Tim Dorsey Collection #1 (17 page)

Serge clicked the remote. A garage door began rising. Serge stopped the car.

“This is the Eagle. We have lunar-module separation,” said Serge. “Prepare for cabin depressurization and space walk.”

“Roger,” said Coleman. He grabbed Serge’s flashlight and jumped from the car.

Serge soon saw a flashlight beam swooping around inside the garage. Then Coleman disappeared behind the parked car. The flashlight swooped across the ceiling. It was starting to take a long time. There were some noises, just a little at
first, things dropping, pliers and screwdrivers. The flashlight went out. More noise. Serge could see Coleman’s silhouette knocking over something, then hearing the crash,
then
reaching to try to catch it before it fell, only sending more things over, until Coleman built to his big
1812 Overture
finale, crashing into a set of metal garbage cans. One of the cans began rolling down the driveway. A light went on in the garage, and a man’s voice: “What the hell’s going on out there!”

Coleman came running down the driveway with something in his right hand. He stumbled and accidentally kicked the garbage can rolling ahead of him, sending it slamming into the side of the Barracuda. Serge stuck his head out the driver’s window and looked down at the paint job.

The porch light went on, then a floodlight. Coleman jumped in the car. Serge hit the gas and sped off as a man in a bathrobe came out the front door with a shotgun.

They were three blocks away before Serge turned and saw what Coleman had taken from the garage.

“Electric pepper mill?”

“Is that what this is?” said Coleman.

“What the hell were you thinking?”

“It looked expensive in the dark.”

“It’s a piece of crap. It’s for people with more money than imagination.”

“We can always pawn it.”

“It might bring five dollars on Crack Street, but that’s it.” Serge looked around the car. “Where’s my flashlight?”

“I must have left it.”

“Nice going, Rico Suave. That was my sentimental flashlight. Cost twenty-nine bucks.” He pointed at the pepper mill: “We’re losing ground.”

Coleman pressed a button on the pepper mill; an electric motor began to whir. “Hey, it works.” Coleman held the mill in front of Serge’s face and pressed the button again. “See?”

“Get that fucking thing out of my face. I’m trying to drive.”

Coleman removed it from Serge’s face and began playing with it in his lap. “I’ll bet I can use it to grind up dope.”

Serge pulled out of the neighborhood and turned right on Gandy Boulevard. “There’s the Seven-Eleven,” he said. “It you want real coffee these days, forget the bookstores. This is where you have to go.”

“I like those little creamers they have,” said Coleman.

“Me too,” said Serge, pulling into the parking lot. “The lavender ones are my favorite. I usually get about five of those and another five packs of sugars, dump it all in a piping-hot twenty-ounce Styrofoam cup, add a dozen ice cubes and chug the whole thing right at the cash register. After that, watch out! I once pulled back on the highway without my car.”

Serge got out of the Barracuda and began taking pictures in the parking lot. He lowered the camera to check for a better angle. “This is a historic place.”

“Historic Seven-Eleven?”

“Not the store. The location.” He snapped more pictures. “The store didn’t used to be here. They just built in on the corner. See what’s wrapped around the back?”

“Yeah, an old motel nobody’s staying at.”

“Not just any motel,” corrected Serge. “The Crosstown Inn. It’s where Donald Segretti stayed.”

“Who?”

“One of Nixon’s henchmen. He stayed at the Crosstown when he was playing dirty tricks on the Democrats. Ever see
All the President’s Men
?”

“No.”

“Remember the scene where Dustin Hoffman and Robert Redford are going through Segretti’s credit card receipts?”

“I didn’t see the movie.”

“If you put the VCR on pause, you can see a receipt for the Crosstown Inn.” Serge turned and snapped more pictures, then lowered the camera. “If you watch an entire movie frame by frame, it’s amazing what you’ll find. That’s what I do.”

“Let’s go in and get some beer.”

