by Tim Dorsey
“Serge!”
“Charley!”
“No way! I was going to talk to you about that. You still haven’t paid from last time.”
“The only reason I didn’t pay was because that motel took all my money.”
“Why’d they do that?”
“I stayed there.”
“That’s how it works.”
“No, I mean they ripped me off. All the cottages were taken so they gave me the last converted unit over the office. Except after they closed the office and turned off the AC downstairs, all the heat rose and the little window unit couldn’t handle the load. It turned into a furnace. I called the after-hours number, but they refused to listen.”
“Serge, you know the Keys. You never rent the converted unit over the office.”
“I want to believe in people.”
“Take the book. It’s too much aggravation.”
“You sure?”
“I’m sure I won’t get paid.”
“What about that aerial photography book. I’ve also kind of had my eye on—”
“Serge!”
“Okay, just this one. I’m boning up on my pioneer research. I built a kiln the other day.”
“Ceramics?”
“No, the old charcoal kind they used to have in the back country.”
“Those were huge,” said Charley. “Where’d you build it?”
“In my mind.” Serge held up the new book. “I plan to reenact the life of Happy Jack, tracing the rum route from Sugarloaf to the Old Customs House that he and his merry band used to navigate in handmade sailboats. This book will help me faithfully re-create the experience down to the last primitive detail.”
“But the route took days, even in good weather.”
“That’s why I’m getting an airboat.” Serge casually flipped through his new history book. “What’s with that humongous building going up on the north end?”
“The house?” said Charley.
“That’s a house? I thought it was a new resort or sportsman mega-outlet.”
“Donald Greely’s new place.”
“That’s Greely’s place?” said Serge. “I heard he was building, just didn’t know where.”
“Who’s Greely?” said Coleman.
“You’ve never heard of Donald Greely?” said Serge.
Coleman shrugged and picked up a mini-booklight, flicking it on and off.
“You don’t remember all those news stories about Global-Con? The telecom-energy conglomerate that cooked the books and wiped out all those retirement accounts?”
“No.” The booklight stopped working. Coleman put it back. “Must have been watching another channel.”
Charley sat down in a chair behind the counter and leaned back with his hands behind his head. “Heard it cost twenty million. Put the yacht in his lawyer’s name and parked it out back.”
“But how’d he get clearance for that kind of construction?” said Serge.
“Bribes. But they couldn’t prove anything. Even had people come in at night and cut down mangroves…. Serge, your face is all red….”
THE BUICK PULLED away from the bookstore and continued east on U.S. 1.
Coleman had his hand out the passenger window, flying up and down in the wind. “Where to now?”
“Get my airboat.”
“I didn’t know they had any airboat places down here.” Coleman lit the roach he’d left in the ashtray. “Just on the mainland by the swamp.”
“DEA seizure auction in Islamorada. Saw my boat on the Internet.”
“What are you doing now?”
Serge was looking ahead and squinted hard, stiffening the muscles in his arms. “Concentrating on life so it doesn’t pass me by. From time to time I force myself to strip away all rationalization and gaze into the naked essence of existence. This is my truth stare.”
Coleman exhaled smoke out the window. “I have my own truth stare. I look in the opposite direction and hope it goes away.”
“Aaahhhhh!!!”
Coleman jumped. He picked his roach up off the floor. “What happened?”
“Found myself in the utter horror at the moment of birth. Let me tell you, it was no picnic…. Lower the roach—here comes a sheriff’s car.”
The Buick passed a green-and-white cruiser heading the other way. Deputy Gus was behind the wheel, popping Ibuprofen and chasing with coffee.
“Gonna eat your stomach lining,” said Walter.
Gus scanned the side of the road for cars from the all-points bulletins.
“Why won’t you tell me how the Serpico nickname started?” said Walter.
“There’s not much to tell.”
“I’ll help you look for cars if you tell me the story.”
“You should be looking anyway. It’s your job.”
“Why won’t you tell me? I’ve heard it from the other guys.”
