by Tim Dorsey
“He’s under one of the beds screaming about giant flying snakes,” said Bud. “The cops finally called animal control, and they dragged him out by slipping one of those lasso-sticks around an ankle, and he bites one of the officers, which got him ninety days in the Stock Island jail. On the seventy-fifth day, he runs away from a road detail and disappears into the mangroves, where he’s been ever since. There are still warrants, but the police just want to help him more than anything. He’s harmless except when he tears up the garbage cans all over the island—worse than the raccoons.”
The trash cans banged around some more.
“That’s Roger?” said Coleman.
Bud nodded. “The Skunk Ape.”
“Man, you guys have some great stories!” said Coleman, surreptitiously peeling a dollar off the wall.
Serge slapped Coleman’s hand.
“Ow.”
“You haven’t even heard the best ones,” said Bob the accountant. “No Name Key.”
“What’s No Name Key?” asked Coleman.
“Right across that bridge you saw when you came in,” said Rebel. “One scary island. People you never want to mess with. No sewer lines or power or anything. Just a bunch of no-trespassing signs at the ends of spooky private roads winding back to places you can’t see.”
“Bud,” said Serge. “Remember the time you got kidnapped?”
“You got kidnapped?” said Coleman.
Bud nodded. “This will tell you everything you need to know about No Name Key. I was doing freelance real estate photography of a stilt house back up one of those roads. I go and take my pictures, no big deal. I’m heading out and this woman in a Dodge Dakota is coming the other way. She blocks me with her pickup, gets out with this big gun.”
“Some crazy old hag?” asked Coleman.
“No, a real looker,” said Bud. “Asks what the fuck I think I’m doing on private property, can’t I read the signs? I tell her about the photos, even show her my real estate paperwork. Doesn’t care, just waves the gun. Orders me to turn my car around and drive off this little sandy spur that leads God-knows-where. The road goes deeper and deeper into back country and we come to another stilt house, totally secluded in the salt flats and mangroves. Makes me get out of the car and walk around behind the house to a patio, where she makes me sit in this lounger with my back to the building. Tells me not to turn around or she’ll shoot. Then she climbs the stairs and goes inside. I’m really shaking now, all kinds of horrible stuff running through my mind. You wouldn’t even have to dispose of a body there, just let nature take its course. I’m about to make a run for it when I hear a door open and footsteps on the stairs. Then this scraping noise. She’s dragging another lounger and sets it up right next to mine. I look out the corner of my eye and can’t believe what I’m seeing. She’s completely naked. And fine. No supermodel’s got anything on her. She sets the gun on this little cocktail table on the other side of her lounger, which also has a pitcher of lemonade and one of those bottles of Jack Daniel’s with a handle. Then she fires up this huge Bob Marley spliff, lays down in the sun and starts reading a magazine like there’s absolutely nothing wrong with this picture.”
“So did she kill you?” asked Coleman.
“No. But I didn’t move a muscle for an hour. Finally she gets up, grabs the gun and goes in the house. I wait a few minutes just to make sure, then take off running like a bastard. I get around the side of the house and there she is, walking back up the road from the mailbox, still buck naked, nonchalantly thumbing through envelopes, the gun dangling upside down by the trigger guard from one of her fingers. Doesn’t even look up, just says, ‘Where the hell do you think you’re going?’ So I’m back on that lounger. Another hour goes by, and suddenly there’s this crashing in the brush and some big lumberjack type in jeans and tattoos jumps out and charges at me, screaming and swinging a baseball bat. Chases me all over the yard. We make several circles around the naked woman on the lounger, and she’s just reading her magazine, la-de-dah, and finally says like she’s really bored, ‘You wanna fool around or you wanna fuck?’ She puts down her magazine and skips off into the swamp. The guy drops the bat and runs after her undoing his pants. I made a break for it, never looked back.” Bud took a long sip from his draft. “And that, my friend, is No Name Key.”
“Whoa,” said Coleman. “Some story!”
“That’s not even the best,” said Rebel. “There’s this drug kingpin who lives over there named—”
“Shhhhhh!” said Shirtless Bob.
