Authors: Tim Dorsey
S
erge got stacked up behind five cars at a traffic light.
“Screw it!”
He cut the corner through a gas station, briefly leaving the ground as he sailed over a curb where there was no exit.
“Shoot him?” asked Andy.
“That’s what I said.”
“Ha!” blurted Guillermo. “The test!”
“What test?”
“Don’t worry,” said Guillermo. “Just to see if you’re loyal.”
“Shoot him,” Juanita repeated.
Andy raised his arm, lowered it, raised it again.
“Go on, shoot me,” said Guillermo, knowing he was her favorite and remembering how she’d rigged his own test in the beginning. “What are you waiting for?”
Juanita stepped up to his side. “What
are
you waiting for?”
Andy raised his arm again. This is what he’d come for. Why couldn’t he close the deal?
“I’ll make it easy,” said Guillermo, pushing himself up from the table to create a larger, swaying target.
Andy aimed the gun at his face, hand shaking heavily.
“Look,” said Guillermo. “It’s not loaded. So make her happy and pull the trigger.”
Andy pulled the trigger.
Bang.
Guillermo’s eyes went wide. He grabbed his neck, blood running between his fingers.
“Son of a bitch!”
He looked at Juanita. “Madre, you left a round in the chamber. Have to be more careful.”
“I know.”
“Well, it’s just another flesh wound, like I don’t have enough.” He grabbed paper towels. “But this is getting ridiculous.”
“Guillermo,” said Juanita, “when I said ‘I know,’ I meant I know I left a round in the chamber.”
“What? Why?”
“You used to be magnificent. What’s happened to you?”
“But I’ve always done everything you asked.”
She turned to Andy. “Shoot him. This time steady it with two hands.”
Andy stretched out both arms. Guillermo backed up and crashed into a china hutch. Adrenaline. Liquor haze parted.
“Madre,” shouted Guillermo, lighting up with recognition, “that’s Andy! Andy McKenna!”
“Andy?”
“I recognize him from the hotel room with Ramirez.”
Juanita shook her head. “You’re just saying that now to save your hide. If it really was Andy, you would have mentioned it when we first came in.”
“That was because of the whiskey, but now I’m sure!”
“You disappoint me.”
“Just listen,” said Guillermo.
Juanita smiled at her new recruit. “You’re not Andy, are you?”
He shook his head.
She looked back at Guillermo. Out the side of her mouth: “Shoot him.”
Instead, she felt the barrel of a Glock against her temple.
“I’m not Andy. But I
am
Billy. Billy Sheets, son of the mother you killed. And the father you tried to.“ He raised the gun and cracked her in the side of the head.”Now go around the table and stand next to him.”
A woody station wagon skidded up the driveway of a hacienda south of Miami.
Serge ran through the front door with gun drawn. “Andy? Are you here? . . .”
He turned the corner into the dining room. “Andy, don’t shoot!”
“Fuck it.” He steadied the gun in two hands like Juanita had instructed.
“Easy with that trigger,” said Serge. “You’re shaking.”
“Good! . . . You two ready to die?”
“Let’s calm down and talk,” said Serge. “This isn’t the Andy I know. You haven’t shot yet, which means something.”
“Yes, I have.”
Guillermo pointed at his neck.
Serge raised his eyebrows. “Okay, but you haven’t shot twice.”
“Shut up!” Andy stretched his arms to the fullest.
“Don’t make any sudden moves,” said Serge. “I’m coming up behind you.”
“What do you care? I thought you wanted ’em dead almost as much as me.”
“Not by your hand. Mine are already dirty.”
“He’s crazy!” said Guillermo.
“You ain’t seen nothing yet,” said Serge. He stepped beside the boy and slowly reached. “Carefully let go of the trigger and I’m going to take the gun, okay?”
Andy stood rigid. As Serge’s hand grabbed the top of the barrel, an index finger uncurled.
The youth let go the rest of the way and fell crying into one of the dining table’s chairs. “I let my family down.”
“Just the opposite.” Serge took aim. “Where’d you leave the Challenger?”
“Up the street.”
“Get in it, go back to the motel and forget everything.”
“But—”
“I’ve got it from here. This isn’t your turf. Now go.”
Andy stood up and went out the front door.
Serge motioned with the gun. “Have a seat.” The pair slid forward and pulled out chairs.
Serge grabbed his own on the other side of the table. They sat facing each other.
“What are you doing?” asked Juanita.
“Waiting for dark.” Serge leaned back, bracing the gun against his stomach. “Now no more talking.”
FOUR A. M.
“Where are we?”
Serge poked the gun into Guillermo’s back. “Keep walking.”
The air atop the Miami skyline was electric with decorative floodlights bathing the sides of banks and offices. A bridge over the bay glowed blue underneath like a car pimped with neon tubes.
A different story down in the dark streets south of the MacArthur Causeway.
