Triggerfish Twist

by Tim Dorsey

  Siddhartha didn’t move. “Don’t worry. It can’t hurt me.”

  The fuse was almost down to the solid-fuel booster. The rocket the students had assembled was quite impressive. And heavy. Too heavy, in fact, for the first stage, and one of the cardboard fins slowly began to buckle.

  “What’s happening?” Bernie yelled to Siddhartha.

  “I think it’s tipping over.”

  “Do something!” Bernie yelled.

  “No, I won’t interfere. It doesn’t matter anyway.”

  The fuse burned into the rocket fuel a split second before it fell over completely, and it took off like a Sidewinder missile.

  “I DON’T LIKE these odds,” said Rufus. He put all the bullets back in the gun and pointed the pistol at Jim again. “This is for Skag. Nice knowin’ ya.”

  He cocked the hammer back with his thumb.

  There was a tremendous whoosh outside the house.

  Rufus turned. “What the—”

  The front window crashed, spraying glass, and everyone shielded their eyes. When they looked again, a Saturn V rocket was lodged in a human Liberty Bell, shooting sparks. The papier-mâché caught on fire and Lance began screaming.

  “I’m really starting to get pissed off!” said Rufus.

  The second stage ignited with massive thrust, pushing Lance across the room. Rufus opened the door at the last second, and the Liberty Bell ran out onto the front lawn.

  A gash opened in the side of the papier-mâché, and the rocket shifted inside the bell, sending thrust off at an angle and spinning Lance across the lawn like a top. Everyone ran to the windows.

  The third stage ignited, and the extra thrust caused the Liberty Bell to pitch up on its side. It began rolling and took off down the street at high speed, the rotation creating a Doppler effect in Lance’s screaming.

  At the intersection, the third stage burned down to its core pyrotechnic charge, and Lance exploded in a flaring six-point starburst of blue, green and magenta. Seconds later, all that was left of him were twinkling little tracers fluttering to the ground.

  The college students looked at each other.

  “Hide!”

  They ran inside and got in a closet.

  “Un-fucking-believable!” said Rufus. He turned back around. “Show’s over. Everyone get away from the windows…Hey! This isn’t everyone. Who’s missing?”

  Rufus looked at Willie and Sly.

  “We were watching the fireworks.”

  “Dammit!” said Rufus. “Search the house!”

  “WHAT’S GOING ON?” asked Serge.

  “I can’t see,” said Mahoney. “Hold on a second. Let me adjust this thing. There we go. We need to come up a little on our right.”

  “What’s our range?”

  “Fifteen feet and closing. Get ready. On my mark…”

  Jim Davenport stepped into the middle of the room. “I’d like you to leave now.”

  Rufus almost didn’t notice, Jim was so quiet-spoken. “Huh? Did you say something?”

  “I would like you to leave my house now.”

  Rufus began laughing. “Oh, you would?”

  Jim nodded. “Please leave.”

  Martha whispered urgently behind him: “Jim! What are you doing?”

  “Hey guys!” Rufus yelled to Willie and Sly. “The wimp’s throwing us out of his house!”

  “My husband’s not a wimp!” yelled Martha.

  Rufus leered. “You got some fire. I’m gonna enjoy that later, right after I settle the score for my brother.”

  “Last chance,” said Jim. “Leave or else.”

  Rufus broke up laughing again. “So tell me, why do you want us to leave?”

  “Because you’re scumbags, and this is where my family lives.”

  Rufus’s amusement tapered off.

  Time was slowing down for Jim. It was like he was outside his body watching it all from the ceiling. He heard the words coming out of his own mouth like a tape recorder on dying batteries. It was as if a part of his brain that had always stayed behind a locked door was now in control. Jim saw himself begin to walk toward Rufus.

  “My patience has run out,” said Jim. “I can handle you being a loser and stupid and rude, but not all three at the same time.”

  Rufus stopped laughing and raised his gun. “You’re in a serious rush to die, you little worm!”

  “No!” Martha screamed.

  Sly pointed across the room.

  “I don’t remember that costume.”

  “You’re right,” said Willie. “There wasn’t any buffalo at the party.”

  The buffalo began to charge.

  “Rufus! Watch out!”

