by Tim Dorsey
“Reagan’s attorney general, who strong-armed the Southland Corporation. That’s why the lunch-bucket crowd can’t buy Playboy in 7-Eleven anymore, while the big party donors are up in their five-hundred-dollar suites watching Amateur PTA Moms Backdoor Entry, Vol. III.” One final twist from the drill. “There. Done. You can let go now.”
“Serge?”
“What?”
“I thought you were supposed to put the plywood on the outside of the window.”
“This isn’t for the hurricane. It’s for my guitar.”
“I don’t follow—”
“I’m tired of that dinky amp. I’ve decided my career needs a big sound. That’s why I’ve been collecting all these components from pawnshops. And now I have the final pieces to build the largest amp I’ll ever need. Maybe a world record.”
Coleman turned around. “Where?”
“You’re standing in it.” Serge began unscrewing stereo woofers.
Coleman looked at his feet. “I don’t see anything.”
“The room is the amp. Ten thousand watts if this motel’s fuses don’t blow first.” Serge arranged heavy chunks of metal on the bed.
“How can a room be an amp?”
“Easier than you’d think. It’s just a matter of scale. Take what would make a regular amp and multiply it by cubic volume.” He unwired a speaker harness. “There are two kinds of amps. The ones that breathe and the airtight. Those are called acoustic suspension. That’s why I needed the plywood. The first note on my guitar would have blown the window all over the parking lot.”
“So that’s why we’re staying at this motel instead of your house. I thought it was to hide out.”
“Landlords are picky about drilling a bunch of holes.” Serge drilled a bunch of holes. He began mounting metal chunks. “These are the magnets that drive the speakers. Figure sixty ought to do it. The pawnshops had way more than I needed—lots of starving musicians out there. I’ll also have to mount some of the magnets inside the walls, for Dolby noise reduction and proper high-end fidelity during my incredible Eddie Van Halen solos. That’s what the jigsaw is for.”
It took most of the day. The mounting went well, but Serge had to parallel-wire all the components, and Coleman kept tripping over cables.
“Look out!”
“There’s no place to walk.”
“We’re leaving soon anyway. Just sit on the bed and watch TV.”
Coleman clicked the remote. A stenciled title came on the screen. “Cool. Our favorite show.”
“…Welcome to another installment of Florida’s Funniest Surveillance Videos, where we open to night’s program in Tampa….”
Coleman watched black-and-white footage of two men and a handcart. “Hey, Serge. We’re on again.”
“Which one?”
“Convenience store.”
The choppy video now showed the two men wheeling a small ATM out of the store. “Our crooks were so brazen they even stopped to have the clerk sign for it….” The screen switched to a follow-up interview with the employee. “Why’d you let them take the cash machine?”
“They had a clipboard.”
Coleman glanced toward a corner of the room and the jimmied-open ATM. “I can’t believe we got away with that so easy.”
“I can,” said Serge. “Once again, validating Serge’s Key to Life: Always act like you deserve to be here.”
By nightfall, the room’s floor was an intricate web of wiring. Serge plugged in no fewer than eight power cords. “I think she’s ready.” He grabbed his guitar case. “I’ve been practicing Goats Head Soup.”
“Great album.” Coleman cracked another beer. “Let ’er rip.”
“Not here,” said Serge. “It isn’t safe. We have to clear the blast zone.”
“How are you going to play from that far?”
Serge held up a rectangular box the size of a garage-door opener. “Pawnshop again. Transmitter, like all the great guitarists use so they can leap around in concert. I’ve decided my stage persona needs lots of jumping…. Let’s go. Watch your step.”
“Can I be a roadie?”
The sun was setting as Serge climbed up on top of the H2. It was parked at a closed Laundromat two hundred yards from the motel. “Roadie, guitar…”
Coleman handed it up, and Serge looped the strap over his neck. He turned the transmitter on.
Coleman raised his right arm and flicked a Bic lighter. Serge began strumming.
DUH-DUH! Da-da-dah,…
A million dogs barked. Car alarms whooped everywhere.
