Tim Dorsey Collection #1 (49 page)

Dar-Dar placed the point of the sword into the road and genuflected to one knee. He closed his eyes and prayed softly. Serge looked at Coleman and spun a finger at the side of his head, indicating insanity.

Dar-Dar continued his contrition. “I am not worthy, oh dark one. But thank you, great Satan, for the chance to offer you this humble blood sacrifice in the name of all that is unholy and shitty….”

With long black hair and black clothes, kneeling at night on an unlighted bridge, Dar-Dar was invisible. There was faint singing in the night, “
Put your hand in the hand of the man who calmed the sea
…”

It grew louder, but Dar-Dar continued talking to the devil.

“…
hand in the hand of the man from Galilee
…”

Dar-Dar looked up over the high headlights and saw a man behind the wheel with eyes streaming tears of joy. A banner hung across the top of the windshield.

Dar-Dar read the banner and said, “Goddammit!” and was crushed to death by a Promise Keeper bus.

With Dar-Dar all over the road and Promise Keepers running everywhere, Serge decided they should leave before the authorities arrived.

An hour later they were ambling down Duval Street. Coleman wore a newly purchased T-shirt that said, “Mean people suck…. Nice people swallow.”

“Maybe later we can go to the cockfights,” said Serge. “They have them around here somewhere. I just have to get hooked up. We’ll ask a cabdriver. They know where all the action’s at.”

They ate conch fritters with Key limes, sitting on the sidewalk, leaning against the front of the Southern Cross Hotel. A debutante from Jupiter Island mistook the bearded pair for vagrants and said, “Homeless and hungry, blah, blah, blah.”

Serge spotted one of the half-bike/half-rickshaws in the loading zone. The driver said his name was Aubrey, from New Zealand. Twenty-two and not a bit wiser. He looked at their Hemingway beards.

“Hey! ZZ Top!” he said.

“ZZ Top wants the big tour,” said Serge, climbing in back with Coleman.

“You got it.”

After directing Aubrey through a series of stops, Serge and Coleman had sacks of take-out Cuban food, beer and Jack Daniel’s in back with them.

“Have a beer,” Serge told Aubrey.

“Not while working. I’ll get fired.”

Serge had him stop at a drugstore and bought a bicyclist’s water bottle. He filled it with two cans of Miller and handed it over Aubrey’s shoulder.

“Hey! Thanks!”

Over the next three hours, Serge and Coleman would make Aubrey a legend in his field, setting the Key West rickshaw record with a two-hundred-dollar fare. They saw Truman’s southern white house, and they stopped to take pictures of the ten-ton concrete thimble at the ersatz Southernmost Point. In between were constant stops for rest rooms and tropical trinkets.

They rode down Olivia to Whitehead Street. At the corner of the Hemingway House they were beset by three competing crack dealers on mopeds, who appeared from behind bushes like motorcycle cops at a speed trap. “Psst, hey, I got what you want!”

Serge stood in the back of the rickshaw and pulled up his shirt to display the pistol in his waistband. The mopeds scattered.

Aubrey pedaled north on Duval.

Susan Tchoupitoulas walked south on the side
walk, carrying flyers, darting in and out of stores where Serge and Coleman had been spotted.

She showed faxed photos of them in a kite factory, a body shampoo parlor and an art importer. The importers remembered the two all right, high breakage risks. Serge had handled and photographed everything. Coleman had bumped his marlin hat into a giant copper wind chime depicting a school of Spanish mackerel, and the staff had to get ladders to untangle him.

Susan walked in Southernmost Bong and Hookah, where Coleman had bought a ceramic toucan water pipe. The clerk yelled to another clerk, “Yo, Five-O! Five-O!”

“Bennie! It’s me, Susan,” Tchoupitoulas yelled as Bennie ran out the back door. “We went to high school together!”

Serge kept a steady flow of beer going to Aubrey, who lost inhibition and started taking pulls straight from the Jack Daniel’s bottle in traffic in front of the Bull.

“You guys are the greatest,” Aubrey declared.

“It’s all relative,” said Serge. “Turn around and watch the road.”

When they got to Turtle Kraals, Aubrey was having trouble keeping the rickshaw on all three wheels. Leading to the Land’s End Marina, in the darkness, was a winding downhill road. Aubrey took his feet off the pedals and let the bike freewheel. The pedals spun like fans, and Aubrey turned to an ashen Serge and Coleman. “Extreme, man!”

Somehow they found themselves going about thirty out on the wooden pier, vibrating like they were going down railroad tracks. They sailed off the end into the black water of Key West Bight.

A crack team of barflies ran down the pier and fished them out.