“Hold on. I’m not done.” Click, click. “It’s stuck in a 1972 time warp! Can you feel it? Look at that old sign, the retro architecture of the office. I can just see Segretti checking in”—Serge started creeping around the parking lot—“looking over his shoulders, making calls from the pay phone, using code words like ‘Condor’ and ‘The Package.’ ”

“You kinda like history, don’t you?” said Coleman.

Serge straightened up. “Who doesn’t? Let’s get some coffee.”

Serge pushed open both front doors of the 7-Eleven at once—Doc Holiday entering a saloon. He threw his arms out wide: “My people! I am home!”

The customers stopped and turned to see what the noise was about, then ignored him. They fell in three groups. Some were drunk. Others had been drunk. The rest would soon be drunk. That was it.

“What? No welcoming party?”

“Hi, Serge,” said one of the clerks.

“What’s shakin’, Serge?” asked the woman in the deli.

“That’s more like it,” said Serge. “I could live in a convenience store. No fooling around. Everything’s close to the bone.”

“Beer,” said Coleman, pointing at a stack of Bud twelve-packs.

“This place is like a proletariat terrarium. The salt of the earth.”

“Beer.”

“Okay. Go get your beer. I’ll be at the coffee.”

Serge grabbed a cup and picked up the coffeepot. He held it to his nose, sniffed and smiled. “February was a good month.”

He filled his cup three-quarters, leaving room for creamers, sugar and ice. He went to the front counter and got in line. There were seven people ahead of him, six buying lottery tickets and one buying a lottery magazine.

Coleman arrived with a Budweiser suitcase in each hand and joined Serge in the back of the line. Serge twisted and fidgeted and stood on his tiptoes to see up to the counter. “What’s the delay?”

The line bled down to the last customer in front of Serge, a middle-aged woman in jumbo sweatpants and a T-shirt with a rebel flag.

“What do you think about this Confederate flag controversy?” Coleman asked Serge.

“Sometimes people adopt fashions that say things about themselves they don’t even realize they’re revealing.”

“What do you mean?” asked Coleman, munching a beef jerky and wearing a baseball cap that said,
OFFICIAL PUSSY INSPECTOR
.

“I’ll explain later.”

The woman in the sweatpants dropped a pile of candy bars on the counter and handed the clerk a lottery card.

The clerk stuck the card in the machine; a ticket popped out.

“Those are my lucky numbers,” said the woman. “They’re the birthdays of my cats.”

“That so?” said the clerk. She handed her the ticket.

“Oh, what the hay!” she said. “I feel lucky. Give me a Quick Pick!”

The clerk gave her a Quick Pick.

The woman pointed down through the glass counter at the vibrant rolls of instant scratch-off tickets. Cowboy Cash, Lucky Seven, Gold Rush, Treasure Island. A strip of tickets with flying saucers grabbed her eye. “That a new game?”

“Which?”

“UFO Dough.”

The clerk said yes.

“Give me one.”

The clerk gave her one.

The woman leaned over the counter and rubbed the ticket with a quarter.

Serge spun around and grabbed Coleman by the shoulders. “Oh my God! She’s scratching them off at the counter!”

“Easy,” said Coleman.

The woman finished rubbing. “Fudge! I lost. Better give me another.”

She scratched again with the quarter. No luck.

“Well, easy come, easy go.” The woman began rummaging in a purse that was the extra-large size favored by refugees and kleptomaniacs. She eventually came up with a personalized checkbook imprinted with cats.

Serge turned and grabbed Coleman’s shirt again. “Sweet Jesus! She’s paying by check!”

“Hang in there,” said Coleman.

The clerk bagged the candy bars. “You can use a check
for this stuff, but you have to pay cash for the lottery tickets. State law.”

“Oh, heavens,” said the woman, beginning another excavation in her purse. She came up with a peanut butter jar. “How many pennies can you take?”

A fist slammed down on the counter. The startled woman jumped back and saw Serge.

“Bzzzzzzzzzzzz! That’s our final buzzer. Time’s up. You lose. Collect your shit and move along to extinction.”

