Tim Dorsey Collection #1 (26 page)

I
T WAS A MOONLESS EVENING
. Approaching storm clouds from the east made the sky prematurely dark. It began to rain. A barge was moored in Tampa Bay; city workers in plastic ponchos set up a row of mortar launchers and went over safety checklists. The mist and clouds trapped the light from the city, creating an eerie yellow dome. Along Dale Mabry Highway, neon from steakhouses, sports bars and dance clubs reflected off the moist cars. Traffic was backed up from the three-day weekend.

Agent Mahoney slapped a bandage on his bad wing and jumped in the Crown Vic. He radioed a bulletin on the Ferrari, and immediately got reports of a car matching the description speeding north on Mabry. A police helicopter lifted off.

John Milton was approaching Tampa Bay Motors in Lance’s gold Navigator. He spotted Rocco Silvertone standing outside the showroom, looking for customers. John slowed and pulled in the side entrance. He got out of the car, held the stun gun at his side and approached.

A snow-white Ferrari zoomed past the dealership.

“I can’t believe it!” yelled Rocco. He jumped in his Corvette and sped after it.

“Nuts!” John ran back to the Navigator and took off after Rocco.

Vehicles moved in packs between the traffic signals up and down Dale Mabry. A red light stopped sixty cars in three lanes at the intersection with MLK Boulevard, across from the stadium. The Ferrari with Rufus and Ambrose sat in the pole position. Serge and Coleman were six rows back in the Barracuda. Rocco Silvertone gunned his Corvette in the middle of row fourteen. John Milton was in the Navigator at the end of row seventeen, and Agent Mahoney brought up the rear in row twenty. The rest of the field was Tampa’s standard nightly issue of young adults flowing together in a sexually charged amoeban steel river of Saturns, Mustangs and Corollas. Curbside homeless men with cardboard lies worked the intersections. The police helicopter hovered, its search beam sweeping across the wet pavement for a Ferrari. The rain came down harder, and the first bolt of lightning flew.

The light turned green; sixty cars began moving. The Ferrari got a jump on the pack, but Serge slipped around a Camaro and began gaining in the breakdown lane. Then Mahoney made his move, squeezing by two carloads of teenagers driving abreast in the left lanes, yelling to each other, trying to have sex. Everyone accelerated to top speed, then braked and bunched together again at the next red light. Tempers simmered through the long left-turn cycles. Squatters sat under umbrellas at the four corners of the intersection, selling used cassette tapes, broken wristwatches, two-dollar rhinestone sunglasses and thoroughbred ferrets.

The light turned green. Everyone accelerated. The road opened up and traffic spread out. Rufus got the Ferrari up to a hundred. He looked in the rearview. Everyone was way back. Then something caught his peripheral vision. Two
pizza trucks passed on the left, continued accelerating and disappeared over the next overpass.

There was an explosion. Rufus ducked. “What the hell?”

Ambrose pointed out the windshield. “The fireworks are starting.”

“Fireworks!” said Coleman, hitting a joint. “Green, yellow, pink, blue…”

Serge saw an opening and went for it. A Subaru driver on a cell phone drifted left and forced a Sentra into a row of orange rubber construction cones, and Serge used the opening left by the Subaru to force them both into the construction area so he could pass. The Sentra and Subaru rubbed sides, then diverged. The Subaru caromed off a bus-stop rain shelter and wedged under a semi full of Posturepedics. The Sentra spun out in the intersection, hit a curb sideways and rolled, scattering a squadron of homeless men on the corner, cardboard signs Frisbeeing into the air as they dove for cover, knocking over ferret cages. The ferrets escaped northbound as the Sentra continued rolling and slammed into a Florida Power cherry picker, sending the crane arm spinning. The electrician leaped from the basket
F Troop
—style before it smashed into a transformer, which blew with a bang and a shower of sparks. All the traffic lights went out, and twenty blocks of Dale Mabry lost electricity. The police were in the middle of raiding the Red Snapper strip club during a surprise Tet Offensive of the mayor’s War on Titty Bars when the power went. The strippers used the cover of darkness to make a run for it, and they came pouring out of the club, kicking off heels and sprinting south. The stampede of dancers was at full gallop when they were met in a Blockbuster Video parking lot by oncoming waves of terrified, scampering ferrets. The strippers shrieked and scattered like a billiard break. A motorist swerved to avoid the naked
women spilling into traffic, and he locked up his wheels in the rain, jumping a curb and sliding into a gas pump. The man ran from the wrecked car as gasoline gushed across the concrete.