The rubber bands holding their beards had slipped down around their necks, and someone yelled, “It’s those guys from TV, the deer killers!” Serge and Coleman fled sopping wet and ran out in front of a pink taxi driving by on Front Street. The driver hit the brakes and the two hopped in.

The taxi had a thick plastic body-fluid liner over everything in the backseat, and the driver ignored their wetness.

“Where to?” he asked.

“To the cockfights!” said Coleman.

“Ignore him,” said Serge. “Start driving and I’ll tell you when to turn.”

They went west on Greene Street. Serge looked out the back window and saw a small mob running down the street chasing the cab. The cabbie studied them in the rearview mirror.

“Hey! You’re the guys from TV! The murderers!” The hack hit the brakes, and Serge and Coleman bailed out and sprinted up Greene Street. The vigilantes ran by the cab in pursuit.

The mob was closing, about fifty yards behind Serge and Coleman, as they came to the intersection with Duval.

There was a lot of activity ahead in the road. On
the left-hand corner was Sloppy Joe’s, and out on the sidewalk, spilling onto Duval, were the look-alikes. A few hundred, massing in the intersection.

They were in a tight knot in the street, mostly staggering, moving slow, or completely stopped, not appearing to be going anywhere soon, like cows when they’re chewing. Blocking Serge and Coleman’s escape. The mob right on them.

Serge reached the Hemingways, stopped and spun. Looking for an exit. He saw the mob a few feet away, about to pin them against the look-alikes. “Put your beard back on!” he told Coleman, and they pulled the rubber bands up behind their heads. Then they both turned their backs to the mob and pried their way into the Hemingways like they were climbing into a dense jungle.

The mob stopped at the edge of the Hemingways. They stood on their tiptoes and stretched their necks, trying to pick out Serge and Coleman. The pair burrowed deeper into the look-alikes.

One of the pursuers pointed and yelled, “There they are!” Serge saw the vigilantes start climbing in after them, and he pulled a pistol. He fired a fusillade in the air. The mob pulled back, tentative, and they dispersed when Serge fired two more shots.

Meanwhile, the Hemingways started moving slowly in the opposite direction, down Duval. In their dulled state, there was a calm confusion and general sluggishness of response. But as a few started moving, so did others. Slow at first, but soon all were under way, and the movement took on its own life.

The undulating, protoplasmic mass of Hemingways broke into a trot, then a run. In the middle, Serge and Coleman kept pace. By the time it got to Fleming Street it was a full-scale stampede. A clomping, reeling, wobbling herd of flatulence engines thundering across the island. A woman shrieked and a stranger darted into the street and pulled a small child from the path of the Hemingways. A moped slid out from under someone, and a man wearing a sandwich board that said “Repent” was trampled, footprints up and down his signs.

People ran hollering in the opposite direction; others dove for doorways or climbed on top of cars. Spooked cats came out of nowhere, running for their lives, adding to the panic. A tabby jumped onto one of the Hemingways’ back and dug in its claws. The Hemingway twirled, yelling and flapping his arms behind him, trying to swat the cat just out of reach, and he ran up on the sidewalk and crashed through the front window of Margaritaville. A group of college thrill-seekers waited behind a fritter wagon, timing the herd. When it was alongside, the young men ran out into the Hemingways and down the street with them, dodging the men and their beer steins, trying not to get gored. Serge and Coleman worked their way to the eastern edge of the stampede and dove into a sunset cruise ticket booth at Angela Street.

The leading Hemingways ended up falling in the sea at the foot of Duval and others turned onto South Street until the matter petered out under its own spe
cific gravity. The Japanese, English and Spanish television crews took news of the melee global. The following week, the look-alikes would be approached by a consortium from London, who would sign them to a lucrative deal to participate next year in the first annual Running of the Hemingways.

Serge and Coleman made their way through tiny backyards and victory gardens until they came out behind the garbage cans in an alley next to the Purple Pelican. In the distance, back toward Duval, they heard sirens and saw several spires of black smoke. They nonchalantly walked around the corner and into the Pelican’s lobby. Serge waved as they walked by, soaking wet, filthy and winded, but the desk clerk showed disgusted indifference and returned to his crossword.

When Serge flicked on the light, he and Mo Grenadine surprised each other equally and both yelled. Grenadine had a flashlight and burglary tools in a drawstring Crown Royal pouch.

“Who are you?!” Serge asked.

“Southernmost Termite. The owner called and asked…”

“No you’re not,” said Coleman. “I know you. From the radio. You’re Holy Moly! I love your show!”

Grenadine smiled, but Serge clubbed him to the ground anyway.

“I can’t believe I’m really talking to Holy Moly in person!” said a starstruck Coleman as he and Serge tied him up in a chair.