The woman was taken aback. “Well, I never!…”

“Pipe down, Chumley! I don’t know what black hole of personal ambition you climbed out of, but it’s now time to skee-daddle on back, you Crisco-based life-form.”

The woman put a hand up to her open mouth, then ran out the door. Serge stepped up to the counter. He set the coffee down and opened his wallet.

“Dollar-six,” said the cashier, blowing a bubble with her gum.

“Ever see the independent movie
Clerks
?” asked Serge, handing over exact change.

“No,” said the clerk. “What’s it about?”

“It’s about your struggle, sister!” Serge held up a fist of solidarity.

Then he picked up the coffee and downed it all at once. He set the empty cup on the counter and gave a satisfied “Ahhhhhh,” hydraulics venting pressure.

Coleman took a cautious step back. The clerk saw Coleman and took her own step back.

All was quiet for a moment. Then the tremors started, first in his legs, moving quickly up his body like the coyote after he eats ACME earthquake pills. When they reached his neck, the babbling started.

“Al Lang, Jack Russell, Doak Campbell, Joker Marchant, Chain O’Lakes, Tropicana, Raymond James, Pro Player, O’Connell Center…”

“What’s he saying?” asked the clerk.

“He’s naming Florida sports venues.”

“…Gulfstream, Brian Piccolo Park Velodrome…”

“Why?” asked the clerk.

“Because he drank coffee. It makes his brain incontinent. The state’s aquifers should be coming up next.”

“…Floridan, Biscayne, Chocoloskee, Hawthorn, Tampa Limestone…”

“Now the endangered flowers.”

“…Dingy Epidendrum, Delicate Ionopsis, Rose Pogonia, Yellow Rhexia, Teyrazygia…”

“The lighthouses…”

“…Jupiter Inlet, Rebecca Shoal, Sombrero Key, Fowey Rocks, Alligator Reef, Boca Grande—middle and south, Cape Saint George…”

“And the original Indians…”

“…Calusa, Tequesta, Tocobaga, Timucua, Apalachee…”

“Finally his favorite roadside attractions…”

“…Weeki Wachee, Tupperware Museum, defunct Xanadu home of the future, Alternate Highway 19 Chimp Farm, Pasco County Taxidermy Museum (with two-headed cow)…”

Serge stopped and jerked his head around in terror, screeching like a cornered animal. He bolted out the door. Coleman and the clerk ran to the window. Serge loped across the parking lot, arms swinging low to the ground. He ran out into the busy intersection. Drivers slammed on brakes and skidded sideways. Stopped cars filled the road at all angles. Serge jumped up on one of the hoods and
screeched some more. He beat his chest with his fists before running across the intersection on the roofs of cars and disappearing into the night.

“Unbelievable,” said the clerk. “He actually thinks he’s a monkey.”

“No,” said Coleman. “He thinks he’s an actor. He’s doing a scene from
Altered States.
It’s one of his favorites.”

C
OLEMAN STOOD
in the middle of a dark intersection in one of south Tampa’s grid neighborhoods, giving his arms a rest. When feeling returned to his shoulders, he reached down and picked up the Budweiser suitcases at his feet. If only Serge hadn’t run off with the car keys. He walked some more, but his arms tired quickly. Coleman set the cardboard boxes down again. When he did, the pepper mill in his back pocket began to whir. He reached and turned it off.

Coleman got an idea. He figured if he started drinking the beer, it wouldn’t weigh as much. He put the boxes down again.

After sixteen blocks, Coleman had finished enough beer to consolidate the remaining cans into one suitcase. He took a rest near the Crosstown Expressway, smoking an emergency joint he kept in his shoe. Coleman saw a shadow near the top of the expressway embankment. He squinted at the dim form. Coleman guessed it was a woman because of the high heels and breasts, but of course that could mean any number of things. The tall figure climbed awkwardly over the concertina wire fencing off the highway from the adjacent neighborhood. She had a large, cumbersome object that took two arms to carry.

