by Tim Dorsey
There was much to do. People busily handled festival preparations at a variety of locations.
A car pulled up to the sheriff’s substation on Cudjoe Key, Deputy Gus arriving for overtime security duty at the festival.
He opened the door and walked to his desk. There was a cardboard box on top of it. All the APBs and photos that he’d taped to the wall were inside.
Walter strolled over wearing an orange traffic vest. “Sorry to hear.”
“Hear what?”
“You getting fired.”
“I was?”
“Actually it’s not till Monday,” said Walter. “It’s a secret.”
“They’re really going to fire me over those Xeroxes of my—?”
“No, you just got probation for that,” said Walter. “They compromised with the union under the new tolerance for sexual deviants. Remember the precedent with the undercover guy who had the vagina surgery?”
“What? A transsexual?”
“No, he kept his penis, too. Then he started dating himself. The union argued you were just as weird.”
“How’d you find out?”
“Newspaper called me for comment.”
“Wonderful.”
“Don’t worry; I took your side. Told them you made a valuable contribution to law enforcement, despite your lifestyle choice.”
Gus began removing APBs from the cardboard box. “I don’t understand. Then why are they firing me?”
“Taping stuff to the wall. I warned you about that.”
“You’re joking.”
“Wish I was. Internal Affairs just left after taking it all down.”
“They can’t fire me for that.”
“They can under the new Three-Strikes Rule. First pot, then your dick. I’m afraid this is going to be our last shift together.”
“But it’s only taping stuff to the wall.”
“The Three-Strikes Rule has a Zero-Tolerance Policy.”
A FINGER PRESSED the doorbell button on Coleman’s trailer. The button fell off. A hand knocked.
Coleman had the stereo up all the way, watching a Girls Gone Wild tape to AC/DC. Serge gave up knocking and walked around the side of the trailer, scooting down the narrow, overgrown space between the mobile home and a chain-link fence. Empty bottles, damp leaves, mosquito larva in a tire. He banged on the window.
Coleman looked in various directions, trying to place the noise. More banging. Coleman turned around, kneeled on the couch and opened the curtains. “Serge…”
“Open the door!”
“What? I can’t hear you.”
“Open the door!”
“Can’t hear you. Meet you at the door.”
Coleman opened up. Serge came in with his knapsack. “You idiot.”
“What are you doing here?”
“What do you mean? Aren’t you ready?”
“For what?”
“The Greely festival!” said Serge. “Our big operation. The one I’ve been talking about all week.”
“That’s today?”
“Yes!” Serge pulled a pair of walkie-talkies from his backpack and handed one to Coleman.
“Cool.”
“Get your stuff. We have to move out.” Serge raised the walkie-talkie to his mouth and keyed the mike. “Tango Zulu, come in…”
A VAN SAT in the parking lot of Paradise Transmission. On the side, a smoked bubble window and an airbrush mural of a Yes album cover. The back of the van was full of people crouched on the shag carpet like a S.W.A.T. team.
The walkie-talkie on the dashboard squawked. “…Tango Zulu, come in…Tango Zulu, are you there?…”
Sop Choppy was behind the wheel. He turned to Mr. Blinky in the passenger seat. “Are we Tango Zulu?”
The clown passed a joint back over his shoulder. “I don’t know.”
“…Tango Zulu, where are you?…”
Sop Choppy grabbed the walkie-talkie. “Are we Tango Zulu?”
“Who is this?”
“Sop Choppy.”
“Yes!”
“Tango Zulu here.”
“Is everyone ready?”
Sop Choppy looked back. “Yep, they’re ready.”
“You got the oxygen tank?”
Sop Choppy glanced at the metal cylinder Mr. Blinky was holding between his legs, Coleman’s old nitrous tank that had been refilled with O2. “Check.”
“Let’s do it.”
A METALLIC GREEN Trans Am rested under a tarp in the driveway of a waterfront home on Big Pine Key.
Anna Sebring was alone inside her late brother’s vacation place. She sat at the kitchen table, gazing out the back windows at the fishing boats filling Bogie Channel. The weather was perfect.