“Then you don’t need me to repeat it.”
“How about just the embarrassing parts?”
GUS WAS A twenty-six-year-old rookie in 1985. Some officers get lucky and stumble over big cases. Gus had one crash into him—literally. Happened three A.M., a Saturday morning. Gus sat parked in his cruiser outside Overseas Liquors. The dome light was on. Gus filled out a report. The suspects were in the backseat on the other side of the mesh screen. Two of them, that is. The other six had already been carted away by backup. Gus nabbed them all single-handed—the “Overseas Eight,” as they became known in law-enforcement circles.
Overseas Liquors has the coolest 1950s neon signs in all the Keys. Red and aqua. It also has one of the few basements, if you want to call it that. Four feet deep, hewn into the limestone; you have to stoop over the whole time. The access door is an unassuming square panel on the bottom of the wall behind the cash register that looks more like a cabinet. They keep the liquor stock down there. Once upon a time, they also used to rent cheap rooms in the back of the bar over the basement. If you go in the basement today, there’s a diamond-shaped grid of bare alarm wires under the ceiling boards. The reason is the Overseas Eight.
Gus was the nearest deputy when the call came in. He found the store’s front door unlocked. His flashlight beam worked its way along a shelf of vodka bottles, then across the room to the dust-covered liqueurs. Nothing. Until he looked over the counter. A facedown body hung halfway through the basement access. He pulled his service revolver and crept around the counter. He got down on one knee. The flashlight and pistol were together in his hands to form a single unit. He shined over the body and through the opening into the basement.
The dispatchers told Gus to slow down; they couldn’t understand him. He was hyperventilating. “…Seven bodies. Maybe eight.”
Squad cars arrived. And kept arriving, until the whole shift was there. The laughter wouldn’t quit as the last of the passed-out burglars was dragged from the building. One of the tenants in the back of the store had sawed through the floor. Burglary wasn’t intended. He didn’t even know there was a basement. Sometimes he just started drinking and liked to saw stuff. Word of the discovery quickly spread on the bum telegraph. Dark figures converged from all directions. At its peak, twenty-nine people were crammed in that basement. Most grabbed as many bottles as they could and fled, but eight decided to party on the spot, like rats finding tasty poison in a fake cheese wedge.
Gus knew he’d never hear the end of it. That’s why he didn’t mind staying behind in the parking lot to start the report. He flicked on the dome light and scribbled to get a difficult pen to write. That’s when the Camaro doing a hundred on U.S. 1 flew through the guard rail. It scattered a row of news boxes and clipped the nose of Gus’s cruiser before wrapping itself around a cement light base. Gus saw the ejected driver, and jumped from the cruiser. His feet went out from under him and he slammed to the ground, sending up a fine white cloud. Gus stood and dusted himself.
The parking lot was full of patrol cars again. This time the day-shift commander was called in from home. Then an ev
idence team from Key Largo and federal agents with latex gloves, who collected ruptured cocaine packs that had spilled from the Camaro’s blown tires.
“Of all the dumb-ass luck!”
“That idiot’s going to get a drawer full of commendations for sure!”
He did. Bunches of them. Plaques and ribbons and shiny medals, one for each politician who got to shake Gus’s hand in a separate ceremony for the newspaper photographers. Not that Gus’s nonactions were particularly heroic, but his colleagues knew what the rookie didn’t. Funding for the War on Drugs was based on volume of press clippings. Thanks to Gus, Monroe County shot up forty-seven budget positions.
After all the headlines, Gus became too valuable for patrol duty. They made him the department’s token liaison with the multiagency state and federal task force fighting the war on South Florida’s flank. That way they could have a local face at the press conferences to ensure all the hometown media ran the story on the great work of the multiagency state and federal task force.
And darned if Gus didn’t do it again!
Everyone was thinking cocaine back then, watching for big, rusty foreign-flagged mother ships beyond territorial limits offloading to supercharged go-boats. Profits were so insane that the kingpins began sending shotgun waves of vessels at the overwhelmed Coast Guard. At least a couple had to make it. Then word came. A Liberian freighter expected off Fort Lauderdale any day now. Time to ship Gus to Key West.
