Hurricane Punch

by Tim Dorsey

  “But, Nick, it’s another promotion.”

  “No it’s not.”

  “We’ll still call it that. You get to keep your job.”

  The next morning Nick sat at his desk with nothing to do but ignore his colleagues’ snickers. A news clerk walked by and uncapped a washable marker. Red dashes extended the tracking path of the latest hurricane. The WPPT-FM assignment editor handed Nick a piece of paper. “Thirty minutes. Mayor’s press conference on emergency readiness.”

  Nick bitterly snatched the form. He stood and wiggled into the large, feathery parrot head.

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  TAMPA BAY TODAY

  Listless editors assembled for the budget meeting in a silent culture of defeat.

  Spread across the conference table were copies of the competition’s morning editions. Front-page articles above the fold: Party Parrot hospitalized by state agent. Large photos of EMTs stretchering the colorful bird from a medevac helicopter at Tampa General. Tubes, wires, oxygen. The head was off, Nick’s left eye large and purple and swollen shut.

  “I told you something like this would happen!” said Tom. “Setting up that serial-killer meeting was the most ridiculous idea I’d ever heard.”

  “Calm down,” said Max. “At least Jeff ’s safe.”

  “But Nick’s in the hospital with brain lesions!” exclaimed the WPPT station director. “They say the extra padding in the parrot head is the only thing that saved his life!”

  Tom stared daggers across the table. “What on earth were you doing sending the parrot in the first place?”

  “Me?” the station director shouted back. “It’s all your fault!”

  “How’s it my fault?”

  “Your boy Justin told him to go. What the hell was that about?”

  The metro editor’s head snapped to the side. “Justin!”

  “Me?”

  “You told him to go!” said the radio director.

  “What? I didn’t—…I just casually mentioned the story Jeff was working on.”

  “That’s not how Nick put it at the hospital before going into a coma,” said the director. “You told him you were passing an assignment from me. Big publicity stunt.”

  “Must have been delirious,” said Justin.

  “Gentlemen!” exclaimed the maximum editor. “What’s done is done. Let’s move on.”

  “That’s it?” said the metro editor. “You’re not going to do anything?”

  “Okay, new rule: From now on, no crashing serial-killer meetings by the Party Parrot.”

  “This is a mad house,” said Tom. “I’m pulling Jeff off this story.”

  “You’ll do no such thing,” said Max. “McSwirley’s boosted circulation to an all-time high. And this Agent Mahoney is an absolute gold mine. Tell him we’ll protect his anonymity no matter what. McSwirley will even go to jail if subpoenaed.”

  Someone with a visitor’s badge approached the table. “Jeff McSwirley?”

  “Right here.”

  The man handed him a stamped document. “You’ve been subpoenaed.”

  “I think I can fix this,” said Mahoney. “I’ll waive confidentiality and agree to go on the record.”

  “It’s better if you remain confidential,” said the maximum editor. “I’d like McSwirley to go to jail.”

  THAT AFTERNOON

  “You son of a bitch!” Serge yelled down at the man in the driver’s seat. “I’ll kill you! You hear me? I’ll rip your stinking head off!”

  The frightened motorist threw his car in gear and hit the gas. Serge leaned out the drive-through window and splattered the car’s trunk with a cheeseburger. “I’ll seriously mess you up!”

  Serge felt a tap on his shoulder. He turned around. “What do you mean I can’t work at McDonald’s anymore?”

  THE NEXT DAY

  Lunch-hour lines at all the cash registers.

  “Welcome to Burger King. May I take your order?”

  Next register: “Welcome to Burger King. May I take your order?”

  Next register: “Fuck McDonald’s. May I take your order?” Serge felt a tap on his shoulder and turned around. “What?”

  Serge and Coleman walked along the side of the highway on fast-food row.

  “That is embarrassing,” said Serge. “I feel like Chuck Connors in Branded.”

  “What happens now?” asked Coleman.