“Wow, it really does sound like the Stones,” said Coleman. “And freakin’ loud!”
DAH-DAH!… “Told you it would work. Now time to really crank the volume!” Serge twisted a knob all the way up and began bounding around the Hummer’s roof.
DAH-DAH!…
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
TAMPA
Footage from McSwirley’s jail release played throughout the day and into the night. It was on in bars, department stores, newsrooms. One TV sat in the back of a ranch house with a rusty chain-link fence.
Hands in latex gloves held a newspaper. The guest column by Serge and Coleman. It was ripped to shreds, then confetti. Yelling from the television made the person look up. There was McSwirley again, surrounded by a million cameras and shouting reporters, getting all the attention.
“Please!” said the metro editor. “He’s been—”
A brick went through the TV.
TAMPA BAY TODAY
The phone rang for the hundredth time.
“Metro, McSwirley…. No, I’m sorry. I’m not doing interviews…. I just don’t feel like it right now…. I know I’ve become part of the story….”
He hung up, and it rang immediately.
“…I’m sorry. No interviews….”
Justin Weeks waved urgently from the next desk. “I’ll do an interview.”
“Hold on,” Jeff told the caller. “Someone wants to talk to you. I’m going to transfer.”
Another phone rang. “Hello? This is Justin Weeks, McSwirley’s partner. I’ve been working on the same story. Actually, it’s really my story and—…I see…. I see…. I understand…. If you change your mind…” Justin hung up.
“What happened?” asked McSwirley.
Weeks pretended to look for something important on his desk. “They only want to interview you.”
The scene repeated chronically into the night, phone ringing and ringing. McSwirley not wanting to talk to anybody. Nobody wanting to talk to Justin.
Jeff finally got up and stretched. “I’m going to the break room for a soda. Want anything?”
“I’m good,” said Justin.
“Can you get my phone while I’m gone?”
McSwirley was smiling in the photograph. It was the mug shot from the occasional weekend column he wrote for the paper. The picture rested in the middle of a trembling hand. The other hand dialed a phone. The photo was crumpled into an angry ball and tossed away. The phone began ringing. The hand cupped around the caller’s mouth.
A reporter turned toward a ringing phone. He got up and walked to the next desk.
“Metro, Weeks…. And who are you with?…What?…No, really. Who are you?…You’re joking…. You think you know who the killer is?…You’ll only talk to McSwirley because of how sensitively he handles his stories?…No, McSwirley’s not here. In fact he won’t be back for days…. Wait. Don’t hang up. I’m his partner; I’m even more sensitive. He learned all that from me…. Why don’t I meet you instead?…Okay, wait a sec. Let me grab a piece of paper….”
McSwirley rested with an arm braced against the front of a vending machine. He scanned selections. Little red “out of stock” lights next to everything he wanted. Only one flavor left at the bottom. No wonder it was still available. Darn. McSwirley smoothed out a dollar bill and stuck it in the machine. It whirred and came back out. He stuck it in again. It spit back out….
Justin grabbed a coat
and switched off his computer. McSwirley returned to the newsroom, sipping a grape Fanta. “Where are you going?”
“Out.” Justin slipped an arm through a coat sleeve.
McSwirley looked toward his desk. “Anyone call while I was gone?”
“Nope.”
The phone rang.
Justin tensed.
“Metro, McSwirley…. Where?…” He grabbed a pen and began writing. “I’ll meet you there.”
“Who was that?” asked Justin.
Jeff grabbed his own jacket. “Agent Mahoney…”
Justin relaxed.
“…On his way back from the Suwannee River. Found two more bodies.”
“At the river?”
“No, one there and one here. I’m on my way to the second location.”
The reporters rode the elevator down together and left the building in opposite directions.
CHAPTER THIRTY
EAST SIDE OF TOWN
Police cruisers filled a motel parking lot on Busch Boulevard. The Pink Sea horse.
Mahoney was just getting out of his car when Jeff drove up in an oil-dripping ’84 Fiero.
“ID the body up at the river?” asked Jeff.
