Tim Dorsey Collection #1 (68 page)

“What are you doin’ with it here?” asked Serge.

“I’m gonna sell it. I’ve been making some calls to get an auction together. I bet it can fetch at least ten large on the black market.”

“Like hell you’re gonna sell it!”

“Why not?”

“Cuz I’ll kick your ass if you do! You know what you got there? That is the coolest! If I had one, I’d never sell it. I’d keep it in a special container with the rest of my special stuff.”

“Why?”

“To look at. You know, when you get the mood some nights to get your special stuff out and put it on the table, and you sit there and look at it and play with it, move it around…”

Lenny had a puzzled look.

“What?” said Serge. “Didn’t you have any hobbies when you were a kid?”

“So what am I supposed to do with it?” Lenny asked.

“If it’ll bring ten grand, so will a fully authenticated counterfeit moon rock. I can get this certificate touched up at Kinko’s and we’ll run off a bunch. Then we’ll get a few Lucite display boxes with little pedestals inside, like they use to show off autographed baseballs. We’ll sell the rock over and over again.”

“Where we gonna find more rocks?”

A
red Audi driven by Tommy Diaz slowed on Gulf Boulevard and turned into the driveway of Hammerhead Ranch.

“Aaaaaauuuuuuuu!” Tommy yelled, and cut the wheel, barely missing two men crouched low to the ground in the parking lot.

Lenny looked up from the pavement as the Audi swerved by, barely missing him. “I think we’re too far out,” Lenny told Serge. “We’re gonna get run over.”

The pair duck-walked to the side of the motel parking lot, picking up rocks as they went.

“How about this one?” Lenny asked, holding up a smooth white river rock used in decorative landscaping.

“Are you still high? At least make some attempt to select one that looks real. That certificate is only gonna fool ’em so much.”

Serge sorted through some rocks next to a garbage can, and he picked one up and held it in front of his face. “Okay, here we go. We’re cookin’ now!”

“How’s that rock better than mine?”

“Look at it! Think basaltic, igneous—use your imagination. This could be from an ejecta blanket on the Sea of Storms. See the perforated texture? Intense heat, geological trauma! A few more of these and we’re in business!”

Serge leaned back down and sorted meticulously through the rubble among the butts and bottle caps.

“You gotta be careful selling space stuff on the black market,” said Serge. “Local cops and even the FBI shouldn’t be a problem, but you don’t want to mess with the National Aeronautics and Space Administration. Just ask the shrimper who’s talking to rats in his jail cell.”

“What happened?”

“They were on a trawler dragging the North Atlantic for shrimp when they snagged a tiny metal box. The shrimper cracked it open and found some personal effects and a few crew patches that said ‘Challenger.’ Their nets had hit a small skid of debris that hadn’t been found after the space shuttle blew an O-ring in ’86. The guy goes back to Cocoa Beach of all places and tries peddling the box around the pawnshops. He’s asking twenty grand, and he ends up settling for something like thirty bucks.”

“Not too shrewd,” said Lenny.

“That’s why they’re the underclass,” said Serge. “So the pawnshop owner calls NASA, and the next thing the guy knows, he’s walking down the sidewalk on A1A when ten agents come out of thin air and gang-swarm him…. All that scientific nerd stuff you hear? Total garbage—these boys don’t play.”

They stopped talking and went back to collecting rocks.

A half hour later, Serge was still at it, subjecting every pebble to the same intricate degree of scrutiny. Lenny was totally bored and cranky.

“I think this is a lot more work than we have to go through,” he whined. “At a certain point it’s just not worth it anymore.”

Serge turned around with a handful of rocks. “It’s not a question of whether crime pays. It’s whether you enjoy your job. That’s the key to life.”

A
n hour later, Serge and Lenny lay on their backs on their motel beds. Serge held the moon rock above his face, moving it around in the air, making rocket-thruster sounds with his mouth.

Lenny was on the bed next to the window, head toward the door. Serge had given him his keychain laser pointer to play with, and Lenny held it up above him, shooting the beam around the room and out the window.

“This is the coolest,” said Lenny, waving the red light around. “Since we’re gonna sell counterfeit moon rocks, I really don’t need the original. Wanna trade for the laser?”

“Deal!” said Serge.

They each reached out an arm into the little aisle between the beds and did a pinky shake to make it official.

I
t was ninety-two degrees by noon.

Zargoza reclined on a chaise lounge next to the pool at Hammerhead Ranch. He wiped sweat off his forehead and thought, I know this is Florida, but we’re heading into the holiday season for heaven’s sake. His swimsuit was a golden tan and a short length last in vogue in 1973. He had a sheen of sunscreen butter on his rugged, hairy chest and read the
St. Petersburg Times
through postmodern sunglasses that looked like welder’s goggles. It was early afternoon, no clouds or haze, and the sun was full strength. A group of children splashed and shrieked in the pool.