  “We’ve run out of options,” said Serge. “The only thing left is selling our blood.”

  Serge and Coleman walked away from a beige, one-story building of no architectural design. Whiskered people milled around the entrance with brown paper bags.

  “Unbelievable,” said Serge. “You can’t even sell your own blood.”

  Coleman cupped his hands over his mouth. “I don’t smell alcohol.”

  “They didn’t have to smell it,” said Serge. “You crashed into that rolling cart!”

  “Someone left it in my way. Then everybody grabbing me and screaming. Complete overreaction.”

  “Coleman, all those bags of blood ruptured on the floor.”

  “What do we do now?”

  Serge dropped his frustrated weight onto the curb and stared across the street at aas majority owners convenience store. “Let me think….”

  HURRICANE #3

  DANIELLE

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  GULF COAST PSYCHIATRIC CENTER

  A female psychiatrist repeatedly clicked her pen open and closed, betraying a rare moment of impatience. “Serge?”

  “What?”

  “I think it would be better if you turn your chair around. It’s hard talking to your back.”

  “But I like facing the clock.”

  “Serge…”

  “If you insist.” He got up and rotated the chair.

  “Did you follow up on my suggestion to look for a job?”

  “Of course. Me and Coleman both.”

  “How’s it going?”

  “Great.” Serge picked at a leather armrest. “We interviewed with the Times, the Tribune and Tampa Bay Today.”

  “Which one hired you?”

  “Almost all of them. They promised to keep our résumés on file just before we were thrown out. It’s such a clique.”

  The psychiatrist frowned. “So you haven’t been hired at all?”

  “Oh, no,” said Serge. “We’ve been hired. Twice. McDonald’s and Burger King.”

  “You’re working two jobs?”

  “No. I resigned from both over creative differences. What I’d really like is the job where that guy flies the ultralight each year, leading those endangered migrating cranes with the defective on-board navigation. I saw a picture of it in the newspaper: this giant V formation following the kite-plane like it’s a big papa bird. That’s the job for me, except I don’t know where to apply. Do you?”

  “No. Listen, I’d like to—”

  “Nobody seems to know. But I’m starting to think something’s fishy about that gig, because all the people I ask about it downtown just want to get away from me. Except the arrogant lawyer types with their Guccis and four-dollar coffees who think I’m panhandling and tell me to ‘get a job,’ like in that Bruce Hornsby song, and I say, ‘Hey, fella, I got a job. It’s called stalking.’ I’m kidding, of course. Well, half kidding, because I can’t tell you how mad that kind of cruelty makes me. But then it gets funny, because I start following them around and they get all jumpy, walking faster and faster, checking over their shoulders while I make wacky faces, until they finally toss the coffee in the street and run into a building where they don’t even work. This is what I’m up against out there in the job market. It’s enough to make you chuck it all and live under the overpass with the other guys, except that’s a clique, too.”

  “So you’ve just given up?”

  “When have you ever known me to give up?” said Serge. “That’s when I read about these big patriotic corporations dedicated to a drug-free America. I said to myself, that’s a worthwh
ile calling, because I see the damage every day. Coleman. Must be a million job openings for people to watch in the bathrooms so nobody cheats. I started phoning companies to inquire about their policies, and a consistent trend began to emerge. It’s mainly hourly-wage employees that get tested. Never the board of directors and definitely not shareholders. I asked if someone made a mistake. They said, What? I said, Since I’m sure they were sincere about the drug scourge, there must be some kind of slip-up not including shareholders, but they all reacted like I was some kind of crackpot. I said, If it’s a manpower issue, I’d be happy to volunteer and even spring for the paper cups at the annual stockholders’ meeting, and then the line usually went dead. Boy, did I feel disillusioned. Turns out they weren’t interested in principles at all. It was really about insurance costs and the ability of wealth to make working America dance like organ-grinder monkeys. We may not have a drug-free country yet, but we’re well on the way to a dignity-free country. After I realized that, my next move became a no-brainer.”