Anna looked down at the table. A big brass safety deposit box key lay in the middle.
She looked at her watch and took a deep breath.
“Now or never.”
She stood and picked up the key.
THE SOUTHERN SHORELINE of Key West was crammed before noon.
South Beach, Higgs Beach, Rest Beach, Smathers Beach, wall-to-wall cabanas, bikinis and umbrellas sprinkling the sand with bright primary colors. Two cocker spaniels chased each other through a volleyball game on Dog Beach. The swim areas were full of happy, splashing bathers dodging Jet Skis. Farther out, an ocean highway of pleasure craft. Bowriders, cabin cruisers, sailboats and catamarans that bobbed in the wakes of cigarette boats, which in turn were passed by giant hydroplanes and open-sea racers in paint schemes for Budweiser and Little Caesar’s pizza. Beyond that, on the horizon toward Cuba, fleets of shrimp trawlers with boom-arrays extending from both sides. Overhead, news helicopters, parasailers, an ultralight with pontoons and six circling Cessnas pulling banners for drink-till-you-drop specials in Old Town. Atlantic Boulevard and South Roosevelt were jammed with parked cars, traffic at a standstill, convertibles and rentals and VW microbuses with competing music. Matchbox Twenty, 50 Cent, Third Eye Blind.
The sun approached zenith, but it was only ninety degrees with a light breeze that smelled of salt, tanning oil and hot dogs cooking in a relentless line of sidewalk stands. Also, Sno-Kone stands, cotton candy stands and stands with battery-operated blenders serving alcohol-free daiquiris and piña coladas that were openly spiked. Standby ambulances sat at strategic intervals, paramedics already running stretchers back and forth across the beach in front of the concert stage. Passed-out exposure victims burned down one side of their bodies, a college kid who tried to stand on the seat of his jet ski, the ultralight pilot who crashed into the giant inflatable Corona bottle.
Nothing would stop the party. And what a party it was. Donald Greely was paying for it all with his own personal money, which used to be other people’s personal money. He wasn’t supposed to have the money under the court agreement, so it was filtered through judgment-proof combinations of lawyers and Caribbean accounts. It wasn’t cheap. Ten thousand free hot dogs, gallons of soda, city overtime, insurance, upcoming concert by the Beach Boys tribute band and, finally, after sundown, the big offshore fireworks extravaganza. Total bill: thirty grand. Greely had gotten the idea from the block parties John Gotti used to throw in Queens after each acquittal.
All that was missing now: the big entrance.
A corporate jet helicopter skimmed over the breakers.
“Almost there,” said the traveling publicist. She rechecked her organizer, a full schedule of photo ops synchronized to the minute.
TV cameras clustered as the helicopter swooped in from the Gulf Stream and gently touched down. Greely, in a tropical shirt, got out, waving both arms Nixon-style. A crowd surged forward.
The publicist checked her organizer. “Eleven thirty-seven. Hot dogs.”
The mob moved with Greely toward one of the food stands on Rest Beach. An aide fitted a chef’s hat on Greely’s head as he grinned and tonged wieners into buns. People shouted from the back of the crowd.
“We love you, Donald!”
“We’re behind you all the way!”
<
br /> “You da man!”
The traveling publicist had paid them each twenty dollars and told them to wait till the cameras were rolling. Picking crowd-shouters was always an imprecise science, especially at events with alcohol.
“Don’t take no fuckin’ shit from those assholes, Donald!”
Another wave from Greely. “Just trying to be a good neighbor.”
Greely’s expensive smile filled the field of vision in Serge’s binoculars. He and Coleman were down by the shore, where a large contingent of Greely’s personal security team and local police had sealed off one of the docks and was giving a parasailing boat the thorough going-over. Serge continued surveillance with the binoculars and raised his walkie-talkie. “Tango Zulu, whenever you’re ready.”
“Roger.”
Greely had picked the southern shore of Key West for his festival because it was so magnificent. The perfect place to ruin. A cartel of financial backers had already been meeting for a year. If everything went according to plan, this stretch of real estate, from the Southernmost Marker to the salt ponds to Cow Key Channel, would sprout a solid wall of condos.