She started down the embankment. Something went wrong early. A heel got caught, and she went over. The woman and the object began tumbling separately until a ditch stopped them. Coleman ran over and helped her up, a streetwalker in red leather hot pants and halter top. He retrieved the large object from the ditch and handed it to her.

“Thanks.”

“What is it?” asked Coleman.

“Meat smoker.”

“I have a pepper mill.” Coleman pulled it out of his back pocket and pressed a button. “It’s electric.”

“I’ll bet I could use it to mix cocaine and baby laxative. Wanna trade?”

“Sure.”

THEY WAVED GOOD-BYE
. The prostitute went one way with the pepper mill, and Coleman went the other with the smoker. He had put the beer in the cooker’s top compartment and lifted it by the handles.

Coleman headed into a dark neighborhood on another grid street. He went only one block before he had to set the smoker down. He was making poor time with the extra load and began to consider it a shit trade. He saw a pedestrian cross the street up ahead, carrying something, then disappear. Coleman picked up the smoker and went a block. He saw someone else on foot carrying something.

As Coleman continued on, the number of fellow pedestrians increased until it was steady flow on both sides of the street, everyone carrying something. Toaster oven, bug zapper, fax machine.

Coleman ran into a man at the corner of the fifth block. He coveted what the man had; the man eyed Coleman’s smoker.

“Trade?” said Coleman.

“Deal.”

The man went off in one direction with the meat smoker and Coleman in another, pedaling a three-wheeled senior citizen’s bike with a ringer on the handlebars and a case of beer under the seat. He stood up to give the pedaling an extra oomph as he crossed the drainage crest of another intersection. Then he sat back down and coasted with no hands, drinking a beer and ringing the bell.

He reached the next intersection and more pedestrians poured in from side roads and congregated under a stretch of oaks. So that’s it, thought Coleman. Crack Street.

Dealers worked brazenly on the curb. Business was so brisk it was spinning off support industry. Coleman recognized a man operating a floating pawnshop from the bed of a pickup. It was a prix fixe operation. Ten dollars for everything. CD player? Ten bucks. Laptop computer? Ten bucks. A line of people had formed behind the pickup with lawnmowers, rifles, microwaves and a pepper mill. Coleman was getting hungry. If only they had a sausage wagon or snow-cone cart. But it was no use even hoping. Coleman knew crackheads were like camels when it came to food and water. He pedaled on.

Seven blocks later, he stopped at a corner and saw fluorescent lights. A twenty-four-hour grocery. Coleman took a deep breath and leaned into the pedals again.

TWO PIZZA TRUCKS
sped past the corner of San Clemente and San Obispo, where the local crime watch unit was keeping a lookout in Jim Davenport’s Suburban.

“I told you this would be fun,” said Satchel.

A car pulled up and a man got out on the passenger’s side. “Is this the crime watch?”

“Yes it is,” said Satchel. “You need anything?”

“Yeah.” He stuck a gun in the window. “Your wallets and those walkie-talkies.”

They sat for a while without speaking after that.

“Look on the bright side,” said Satchel. “It can’t get any worse.”

Another car pulled up. A gun came in the window.

“Gimme the car.”

“
DOES ANYONE KNOW
where we are?” asked Jim, standing in the middle of the street.

“I think we go that way,” said Wilma.

“We just came from that way,” said Jim.

“I thought it looked familiar,” said Orville.

“How lost can we be?” said Satchel. “Let’s just pick a direction and start walking.”

They came to an overpass.

“The expressway,” said Orville. “See? We’re not lost.”

“Why don’t we grab a taxi?” asked Satchel.

“You see any taxis?” said Jim.

“We’ll call one from a pay phone.”

“You see any pay phones?”

“We’ll find one if we keep walking.”

A wino scurried to the expressway toll basket and stuck his arm down the hole. Dark forms milled about under the bridge. Up on the overpass, youths balanced concrete blocks on the railing, ready to drop on cars.

