The Riptide Ultra-Glide (17 page)

Eventually. The women began moving, or so it seemed. Slippers slid across the dance floor. There were a few canes, a couple of walkers with yellow tennis-ball feet and a wheelchair.

The studio had a total of five daily classes, each numbering twelve to fifteen students, depending on doctor's appointments and memory. Several times a week, they migrated to the strip mall and mustered up in the usual three lines. Then most would slowly dance by themselves to the sounds of Glenn Miller—keeping eager eyes on Wolfgang as he moved one by one through the group for personal instruction. Which is why they came. And it was why, when they fell in line each session, there was the usual dust-up at the front of the first row. Because that's where Wolfgang started, and if there was enough time, those were the gals most likely to squeeze in an extra dance.

“Bitch!”

“Coco,” said Wolfgang, waving a benevolent finger. “Play nice with others.”

“But I was here first.”

“Just slide over one space. I promise I'll give you an extra dance.”

Coco snarled sideways at Mabel.

Wolfgang stood in the corner, his thumb on a boom-box button. “Ready?” He pressed it. The opening notes of “In the Mood” drifted through the room.

He took Mabel's hand and began swaying, careful never to take his eyes off hers. “You look more exquisite every time. Are you getting younger? . . .” The compliments kept flowing for the entire personal session, which lasted the standard lap-dance three-minute limit. Finally, the all-important departing peck on the cheek. Then on to Coco, and Stella, and Gertrude, and the rest of the gals, endlessly repeating the same business model of a congressman: eye contact, bullshit, kiss.

The class took necessary fatigue breaks every ten minutes, and then, after an hour, the music stopped. The women began working their way toward the door with melancholy afterglow. Outside, waiting cabs and a line of Buicks pressed against concrete pylons.

The studio was empty again. Almost. Three of the women sat in a short row of chairs against the wall just outside Wolfgang's office. This was the rest of the business model.

He came to the doorway. “Mrs. Goldstein, you wanted to see me? Come on in.”

“Oh, thank you.” She pushed herself up with a cane. “I know you're very busy.”

“Nonsense, I'll always have time for you.”

She went inside. Wolfgang smiled back at the other two women, then closed the door. They all liked the fact that he closed the door: makes the others wonder. He walked around and took a seat behind his desk, then opened a business ledger and made a precise notation. He looked up with a reassuring countenance. “What's on your mind?”

“My podiatrist . . . I don't know. I shouldn't say anything.” She leaned forward and idly placed a hand on the desk. It's what they all came for.

Wolfgang took his cue. He leaned forward and placed his own hand on top of hers. “I'm sure it's important. Please, tell me all about it.”

“Okay . . .” And she did.

A clock on the wall ticked.

“ . . . Then I got this bunion . . .”

Wolfgang continued holding her hand.

“ . . . And my son-in-law has this esophagus thing where he has to cut his food in really small bites. But what are you going to do? . . .”

He dialed in that smile and eye contact, thinking about the Jaguar he test-drove last weekend.

“ . . . My daughter hates me. I can't complain . . .”

At the half-hour mark, he slowly began to stand, signaling the end of their time but easing the impact by taking her hand this time in
both
of his. After opening the door for Mrs. Goldstein, he stuck his head in the hall. “Mrs. Marconi?”

He went back behind his desk again, making another notation in his ledger.

“ . . . I brought you something to eat . . .” She unwrapped a casserole. Then looked at the framed photo prominently displayed on his desk. “I know you miss your wife since the volcano accident. But that was five years ago. You deserve to find somebody nice. You look too thin.”

Wolfgang stared at the photo with sorrow. He had never married. It was a picture he clipped from a magazine. He shook his head with glassy eyes. “Nobody can replace Beth.”

“You're a keeper,” said Mrs. Marconi.

Wolfgang leaned and warmly placed a hand on top of hers. “Did you bring your bank statements? I just want to make sure nobody's taking advantage of you.”

She pulled envelopes from her purse. “You're so kind looking out for us.”

