Coconut Cowboy (21 page)

 

Chapter
TWENTY-SEVEN

THE HOLE

T
hey reached the bottom twenty feet below.

The support crew waiting above in the house didn't venture near the edge for fear of causing a secondary cave-­in. It was all over-­the-­horizon communication.

“How's it going?”

“We're fine,” said Peter. He had a six-­foot-­long metal pole, thin but heavy, like a rebar. The topsoil of the hole's floor was soft, like plowed dirt. The only compacted areas were under their feet.

“Stand perfectly still and don't take a step,” Peter told Slower. Then he began poking the pole down into the dirt in a precise matrix of half-­foot intervals—­only moving forward once he had cleared the area ahead. He turned around at the hole's southern wall and headed northwest. The pole thrust down again but didn't penetrate as far. Two more nearby thrusts with the same result. He extended the testing radius and the pole descended to its usual depth.

A shout echoed upward. “Think I've got something.”

“What is it?” asked an unseen voice.

“Tell you in a minute.” Peter unclipped an entrenching tool from his belt, got down and began digging. Soon the tiny shovel was back on his belt and Peter used his gloved hands to carefully whisk away the last bits of dirt like an umpire at home plate. He was used to the anxiety of sinkholes. Not dead bodies. He jackknifed and dry-­heaved. A moment to compose.

Another upward shout. “Found him.”

Peter unhooked his harness and told Slower to do the same. The ropes went back up, and investigators from the coroner's office attached the two clasps to opposite ends of a human-­length mesh-­metal basket used in helicopter rescues. Now it was recovery.

Peter grabbed the pulley lines until the stretcher rested on the bottom. “Slower, come help me.”

Unpleasantness began.

They dug a moat of sorts around the body and fit the bag over it upside down. Then they rolled Martin into the stretcher. Peter gave two tugs on the rope. “Good to go.”

He stared straight up as the litter slightly rotated on its ascent, rising into the floodlights hanging from the I-­beam.

Slower was looking the other way. He approached one of the sinkhole walls that they hadn't explored yet. To himself: “What's this?”

A corner of a clear plastic bag. Slower glanced back at Peter, still looking up with focus. The younger man grabbed the plastic and tugged. It began emerging. Green-­and-­white paper. “The money.” He pulled some more.

From behind: “What the hell are you doing?”

Slower spun around to hide the discovery. “Nothing.”

Peter looked up again. “Uh-­oh.”

Faint vibrations became a rumble.

“Get away from there!” Peter yelled as he lunged.

Too late.

Above:
“Everyone out! Now!”

The hole's western wall came down with fury.

It had been supporting three more of the home's foundation piers, which gave way, taking out sixty square feet of floor. A bedroom wall collapsed, along with half of the adjacent kitchen.

Everyone who had evacuated onto the lawn watched high-­velocity plumes of dust shoot out sideways from the crawl space and front door. The middle of the roof began to creak, then fell in halfway and lurched to a stop. Everyone held their breath. The roof stayed put, for now.

Sheriff Highsmith urgently swung his right arm toward the house. “Back inside!”

The firefighters grabbed searchlights and breathing masks and axes. They were first to the expanded hole. The dust still too thick for even the highest candlepower beam. “Can anyone hear me down there?”

Cough, cough.
“Yeah.”
Cough, hack.

“You okay?”

“Just hard to breathe,” Peter said with the front of his shirt over his mouth.

“I'm tossing down a mask,” yelled the firefighter. “Say something else.”

“Like what?”

“That's good enough.” He pitched the mask in the direction of the voice. “Got it?”

“Hit my leg.” He put it on.

“Okay,” shouted the rescuer. “Did the litter with the body fall back down there?”

“It's here.”

“Detach the clasp and hook it to your harness.”

“All right.”
Click
.

“Hang on. We're pulling you out.”

“Wait! You can't!”

“Why not?”

“The other guy's still here.” Peter fell to his knees and began digging. “I have to find him.”

“No time,” said the firefighter. “Everything's unstable and could go at any second.”

“But I have to.”

“It's not your call.” The rescue team began pulling the rope.

After a few seconds of tugging, the line gave out, zipping up through the pulley, and they all fell on their backs.

“Did it break?” asked one of the rescuers.

Another reeled in the rope until he came to the end. “No, here's the clasp. He unhooked it.”

They threw the line back down over the edge.

“Hook yourself up!”

Silence.

