Hammerhead Ranch Motel

by Tim Dorsey

  She shook her head no.

  “It’s true, the Florida legislature was forming the new country down in Miami and they had the name all picked out. It was 1835. About the same time, Major Francis Lanhorne Dade began leading one hundred and ten soldiers from Fort Brooke in Tampa up to Fort King near Ocala. We had just screwed the Indians over but good, trying to ship ’ em out West, so they attacked Dade’s men. It was Florida ’s version of Little Big Horn. Only three survived…”

  Anyone else would have understood the look in Country’s eyes. But Serge was on, well, Planet Serge.

  “…Word got back to the legislature, and they changed the name of the new country to Dade. Here’s a cool epilogue. Some of the maps at the time placed Dade County north of Tampa because some of the mapmakers mistakenly thought the county was where the massacre had taken place… Anyway, so now we’re all pissed at the Indians, and we started the Second Seminole War. But their leader is the brave Osceola-for my money, possibly the greatest Floridian of all time. And the Indians are playing hit-and-run out of the Green Swamp, which feeds the river that runs through Tampa. All the European colonists take refuge at the fortified coastal installations, which is why today we have all these cities with names like Fort Lauderdale, Fort Myers, Fort Pierce…”

  Country could wait no longer for Serge to come around. She pounced and pulled his pants off. Then she pinned his shoulders and got on top, wiggling down onto him with a chirp.

  “…Finally, General Thomas S. Jessup offers a flag of truce to Osceola to talk about peace. When Osceola arrives in St. Augustine, Jessup has him imprisoned, where he died in a year under brutal conditions. The attending physician cut off Osceola’s head and took it home, and whenever his young boys would misbehave, he got out the head and hung it on their bedpost…”

  Country was sliding up and down rapidly, mouth open, breathing hard. A shock of blond hair on each side of her head swung back and forth in rhythm, brushing Serge’s cheeks.

  “…Everyone wanted something done about the Indians, but not like this. There was no honor to it, and everyone told Jessup he was a rat the rest of his days. Finally, it all came full circle. An Orlando-area legislator took up Osceola’s cause, and years later when they were naming a new county-you guessed it! And that’s how Florida got a Dade and an Osceola County…”

  Country’s breathing became increasingly shallow. Then she stopped breathing altogether, bowed up and quivered for ten seconds like she’d been harpooned-and collapsed on Serge’s chest.

  “…Did I ever tell you Winston Churchill once stayed in Tampa as a young journalist?…”

  Lenny and City were outside the room with their ears pressed against the door.

  “What’s going on in there?” whispered City.

  “I don’t know,” said Lenny. “I think they’re watching the History Channel.”

  S erge awoke the next morning to find a naked Lenny sitting in a chair with a toy squirt gun in one hand and his cock in the other. He had them pressed together, end to end.

  “Jesus Christ!” yelled Serge. “What kind of sickness is that!”

  “I’m squirting a cocaine solution up my urethra,” said Lenny.

  Serge shrugged. “I’ll never understand the drug culture.”

  A half hour later, Serge was at the writing desk, playing with a Junior Wizard chemistry set he picked up at Toys “R” Us during the previous day’s supply run. Different-colored liquids and powders filled the beakers and flasks and a rack of test tubes. In the middle of the desk was a glass distillation chamber over an unlit Bunsen burner.

  Lenny asked to borrow the magnifying glass to examine his dick because “something’s not right.”

  Serge didn’t answer. He concentrated on tweaking the ratios of isotopes he had extracted from household cleaning products and fast food. Sodium palmitate, paraffin, naphthene hydrocarbons. Then he poured in a test tube filled with Bacardi 151.

  “What’s that?” Lenny asked as Serge added another test tube containing a clear, unidentified syrup.

  “Eleven herbs and spices.”

  He lit the burner, and the solution began to boil and snake through a coiled glass tube into the condensate vapor trap.

  Lenny sniffed the air. “Smells like bananas and coconuts.”

  “Then I must be close,” said Serge. He looked out the window and saw the sun setting, so he killed the burner and let the solution cool. He grabbed his camera bag and a thick three-ring binder from one of the desk drawers and headed out the door for the water.

