Atomic Lobster

by Tim Dorsey

  “…There is…a house…”

  The Mercury sat along a sandy shore. The lapping, incoming tide chased tiny crabs. A smile spread as Serge slowly scanned the tranquil panorama: coal-black western sky, growing brighter to the south over a fleet of outgoing fishing skiffs, brighter still toward the pier and a large, pastel-green wooden building arched like a Quonset hut.

  Coleman came around the car in a nippy breeze and rubbed his arms. “Where are we?”

  “Gulfport.” Serge watched a seasonal white pelican hover off the flats. “Bottom of the Pinellas peninsula at the northern lip of the bay.”

  “Place looks old.”

  “We’re in one of those isolated geographical anomalies that’s below the radar of devil-worshipping developers. But not for long. That ancient green building to our left is the sacred ballroom called the Casino.”

  Coleman’s hair flopped in the beach wind. “I’ve been meaning to ask, why do you love Florida so much? I’ve never seen anyone so obsessed with something, and you’re obsessed with everything.”

  “If I had to put my finger on one aspect, it’s visual intoxication,” said Serge. “Like here. This neighborhood is one of my favorites, a collage of beauty from around the state: Key West color, West Palm architecture, Miami Beach accents, Coconut Grove landscaping. Look!…” He pointed toward a ribbon of orange light on the eastern horizon. “Here comes the day. Coleman, let’s observe this miracle in the reverence God intended.”

  “…They call…the rising sun…”

  The melody changed, volume increased. A sonic calamity. Serge turned: “What happened to God’s sound track?”

  Back at the Comet, Rachael leaned through the driver’s window, bent sharply at the waist, ass cocked, cutoffs riding high. She twisted a radio dial.

  “What the hell are you doing?” yelled Serge.

  “This music sucks.” She came back out of the window. A driving bass beat shattered the peace.

  “…I just wanna live!…”

  “That’s the last straw!” Serge took an angry step forward.

  Coleman yanked him back by the shirt.

  “Coleman, what are you doing?”

  “Check it out….”

  He did. Rachael had begun gyrating, slowly at first, her eyes closed, full lips parted. One hand ran through blond locks and over her chest; the other raised a pint bottle that she chugged straight.

  Coleman jumped. “My vodka!”

  “It’s being put to better use.”

  Rachael accelerated her hip-grind, flinging the empty bottle over the car and sliding palms down the inside of her thighs as she turned in an erotic circle, the effect enhanced by a black leather jacket with purple, goth lettering: GOOD CHARLOTTE.

  Coleman placed a hand over his heart.

  “You okay?”

  “Almost swallowed my tongue. I’ve never seen a woman…dance like that.”

  “She’s professionally trained, probably at a magnet school,” said Serge. “And I could use the workout. Guess I’ll just have to do her.”

  “What do you mean, ‘do her’?”

  “Is that unclear?”

  “No. But I’m always thinking I want to do some chick, and it never makes it so.”

  “Need a three-day weekend to explain. Involves everything from chromosomes to dental floss.”

  “…Don’t…care…what happens to me!…”

  “Also, what’s with your taste in women?” said Coleman. “Usually it’s the older, brainy chicks. But in between there are these complete opposites.”

  “I’m a connoisseur. This is cleansing the palate for the next ’59 Bordeaux.” Serge walked toward the car. “Get in the fuckin’ backseat!”

  Rachael continued dancing. “What?”

  “Time to pay the piper.” He twisted an arm behind her back again.

  “Let go of me!”

  “You’re welcome.”

  FBI FIELD HEADQUARTERS, TAMPA DISTRICT

  Typical attire. Dark slacks, white shirts, thin black ties. Conference room. At least two hours before their shifts normally started. Dozen agents in all, watching the same video on the large-screen TV: other agents in spaceman biohazard suits, going back and forth from a van (Universal Pest Control) and a modest, single-family home draped in a termite tent.

  The conference room door opened. An agent from Washington entered. His name was Washington. He looked toward the screen. “What site’s this?”

  “Nine,” said the Tampa case agent, Nick Moody.

  “Then we have a cluster.”