He was assigned a low-probability scag investigation on the north end of White Street. This was before heroin came back. If he got lucky, he might collar a dime-bag peddler.
Gus tried all kinds of disguises but nothing worked. Sometimes suspects would smile and wave at Gus as he sat in his car outside a motel. Another time a bum walked up as Gus reclined on a bench, dressed like a tourist.
“You’re a cop, aren’t you?”
“No.”
“The people you want are on the other side of the motel. Room fourteen.”
“How do you know that?”
The bum opened a thrown-away paper sack and popped half a conch fritter in his mouth. “I’m homeless, not stupid.”
The next day, a bum waved flies off a half-eaten crab cake. A red Maserati pulled up to the motel. A man in khaki slacks went in room fourteen. He came out with a pillow.
“I’ll take that.”
The man turned and noticed the bum for the first time. He’d never seen one before with a gun and a gold badge hanging around his neck.
Just like that. Nine ounces of heroin. Another round of commendations and photo ops. The “Serpico” business started.
Gus was promoted to the Narcotics Abatement & Deterrence Squad, an elite commando unit that went in with black uniforms, face paint and flash-bang grenades. He was the lead agent through the back door of a Mexican restaurant moving brown tar in south Miami. Gus’s body armor had been rated to stop most tactical rounds. It didn’t do as well when they tipped four hundred pounds of metal kitchen shelves on you. In the movies, he would have flung the racks aside and yelled, “You’re under arrest!” In reality, this is what Gus said: “Ow, my back.”
The publicity photos got even wider play because they were from the hero’s hospital bed. Rehabilitation was slow and incomplete. They offered Gus a desk job, but that would have meant…a desk job. He might as well sell shoes. Gus eagerly accepted a demotion back to deputy and took an assignment in one of the Keys’ smaller substations. Years went by and pounds went on. Instead of commendations, his personnel file swelled with reminders about the department’s fitness guidelines. Gus never complained.
If only he could make another big case.
20
A ’71 BUICK RIVIERA crossed the bridge to Upper Matecumbe and hit backed-up traffic. People in orange vests waved them into a field used for ad hoc parking.
Serge and Coleman walked across the grass until they came to a large array of flea-market tables. Stereos, computers, TVs, Japanese cameras, German binoculars, video equipment, night-vision goggles, parabolic directional eavesdropping microphones.
“I love DEA seizure auctions!” said Serge. “Coleman, where are you?…”
“I’m tired of walking,” said Coleman, trying out a personal treadmill until Serge yanked him off. The tables ended, giving way to the big stuff in the back of the field near the water. Motorcycles, sports cars, boats.
Serge stopped and put a hand over his chest. “She’s beautiful!”
There it was, like a mirage, radiating shafts of energy. Serge quietly approached and stroked it like a newborn. An eighteen-foot Diamondback fuel-injected 454 horse crate with the Stinger 2.09:1 gear reduction. “I’ve wanted one of these ever since 1967!”
“But you were just a kid,” said Coleman.
“That’s when Gentle Ben first aired on CBS. The coolest show: game warden tooling around the Everglades in an airboat, his son rescuing a cub from the evil hunter Fog Hanson, the bear growing into a lovable giant that helps the family out of complex situations.”
Someone stepped up next to Serge. A squat older gentleman with a cattle rancher’s hat, bolo tie and stubby cigar that he was more chewing than smoking.
“That’s my airboat!”
“It is?” said Serge.
“Gonna be. I scare away the others with my bold initial bids. Leave ’em pissin’ in their boots.”
“No kidding?” said Serge. “I scare ’em away with my ridiculously tiny bids.” He made a big grin.
The man studied Serge with tight eyes, then broke out laughing and slapped him on the shoulder. “I like you, boy!”
They looked at the airboat again.
“Mighty fine,” said the man.