Four swimsuit models lay on their stomachs on Budweiser beach towels. Their bikini tops were untied as they read paperbacks with vibrant covers,
Done Deal, Bones of Coral, Skin Tight
and
The Mango Opera
. Just behind Zargoza’s chair, a constant flow of Japanese, French and German tourists stopped and posed for pictures in front of the row of stuffed hammerhead sharks and then drove away.
Zargoza had a tall, sweating glass of grapefruit juice on the boomerang cocktail table next to his lounger. A cheap transistor radio played “Lawyers, Guns and Money.” Zargoza took two Valium, the blue ones, and chased with the grapefruit. He was becoming a nerve case, thinking too much about the five million in the briefcase. Obviously drug money. Someone doesn’t lose that and not come looking for it. And, apparently, someone already had. Taxidermied alive? Ripped apart under a drawbridge? Zargoza shivered at the images. Those weren’t murders; they were messages. Definitely cartel work. It was only a matter of time.

Zargoza hadn’t been sleeping well. He kept waking up in the night obsessing about the briefcase, worrying it wasn’t hidden well enough. He couldn’t go back to sleep until he moved it again, and late each night he ran around the grounds of Hammerhead Ranch in his Devil Rays pajamas, the briefcase in one hand and a pistol in the other, making everything worse. “What was that?” Zargoza would spin around, aiming the pistol at imaginary shadows, dramatic music playing in his head. The curse was getting to be too much. Not to mention the Diaz Boys, the sweepstakes subpoenas and the simmering scandal at the nursing home. Zargoza decided right then to set C. C. Flag up as the fall guy; prosecutors can’t resist the headlines of bagging a celebrity.

Zargoza took another sip of grapefruit juice. He finished the
Times
and picked up a
Weekly Mail of the News World
left on the next lounger by a British tourist. Zargoza lifted the grapefruit juice again,
gulped and put it back without taking his eyes off the tabloid. He couldn’t believe the stories.

First, a coke brick explodes in a car driven by a college student. Then the same student crashes through the glass dome of the Florida Aquarium. Finally, an unidentified Latin male with a shotgun is killed in the doorway of a condominium by an eighty-year-old woman with a hundred-year-old gun. The stories had the Diaz Boys’ fat fingerprints all over them. Shit, Zargoza thought, the British are covering this better than we are. He looked over the articles again. They all had the same byline, correspondent Lenny Lippowicz.

He turned the page and saw another story by Lippowicz about a frantic treasure hunt in Key West for a briefcase full of drug money. A giant headline: “The Five-Million-Dollar Curse!”

“AAAAHHHHHH!” Zargoza screamed and dropped the paper like it was on fire.

Panic turned to anger. Zargoza picked up the paper and shredded it, crunching the pieces into a ball and slamming it to the ground. “Fuck! Fuck! Fuck!”—spitting the words as fast as he could, losing breath, standing there shaking next to his lounger.

Tommy Diaz had terrible timing.

He drove up in a red Audi, and got out looking shaken.

“What’s wrong with
you
?” asked Zargoza.

“I almost ran over two guys duck-walking in your driveway!” said Tommy, sitting down on the side of the lounger next to Zargoza.

“You always were a shitty driver,” said Zargoza.
He reclined again and closed his eyes. Minutes passed. Tommy looked at the patio around the loungers, wondering what the deal was with all the torn-up newspapers. Zargoza finally sat up again and faced Tommy.

“Do you have any concept of
subtlety
? Any aptitude at all for the soft touch? Is there a feather in that quiver of yours, or is it all sledgehammers and battering rams with you guys?”

“What do you mean?”

Zargoza threw up his arms.

They were distracted by a loud racket. Some hammering and a buzz saw. Both turned and looked out on the beach behind the Calusa Pointe condominiums next door. They saw a furious level of construction as if the Seabees were building a Coral Sea airstrip. Half the noise was coming from where a massive temporary stage was being erected. The rest of the noise was from people getting plywood ready for the hurricane.

“What’s that about?” asked Tommy, pointing at the lighting masts going up over the stage.

“It’s their stupid anti-immigration rally tomorrow,” said Zargoza.

Two workers hung a large cloth banner across the back of the stage. “Proposition 213: Because they just don’t look right!”

“Chowderheads,” muttered Zargoza. He grabbed the grapefruit juice and chugged the whole thing and wiped his mouth with the back of his arm.

Tommy Diaz didn’t say anything. He set a small object down on the cocktail table.

“What’s that?” asked Zargoza.

“It’s a beeper,” said Tommy.