  “Yes and no.”

  “How’s that?”

  “They’re grouped on the timeline, but with no pattern. Victims literally all over the map.” He pointed at the map: Colored pushpins decorated the wall like a shotgun with the choke open. Tampa Bay, Polk and Pasco counties, Crystal River, Arcadia and one way over by Okeechobee.

  “Profiles?” asked Washington.

  “Auto mechanic, banker, college student, priest, cocktail waitress. Same as the geography, no pattern whatsoever. Quantico turn up anything?”

  “Still analyzing the data,” said Washington. “So random it looks deliberate.”

  “At least it’s stopped,” said Moody.

  “That’s what worries me.”

  “You want more victims?”

  “Nine cases in barely a week,” said Washington. “Then a month, nothing.”

  “That’s a good thing,” said Moody.

  “Not if it was a test run,” said Washington.

  “We have no way of knowing that.”

  “We do. NSA’s heard chatter. Can’t talk about it.”

  “Wonderful. Listen, I know how you feel about this,” said Moody. “But now would be a really good time to activate Foxtrot.”

  Washington shook his head. “Can’t risk exposing that kind of asset unless we absolutely have to. There’s still a price on Foxtrot’s head…. Get me Wicks on the line.”

  The Davenports had been up before dawn. Uncharacteristic activity beneath the sheets.

  “Come on,” said Martha. “We still have time.”

  “What’s gotten into you?” asked Jim.

  “Family life. We’re always too tired at night. It’s been…a while.”

  “Ow! You got me in the eye with your finger.”

  “Sorry.”

  “It’s okay. I’ll use the other.”

  “Talk to me.”

  “I am.”

  “No, I mean, you know…”

  “I don’t.”

  “Dirty.”

  “What?”

  “Don’t make me feel more self-conscious than I already am.”

  Jim fumbled below the sheets to get things going. “Where’d this new you come from?”

  “I read a magazine in line at the supermarket. I think we should try something different…. Need help down there?”

  “No, I think I got it.”

  “Couldn’t believe what that article said. So I asked my girlfriends….”

  “Martha.”

  “What?”

  “I need some help.”

  “Okay, hold on.” She reached down. “Start talking.”

  “What do I say?”

  “I can’t tell you what to say. That’ll ruin it.”

  “I don’t know—”

  “Make something up.”

  “What if it’s stupid?”

  “I promise it won’t be. Please? I really think it’ll get me excited.”

  “How do you know?”

  “That magazine article. I started getting wet at the cash register.”

  “Martha!”

  “Jim! This is hard enough for me to express as it is. Now hurry, start talking.”

  “Okay, let me think….”

  The sun peeked over the horizon at a waterfront park. Then it dipped back down below window level. It bobbed up again. Then down again. Then up, then down, up, down…

  The Comet sat beneath a group of palms next to the G
ulfport Casino. Coleman stood a few feet away by a swing set, furtively cupping a roach.

  “Coleman!…”

  He turned and looked back at the car: Serge’s face bobbing up and down in the backseat window, Rachael’s legs in the air.

  “What is it, Serge?”

  He bobbed up. “The sunrise…” He bobbed down. He bobbed up again. “It’s beautiful….”

  Rachael growled and cursed in a sultry voice below window level. “Fuck your stupid sunrise!”

  “Stupid sunrise?” Serge thrust violently. “Take that!”

  “Owwww! Damn you!…Again.”

  The Davenports’ master bedroom was hushed. Sheets began rising and falling. “Jim, what are you waiting for?”

  “I feel awkward.”

  “Please talk to me. I really want you to.”

  “Okay…uh…take my hot, throbbing love-missile.…”

  “Jim?”

  “What?”

  “Shhhh. Don’t talk.”

  “Yes!…Yes!…Faster!…Faster!” yelled Rachael. “Hurt me with your hot cock!…”

  Serge bobbed up. “Coleman…” He bobbed down.

  “What?”

  Serge bobbed up again. “Could you move a little to your left?…You’re blocking my view….”