Underpass world. Shopping carts, malt liquor bottles. The lobster shift of bums begged at red lights.
Serge kept the pistol aimed as he approached yet another construction site and pushed down a loose stretch of chain-link fence that had previously been vandalized by graffiti artists. He waved them through, then picked up the gym bag at his feet and followed.
“What’s in the bag?” asked Guillermo.
“You’ll find out soon enough.”
MONDAY
E
ight
A.M.
Morning rush, downtown Miami.
Traffic crawled. Honking. People on phones, shaving, applying makeup.
Movement began at one of the high-rise condos under construction.
Sixty stories above Biscayne Boulevard, a worker sat in a small control booth with green-tinted windows. The booth slid along grooved tracks in the arm of a massive crane.
When the operator was in position, the booth stopped. A lever went forward.
Down on street level, a temporary fence with N
O
T
RESPASSING
signs surrounding the work site. A steel girder began rising from the ground.
Tied beneath the beam were two long stretches of thick rope that weren’t supposed to be there. The other ends trailed behind large piles of construction material and debris concealing the view to the road.
When the ascending beam reached the second floor, the rope pulled two people to their feet.
The feet left the ground.
Madre and Guillermo were three stories up before anyone noticed. Then
everyone
noticed. They screamed and waved at the crane operator, who smiled and waved back. People called police on cells; others ran along the fence, trying to find someone in a hard hat on the other side. The rest simply looked up in horrified shock.
Madre and Guillermo passed the fourth floor, hands tied behind their backs, kicking and wiggling at the ends of their nooses.
By the fifth floor, wiggling became spasmodic twitches. Madre went limp by the seventh, but Guillermo held on for two more.
The girder kept going up, higher than most of the neighboring buildings, which no longer blocked a stiff onshore wind at that height.
Word finally reached the crane operator. A level yanked back. The girder shuddered to a stop. Fifty stories above the boulevard—with magnificent views of Key Biscayne and South Beach, all the way to distant Fort Lauderdale—Madre and Guillermo swung side by side in the breeze.
GULF COAST OF FLORIDA
T
he Final Four.
Serge, Coleman, City and Country.
Not much had changed.
“Dammit, Serge! You said you were taking us to a fantastic resort!”
“Yeah,” added Country. “With an incredible pool.”
Serge innocently held out his hands. “What? You don’t like it?”
“
This
place?” said City.
“But it’s a historic mom-and-pop!” Serge looked up with a glow in his eyes. “The motel is one of the last shining examples of 1950s parasol architecture.”
“It’s in the middle of nowhere!”
“Actually between Fort Myers and Sarasota.”
“Same thing.”
“That’s why heritage survives! Developers haven’t had a chance to strip-mine this section of the Tamiami yet. Don’t you like the pool?”
“It’s hot,” said City, wading up to her stomach.
“I’m going back to the room!” said Country.
The door opened to number 31. Coleman was already there, after getting tossed from the pool for doing cannonballs.
“Make you a deal,” said Serge. “Watch the world-premiere screening of my spring break documentary, and I’ll take you to one of the best dinners of your life.”
The women looked at each other, then warily back at Serge.
“Swear?”
Serge held up two fingers like a Boy Scout.
“City,” said Country, pointing at a counter. “Grab the vodka. We’re going to need it.”
Everyone settled in with booze, snacks and joints as Serge hooked up the DVD player. He inserted a disc that had been edited and burned from a laptop. A thumb pressed the remote.
PLAY MOVIE
The show began. Students streaming into Panama City Beach, yelling out car windows, dragging coolers . . .
Two hours later, the TV showed a long-range shot of a giant crane hoisting a steel beam up into the downtown Miami sky.
Fade to black.
Serge hit pause.
He slapped his hands together. “What’d you think?”
“Have to admit,” said Country, “not as painful as I’d envisioned.”
“Still two hours of my life I’ll never get back,” said City.
“But it’s not over,” said Serge.
“You’ve got to be kidding.”
Serge aimed the remote.
PLAY
Large, white block letters filled the black screen.
EPILOGUE
Black dissolved to a sunny shore and a rolling montage narrated by Serge. The Eagles played in the background. The kids from Bahia Cabana waved good-bye and took off up A1A.
“
. . . It’s another tequila sunrise . . .
”
“
Spring break finally ended, and the students returned north with a lifetime of stories to tell. . . Except one . . .
”
A telephoto shot of a young man entering the lobby of the local FBI office, where Serge had dropped him.
“
. . . Andy McKenna was reunited with his father at an undisclosed location and assumed a new identity.
”
Four elderly women in leather leaned against the bar in the Iron Rhino Saloon.
“
. . . The G-Unit established themselves as regular fixtures in the Florida biker scene, took up baking with an Internet brownie recipe, and were last spotted at a local planetarium for the midnight Sergeant Pepper’s laser show . . .
