Tim Dorsey Collection #1 (79 page)
Read Tim Dorsey Collection #1 Online
Authors: Tim Dorsey
The man on TV with Crease tried to hide his face. “Please leave me alone. Get away from me.” It was Paul, the Passive-Aggressive Private Eye, who was bad with people but great with inanimate objects, and he was holding the handle of an attractive silver Halliburton briefcase.
Serge slapped his forehead in astonishment. “How the hell?”
He was in awe of Paul’s mystical gift. Then he saw Paul break free of Crease and climb into a Malibu driven by Jethro Maddox, who had hung in a palm tree the night before the hurricane and had an unobstructed aerial view of the Hammerhead Ranch grounds when Zargoza went running around in his pajamas hiding the briefcase for the last time.
Serge went over to his toiletry bag and grabbed his electronic homing device. He banged it on the table and it began beeping.
Cecil the neighbor arrived at the door with two officers. “Open up, police!”
Serge grabbed the toiletry bag and ran across the room and, a second before the officers kicked in the door, he jumped down through the hole in the floor made by Edna Ploomfield.
A
s fear of crime continued to grip the residents of Florida in the late 1990s, legislators in Tallahassee examined the problem in exhaustive detail and fi
nally saw it for what it actually was: an opportunity to exploit for votes.
In a selfless display of bombast, certain lawmakers brought back the tradition of the roadside chain gang. These same legislators then took a valiant stand against tax-and-spend liberals by steadfastly refusing to fund the chain-gang program.
On the first day of the new year, a group of prisoners in a medium-security detail collected trash down the hot median of I-275 on the underside of Tampa Bay. Their chains had never been purchased, so they walked around freely, and escapes were epidemic. In the middle of the shift, something began making a light beeping sound. One of the prisoners pulled a zebra-striped pager from under his baseball cap and read the alphanumeric message: “Crockett, we’re on!”
Over a small hill in the highway came the unmistakable theme song of the smash-hit TV show
Miami Vice
. A dented-up pink Cadillac containing Serge, City and Country flew over the hump and skidded to a stop next to the work detail. Lenny dropped the pager and sprinted up the incline of the median and dove into the convertible as the guard fired a round of buckshot. Serge hit the gas and the car accelerated east toward Interstate 75.
S
ean Breen and David Klein were gone fishing again. Sean had bought a new Chrysler New Yorker with the insurance money after reporting the maniac who had stolen his car at the brush fire down in the
Everglades. The new Chrysler was pulling a new, loaded fishing skiff, purchased with the advance on book rights to their harrowing story in the Florida Keys. (“I can see it now,” said their agent. “We’ll call it
Florida Road
-something.”) They were headed across the state to the Banana River, and the weather couldn’t have been nicer. The sky was blue and clear except for a string of popcorn clouds marching their way across the southern horizon.
A pink Cadillac convertible pulled up alongside. The driver waved and accelerated past. Sean and David looked at each other and then shook their heads and said together: “Nawwww.”
Serge steered the Caddy with his knees and fiddled with the homing device. It pointed him directly at Cocoa Beach.
A hundred miles ahead, a short, rumpled man and his stout friend with the white beard lounged poolside at the Orbit Motel, sipping drinks out of coconuts.
Country played with the radio, turning up Billy Preston, “Will It Go Round in Circles.”
“…
I got a story ain’t got no moral, with the bad guy winnin’ every once in a while
…”
Serge planned to hang loose and play it by ear. No big rush. If they didn’t find Paul and Jethro right away, there were plenty of things Serge needed to photograph over there. And of course he’d have to give Lenny, City and Country the A-Tour, starting with the John F. Kennedy Space Center, where thousands of people lined up every day to peer inside a bulletproof exhibit case proudly displaying a rock from the driveway of the Hammerhead Ranch Motel.
Again, a debt is owed to my agent, Nat Sobel,
and my editor, Paul Bresnick,
for helping me order in finer restaurants.