Mahoney nodded. “Another child molester.”
“How’d you find him?”
“Molested.”
They headed toward a room with an open door and crime-scene tape.
“That motel sure is pink,” said Jeff.
A sturdy officer ran out of the room and got sick in the bushes.
Mahoney and the reporter went inside. A tangled mat of electrical cords across the floor. In the middle was the victim, still tied to a chair. Blood from every natural opening. No wounds. Jeff caught a brief glimpse and reflexively jerked away. “Oh, dear God!”
Mahoney leaned for a closer look. “A Hip-Hop Redneck.” He stood back up and handed Jeff a hankie.
“Thanks.” Jeff wiped his mouth. “What the hell happened?”
“Not sure,” said Mahoney, surveying the crime scene. “But it reeks of Serge.”
An officer entered the room who did not look like the others. He was Dipsy the Hippie Cop. Used to be one of the sound guys for the Grateful Dead. Now he was a police audio tech with a house on the beach, thanks to his skill at turning inaudible bugs and wiretaps into crystal, convicting evidence.
“Whoa!” said Dipsy. “Someone’s been busy!”
“You know what happened?”
“Abso-fuckin’-lutely,” said Dipsy. “I definitely want to rock with these cats.”
“So you going to tell us?”
“Biggest amp I ever saw,” said Dipsy, admiring a relay junction. “Even tops that insane thing Phil Lesh made us carry around in ’73.”
“Amp? Like in guitar amp?”
“Acoustic suspension to be precise.” Dipsy chomped a granola bar and inspected magnetic drivers attached to load-bearing studs. “Nice work, too.”
“I can’t believe it killed the guy,” said a homicide detective.
Dipsy checked connections to one of the signal boosters. “I’d be more surprised if it didn’t. Sound waves are incredibly powerful. Just because they’re invisible, people don’t realize…” He gestured at the blood-spattered electronics. “…This was fishing with dynamite.”
“But how is it possible to build an amp this big?”
“It’s more than possible; it’s easy. Just multiply components and wattage by the cubic volume of the room.” He stuck an empty snack wrapper in the hip pocket of his cutoffs. “Reminds me back in ’62 when me and the brothers at Sig Ep built this ridiculous speaker from eight Heathkits and an abandoned refrigerator. That thing was insane!”
An H2 drove past a motel parking lot full of police cars.
“Looks like they found your amp,” said Coleman. “What do you think happened to the guy you left inside?”
“The Hip-Hop Redneck?” Blue lights flickered off Serge’s face as they passed the motel. “He got to hear my first concert.”
“Don’t you think it was too loud for him?”
“Normally, but you heard his car stereo in traffic. He’d already established that he prefers his music too loud.”
The H2 reached the corner, and Coleman looked back. “They’re wheeling a stretcher out of the room. It’s covered with a sheet.”
“Another pioneering feature of my upcoming tour,” said Serge. “Forget the front row and backstage passes. For the right price, you can sit inside the amp. Of course, you hemorrhage to death from the sound concussion, but it’s only rock ’n’ roll!”
MEANWHILE, ON THE SOUTH SIDE OF TOWN
Justin Weeks drove slowly through a decaying neighborhood. Potholes, growling rottweilers, no streetlights. He squinted at dim house numbers.
His car neared a dead end. It stopped in front of a rusty chain-link fence. He checked the address on his scrap of paper. Matched the mailbox, darkest house on the block. Justin got out. He opened the squeaky front gate and walked stiff-legged to the front porch.
Knock-knock-knock. “Hello? Anybody home?”
No answer.