”
A kiddie pool sat in a parking lot near Las Olas with a fully clothed man in the water.
“
.. . Agent Mahoney recovered from his wounded leg and continued an indefinite leave for ‘needed rest’. . .
”
Next: pandemonium in front of the shootout hotel, where Mahoney flashed a badge and limped away with a handle in his hand.
“
. . . The department didn’t know it yet, but Mahoney would never return to active duty, instead opting for a well-funded fishing retirement, thanks to the contents of the briefcase Guillermo left in a hotel room . . .
”
A dozen police cars screeched up to a downtown Miami construction site. A sixty-story crane slowly lowered a girder.
“
. . . To this day, the double murder of Guillermo and Madre remains unsolved . . .
”
As the girder came down, a growing crowd of onlookers watched from the street, including a homecoming queen from Indiana who ran crying up the sidewalk, followed by Johnny Vegas, pointing up in the air behind him. “But, baby, we don’t even know those people.”
The scene switched to a pair of incredibly sexy but angry women in the backseat of a ’73 Challenger.
“
. . . City and Country became less annoying, learned to appreciate Florida’s history and enthusiastically accompanied Serge across the state on his never-ending fact-finding mission . . .
”
The TV zoomed in on the vintage sign of their current motel.
T
HE
E
ND
.
“You made that last part up,” said City.
“Audiences have to like the characters,” said Serge.
“What about dinner?”
“You promised!”
“And I keep my word,” said Serge. “Let’s go.”
“Where?”
He spread his arms and smiled almost as wide. “Church!”
“You lied again!” said City. “I knew we couldn’t trust you!”
“This is bullshit,” said Country. “You’re crazy if you think I’m eating free pancakes.”
“Have faith.” Serge grabbed his keys.
A quick drive up the coast to Tampa, and the foursome was soon seated in a magnificent dining room.
“Now
this
is a restaurant,“ said City.”I’ve never been in Shula’s Steak House before.”
“You really had us going with that church business,” said Country, reading the menu on the side of a football. “I can’t believe you actually came through.”
“But this
is
church,” said Serge.
A waiter wheeled over a cart with exquisitely marbled slabs of meat for them to select.
Serge made an S with his fingers and whispered, “
Shula.
”
“What?” said the waiter.
Serge winked.
An hour later, dinner came to a spectacular conclusion. Country set a napkin in her plate. “I’m stuffed.”
“Me, too,” said City.
“But there’s more!” said Serge. “I got you a present!”
“You did?”
He placed a gift-wrapped box on the table.
Country looked up at him. “This is so . . . unlike you.”
“That’s the problem,” said Serge. “You judge by my work mode.”
“What can it be?” asked City.
“Let me get the bow off.”
Country opened the box. “Portable DVD player?”
Serge grinned. “Already has a copy of my documentary inside so you can watch it over and over!”
“Not exactly diamonds,” said Country. “But it’s sweet.” She leaned across the table and gave him a peck, then placed the player back in the box.
“Aren’t you going to watch it?” said Serge.
“We just did.”
“Not the bonus material.”
“Maybe some other time.”
“For me?” said Serge. “I did keep my promise on the dinner.”
“I guess we could watch it a little,” said City, smiling coyly. “Give us time to make room for dessert.”
“That’s the spirit,” said Serge. He took the player back out of the box, clicked through the menu and turned the screen around to face them.
“What’s this?” asked City.
“The ‘making of’ documentary,” said Serge. “I gave Coleman a second camera to capture my groundbreaking directorial technique.”
“It’s just a sidewalk and some sneakers. Does it change?”
“No. Coleman left the camera running from his shoulder.”
“I think I’m ready for dessert,” said Country.
“Me and Coleman are going to the bathroom,” said Serge. “I’ll have the waiter send over a menu.”
The women sat alone at the table, sipping what was left of their wine.
On the DVD player, Coleman’s feet began weaving—“
Whoops, having a little trouble here
”—then the view quickly accelerated toward the sidewalk, until lens cracks spread across the tiny screen and went black. The player returned to the previous menu.
Country leaned toward the screen. “What’s this other bonus thing here?”
“What?”
“It says ‘Alternate Ending.’”
“Play it.”
She pressed a button.
“Look,” said City. “It’s the inside of Shula’s Steak House . . .”
“. . . Now it’s the outside,” said Country.
The waiter came over. “Hope you’ll come back and see us again.”
“
Again?
We were going to have dessert.”
“But . . . ,” the waiter said haltingly. “The gentleman just paid.”
“He did what?”
They looked back at the small screen. A muscle car drove away from the restaurant.
“Don’t tell me—”
The women ran through the dining room and out onto the sidewalk, just in time to see Serge and Coleman speeding toward a bridge over Tampa Bay in the ’73 Challenger.