“Peter! Can you hear me? Answer!”

Peter just continued digging blindly in a widening circle. He cleared enough weight in dirt that the ground beneath him shifted with life. He plunged his hands and found Slower. Was it an arm? Leg?

“Peter! Answer us! . . .”

He clawed frantically in swirling directions, trying to find the head. “Here it is.” One hand burrowed under the shoulders, and the other reached the back of the skull. He pulled with everything he had. Dirt flew and Slower sprang up in a spastic fit of coughing and spitting dirt.

The young man broke down crying like a child, and Peter cradled his head in his arms. “You're okay now. I'm getting you out of here.”

“Peter! . . .”

“I got him. I'm grabbing the rope.”
Snap
. Then he got belly to belly with Slower and snapped the clasp to the second harness. “Just hang on to me and you'll be safe in no time.” The traumatized young man wrapped his arms tightly around Peter's neck.

“Peter, you ready?”

He looked upward into the ghostly, search-­beam-­lit haze. “You're going to have two on the line!” He gave the rope a pair of quick yanks, and rescuers began pulling. Except they didn't have the greased ease of the pulley. Just extra weight and heavy friction against the sinkhole's wall.

It became a tug-­of-­war. Firefighters and deputies on their rears, scrambling backward as their feet fought for purchase on the hardwood floor.

It was three feet up and two feet down, with jolts each time, dirt falling in, rescuers sliding toward the hole. Peter dug the toes of his shoes into the wall of clay and soil, trying to climb and aid their retrieval.

At first it was helping, but then after each of Peter's footholds, stuff began caving beneath them, sending up more of the enemy dust. Another jolt as the pair fell back a few feet and rescuers thudded to the floor above.

Word spread out on the lawn. Others ran inside without masks and grabbed the line.

“I think I see them!”

The tops of their heads rose even with the edge of the floor.

“Hold that line fast!”

Three of the team got down on their stomachs, reaching over the lip and grabbing the pair under their arms. They pulled them back out of the hole, then everyone hustled from the house as the floor where they had just been disappeared.

Peter sat on the grass as an EMT came over. “I'm fine.”

“Still have to check you out.”

Slower required a bit more. They irrigated his nose, mouth and eyes; gave him oxygen.

Vernon came up and crouched beside the young man. “How you feeling, son?”

Slower nodded.

Vernon leaned to his ear. “See the money?”

Another nod.

“Did Peter?”

He shook his head.

Vernon patted his arm. “You did great.”

The mayor went back to huddle with the city council.

“Well?”

“He saw the money.”

“What do we do?”

Vernon looked back at the house of cards. “Find a way to get in there when nobody's around.”

MIAMI

Balloons and strings of pennants. The aroma of grilling hot dogs. The salesman had a clip-­on tie and short-­sleeve dress shirt. He grinned with force and slapped the hood of a Fiesta. “Low miles, easy credit, better life.”

A prospective customer dabbed mustard from his mouth. “I don't know. We've had good luck with GM products. Something in a full-­size, like a Caprice or Impala.”

The salesman winced for effect. “Just sold the last one.”

A roar boomed behind them with heavy reverb effect. A DJ stood with a microphone outside the WPPT-­FM Party Parrot broadcast truck.
“ . . . I'm here with the Mobile Mayhem Van at a weekend blowout tent-­sale extravaganza you won't want to miss! With live music, free munchies, the Party Parrot's Bouncing Jugs Dancers, and prices so low you'll swear the owner went insannnnnnnnnnnnnnnne! . . .”

Another roar, this one up the road. The salesman spotted a car-­transport truck. “Wait,” he told the customer. “I think we might have something you want coming in on that trailer.”

He ran to the side of the lot and slid open the giant chain-­link delivery gate. The truck pulled in. Straps and chains released. New used cars began backing off the skids.

“There's a Caprice now,” said the salesman. “Let's take a test drive—­”

Suddenly, sirens and lights.

Nondescript sedans with tinted windows had been parked along the street. They now came to life and poured into the dealer­ship. Drug Enforcement agents jumped out with bulletproof vests and hands on holsters.

“Nobody move!”

A man in a parrot costume stopped spinning a sign.

The team brought in the drug-­sniffing dogs and trotted them alongside the transporter. They all stopped and barked at the Caprice. An agent opened a door and a German shepherd hopped onto the passenger seat, staring at the headrest. He received a bacon-­flavored treat as they sliced upholstery.

