Electric Barracuda (8 page)

“Looking back, I feel so silly.”

“Impressive.” More unreadable doctor scribbling. “Last question: What about Serge?”

“That loser?” said Mahoney. “Life’s too short.”

“You aren’t obsessed in the least?”

“Only think about him when you mention his name in this room.”

“I don’t know what to say.” The doctor made a final note and closed the file. “Have to admit when you first came in here I wasn’t optimistic, but that’s fifteen excellent sessions now without a single slip of slang. Never seen such rapid progress.”

“What are you getting at?” asked Mahoney.

“Can’t see the point of meeting anymore.” The doctor got up and headed for the door. “I’ll have my secretary type up the letter. You can wait for it in the lobby if you’d like.”

“Appreciate it.”

Twenty minutes later, the envelope was in his hand. He cordially waved when the doctor opened the lobby door to call in the next patient. “Take care.” And as soon as Mahoney was outside: “Goofball-pushing head cracker needs his ticket punched on a Harlem sunset.”

Mahoney didn’t even wait to leave the parking lot before ripping the suit off right in his car, throwing on his old threads like he was fighting to come up for air.

And now he stood in his flophouse flat, opening the envelope. A letter on physician stationery unfolded. The last line: “Cleared for active duty.”

The page fell next to the typewriter. He opened a drawer. Gold shield and a Smith & Wesson. He grabbed a third toothpick.

A black rotary phone sat on the desk.

It rang.

Ten Blocks Away

A ’68 Ford Gran Torino sped south on Fourth Street.

“. . . Recalculating, drive point-two miles and make a U-turn . . . Recalculating, drive point-three miles and make a left . . . Recalulating . . .”

Coleman stubbed out a joint. “Where’s that woman’s voice coming from?”

“My new Garmin GPS. You know how I love gadgets. And I love my new Garmin!”

“. . . Recalculating, drive . . .”

“Does it ever stop talking?”

“That’s the only problem.” Serge cut down an alley. “I know every shortcut in Florida like the back of my hand, but that chick in the machine thinks she’s smarter. Women are always telling you how to drive and getting on your last nerve. Why did I buy this fucking thing?”

“If you know the state so well, why
did
you buy it?”

“Because sometimes I get distracted taking pictures and daydreaming about all the super powers I’d like to have, but not delusional super powers that crazy people scream about on the street. I dial it down to just stuff that’s possible, like X-ray vision that sees through only
thin
walls, or a heightened ability to detect bad milk, and then I’ve missed my destination by fifty miles, so the GPS reminds me, saving precious time and extending my life expectancy.”

“. . . Recalculating. Drive point-four miles . . .”

“What’s her weird accent?”

“I switched the Garmin to British in the language settings. Kind of a turn-on.”

“. . . Make a left, then make a right . . . Recalculating . . .”

Serge pounded the dashboard. “Shut up! . . . Shut the fuck up!”

“Why don’t you just switch it off?”

“Because it’s a gadget.”

Cars streamed off the highway into downtown St. Petersburg.

The Gran Torino headed from Central Avenue to Third. Orange cones in the road, police directing traffic.

Noon.

“. . . Recalculating . . .”

Serge drove by parking lots that had already begun to fill. “I can’t believe that hotline let us go after one day.”

“They wanted to keep me,” said Coleman.

Serge shook his head. “I wouldn’t do that to my buddy. Can’t leave you at the mercy of any outfit that treated me so shabbily.”

“They said they listened to the tapes from your last phone conversation.”

“That was tough love,” said Serge. “Sometimes you have to scream back and call their bluff.”

“At least the paramedics arrived in time.”

“You get one bluff wrong, and everybody’s emotional.”

They waited through two cycles of a red light. Coleman cracked as many beers. “Look at all these cars.”

“Nothing compared to what we’ll see in an hour.”

“How’d you get this other job so fast?”

“Connections.”

They continued past more lots. People climbed from vehicles and joined a growing human river flowing east. Others unfolded chairs and opened coolers.

Serge turned left. “Here we are.” They stopped at the driveway of one of the only empty parking lots in sight. Serge got out and undid the chain across the entrance, then motored inside.

“Don’t forget this.” Serge handed Coleman a bag on the seat between them. “It shows you’re official.”

They went to the trunk for the rest of their supplies.

Almost immediately, the first car arrived.

“Enjoy the game,” said Serge, handing the driver a ticket. He tucked fifteen dollars in a zippered pouch attached to his waist.

“Get wrecked,” said Coleman, handing the next driver a stub.

Then they picked up their cardboard signs again and stood on the side of the road in yellow safety vests.

Other cars approached to consider the lot, then booed and cursed the pair. Someone shot a bird.

Serge just smiled and waved.

“What’s that all about?” asked Coleman.

“Home-field advantage,” said Serge, waving at someone else who spat in their direction. “Just keep that sign up so everyone can see it.”

Coleman raised the cardboard: Parking $20.

Serge raised his: Tampa Bay Hospitality Special: Anyone Wearing Visiting Team Hat Or Shirt, $5 Off.

Cars continued pouring into their lot. Even more shunned it and jeered. Zippered waist pouches became fat.

“Serge, look at all this money. I hope they’re paying us better than that last place.”

“They are.”

More bills went in Coleman’s pouch. “I like jobs where you get to touch lots of cash.”

“Me, too,” said Serge. “Except we’ll only have this gig one day.”

“How do you know they’re going to get rid of us?”

