SS 18: Shark Skin Suite: A Novel (5 page)

Chapter
SEVEN

THE NEXT MORNING

S
unshine streamed through thoughtful clouds over the Florida Keys, sending warm shafts into the blinds at the Old Wooden Bridge Fishing Camp.

There was never a gradual awakening for Serge. His eyes would just spring open and he was into the day. He looked through the open bathroom door where Coleman was still snoring. Then his eyes wandered toward the other bed.

Empty.

But how?

Brook had been pretty smashed when he’d tucked her in. He would have sworn she’d outsleep him by hours.

Serge searched the rest of the cottage. Then around the outside. Then around the fishing camp. The sky was clear and a stiff onshore wind cut the heat. Perfect day to be on the water. Serge stopped and scratched his head. Sportsmen fueled center-console fishing skiffs near the big Texaco gas tank. They clomped down the dock carrying fly rods and coolers and frozen bait. Others rented orange-and-yellow kayaks, paddling out of the still harbor and into the heavy chop of Bogie Channel that quickly swept them off with the changing tide whether it was their intention or not.

Serge climbed the wooden steps of a clapboard building and entered the bottom-floor marina and motel office. Customers stood in line for ChapStick and nautical maps, fishing weights and bobbers, coffee, postcards, polarized sunglasses, advice. Someone opened a refrigerated case for sodas.

The last angler left and gave Serge the counter.

Julie rehung a sun visor that someone had second thoughts about. She returned with a smile. “You seem lost.”

Serge stared down in concern. He looked up. “Julie, did you happen to see the woman I arrived with yesterday? Maybe taking a morning stroll?”

“No, why? Another one get away?”

Julie had never seen Serge anything less than radiantly confident. Now he was worried. “It’s probably nothing.” He went back to the cabin as Coleman sat up dazed on the bathroom tiles.

“Coleman, you know where Brook is?”

He removed a Lincoln penny from his mouth and examined it. “She’s gone?”

“Did you go anywhere last night besides the liquor and grocery stores?”

“No, I mean, yeah, we stopped back in the No Name Pub again.”

“Anything happen?”

“Not really.” Coleman put the penny in his pocket, where he discovered a melted Klondike bar. “I wanted to eat that.”

“Think hard,” said Serge. “This is important.”

“Well, we met some of the regulars: Yulee, Fellsmere, Daytona Dave, Sop Choppy, Bob and Shirtless Bob—”

“Fine,” Serge said impatiently. “Did anything happen?”

“She was chatting with a lot of people, but after all she’s pretty cute.” Coleman grabbed a bottle of hair of the dog. “Then some of them took a table in back and leaned closer like they had secrets and then Sop Choppy—that’s the big biker—”

“I know who he is. What did they do?”

“He called someone on his cell and handed it to Brook, who talked like forever, but that’s really all.”

“And none of this seemed unusual to you?”

“Not really.” Coleman reached in the fridge for a Schlitz. “It’s the No Name.”

“Great.” Serge opened all the blinds and plopped down on the sofa; the water on the other side of the windows grew choppier, kayakers screaming in the channel as they were swept out to Florida Bay. “Where on earth can she be?”

Tires squealed as a muscle car whipped around the corner and skidded up in the gravel just before hitting the picnic table.

Coleman pointed with his beer. “Maybe that’s her.”

Serge bolted out of the cabin.

The driver’s door opened.

Serge sagged. “Oh, it’s just you, Faber.”

“Oh, it’s just
me
?” said Joe. “I was expecting a little more gratitude, like, ‘Hey, I know you’re running a couple of really busy bars, but thanks for risking your neck collecting the luggage of a known fugitive and throwing it in the trunk of a cool new ride you just hooked me up with.’ It’s a seventy-six Cobra, by the way. Next time a Pinto.”

“No really, thanks,” said Serge. “I just got my mind on something—”

Joe threw the car keys like he was still pitching for Miami. Serge ducked and Coleman grabbed his forehead. “Ow, shit!”