“I
know
it’s a beeper, you dumb shit,” Zargoza said. “When I say ‘What’s that?’ I mean, what is it in the technical context of ‘Why should I give a flying fuck?’”

“It’s going to make us rich,” said Tommy.

“What? You’re putting up microwave towers?”

“No. We stole these. A whole semi full. When we unload them, we’ll make a fortune.”

“It has zebra stripes,” said Zargoza.

“They all have zebra stripes.”

“
All?
”

“All thirty thousand,” Tommy said proudly.

“Jesus, you got thirty thousand beepers with zebra stripes. How do you ever expect to unload them?”

“Because they’re Motorola,” said Tommy. “People want quality.”

“They don’t want zebra stripes.”

“Yes they do.”

“No they
don’t
! Maybe they want their favorite color, but not this nightmare. It’s hideous. Might as well be covered with 666s.”

“Maybe some people won’t like it, but there’ll still be plenty of other customers.”

“Look, you got only two markets for this thing,” said Zargoza, counting off on his fingers. “One, zoologists, and two, that hooker chick in
Get Christie Love
. That’s it. End of story. Fade to black.”

Tommy Diaz was crestfallen. “What am I gonna do with ’em?”

“That’s your problem,” Zargoza said as he lay back down and closed his eyes.

“Well, it’s kinda
our
problem. They’re all in room ten.”

Zargoza sprang up. “What!”

“Easy, easy. We had to get rid of the truck. It was bringin’ a lot of heat.”

“Bringin’ a lot of heat? As opposed to what? Dropping some kid through the roof of the aquarium?”

“We weren’t thinking right on that one. We were drinking and I got a little dizzy from the helium.”

“Jesus! You’re all over the papers. And if you go down, I go with you. You guys need to lay low for a while. Watch some cable TV. Catch up on
Law & Order
. You staying in room ten?”

“Can’t,” said Tommy. “It’s full of beepers.”

Zargoza’s head fell to his chest in frustrated exhaustion.

Tommy got a funny look on his face, like he was debating whether to say something. “You didn’t happen to come across five million dollars by any chance?”

“Five million? Are you kidding?” said Zargoza, and he laughed artificially.

“You wouldn’t hold out on us, would you?”

“Never!”

“Word on the street is it’s from the Mierda Cartel,” said Tommy.

“Mierda?” said Zargoza. “That means
shit
in Spanish.”

“Apparently they didn’t research the name well enough.”

They both lay back down on their loungers and closed their eyes. They were quiet a few minutes.

Tommy finally lifted his head. “I notice you don’t carry a beeper.”

S
erge hunched over and turned a jeweler’s screwdriver, the last step in reassembling the homing signal receiver, which he was doing for the eleventh time in three days. He turned it on again. Nothing again.

“Dammit! What’s the deal?” He grabbed it in his right hand and smacked it on the writing table a few times. He stopped and waited. Still nothing. He had it over his shoulder, ready to fling at the wall, when the indicator lights began flashing and the beeper began beeping.

Serge looked out the window of room one. Zargoza was walking by on the sidewalk with a briefcase, every few steps spinning around in paranoia like a street crazy.

S
erge ambled down to the jetty next to Hammerhead Ranch. A few dozen people fished at the end of the rocks, a wide mix of heritage and walks of life, getting along famously. A rapper with a Snoop Dogg
T-shirt showed a skinhead how to tie off a new lure. Serge’s theory was that you could end the world’s troubles by going to the hot spots and handing out fishing poles.

He watched the people with saltwater casting rigs and buckets and stringers. Three men without shirts cast from the last rock of the jetty. Waves rolled in every minute, threatening to sweep them off. But there was a large tidal pool at the base of the rock, which sucked the waves down and blasted a spray high in the air in front of them.

To the left, on the beach side of the jetty, children and families played in the swim area, roped off with buoys. A small boy with a new dive mask was facedown in the knee-deep water, studying shells and schools of tiny translucent fish that changed direction abruptly and in unison.

Midway on the jetty, Zargoza had climbed down the boulders to the water line, where there were no other people, looking around nervously and jamming a metal briefcase in a cranny between the big rocks.

Serge arrived on top of the jetty without a sound and called down to Zargoza. “Nice weather.”

“Auuuuuhhhhh!” Zargoza yelled, jumping up in surprise. He put his hand over his pounding heart. “Don’t
do
that!”

“You’re the owner of the motel, aren’t you?” asked Serge.

“Who wants to know?” said Zargoza, climbing back up the boulders.

“I’m a guest. Room one.”

Serge smiled broadly and Zargoza didn’t like the looks of it.