  EIGHT

  ALTERNATE U.S. HIGHWAY 19

  A’73 Mercury Comet sped north from St. Petersburg, up through Clearwater and Dunedin, respective ethnic strongholds of Scientologists and Scotsmen. The January 1947 issue of National Geographic lay open to page 132 in Serge’s lap.

  “Six minutes,” said Coleman. “Five minutes, fifty-five seconds…Five minutes, fifty…”

  Serge gritted his teeth, blue knuckles on the steering wheel.

  “…Five minutes, thirty-five seconds…Five minutes…”

  Serge screamed and attacked the sun visor. “You’re driving me insane!”

  Rachael crumpled an empty cigarette pack. “What’s the stupid counting about?”

  “He does this every time,” said Serge, unbending the visor. “Seven A.M….”

  “…When they start selling alcohol again,” said Coleman. “Four minutes, thirty-five seconds…Four minutes, thirty seconds…Start looking for a convenience store…. Four minutes…”

  Later in the countdown: Coleman stood with a beer suitcase in a Grab ’N Dash. There were two lines at the registers. One that moved, and a much longer, stationary one that stared at a wall clock and chanted. “…One minute, fifteen…One minute, ten…”

  Serge paced the sidewalk. “Come onnnnnnn!” He waved a National Geographic at the store window. “This only happens once a year!” Rachael tore the cellophane off a fresh, untaxed pack of Marlboro Lights meant for export that had been sold on the black market by a Honduran gang working the port.

  Coleman finally climbed back into the car, and he and Rachael ripped open the twelve-pack like wild dingos. Serge threw the Comet in gear and floored it up Alternate 19. Eagles on the radio.

  “…The Greeks don’t want no freaks…”

  It was a short, ten-block drag race. Serge skidded into the first available parking slot, jumped out and popped the trunk. He grabbed something from a duffel bag and slammed the hood. “We have to hurry!”

  Coleman and Rachael remained glued in the backseat, cracking more beers.

  “No! No! No!” yelled Serge, snatching for cans that they pulled out of range. “You’re going to make me late for my special day!”

  “It’s cool,” said Coleman. “We can take ’em with us.” He reached under his seat for a pair of small, flexible magnetic sheets.

  “What are those?” asked Serge.

  “Watch.” Coleman wrapped one of the rectangular magnets around his beer. It had a Coca-Cola design. “This way you can drink on the street.” He handed the other to Rachael.

  She curled a Pepsi magnet around her own can. “Where’d you get these?”

  “They sell them wherever there’s a college nearby.” Coleman reached under the seat again and held up a plastic funnel attached to a long, clear tube. “Same place I got my beer bong.”

  Serge pounded fists on the roof. “Can we go now?”

  They headed up the sidewalk: ancient buildings, ancient boats, ancient storefronts with bolts of cloth, ancient family bakeries that let the aroma of fresh Mediterranean bread do their advertising. The cool morning street reverberated with the tin echo of low-fidelity radios all tuned to the same lyrical foreign language. Fourth-generation locals had arrived first, for morning coffee from the homeland, and now tourists, who filled the sponge docks, sponge museum, sponge souvenir stands, getting their pictures taken with the statue of a sponger in an antique brass diving helmet.

  “Serge,” said Coleman. “What’s the deal with all the sponges?”

  “Shhhh!” snapped Serge. “Keep your voice down. You always culturally embarrass me.”

  “How?”

  “Like on Calle Ocho when you asked the lunch-counter lady what a Cuban sandwich was.”

  “Didn’t want to eat strange shit.”

  “You’re in Tarpon Springs, sponge capital of America. Or was, until they started making artificial ones in factories.”

  Rachael finished her beer and tossed the can in the street.

  Serge screamed.

  “I’m on it!” said Coleman. He trotted off the curb. A station wagon hit the brakes and honked. Coleman peeled the Pepsi wrapper from the can and stuck it in his pocket. Then he threw the can back in the street.

  Serge yelled again. He dashed over and grabbed it. “What’s wrong with you guys? Littering is like taking a big dump on the community.” He looked around. “Where’s a designated garbage receptacle?”

  “Up there,” said Coleman. “End of the block.”