Faber stomped up the street to check on his bartenders.

Serge followed him, and Coleman followed Serge. “Where are you going?”

“To talk to Sop Choppy. He has some explaining.”

The screen door flew open with a bang. “There you are!”

Sop Choppy looked up from a mug of beer. Eyes got big. “Serge, uh, what are you doing here?”

“Surprised to see me?”

“Yeah, you’re supposed to be in hiding.”

“You better start talking. Fast!”

“About what?”

“Last night, Brook.”

“Oh, that.” Sop Choppy relaxed and hoisted his mug. “Don’t worry about it. All taken care of, just like you wanted.”

“What are you talking about?” said Serge. “I didn’t ask you for anything.”

“Brook relayed your message. I thought I was doing you a favor. Why? Did I do something wrong?”

“What
did
you do?”

“Oh my God,” said Sop Choppy. “Then this is bad . . .”

Faber was behind the counter filling out a vacation schedule. A beer mug shattered. He turned to see Serge jerk Sop Choppy off his stool and drag him toward the men’s room. The owner threw up his arms and went back in the kitchen.

Several miles away, on the side of U.S. 1, a timid knock on a door at a signless motel. A man in shorts answered. Shaved head and prison tats running up his neck. More ink formed a teardrop next to his left eye. A scar from a box cutter ran from one corner of his mouth to his ear. He took a drag on the stub of a Marlboro pinched in his fingers.

“You Brook?”

She nodded. “You Bones?”

“Still time to change your mind.”

Brook gulped and shook her head. “I got your money.” She began opening her purse.

“Not here.” He glanced outside, then waved her into the room. “You’re going to want a drink first. Maybe a few . . .”

. . . A blue-and-white Ford Cobra raced south on Big Pine Key. Coleman made the rare decision to buckle his seat belt without being told. They went hard around a corner, and the shoulder strap cut into his chest.

“Serge, you might want to slow down. I mean you usually drive fast, but—”

“Shut up.”

Serge quickly arrived at the motel room supplied by Sop Choppy. No knocking, just straight to kicking in the door.

Coleman moseyed up. “Where is she?”

“Too late,” said Serge.

They looked around. The room would not be back in service for a while. Broken lamps and mirror, holes in drywall, legs busted off a chair. The blood might wash out of the sheets but not the mattress.

Serge smelled the air. Fresh cigarette smoke. “We just missed them.”

They ran back outside and jumped in the car. Serge pulled to the edge of U.S. 1.

“What are you waiting for?”

“It’s a fifty-fifty shot.” Serge frantically glanced left and right. “Which way would I go? . . . I’d want an escape route.”

He cut the wheel and sped east.

Coleman rubbed his shoulder. “Where are we going?”

“To where he’s going to drop her.”

“I don’t know what’s happening.”

Serge’s eyes locked on to the road with tunnel vision, weaving across the double orange line to pass slower cars and narrowly missing an oncoming dump truck. Bahia Honda, Ohio and Missouri Keys, Little Duck. They hit the Seven Mile Bridge, and the needle hit a hundred. Halfway across, with Pigeon Key in sight, dozens of red taillights came on. Serge slammed the brakes with both feet and skidded to within inches of a Mazda’s bumper.

Traffic at a dead standstill and nothing coming the other way.

Coleman stuck his head out the window. “The road’s jammed up forever. Think it’s a wreck? . . . Serge? . . .
Serge?
. . .”

Coleman turned to see an open driver’s door. He watched through the windshield as Serge sprinted up the center line. He ran past fifty cars until stopping behind the police line. He could do nothing as paramedics slid a stretcher into the ambulance.