An agent shook a clear test tube that turned blue. Positive for heroin.

The drugs went in an evidence bag, and handcuffs went on the truck driver and car salesman. The Caprice went back up on skids, but this time a government impound truck.

Someone began walking away.

“Stop!” yelled an agent. “Who are you?”

“I was just shopping for a car when everything went crazy,” said the customer. “Are these men dangerous criminals?”

“Show me some identification and you can go.”

“Sure thing.”

LATER THAT NIGHT . . .

The regular gang gathered at their regular table in Lead Belly's. It was not a regular meal.

Steve was also there, back to wearing his plaid country-­boy shirt. “He actually saw the money?”

“Sure as day,” said Vernon. “We just have to come up with a plan to get it back.”

Jabow noshed a rib. “But given that we'll be doing most of the heavy lifting, a salvage fee would be in order, say a third.”

“The money's lost to me as it is,” said Steve. “Why not? As long as it still includes our side deal for my arrangements concerning a certain person.”

“Then it's settled.”

“So what's your plan?”

“We all drive out after dark tonight,” said Vernon. “The I-­beam is still up in the house. We just go down and collect our paycheck.”

“But none of us knows anything about sinkholes,” said Steve.

“What's to know? Anyone can work a pulley.”

“Smells risky to me,” said Steve.

“Have faith,” said Vernon. “Besides, it's my lucky night. There's a blue moon.”

“What's a blue moon?” asked Jabow.

Vernon shrugged.

“It's the second full moon of a month,” said Steve. “Lunar cycles are twenty-­nine-­and-­a-­half days, so it happens once every ­couple years or so.”

“Check out the IQ on Steve,” said Vernon.

The cell phone in the newcomer's pocket sounded a text alert. He checked the message from a Miami car lot. “Shit, I'll have to catch you later.”

He reached the restaurant's front door just as Sheriff Highsmith opened it. Accompanying DEA agents swiftly cuffed him. “Stephan DeVinsenzi, you are under arrest for importation and distribution of a controlled substance.”

The door closed.

“Right on schedule,” said Vernon, pulling apart barbecue.

“I thought we needed him to take care of Peter.”

“We do.” A big messy bite. “His lawyers will get him out by arraignment tomorrow.”

“Then why have him arrested in the first place?” asked Otis.

“So he won't be around tonight. We'll tell him we ran into some kind of trouble at the sinkhole,” said the mayor. “Then we won't have to split all that cash.”

“You planned this, didn't you?”

 

Chapter
TWENTY-EIGHT

SOMEWHERE ALONG U.S. HIGHWAY 44

R
adio check,” said Coleman. “My tummy's talking to me.”

“I'm hungry, too,” said Matt.

“Food it is.”

Serge exited the highway and scrutinized a dozen idling cars circling a building. “I'll blow my brains out if I have to wait in that drive-­through lane. We're going inside.”

The trio entered a glass side door and stepped up to the back of a shorter line. Parents herded laughing children. Teens tried to be popular. Other teens in restaurant uniforms hustled backstage, filling orders displayed on flat-­screen monitors that flashed red if they went past three minutes.

“Kids don't know how good they have it today,” said Serge. “In the sixties, we didn't get to run out to fast-­food joints on any whim. Relatives back then actually remembered who was in the family by seeing each other around the dinner table every night. The downside was the menu.”

“I had to eat liver,” said Coleman. “And gizzards.”

“Kids who got liver and gizzards didn't know how good they had it.” Serge craned his neck to see how their line was progressing. “Families in the Kennedy years experienced firsthand the struggle of clawing their way into the middle class, so they learned to economize. It wasn't half bad if your parents were ethnic and knew how to cook—­or had imagination at the grocery store. I rolled snake eyes on both counts. We ate roots.”

“Roots?” asked Matt.

“Every single night, the same thing, a totally root-­based diet,” said Serge. “Only the colors changed: potatoes, beets, and turnips that came in huge mesh bags from Publix. The worst part is they'd just skin them and throw 'em in a big pot of boiling water, then stick these steaming bulbs on my plate, and I had to finish the job crushing it all down with a fork. I think about it every time I watch a depressing documentary on nineteenth-­century Ireland. And the beet juice would run and make the potatoes pink.”

“No meat?”

“Hamburger, which kids normally love,” said Serge. “But they boiled that, too!”

“Boiled hamburger?” said Coleman.