  Zargoza sat near the shore in a cheap beach chair with frayed straps. He still wore his business suit, but his shoes were off and his toes deep in the sand. He was blinking and swallowing fifty percent more frequently than the average person, and his blood pressure made his head feel like a thermometer bulb. His left thumb had developed a slight involuntary shake. He drank haughtily from a large tumbler decorated with scuba flags, trickles of fluid running out each side of his mouth. The tumbler was filled equally with rum and Coke, and Zargoza constantly checked his watch, impatient for the alcohol to take effect and deliver him from the anxiety attack. It was a half hour till sunset, and he was as far up to the water as the fluffy, dry sand went. In front of him was the damp, packed sand of the littoral and the beach’s pedestrian traffic. The day crowd was gone, the young body-watchers and pickup artists and beer guzzlers. This was the sunset club, a slightly higher sensibility. Beachcombers in their forties and fifties, joggers, people setting up camera tripods and long lenses. They walked down from their beach houses and condos and rentals and motel rooms; most had light jackets or sweat pants rolled above their calves.

  Behind Zargoza were two goons/bodyguards, also in street clothes, sitting on a beach blanket playing poker.

  The goons saw someone violate their no-fly zone, and they went for rods inside their jackets. Zargoza turned when he heard the commotion. “It’s okay. Let him through.”

  Serge pulled up a stray beach chair and sat alongside Zargoza. He stuck his camera bag under the chair and set the three-ring binder in his lap.

  “What do you have there?” asked Zargoza.

  “My sunset album.”

  “Hmmmmmm.”

  “The pictures are arranged geographically,” said Serge. “That’s up in sawgrass at Yankeetown, and these are the flats off Homosassa. Here, the sunset reflects in the bayou at Tarpon Springs, and here it is from the Hurricane bar just down the road. This is over Lido Key, and here’s Siesta Key and Boca Grande through the sea oats…”

  Zargoza was looking, not listening. He felt spiked walls closing in.

  Serge began pulling all the photos from their slots and rearranging them chronologically and then alphabetically, then by hue. He took them out again and shuffled them and stuck them back in the book under some other criteria. He looked at it, shook his head, and started pulling the photos out again.

  Zargoza reached over and slammed his palm down on the book. “Stop it! Just stop it! I’m nervous enough as it is!”

  “No problem,” said Serge. He put the book under his chair and pulled out his camera bag. Five minutes to sunset, the beach foot traffic slowed and then stopped. They produced binoculars and camcorders.

  Serge aimed his camera at the sea and focused. He didn’t like the lens. He changed it, then changed it back and refocused. He adjusted the aperture. He tried the camera body vertical and horizontal. Then tried it both ways again with the other lens.

  Zargoza didn’t even turn to face Serge. He hissed through his teeth: “Just take the picture or so help me I’m gonna hammer-throw that fucking camera in the ocean!”

  Serge pressed the shutter button. Click. Again. Click. Advancing the film. Click, click, click, click, click. Zargoza closed his eyes and strangled the armrests of his beach chair.

  26

  The next day, Boris the Hateful Piece of Shit was wrapping up his morning shift in the heavily air-conditioned broadcast studios of radio station Blitz-99. “Remember, d
on’t let your parents give you any crap, because they don’t know squat! This is Boris the Hateful Piece of Sh-AHH-OOOO-GAH!”

  As he stepped into the station’s parking lot, he pressed a button on his keychain and his new Corvette beeped that it was unlocked. Boris planned to head over to the beach and the Proposition 213 rally, where he was scheduled as the main speaker that evening. Boris was not political, but he latched on to the Proposition 213 spearhead when he found it was a great way to score with bigot babes, who tended to be easier.

  Because of his bulk, Boris could only get into his Corvette through a deliberate, time-consuming insertion like Wally Schirra. It was at least a fifteen-minute effort, and that was with the custom detachable steering wheel that snapped back on the column once he was in place. Boris didn’t mind. The Corvette’s sleek lines and sharp, bullet exterior concealed the gelatinous lines of Boris’s decidedly parabolic fuselage. He had the driver’s seat rigged extra low, with as little of him visible above window level as possible. Once inside, Boris the Hateful Piece of Shit became Boris the Disembodied Head in a Sexy Sports Car. He pulled out of the parking lot. His bumper sticker read: “It sucks to be you.”