“Give me a break!” said Sop Choppy. “Don’t tell me you’re afraid to even say his name!”
“Keep your voice down,” said Bud.
“I don’t even believe he exists,” said Sop Choppy.
“You better,” said Rebel.
13
T HE PETITE WOMAN took off her sunglasses for the first time. She dabbed tears, put them back on. She turned her head in the direction of No Name Key. “I just know he was behind this.”
“Keep your voice down,” said the man sitting across from her. He scooted his chair closer. “Of course he’s behind it. That’s why we have to get you some place safe. And a new identity.”
“I’m not going to spend the rest of my life looking over my shoulder.”
“You need to start making plans.”
“I’m still thinking about Janet.”
“That’s what I’m talking about.”
“I never should have let her leave the truck stop. If only I’d driven faster…”
ANNA LOOKED AT the speedometer. A hundred and five. She took the second exit off the Interstate and raced east down a county road with cattle fencing and no street lights. Anna knew the area; she turned up an unmarked dirt road. The Trans Am had what’s known as racing suspension, which means it’s bad. Especially doing fifty without pavement. The uneven earth threw the car around. It seemed like forever, but the road soon dumped into a pasture. A dark aluminum building came into view at the edge of the Australian pines. Janet’s car was already there. Janet waiting inside. Good. Anna pulled nose-to-nose with the other car. What was up with Janet’s windshield? Those would be bullet holes. Thirty.
Headlights came on from an unseen car behind the building, two tubes of lighted fog across the field.
Anna threw the car in reverse, looked over her shoulder and began backing up as fast as she could. The rear end swished in the dirt. High beams from the oncoming car hit the Trans Am. Anna didn’t turn around, just kept fighting the Pontiac’s back end trying to muscle itself off the road. The other car was a quarter mile and closing, a white Mercedes with tinted windows. Anna came to the end of the dirt road, spinning backward onto the hardtop. She threw it in drive, went maybe fifty feet, then killed the lights and dove down another dirt road that she knew from memory would be there. The Mercedes wasn’t far behind; they’d check down the road and see her taillights. So Anna cut the wheel and crashed into the palmettos. She jumped out and braced behind a tree.
The end of the dirt road: High beams grew brighter on the hardtop until a white Mercedes came into view. It stopped. Anna knew they were looking. She didn’t breathe. An eternity. The Mercedes accelerated away.
Anna jumped in the Trans Am, praying it wasn’t stuck. She hit the gas and the front end popped out of the crunched brush. The car rolled without headlights back to the edge of the county highway. Anna looked to the right. No sign of the Mercedes. She turned left and floored it.
ANNA SAT BACK in her chair in the No Name. “…And then I called you from the turnpike and came here.”
“Jesus.”
“Thanks again for meeting me like this.”
“I told you, I’d meet you anywhere.”
“Aren’t you afraid?” asked Anna.
“Why?”
“You had that big falling-out with him. And everyone I know in our circle is dead.”
“Your circle,” corrected the man. “We were the ones who met you at the marina. It’s a littl
e different code among us.”
“I remember that day. I didn’t like you.”
He smiled. “I could tell.”
“So what happened?”
“Fernandez got too crazy.”
“Is that his real name? I just heard his nickname.”
“That’s part of the myth. Except it wasn’t all myth. The violence is mostly true. But the worst part was his stare. He has this way of looking at you—”
“When? I never saw him,” said Anna. “In fact, come to think of it, I don’t know anyone who’s ever seen him.”
“Almost nobody has.”
ON THE OTHER side of the No Name Pub, Rebel Starke leaned low over the bar and spoke like a conspiracy. “Nobody’s ever seen him and lived to tell. Nobody knows what he looks like. He lives right across that bridge….”
“You guys are wussies!” said Sop Choppy. “That’s just a fairy tale.”
“I believe it,” said Bud. “I know this guy he had killed. Castrated him with a sharpened melon scoop, let him bleed out.”
“Who?” said Sop Choppy.
“My wife knows this woman at work. Her brother’s friend heard it—”
“Exactly!” said Sop Choppy. “Someone told someone told someone else. That’s how urban legends start.”
