by Tim Dorsey
“Don’t think I should.”
“Why not? Coleman does it all the time.”
“No, thanks.”
“Anyway, childhood’s over.” Serge reached under his seat. “Now vacation means a whole new adult routine.” He popped the ammo clip from a chrome.45 and checked the chamber.
“What’s the gun for?” asked Andy.
“What do you think?” Serge replaced the magazine. “Florida.”
Chapter Twenty-Three
PANAMA CITY BEACH
Another stop-and-go morning on the strip. Agent Ramirez slapped the steering wheel of a Crown Vic, caught between overloaded Jeeps of hollering, mug-hoisting students. Holiday Isles was in sight, but who knew how long?
The government sedan crept past the Alligator Arms, where a Hertz Town Car pulled into a parking space. Four men headed toward the elevator.
Ramirez’s Crown Vic only rolled another hundred yards in the next ten minutes.
“Hell with this.” He put two wheels up on the curb and honked kids out of the way. The sedan sped up the valet lane at Holiday Isles. Agents jumped out and ran for the entrance.
Hotel employees in blazers: “Hey! You can’t park there!”
Badges.
“Please park there.”
They raced to a room on the ninth floor. Three local uniforms on the balcony guarded the door. Even more crowded inside. Ten agents compared notes.
A real estate broker fidgeted in a chair. “How much longer is this going to take? I’m paying a fortune for this room!”
Ramirez entered. “You Kyle Jones?”
“Yeah. And I demand to know-”
“You don’t demand anything.”
Jones muttered under his breath.
“I didn’t catch that,” said Ramirez.
“Nothing. But I’ve already answered a million questions. I have no idea what’s going on.”
“Shut it.” He turned. “Baxter?”
“You must be Ramirez.”
Shook hands.
“Thanks for sitting on this for me.”
“Gets stranger the more we look at it.” He gave Ramirez a printout. “That’s the background check you requested. Spotless, except for mortgage-fraud lawsuits.”
“So he isn’t working with them after all?”
“That’s how it smells.”
“It stinks,” said Ramirez. “He showed up on someone’s radar.”
“Can’t figure the connection except the one phone call. And that’s a dead end.”
Ramirez stared toward the balcony. “There’s got to be something.”
INTERSTATE 95
The southbound ’73 Challenger blew past all three St. Augustine exits. Signs for five-hundred-year-old stuff and adult video stores.
“Melvin,” said Serge, “how’s it going back there?”
“Fine.”
Serge checked his mirror and smiled. Melvin bashfully looked at Country, who returned a confident gaze. She’d been working on a bottle of vodka and poured generously through the open tab of a half-empty can of Sprite. Then she covered the hole with a thumb and shook. “Want some?”
“No, thanks.”
Country shrugged and drank it herself.
“Melvin,” said Serge, “what do you think of your traveling companion back there?”
“She’s okay.”
“Come on,” Serge chided. “I’ve seen the way you been looking at her.”
He blushed so brightly you could almost read a map by it.
“Serge,” said Country, “I think your friend’s kind of cute.”
“Hear that, Melvin? She thinks you’re cute.”
More blushing.
“Have a girlfriend?” asked Country.
“No.”
“Ever had one?”
“Well, in grade school.”
“Serge,” said Country. “He’s adorable.”
“Why don’t you ask her out?” said Serge.
“Who?” said Melvin. “Me?”
“Anyone else back there named Melvin?”
“I couldn’t. I mean she, I… What if she says no?”
“You’ll never find out unless you ask.”
Melvin couldn’t get his mouth to work. Country poured more vodka.
Finally: “Would you consider, you know, maybe-”
“Sure.” She handed him a soda can. “You need to drink that.” This time Melvin accepted. “How’d you get the name Country?”
“ ’Cause I’m from Alabama.”
“So tell me something about yourself.” He took a sip.
“I’m Serge’s girl.”
Melvin spit out the drink and made a panicked retreat to the farthest corner of the car. “Serge, I didn’t know! I swear!”
“Relax.” Serge checked his blind spot to pull around a slow-moving horse trailer with tails flapping out the side. “Me and Country got an open thing. Ask her when she wants to go out.”
Silence.
“Melvin?”
“Uh, when do you want to go out?”
Country tilted her head. “This is a kind of date right now.”
“What kind?”
She just smiled.
“Andy,” Serge said sideways across the front seat, “ever been to Florida before?”
“Nope. This is my first time.”
“Then you’re in for a real treat!”
Andy McKenna leaned his head against the passenger window, faintly recognizing old billboards for citrus and marmalade stands. His mind drifted back to a childhood in Boynton Beach and that day fifteen years ago when the men in dark suits whisked him from kindergarten…
… Staring out the rear window of their car, watching teachers run down school steps, pointing and gossiping. The school disappeared. Someone gave him a lollipop.
“Who are you guys?”
“Billy, we’re friends of your father.”
“Where is he?”
“Taking you to him right now.”
Then unstoppable crying, no matter how many lollipops.
The cars whipped into the parking lot of a run-down motel off Southern Boulevard near the West Palm airport.
