Coconut Cowboy (23 page)

“What?” said Peter.

The others fought to contain giggles.

“Hey,” snapped Vernon. “Peter's got a loving wife. I know what some of you are going home to tonight.”

“He's right,” said Jabow. “Peter's a lucky man.”

“Mary's a wonderful woman.”

“You're a good husband.”

“Give me a drumstick. Crispy, not original.”

They resumed dinner and popped a second round of beers.

“I have a question,” said Peter. “What's this Stand Your Ground law?”

“Levels the playing field,” Otis said with his mouth full. “They enacted it because there was too much burden on a crime victim to fully retreat. You had to be completely cornered before fighting back.”

“I totally agree with that,” said Peter. “If you're busy retreating and end up with your back to the wall, you decrease your odds.”

“But the law also had some unintended benefits,” said Jabow.

“Such as?”

“Well, before, if you picked a fight on the street with a complete stranger and started to lose and had to shoot him, you couldn't claim self-­defense. What's up with that?”

“Plus these new neighborhood watch groups are insanely dangerous,” said Otis.

“But
you're
in a watch group,” said Peter.

“Not us,” answered Jabow. “That other watch group. They scare the shit out of me, running around at night with guns, confronting ­people. It's just reckless.”

Vernon checked his watch again and closed the cooler. “Time's a-­wastin'.”

They piled out of the car and Jabow called Vernon aside. “Why'd you bring Peter along? I mean, with everything else that's been going on and all.”

“That's the whole point,” said Vernon. “I want to keep an eye on him. Who knows if he'll crack up and start blabbing before Steve gets out of jail.”

They headed back toward the street where the other gang was already waiting with bellies full of Arby's and Schlitz. But before the group could get there, one of them spotted something of greater concern and sounded the alarm.

“Hoodie!”

Vernon's team sprinted up the road, pulling down ski masks before surrounding the unknown pedestrian and aiming guns in a circular firing squad.

“Freeze!” shouted Jabow. “What the hell are you doing in this neighborhood?”

The person reached up and pulled the hood off his head.

“Oh, Senator Pratchett,” said Otis. “We thought you were someone else.”

“What is wrong with you guys?”

“But you were wearing a hoodie,” said Jabow.

“Because it's cold! It's just a hoodie!”

“Sorry,” said Vernon. “But what
are
you doing here?”

“Telling you to knock off this idiocy.” He pointed over his shoulder at a woman peeking out a bedroom window. “I just got back from the committee hearing in Tallahassee and there's too much heat right now, so stop these ridiculous patrols before someone gets hurt—­”

Bang
.

Jabow went down. “Ow, he shot me!”

The senator rolled his eyes at the sky.

Vernon snatched the gun away from Slow. “Why did you shoot him?”

“He looked scary to me.”

“But it's Jabow!”

Slow shrugged. “He was wearing a ski mask.”

“This is exactly what I'm talking about!” Pratchett bent down next to Jabow. “Let me see that arm . . . Good, just a flesh wound.”

“Except hospitals are required by law to report all gunshot injuries no matter how minor, and Slow is on probation,” said Vernon. “We need someone who has a clean record . . . Okay, everyone listen up. This is the plan. Peter here was the shooter . . .”

“What!” said the geologist.

“You'll be a hero. Just follow along.” Vernon faced the others. “Peter grazed Jabow while protecting us from an assailant who took the bullet and got away. Then we put out an alert for all area hospitals to be on the lookout for a bloody sleeper-­cell foreigner in a hoodie.” Vernon handed Peter the gun he had confiscated from Slow. “Point that in the air and fire.”

“Why?”

“We need gunshot residue on your hand.”

“Peter,” the senator said calmly. “Give me the gun. I'm taking Jabow to a doctor I know who will discreetly give him antibiotics and stitches. Or is that too complex?”

They all decided to call it a night and began walking at a more leisurely pace back toward the cars.

“So, Peter,” said Vernon. “How have you been holding up?”

From behind:

Bang.

“Ow, shit!”

Peter started turning around. “What was that?”

“Probably nothing.”

 

Chapter
THIRTY-ONE

A NEW DAY

B
irds chirped. A rainbow. Young boys with baseball cards in their bicycle spokes pedaled past the First National Bank of Wobbly.

The front door opened. Otis rushed in lugging a stack of newspapers bundled with twine. “Had to drive halfway to Orlando!”

Jabow adjusted the sling on his wounded arm. “We really made the
New York Times
?”

“I know!” Otis said ecstatically as he sliced the string with a pocketknife. “Most of our names are in it. I bought extra copies that we could mail to relatives.”

They all got busy reading.

“It mentions Lead Belly's . . .”

“And the neighborhood watch . . .”

“Our world-­famous sinkhole . . .”

The door opened again.

The gang looked up. “Hey, Senator! Have you seen today's
New York Times
?”

“Yes,” snapped Pratchett.

Otis quickly turned a page. “We're like celebrities!”