  “What—”

  Too late. Mahoney and Serge nailed Rufus in the back. He tumbled over a coffee table, and his gun went flying. Rufus came up on the other side of the table mad as hell, yelling to his brothers. “Shoot the buffalo! Shoot the buffalo!”

  Jim Davenport was approaching the speed of light. Time slowed, mass expanded, sound went dead. He saw Willie and Sly turn in slow motion and level pistols at the buffalo. He looked down and saw Rufus’s loose gun skittering across the wood floor, taking forever. He dove for it.

  Willie and Sly began firing at the buffalo. They hit it in the head, and the bison slammed against the wall. They continued firing, striking it again in the midsection and flank. The buffalo slumped in the corner.

  Jim rolled on the floor, picking up the pistol. He continued the roll, onto his back, aiming at Willie and Sly. Jim was no trick shot—he didn’t know guns at all. It was big and heavy and foreign in his hand. And he was still rolling fast as his pistol arm swept across the room. All he had was himself—a lifetime of discipline, circumspection and clarity. He would have only one chance, and he took and extra millisecond to aim and compensate for his roll, like a twisting basketball player adjusting during hang time at the top of a jump shot, then releasing just as he starts coming down.

  Willie and Sly looked at their chests in disbelief. They touched their shirts. What the hell is this? Blood? They fell over.

  Jim came up on his knees and instinctively fired behind the coffee table, the last place he had seen Rufus. But no Rufus. Instead, Jim killed a grandfather clock. Time speeded back up to normal, and the sound came back on. People were screaming and crying and running in all directions. Everyone raced over to the buffalo and unzipped the costume. They pulled the back end off. Serge stood up and looked himself over.

  “I can’t believe I wasn’t hit.”

  He looked down at the front end of the buffalo, lying there.

  “Mahoney!”

  Jim and Serge grabbed the buffalo head and pulled it off. There was a lot of blood. Mahoney wasn’t moving.

  Serge lifted Mahoney’s head. “Talk to me, buddy.”

  Mahoney opened his eyes. “Damn, that hurts!”

  He sat up grimacing and grabbed his bloody right arm. “What about the McGraws?”

  “Willie and Sly are dead,” said Serge.

  Gladys Plant stepped up next to Jim. “Wow, you’ve killed again. According to the experts, one more time and that technically makes you a serial killer.”

  “Serge,” said Jim, “Rufus got away.”

  Serge looked around the living room. “Where’s Ambrose?”

  They heard tires squeal outside and ran to the window. The Ferrari took off down the street.

  “He’s got Ambrose!” yelled Coleman.

  Serge ran for the front door, then hesitated and looked back in indecision.

  “I’ll be all right,” said Mahoney. “Go save Ambrose. I’ll catch up.”

  Serge nodded and opened the door.

  “Serge!” yelled Mahoney.

  Serge turned around.

  “This doesn’t change anything. I’m still gonna get ya.”

  48

  I T WAS A MOONLESS EVENING. Approaching storm clouds from the east made the sky prematurely dark. It began to rain. A barge was moored in Tampa Bay; city worke
rs in plastic ponchos set up a row of mortar launchers and went over safety checklists. The mist and clouds trapped the light from the city, creating an eerie yellow dome. Along Dale Mabry Highway, neon from steak-houses, sports bars and dance clubs reflected off the moist cars. Traffic was backed up from the three-day weekend.

  Agent Mahoney slapped a bandage on his bad wing and jumped in the Crown Vic. He radioed a bulletin on the Ferrari, and immediately got reports of a car matching the description speeding north on Mabry. A police helicopter lifted off.

  John Milton was approaching Tampa Bay Motors in Lance’s gold Navigator. He spotted Rocco Silvertone standing outside the showroom, looking for customers. John slowed and pulled in the side entrance. He got out of the car, held the stun gun at his side and approached.

  A snow-white Ferrari zoomed past the dealership.

  “I can’t believe it!” yelled Rocco. He jumped in his Corvette and sped after it.

  “Nuts!” John ran back to the Navigator and took off after Rocco.