  “Which was?”

  “Be an employer. Coleman and I started our own consortium. Then we hired ourselves. I began reading the Wall Street Journal and watching Lou Dobbs to see how it worked. Naturally my first move as CEO was to outsource both our jobs. As wage slaves, it was either move to Indonesia or get fucked up the ass again. But as majority owners of voting stock, we couldn’t have been happier at how our company was keeping the boot down on labor.”

  “I know I’ll regret asking,” said the doctor, “but what exactly does your company do?”

  “Nothing at all. It’s the Enron model. Can you tell me what they did? No. Can you name one store where you could buy an Enron gizmo? I think not.” Serge crossed a leg and leaned back smugly. “That’s something else I learned from the financial shows. If you’re impatient and want to shoot straight to the top—that’s me in spades—make sure your company doesn’t lift a finger. Factories, office buildings, customers: just slows you down.”

  “You’re doing nothing?”

  “And better than anyone else! Growth is off the chart. Another week, we do a little insider profit taking, dissolve the company and make off like bandits with the retirement accounts of our former employees, which is also us, so the big gains cancel out. I’m still trying to figure a way around that last part.”

  “You didn’t fill your prescription, did you?”

  “Bet you couldn’t tell.”

  “I’m writing another one. And I’m sorry to say I’m more than a little disappointed by your lack of vigor seeking employment.”

  “Worry not. I’ve got something lined up.”

  “Make-believe jobs don’t count.”

  “This isn’t like the others. We landed real jobs.”

  “What is it?”

  “Convenience stores. Delivery and pickup work. Actually, just pickups.”

  “When do you start?”

  “Next week.”

  Gulf Coast Psychiatric Center was located far from the coast in an old part of central Tampa called Seminole Heights. For mystic reasons, certain parts of every city attract clusters of new-car dealerships. Lincoln-Mercury, Chrysler, BMW. All bunched together in a row, duking it out every Saturday morning with balloons, snapping pennants, blaring radio-station vans and the aroma of grilling hot dogs.

  Not here. This was the string of “Bad credit? No problem” used-car lots with barbed wire and a clientele of recent graduates from the bus stop. Also, used-furniture stores. Used-appliance stores. One place just sold used doors. Another rented TVs and wrote bail bonds. They occupied the ruins of undesignated historic buildings falling down around the middle of a previously thriving garden district sliced open by the interstate. Lower-rung yuppies who couldn’t afford the Hyde Park section of town were fixing up circa-1925 bungalows, with mixed results.

  The neighborhood’s only professionals were the good doctors practicing out of the psychiatric center, which rented the second floor of an art deco movie house on Florida Avenue. The main theater downstairs was now the meeting hall for a high-turnover lineup of inspirational seminars, multilevel-marketing scams, narcotics support groups and itinerant congregations featuring rousing choirs and bass guitars.

  The rent was ridiculously low, and the psychiatrists could barely afford it. Theirs was a partnership of necessity: two men who’d just completed medical suspension for writing themselves OxyContin prescriptions, and a highly capable woman swimming her way to the financial surface after a marriage that was so bad she’d left him with everything just to get away.

  The woman had previously worked at a state hospital in north Florida and treated Serge after an involuntarily commitment. That was years without contact. Now look what the cat dragged in.

  “If you don’t mind, I’d like to further explore your violent urges.”

  “Shoot.”

  “Can you give me an example of a time you controlled your temper?”

  Silence.

  “Did you hear me?”

