The Riptide Ultra-Glide (12 page)

Chapter Eleven

A FEW DAYS LATER

S
erge stood with his back flat against a wall. Eyes big with dread. His arms were spread wide, also plastered against the wall. He was outdoors, a hundred feet off the ground. The building was round. His feet inched sideways.

Coleman walked slowly behind him, hitting a secret flask and filming with the camcorder. “I didn't know you were afraid of heights.”

“I'm not,” said Serge, incrementally sliding along. “I'm reenacting my 1967 fear of heights. One of my earliest memories was my kindergarten teachers taking us up here on a field trip. It's the magnificent Jupiter Inlet Lighthouse, built on an Indian shell mound, her oil lamp lit for the first time on July tenth, 1860.”

Coleman took a swig and aimed the camera over the railing. “We are pretty high up.”

“It was a different era.” Serge slid another step. “People weren't as obsessed with safety back then, like not making kids wear seat belts, or giving an entire class of five-year-olds a bunch of soda and sending them up to run around the balcony of a hundred-and-eight-foot lighthouse. I remember the other kids acting nuts and horsing around, and I'm thinking we're going to have a couple empty sleeping mats for nap time this afternoon. Of course, the adults were conscientious and told us to stay away from the railing. None of the other tykes listened, but I took their warning to the extreme, because that's where I live. So I pasted myself against the building like I'm doing now. I've got a long history of ultra-compliance with authority.”

“You?”

“Don't say that like you're so surprised.” Serge slid some more. “Another example: That same year there was a total solar eclipse. Huge deal, everyone talking about it for weeks. And they kept stressing the dangers of looking at the eclipse and the hundreds of people who went blind every time one came around. Except they didn't mention how long you had to look. So naturally I thought it was instant, like Lot's wife turning to salt.”

Coleman took another swig. “Is it?”

“No, but I was only five. What did I know? Then the TV people gave tips on perfectly safe ways to view an eclipse, like poking holes in a shoe box. And I'm thinking: ‘Risk going blind just to see a fuzzy image on a piece of cardboard? Fuck that.' But mainly I was worried that I'd simply forget when the eclipse was, because forgetting important stuff is a kid's main job, and then I'd be out riding my banana bike with training wheels and accidentally happen to look up, and after I finally feel my way back to the house: ‘Mom, Dad, please don't be mad at me . . .' So I went in the carport and got the strongest piece of rope I could find, then I tied one end to a leg of the coffee table and the other to my ankle. Plus a backup rope in case I managed to pull free after forgetting why I had tied myself to the furniture, because my mind tended to jump around a lot back then. And I stayed inside all day and watched TV.”

“What did your parents say when they came home?”

“Something like, ‘What in the hell is going on in here?' I answered: ‘Not staring at the sun.' ”

“Your parents said
H-E-
double-hockey-sticks in front of a little kid?”

“Can't really blame them,” said Serge. “Because we had these little lizards that ran all over our yard, and in the days leading up to the eclipse, I captured as many as I could, because I didn't want the lizards going blind. So in addition to walking into the room and seeing me lashed to the coffee table, dozens of lizards were tied up with kite string around their necks. You'll have to understand if my parents didn't see the logic right away.”

“What did they do?”

“Sat me down for a calm talk, just like they did when I got confused about what ‘allergic' meant. A month before, while we were finger-painting in kindergarten, I heard Susie Mapleton say she was allergic to bumblebee stings, and I thought it meant to be afraid. So then some of the other classmates added that they were allergic to peanuts and eggs and mold, and I start grabbing them by the shoulders and shaking hard: ‘For God's sake, man, get a grip on yourself!' ”

“Serge, you're moving so slow. I thought you said we were in a rush to get someplace.”

“We are.” Serge slid slowly. “Just keep filming.”

“Got it.” He pressed the viewfinder to his right eye.

Serge slid another step. “We have to begin my reality show in Jupiter because, as a child, this defined the northern limits of my global sphere of influence.”

Coleman continued filming as Serge gradually circled the balcony. “Then why did we drive way up north of here on I-95, just to turn around and head south?”

“To experience driving down to Florida through the eyes of someone who's never been to Florida.” Serge slithered along. “That's the theme of my reality show: I'm the Native Tourist. I'm going to track my life in Florida by roaming the coast and visiting all the great attractions.”

“Why?”

“How many times have you heard the cliché ‘I've lived in New York City my whole life but have never been up the Empire State Building,' or ‘Born and raised in Possum Shoals but never seen that woman's goiter shaped like Wayne Newton.' I mean to change all that! Show people the possibilities of what's right under their noses each week by moving from town to town, getting into jams, meeting strangers, lending them help from the goodness of our hearts.”

“Helping them how?”

“Out of the jams we've gotten them into. It's only polite.”

“That was a pretty weird drive down the interstate. There must have been a million billboards for pain clinics. I wrote down the phone numbers.”

“A relatively recent phenomenon.” Serge scooted around to the east side of the tower. “We can now add to our list of visitors the OxyContin Tourists. And those billboards must be for legit operations because they're being pretty obvious, so imagine how many more are under the radar. Those signs start at the top of the state, between the population centers, facing north on the interstate, nestled among all the other billboards that are only designed to reach out-of-state travelers driving south into Florida. So now you got signs for truck stops, motels with free Wi-Fi, citrus stands, fast food, and pictures of car crashes with jagged red lettering to remind people that they might be in pain from something that happened in Cleveland. I mean how does that work? Are this many people suddenly making major medical decisions on vacation? When you're driving to Niagara Falls, do you see a hundred miles of billboards for joint-replacement surgery, ‘Call 1-800-HIP-OUCH'? . . . Or is it an impulse thing: ‘Let's see, I've been on the road for hours, so I need to stop for gas, use the restroom, get a Big Mac and develop a drug problem.' ”

Coleman capped his flask and looked down at Serge's feet. “Why are you stopping?”

