Cadillac Beach
Page 30
“The International Conference of Latin Mayors is coming to town next week,” reminded the government liaison.
“That’s right. The Today show will be doing a remote broadcast from the conference,” said the president. “They’ve been inquiring about ideas for quirky feature stories to fill out the hour.”
“What do you think?” asked the treasurer.
“It can’t miss. Dafoe was a complete asshole. If these tour guys were able to win him over, Katie and Matt should be a piece of cake.”
The treasurer pointed to a spot on the newspaper near the end of Mick’s column. “Here’s a website for the company.”
FOUR MEN IN Michigan State alumni jerseys trudged through the hot sand on Miami Beach, checking out topless women under the guise of not checking them out. They headed back through the palm trees to Ocean Drive and waited to cross the street. A green Jaguar went by, black BMW, white Mercedes, gull-winged DeLorean, candy-apple red Rolls-Royce with magnetic door signs.
Brake lights came on. The Rolls backed up. The driver’s door opened, and an old man got out. He produced a roll of bills from his pocket and peeled off four thousand dollars for each of them. He got back in and drove off.
The Rolls passed a construction site. A slurry of concrete poured out the chute of a cement mixer, covering an orange surveyor’s ribbon.
Serge was in the backseat with Lenny. He had his clipboard in hand, talking to himself and checking off completed items: “…launch business, solve grandfather mystery, embarrass Castro, restore CIA pride, decimate mob, help Chamber of Commerce, find gems—sort of. That one gets an asterisk….”
They arrived at the curb outside Bayfront Center and parked behind a semi-trailer with a peacock on the side. Police held back a crowd waving brightly colored homemade signs. An NBC camera crew moved across the pavilion toward the street, filming a smiling man and woman walking toward the Rolls.
Serge looked out the window, then crossed the last item off the clipboard. “…and the Today show. That just about wraps it up.”
One of the NBC crew opened the back door of the Rolls. Serge slipped a fresh page into his clipboard and tapped it with his pen.
“What next?”
A NOTE ON THE TYPE
The text of this book was set in a face called Sardonic Bold, whose origins can be traced to seventeenth-century Luxembourg, where a robust typography movement…Hey, who are you? You’re not supposed to be in here! What are you doing?…Wait a minute, I recognize you now. You’re that guy from the Today show this morning! I’ve never seen such a disaster! What on earth were you thinking?…“Shhhhhh! I’m trying to avoid some people. Is there a back way out of here?”…Yeah, that door goes into ‘About the author.’…“Thanks.”—a typeface that saw a brief resurgence during the Age of Realism and was later revitalized in the forgings of the so-called Sans Serif Seven.
Acknowledgments
P ROFOUND THANKS AGAIN to my agent, Nat Sobel, and my editor, Henry Ferris. I also owe a tremendous debt to Michael Morrison for believing in the books, Lisa Gallagher for watching my back, Debbie Stier for her much-needed calming influence and David Brown, the man behind the curtain of those insane tours.
About the Author
Tim Dorsey was a reporter and editor for the Tampa Tribune from 1987 to 1999 and is the author of the novels Florida Roadkill, Hammerhead Ranch Motel, Orange Crush, Triggerfish Twist, The Stingray Shuffle, and the upcoming Cadillac Beach. He lives in Tampa, Florida. Visit his website at www.timdorsey.com
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Praise for TIM DORSEY’s
CADILLAC BEACH
“His sixth and arguably his most raucous and hilarious tale yet…It skewers the righteous, gives us the quirky backside of Florida history, has plenty of gun battles and fireball explosions, and once again shows why Dorsey is acquiring a reputation as his state’s most satiric and entertaining author…Thoroughly disrespectful and side-splittingly funny.”
—Denver Rocky Mountain News
“Another exhilarating road trip…[A] certifiably zany romp around Miami…The denouement is as surprising and as entertaining as everything else in this rude, often hilarious novel.”
—Sarasota Herald-Tribune
“[A] madcap romp…Tim Dorsey is the Three Stooges of mystery fiction…But Dorsey is not just about ‘nyuk nyuk nyuk’ and fingers-in-the-eyes jokes. Dorsey’s offbeat humor is tempered with perceptive social commentary and a wry, affectionate though clear-eyed look at the vagaries of Florida. It’s always amazing to see how over the top Dorsey can go, yet still stay so close to the truth about the Sunshine State.”
—Fort Lauderdale Sun-Sentinel
“Hysterical…Can’t put it down…Tim Dorsey’s titles barely hint at the semi-tropical madness within. The entire series is an orgy of cocaine, massacres, alligators, hurricanes, corruption, strippers, environmental rape, and the undeniably appealing Serge…Catch him.”
—San Diego Union-Tribune
“Entertaining…quite funny…irreverent and loving at the same time…[Dorsey] leaves the reader…gasping for breath.”
—Washington Post Book World
ALSO BY TIM DORSEY
Florida Roadkill
Hammerhead Ranch Motel
Orange Crush
Triggerfish Twist
The Stingray Shuffle
Credits
Cover design by Amy Halperin
Cover illustration by Bill Mayer
Copyright
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, organizations, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental and beyond the intent of either the author or the publisher.
CADILLAC BEACH. Copyright © 2004 by Tim Dorsey. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of PerfectBound™.
PerfectBound™ and the PerfectBound™ logo are trademarks of HarperCollins Publishers, Inc.
Microsoft Reader March 2006 ISBN 0-06-117201-4
* * *
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Dorsey, Tim.
Cadillac Beach: a novel / Tim Dorsey.—1st ed.
p. cm.
ISBN 0-06-052046-9 (hardcover)
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
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