Crying dovetailed to sniffles as the convoy stopped, and the child pressed himself against the glass. Lots more men, same suits. They stood along a row of rooms and in various spots across the lot. Billy’s head swiveled back and forth. No Dad.
Then a burst of action. Five men ran to the car. One grabbed a door handle but didn’t open it. Others stuck hands inside jackets.
Someone gave the signal.
Out of the car. Nothing gentle. One of the men grabbed Billy under the arms. The rest surrounded them, sprinting for a middle room. Billy thought they were going to crash into the door, but at the last second it opened from inside. More men. This time he saw guns.
The door slammed behind him. In front, an agent opened another door, the one to the bathroom. Someone came out.
“Daddy!”
Billy hit the ground running for the tearful hug. His father rubbed his sandy hair and squeezed him tighter than ever before. “You okay, son?”
“Daddy, I’m scared.”
“That’s all over now. You’re with me.”
“Are we staying in this hotel?”
“No, we have to be leaving soon.” He held the boy out by the shoulders and tried to calm him with a false smile. “ Guess what? We’re going on a vacation!”
“Where?”
“You’ll get to see snow!”
“Snow? I’ve never seen snow before!” Billy realized something and looked around. “ Where’s Mom?”
“Already there waiting for us.”
Five hours of motel room life. An uneventful evening in eventful circumstance. They watched TV and ate McDonald’s the agents brought in. “Son, I know this won’t make any sense to you now, but it’s very, very important. From now on, your name is Andy.”
“Andy?”
“Andy McKenna.”
“I do
n’t understand.”
The father pulled the boy to his chest again. He saw one of the agents give him a look.
“Son, it’s time to go…”
At the end of a long day, a Boeing 737 touched down in Detroit. “Andy” had a window seat. “Wow, snow!”
A hand shook Andy’s arm and he jumped. “What?”
Serge gave his passenger a double take. “Didn’t mean to startle, but you were zoning. Like it was something distressful.”
“Just tired.”
PANAMA CITY BEACH
“Think!” yelled Agent Ramirez.
“Told you, I have no idea,” said the real estate man named Kyle. A breathless field agent ran into the room. “Think we got something.”
“What?” asked Ramirez.
“Call from the hospital in New Hampshire. Oswalt talked to the kid again.”
“What kid?”
“Pet feeder.”
“I remember.” Ramirez nodded. “Madre’s boys paid him a visit. Surprised he’s still alive.”
“Still a basket case, but coming around. He remembered something. You know how he gave us the name of this hotel and Kyle’s name?”
“Yeah?”
“The hotel info was a call he got from the road.”
“Right, from Andy.”
“Not from Andy. Kyle Jones of Boston College…”
“Who doesn’t exist?” said Ramirez.
“The kid back at campus never heard of this Jones before, just got a call out of the blue from a guy who said he’d met his friends at a rest stop. Upon further questioning, turns out he never spoke to anyone known personally.”
“But I thought he spoke directly to Andy about feeding fish.”
“That was the first call.”
“First?”
“Second was from our mystery man who said they switched hotels to this one.”
“Don’t tell me there’s another hotel.”
“Alligator Arms.”
Memory flash. “Son of a bitch!” Ramirez ran onto the balcony and stared up the strip. An older, unsleek building stood in the distance. Out front, a neon alligator smiled at him.
A walkie-talkie squawked. A local sergeant guarding the room grabbed it. “… Ten-four, Alligator Arms.” He looked at Ramirez. “Sorry, something’s come up.” Then to other officers: “Need to roll pronto.”
They sprinted for the elevators. A growing chorus of sirens approached in the distance.
“Wait!” Ramirez ran after them. “Did you say Alligator Arms?”
Chapter Twenty-Four
DAYTONA BEACH
A Andy.” Serge shook his shoulder again. “How can you be tired? You’re a kid.”
“I’ve been up all night.” He leaned back against the door. “Let me sleep.”
“You can sleep tomorrow, or the next day,” said Serge. “That’s when I plan to. But not now-I’ve got a super-special adventure planned. Anything can happen.”
“Like what?”
“Daytona! It’s crazy! Twenty miles of beach you can drive on, right where they used to hold the old races and land-speed record attempts. Want to go for our own attempt?”
“Not really.”
“Maybe you’re right, because the speed limit on the sand is now ten miles an hour. But we could always shoot for eleven and set the modern record.”
“Why are we going to Daytona, anyway? We could have just hit another Panhandle town.”
“Time travel!” Serge stuck his camcorder back out the window. “You’ve already had the Panama City experience. Daytona was the previous hot spot. A few students had been going there for years, but it seriously took off in 1985. That’s when the birthplace of spring break, Fort Lauderdale, drove kids out of town with draconian laws, and they migrated north. The next year, MTV held its first spring break jamboree in Daytona, and visitor estimates hit four hundred thousand. Then the place got cash-fat and gave students another heave. Today it’s back down to barely a trickle, which means plenty of driving room on the beach. I’m definitely going for eleven!”