Welcome to
Tim Dorsey’s
Hammerhead Ranch Motel
“A WILD, WACKY MOTEL WORTH CHECKING INTO…
There ought to be a law—if it’s summer, we get a new Tim Dorsey novel.”
Milwaukee Journal Sentinel
“WRY HUMOR, OUTLANDISH CHARACTERS, AND RAW-EDGE SITUATIONS…
[a] skewering of Florida’s foibles, scenery and stereotypes…Where else would the lunatic fringe go but the Hammerhead Ranch?…Dorsey corrals a Robert Altman-like cast…In the vein of Carl Hiaasen, Dorsey thrives on Florida’s bizarre, which need little embellishing.”
Ft. Lauderdale Sun-Sentinel
“ZANY…[A] HILARIOUS, VIOLENT FARCE…
Dorsey places himself in the ranks of Laurence Shames and Carl Hiaasen…A delightfully giddy ride it is, ending with the promise of more craziness to come.”
Publishers Weekly
“HILARIOUS…
Dorsey’s prose scampers at a rate just this side of manic…Fans of the fast-read, you have met your match. As for the rest of you, just don’t wonder why everyone else is laughing.”
Tampa Tribune
“WILD AND WACKY…
Strap on your helmet! Reading this book is like being shot out of a cannon, on fire, and aimed at Florida, laughing all the way…Dorsey gives us sex, drugs, cleverly placed rock ‘n’ roll, and a few colorful murders (by taxidermy and by drawbridge), all tightly wound and delivered at the speed of sound.”
Nashville Tennessean
“DORSEY HAS MUSCLED IN ON THE BIG GUNS’ TERRITORY
and ripped the place upside down and inside out.”
Miami Herald
“COMICAL, EDGY…‘KEY LARGO’ MEETS ‘THERE’S SOMETHING ABOUT NATURAL BORN KILLERS’…
[Dorsey] reintroduces spree killer/Florida folklorist Serge Storms…It’s tough to make a homicidal maniac a sympathetic hero, but Dorsey pulls it off.”
Raleigh News & Observer
“A GOOD WRITER WITH PLENTY TO SAY…
To Dorsey’s eye, the Florida [that] residents love is awash in racism, smut, dope, corruption, and casual murderous violence. You can tell he loves it still.”
Cleveland Plain Dealer
“IMAGINE THE VIOLENCE OF EDNA BUCHANAN MARRIED TO THE SKEWED WORLDVIEW OF DAVE BARRY; NOW YOU’RE READY TO MEET TIM DORSEY.”
Booklist
“VERY FUNNY STUFF,
perfect for the beach or anonymous mailings to friends you’d rather not have move here…Dorsey exhibits both a prodigious talent for dialogue and a delightful sense of the absurd.”
St. Petersburg Times
“A VERY ENTERTAINING READ…
a frenetically paced farce involving sex, murder, drugs, skydiving Hemingway lookalikes, and five million in cash holed up in a briefcase…In Serge Storms, the convivial, schizoid torturer with an encyclopedic knowledge of Florida, Dorsey has created a truly lovable loon.”
Birmingham Post
(U.K.)
“A NEWER, NUTTIER INDIVIDUAL IS INTRODUCED ON PRACTICALLY EVERY PAGE…
It’s a sweet relief to discover that Dorsey can keep up with himself. Heaven knows nobody else can…With writers as wild and wonderful as Tim Dorsey to represent us [Floridians], even hurricane season doesn’t seem so bad.”
Orlando Sentinel
“TIM DORSEY IS ONE SICK BUNNY.”
Belfast News Letter
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, organizations, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
HAMMERHEAD RANCH MOTEL
. Copyright © 2000 by Tim Dorsey. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the nonexclusive, nontransferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, decompiled, reverse-engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.
