Tropic of Stupid

by Tim Dorsey

Heather took a hard breath. “Make it a short story.”

  “No guarantees,” said Serge. “Back in the eighties, the cartels were shipping coke in ridiculous amounts, and this state got a little too hot, so they had planes start landing in unsuspecting places like Tennessee, Alabama, Georgia. One Florida pilot landed in Montgomery. His flight plan listed a short hop, but some alert person at the airport noticed an extra-large gas tank and four blades on a propeller that should have had three, meaning a long haul with a heavy load. They found the coke and flipped the pilot to testify for the feds. They put him in protective custody, and sealed all information about him. He was supposed to be as safe as it gets.”

  “Are you saying they got to him anyway?” asked Heather.

  Serge shook his head. “Someone pretending to be a defense lawyer called a clerk at the courthouse and was able to trick her into opening a file that she didn’t realize was supposed to be confidential, and she gave the address of his mother’s house, not too far from your field office, in fact. They sent two guys to knock on her door, and they didn’t even wait for her to open it. As soon as they heard ‘Who is it?,’ they cut loose through the wood with a pair of machine guns. Effectively shutting up the witness for the feds.”

  “I remember when that happened,” said Bobby. “All over the papers on the east coast.”

  “Before my time,” said Heather. “But I’ve heard the older agents talk about it.”

  Serge held out his palms. “The human element. Weakest link in any plan. The only truly safe house is one nobody else knows about.”

  “What are you suggesting?” asked Bobby.

  “I know this state like my own face,” said Serge. “And when push comes to shove, I’ve got all the ultimate, tried-and-true fallback positions.”

  “So what now?” asked Heather.

  “Tell your office about Grayson’s murder, and your cold case, and that the suspect has had you under surveillance,” said Serge. “And that you’re making your own arrangements.”

  “I’ll need to go home to get my stuff,” said Heather. “I only keep a small overnight bag in the trunk of the Vic.”

  “Then that will have to be your stuff.” Serge stood. “The sooner we get moving, the better.”

  “But Serge,” said Bobby. “The police outside told us nobody can leave the park for a while.”

  Serge turned knowingly to Heather. “But you can get us out.”

  “Yes, I can.”

  “Then let’s get moving.”

  Police were questioning several rangers near the blockaded entrance to Myakka River State Park.

  Heather flashed her badge, and a pair of patrol cars backed up to clear exit space.

  The Crown Victoria with her dad inside rolled out of the park, followed by Serge and Coleman in a blue-and-white Ford product.

  The Cobra soon passed the Vic, leading them through the first light of day on their marathon odyssey of refuge. Shortly after leaving the park, Heather called her people at the field office and relayed the info that Serge had given her. “Right, Artemas Tweel, Homestead. . . . Okay, I’ll wait for your call . . .”

  The two-car convoy drove down the southwest coast of Florida, then across the Everglades before another turn south, jumping to Key Largo and the Overseas Highway.

  Somewhere in the middle of Big Pine Key, Heather’s phone rang. “. . . I see, I see, okay . . .” And she listened some more. “. . . Don’t worry, I’ll stay safe. Bye.”

  She hung up. Her dad was looking. “Well?”

  “Serge was right,” said Heather. “Tweel’s our guy. A team is at his house at this moment, and it’s just like Serge said, the corkboard and souvenir driver’s licenses and everything. They worked up a full background check, and he was either living or working near all the crime scenes at the times of the murders. Ocala, New Smyrna, Sebastian, Vero, everywhere.”

  “I told you Serge could be trusted,” said Bobby.

  Six hours after they had begun, the two cars pulled into a parking lot lined with natural limestone boulders. They all got out, and the ranger looked up at a red sign with a diagonal white stripe. “The Looe Key Reef Resort?”

  “Home away from home,” said Serge.

  “But I thought you were taking us to some kind of super-secret remote hideaway,” said Heather. “This is the only safe house I’ve heard of with a tiki bar.”