Part
TWO

ONE YEAR LATER

Chapter
EIGHT

SOMEWHERE ALONG U.S. 1 IN MIAMI

A
nd another thing that pisses me off,” said Serge. “Ticket companies. Like when you go to buy your Skynyrd tickets online, they make you re-type some made-up security word that’s written all crazy, like you’re trying to read a newspaper through a motel-door peephole, and I can never figure out the fucking thing. Does that say ‘Quittle shnatzume’? And then I get one of the letters wrong and they give me another chance. ‘Xydolak prunsassi,’ and I get that wrong. ‘Btsabi glohelf,’ ‘Mentracu Twatinger.’ And by the time I type it right, the only remaining seats are in the top row, and then I destroy another keyboard.”

Coleman was wearing a felt jester’s hat, and the bells jingled as he chugged a beer bong. “I hear they’ll soon have pot vending machines in Colorado.”

“Coleman?”

“What?”

“I was talking to you.”

“Right, we’re having a conversation. You said something and then I said something.”

“No,” said Serge. “What you said had absolutely nothing to do with what I just said. In a conversation, it at least has to be vaguely related.”

“Really?” Coleman wiped foam from his mouth. “That would explain a lot.”

“Like if I was at a black-tie charity ball with canapés and spinach dip, and I bring up the ticket bullshit to a socialite in a strapless gown with an apple martini, she’d volley back a cultured response about her favorite Skynyrd concert or motel peepholes or that she once employed a lotion boy of unknown origin named Mentracu Twatinger.”

“That’s why they’re so rich.”

“The whole key to social climbing is not having spinach in your teeth.” Serge killed the rest of his coffee. “See, the beauty of a good conversation is that it may wander all over the place, and after numerous chess-move segues”—Serge made a gentle curving motion with his right hand—“then you can work the conversation back around to the pot machines. Let’s try again.”

“Okay,” said Coleman. “Fuck ticket companies.”

“That’s better,” said Serge.

“I heard they make us type the weird security words because robots were buying up all the best tickets.”

“And what’s with that convenience charge?” said Serge. “It’s so big you’d expect the president of the ticket company to fly in and hand-deliver them himself.”

“Except I’ve never seen robots watching a concert.”

“Because they’re all sitting in the front row,” said Serge. “My thinking is if the robots have figured that out, then bad seats for Beyoncé are the least of our problems.”

“And God forbid if they get to the pot machines,” said Coleman.

“Now,
this
is a conversation,” said Serge.

“How far is Colorado?”

Serge continued along Federal Highway, where the sidewalk hosted robust pedestrian traffic. Other places they’re heading to work or home or lunch, maybe to pick up dry cleaning. Not here. Just walking, cutting through motel parking lots and alleys, stopping to meet on street corners and behind steel-barred convenience stores to form brief, random alliances for continuing adventures of backward progress.

A block west of the highway sat a three-bedroom bungalow. An extension cord ran from the blind side of the garage next door, through a chain-link fence and into a back window. A Cobra pulled up in the driveway.

Coleman strolled into the kitchen, where the extension cord made the refrigerator hum. He opened the door for a cold one. “The black light is trippy.”

“It’s for my new diet book,” said Serge.

Knock, knock, knock!

Coleman jumped. “Who can that be?”

“I have a special technique to find out.” Serge walked to the front door and opened it. “Hello!”

“Do you live here?” asked a dour man with a notepad.

“Yes, I do!”

“Do you plan on paying the bank any money before next Friday?”

“Let me think.” Serge stared up and twiddled his thumbs. “Uh, no! You can write that down as a definite.”

He handed Serge a court document. “Then you have eleven days to move out or the sheriff will evict you.”

“Sounds fair to me.” Serge grinned wide. “Have yourself a great one, douchebag!”

He closed the door and returned to the dining room, sitting cross-legged on the floor in front of an array of paperwork.

Coleman plopped down next to him, splashing beer. “Tell me again how we’re able to stay here for free.”

