SS 18: Shark Skin Suite: A Novel (7 page)

Bannon was already reclining on his own south Tampa sofa when he received the last confirmation from Central America. It came in on the same disposable cell phone that he had just used to give a bunch of parents heart attacks. “Thanks, Sanchez . . .” Bannon held a second, just-out-of-the-box disposable phone in his other hand. “Same time next Saturday. Take down this new number . . .”

Then he sank smugly into his couch and resumed watching the Golf Channel. Someone in knickers extolled the virtues of keeping knees properly bent in a sand bunker as Bannon broke apart a cell phone with his hands.

Chapter
TEN

DOWNTOWN MIAMI

A
run-down two-story office building stood in the shadow of a drawbridge on the bank of the Miami River. Junkyards and auto salvage and Jamaican trawlers moored to the shore. Unfed guard dogs barked. The drawbridge began to rise, and motorists cursed in six languages. The office building’s population had dwindled to a handful of tenants in the heat of the summer.

The reason: no air-conditioning.

The building was circa World War II, and the original interiors had been accidentally preserved due to landlord neglect and depressed economics of the sketchy river district. Spiderweb cracks spread across the old lath-and-plaster walls.

As the sun reached its zenith, heat seemed to well up from the ground. One of the upstairs transom windows was open, and a large plantation fan whapped out of kilter. Below the fan sat a high-usage oak desk chronicled by numerous overlapping coffee-mug stains. Next to a half-empty bottle of rye were the current tenant’s propped-up feet, wearing old oxfords with an Adlai Stevenson hole in the sole. The office door had a pebbled-glass window with flecked gold lettering: M
AHONEY &
A
SSOCIATE
S,
P
RIVATE
I
NVESTIGATIONS.

A single fedora rested atop the hat rack in the corner.

Mahoney leaned back in his chair and flipped through a deck of playing cards with girlie pictures. Attractive, topless women back when their eating habits were healthy. He slapped down the queen of spades, who covered her key parts with Japanese foldout fans.

A pith helmet Frisbee’d through the air and landed on the hat rack next to the fedora. Mahoney peered up with a steely glint. “Doctor Livingston, I presume?”

“What, this?” said Serge, looking down at his new Rudyard Kipling ensemble. His right hand held a capture pole with a rope loop. “It’s my new safari suit.”

Mahoney flipped over the queen of hearts to find a pinup with a feather boa.

Serge pointed. “Do I see coffee?” He reached for a cold mug atop another brown desk circle, and drained it in one long guzzle. “So I decided to treat myself to new threads. Bet you’re dying to know why I went with the big-game hunter look. I’ll tell you! Every lawyer and future lawyer needs an exotic sport to cement his image, and I’m going on that big python hunt in the Everglades. But I know what you’re thinking: The python hunt is over—and what a travesty! They barely caught anything. Here we are supposedly in the middle of some apocalyptic invasion of Burmese pythons slithering through the suburbs in such staggering numbers that there must be an eight-hundred-pound snake under every kitchen sink with a poodle-shaped lump in its stomach, and state officials offer eye-popping cash prizes to unleash our entire population, which musters at the rallying points like that scene from
Jaws
where they post the bounty on the shark, and a million people show up at the docks with ridiculous fishing equipment like axes and shotguns. And then our great python hunt is over, and we only come up with sixty-eight of the suckers. We’ve had more than our share of national shame over the years, but sixty-eight is just embarrassing—”

Serge was interrupted by a heavy scurrying sound across the floor. Mahoney looked down at the edge of his desk. Coleman crawled around the corner and glanced up with a grimace.

“Don’t mind him,” said Serge, pouring another mug of coffee from Mahoney’s checkered thermos. “He just received a shipment of drugs from the Internet. I warned him you never know what you’re getting when you order off the Web.”

Coleman emitted a panicked, scratchy whine, then spun around on his knees and scurried back out of sight.

Serge chugged the second mug. “I found the box Coleman received in the mail and looked at him: ‘Dude, they’re pet meds. You have heartworms or something?’ But he just said, ‘Fuck it. I’m taking ’em anyway.’ And now we have this.”

The scurrying sound disappeared down the hallway. The queen of diamonds flipped over.