  “As safe as they come,” said Serge. “I know it seems counterintuitive on the side of a busy highway, but here’s the thing about the Keys: Visitors enjoy staying in the upper and middle islands, but once they cross the Seven Mile Bridge, the lure of Key West is too much to resist, and they blaze right through, leaving these lower islands quiet and unruined. About the only people who stop are naturalists into the offshore geology and marine life.”

  “In other words we’re hiding in the obvious?” said Bobby.

  “As safe as if we’re on an uninhabited island. Follow me . . .” He led them into the combination motel office and dive shop.

  “Serge! . . .”

  “You’re back! . . .”

  “Got your favorite room ready! . . .”

  Heather turned to Serge. “This seems quite far from low-profile.”

  “I got this,” said Serge, facing the staff behind the counter. “Guys, I have an odd request.”

  “Nothing will surprise us anymore.”

  “I’m not here,” said Serge.

  “Yes, you are. Standing right in front of us.”

  “No, I mean this trip is classified.” He grabbed a postcard of the reef and gave it to Bobby. “If anyone asks, you don’t know me and my friends. We’re not staying here.”

  They handed him magnetic room keys. “You know we’ve got your back.”

  “Thanks again.” Then to Heather and Bobby: “Let’s get you settled. You’re going to love this place!”

  The afternoon dive boat returned. Night fell. The live band played. Suntanned people congregated in the tiki bar to compare notes about the day’s adventures.

  Serge and the gang sat around a table near the stage. “Check out this National Geographic! . . .”

  Heather was facing the other way toward the dance floor, watching Coleman’s flab jiggle as he twirled his shirt over his head. “Serge, this is a plan?”

  “Trust me.” He smiled and held up a faded magazine. “Loggerhead Key! . . .”

  Back up the archipelago in Islamorada, a sunbaked Chevelle raced down the Overseas Highway.

  Chapter 41

  5:50 a.m.

  Pickup trucks full of construction workers clustered in the dark.

  A few hundred yards up the road, someone quietly slipped out of a room at the Looe Key Reef Resort. Crushed gravel crunched under a pair of old Velcro sneakers as they walked away from the motel and the convenience store, then in silent solitude along an uninhabited and unlit stretch of the Overseas Highway. The sneakers finally reached the parking lot with all the trucks.

  Someone inside the Five Brothers Grocery Two unlocked the door, and the waiting crowd filed inside, followed by the sneakers worn by Serge.

  “Excellent, they’ve got the media noche,” Serge said to himself. “It’s like a Cuban but not. Different bread with a sweeter taste when you absolutely have to mix it up.”

  “Excuse me?” asked the woman behind the counter.

  “Just talking to myself,” said Serge. “I like the company. Anyway, super-thanks for opening a second place up here. I’d been going to the original on Southard in Key West since the eighties. The first time I was in there I got to meet the patriarch, you know, that old white-bearded dude. And I spotted a souvenir baseball cap with all five brothers on it that I just had to have, if you know anything about me, which you don’t. Yet. And I asked the old guy, how much? And I’ll be damned if he didn’t just up and hand it to me with a smile. Where does that ever happen in this insane world? Been ultra-loyal to the five bros ever since then.”

  The woman behind the counter smiled. “That w
as my father.”

  Serge gasped. “Imagine my pre-dawn luck! I’m in the presence of ancestral greatness! Pleased to make your acquaintance. Sorry about ‘old’ and ‘dude’ . . .” He ordered four Cuban breakfast sandwiches and an equal number of tall café con leches that he needed to have boxed up.

  The sneakers headed back along the side of the highway. It was the best routine, the best place, the best food, the best friends, and an incredible day laid out near that incredible reef. It was great to be alive, and Serge wanted to consume it all at once. He inhaled deeply and happily through his nostrils, taking in the invigorating aroma of the coffee and freshly baked Latin bread, trying to inhale life itself.