  A thunder of footsteps went by, high school boys wearing the same white shorts and shirts, all clearly athletic except the last one, a scrawny youth a foot shorter than the rest, panting hard. “Hey guys! Wait up!”

  The group stopped. “Nikolai wants us to wait up.”

  Nikolai reached the gang. They shoved him in the bushes and took off. The boy crawled out. “Wait up!”

  Serge approached the garbage can. “Hate bullies…”

  A deep voice from behind. “Hold it right there, fella!”

  Serge turned around. A police officer marched toward him. “You’re under arrest for open container.”

  “What?” Serge looked at the can in his hand, then stared daggers at Coleman and Rachael. “You!—Why!—I’m gonna!—” He clenched his eyes shut, the slide show of a grim future flickering inside his skull: handcuffs, photos, fingerprints, fifty positive hits in a computer network’s unsolved-crime database, and, finally, death row. Of all the jams he’d squeezed out of just for this! He had to think of something fast. He opened his eyes….

  ALACHUA COUNTY

  Inland Florida is like another state, especially toward the north end of the peninsula. More Dixie than South Beach. Horse ranches, church steeples.

  The prominent feature is population. Not much. But on this January morning, the country roads were unusually busy, all in one direction, toward Gainesville. The nature of the traffic was another departure: newer vehicles, expensive, sporty. With Christmas break over, nearly fifty thousand students were returning to the University of Florida.

  State Road 24 ran particularly slow, a tiny, two-lane highway, the end of the only southbound route down from Jacksonville. Just inside the county line, a large farmhouse appeared atop a hill. Hanging plants and a cedar swing on the front porch. A birdhouse made from hollowed-out gourds. No farm activity. Because this type of outskirts residence was increasingly favored by tenured professors who needed sanity.

  Sunlight streamed through the kitchen, where a coffeepot perked beneath a window overlooking a feeding station and an arriving hummingbird. A fresh cup was poured. A man tested the temperature with a tiny sip. He took careful steps across the varnished floor slick with blood. Red hand streaks ran d
own cabinet doors and the refrigerator, more splatter by the sink, which held a carving knife, tip snapped off. The man casually walked around a woman’s body and into the living room, searching for anything else of value. An open suitcase on the dining room table was almost full. He strolled past the fireplace and went through the pockets of a man’s body slumped in another spreading pool. He finished enjoying his coffee.

  A noise outside.

  A black Camaro drove up the dirt road to the house. Gators license plate and fraternity bumper sticker. A young man in a polo shirt bounded up the steps. He was about to knock when the door opened. His expression changed.

  “Who are you?”

  “Handyman.”

  The youth peeked around the husky frame. “Where are my parents?”

  “Not here.”

  “Car’s in the driveway.”

  “Maybe someone gave them a ride.”

  Their eyes remained locked for the longest time. The man in the doorway smiled. The youth slid a foot backward. “I-I-I think I’ll drop by again later.”

  “Why don’t you wait? They said they’d just be a few minutes.”

  “No, I’m really in a hurry.” The young man took another step back and pointed at his Camaro. “Have to be somewhere.” He took off running.

  NINE

  TARPON SPRINGS

  Serge pleaded desperately with the cop. “…Honest, I found this beer can in the street. The garbage bin’s right there. I was just tidying up civilization.”

  “Sure you were, buddy”—reaching for the cuffs.

  “Wait. Officer, I know how this looks. A guy’s carrying a decapitated head down the sidewalk, he’s probably not a mortician. But I’m always on trash patrol. Ask around. Littering’s a crime, too, right? So I’m like police auxiliary, and we take care of each other. The Blue Wall of Silence”—wink—“smell my breath…” Serge blew a hot gust in the officer’s face.

  The officer fanned it away, but he had to admit: no alcohol.

  “Officer!” Coleman stepped forward. “This man’s innocent. I can prove it!”

  “Wonderful,” said Serge. “My lawyer’s here.”

  “It was my can,” continued Coleman. “I mean, I drank it legally, but then forgot and littered. Luckily my friend Serge was there. He hates litterbugs. You should have seen what he did to this one guy. He’ll never litter with his right hand again—”