  Vehicles moved in packs between the traffic signals up and down Dale Mabry. A red light stopped sixty cars in three lanes at the intersection with MLK Boulevard, across from the stadium. The Ferrari with Rufus and Ambrose sat in the pole position. Serge and Coleman were six rows back in the Barracuda. Rocco Silvertone gunned his Corvette in the middle of row fourteen. John Milton was in the Navigator at the end of row seventeen, and Agent Mahoney brought up the rear in row twenty. The rest of the field was Tampa’s standard nightly issue of young adults flowing together in a sexually charged amoeban steel river of Saturns, Mustangs and Corollas. Curbside homeless men with cardboard lies worked the intersections. The police helicopter hovered, its search beam sweeping across the wet pavement for a Ferrari. The rain came down harder, and the first bolt of lightning flew.

  The light turned green; sixty cars began moving. The Ferrari got a jump on the pack, but Serge slipped around a Camaro and began gaining in the breakdown lane. Then Mahoney made his move, squeezing by two carloads of teenagers driving abreast in the left lanes, yelling to each other, trying to have sex. Everyone accelerated to top speed, then braked and bunched together again at the next red light. Tempers simmered through the long left-turn cycles. Squatters sat under umbrellas at the four corners of the intersection, selling used cassette tapes, broken wristwatches, two-dollar rhinestone sunglasses and thoroughbred ferrets.

  The light turned green. Everyone accelerated. The road opened up and traffic spread out. Rufus got the Ferrari up to a hundred. He looked in the rearview. Everyone was way back. Then something caught his peripheral vision. Two pizza trucks passed on the left, continued accelerating and disappeared over the next overpass.

  There was an explosion. Rufus ducked. “What the hell?”

  Ambrose pointed out the windshield. “The fireworks are starting.”

  “Fireworks!” said Coleman, hitting a joint. “Green, yellow, pink, blue…”

  Serge saw an opening and went for it. A Subaru driver on a cell phone drifted left and forced a Sentra into a row of orange rubber construction cones, and Serge used the opening left by the Subaru to force them both into the construction area so he could pass. The Sentra and Subaru rubbed sides, then diverged. The Subaru caromed off a bus-stop rain shelter and wedged under a semi full of Posturepedics. The Sentra spun out in the intersection, hit a curb sideways and rolled, scattering a squadron of homeless men on the corner, cardboard signs Frisbeeing into the air as they dove for cover, knocking over ferret cages. The ferrets escaped north-bound as the Sentra continued rolling and slammed into a Florida Power cherry picker, sending the crane arm spinning. The electrician leaped from the basket F Troop-style before it smashed into a transformer, which blew with a bang and a shower of sparks. All the traffic lights went out, and twenty blocks of Dale Mabry lost electricity. The police were in the middle of raiding the Red Snapper strip club during a surprise Tet Offensive of the mayor’s War on Titty Bars when the power went. The strippers used the cover of darkness to make a run for it, and they came pouring out of the club, kicking off heels and sprinting south. The stampede of dancers was at full gallop when they were met in a Blockbuster Video parking lot by oncoming waves of terrified, scampering ferrets. The strippers shrieked and scattered like a billiard break. A motorist swerved to avoid the naked women spilling into traffic, and he locked up his wheels in the rain, jumping a curb and sliding into a gas pump. The man ran from the wrecked car as gasoline gushed across the concrete.

  Mahoney was three blocks back when the hundred-foot fire-mushroom went up from the gas station. Traffic was snarled. Smoke filled the air. Sirens wailed. Helicopters swooped with search beams. More transformers began blowing in sequence down the highway like a string of fire-crackers. Hysterical people ran crying everywhere. Some of the ferrets became separated and stood on their hind legs, looking for a familiar face. Looters hit the beer coolers at the burning gas station. Frantic strippers banged on the Crown Victoria, breasts pressed against the windshield: “For the love of God, take me with you!” Mahoney looked up at the elevated pedestrian bridge over the highway for the Yankees spring training complex, where Christ and the Antichrist waged fierce hand-to-hand combat against a backdrop of lightning and fireworks. Mahoney looked over at the Bible sitting on his passenger seat and laid a reverential hand on the cover. “So it begins in Tampa.” Mahoney pulled out of traffic, popped his blackwall tires up onto the cement median, and floored the Crown Victoria straight into the Jaws of the Apocalypse.

  The Ferrari was now all alone, a half mile ahead of everyone. Rufus sped up the next overpass, watching the bedlam unfolding in his rearview mirror. “Yes! We made it!”

