The Riptide Ultra-Glide (18 page)

Chapter Eighteen

RIVIERA BEACH

C
oleman stood on the shore of Singer Island with a Schlitz in his hand, watching the sun rise out of the Atlantic.

“It's dawn. I win another beer.”
Pop
.

Serge was on his knees, patting down the courtyard of his fort. He made one last swipe of his trowel over a turret and stood up. “Castillo de San Marcos is completely repaired and ready for the French, possibly Italians.”

“What do we do now?”

“Be patient.”

“Can I drink beer?”

“Beer drinking is the wayward child of patience.”

They headed fifty yards away and reclined in a pair of beach chairs. Coleman reached in their canvas beach bag for another cold one.

Morning broke over the shore.

“Look, it's Coleman! I can't believe it! . . .”

The morning wore on.

“Can I get your autograph?”

The sun tacked across the sky.

“First,” said Coleman. “Never use your driver's license to de-seed dope. Cops notice the dirty edge, and now they can even run tests.”

“Far out . . .”

Into the afternoon.

Coleman posed for photos. A ring of people with cell phones hit buttons.
Click, click, click . . .

“Yo! Jackie-O!” said Serge. He stood up as he noticed something down the beach. “We're in business.”

Coleman finished signing a ceramic wizard bong and turned around. “What's up?”

“My pal over there just kicked in all my bastions. Knew he couldn't resist.” Serge reached into the beach bag and pulled out his latest novelty.

“That's the football you were messing around with last night,” said Coleman. “Except it's smaller and bright orange.”

“Because it's a special Nerf beach football. The vortex foam model with tail fins.” Serge reached back and froze in a classic Dan Marino stance. “It's a gift for him. I'm going to speak real nice, my way of trying to bridge understanding.”

“I get it now,” said Coleman. “The football is a bomb. You're going to get him to play catch.”

“These babies fly so much farther than regular balls that he won't be able to resist showing off for the bubbleheads.” Serge took a hike from an invisible center and dropped back in the pocket. “But no, it's not a bomb.”

“So it really is a present? You're actually going to be nice to that dick?”

“Speaking nice and being nice are two different things.” Serge scrambled in the backfield, eluding make-believe tacklers. “I initially considered the idea of a football bomb, but that would irresponsible because there are too many people around. What if my pass is off target or he tips it and I accidentally blow up some people from Michigan? Imagine the headlines in Detroit. So my scenario demands a pinpoint surgical strike . . . The ball isn't a bomb, but there is a surprise inside.”

“Is that what you were doing in the motel room last night, slicing the ball open with a razor blade, then gluing the halves back together?”

“And therein lies the rub . . . Let's see if I can get his attention.” Serge stuck two fingers in his mouth and whistled loud.

The muscle-boy turned around.

“Hey, homey!” Serge yelled down the beach. “Got you a present!”

“Go fuck yourself.”

“No, really.” Serge held it high over his head. “It's the vortex football. Flies forever.”

“Am I going to have to come over there and beat your ass in front of everyone?”

“Only if you're afraid my arm's too strong, and you can't handle a simple hitch-and-go pattern.”

“I can do hitches in my sleep,” the stud shouted back. “And I can definitely deal with anything your scrawny arm can sling.”

“Then we're on.” Serge stepped up to the line. “Fourth down, trailing by five! Three seconds left! No time-outs! The stadium is going wild! . . .”

The crew cut crouched with a hand on his knee, ready to blast off.

“ . . . Storms is in the shotgun, but the crowd's too loud! He steps under center! . . . Hut, hut, ninety-two, forty-six, slant-blue, thirty-eight, hut, sweep-red, twenty-seventy, trap-yellow, seventy-one, whiskey-tango . . .”

The stud took his hand off his knee and stood up.

“ . . . Hut, fifteen, box-red, blue-light special, double-A batteries, eleven herbs and spices, fifty ways to leave your lover . . .”

The crew cut placed his hands on his hips in frustration. “Come on! Throw the fucking thing!”

“ . . . Jackson Five! Three Dog Night! Turn your head to the side and cough! Hut! Hut! Hike!”

Serge took the snap and faded back in a three-step drop. The stud sprinted down the beach.

“ . . . It's a blitz! Storms is forced to scramble! . . .” Serge dodged left and right. “ . . . He's flushed out of the pocket! . . .” Serge ran in a circle. “ . . . His tight end picked up the linebacker! . . .” More scrambling . . .

The stud stopped running.
“Throw it!”

“ . . . He's got Janofski on his back! . . .” Serge ducked as a phantom player sailed over him. “ . . . I don't see how he's staying on his feet! . . . The crowd is losing its mind! . . .”

“Throw it!”

“ . . . He's pressured toward the sideline! Here it is! The money play! He reaches back! He releases! Here's your ball game, folks! . . .”

The Nerf flew up in a tight spiral. The stud took off again. The ball arced higher into the blue. The stud picked up speed, now looking back over his shoulder as the ball began its ballistic descent.

“I got it! I got it!”

He continued sprinting on a perfect intersecting path with the ball's trajectory.

“I got it!”

The ball fell into his fingers just as he reached Serge's sand-castle fort.

He stopped in the middle of the fort's courtyard and raised the ball high over his head in triumph. “I told you I'd get it—”

Boom
.

The sound concussion got everyone's attention. A huge plume of sand flew into the air like Singer Island was under naval bombardment.

“Where'd he go?” asked Coleman.

“I'm not sure.”