Jabow held up his own paper. “Senator, your name's in here, too. A lot more times than anyone else's.”

“You morons!”

“Why so crabby?” asked Otis. “The article makes you look great. Says the city of Wobbly cast more votes for you in the last election than there are ­people in the town.”

“Everyone, close your traps!”

“What's the matter?” asked Vernon. “We loved what you said on TV, sticking up for us in the committee hearing.”

“Stop calling attention to yourselves!” said Pratchett. “It doesn't take much digging around here.”

“So what do you want us to do?”

“Shut it all down!”

“What's that mean?”

“The speed trap, the neighborhood watch, and I know you're still overpumping at the water plant,” said the senator. “Most important of all, make sure nothing happens to Peter Pugliese. Not even a splinter.”

“What do you mean?” said Vernon.

“I got a pretty good idea what you've been doing on the side with your Miami friends,” said Ryan. “And normally that's your business. But right now, if anything suspicious happens to him, it'll bring in the FBI and put this whole place under martial law.”

“Would they still let us have Founders' Day?”

“Shut up.”

CLEWISTON

A fit young man in a Ferrari shirt sat tied to an uncomfortable motel room chair. He looked toward the dresser, where his captor had his back to him, working on something unseen.

“I already gave the cookie money back! Please let me go!”

“Put a sock in it!” said Serge. “You think that just because you have tons of money, you can poop on everyone else?”

The man continued watching Serge with confused dread. “W-w-­what are you going to do to me?”

“This is what!” Serge spun and ran toward the chair, seizing the hostage by the hair on the back of his head. “Eat the fucking Dorito taco!”

“No! Not that!”

“Eat it!”

“I won't!” He clenched his lips tight.

A cell phone rang. Serge answered with his free hand.

“You ditched me again! I waited all night at the motel!”

“Matt, something unforeseeable came up—­”

“I won't eat the taco!”

Slap
.

“Taco? What's going on?”

“I'm losing reception . . .” Serge threw the phone in the corner, then pinched the hostage's nose shut until he had to come up for air. “In goes the taco!”

“Mgrmmghphmmm . . .”

Serge stepped back as the man spit out what he could.

Coleman stumbled over with a joint and giggled. “He's got guacamole all over his face.”

“For the rich, this is worse than water-­boarding.”

“That's it?” said Coleman. “You're only going to make him eat a taco?”

“Just batting practice,” said Serge. “I've been planning this one for so long, but never had an asshole in the right tax bracket. All the logistics are already in place.”

Serge duct-­taped the man's mouth, then gave him a booster shot of tranquilizer. The prisoner's chin fell to his chest.

“What now?” asked Coleman.

“Back to the Ferrari,” said Serge. “I like how it handles.”

A half hour later, the sports car pulled out of another rental business with a small moving trailer in tow. It skirted the under­side of Lake Okeechobee and turned into a parking lot surrounded by a fence topped with spools of barbed wire. Row after row of garage-­type doors.

Coleman accidentally inhaled a tiny roach, and washed it down with Southern Comfort. “You're going to rent a storage unit?”

“Already have one.” Serge pulled the Ferrari up to unit 127. “Told you the logistics were in place.”

He twisted a combination lock and raised the door.

“Look at all these bags,” said Coleman. “They're like giant sacks of fertilizer.”

“Fifty pounds each.” Serge hoisted the first one onto his shoulder.

“How many are there?”

“Fifty.” Serge walked to the back of the trailer and tossed the bag inside.

“But what's in them?” asked Coleman.

“Let me give you an impenetrable hint: Read the labels.”

Coleman crouched and slowly moved his lips. “Where on earth did you get this stuff?”

“Only takes money and the Internet,” said Serge. “And it's far easier to procure than fertilizer, because that contains nitrates that can be converted into explosives. But this stuff is totally harmless. It's just that average citizens never have the imagination to ask for it. You simply find a big distributor that supplies the kind of massive factories you see all the time on cable shows about how things are made.”

“You're going to make things?”

“I won't be able to do anything if you don't stop yapping and give me a hand.”

Coleman strained to raise a bag and decided to just drag it on the ground. “Serge, help me get it over the bumper.”

“Here you go.”

Thud.

Coleman paused and stared back at the Ferrari's trunk.

Bang, bang, bang
 . . .

“Serge, I think your new friend has a question.”

“Soon he'll have more answers than he'll know what to do with.”

Thud . . .

Eventually the last sack landed in the trailer, and Serge wiped his hands on his pants. “That about does it. Forty-­seven bags for me, three for you.”

They closed up the storage unit and headed south again. The Ferrari left Lake Okeechobee behind and dove down into the vast low-­horizon wasteland of sugarcane country. No traffic, just a raised berm of a road that let them see thirty miles in all directions across the top of the fields. The road ran alongside a drainage canal of deceptive depth and reached a place called Okeelanta, a town so small that it's literally only a name on a map. Just a crossroads in the middle of nowhere with four empty corners and nothing else in sight but more endless miles of cane waving in the wind.