The car thieves and Sid and Patty had been child’s play. But he hadn’t fully appraised this Zargoza cat yet. Might be a more worthy adversary. Serge decided to bide his time and draw the thing out in a war of nerves, maybe even use a little “rope-a-dope,” and his mind suddenly unanchored and floated back thirty-three years to Miami Beach, a young underdog named Cassius Clay going crazy at the weigh-in, pounding on Sonny Liston’s limo at the airport, then beating Liston like a rug at the Convention Center….

“Hello? Hello? Anybody home?” asked Zargoza.

Serge snapped back to the present. “Sorry. I was in Miami.”

Zargoza took a step back and gave him a wary look, but they were interrupted by a loud mechanical noise. They both turned and looked up the inlet. It was a growing buzzing sound, high-rpm engines like dirt bikes. Or Jet Skis.

There were four of them. Lots of colors, expensive swimwear and shirts with designer markings. Luxury dive watches on their wrists even though they weren’t divers. Huge scuba knives strapped in spring-loaded scabbards on their calves even though they never had any use for them. They did doughnuts in their personal watercraft, accompanied by “Wooooooo!” and “Yahoooooo!” Then another flat-out run in formation across the mangrove flats and toward the jetty. A rapidly approaching jackass armada.

“No nautical training, no understanding or respect for maritime courtesy,” said Serge. “Everyone with a boat knows the unspoken code you live by. The waterways were the last refuge of
honor
.”

Zargoza nodded gloomily. “Now I know how the outlaw bikers felt when these dingleberries started showing up on Harleys.”

On the first pass, the Jet Skiers snapped two fishing lines. Then they had the courtesy to come back and snap three more. By the third pass, they had driven every fish out of the inlet. People on the jetty slammed down their poles. The Jet Skiers whipped around the end of the jetty, and only providence saved them from the submerged boulders they didn’t know existed. They ran over the swim ropes and through the family bathing area, forcing a mother to snatch her two-year-old out of a blow-up turtle and dive toward the beach. They passed between shore and the small boy in the swim mask with his head down in the water.

The Jet Skiers stopped up the beach and one pulled a small fabric cooler off his shoulder. He opened it and tossed beers to his buddies. They killed them fast and chucked the empties in the water.

“Did you see that?” said Zargoza. “They almost ran over that kid. And they littered.”

Serge walked over to a garbage bin and pulled out a few soda cans and filled them from the faucet at the fish-cleaning table. He walked back and rejoined Zargoza out on the rocks. They could hear the high whine of the engines on their return trip. The Jet Skis rounded the end of the jetty one by one.

“I love Florida sunsets,” said Serge. “Every time the sun goes down it gives me renewed hope for tomorrow.”

Serge made practice swings with his arm, gauging the weight of the can. He lobbed the aluminum cylinder in a practice shot and it splashed ten yards out from the rocks. “Now you try.”

Zargoza made practice swings of his own to get the feel.

Serge studied his stance and motion. He pointed at the Jet Skiers yelling and doing more doughnuts at the end of the inlet. “What’s happening to this country?”

“No sense of sacrifice,” said Zargoza. “They live right up to the edge of their means, buying Jet Skis they ride two days a year. Fancy cars, Rolexes, all show. They eat their seed corn.”

“In Texas, they have a saying for people like that,” said Serge. “Big hat, no cattle.”

Zargoza got ready with the soda can. He reached his arm back.

“Say, you hear anything about the cursed five million dollars that’s in the papers?” asked Serge.

Zargoza became unnerved and bricked the shot ten feet off target.

Serge walked over and grabbed Zargoza’s arm like a golf instructor, and he swung it in a slow pendulum to demonstrate technique.

“The mistake people often make is to try to add too much velocity. That way you lose accuracy,” said Serge. “What you want to do is put all your effort into aim. At the speeds they’re going, they’ll supply
all the velocity you’ll need. Finesse it. Air it out in a nice arch like Rip Sewell’s old ephus pitch for the Pittsburgh Pirates.”

Zargoza reloaded with another can. The first Jet Skier approached, and Zargoza let it fly. The skier didn’t notice as it missed wide and long.

The next Jet Skier was about to go by. Serge tossed the can in a two-handed lob from between the legs—a basketball free throw out of the fifties. The sound was a sickening thud as the can broke across the bridge of the man’s nose and knocked him backward off the Jet Ski like a horseback rider hitting the bottom branch of a tree.

The jetty broke into laughter.

The other three Jet Skiers circled and grabbed their friend out of the water. One skier pulled him aboard, and then the other two moved toward the rocks where Zargoza and Serge stood. They went for their scuba knives. Zargoza produced a pistol, and the men beat a panicked retreat, leaving the fourth Jet Ski bobbing nose down in the water.

“You know,” said Zargoza, tucking the pistol back in his waistband and turning to Serge, “you’re a lot of fun to be around.”

“That’s because I’m a people person.”