Serge slammed the empty mug on the desk. “When we arrived at your office, I got worried because this place was built before modern code enforcement, which means the window ledges are really low and Coleman could easily tumble out. But then I started thinking about the meds he got in the mail and it reminded me of a trick you can play on cats. It’s mean if you actually do it to animals, but it’s an act of mercy where Coleman’s concerned.”

The scurrying returned from the hall. Coleman crawled back around the desk. Mahoney noticed he wasn’t wearing a shirt. A long strip of duct tape ran down the length of his back.

“Serge, help!” said Coleman. “I’m stuck underneath something really low.”

“You’re doing fine,” said Serge. “Just proceed as you are and you’ll be out from below it in no time.”

“Thanks, Serge.” The crawling noise returned to the hall.

“No window falls for Coleman today.” Serge stood and gathered his capture stick. “Well, snakes are a-waitin’ . . .” He scratched his temple with the end of the pole. “But I’m a kill-free animal lover, so what will I do with the hundreds of Burmese pythons I’m sure to nab?” He stopped scratching and grabbed his pith helmet off the hat rack. “Guess I’ll mail them back to Burma.”

A black rotary desk phone rang.

Mahoney let it ring at least nine times, as he always did, because an answered phone held finite possibilities. But a ringing phone was limited only by imagination, and Mahoney dreamed out loud: “Foggy piers, leggy dames, filterless cigarettes, brass knuckles, a lake being dragged, a villain with a monocle, a hooker trying to better herself with typing classes . . .”

“Jumping Judas!” yelled Serge. “Answer the thing already! You don’t know how batshit that makes me!”

Mahoney sneered and grabbed the receiver. “It’s your dime. Start gargling . . .”

“Please, we need your help. Last Saturday night . . .”

“The story had all the elements,” said Mahoney. “Sympathetic victim, ruthless grifters, juicy revenge angle. I snagged a fresh toothpick and chewed on the tearjerker until my pie hole had the taste of a stripper’s breath after a week’s run on the broken dreams end of Reno, and my guts twisted up like the inside of the same stripper’s stomach after the ninety-nine-cent sunrise special in a Hoboken hash house . . .”

On the other end of the line:
“What?”

“We’ll take the case.” He hung up.

Serge was waiting. “Are you going to tell me?”

“Park the caboose.”

Serge sat down again. Mahoney laid out the tribulations of his newest client.

Serge leaped to his feet. “That son of a bitch! Where did this happen?”

“Cigar City.”

Serge ripped the duct tape off Coleman’s back, and they split for Tampa.

SOUTHWEST FLORIDA

An eighteen-foot fishing boat idled without wake down a canal that threaded between the backyards of some of the earliest ranch homes in the state.

The couple in the boat were the Loseys. The name on the boat’s stern: T
HE
L
OW
S
EAS.
Another day in retirement paradise. The couple chatted about an item in the morning paper on the death of an original Tarzan chimp near Orlando. They passed a home with a protest sign on its seawall: P
ICK O
N
S
OMEONE IN
Y
OUR
O
W
N
T
AX
B
RACKET
.

The boat reached the end of the canal and throttled up the Caloosahatchee River. “I didn’t know chimps lived that long.” The river led to the Gulf of Mexico and many of the finest mangrove fishing grounds surrounding the islands of Lee County, home of Thomas Edison and the “World’s Largest Shell Factory.”

More and more boats headed down the canals and merged in the tributary, which was spanned by several large bridges that connected Fort Myers to Cape Coral. Most local residents didn’t even know it, but Cape Coral is the largest city between Tampa and Miami, in terms of square miles, which was 120. Of greater note are its 400 miles of canals, more than any other city in the world, including Venice. Pet reptiles have gotten loose and multiplied.

It was a planned city, designed to attract northern retirees with all those canals. About half the place was filled out by people who decided their golden years needed a boat. The rest of the city is still waiting. That’s mainly the west side, where platted streets have occasional houses between large fields. It’s also the part of town where the most well-known thoroughfare is called Burnt Store Road, lined with real estate signs selling fields popular among dirt bikers.

The name of that street comes from the city’s rich history of real estate transactions. In 1855, a Seminole Indian chief called Billy Bowlegs saw land being cleared for American forts and settlements. Bowlegs was concerned that the government was about to evict his people. The government told him nonsense and kept saying, “Could you please move back a little more?” So the chief led a raid and burned down a trading post. Soon Indians had no land in the area. Bowlegs retired to Oklahoma.