“How do you explain that big house across the channel?” said Bud. “Nobody’s seen the owner.”
“I believe some hermit lives over on No Name,” said Sop Choppy. “So what? That island’s full of recluses. And as far as the dope-running…like that’s far-fetched. Throw a rock anywhere in the Keys and it’ll bounce off three smugglers. I’d be more astounded if he ran a tire store. Remember back in the eighties when every other phone booth around here had a number to call if you found a bale, and a van would come by in thirty minutes and give you five grand, no questions asked? They were more dependable than Domino’s.”
“What about the model-ship story?” said Rebel. “That one I definitely believe.”
“Me, too,” said Bud. “The ship story is practically legend. I’ve heard it from at least four different people.”
“Big deal. A lot of people are telling the same rumor,” said Sop Choppy. “How many times have you heard the one about the rock star who had all that semen pumped out of his stomach?”
“I heard that one,” said Coleman. “It was—”
“Shhhhhh!” said Serge. “If you can’t say something nice about someone…”
“The point I’m making is it’s a physical and medical impossibility,” said Sop Choppy. “Semen’s nontoxic, so there’s no need to pump, and as far as the ridiculous amounts in those stories, it would take like two hundred guys to produce that kind of…What? Why are you all looking at me like that for? I don’t do it. I’m just saying check the facts before you go believing every stupid rumor you hear.”
“What’s the model-ship story?” asked Coleman.
“Don’t tell that idiotic thing again,” said Sop Choppy. “Everyone’s heard it.”
“I haven’t,” said Daytona Dave.
“Me neither,” said Coleman.
“Okay,” said Rebel. “There are only two things known for sure about the owner of that house: He’s ordered the murders of more than a hundred men, and he loves building model ships—”
“I’m telling you he doesn’t exist,” said Sop Choppy.
IN THE BACK of the pub, Anna Sebring picked at her fingertips. “Who’s seen him besides you?”
“Just a handful of the top people in Miami and South America. He actually gets a kick out of all the rumors. He’s got it so half the people around here are afraid to say his name and the rest don’t even believe he exists.”
“What about the guys you were with at the marina?”
“Nope. None of them was ever allowed to meet him. That’s the way he wanted it. Put an extra level of fear in the ranks in case someone decided to skim.”
“All I know is he’s an asshole,” said Anna.
“That’s why I had to quit. Too erratic with the violence. Didn’t make business sense.”
“So he just let you leave?”
“No, he had some guys looking for me awhile. To be honest, I was pretty scared. But I had some friends, too. He might take me out, but not without a war. We came to an agreement.”
They stopped and looked at each other. The man squinted at Anna. “You understand the risk you’re taking just by sitting here? He’s right over that bridge.”
“I know.” She was still fidgeting with her fingers.
“You fled all the way from Fort Pierce to be in his backyard?”
“He murdered my brother.” She looked up. “Will you help?”
“Don’t even—”
“I’m gonna kill him. I don’t give a shit anymore.”
The man shook his head. “I can’t help. It’s part of our understanding. When I walked away, I walked away. He gets the big house and I get a crummy job, but at least I’m alive.”
“You liked my brother.”
“I did.”
“And you won’t help?”
“Anything else. You need cash? Help getting away? I’ll even go over there and talk to him for you if you want.”
She didn’t react.
The man sat back in his chair and decided to change the subject. “Staying at your brother’s vacation place?”
“I’m not going near there. He’s probably got the house watched.”
The man rubbed his chin hard and looked at Anna in a different way. “You actually did come down here to kill him.”
Anna took off her sunglasses again and answered with her eyes.
“At first I thought it was the money,” said the man. “But you really don’t know about that, do you?”
“What money?”
“Your brother squirreled it away. A bunch, I hear. He was pretty smart about that.”
“I don’t know about any money.”
“Everyone else does. They say it’s in the millions, but that could just be talk. When I first heard you were coming down here, that’s what I thought it was about. Get the money for a fresh start.”
“Where is it?”
“Nobody knew but your brother.”
“I don’t care about money.”
“You will.”
“Sure you won’t change your mind?” asked Anna.
The man stood. “Sure you won’t change yours?”