EPub Edition © MARCH 2006 ISBN 9780061836725
Version 02072014
06 07 08 09 10
For Kerry, Chris and Dinah
Either he’s dead or my watch has stopped.
—GROUCHO MARX
U
h-oh. Lenny slipped me LSD.
That can be the only explanation.
It’s been nonstop hallucinations. Which normally I don’t mind, but you wouldn’t believe how it complicates trying to cross U.S. 1 against heavy traffic. I must have stepped off the curb and headed back about fifty times now. I think I’m in the Florida Keys.
I keep slapping the side of my head to make the visions stop, but it only changes the picture, like a slide projector.
Slap!
Carjackings, exploitation of the elderly, cigarette boats running from the Coast Guard, melanoma, tar balls, deed restrictions, beefy mosquitoes that crack windshields, Colombian shoot-outs, Cuban boycotts, Mexican standoffs, rampant-growth speculators, offshore-drilling lobbyists, cheap rum, cheaper motels, crack vials, condoms, mouse ears, William Kennedy Smith, Phillip Michael Thomas, chicken wing restaurants featuring women’s breasts…
Slap!
Shark attacks in two feet of water, barracuda jumping into boats and biting people, alligators roaming backyards and eating poodles named Muffins, college boys named Bo funneling beers on the beach and trampling sand castles and making children cry, broken-down cruise ships with decks full of irritable people from Michigan in puffy orange life preservers, the lottery won by a pool of 23 office workers who quit their jobs to become down-and-out junkies, trained seals playing
In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida
on bicycle horns…
Slap!
There. The hallucinations have stopped. I’m in the dark, now. I’m weightless, too. That’s much better.
Whoops. Spoke too soon. The weightlessness is giving way. I’m starting to drop. Faster and faster. Free-falling toward a pinpoint of light. The light grows bigger, spinning off bright curved red swirls as I hurtle down this spiral chute like some hokey special effect from
The Twilight Zone,
or Jimmy Stewart in
Vertigo;
I’m helpless, this little black silhouette of a man, arms and legs flailing in a blizzard of chads, plummeting toward a haunting psychedelic pinwheel with the floating head of Jeb Bush in the middle…
The spinning has stopped. I’m coming out of the tunnel now. The LSD feels like it’s wearing off, but the sky is still ten different colors and the clouds are whispering about me. Just ignore them or you’ll end up doing something odd that will attract attention. Are we hungry? My skin is unusually sheen and agreeable. I want to raise my voice and croon the opus of life!…I can’t think with all the people in my head talking at once! I need to call the room to order…. That’s better. Next item of business? Yes, you in the back with your hand raised…. Why are we wandering in the middle of busy traffic?…Good question. How
did
we get out here? I thought we were still on the
sidewalk…Well, what’s done is done. Cars are whizzing by, so work with it…Try to get to the opposite curb. So what if that truck is coming? He’ll stop because I will it. I am the master of time, space and dimension. Here we go: to the curb…See? The truck stopped. He hit that car when he swerved around me, but I’ve made my point…Where’s that music coming from? It’s The Doors, “People Are Strange.” No kidding. The sound…it’s coming from the sun. God’s playing it on his personal hydrogen jukebox, the Big Puff Daddy-G layin’ down the master moral rap and spinnin’ the eternal hits,
If there’s a rock ’n’ roll heaven, you know they got a hulluva band!