  “I’m thinking…. Okay, yeah, a decade ago. I drove up to Crystal River, one of those nature places I like to visit when the city’s about to make me explode. I bop on out to the manatee-viewing platform. Absolutely beautiful. Those gentle giants rolling around without a care. I’m calmer than I’ve been in months. I take a few photos, hang out some more, grab a tuna sandwich from my fanny pack. Then these two L. L. Beaners arrive. One sets up a huge camera on a monopod like they use at NFL games; the other’s carrying a high-end tape recorder and extends this big, furry microphone over the railing. I smile and say hello, but they ignore me. I figure no big deal and take a few more photos. Suddenly: ‘Shhhhh!’ I turn. The guys are staring. ‘Your camera’s disturbing the manatees.’ I say, ‘What’? He says, ‘We’re scientists. These animals are easily stressed.’ He looks at his pal and mumbles something, and they chuckle. And then, get this: He starts snapping photos! I say, ‘Hold it, Dr. Dolittle, you’re taking pictures.’ He says, ‘We’re scientists. Our photos help them. It’s the public that’s disturbing the delicate balance.’ Now all my pressure gauges are in the red zone.”

  “Like your face is getting now?”

  “Exactly. I’m right back in the city. These fuckers are going on and on about preserving the natural harmony, but I’m onto their game. They really came down to that manatee-viewing platform to rumble.”

  “You said this was a story of restraint?”

  “That’s right. Incredible discipline. I was flashing on some pretty gruesome stuff….” Serge began making a vigorous up and-down pumping action with a fist. “…Fuckin’ stabbing the motherfuckers over and over!…”

  “Serge…”

  His face deepened to purple, fist thrusting faster. “…More stabbing in the chest!…And down here in the balls!…And up here in the eyes!…”

  “Serge!”

  “What?”

  “You paint quite a picture. I get it.”

  “I wanted to chop them into bite-size bits and feed them to the manatees.”

  “But you didn’t?”

  “No, they’re herbivores. The manatees.”

  “I’m sure it was more than that. I’m proud of you. You made a choice.”

  “That’s right. I left them unconscious on the viewing stand and went home and took ginseng.”

  “You attacked them?”

  “That’s the part that cracks me up. Kept talking about we scientists, knowing all about animal behavior. Whoops!”

  “But that’s not restraint.”

  “Did I stab them?”

  “You need to find a way to control your anger.”

  Other side of the wall: “You need to find a way to release your anger.”

  “But I don’t feel angry,” said McSwirley.

  “Something has to make you angry.” The doctor reviewed his notes. “What about this other reporter, Justin Weeks?”

  “He hates me.”

  “You’re a likable guy.”

  “I try to be. But I�
��ve been landing some big stories. He used to be the star.”

  The doctor nodded. “You stole his show.”

  “Didn’t mean to.”

  “Nothing to feel guilty about. Sounds like the guy’s a prima donna.”

  “That’s him.”

  “He has to make you angry.”

  “Not really.”

  “But you said he makes fun of you in front of the staff.”

  “Doesn’t bother me,” said Jeff.

  “Not even a little bit?”

  “No, but I take pride in my work, and he undermines my perfor mance. I don’t like that.”

  “And that makes you angry?”

  “No, I just don’t like it.”

  “Give me an example of how he undermines you.”

  “Well, we were sharing a byline on this one story. Police investigation, so there was beat overlap. He did most of the legwork, and I’m writing it up, because I write better. The next day the top editor gets a screaming phone call from the chief. The story bollixed the results of an internal-affairs case, practically convicted a lieutenant of lewd conduct. They call me and Justin in. I’m not worried, because that was Justin’s half of the story. I tell them I just copied from his notes. Then Justin shows them his notes, and it’s exactly the opposite of what was in the paper. I get blamed. Big correction runs. Had to apologize in person at the cop shop.”

  “What happened?”

  “Thought I was losing my mind. I never make mistakes like that. The next day in the elevator, Justin shows me two pages of notes. Identical copies, except he changed that one fact and switched them on me. He sticks the pages back in his pocket and tells me to stay out of his fucking way.”

  “You should have told your superiors.”

  “I did, but who ever heard of such a preposterous thing? They didn’t believe me. I didn’t believe me, and I saw the notes.”

  “What happened?”

  “Got in even more trouble. Said they were surprised at me, lying to shift blame out of professional jealousy.”

  “That made you pretty mad, didn’t it?”