, I'm supposed to work for nothing?”

“Batman.” Coleman pointed at the comics. “Bruce Wayne was already rich. No job, free cave.”

“And they gave him a pass on all his shit—violated at least seven constitutional rights by my count, and that's just the Joker.”

“It's not fair,” said Coleman.

“But what are ya going to do? Dwell on the negative, or think about Catwoman?”

“That was my first boner,” said Coleman.

“The first for everyone our age,” said Serge. “And the rest of your life you're chasing that initial sensation, which is a recipe for disappointment, because even though you buy the most expensive Catwoman costume, the reaction's always the same: ‘Get the hell away from me, you freak!' ‘Wait! I was only six years old! I blame TV!' ” Serge flipped to weather and the local crime report on the back page. “Ooooo! Here's a follow-up on the story of the year from the Keys. This woman was cruising down the Overseas Highway in a convertible and was arrested for distracted driving because she rear-ended someone while shaving her pussy.”

Coleman dropped his comics and began coughing. He pounded his chest. “That's it. Fuck it. I'm definitely reading from now on . . . Please, tell me more!”

“Let's see, she was just convicted of DUI the previous day, and told the cops she wanted to look good for a date with her boyfriend; plus the passenger was her ex-husband, whom she had asked to take the wheel so she could shave, which means he's definitely not looking at the road either, and—here's the cherry on the sundae—a comment you will only hear from a cop in the Keys: It was the strangest traffic incident he'd seen on the Overseas Highway since pulling over that guy with four syringes sticking out of his arm—”

Thud, thud, thud . . .

Serge looked around. “What's that noise? Rats?”

“They'd have to be big.” Coleman twisted the end of the jay in his mouth.

Thud, thud, thud . . .

“There it is again.”

Thud, thud, thud . . .

Both of their heads turned slowly toward the closet.

“We completely forgot about him,” said Coleman.

Serge reached in his pocket. “I guess our work here isn't done after all.” He pulled out a tiny object and cupped it in his hand.

“A diamond-stud earring?” asked Coleman. “Did the dead guy who lived here have a wife or something?”

“No.” Serge pointed the gem at the closet. “I pulled it off his ear in the trunk, remember?”

A muffled scream from the door.

Serge pocketed the jewelry. “And that's the same sound he made when I ripped it off his ear.”

“I remember that now from the parking lot.” Coleman took another giant hit and cracked a beer. “Still makes me cringe.”

“Not my fault.” Serge held up innocent hands. “He broke the rules of society at that bank branch, so I was involuntarily drafted into the War on Rudeness. If there's one thing I'm not, it's a draft dodger.” He stopped and scratched the top of his head. “Although I could have enrolled in community college and gotten a deferment. But as John Fogarty sings, ‘I ain't no senator's son.' ”

“The guy was a little on the pushy side.”

“No joke.”

“Probably high on coke,” said Coleman. “That's how you know if it's good coke. It makes you pushy.”

“So keep it in the nightclubs,” said Serge. “The clubs are specifically designated for people to work off their pushiness, just like gyms are made for exercise. But you don't see people lifting weights in the street.”

“His ear was really bleeding.”

“Couldn't be helped,” said Serge. “You can't tear it off without that.”

“Why tear it off at all?”

“If you're a gigantic prick, the diamond-stud earring is the exclamation point,” said Serge. “It's like a huge, flashing neon frame around the prick picture.”

“I didn't know you were prejudiced against guys wearing earrings.”

“Just the opposite,” said Serge. “It's all a question of what works. For most guys, it's pretty cool. But everybody simply has certain things that won't gel with their overall package, and it only emphasizes the fact you're trying too hard. For example, you won't see me strutting out of a hip-hop barbershop anytime soon with ‘Don't Snitch' shaved into the side of my head. Clashes with the shape of my face. Four-hundred-pound guys shouldn't wear shirts with horizontal stripes, and pricks shouldn't wear diamond earrings. They're just fashion no-no's, like how certain people definitely shouldn't wear certain swimsuits to the beach—we all agree on this last point. It's the only concept that unites us as a nation.”

“So have you decided what you're going to do with him?”

“I think I finally figured out my next science project.”

WISCONSIN

A
sink was running. Sounds of someone brushing his teeth.

Barbara McDougall was already in bed with a book. “You're not supposed to leave the sink running when you're brushing your teeth. We've told our students a million times.”

“I always forget,” said Patrick, turning a faucet.

He finished brushing and flicked off the bathroom light.

Barbara looked up from her book. “Don't forget to leave the sink running so the pipes don't freeze.”

Patrick smiled and went back, giving the hot-water knob a quarter twist. He returned to the bedroom, pulled back the blanket and looked over at the cover of the thick book Bar had just started. An orange sunset over a sooty industrial skyline. “
Gravity's Rainbow
? How many times have you started that book?”

Bar looked over the top of reading glasses halfway down her nose. “Can't remember. Supposed to be a literary classic—all the people I respect say so. Except it's impenetrable to me.”

“I've never gotten much farther than when he goes into the toilet and somehow wiggles through the pipes,” said Pat. “Reminded me of that Scottish bathroom scene in
Trainspotting
.”

Her nose went back in the novel. “This time I'm determined. I'd hate to think I'm not smart enough.”

“You're the smartest person I know.”

A smile. “You're just saying that because you're married to me.”

“It's
why
I married you—”

The phone rang. Patrick reached for the nightstand on his side. “Hello? . . . No, don't apologize. It's not too late . . . What's up? . . .”

Bar lowered the book and saved her spot with a finger. “Who is it?” she whispered.

Pat covered the receiver and whispered back. “Courtney's parents.” He uncovered it. “Is she okay? . . . I see . . . Why don't you put her on the phone? . . . Hello, Courtney? It's me, Mr. McDougall. What seems to be the matter? . . . Courtney, just slow down and relax. I can't understand if you keep crying . . . That's better. No, everything's going to be all right. You haven't done anything wrong . . . I understand completely. Could you do me a favor and put your father back on the phone? . . .”

“What's going on?” asked Bar.

Pat held up a hand for her to wait. Then into the phone: “Jack, yeah, I know . . . Last night it was three
A.M.
before she settled down? She did seem a little exhausted in class today . . . Jack, you two can't blame yourselves. There's nothing you did to trigger it; I've read all the studies . . . What? Tonight she was crying so hard she gave herself a nosebleed? . . .” Pat pulled off the blanket and threw his legs over the side of the bed. “I'm coming over . . . Don't say not to. We're like family . . . Look, the longer we stay on the phone, the longer till I'm there . . . See you in a few.”

He hung up.

Bar looked at the alarm clock. “You're going over to the Arsenaults' at this hour?”

“It's Courtney.”

Bar threw off her covers.

“What are you doing?” asked Pat.

“Coming with you.”

Pat pulled up his pants and buckled the belt. “She's not your student. Stay here and get your rest.”