That’s why Greely needed their love. He was planning to parlay goodwill into city council fiat. A couple more of these parties and he could pack any council chamber with an audience of enthusiastic, poster-waving local supporters who would swear until the end of the universe to vote against any politician who didn’t give Greely his rezoning. The financiers had asked Greely to be their front man because of his rare talent. He could make people smile while he fucked them.
Of course it wasn’t all greed. He was going to give back to the community. The blueprints included a provision to donate a portion of the land to descendants of the first Native Americans in the Keys, because the backers also wanted a casino.
The publicist snapped her leather organizer shut. “Eleven-fifty-one. Limbo.”
An assistant removed Greely’s chef’s hat. A van with a Yes mural inched past the hot dog stand.
Sop Choppy monitored the second hand on his wristwatch. “Readyyyy…readyyyy…Now!”
The side door of the van flew open. Mr. Blinky slapped each person on the back as they jumped from the vehicle. “Go!…Go!…Go!…”
The team hit the ground, angling off in the different directions for their respective stations. When the back of the van was empty, two clowns grabbed the oxygen tank and advanced on the beachhead.
THE BANK WAS a fortress. Built like a German pillbox on the Atlantic Wall.
It wasn’t for robbers. It was for hurricanes.
The bottom of the building was the truncated base of a pyramid. It rose above the storm-surge plane before a tiny slit opened where people and money went in and out. On top of that, another huge concrete slab that displayed an iron sculpture of the island chain as seen from orbit. A metallic green Trans Am sat under a tarp in the parking lot. A black sedan pulled up six slots away.
Anna couldn’t stop fidgeting in the glass office of the bank vice president. A woman smiled at her from the other side of the desk. Anna smiled back, wearing dark sunglasses, picking her fingernails, hyperventilating with alcohol on her breath, just like everyone else in the Keys who comes to check safety deposit boxes. The vice president examined Anna’s driver’s license and looked something up in the computer. She pushed her chair back and stood. “Follow me.”
A guard opened the vault. The women went inside and simultaneously stuck keys in a drawer like a missile launch.
“Call if you need anything,” said the vice president. She left Anna alone.
Anna looked up at the wall of brushed metal boxes, various sizes. She felt her heart beating in the still room. The wall seemed to tower. What was going on in the other boxes? Were they all like her brother’s—debris from life wreckage? This being the Keys, the answer was yes. If Anna had X-ray vision, she would have seen pornographic detective photos, bloodstained packs of hundred-dollar bills, serial number–filed pistols, ledger books entirely in code and recently drawn maps of backyards with Xs over flower beds. Anna pulled her box from its slot and lifted the long metal lid. One item inside. Polaroid photograph. Anna immediately recognized it.
THE CLOWNS HAD been busy. They finished filling a hundred elongated balloons with oxygen and twisted them into parrots and monkeys and dachshunds. The balloon-animals were tied together, forming gigantic bouquets that the clowns carried off in opposite directions.
A small child walked up to Uncle Inappropriate. “Mr. Clown, how much for one of the balloons?”
“Fuck off.”
The traveling publicist checked her schedule. “Twelve-thirteen. Schoolchildren bury you in sand.”
A personal assistant lifted the limbo bar. Serge’s binoculars followed Greely over to a group of first-graders vetted with background checks. Greely lay down on the beach. Children began digging with plastic shovels. The binoculars panned across the shore. Everyone was in position. Serge raised his walkie-talkie. “Get it going, Dave.”
An emcee climbed the steps of the concert stage and grabbed the microphone. “Let’s kick this off with a real treat! We have with us today the legendary ‘Daytona Dave’ DeFuniak, singing his mega-hit ‘Island Fever,’ which appears on the new album ‘One-Hit Wonders of the ’70s: The Rehab Collection.’”
Dave walked out and waved to a smattering of applause. He turned to the band and snapped his fingers. “A one, and a two…I burnin’ up with that island…”
Mr. Blinky and Uncle Inappropriate glanced at each other from opposite sides of the beach and simultaneously lit cigarettes.