A half hour later, his head popped back into the hall. “Mrs. Farina? . . .”

She came in and took a seat. “They don't want me to drive anymore.”

“Who?”

“Everyone.”

Wolfgang checked his ledger. Two previous dates in his office, now three. Which meant it was time.

His smile dissolved to a tight mouth of concern.

“What's the matter?” asked Coco. “Something I said?”

“I'm sorry about that.” He shook his head. “You came here to talk to me. I don't need to bother you with my own worries.”

“No, really, what is it?” asked Coco.

“My foundation.”

“You mean Ballroom Preservation?”

He nodded. “We're having trouble with the bills. I'm afraid it looks bad.”

Coco edged closer. “Is there anything I can do?”

“Well . . .” He quickly pulled out a glossy brochure and handed it across the desk. “As I believe you already know, the foundation is supported entirely by the contributions of generous benefactors who belong to my gold membership.”

Coco scanned the brochure, given to each dance student upon their third office visit, and again after every three subsequent visits, upping their membership status to platinum and diamond. She unhesitatingly whipped out her checkbook, like most. They'd seen what had happened to the others who held back. Sitting outside on their fourth visit and getting skipped over, again and again, finally the only one left in the hall, Wolfgang grabbing his coat: “Sorry, in a hurry to see someone at the hospital.”

Cut off.

Everyone knew there were no hospital visits, and they all blamed their frozen-out classmate for being selfish. She deserved it for not helping such a kind soul in his ballroom foundation's time of need. He was the lonely hearts club's one-stop shopping for all their emotional and spiritual needs.

Coco squinted at her checkbook. “How much do you need?”

He slid a piece of paper with a number across the table. Not what he needed; what she could afford. He'd seen the bank statements.

She finished writing and ripped out the check. “Here you go.”

Twenty-four thousand.

That number ain't fiction. And Wolfgang wasn't alone. All across the state, every day. Age demographics helped Florida corner the market on debonair geriatric gurus. Some woman in Fort Myers was taken for eighty-nine thousand before her children noticed the electric company had turned off her lights. It made the papers, as did the other cases, handfuls every month—dance instructors, nutritionists, home health workers—but their customers still kept writing those checks. Happily.

Wolfgang himself had gone through his own brush with authorities after an estate planner discovered a widow from Boynton had cashed all her CDs.

They handcuffed him right in the studio.

“Booo!” “Leave him alone!” “Fascists!”
Coco even spit on one of the officers as they led him away. But all charges were quickly dropped when the victim said she wanted to give him more money for legal bills.

He'd found his calling.

And things couldn't be going better for Wolfgang. In addition to a bustling clientele with loose checkbooks, he had just gone into partnership with a major new investor. Someone he became acquainted with from the strip mall. More specifically, the pain clinic. Wolfgang had already begun milking him for information with eventual plans to rip him off as well. He now had a new partner, a defrocked doctor from Tampa named Arnold Lip.

Chapter Seventeen

SINGER ISLAND

S
ky and ocean blended together in the black night. The rim of the horizon became defined by a yellowish glow and a preview of the coming moonrise.

Two Floridians stared out over the tranquil Atlantic.

“Now, this is a bar,” said Coleman, downing a double of Jack on the rocks.

“It's definitely going on the list.” Serge bent over his notebook. “Top O' Spray, on the Palm Beach Shores side of Singer Island. Not only is it on the beach, but it's got an elevated view from the top of a motel with lots of glass. Plus it's a
real
bar: old decor and old school, genuine people with quiet class who don't whoop it up to call attention to themselves during fertility runs at genetically engineered beach joints like Coconuts or Rumrunners or ‘World Famous Tiki Bar.' ”

“Don't the people up north know there's like a thousand of those famous tikis.”

“Amazingly, they're like kids going to see Santa Claus at the mall and always think they've found the only one: ‘Look, Velma, the sign says “World Famous,” so we're forced to go inside.' ”

Coleman knocked on the ancient counter under his drink. “But how'd you find this place? It's so out of the way.”