Mahoney was three blocks back when the hundred-foot fire-mushroom went up from the gas station. Traffic was snarled. Smoke filled the air. Sirens wailed. Helicopters swooped with search beams. More transformers began blowing in sequence down the highway like a string of firecrackers. Hysterical people ran crying everywhere. Some of the ferrets became separated and stood on their hind legs, looking for a familiar face. Looters hit the beer coolers at the burning gas station. Frantic strippers banged on the Crown Victoria, breasts pressed against the windshield: “For the love of God, take me with you!” Mahoney looked up at the elevated pedestrian bridge over the highway for the Yankees spring training complex, where Christ and the Antichrist waged fierce hand-to-hand combat against a backdrop of lightning and fireworks. Mahoney looked over at the Bible sitting on his passenger seat and laid a reverential hand on the cover. “So it begins in Tampa.” Mahoney pulled out of traffic, popped his blackwall tires up onto the cement median, and floored the Crown Victoria straight into the Jaws of the Apocalypse.

The Ferrari was now all alone, a half mile ahead of everyone. Rufus sped up the next overpass, watching the bedlam unfolding in his rearview mirror. “Yes! We made it!”

He was still watching the mirror as he crested the overpass. He finally looked forward again. “Uh-oh.”

The pavement ahead was covered with flares, stop sticks and pepperoni, where two overturned pizza-delivery trucks with punctured tires were engulfed in flames in front of a police roadblock.

Rufus hit the brakes, and the Ferrari went into a slow counterclockwise spin down the incline. It angled off the overpass and punched through the guardrail, sailing thirty feet before crashing into the embankment nosefirst and flipping out into the retention pond, landing upside down on top of a late-model Buick already stuck in the water. The force of the crash blew out all the windows in the Buick and collapsed the roof down to the headrests, still a good six inches above the heads of the four elderly women trapped inside.

Eunice pointed out the slit that used to be the passenger window. “An arm!”

“Pull it!” said Edith.

Eunice pulled it. It fell off.

It belonged to Rufus. He was dead.

There was a thud from above, followed by an “Ouch!”

Ambrose had pushed away his deflated airbag and hit the release latch on the seat belt. He fell to the roof.

“Someone’s still alive up there,” said Edith. She leaned toward the crack where her window used to be, just as Ambrose’s upside-down head hung over the edge of the Buick.

“Stud-muffin!” said Edith.

“Uh-oh,” said Ambrose.

Another voice: “I’ll save you!”

It was Rocco Silvertone, sloshing through swamp water. “Hold on, Ambrose! Help’s coming!”

Rocco broke through the edge of the cattails. He grabbed Ambrose under the armpits and pulled him the rest of the way out of the Ferrari, then carried him piggyback off through the reeds toward the highway.

“Hey! What about us?” said Edith.

It was quiet again.

“Shit.”

ROCCO REACHED THE
top of the embankment with Ambrose on his back. He stepped over the twisted guardrail and carefully lowered Ambrose to the ground. More cars arrived and screeched to a halt. Doors slammed.

Serge and Coleman jumped from the Barracuda and began running toward their little friend. “Ambrose! Are you okay?”

“Hold it right there!” ordered Rocco, seizing Ambrose around the neck with a thick forearm. He leaned to Ambrose’s ear. “Who are those guys?”

“Oh, it’s okay,” said Ambrose. “They’re my kidnappers.”

“The kidnappers!” yelled Rocco. He pointed at Serge and Coleman. “Don’t come any closer!”

Rocco wrapped his other arm around Ambrose’s chest and lifted him off the ground. He began slowly backing up with Ambrose in front of him—not as a human shield, but more like a valuable prize that nobody was going to take away from him. “Stay where you are! I’m warning you!”

Agent Mahoney skidded up in his Crown Victoria. He jumped out and flashed his badge at Rocco. “Let him go!”

The police came running from the roadblock. Rocco pointed at Serge and Coleman. “They’re the kidnappers! Get ’em!”

The police pulled their guns on Rocco.

“Not me, you idiots!
They’re
the kidnappers! I’m the one who saved him!”

“Just stay calm,” said Mahoney. “Nobody’s going to get hurt.” Mahoney saw someone quietly circling around behind Rocco, but he didn’t give it away.

Rocco tightened his grip on Ambrose. “What’s the matter with you!” he yelled at the cops. “The real kidnappers are standing right there! Arrest ’em before they get away!”

“Everything’s going to be just fine.”

Rocco heard another voice behind his left ear.

“Flipper was a dolphin.” Then:
Zzzzzzttt!

Rocco flopped around the street from the stun gun. The police pounced and cuffed him. Ambrose went running toward Serge and Coleman, who met him halfway.

Serge grabbed the little guy by the shoulders and looked him over. “You okay, buddy?”

Ambrose nodded that he was.

The three turned for the Barracuda, but Serge suddenly stopped when he saw Mahoney standing there with his .38 by his side.

“Where can a poor shlub get some decent fried chicken in this town?” asked Mahoney. “And I want a side order of history. Local funk. A real joint.”

“That would be Palios Brothers on MacDill Avenue,” said Serge.

“This one’s on the house,” said Mahoney, holstering his pistol. “But it still doesn’t change anything. Some day I’m gonna nail you…Now get the hell out of here before I change my mind!”

Serge gave a quick salute, and they ran for the Barracuda.