  A crowd gathered immediately when Boris’s Corvette cruised into the parking lot at the Calusa Pointe condominiums. Boris got out of the car wearing dark sunglasses and a size XXXXXL metallic silver jogging suit that was designed to deflect heat and sometimes caused Boris to show up on radar. There were two Cuban cigars in the shirt pocket of the jogging suit, and he removed one and lit it. He signed dozens of autographs with a simple circle as he headed straight for the bar next door behind the Hammerhead Ranch Motel.

  The Proposition 213 rally wasn’t for another four hours, and the bar was as good as place as any to get chicks. He walked inside and didn’t take off his sunglasses. He took a seat against the wall, leaned back, crossed his arms and thought: Come to Papa.

  Boris had a few nibbles in the first hour. The teenage girls had been star-struck, but not quite enough to overcome the gag reflex to Boris’s appearance and hygiene. After the last gaggle walked away, Boris looked out the window to check the progress of the workers preparing the outdoor stage for the rally behind Calusa Pointe. He looked closer up the beach and saw smaller, separate preparations under way for another function-a VIP waterfront luau for the visiting Olympic delegation. There were a few rows of beach chairs, a small podium and a giant work-shaped dish that was a replica of the Olympic stadium torch and doubled as the barbecue.

  Boris heard some laughing in the bar and turned his attention to City and Country. He liked what he saw. He realized they weren’t going to come to him, so he chugged another beer and began working his way to his feet.

  “What’s shakin’?” Boris asked when he arrived at their table.

  Country turned around and let out a startled yell upon first seeing Boris, which he did not take as a good sign. They tried to ignore him, but Boris couldn’t take a hint, and he hovered over their table like a weather balloon.

  Art walked into the bar and sat down three tables away from City and Country. He placed a zippered leather pouch on the table and stared at Boris.

  Serge sipped a mineral water at the end of the bar and heard a rumpus over in the corner. Boris was trying to grope Country and had her by the arm. It looked like he was leaning in to administer a hickie.

  “Let go!” Country yelled, and pulled her arm away.

  “Lesbians!” Boris shouted, and stormed out of the bar.

  Boris went out on the beach, where a crowd again formed. A guy on a beach lounger was made to get up and offer his seat to Boris, who took off his jogging outfit to reveal an inadequate bathing suit, and he reclined in the glow of adulation.

  Art picked up his zippered leather pouch and walked out of the bar down onto the beach. He got inside a portable toilet set up for the Proposition 213 rally.

  Boris was having the time of his life. Teenage girls in bikinis surrounded him. Boris snapped his fingers and someone materialized with a cell phone. Boris chewed someone out for a minute, then tossed the cell phone over his shoulder. His Man Friday caught it on the fly, and a young girl handed Boris a fresh drink and her phone number.

  Art Tweed peered out a small, screened vent in the side of the portable toilet. He ripped the screen out of the way. He unzipped his leather bag, took out the Colt Python and rested the barrel in the vent hole. An easy shot at that distance. Art began squeezing the trigger.

  A high-pitched Latin twang came from the direction of Hammerhead Ranch. Boris and his retinue turned around to see where it was coming from. Art let off the trigger and withdrew the gun. He pressed his eyeball to the vent hole to get a wider view of what was going on.

  “Lotion boy! Lotion boy!” said Serge as he hopped light-footed down the beach wearing a small, incredibly fake mustache. He stopped next to Boris’s lounger and set down a canvas beach bag. He pulled out towels and tubes of lotion.

  “I didn’t know this place had a lotion boy,” said Boris, glancing back at Hammerhead Ranch.

  “Sí! Sí! Lotion boy!” said Serge, rubbing lotion vigorously over his palms and smacking them together.

  Boris laid his head back on the lounger and closed his eyes. “In that case, it’s about fucking time!” he said. “Give me the full treatment and make sure you get the pecs. But no faggot stuff or I’ll snap your neck.”

  For the next five minutes, Serge lathered up Boris good, not missing a spot.

  “Say, that doesn’t smell too bad,” said Boris. “Like bananas and coconut.”

  “Sí! Sí!”

  When Serge was done, he just stood there, and Boris finally opened his eyes.