In another direction: demonstrators in Serge T-shirts ran toward Greely, shouting and waving picket signs. STOP DONALD’S DEVELOPMENT! FIGHT THE RESORT-IFICATION! WHERE’S MY LIFE SAVINGS!
The traveling publicist turned toward the noise. “Where the hell did they come from?…Security!”
The head of Greely’s security team barked into his own walkie-talkie. “Get him out of the sand! Now!”
The TV cameras swung from Greely to the demonstrators. A shoving match broke out between the protesters and the bodyguards. The security detail at the parasailing boat was called in as reinforcement.
From the concert stage: “It’s always good to have that Island Fever…Uh-oh—” Dave fell writhing onto the stage.
“Daytona Dave’s having a seizure!”
Cops and paramedics rushed over.
Two clowns taped their cigarettes to long sticks and raised them toward the balloon bouquets.
Bodyguards pulled Greely from the sand and hustled him from the melee. At opposite ends of the beach, balloon-animal fireballs exploded into the sky. People ran screaming, crashing into each other—“Look! The Skunk Ape!”—a full-scale, multidirectional stampede. Sop Choppy’s biker associates arrived and joined the fray with the bodyguards, now spilling into the street. The remaining cops at the parasailing boat abandoned their posts and ran to help.
Serge and Coleman climbed aboard the vessel. “Hey!” yelled one of the parasail’s two operators. “You’re not supposed to be here!”
Serge produced a gun. “Down in the cabin. Both of you.”
The traveling publicist shuddered at the PR carnage. TV cameras pointing everywhere except at Greely. Ten reporters interviewed a naked woman. The publicist ran over to the head of Greely’s security team. “We have to save this.” She opened her organizer. “Twelve-forty-nine. Parasailing.”
ANNA RACED AWAY from the bank and parked behind the nearest gas station. She ran to the pay phones and dialed. The man at the next phone was on meth. Anna sprang up and down on her legs. “C’mon, answer!”
A dark sedan rolled up to one of the gas pumps.
Then, shouting. Anna jumped. The man on the next phone slammed the receiver. It bounced off the hook and swung on its metal cord as he stomped away. A click in Anna’s ear. “Hello?” She turned and burrowed into the phone booth. “I got it…no, just a photograph…you’ll understand as soon as you see it…right, I k
now the place.”
THE OFFICIAL ENTOURAGE whisked Greely down to the dock. The publicist grabbed a couple of TV cameramen along the way. “There’s nothing worth shooting over there….”
They arrived at the parasailing boat. One of the deckhands reached over the railing. “Let me help you aboard.”
Cameras filmed as twin three-fifties throttled up. The boat blasted away from the dock.
The deckhand fitted the ex-mogul into his Coast Guard—rated life vest and parasailing harness.
“Have to make sure this thing is good and tight,” said Serge, yanking up hard on the strap between Greely’s legs.
“Ow!”
“You’re all set,” said Serge. “Let’s get you back to the launch area.”
Greely stood in position on a specially welded platform and grabbed the chest-high safety bar in front of him. Serge screwed down the metal O-rings attaching Greely’s harness to the parasail, ready for deployment in its cradle. He bunched the little drogue chute in his hand and threw it into the wind, pulling the main sail out of the holder. It quickly inflated, yanking Greely a few inches off his feet. Serge grabbed the handle on the winch.
“Okay, I’m going to start unreeling you.”
Greely immediately popped up to an elevation of ten feet. Serge turned the handle faster, letting out more rope. Twenty feet. Greely pointed at the boat’s driver.
“Is he drinking beer?”
“A few.” Still unspooling. Thirty feet.
Greely had to shout now. “How much experience do you have?”
“Tons,” Serge yelled back. “Oh, you mean parasailing? This is our first time.”
Fifty feet. “I want to come back down!”
“What?” yelled Serge, still cranking.
Greely’s shouts grew faint. Serge finally tied him off at two hundred feet and went up front with Coleman. They made a swing by the dock. Greely saw the TV cameras and figured he better stop screaming and start waving.
He stayed up a half hour without incident, starting to relax, numerous happy passes by the dock for the cameras. “This is more like it,” said the publicist.