“Foreclosures are rampant in Florida, and it just takes a little records search and surveillance to find the people who have simply split and abandoned their house, wasting perfectly good digs that still have weeks left before the legal eviction deadline.” Serge rearranged pages on the floor. “Don’t get me wrong: I love our roach motels, but sometimes it’s good to stretch out.”

“What about that guy at the door?” said Coleman. “I can’t believe he didn’t throw us out or call the cops. We don’t own this place.”

“He didn’t ask that,” said Serge. “He just asked if we live here. We do.”

“How’d you figure this scheme out?”

“It’s been heavily covered in the news: People all over Florida are doing it since our skyrocketing housing defaults have ushered in the new age of squatters, and the police have essentially washed their hands of the whole mess, leaving it to the banks and process servers. One woman even had a lawyer cite a century-old homesteading law meant for pioneers driving cattle.”

Coleman looked around.

“No cows.”

“Right.” Coleman uncapped a flask. “What’s all those papers?”

Serge continued transposing their placement on the hardwood floor. “My renewed plan for global domination. Another reason for the house. When you invite the diplomats over to bend them to your will, an island kitchen says much more than Motel 6.”

Coleman leaned forward with a jingle of bells. “How’s it going?”

“Pretty good, actually.” Serge picked up of one of the pages. “Here’s the most recent findings of the blue-ribbon commission consisting of me: ‘Economic turmoil, unstable foreign governments and fractured politics at home all combine to create a fertile window of opportunity for a new leader to emerge.’ ”

“Sounds like you’re on your way,” said Coleman.

Serge picked up another page. “Here’s the downside: ‘Extensive research shows we don’t have jobs and are almost out of money.’ ”

Coleman drained the flask and made a face. “We’ve done all right before.”

“That’s the spirit.” Serge stood and tossed Coleman a navy-blue windbreaker.

“What’s this?”

“The key to cash flow. Put it on.”

Coleman searched for an armhole. “How is this supposed to make us money?”

“The windbreaker is the natural extension of clipboards, orange safety vests and traffic cones,” said Serge. “They’re readily available, but everyone assumes that if you have one, you’re officially authorized to be doing whatever it is you’re up to.”

“But it’s just a jacket.”

“Not just
any
jacket.” Serge slipped on his own. “Read the back.”

Coleman turned it over. In large block yellow letters: B
AIL
R
ECOVERY
A
GENT
. “What’s that mean?”

“Bounty hunter,” said Serge. “I got to thinking. The legal system in our country is just spraying money like an oil geyser. How can we catch some of it?”

“Clipboards and cones are one thing,” said Coleman. “But we could get in trouble for pretending to be these agents.”

Serge raised a finger of triumph. “And therein lies the loophole. We could get arrested for impersonation if our windbreakers said FBI or ATF or police, but bounty hunters don’t work for the government.”

“That’s some loophole,” said Coleman, slipping his right arm in the left sleeve.

“Let me give you a hand with that.” Serge turned the jacket around on Coleman’s back. “It’s just another glaring opportunity missed by the general populace. There’s no law against pretending to be a civilian professional. For all the cops care, you can order as many windbreakers as you want that say ‘Pet Grooming Agent.’ ”

Coleman poked a hand out the end of a sleeve. “Where’d you get
this
idea?”

“My new Master Plan. I’ve completely rededicated my life to the practice of law. Except they won’t let me be a lawyer just because I forgot to go to law school.”

“That’s just not right.”

“Tell me about it,” said Serge. “If you practice law without a license, they arrest you. And
then
you’re allowed to be a lawyer and represent yourself. What is that bullshit?”

Coleman burped with another jingle of bells. “Okay, so we’re wearing jackets. Now what?”

“Continue my alternate legal education.” He stuck a stun gun in his pocket. “I’ve been watching a lot of Florida movies concerning crime and punishment. Elmore Leonard’s bestselling novel
Rum Punch
was set in Riviera Beach and the Palm Beach Gardens mall. In the film version, Tarantino resurrected the career of journeyman actor Robert Forster in the lead role of street-smart bail bondsman Max Cherry. So I figured I’d start there and learn American jurisprudence from the ground up until I’m ready to argue before a jury. Let’s rock.”