Justin glanced around and tried the knob. Unlocked. He just had to scoop McSwirley. The door creaked open. “Anyone here?” He kept calling as he walked through the unfurnished living room, then the empty dining room. In the kitchen he found a light switch. Roaches made a jail break from a pile of spent TV-dinner trays. Justin worked his way around the rest of the mounting garbage. Empty tuna tins and Chef Boyardee cans, jagged lids bent up, some still with forks inside from when they’d been eaten cold. “Jeee zusssss Christ…”
Weeks continued canvassing the house, with no sign of life. Only one room left in back. The door was closed. A sign: No Trespassing! Anyone else would have split right there. No, they never would have gone inside in the first place. But that was the thing about Justin. He was smarter…. Knock-knock. “Anyone in there?” He knocked again; the door was ajar and slowly swung open on its own. “Hellllooooo?…” Justin’s hand felt along the wall again and flipped another light switch. That’s when he saw it. His jaw fell, and an electric tingle danced up his spine. “Oh…my…God…” He was looking at The Wall. He didn’t hear the car drive up.
Justin found himself unconsciously stepping forward in fascination. His eyes first went to the largest photograph of McSwirley. The one with the meat cleaver through the forehead. Then the others: college, high school, family. He turned to the newspaper clippings, moving through the years until the most recent coverage of Serge. One had a double byline, McSwirley and himself. The article was covered with handwriting. Bold, all caps, in thick, blood-red marker: WE DON’T LIKE JUSTIN. WE LIKE McSWIRLEY.
The door behind him creaked shut.
Justin spun. “I…uh…the door was open…. I’m sorry…. I have to go….”
Quick footsteps toward him. Justin raised his arms to fend off the crowbar. Then the lights went out.
There was a stereo on a shelf in the corner. Latex hands inserted a CD and turned the volume all the way up.
The music brought Justin around. He stirred and raised his head.
“…Talkin’ ’bout the Midnight Rambler….”
Justin raised his arms again in defense. “Noooooooo!”
The chain saw roared to life. The business end hung in the air for a breathless second. Then it came down with an unmistakable gnarling sound.
This was clearly the work of a madman. Everyone knows it’s not safe to run a gas engine indoors.
HURRICANE #4
ESTEBAN
CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE
TAMPA BAY TODAY
One hour before sunrise. A lightning storm of xenon camera strobes lit up the main entrance to Gladstone Tower. Photographers from the crime lab and the newspaper elbowed for shooting space.
The chief of police was on scene with all the brass. Only a couple gawkers so far, winos crawling from alleys. But that would seriously change with the morning rush hour. “Get a sheet around the whole thing,”
said the chief. “We don’t need everyone seeing this.”
All across town, sleeping newspaper editors rolled over in bed and fumbled for ringing phones. “Hullo?…”
Twenty minutes later. Unshaven journalists streamed into the newsroom. Every coffeemaker in ser vice. It started getting light outside. The earliest emergency meeting yet at the oval conference table.
“Where’s McSwirley?” demanded the maximum editor. “We need him on this!”
“Don’t you care at all about his safety?” said Tom.
A news clerk held a phone receiver. “Still getting his answering machine.”
“What about his cell?”
The clerk shook his head. “Must be off.”
“Keep trying!”
Features raised a pen. “Is it true there are pieces of Justin all over the sidewalk?”
Sports raised a pen. “I heard the parts were arranged to spell ‘Hi!’”
A pen from Business. “Did they really dot the i with his head?”
The news clerk: “Still no answer.”
Max’s face fell into his hands.
“Let’s not overreact just yet,” said Tom. “There’s still a good chance Jeff ’s on his way in right now. You know how he likes to get here early.”
A green ’84 Fiero exited the Lee Roy Selmon Expressway in the predawn half-light. It rumbled over the metal grating of the Bro-rein Street Bridge. An Ivy League rowing team had clandestinely pulled up to a seawall on the Hillsborough River and begun spray-painting their school name below the Radisson.
McSwirley didn’t see them. He was distracted by the countless red and blue lights flashing through the downtown canyons. Jeff came off the bridge and began zigzagging across the grid of one-way streets to Gladstone Tower. The closer he got, the brighter the lights. He made a final turn onto Kennedy Boulevard, and police barricades forced him to loop around the block to get to the parking garage.
A cell phone rang at the conference table. Metro Tom pulled it from his jacket, immediately recognizing the numeric display. “It’s McSwirley!” Everyone hushed. Tom pressed a button “Jeff! Where are you?”