…Oh, no, that horrible song is now stuck in my head. I must kill myself immediately. Damn that Lenny!…Wait. Who’s Lenny? For that matter, who am I? Why can’t I remember my name? And what the heck is this strange outfit I’m wearing? A royal blue jumpsuit with a NASA patch on the shoulder. Am I an astronaut?…Now I’m getting a shooting pain. It’s coming from my forehead. What’s this I feel up here? That’s some huge knot you got on your dome—better have a doctor look at it. Maybe that’s why I can’t remember who I am…When in doubt, check your license. Let’s see, is your wallet in this pocket? No, not there, but…what’s this? A prescription bottle? Empty. Wow, that’s some serious medication on the label; the guy who’s taking this is one real sick-o…. Hold a sec. Could this be yours? The first name on the label is “Serge,” but the last name has worn off. And the refill date was over a month ago…. Now it’s starting to add up. This isn’t LSD after all. It’s not even a drug experience. That’s the whole problem—you haven’t
taken
your drugs…. Uh-oh, hallucinations again; the ground is starting to move. The road is rumbling and rising up. This is no ordinary street. It’s a bridge. A drawbridge. Only one thing to do: hurry up and
get to the lip of the span and hang on by hooking your arms through the grating. That way, when the span rises, you’ll be way up at the top, above the hubbub, alone with some space to think and a clear view of the situation…. Here we go, up, up, getting pretty high now, nice panorama. Wish I had my camera. Why are all those people down there pointing at me? And who called the cops? Here they come again, drawing their guns as usual. Now I’ll have to dive in the water for my getaway. All this stress can’t be good…
Two weeks later.
An unconscious man in a blue astronaut jumpsuit lies facedown on the shore of a breezy mangrove island in the Gulf Stream. He’s coming around, talking in his sleep.
Jeannie! Come out of that bottle right now!
His eyelids flutter in the sand, squinting at the bright sunlight. He raises his head and sees hundreds of eyes staring back at him.
They’re still here. What do they want from me?
Serge stands up.
“I told you. I’m having memory problems. I can only recall textbook history, plus some stuff about a briefcase and a recent trip I took, but I can’t piece it all together yet.”
The eyes silently stay on him. Some blink.
“Okay, okay. One more lesson.”
Serge steps forward in the sand and spreads his arms in an encompassing gesture:
“Railroads had a seismic impact on the development of Florida, beginning with the fabled East Coast line slashing its way through the swamps a hundred years ago, opening up the bottom half of the state, an unforgiving no-man’s-land of eccentric pioneers, cranky Indians and alcoholic hermits…”
Serge. Serge A. Storms. Wiry, intense, unhinged, stand
ing on a beach in the lower Florida Keys, leaves rustling in the salt wind, surrounded by his students, hundreds of small attentive monkeys.
“…Then the railroads unveiled the fancy deco streamliners of the 1930s, introducing the northerners to frost-free vacations and society-page beach sex in Palm Beach…”
Serge stops speaking. One of the monkeys in back is chattering.
“Buttons, please, I’m trying to talk up here.”
The monkey stops chattering.
“Thank you…. As I was saying, the histories of the railroads and Florida are inextricably entwined. By the end of the twentieth century, Amtrak had unveiled its latest high-speed express train,
The Silver Stingray,
for its New York-to-Miami route. The train didn’t have the same seminal influence on the state as its predecessors, but it played a crucial role in one of the most infamous mysteries in the annals of Florida crime. The missing briefcase with five million dollars. Remember? The one with the curse I was telling you about?”
The monkeys stare.
“It was a Wednesday.
The Silver Stingray
clacked down the tracks on its regular afternoon run. The train entered a tunnel near a phosphate mine, and everything went dark. The train came out of the tunnel. Someone screamed! A body lay in the aisle of the dining car!”
Serge lies down in front of the monkeys for effect.
“The victim wore a blue velvet tuxedo and ruffled shirt, one of the lounge reptiles entertaining the tourists on the trip south. It was murder! All the passengers eyed each other suspiciously. Who was the killer? Was it one of the other performers in velvet tuxedos? The blues singer from New York? The Russian? The Jamaican? Or perhaps one of the
women in that book club? And why? Did it have something to do with the five million dollars rumored to be on board?…”
Serge stops talking again, his hyperkeen senses twitching. He jumps up and runs to the edge of a mangrove outcropping, peering out at the ocean through the branches.
“A boat’s coming! Battle formations!…”