“To take in the view. It's spectacular!” Serge swept an arm across the horizon. “You've got a perfect day over the Atlantic, the inlet to the south with fishing boats motoring out of the Loxahatchee River and through those jetties. I've never seen it from this high up before.”

“What?” said Coleman. “You never saw this before? But I thought you came up here on a kindergarten trip.”

“Right, I came up here. But I kept my eyes closed tight the whole time I slithered around the top with my back against the wall.”

“Why?”

“Because I was halfway up the lighthouse stairs with my class, and I suddenly wondered: ‘Was that eclipse supposed to be today or tomorrow? Dang, I was busy playing with my turtle.' So to be on the safe side, I never opened my eyes up here.” Serge resumed scooting again. “But that was typical during the Cold War. Kids today have it made, but growing up back then during our struggle with the Russians was a lot more intense. First, you had to learn how to hide under your desk in case a hydrogen bomb went off near the swing set. Then, one morning you're riding to kindergarten singing ‘The wheels on the bus go round and round,' and the next minute they're running you through some rigorous stress test that involves not falling off a lighthouse during an eclipse. Back then they had to plan for every scenario.”

“Your kindergarten teachers did that on purpose?”

“Definitely, because they pulled me aside when we got back from the field trip.” Serge finished circling the top and reached the door. “They wanted to know why I was behaving so differently from everyone else on top of the lighthouse, because clearly I was the only kid getting it right. So I told them everything, even rounding up lizards for their eyesight, and that's probably the first time they realized I was more advanced than the other children because they sent me to see a special doctor.” Serge began heading down the lighthouse's corkscrew staircase at a rapid clip. “We'll have to move fast now to make up for all the time we wasted up there. Our reality show is running up some hefty production costs. But our conversation on the balcony gave me some ideas. This whole pain-clinic deal got me thinking. Don't ask me how I know, but I just have this vibe that something big is about to go down in that area. And it might involve a large payday for us.”

“Money,” said Coleman. “Cool.” They reached the bottom of the lighthouse and headed for the gift shop. “But what ever happened when the kindergarten teachers sent you to see that doctor?”

“He said he was going to put me on some special pills, which I assume were to make me more advanced. Then he asked me if I was allergic to anything, and I said, ‘Just grizzly bears, sharks, eclipses, atomic bombs and Old Man Clancy down the street with the cloudy eye. But that's it; nothing ridiculous.' ”

FORT LAUDERDALE

A
Porsche 955 pulled into a strip mall on U.S. Highway 1.

A lawyer with a Lance Armstrong haircut looked for a parking slot but had to keep driving. “Holy Jesus, look at all these cars!”

After parking behind a lawn-ornament store on the next block and walking back in the heat, Hagman Reed entered a newly opened pain clinic that looked a lot like the insurance-fraud clinics back in Tampa. Chock-full of patients, neck braces, old magazines with candid fat photos of the stars on vacation. Hagman went straight down the hall.

“Sir?” a receptionist called after him.
“Sir! You can't just—”

He ignored her and walked past a row of doctor's offices, peeking inside each, diplomas on the walls from Guyana, Cancún, the Caymans, French Guyana. The diplomas had regal crests with toucans and tree frogs. Hagman reached a final, closed door at the end of the hall and opened it.

Arnold Lip sat behind his desk, playing a video game pitting farm animals against fighter jets.

Hagman plopped down in a chair without invitation. “Damn, when you said this place was hopping . . .”

A chicken exploded. Arnold wiggled the joystick. “Can hardly keep up with demand.”

“Are the other three clinics the same?”

“Four clinics,” said Arnold.

“Four? And all in this short amount of time? I can't believe it!”

“No, wait, three,” said Arnold. “No, four. No . . . fuck it, I can't remember.”

“You don't know how many clinics we have?”

“First, one got raided, then we opened two more, then another got raided . . .”

“But you're doing everything I said to firewall us, right? All the legal precautions?”

Arnold nodded.

“Including that window?”

Arnold looked back over his shoulder, then nodded again.

“Good.” Hagman relaxed in his chair. “I see you're still hanging your diploma despite losing your license.”

Arnold looked back at the framed parchment. “I still graduated.”

Hagman glanced upward in mild condescension. “Whatever gets you off . . . But where'd you go to school? The thing looks like a sweepstakes entry form.”

“It
is
a sweepstakes entry form. I lost my diploma. Most of the patients can't read English anyway. Half are migrant day laborers who only speak Spanish; the rest are Kentucky day laborers who spit a lot.”

“Kentucky?”

“Who would have thought?” said Arnold. “They fill up buses and run them down. Apparently there's a huge OxyContin market in that area. West Virginia, southern Ohio.”

“But where do these bums get the money to pay for their trips and doctor visits?”

“It's the other way around,” said Arnold. “
They're
paid. Then as soon as they fill the prescriptions, the trips' organizers confiscate the pills and stash them in steel lockboxes in the luggage compartment—I've seen it—an outrageous pile of these orange plastic vials. The cops know what's going on, and they're always going on TV after the latest raid, claiming that they're winning the war. But it's like a tidal wave; they're completely outmatched. As long as we have the will to keep opening clinics”—the ex-doctor pushed a ledger book across the desk—“ . . . there's no way we can lose.”