Serge nodded. “Started out promising enough with a frying pan, except then they poured in a bunch of water and put a lid on it, and what ended up on my plate was an indestructible gray shoe sole. Don't get me wrong: I'm totally grateful.”

“Doesn't sound like you are.”

“It's just that every time I see a bunch of young ­people using credit cards to buy french fries, I want to grab them by the necks and say, ‘You need to wake up from this dream in a fucking hurry! After graduation, you're flying straight into a force-­five economic hurricane! Do you want to eat pink fork-­track potatoes and shoe-­sole hamburgers the rest of your life?' ”

“When you put it that way,” said Matt.

“Totally cherished childhood memories of appreciation.” Serge glanced around the line again. “And you know what my main sixties memory of eating was?
Not
eating.”

“You didn't eat?”

“It's like my folks forgot they were kids once, too. They constantly thought I was lying about the gag reflex.”

“They thought I was lying, too!” said Coleman.

“But we really were gagging.” Serge stuck a finger in his mouth for emphasis. “It's how nature programs kids to survive into adulthood: an extra-­sensitive throat reflex carried over from caveman days so we wouldn't eat the poison berries. I kept trying to tell my parents this, but it was always the same answer: ‘This isn't a cave, and that's not poison. Now eat your parsnips.' ”

“So you didn't eat?”

“In hindsight, I believe these were the first signs that I had gifts of extraordinary behavioral stamina. I remember an entire childhood of sit-­in protests at my plate, frozen like a statue staring at uneaten meals, hour after hour, long after everyone else had left the table because back then you weren't allowed to get up until you cleaned your plate. Then I'd stay sitting into the night while the grown-­ups went in the other room and watched a prime-­time lineup of intriguing TV that I could only hear.
I Spy, Ironside, The Courtship of Eddie's Father
. Finally came bedtime, and they sent me to my room hungry.”

“That sounds like abuse.”

“You can only judge through the context of the times,” said Serge. “What's an expression of love in one generation brings social workers to the house today. Besides, nature also programs children to adapt to harsh environments, and I developed a highly ordered survival skill set. At every supper my family would also place a glass pitcher of milk in the middle of the table, along with a bag of Wonder Bread. Knowing that I'd inevitably be thrown back into the
Deer Hunter
bamboo cage they called my bedroom, I loaded up like Gunga Din on that bread and milk, but I had to be coy, using my fork to move mashed roots around my plate, station to station, creating the illusion of cooperation. Naturally everyone else in my family has completely different recollections of all this.”

A kid with a bag of food bumped into Serge while texting on his phone. “Oh, excuse me.”

“Excuse me!” said Serge. “Did you buy that with a credit card?”

“Yeah, why?”

“You need to wake up from this dream in a big f—­!”

One minute later. “Serge, everyone's staring at us again.”

“Because they can't handle the truth.” Serge checked his watch. “Maybe we should have tried the drive-­through after all. Anyway, every time I'm in a fast-­food restaurant, you know what I think about?”

“No.”

“The space race.”

Matt scribbled in a notepad. “Elaborate.”

“Nobody cares now, but back when McDonald's hamburgers were nineteen cents, everyone was shitting their pants over the Russians dropping atomic bombs from Sputnik. So our space program became a national obsession. And you know how the Golden Arches always likes to beat the latest craze to death like ninja turtles or
Toy Story
? When I was a kid it was genuinely educational. They gave me a folded road map, except it was a map of the solar system with Ronald McDonald floating around in an astronaut helmet. I got home and built this hellacious cardboard space capsule in the center of the living room and taped up the McDonald's planetary chart, pretending it was my view out the window. Then I'd sit crouched over in my spaceship, training for long-­duration flight that was required to land on the moon. Again, focus.”

“What about your parents?” asked Matt. “Didn't they mind that big mess in the living room?”

“Normally it would have gone right in the trash,” said Serge. “Except I had reached an age of intellectual curiosity and begun exploring how all the contraptions around our house operated inside. The way I figured, I was just a kid, and if I could take it apart, they surely could put it back together. Then my mom would walk in the kitchen and see me standing on a chair at the counter, holding a screwdriver with disassembled components all over the place. ‘What the heck's going on?' ‘I'm intrigued how the blender works.' So I'm hunched down in my capsule watching another Gemini launch on TV that all three networks covered nonstop from rollout to splashdown. And I can hear my parents whispering: ‘How long has he been in there?' ‘Going on five hours.' ‘Has he moved?' ‘No.' ‘What do you think he's doing? . . .' ” Serge shrugged at Matt. “I wanted to tell them about the training program, but the vacuum of space doesn't carry sound.”