  Serge got back to the room where Coleman was wedged between a bed and the wall. He sat at the end of a mattress and clicked on the TV. CNN appeared, but Serge switched over to local news for the flavor. The weather came on, and the roll of fortune continued. A grade-A forecast for the day, including a marine report of calm seas and high visibility. Serge smiled. He always loved it when the local weather map on TV was a radar image of the Keys, which meant his existence was keeled. Then the news. A naked Florida man was tased by police after he asked them to. Coleman arose in a fog, and Serge walked over with one of the to-go cups. “Here, drink this. Café con leche is the magic cure for all that ails. Lots of caffeine, sugar and cream. You’ll need that if you’re not going to ruin our trip.”

  “Thanks.” Coleman ran a hand through a mop of hair and uncapped the cup.

  The next hour was the exquisite torture of nuclear anticipation and excitement. Serge checked his watch. At one minute past seven: “That’s polite enough.” He grabbed his box and went outside to the next room.

  Knock, knock, knock.

  Ranger Bobby answered.

  “What are you doing?” asked Serge.

  “You knocked.”

  “But you weren’t supposed to answer unless I gave the password,” said Serge.

  “What was the password?”

  “I forgot to make one.” He grinned and held out the warm box. “Breakfast in bed! Enough in there for Heather, too. I’m knocking on her door next. Tomorrow the password will be Five Brothers. And no hurry, but by the time you finish that, they should be boarding our boat.”

  “A reef trip? Are you kidding?” asked Bobby. “Given all that’s been going on, isn’t it better to stay in the room instead of taking a trip out to sea?”

  “Absolutely not,” said Serge. “You can’t think of staying here and not attending that offshore church. Besides, nobody can follow us, and we’ll have a three-sixty view for miles in all directions for any shit. What can possibly go wrong?”

  “Want me to make a list?”

  “Enjoy,” said Serge. “I’ll be back when they start loading the gear.”

  Serge returned to his room and inventoried his new diving backpack, then went out to the car for a flex-cooler of Gatorade. He didn’t even realize it, but out of subconscious habit, he reflexively felt under the back bumper. He stopped.

  “What’s this?”

  He pulled loose a small magnetic GPS tracker and stared at it in his hand. “But how? . . . I’m always careful . . . I know I checked the last time . . .” And his mind spun through all the places the car had been recently. He closed his eyes and kicked the dirt. “Dammit.” He thought back to when he was in Bobby’s apartment in the woods at Myakka. After he found the body, and before the police arrived, the Cobra had been sitting alone outside with the killer still lurking who knew where. In their rush to leave the park, he hadn’t made his mandatory bug sweep. “I must be losing my edge.” Serge looked around. What to do? He dropped the tracker and stomped it to pieces in the gravel. Then he went in the motel office.

  “Hey, Serge!” said the manager on duty.

  “Has anybody been asking about me?”

  “That’s what I was just about to tell you. A guy wanted to know if you were here.”

  Serge grabbed the edge of the counter with white knuckles. “And what did you say?”

  “I told him no, just like you asked,” said the manager. “But he seemed to be a really good friend, knew all about you. Oh, and he said he was related, a distant cousin or something, so I thought you’d want to know.”

  “Did he check in here?”

  “Not with me.”

  “Appreciate it.” Serge turned to leave.

  “You and your friends still going out this morning?”

  “Wouldn’t miss it.” The office door closed.

  Serge was in focused motion on a perimeter sweep. First, outward for counter-surveillance and anyone who might have eyes on the motel, then inward, checking the lot and surrounding streets for a Chevelle. He returned with no signs of the car. Now they definitely had to go on that boat trip, for the safety of the open sea until he could figure how to slip them to a more secure location. There was a familiar clanging sound as he stepped out back onto the dock. The crew had started loading the tanks for the scuba contingent.

  “Hey, Captain Katie.”

  “Hey, Mr. First-In-Last-Out.” She stowed life preservers. “The visibility is supposed be an incredible hundred feet. You picked the perfect day to bring your friends.”

  Serge hoisted his backpack over the port railing and onto the boat. “They’re going to love it!”

  He crossed the dock and knocked on the back door of one of the rooms. “Five Brothers.”

  Bobby opened again, wearing swim trunks. “You still sure about this?”

  “More than ever now. You can board.”

  Serge walked to the next room. Knock, knock. “Five Brothers.”