“Yes, she is,” said Serge.
“I love the War on Drugs!” said the man. “Get more great shit since the forfeiture laws. They can take anything they want, not even due process.”
“Of course there’s due process,” said Serge. “This is America.”
“What are you, for drugs?” said the man. “Suppose you want proof, too.”
“Proof’s bad?”
“We’re talkin’ drugs, boy!”
Serge smacked a fist into his other hand. “Goddam the pusher-man!”
“ACLU technicalities!” The man removed his cigar and spit something on the ground. “But we’ve fixed proof. Here’s your new proof: A dog barks. Then they take whatever they want.”
“Barks?”
“This one family was ridin’ through Pasco County, and they had like ten thousand in cash when they got pulled over for a busted taillight, which may have been a busted taillight or maybe they looked a little too brown. Anyway, car’s clean as a whistle. So they bring the German shepherd over and he barks at the money, which may have been cocaine residue or maybe he had heart worms. Didn’t matter. ‘Well, we’re just gonna have to take that drug money away from you folks.’ Then they let ’em go. In the old days, that kind of arrangement would be called a bribe. Now it’s forfeiture. And if they want their money back, they have to hire an attorney because the law says the burden’s on them.”
“Doesn’t seem fair,” said Serge.
The man started laughing and slapped Serge on the shoulder again. “It ain’t!…Ha ha ha ha…”
Serge: “Ha ha ha ha…”
“Hoo.” The man pulled out a hanky and dabbed his eyes. “You ain’t thinkin’ of bidding against me, are you?”
“Lookin’ like I’m fixin’ to get a hankerin’ to.”
A final slap. “I like you, boy.” He walked away with his handkerchief.
Serge and Coleman headed over to the folding chairs in front of a small stage. They grabbed seats in the first row. Serge fanned himself with bid paddle number 142.
It was a furious auction, heated bidding, everything selling fast. Corvette, Indian motorcycle, forty-foot Scarab.
Coleman looked over his shoulder at the man in the cattle hat three rows back. “How much money you got?”
“Hundred dolla
rs,” said Serge.
“That’s all?”
“It’ll be plenty.”
The auctioneer moved on to item thirty-two. “A beautiful Diamondback airboat. Only fifty hours on the engine. Who’d like to start the bidding?”
“Ooooo, me, me, me, me!” Bid paddle 142 waved frantically. “I bid a big one!”
“A thousand dollars?”
“A hundred,” said Serge.
“Sir, this is a very expensive boat.”
“That’s my bid.”
The auctioneer shrugged. “The bid is one hundred dollars.”
Booming laughter from the rear. Another bid paddle went up over a cattle hat. “Fifteen-thousand!”
The crowd gasped. Intimidated bidders lowered their paddles.
“…Going once, going twice, sold for fifteen thousand dollars!”
“Looks like you lost,” said Coleman.
“Got any more weed?”
“I thought you didn’t do drugs.”
“I don’t.”
Serge and Coleman hung around to the bitter end. Workers folded chairs and unplugged microphones. Winners paid with guaranteed checks.
A man in a cattle hat hung out the driver’s window of a Bronco, backing up to an airboat.
“Congratulations!” said Serge. “Let me give you a hand hitching that.”
“Mighty neighborly of ya.”
Serge set the clasp and hooked the chains. He waved toward the driver’s mirror. “You’re all set!”
Then Serge walked up next to a DEA agent in dark sunglasses. He leaned his head sideways and whispered.
The Bronco started pulling out of the lot toward U.S. 1.
“Freeze!” yelled the agent. “Turn the engine off and step out of the vehicle!”
“What in cotton-pickin’—”
They brought the dogs over.
Barking.
The agent reached in the airboat. “What’s this?” He held up a joint.
“That ain’t mine!”
“Unhitch it,” said the agent.
“I just bought it!”
“It’s government property now.”
“Excuse me,” Serge said to the agent. “You haven’t cashed his check yet or filed the title papers with the state.”