“Let’s go the other way,” said Jim.

They came to a dark intersection and looked both ways. A block to the right, a figure crossed the street on a large tricycle. To the left, a hooker pushed a gas grill on wheels. Ahead, some men hung back at the end of an alley, watching them.

“This way,” said Orville.

At the next corner, a man sat at the base of a stop sign, drinking from a paper bag. He pointed at the four of them. “Y’all be bullshit! You know I’m right! Y’all be bullshit!…”

“This way,” said Wilma.

They turned the corner and saw a boarded-up gas station. “A pay phone!” said Jim. He ran to it. The phone book was gone and the receiver had been torn out by the wires. A man in a Cadillac slowed as he passed, looked Wilma over, and sped up. The Caddy stopped a block ahead, helped a hooker put a gas grill in the trunk, and they drove off together.

“We’re just going in circles,” said Jim. “That’s the same hooker.”

“Let’s go back this way,” said Satchel. “At least the expressway was a landmark.”

They passed the man at the stop sign again. “Y’all be bullshit
and
lost! Ha ha ha ha!”

They made a right.

Whoops. Crack Street. They made a left, past the floating pawnshop in the pickup.

“Look!” said Wilma, pointing at the back of the truck. “Our walkie-talkies!”

“Give those back to us!” said Satchel.

“Fuck yourself!”

“You better give them back! We’re the crime watch!”

“Ooooo! Look at me, I’m shaking!”

“We’re the eyes and ears of the police,” Satchel warned him. “We’ll report you.”

“With what?”

“With our walkie…”

“Let’s go,” said Jim.

Three more blocks.

“I can see light from a sign,” said Jim. “That means a store. And probably a pay phone.”

He was right. A small twenty-four-hour grocery with a big tricycle out front. Jim saw a phone at the corner of the parking lot and headed for it.

A big-shouldered man in a sharkskin suit leaned against the hood of a black Mercedes parked next to the phone. Jim reached for the receiver.

“Don’t touch that.”

“But I need to use it,” said Jim.

“I’m expecting a call.”

“This is sort of an emergency. I need to call a taxi. Just be a second.”

The man pulled back the right side of his jacket to reveal a shoulder holster.

“It’s all yours.” Jim walked quickly back to the others in front of the grocery.

“Did you call a taxi?” asked Wilma.

“I think it would be better to use the phone inside,” said Jim. The crime watch headed for the the automatic front doors.

Behind them, stereos thumped in the passing traffic. It was now 3
A.M.
, the sexually desperate portion of the program. A man driving alone in a Datsun began wondering why his neon license plate frame and
GAS
,
GRASS OR ASS
bumper sticker weren’t working. Those who had not had sex the longest would soon begin pulling people out of cars and beating them.

Serge walked out the end of a grid street from a dark neighborhood and into the greenish fluorescent light outside a twenty-four-hour grocery store. A black Mercedes sat on the edge of the parking lot next to the pay phone. There was
nobody in the car or near the phone. It began to ring. Serge answered it.

“You got The Package?”

“Yeah, I got The Package,” said Serge. “Meet you at the Crosstown Inn.”

“Hey, that’s not where we were supposed to meet.”

“Plans have changed, Condor.”

“Condor? What the fuck are you talking about? Hey, you’re not Vince!”

“No, I’m not.”

“Who the hell are you?!”

“Segretti.”

“Segretti? Who the fuck’s Segretti?”

“Segretti’s calling the shots now. You want The Package, you come to the Crosstown!”

“Fuck you! I’ll kill you! I’ll—”

“Don’t you threaten me!” said Serge, ripping the receiver out of the phone.

A large-framed man in a sharkskin suit came out of the grocery store unwrapping a pack of cigarettes and heading for the Mercedes. He saw Serge at the pay phone.

“That phone didn’t ring, did it?” he asked Serge.

“Are you Vince?”

“Yeah. How’d you know?”