They headed down the street.

“Where are we going?”

“To catch a bail jumper.”

“You know where one is?”

“Yes and no.” Serge pulled a fake document from his pocket. “I don’t have any particular suspect in my sights. But mathematically, at any particular time, there is the nearest bail jumper to you. Might be ten miles, might be one. Except the odds are much better in Florida, where you can throw a rock in any all-night waffle joint and it’ll ricochet off three fugitives.”

They turned the corner at U.S. 1 and headed up the sidewalk.

“I’m still worried about one thing.” Coleman pulled an airline miniature from his pocket for nerves. “The impersonation might not be against the law, but we’re both wanted. We’ll be calling attention to ourselves.”

“Another perk of the windbreakers,” said Serge. “Who would ever expect fugitives to be posing as bounty hunters?”

TAMPA

The music came first.

It droned faintly in the distance, pounding, thumping rhythms. Drums and bass guitars from a large number of stereos.

As the sound grew closer, higher frequencies revealed themselves. Other instruments and vocals kicked in. Rock, rap, country, techno-dance, alternative FM, Christian rock. All growing louder in a swirling sonic mush, fusing themselves into a single new genre about partying all night with gangsta bitches screwing cowboys to the nasty beat that leads to Jesus.

Then headlights.

Halogen beams swung around the dark corner of a building, leading a massive flock of other lights. Expensive new cars, clunkers and in-between-mileage used models with encumbered titles. But everything sporty. No SUVs or boxy sedans. Nothing big except the Jeeps.

They fanned out and raced at uncoordinated vectors with disregard to the markings on the pavement. Several near misses as usual. Brakes screeched, steering wheels jerked, shouting and hand gestures out windows. Right on schedule. The regular Saturday-night landing wave of teens had arrived at the Macroplex 30 Cinema.

The cars spit out high schoolers with faces aglow in the light of a hundred cell phones. They texted and chatted across the parking lot as social gravity pulled them into naturally forming clumps. Jocks, stoners, brains, Goths, cheerleaders and gay kids, who suddenly found themselves 50 percent popular, which unfortunately was the average of only two levels of tolerance, zero and a hundred.

The respective groups commenced tribal rituals to create the illusion they were in demand. Guys did complicated handshakes and got themselves in occasional headlocks; girls shrieked and hugged and called out friends’ names that could be traced to a paranormal event a decade and a half earlier, which tugged expectant parents toward the same hard consonant and diphthongs: Kaylee, Kylee, Casey, Caitlin, Kayla and another Kaylee but with a
C
. They bought tickets and popcorn.

The cinema was weighted toward movies starring young people who were vampires, could do ancient magic, paid off debts to the syndicate by street racing and went on spring break. The few adults at the theater filed into a pair of ill-attended movies about difficult choices made by three generations of estranged relatives and an Elizabethan costume-fest about a seventeenth-century British countess who feels drawn to Bavaria for some reason.

Outside in the parking lot, a few late arrivals straggled toward the ticket booth. But generally it was that calmed-down period between the movies’ start times. A security guard drove by in a golf cart. He passed an empty Lexus and made a left at the end of the row. Three men in the Lexus sat back up. When the crush of kids had arrived fifteen minutes earlier, the telephoto lens of a digital camera had poked out the top of a tinted window.
Click, click, click.
Now it sat on the dash. The photos matched kids with cars. The man who took the shots studied the screen of his laptop, which displayed hundreds of downloaded close-ups. He wore Italian shoes, a breathable black polo shirt and the merciless thin line of a mouth. His coal-black hair was parted down the middle so that bangs covered forceps depressions from a non-glitch-free delivery forty-eight years ago. The name on the birth certificate was Linus Quim, but he recently started going by Bannon. He was the leader.