Today, property is still being seized in Cape Coral. Florida has the highest foreclosure rate in the nation—one out of every thirty-two homes—and Cape Coral is among the hardest-hit cities in the state. Many causes are cited. Subprime lending, underwater mortgages, housing bubble, “What was I thinking?” Then a new reason emerged. In theory, banks don’t want foreclosures because they lose money. Then the business model changed through federal bailouts and loose regulations that allowed bad risk to be sold off to government institutions. But mostly, banks knew how easily honest people can be frightened.

Greed snowballed as only greed can. Banks began sending out notices at the first possible second under the law, then before the property was in default, then, screw it, to anyone they felt like. It’s surprising how many homeowners panicked and made disastrous decisions. Then again, maybe not. And it’s all true. The banks could get away with it because they eliminated the paper trail by enrolling in their own private electronic filing system, facilitated by politicians with fat new campaign contributions. True again. It’s why they’re called banks.

So many documents were now moving around in the shell game that there weren’t enough financial employees to verify them as required, so they just recklessly signed them.

Hilda and Vernon Rockford retired from Cedar Rapids because shoveling the driveway had lost its luster. Their Iowa home had been paid off years before from his job at the Quaker Oats mill. They rolled the sale of the house into their downsized villa in Cape Coral. Not a penny owed—their castle was free and clear. The Rockfords couldn’t have foreseen it at the time, but they were about to make headlines across the country. If you didn’t already know it actually happened, you wouldn’t believe it. The Rockfords certainly didn’t.

It was a Tuesday morning. The house had a cheerful breakfast nook overlooking one of those countless canals. The Fort Myers
News-Press
lay open to college basketball scores. Orange juice. Hilda brought in the mail.

“The Hawkeyes lost to Michigan State,” said Vernon.

“That’s nice.” Hilda sorted envelopes and tossed non-essentials on the counter like a blackjack dealer. AARP, free heating and air inspection, oil-change special, Stanley Steamer, a government-looking letter that was a scam, and the
Saver’s Gazette
newspaper with classified ads featuring used aquariums and discount treatment for diseased gums.

“The Cyclones beat Drake.”

“Why don’t the children write?”

Hilda was about to discard another official-looking envelope, because they never did any business with the bank it came from, but something made her open it.

“E-mail,” said Vernon.

“What?”

“The kids use e-mail now.”

“Look at this.”

“What is it?”

“Just read.”

Vernon pushed glasses up his nose. “Foreclosure?”

“What do we do?”

He turned to the comics. “Throw it away. It’s a mistake.”

Two weeks later: “We got another notice from the bank. What’s going on?”

“Throw it away.”

And so forth. Until they found the sheriff’s notice on their door.

HIGHWAY 27

Bass fishermen stood atop the hurricane berm skirting the southern shore of Lake Okeechobee.

“How did you sink the boat?”

“I thought the bilge plug was in. Let’s drink beer.”

“Okay.”

They climbed down the grassy incline as a ’76 Cobra raced by with an empty coffee thermos on the dash.

“Here’s another fun fact,” said Serge. “Miami security companies began selling thumbprint-recognition pads for access to vaults, but they had to stop because executives were getting their thumbs cut off. Not a big selling point . . . I’ve decided I need a T-shirt gun.”

Coleman packed a bowl. “You mean those things at sporting events?”

“I’ve never understood the phenomenon, but everyone absolutely loses their minds whenever they see someone pull out a T-shirt gun. It’s a universal constant that transcends all cultural divides: Republicans, Democrats, rich, poor, glassblowers, Inuit Indians, Motown nostalgia acts: They all pay a fortune for their tickets and sit nicely dressed and civilized. Then the dudes with the T-shirt guns come out and everyone gets that crazy red demon glow in their eyes, ready to tear arms out of their sockets and dive off balconies for three dollars of cotton. On the other end, the guys with the guns are in complete control of the crowd and get a God complex, teasing them, faking shots and making thousands of screaming loons sway left and right with their slightest move. And yet nobody but me can see the potential, like the next time the rest of the world is giving America a bunch of shit, our president just goes before the UN General Assembly and busts out a T-shirt gun. Problem fucking solved.”