“My hometown,” said Serge. “During return visits, I'd stay here when it was a Best Western. Then I'd stare out the back windows of this bar and pretend I was a contestant on
Treasure Isle
.”

“What's that?”

“Believe it or not, they used to shoot a nationally televised game show right out on that very shore. I can see it all like it was just yesterday . . .” Hands waved in the air over his bottled water. “ . . . The year was 1967, the network: ABC! Couples paddling little toy boats across a man-made lagoon behind the landmark Colonnades Hotel, digging in the sand for clues to solve the puzzle, urged to hurry by the booming voice of host John Bartholomew Tucker until the familiar strains of Herb Albert's ‘Tijuana Taxi' signaled that ‘we've run out of time again,' and then they'd all gather and wave to the camera. It was a magic era.”

“I remember it now,” said Coleman. “The show that was like
The Newlywed Game
on the beach.”

“I was just a little kid sitting too close to the TV and ruining my eyes, thinking, ‘This is just a few miles away but being broadcast to the entire country. That must be really important!' Then I ran around the house yelling hysterically, ‘Mom! Mom! Take me to sit in the live audience!' ‘I'm making dinner.' And I'd stomp my feet and point toward the ocean, screaming falsetto: ‘But they're paddling in the lagoon right now!' . . . We never did go, and then it got canceled in 1968, and years later I realized it was just a bunch of silliness.”

“If it was silly,” said Coleman, “then why did you make us stop before coming to this bar and dig a lot of holes out on the beach?”

“Because when they cancel a show, the staff doesn't give a shit. Do you think they actually made sure they dug up all the leftover clues? Who knows what it could be worth to solve an unfinished puzzle?”

“That beach cop who questioned us wasn't very polite.”

“I generally have universal respect for law enforcement, but some can be deliberately obtuse, and he comes over with his flashlight: ‘Hey, what do you two fellas think you're doing out here?' ‘Digging for clues. Solving puzzles.' ‘Clues?' ‘When they cancel a show, the staff doesn't give a shit.' ”

Coleman raised his drink. “He acted like something bizarre was going on.”

“He'll never make detective.” Serge chugged his water. “Let me see that magazine again. I can't believe you made the cover of one before I did.”

“Where do I pick up my fan mail?”

Serge flipped inside to the feature article. “Look at this. I'm so jealous. They even have a time line of your career, like they're tracing the ice ages in North America. Here's your ‘early bong period,' and then the advent of your unforgettable chicken hookah . . .”

“You use what you have on hand.”

“ . . . And the time you and Lenny made a bong from a hundred-gallon aquarium, which this magazine says silenced even the most jaded cynics.”

Coleman tapped a spot farther down the graph. “That's where we lost our crown to the Australians, who used silicone caulk to seal up one of those red British phone booths . . .”

“They're saying it was like the America's Cup . . .”

“And here's where we finally won it back.” Coleman tapped another spot. “That should keep the title in the States for a while.”

“Where was I during all this?”

Coleman just shrugged. “Me and Lenny were hanging out in this college bar. And we met some stoners from the physics department, and one of the grads was a teaching assistant who had a key, so we went in after midnight . . .”

Serge incredulously held the magazine closer to his face. “You made a bong from a super-collider?”

Coleman downed a drink and smiled offhand. “A bong has to be airtight, and those collider things can't be having little particles getting loose.”

Serge closed the magazine and patted Coleman on the back. “Drink up.”

“But we just got here.”

Serge climbed off his stool. “Have to find a home improvement store before they close, then get to bed early for plenty of rest.”

“Why?”

“I need to repair a Spanish fort.”

OCALA

S
ix
A.M.
Shadows. Hoofbeats.

No lights except the horse barns. Electric faux lanterns. Parsons Gram folded a used horse blanket and placed it on a stack in the back of the stables. Then he lifted the entire bundle and lowered it into a heavy-gauge corrugated shipping box.