“What are you doing here?” Coleman asked.

“You dolt!” said Serge. “He’s looking for the money!”

Serge tied Grenadine’s ankles together and went through his pants pockets.

“Get your hands off my dick, you fudgepacker!” Grenadine shouted. “Help! Help! Faggot attack!”

“That’s it,” said Serge and sealed Mo’s mouth with duct tape. He flipped open a pocketknife and cut the ropes except the ones tying Mo’s hands together. “Coleman, give me a hand here. Let’s get him on his feet.”

Coleman was looking for something for Grenadine to autograph.

“Coleman!”

Mo writhed and they sat him on the end of the bed. Coleman held Mo fast around the chest while Serge got the antigravity boots from his gym bag and put them on Mo’s feet.

“Help me get him upside down,” said Serge. They hung him by the hooks on the boots to the tension rod in the bathroom doorway. Serge opened his tackle box.

He squatted down and peered into Mo’s inverted face. “You sure like to call people fudgepacker.”

Grenadine’s answer was muffled under the tape. Serge to Coleman: “Pull his pants down, I mean up.”

Serge felt around inside the bag and pulled out a small plastic funnel used to change oil, some still coating it.

“Do you know what you make life like for a lot of people who have far more character and compassion
than you?” This time Serge pulled back the tape to let Grenadine answer.

“Butt-snorkeler!”

Serge replaced the tape. “I suggest a toast. A toast to Holy Moly!”

He jammed the funnel between Grenadine’s legs. “It’s a special drink I’ve invented with you in mind. I call it the fudge daiquiri.”

Serge opened a bottle of rum and poured it carefully into the funnel. “Bottoms up!”

Half the bottle went into Mo, and Serge corked up Grenadine with a pelican-shaped bar of hotel soap.

Serge explained to Grenadine, still upside down: “DUI in Florida is point oh eight percent blood alcohol content. At point forty, you’re on your way to a coma, and you’re pretty much dead at point sixty. What I’ve just poured in you should top out around point ninety. By bypassing the liver and going straight into the bloodstream through the intestines, the liquor will hit you in the next few minutes like a rocket sled.”

Serge checked his watch.

“Here’s your only hope for survival. And I think you, in particular, will appreciate this. In the next fifteen minutes you need to persuade someone to give you an immediate and massive enema. Your life depends on it.”

They took Grenadine down from the tension rod and walked him out of the hotel room to the top of the stairs.

“You’ve heard of The Duval Crawl?” Serge asked,
referring to the bar-hopping tradition of Duval Street. “You’re about to become the first person in history to do The Duval Crawl of Death!”

He cut Mo’s wrists free, took the tape off his mouth and pushed him down the stairs.

“Rock on with your bad self, Beavis!” Serge called after him, and he and Coleman went back in room 3 and slammed the door.

The clerk at the front desk heard the rolling crash and sprang back. At the foot of the stairs, Grenadine pulled himself up by the banister. He could see at least five or six clerks at the reservation desk, circling in a kaleidoscope.

Mo charted a course for the desk, but he ended up moving like a guy in an initiation game after spinning around a baseball bat with his forehead on the handle. He overshot the desk and crashed into a potted croton. The clerk ran around the counter to help him, and Mo grabbed him by the shirt and demanded an enema.

Mo hit the sidewalk in front of the Purple Pelican on his back.

“And stay out!” yelled the clerk.

Even in his stupor, Mo knew time was critical. He stumbled his way across traffic on Duval and into the Charter Boat.

The Charter Boat was testosterone-rich, pea-brained and about as homophobic a bar as Key West can muster. The bartenders mixed drinks up on a tuna tower welded into the middle of the tavern. Behind it was a teak fighting chair, where patrons
strapped themselves in, put their heads back and had margaritas mixed in their mouths. They yanked around with the aftertaste like they were fighting an eight-hundred-pound mako shark.

Mo careened into two guys on stools, spilling their beers.

“Help me. For the love of God. They’re trying to kill me. They poisoned me with alcohol…”

Except it came out in a new, indecipherable language consisting entirely of vowels and drooling. Unfortunately for Mo, his enunciation congealed at the moment he got to the part about the enema.

Mo was strapped into the fighting chair, a big-armed man pinching his nose and another pouring double margaritas down his throat. Mo kicked furiously against the foot plate. Over the bar he saw an autographed photo of himself, inscribed, “Death to the Fudgepackers! Affectionately, Holy Moly.”

Soon he was back flat on the sidewalk again, fuming high-proof from both ends. He righted himself on a bike rack and slalomed down the sidewalk, knocking over mopeds and banging into people, who shoved him into walls and lampposts. Duval Street had become an evil fun house, rocking, bending and weird.