“But how are we supposed to have fun if the city doesn’t want us?”
“Wear biker shirts.”
“Biker?”
“Town shakers now woo two-wheelers because they spend more insanely than students. If you check the chamber of commerce home page on the Internet, there are two huge motorcycle fests but not a single word about spring break. For that, you have to go to a local-merchant site angling for the wholesome crowd with something called ‘Spring Family Beach Break,’ which is like radiation to college students. And since the kids aren’t coming in effective numbers anymore, there’s no money or reason to update the old beach arcades and boardwalk, inadvertently preserving them in their original historic state, like a mini Coney Island, not to mention the venerable band shell, Florida’s version of the Hollywood Bowl. I’m getting a diamond-hard boner just thinking about it. That was probably too much information.”
The sun rose high as the convoy grew closer to its destination. Palm Coast, Flagler Beach, Ormond Beach. It was quiet in the Challenger. Too quiet.
Serge glanced in the rearview. “Melvin, you haven’t been saying much lately.”
Melvin stared straight ahead, blinking and breathing rapidly.
“Melvin? You all right?… Melvin?…”
Then something else. Something out of place.
Serge leaned for a different angle in the mirror. “Where’d Country go?… Country?…”
Her head popped up into view. “I’m still here.” She disappeared again.
“Melvin, you sly dog!” said Serge, smiling in the mirror. “I didn’t know you were into road-trip tradition.”
PANAMA CITY
A mass of students from the beach moved into the parking lot of the Alligator Arms. Beer, music, rumors, emergency vehicles and flashing lights. Everyone looking up at crime tape across an open door on the fifth floor.
Traffic cops waved a motorcade of government sedans through the entrance. Agent Ramirez ran for the elevator. A small plane flew over the roof of the motel with an advertising banner for coconut rum.
Ramirez raced down the fifth-floor landing as coroners wheeled another sheet-covered stretcher the other way. Police met him outside the room.
Only one question on his tongue: “IDs?”
A sergeant checked scribbled notes, rattling off five names gathered from out-of-state drivers’ licenses.
“No Andy McKenna?”
The sergeant shook his head. “But that name sounds familiar.” He called to a corporal. “Ray, where did I hear the name Andy McKenna?”
“That’s who the room was registered to. Or was.”
“Then where is he?” said Ramirez.
“Got kicked out yesterday.”
“What for?”
“We went back and looked at last night’s incident reports. Someone almost killed himself diving into the pool from the balcony,” said the corporal. “It’s a bit of a problem around here. Especially with the more educated types.”
Ramirez felt himself slipping through the looking glass. Another stretcher rolled out the door. He raised the crime tape and ducked inside.
Walls a splatter fest. Local cops among themselves: “… Never seen anything like it…”
Ramirez had. Miami. The good ol’ days. “Only one person could be behind this.”
“Who?” asked his top assistant.
“Guillermo.”
“Guillermo?”
“Madre’s lead boy. Calm, calculating, complete psychopath. No conscience whatsoever.” He quickly called a huddle with his team. “McKenna’s still out there. As soon as the victims’ names hit TV, Guillermo’s crew will know they missed the target and come back. Call every hotel in the city, see which one he switched to. Question all other guests staying here and canvass the staff. Get out an APB on Andy, but for law enforcement eyes only. No press or it’s up for grabs. Go!”
They dispersed.
Ramirez
walked onto the balcony and dialed his phone. “… Need you to track a credit card for me… Andrew McKenna, address either Dorchester or Durham… And this is important. Except for you and the chain of command, nobody is to see it but me…” He didn’t say why, didn’t have to. An informant in the house.
“Thanks…” Ramirez hung up and looked down over the railing at an extra-tiny chalk outline on the patio.
Part Two
DAYTONA BEACH
Chapter Twenty-Five
DAYTONA BEACH
The Challenger drove slowly down route A1A. Serge scanned motels.
No vacancy.
“It’s just like the Panhandle,” said Melvin. “We’re not going to find a place to stay.”
“Something will open up.”
“Breaker, breaker,” said Coleman. “ Why do they call it Daytona, anyway?”
Serge keyed his own walkie-talkie. “Lord of the Binge, keep that childhood wonderment torch burning! Most people sell children short, saying how cutely they notice the little things, when they’re actually noticing big things. Adults can live someplace three decades, and you ask, ‘How’d your town get its name?’ and they say, ‘I dunno.’ Then they shit on the children.”
“So how did it get its name?”
“From Matthias Day, who established the city, 1870. Came this close to calling it Daytown or Daytonia.”
“Where do you find all this junk?”
“Same as Panama City: the books of preeminent historian and local treasure Allen Morris, clerk of the House, 1966 to 1986, papers now preserved at Florida State.”
Serge let off the gas, slowing further as they approached a single-story mom-and-pop motel. “This looks promising.”
“But the sign,” said Melvin. “ ‘No Vacancy,’ like all the others.”
Serge pointed at a dozen students in the parking lot, cursing and throwing luggage in trunks. “Can’t believe we got kicked out.”