Clip-clop, clip-clop.
A jockey guided a filly up the paved driveway into the barn.

Parsons took the reins.

“Thanks, Dominic.”

He threw a blanket over the horse and returned to sealing up his mailing container. Must have gone through a half roll of strapping tape. No way he was going to let this thing bust open in transit.

Clip-clop, clip-clop, clip-clop.

Parsons stayed bent over his box. He could tell it was two horses. He tore off a last length of tape and pressed it firmly over the flaps. Then stood up and turned around.

“Who the hell are you?” said Gram. “And what are you doing in my barn?”

A pair of Latinos in straw cowboy hats climbed down from the mares. Smiling.

“We have a business proposition.”

“Where's Eddie and Willie?”

“Taking a smoke break.”

Parsons pulled out his cell phone. “I'm calling the police.”

“I wouldn't do that. Unless you want them to search the barn. You'd be amazed how fast we can make this a crime scene.”

Parsons hung up. He glanced toward some tools leaning against a stable door. Ax, pitchfork, shovel.

The other Mexican stuck a hand in his jacket and smiled with gold teeth. “You're not that fast.”

“Look, I don't know how you got this address or what you're up to, but this is a mistake. You've got the wrong place.”

Gold Teeth looked at his partner. “Pablo, you think we might have gotten the wrong place?”

Pablo looked around the barn and up at the truss supports in the vaulted ceiling. “Seems like a nice enough place to me.”

Gold Teeth turned toward Parsons again. “Pablo said he likes this place. I do, too.”

“You want money?” said the horse rancher. He pointed in the general direction of an unseen farmhouse on the back of the property. “I have a safe. Some jewelry, too.”

Pablo shook his head. “We want the Oxy.”

“Oxy?” said Parsons. “What's that?”

Gold Teeth gave Pablo a disappointed look. “And I thought we could have a friendly business discussion.” Back to Parsons, no-nonsense time: “Where's the shipment?”

“What shipment?”

“It's in the box, isn't it?”

“What, that?” Parsons turned around. “They're just horse blankets.”

“It's in the box . . .”

Five minutes later, Parsons pushed himself up in the hay, bloody and bruised. He watched his two attackers stroll out of the barn with a pile of horse blankets. He punched up a number on his cell. “ . . . Catfish, it's me, Parsons . . . Yes, I know what time it is. That's why I'm calling. I've got some bad news . . . I lost the shipment . . . Not police. It was a drug rip-off, two Latin guys with guns. I think they were Mexican . . .”

On the other end of the line: “Something's not right,” said Catfish. “If this was just a rip-off, you wouldn't be talking to me. You wouldn't be talking to anyone, ever again . . . But why did they beat the shit out of you? You think they were sending some kind of message . . . What do you mean, they wanted information? What did you give them? . . . I see . . . Hold on, I got another call coming in. I'll get back to you . . .” He punched a couple buttons. “Hello? . . . Yeah, I had a strong feeling who it might be, judging from the odd hour and the fact that two assholes just beat this phone number out of a close friend of mine. I don't know your name yet, but I'll call you a dead man . . . What? Could you repeat that last part? . . . You want to give back the shipment? Then why'd you take it in the first place? . . . You do realize there are other ways to get someone's attention . . . You want a meeting? Sure, we can have a meeting . . . Alone? Absolutely. I won't bring another soul . . . I got a pen; give me that address . . . Right, see you at three o'clock . . . And, uh, since we're going into business together, one question, if you don't mind: How'd you know about the horse barn? . . . What? Last week you followed my buses from a pain clinic and saw I was the trail vehicle and then I stopped at a gas station . . .” Catfish closed his eyes tight. “No, I already know the rest . . . Right, I'll be there at three.” He hung up and walked out into the parking lot toward the Durango.

His fingers felt around under the back bumper until they stopped against something that wasn't factory equipment, attached by a sturdy magnet. He pulled the GPS homing device free—“son of a bitch”—and smashed it to small electronic bits on the ground.