  “Oh, you must be waiting for a tip,” said Boris.

  Serge nodded fast and smiled. “Sí! Sí!”

  “Okay, here’s your tip: Speak the fuckin’ language!” Boris laughed at his own joke and looked around, and everyone else started laughing, too.

  Serge smiled and nodded some more. “Sí! Sí!”

  “What are you smiling about?” said Boris. “I just insulted you!”

  “Sí! Sí!”

  “Stop that!” yelled Boris. He leaned and shoved Serge in the chest. “Get the hell away from me! You give me the creeps.”

  “Sí! Sí!” Serge said and hopped away.

  With Serge gone, Art had a clean shot, and he lined up the Colt’s barrel again in the vent hole. One of the girls moved farther out of the way, giving Art an even better shot. He couldn’t miss. He closed one eye, carefully aligning the sight.

  Boris pulled the last cigar from his shirt pocket and stuck it in his mouth. He looked around with a smirk at his fan club and nodded in the direction Serge had departed. “Man, those spics are stupid.”

  The kids laughed again. Art began squeezing the trigger. Boris raised a gold Zippo to his cigar. The Colt’s hammer was all the way back. Boris flicked the Zippo.

  Everyone was momentarily blinded as if a giant flash bulb had gone off. When they could see again, Boris was on fire from head to toe as if he was covered in napalm. Serge’s new bananas and coconut island-scent napalm to be exact.

  “Farts!” said Tweed, and he put his unfired gun away in disappointment.

  Boris ran screaming for the nearest body of water-the pool only yards away behind Calusa Pointe. The incredible shrinking mayor of Beverly Shores saw Boris coming, and just as Boris reached the pool fence, the mayor slammed the gate shut. “Residents only!”

  “Auuuuugh!” screamed the flaming Boris, and turned for the Gulf of Mexico. He reeled frantically toward the water, but he was beginning to succumb, stumbling on fire through the sand.

  The president of the chamber of commerce was at the beach podium reading a proclamation welcoming the Olympic delegation when Boris staggered up and belly-flopped into the Olympic torch/hibachi, igniting a magnificent blue-orange flame. There were several oooooh’s and ahhhhh’s and then a polite round of clapping.

  The delegates lined up and grabbed paper
plates. The Viennese delegate spooned out potato salad and whispered to the representative from the Maldives: “Saw better special effects at Universal Studios.”

  S hhhhhhh! Everybody shut up!” yelled Zargoza, pulling a chair up in front of the television in the boiler room. He clicked the set over to Florida Cable News. The goons gathered around.

  Zargoza had sent C. C. Flag out to Vista Isles that afternoon to calm things down. The place was getting a lot of bad attention from all the missing Alzheimer’s patients. State officials everywhere, going through files, interviewing people. The investigative TV crew showed up unexpectedly. That was because Zargoza had tipped them off personally-told them the famous Daddy-O of Rock ’n’ Roll, C. C. Flag, would show up to answer questions.

  It was Zargoza’s attempt to staunch the bleeding. There had been a damning, week-long series of TV reports about the nursing home. Zargoza was sick and tired of seeing some stupid factotum at Vista Isles acting defensive on television, stuttering, vacillating, giving wrong answers or, worst of all, running and hiding in a closet. This was the real problem, thought Zargoza. It couldn’t possibly be that he was kidnapping patients. He was convinced that investigators had descended on the home for one reason and one reason only-the staff wasn’t telegenic.

  He was right.

  Zargoza wondered how deep into the newscast Flag would be. Maybe fourth or fifth item. Third if they were lucky. He couldn’t wait to see Flag confidently lying on the air. That ought to call off the state agencies. What’s fair is fair.

  To Zargoza’s surprise and delight, Flag led off the news. There he was, filling out the screen in his safari jacket and pith helmet. Zargoza heard cheering and clapping in the background.

  “All right, Flag!” Zargoza said. “Way to go!”

  On TV, Flag stepped to the microphone again and held up his hands for everyone to be quiet. “…And another thing,” he barked, “I say cut off their benefits. And what are their kids doing taking up valuable space in our classrooms when they should be out in the fields picking tomatoes? And if they don’t like subminimum wage, they should have chosen another country to sneak into, and learn what real oppression is…like Canada!”