She shook her head.
“Remember, you can always call.”
“I know.”
The man walked away from the table, past an involved story-telling circle at the bar.
“…He builds these intricate model ships from scratch,” said Rebel. “Old eighteenth-century wooden frigates and stuff. An insane perfectionist, painstaking detail. Some take as long as a year. Then he goes over them with a magnifying glass and if there’s the tiniest flaw, he’ll smash whole masts and riggings in an insane rage and spend weeks redoing them. When he’s finally satisfied the model is absolutely perfect, he gets out a giant survival knife and carves his name in the base.”
“What name?” asked Coleman.
“Okay,” said Rebel. “I’ll tell you his original name, but I don’t want to say what they call him now because of the curse—”
“Since when is there a fuckin’ curse?” said Sop Choppy. “This story gets more ridiculous every time I hear it!”
“Fernandez,” said Rebel. “Doug Fernandez.”
“That’s not a scary name,” said Coleman.
“That’s why he changed it,” said Rebel. “Fernandez has this way of looking at you. Very intimidating. Strong men have been known to throw up. There’s this famous test he gives. Nobody is ever allowed to see him. Unless you’re in his smuggling organization and about to be promoted into the highest ranks. Then you get to meet one-on-one. But only that single time; you’ll never see him again. And if, during that meeting, you can look him in the eye and pass the test, you get your promotion.”
> “Ooooo, that’s pretty spooky,” said Sop Choppy. “They have a staring contest.”
“No,” said Rebel. “It’s not a staring contest. There’s conversation, too. The point is it’s a mental test. They don’t kung fu fight or some shit.” He turned to Coleman. “Don’t listen to him. This is all true. There was this one lieutenant of his, young but rising fast. He’s up for the big promotion. They drive him out to No Name Key, all these limos kicking up dust down the no-trespassing road. The kid is led upstairs to Fernandez’s personal office. All the goons assemble outside the door—they’ve all passed the test, but they’re not allowed to see Fernandez again. They stare at the doorknob. The new guy gulps and grabs it. He goes in and finds himself standing all by himself in this huge room, looking across an empty, gleaming oak floor. On the other side of the office is an antique Louis-the-whatever desk with a stunning scale model of a British schooner. Behind the desk is a giant wicker butterfly chair, facing the other way. The kid isn’t even sure if there’s anyone else in the room. Then, the butterfly chair slowly begins rotating, and there…is…Fernandez!”
“Butterfly chairs can’t rotate,” said Sop Choppy. “They’re stationary.”
“Whatever the fuck,” said Rebel. “It’s a chair with a very high back and casters or wheels or a swivel base. You happy?”
Sop Choppy looked at the ceiling. “…Hmmm-hmmm-hmmm…Bullshit story…Hmmm-hmmm…”
Rebel ignored him. “…Fernandez leans forward in the chair and bears down on the young man with that glare of his. The lieutenant tries to maintain eye contact, but he can’t. Fernandez sits back and folds his hands in his lap. He doesn’t say anything. The young guy’s really shaking now. Fernandez finally opens a drawer in his desk. He takes out a stopwatch and a gun. The new guy doesn’t know what’s going on. Fernandez braces his shooting arm on the edge of the desk and says in an unnervingly calm voice: ‘You have one minute to make me angry. Or you die.’ He clicks the stopwatch. This is the test. The kid is stupid with fear. Fernandez looks at his stopwatch. ‘You now have fifty seconds.’ The guy figures he better do something. He starts swearing at Fernandez, but he’s stuttering. Fernandez laughs. ‘I’ve been called worse. Forty seconds.’ The guy insults Fernandez’s mother. Fernandez laughs again. ‘I never liked her myself. Thirty seconds.’ The guy’s in a complete panic, sweat pouring down his face. Fernandez flicks the safety off the gun. ‘Twenty-five seconds.’ The guy’s head jerks around the room. ‘Twenty seconds.’ Fernandez cocks the hammer. ‘Fifteen seconds.’ The guy runs up to the desk. ‘Ten seconds.’ He picks up the model ship, races across the room and throws it out the fuckin’ window!”