Coleman pointed with his beer. “Red stuff's raining down into the water.”

“That's him.”

Everyone started running. Lifeguards toward the explosion; everyone else in the other direction.

Coleman calmly finished his Schlitz. “I thought you said there wasn't a bomb in the football.”

“There wasn't,” said Serge, picking up the canvas beach bag. “I told you: too many innocent bystanders around. And in addition to the other reasons, the football would have been an above-ground detonation, which means shrapnel and other hazards could fly out sideways toward families and children. On the other hand, if a device was underground . . .”

“Like buried beneath your sand fort?”

“Hypothetically. Then the blast is vectored upward, eliminating lateral damage and only imperiling that which is directly above.”

“Now I understand.” Coleman nodded. “He stepped on a makeshift land mine.”

“Still too risky,” said Serge. “What if a toddler wandered over and stepped on it first before I could scramble out of the pocket? My top priority is public safety.”

Behind them, people stampeded away from the black smoke rising out of the crater.

Coleman reached in the bag hanging from Serge's shoulder and came out with another beer. “Then how'd you blow him up?”

“Hypothetically again, what if some rascal had glued a garage-door opener inside the football? With the button taped down in the on position? Those things have a fairly limited range.”

“You wanted to open a garage door?”

“No, unimaginative people might want to use it to trigger the actuator on a garage door and park their car for the night.” A fire engine raced by. “But what if a certain person decided that instead of wiring the receiver to a garage-door motor, he attached it to a blasting cap under a Spanish sand fort? Oh, and some very small sticks of dynamite that went missing from a limestone quarry west of Miami.”

Coleman tossed a beer can in the trash. “So you threw the football to lead him to the fort, and when the garage-door opener got within range . . . I like it. Spanish forts are cool.”

Serge grabbed the door handle of the Torino. “History doesn't have to be boring.”

U.S. 1

A
canvas beach bag sat on a motel bed, brimming with sunscreen, towels, flip-flops and a throwaway camera.

Patrick McDougall stood on a chair and pushed up a ceiling tile.

Bar opened a dresser drawer. “What are you doing?”

Patrick reached into unseen dust. “Hiding my wallet.”

“Why?”

“Because people keep knocking on our door.”

“When was this?”

“You were in the bathroom getting ready. And also before you woke up. Three so far.”

“What did they want?”

“First they acted like they had the wrong room.” Pat fit the ceiling panel back in place over his head. “Then they acted like it was the right room, and asked for a cigarette and said I could listen to their radio. I'm not familiar with the local customs, so I didn't know where it was leading.”

“All three said the same thing?”

“No, the last was a woman who told me she was locked out of her room.”

“Why is she coming to our room instead of the manager's office,” said Bar. “We don't have her keys.”

“I pointed that out.” Pat hopped down from the chair. “She said she wanted to use my phone so she could call the people inside the room to open up for her.”

“What about knocking on her own door?”

“I mentioned that, too,” said Pat. “I think something else was going on.”

“My Sherlock Holmes.”

Pat pointed up at the ceiling. “That's why I'm taking steps.”

“Do you think we're in any danger from those people?” asked Bar. “They could come back.”

“I don't think so,” said Pat. “I watched through the curtains after the woman left. Wanted to see if she tried knocking on her room or went to the manager's office.”

“Did she?”

“No, she went across the parking lot and around behind a Dumpster. Then she ducked down.”

“Did you see her again?”

“About five minutes later, her head popped up behind the trash bin like a woodchuck. Then back down. It happened a couple more times before I got tired of watching.”

Bar looked toward the ceiling. “With your wallet in there, what are you bringing to the beach?”

Pat went over to the nightstand. “My backup wallet.” He displayed a cheap fabric billfold. “I transferred just a little cash and an ATM card, because nobody can use it without the PIN number. In the other compartment is my reserve driver's license.”

“Reserve?”

“A couple years ago I read a travel tip: Always have a reserve photo ID packed separately on vacation in case you lose the first one. Otherwise you can't clear security and get on the plane for home. So I paid ten bucks for a duplicate license I told them I'd lost.”

“You lied?”

“I fibbed. Don't say anything. It was the travel tip.”

“Sometimes you worry too much.” She jammed a box of Ritz Crackers in the beach bag. “I'm not criticizing; just don't want you to lose your hair.”

“Remember when we locked ourselves out of the house, but instead of breaking a window, I'd buried a key in the yard?” Pat tapped a finger on his temple. “Worrying can also have benefits.”

“What will you do with the backup wallet while we're swimming?”

“Leave it onshore with our beach blanket, hidden inside my shoe.”

Bar unzipped a suitcase. “Isn't the shoe where everybody puts it?”

“I've never heard that.”

She stood silent, staring down into the dresser drawer.

Pat slipped into his swim trunks. “What's the matter?”

“These drawers are disgusting. The room doesn't look like the photos.”

“We'll barely be in the room.”

“But where am I going to unpack?” She walked gingerly across the soiled rug, keeping her arms tight to her body, just as she had ever since they'd gotten inside and fastened all the locks. “Ick, the closet's worse. There's something splattered on the wall.” She reached down and pulled a small butter-white square from the nap of the carpet. “Is this what they call crack?”

“I don't know,” said Pat, tying off the strings hanging from the front of his swim trunks. “But better put it down. Maybe you can get high from just touching it.”

“Doubt it,” said Bar. “I'll just throw it in the wastebasket.” She stood over their luggage with her hands on her hips. “Where am I going to store our stuff?”