  Inside: “What?”

  “The new password.”

  She opened up. “Did we have an old one?”

  “That’s why it’s new—” He stopped. In guilty headlights. Yowza. He’d never imagined her in a tasteful one-piece, and now he tried not to because it was his friend’s daughter.

  “Something the matter?”

  “No! Why? I wasn’t checking you out. Shazam! Great visibility! We’re boarding!” He trotted off for the dive shop.

  “You’re back?” The manager glanced in the direction of the dock. “Shouldn’t you be on the boat?”

  “Last-second thing.” He opened his wallet and pointed at a peg board. “I need one of those.”

  The manager looked at it and turned back around to Serge. “But your certification’s lapsed. You’re not going to . . .”

  “Wouldn’t think of it . . . Oh, and one of those, too.”

  “But you’re snorkeling.”

  “It’s a souvenir.” Serge grinned impishly. “And they’re gadgets.”

  Fifteen minutes later, the crew did a head count of the thirteen seated passengers. Serge also did a head count. Well, not really a head count. A critical analysis. He searched each face for clues. First, he eliminated all the women, then all the men who were with women. That just left four young divers who didn’t fit the age range. Also, Serge had worked up a profile in his head: The guy seemed to not want to get caught, and getting on that boat with them would have left him cornered. So far so good. But Serge couldn’t uncoil until they were underway.

  Finally, the engine revved up and they pushed off from the dock, and Serge slumped back in relief.

  The Kokomo Cat II idled down the canal as it had done a thousand times, then throttled up when it hit the channel, spraying water and heading straight out into a perfect sunny day.

  Heather and Bobby were smiling for a change. She pointed off the port side at an anchored house boat flying a Jolly Roger and beach chairs in the sand. “What’s that?”

  “Picnic Island,” said Serge. “And up there is Little Palm, where I had my honeymoon.”

  “I didn’t know you were married.”

  “Neither did I,” said Serge. “I mean I took the vows, but Jesus, the strings attached!”

  “What happened?”

  “Guest towels. I’ve put it in the rearview.”
<
br />   People on the houseboat waved, and the divers waved back.

  “Why is your face all white?” asked Heather.

  “Taking one for the planet,” said Serge, passing her the pump bottle. “Use this stuff, safe for the coral . . .”

  The pontoons slapped the swells as they rounded the last island in Newfound Harbor and it was all ocean from there.

  “So beautiful.” Heather adjusted the strap on her mask. “I think I’m really going to enjoy this.”

  “Would be hard not to,” said Serge. “Now about the severed ear . . .” And he regaled them with tales of old drama out on those waters.

  They arrived at a mooring buoy, and the first mate reached with the hooked pole again.

  “It’s low tide,” Captain Katie announced to the passengers. “So stay away from where those whitecaps are breaking over the reef or you could slam into the coral.”

  The mate unsnapped the chains on the sides of the boat.

  “Okay, everyone,” said Katie. “The pool’s—”

  Serge plunged off the edge.

  “—open. No surprise there.”

  The others jumped in and bobbed in mild waves.

  “Heather! Bobby!” said Serge. “Look under the boat! There’s a goliath grouper! And circling us the other way is a great barracuda. Don’t worry, he’s just curious.”

  “Holy cow!” said Heather. “Where did that swarm of little fish come from?”

  “Yellowtails.” Serge pointed up to where Coleman was still aboard the boat in an inflated safety vest, heaving over the railing. “He’s serving lunch.”

  And it went on like that, Serge zestfully beckoning them to follow. “I know the best place to see reef sharks!”

  “Sharks?” said Heather.

  “They’ve seen a million divers out here and know we’re not food. They like to patrol the tops of some coral formations.” He held up his GoPro on a wrist strap. “I need footage! Come on! . . .”

  It was indeed an ideal day to be out on that reef. And it was almost all theirs. Just a handful of other, widely spaced boats, including one arriving from Bahia Honda State Park.

  Back ashore, on one of the Torch Keys, a tourist paid cash for a small rental boat with a Bimini top.