“I answered the phone a minute ago. Someone said they wanted to see Vince right away at the Crosstown Inn.”

“That’s not where we’re supposed to meet.”

“That’s all I know,” said Serge. “I’m just walking by and the phone rang, so I picked it up because that’s the kind of guy I am.”

“Something’s not right here.” Vince took a menacing step toward Serge.

Serge didn’t flinch. “Damn straight something’s not right. You’d think the V.A. hospital would know how to treat leprosy after all these years. You know why they can’t? Because they’re all androids.
I looked.
”

It was Serge’s turn to take a step forward, and Vince backed up. “Get away from me, you crazy motherfucker!” Vince jumped in the Mercedes and took off.

“Is it my breath?” Serge cupped his hands over his mouth to check.

He began walking again, past the grocery store with the oversized tricycle parked out front. He came to the edge of the road, crossed it, and disappeared into the darkness of the grid streets.

Back inside the store, the crime watch stood in an ammonia haze near the registers. Number Six was open, the cashier going extra slow so she wouldn’t break two-inch chartreuse nails. She had worked the graveyard shift for three years, but hadn’t made the connection with her facial tattoos.
The cast of The Rocky Horror Picture Show
was in line at the register, buying beer, wine and over-the-counter remedies addressing all stages of digestion.

Jim walked up to the cashier. “I have to use the phone.”

“There’s a pay phone out front.”

“It’s in use. Can I make a call on the office phone?”

“Customers have to use the pay phone. Policy.”

“But it’s kind of an emergency—”

There was a rising grumble in the line at the register. Jim looked up; they were all staring daggers.

Jim walked back to the others.

“Will they let us use the phone?” asked Orville.

“It’s best we find another…” Jim saw someone over by the milk. “I think I recognize that guy. He lives on my street.”

Coleman stood at the dairy case and grabbed an aerosol can of whipped cream. He stuck the end in his mouth and sprayed. For some reason, regular aerosol doesn’t work with whipped cream, and they have to use nitrous oxide instead. And, sitting on a grocery shelf, the laughing gas separates and rises to the top of the cream.

“You again!” yelled the night manager. “I told you to stay out of my whipped cream!”

Coleman dropped the can and stumbled. Sounds whooped and echoed in his head. He tried to take off running, but his equilibrium gyroscope was spinning on the wrong axis and he went sideways instead, plowing through an eight-foot promotional pyramid of Velveeta Lite.

“This time you’re paying for it all!” said the manager, pointing at two dozen spent cans of whipped cream scattered in the bottom of the dairy case. The manager grabbed Coleman by the arm. “I want to see some green! Now!”

Coleman reached down the neck of his shirt and pulled out two fifties. He gave it to the manager, who slapped a cardboard box into Coleman’s stomach and told him to pack up the empties, get the hell out of his store and never come back.

Jim waited until the manager had walked away. “Excuse me? Aren’t you one of my neighbors?”

“I yam what I yam. Yug-gug-gug-gug-gug.”

The crime watch stared.

“That’s Popeye,” said Coleman, filling his box with whipped cream cans.

“Do you think you can take us home?” asked Jim.

“Sure,” said Coleman. “C’mon.”

Jim stared at Coleman’s chest. Something was wrong. But he was too discreet to say anything.

Not Satchel. “Hey! What’s wrong with the man’s tits?”

Coleman looked down at his chest. “Oh, that. It’s much too dangerous to carry money around this town at night. You got to have a money belt. Except they were all out of money belts and I was drunk, so I got the money bra.”

He pulled three hundred dollars out of his shirt as some kind of proof, then tucked it back.

“Why do you have so much cash on you?” asked Jim.

“You mean you don’t carry bail money?”

“Not usually.”

Coleman led them out the front door and stowed the box of whipped cream under his tricycle seat.

“I thought you had a car,” said Jim.

“I did,” said Coleman. “But I got in a wreck, and the insurance company refused to pay because I didn’t have insurance.”