“What happened?”

“My mom said something like ‘I don't want that piece of junk in the house,' and my dad said, ‘He's staying still. Let's leave well enough alone.' ”

Coleman looked around the restaurant's interior, dominated by lime green and banana yellow. Then his eyes went up to a lighted menu board with an overwhelming volume of nutritional data. “I've never been in a fast-­food place like this before.”

“It's one of the nuevo healthy bistros where you pay more not to have heart attacks,” said Serge. “The gimmick here is they air-­fry everything.”

“How do you air-­fry?”

“You don't.” Serge bobbed anxiously on the balls of his feet. “They're secretly baking stuff in super-­heated air tunnels.”

Coleman looked back up at the menu board. “What are New Age Cookies?”

“Gluten-­free,” said Serge. “Baked by prisoners of conscience.”

“Only two more ­people ahead of us,” said Coleman. “Hey look: The girl at the cash register has a tip cup. I've also never seen that in a fast-­food place.”

“Another offspring of these trendy new spots,” said Serge. “And I'm all for it. That kid could be out with her friends eating designer yogurt like it's an entitlement, but instead she's in here learning a work ethic for crappy pay. And the ­people don't really tip; they just occasionally toss loose change.”

“One more person ahead of us,” said Matt. “Have you checked this guy out?”

“He's been on my radar ever since we got in line,” said Serge.

“On his cell the whole time,” said Matt. “Talking really loud.”

“That's the point,” said Serge. “He needs everyone to hear.”

“ . . . Then send in the lawyers. He's not the first competitor I've crushed. Don't these amateurs ever learn? . . .”

“He's got one of those expensive European shirts like soccer fans wear,” said Coleman.

“Except I caught the logo on the front when he turned around. It's a Ferrari shirt.”

“ . . . Remember to forward my calls to Saint Kitts this weekend. And phone the resort. They stuck me with a dump of an eight-­hundred-­dollar room last time . . .”

“Plus those fancy sunglasses on top of his head,” said Coleman.

“Ferrari sunglasses.”

“You think he likes Ferraris?” asked Coleman.

“He
owns
one.” Serge pointed out the restaurant window. “And it's not good enough that he has the car. He's got to wear all the Ferrari shit so ­people know about it when he's forced to be on foot.”

“It's parked in the handicapped space,” said Matt. “That's breaking the law.”

Serge bent over and pointed again. “Worse. He's got a handicapped tag on his mirror.”

“But he doesn't look handicapped,” said Coleman. “In fact, he looks in great shape.”

“He is.”

“ . . . Another interview request? Unless it's
Time,
tell them I'm at the house in Marseilles. Once you've been on enough magazine covers . . .”

“But how can he have a handicapped tag?”

“Easier than you'd think,” said Serge. “You just need a doctor's note. And if all those celebrities can score exotic pharmaceuticals in Malibu by saying they've been on edge lately, a handicapped car tag is child's play.”

“That's not right,” said Matt.

“ . . . So change distributors. Doesn't he know everyone wants my business? He'll be in a bread line before I'm finished with him . . .”

“I hate to stereotype, but I've seen the type,” said Serge. “Nobody else matters. If he wants extra space so his precious car doesn't get scratched, then the wheelchair ­people will just have to pick up the slack.”

“He's up to the register now,” said Coleman. “She's ready to take his order, but he's still on the phone.”

“ . . . Yeah, a supermodel again. But you get tired of that . . . No, I'm not going to tell you what she's into . . . Okay, I'll let you guess . . .”

Serge tapped him on the shoulder.

“ . . . Hold on.”
The man turned around. “Can't you see I'm on the phone?”

“That's what I wanted to talk to you about.” Serge gestured behind them. “There's a pretty long line, and that girl's waiting to take your order. But she's just a kid and too polite to say anything.”

“So?”

“So the proper thing to do is get off the phone,” said Serge. “Please, come join us in the merriment of polite society.”

“Unlike you losers, I have important business.” Then back into his cell:
“No, just some jack-­off . . . Tell that other idiot I can have him fired with one phone call . . .”

“Serge,” said Coleman. “You know how you asked me to remind you to count to ten when your face gets that color? . . .”