Even farther south, they turned off the pavement and onto a dirt road running through one of the anonymous cane fields. About a mile in, Serge stopped and pulled a GPS from his backpack, setting coordinates. Then he pulled the hostage from the trunk.

A groan as a rib cage slammed the ground.

Serge crouched like a baseball catcher. “Here's the deal: That tranquilizer's pretty much worn off. You're still tied up good, but don't penalize me for a savant gift with knots. And I think by now you've learned a valuable lesson about courtesy that you'll never forget. Did I guess correctly?”

The man nodded emphatically.

“It's amazing how often I get that one right. It's like thirty in a row. Anyway, here's the bonus round and your chance to escape. I've tied your hands
in front
of you, which means you can crawl the mile back to the main road. I'm afraid it'll seriously suck to slither that far, but consider it the price of personal growth. No need to thank me. And just because I'm a ­people person, I'll leave a knife on the side of the road so you can cut off your bindings when you get out of this field. Then it's a long walk to the nearest town, but a migrant truck or something will probably come along first.”

Serge and Coleman climbed back in the sports car and sped off, kicking up a billowing contrail of dust and pesticide. Crawling commenced . . .

“Don't take this the wrong way,” said Coleman. “But what you did to that guy back there didn't seem up to . . .” He snapped his finger. “What's the word I'm looking for?”

“Par?”

“No, that's not it.”

Serge grinned. “You're forgetting the fifty-­pound sacks o' fun.”

“Yeah, I did forget,” said Coleman. “When do I find out what they're for?”

“It's the next item on today's zany schedule,” said Serge. “Another piece of logistics already in motion.”

The northbound Ferrari reached the lake again and turned west. Off a spur into the countryside sat a large metal shed and a small house. Grassy acres lay flat and sprawling.

A man came out of the cottage when he heard visitors. The mailbox said B
ABCOCK
. First name was Dylan. Sixty-­eight and still going strong from a regimen of strenuous chores around the property. Full head of white hair, faded jeans and a large Western belt buckle with crossed rifles. He'd done the same thing for a living his entire life, marking years with the seasonal cycle of the burning of the sugarcane. He strolled up to the driver's door. “Got the rest of my money?”

“Right here.” Serge climbed out and handed Dylan a thick envelope.

They both went around the back of the trailer and unloaded sacks.

“Done the same thing my whole life,” said Dylan. “And I ain't never done this.”

“It's the movie business,” said Serge. “Our lawyers want us to use something that's absolutely harmless to humans, animals and plants. Plus, white is so bland. This stuff will add a bit of color to our filming.”

“That it'll accomplish,” said Dylan. “How realistic do you want me to make this?”

“We've taken every safety precaution with our actor,” said Serge. “So cut it as true to life as possible.”

Once the truck was empty, they opened wide doors on the metal shed and wheeled out an unusual-­looking aircraft with a small bubble cockpit. “You realize there's only room for two.”

“Coleman needs to stay and watch the car anyway.”

Soon the glazed-­red airplane picked up speed as it bounded across the field and lifted off. Serge handed Dylan a scrap of paper with the GPS coordinates.

“What kind of movie did you say you fellas were doing?”

“Another remake,” said Serge. “It's an homage to Hitchcock.”

“Think I saw the original when it first came out in the fifties,” said Dylan. “The one where Cary Grant gets stuck at the crossroads?”

“An all-­time classic,” said Serge. “How can anyone not love that flick?”

“Except for what happened to the pilot.”

“Don't worry,” said Serge. “We took care of that in rewrites.”

Travel by air was much quicker than even a limited-­edition Ferrari.

“We're almost over your site,” said Dylan. “Where are the movie cameras?”

“Hidden,” said Serge. “Since this is the big scene, we're filming from multiple angles and can't have other cameras show up in the footage. Made that expensive mistake the last time.”

“Think I see your actor now.” Dylan looked down from the side of the cockpit. “He's coming out the cane field and heading up that road.”

Dylan pushed his stick forward, putting the plane into a shallow dive.

“Can I pull the release lever?” asked Serge.

“Be my guest.”

The crop duster swooped low over the road, spraying a thick orange cloud that settled broadly over a hundred-­yard swath.

Joe Ferrari began coughing and rubbing his eyes. He was barely able to see when he heard the plane returning for another pass. He looked around. Only one place to hide. He dove back into the rows of sugarcane. Another orange cloud wafted gently over the crops.

More coughing and spitting on his hands and knees. He stood up as the plane banked in the eastern sky for a third run. He took off deeper into the sugarcane.

“How many times do you want to do this?” asked Dylan.

“Until we're empty,” said Serge. “He's got a gas mask, so there's no such thing as overkill.”

“Where'd your actor go?”

“Just follow the ripple through the cane field.”

“He's really thrashing around,” said the pilot.

“One of the best actors working today,” said Serge. “Take her down.”

“You're the boss,” said Dylan, putting the plane into another dive. “I can cross this off my bucket list.”

“So can he.”