“They’re not. We’re quitting.” Serge tore off a ticket. “Enjoy the game! . . .”

Another carload of people in pinstripes and New York caps parked in their lot and headed toward the stadium.

“Go Yankees!” said Serge.

“But you’re a Rays fan,” said Coleman.

“The biggest. That’s why I took this job.”

“Yet we’re quitting?”

“Promptly.” Serge motioned for the next car. “We need venture capital for the next phase of my life.”

“Which is?”

“Relaunching our travel website, under new management.”

“But it isn’t under new management.”

“That’s right. Meet the new boss, same as the old boss . . . I always get a kick when I see an U
NDER
N
EW
M
ANAGEMENT
sign. Translation: This place used to blow, but we got rid of those assholes.” He dispensed a ticket. “Enjoy the game! . . . My revolutionary new twist will turn all other websites into weeping piles of Twittering mush.”

“The Fugitive Tour?”

“Got to thinking: How have I found so many cool Florida destinations? I knew a bunch of them before, but the lion’s share came after I was on the run, police sirens blaring, crashing barricades, hails of gunfire, knife fights, pistol whippings, hand-to-hand combat with angel-dust fiends trying to bite your ears off. Why should I have all the fun?”

Coleman exchanged another ticket for money. “I don’t think they’ll get a kick out of that as much as you do.”

“Not the brushes with death,” said Serge. “They’ll just pretend those parts. The real payoff is all the most remote, offbeat locations I’ve personally vetted. That’s the key to my business model: I’ve spent years crisscrossing Florida on the lam, and now I’ll pass the savings on to them.”

“You’re always thinking of others.”

“Because my company runs on love. And at the same time I get to work on my Secret Master Plan.”

“What’s the Secret Master Plan?”

“A secret.”

Coleman stood with a ticket in his hand. “There must be a hundred cars in the lot.”

“At least.”

“But why aren’t they coming in as fast as before?”

“Because the game’s about to start.”

“Then what do we do?”

“Get the folding chairs out of our car and sit in the shade doing nothing.”

“And you want to quit a job like that?”

“There’s a catch.”

Meanwhile . . .

Mahoney stood in his flophouse and stared at a black rotary phone.

Fifth ring.

Mahoney liked to let phones ring. Once he picked them up, mundaneness. But until then, hope. Wide-open horizons of intrigue: the boozy broad in a tight sweater with a sob story and trouble uptown . . . a caller with a handkerchief over his mouth who says to check out some freshly poured cement in the bowery . . . the grudgingly respectful police captain telling him to stay away from their latest case or he can’t help him this time . . . some Joe spilling his guts over a body in the lake but stops mid-sentence because of the knife in his back . . . His mother who thinks the neighbors are deliberately blowing leaves into her yard . . . Mahoney dared to let himself dream:
The Maltese Falcon
? . . .

Ninth ring.

He snatched the receiver.

“Mahoney. Start yapping.”

“Mahoney? This is Agent Lowe.”

“To what do I owe the inconvenience?”

“I’ve just been put on a task force.”

“Goody gumdrops.”

“We’re after Serge.”

Silence.

“You still there?”

“All ears.”

“We’ve been going through old files and your name came up. Quite a few times, in fact.”

Mahoney thinking: Serge is mine, you diaper jockey. “How can I jibe?”

“That’s why I’m calling. I’d like to pick your brain about the way this guy operates. Any ideas where we should start looking?”

“Spit your digits,” said Mahoney.

Lowe gave him his phone number. “When I can I expect to hear back from you?”

“I’ll yank my flogger and spread cabbage in the clip joints.”

“What?”

Mahoney hung up.

He scooped his badge and gun and ran downstairs for the Cutlass. Gravel flew as it fishtailed onto the street. He was forced to do something he couldn’t have dreaded more: go to the library and get on a computer.

S
erge stood at the edge of a parking lot in a yellow vest. He checked his watch. “First pitch should be any minute.”

“I’ll get the lawn chairs,” said Coleman.

A few more late-arriving Yankee fans and then nothing. Coleman sat under a tree, fanning himself with his sign and pressing an ice-cold beer can to his forehead. “I could get used to this.”

“Don’t.”

“I know. Your website.”

“But first we have to call Mooch.”

“Mooch?”

“Our boss.” Serge opened his cell phone. “Told you I had connections.”

Fifteen minutes later, Serge pointed up the street. “Here he comes.”

Coleman stood and unzipped his cash pouch with a sulk. “Guess I have to give him all my money now.”

“No, we get to keep that.”

“Serge, you’re babbling.”

A vehicle pulled up.

“Mooch!”

“Serge!” He looked around the lot. “Looks like you did a tidy bit of commerce today.”

“Bumper business, excuse the pun.”

Mooch opened his wallet and handed Serge a thousand dollars.

“Ahem! . . . I got overhead. Cardboard ain’t free.”

“
Alllllllll
right,” said Mooch. “Here’s another five hundred. Let me know when you want to work together again.”

Several trucks arrived and idled just outside the lot. Serge walked over to a signpost where he’d hung a parking poster.

Mooch stuck two fingers in his mouth and whistled at the drivers. “Let’s go, boys! We got a lot of work to do.”

Serge pulled down the poster, revealing the permanent sign underneath: No Parking. Tow-Away Zone.

Six tow trucks pulled into the lot, and Serge pulled out.

“Now I get it,” said Coleman. “I was wondering why you had to use bolt cutters on the chain at the entrance.”