  He was still watching the mirror as he crested the overpass. He finally looked forward again. “Uh-oh.”

  The pavement ahead was covered with flares, stop sticks and pepperoni, where two overturned pizza-delivery trucks with punctured tires were engulfed in flames in front of a police roadblock.

  Rufus hit the brakes, and the Ferrari went into a slow counterclockwise spin down the incline. It angled off the overpass and punched through the guardrail, sailing thirty feet before crashing into the embankment nosefirst and flipping out into the retention pond, landing upside down on top of a late-model Buick already stuck in the water. The force of the crash blew out all the windows in the Buick and collapsed the roof down to the headrests, still a good six inches above the heads of the four elderly women trapped inside.

  Eunice pointed out the slit that used to be the passenger window. “An arm!”

  “Pull it!” said Edith.

  Eunice pulled it. It fell off.

  It belonged to Rufus. He was dead.

  There was a thud from above, followed by an “Ouch!”

  Ambrose had pushed away his deflated airbag and hit the release latch on the seat belt. He fell to the roof.

  “Someone’s still alive up there,” said Edith. She leaned toward the crack where her window used to be, just as Ambrose’s upside-down head hung over the edge of the Buick.

  “Stud-muffin!” said Edith.

  “Uh-oh,” said Ambrose.

  Another voice: “I’ll save you!”

  It was Rocco Silvertone, sloshing through swamp water. “Hold on, Ambrose! Help’s coming!”

  Rocco broke through the edge of the cattails. He grabbed Ambrose under the armpits and pulled him the rest of the way out of the Ferrari, then carried him piggyback off through the reeds toward the highway.

  “Hey! What about us?” said Edith.

  It was quiet again.

  “Shit.”

  ROCCO REACHED THE top of the embankment with Ambrose on his back. He stepped over the twisted guardrail and carefully lowered Ambrose to the ground. More cars arrived and screeched to a halt. Doors slammed.

  Serge and Coleman jumped from the Barracuda and began running toward their little friend. “Ambrose! Are you okay?”

  “Hold it right there!” ordered Rocco, seizing Ambrose around the neck with a thi
ck forearm. He leaned to Ambrose’s ear. “Who are those guys?”

  “Oh, it’s okay,” said Ambrose. “They’re my kidnappers.”

  “The kidnappers!” yelled Rocco. He pointed at Serge and Coleman. “Don’t come any closer!”

  Rocco wrapped his other arm around Ambrose’s chest and lifted him off the ground. He began slowly backing up with Ambrose in front of him—not as a human shield, but more like a valuable prize that nobody was going to take away from him. “Stay where you are! I’m warning you!”

  Agent Mahoney skidded up in his Crown Victoria. He jumped out and flashed his badge at Rocco. “Let him go!”

  The police came running from the roadblock. Rocco pointed at Serge and Coleman. “They’re the kidnappers! Get ’em!”

  The police pulled their guns on Rocco.

  “Not me, you idiots! They’re the kidnappers! I’m the one who saved him!”

  “Just stay calm,” said Mahoney. “Nobody’s going to get hurt.” Mahoney saw someone quietly circling around behind Rocco, but he didn’t give it away.

  Rocco tightened his grip on Ambrose. “What’s the matter with you!” he yelled at the cops. “The real kidnappers are standing right there! Arrest ’em before they get away!”

  “Everything’s going to be just fine.”

  Rocco heard another voice behind his left ear.

  “Flipper was a dolphin.” Then: Zzzzzzttt!

  Rocco flopped around the street from the stun gun. The police pounced and cuffed him. Ambrose went running toward Serge and Coleman, who met him halfway.

  Serge grabbed the little guy by the shoulders and looked him over. “You okay, buddy?”

  Ambrose nodded that he was.

  The three turned for the Barracuda, but Serge suddenly stopped when he saw Mahoney standing there with his .38 by his side.

  “Where can a poor shlub get some decent fried chicken in this town?” asked Mahoney. “And I want a side order of history. Local funk. A real joint.”

  “That would be Palios Brothers on MacDill Avenue,” said Serge.

  “This one’s on the house,” said Mahoney, holstering his pistol. “But it still doesn’t change anything. Some day I’m gonna nail you…. Now get the hell out of here before I change my mind!”