Hurricane Punch Read online

  TIM DORSEY

  HURRICANE PUNCH

  For Steve Genest

  It’s only funny until someone gets hurt—then it’s hilarious.

  —ANONYMOUS

  CONTENTS

  EPIGRAPH

  PROLOGUE

  Editor’s Note—In cooperation with local authorities, Tampa Bay Today is…

  HURRICANE #1: ALEX

  CHAPTER ONE

  The consistently inventive positions of the hurricane-flung bodies validated the…

  CHAPTER TWO

  The mandatory evacuation order had just been issued.

  CHAPTER THREE

  Welcome back to our Storm Team Five Special Hurricane Report,…

  CHAPTER FOUR

  The back side of the hurricane was long gone, somewhere…

  CHAPTER FIVE

  The police were wrapping it up, but the media was…

  CHAPTER SIX

  Wooooooooo-hooooooo!

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  The storm roared around the motel and shook the trusses,…

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  Hurricane Alex left the state overnight. The exit wound was…

  CHAPTER NINE

  The chief of police stood next to a semi trailer…

  CHAPTER TEN

  There was a war on.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  Fourteen, corner pocket.” Mahoney bent over the lone pool table…

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  A black H2 sped north on U.S. 1 toward the…

  HURRICANE #2: CRISTOBAL

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  A black H2 passed the base of a bridge. Coleman…

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  Journalism gets into your blood, like disease, addictions.

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  The storm was gone. Havoc remained. Young eyes fluttered open…

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  Serge cradled a hard black sphere the size of a…

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  Public-opinion polls consistently tout Walter Cronkite as the most trusted…

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  Five minutes before midnight. McSwirley was drenched in the perspiration…

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  Serge and Coleman sat across from each other with sharpened…

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  Listless editors assembled for the budget meeting in a silent…

  HURRICANE #3: DANIELLE

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  A female psychiatrist repeatedly clicked her pen open and closed,…

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  Coleman grabbed the dashboard. “Watch out!”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  This drowsy little Gulf Coast community has a reputation for…

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  A hand in a surgical glove wrote under the blue…

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

  A few miles above Venice, the Tamiami Trail takes a…

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

  I hate work,” said Coleman.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

  Copies of the latest letter sat in front of each…

  CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

  Loud knocking on the door of a motel room across…

  CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

  Footage from McSwirley’s jail release played throughout the day…

  CHAPTER THIRTY

  Police cruisers filled a motel parking lot on Busch Boulevard.

  HURRICANE #4: ESTEBAN

  CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

  One hour before sunrise. A lightning storm of xenon camera…

  CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

  Editors sat solemnly around the conference table at Tampa Bay…

  CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE

  Word swept Gladstone Tower.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR

  The newsroom mob around McSwirley was bigger than ever.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE

  Deadline loomed. It would be a race. The firsthand story…

  CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX

  You know how in old movies or the Superman TV…

  CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN

  The budget meeting. Everyone congratulated McSwirley.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT

  Another codependency budget meeting.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE

  I demand you stop the series!” said Metro Tom.

  HURRICANE #5 AND #6: GASTON AND ISAAC

  CHAPTER FORTY

  Serge sat in the headlights of a woman’s withering stare.

  CHAPTER FORTY-ONE

  A sparse crowd filled a downtown bar at the corner…

  CHAPTER FORTY-TWO

  A JetBlue flight roared overhead.

  CHAPTER FORTY-THREE

  Coleman moaned and raised his face from a cold, unfamiliar…

  CHAPTER FORTY-FOUR

  The Gulf of Mexico had hurricane sky.

  CHAPTER FORTY-FIVE

  A rented green Taurus sped east through a driving rain.

  CHAPTER FORTY-SIX

  The entire nation clung to every update from the National…

  EPILOGUE

  Serge wielded a razor-edged knife.

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  OTHER BOOKS BY TIM DORSEY

  CREDITS

  COPYRIGHT

  ABOUT THE PUBLISHER

  PROLOGUE

  Editor’s Note—In cooperation with local authorities, Tampa Bay Today is seeking the public’s help in identifying a serial killer using this unprecedented hurricane season as cover for his string of grisly homicides. The following letter was just received by one of our reporters:

  Dear Florida,

  I am the one you seek, borne on the curling wisps of ghostly madness that crawl onshore at midnight and seep over the swamp. My glorious evil rages north from the Everglades, the living fury of the land welling up. Flushed birds fill the black sky; reeds yield as one in genuflection. I stalk across the turnpike as you sleep in your new six-bedroom abominations with screened-in pools, blissful sheep ignorant of the million alligators beyond ridiculous canals you’ve scarred into the sacred ground. I am the pressure drop in your soul when you finally accept, bound and gagged, that you are in The Place of No Hope, with your last breath, pitifully whimpering for the impostor that is mercy. My next sacrifice will be offered when the barometer dips below twenty-nine inches.

  —The Eye of the Storm

  Editor’s Note—In cooperation with local authorities, Tampa Bay Today has decided to publish a second letter in connection with the recent rash of homicides. Based upon evidence they cannot disclose, police have confirmed that the author is responsible for at least some of the murders. However, investigators are uncertain whether this new correspondence is the work of the same person writing in a different state of mind or evidence of a second, copycat killer. A word of caution: Certain language may offend sensitive readers, but we are leaving the letter intact to increase the chance that someone might recognize the writer’s syntax.

  Dear Letters to the Editor,

  This is the third time this month I’ve gotten a wet paper—what the fuck? You can fill the building with Pulitzers, but it doesn’t mean dick if the guy delivering your product is on the pipe. Don’t bother trying to contact me to apologize or deliver replacement papers, because I stole them off someone’s lawn. All I can say, sirs, is that the residents of 3118 San Luis Obispo have every right to be prickly with your level of ser vice.

  Next: What’s with giving that retardo-bot serial killer credit for every unsolved murder in this state? He doesn’t possess nearly the intellect or wit to conceive the imaginative technique that police aren’t divulging in the Fowler Avenue case (if, hypothetically, I knew anything about it, which I don’t). But you have to admit, it was pret
ty funny, especially if you were there (which I wasn’t). And then, what on earth were you thinking publishing his letter last week? Could you believe that trite prose? What a bunch of self-important, freshman-philosophy drivel! Sure, I went through the same idealistic phase about the encroachment of rampant development on our stressed ecosystems. And yes, people need to be killed, but not randomly. That’s just wrong.

  Plus: What’s with letting the guy name himself? “Eye of the Storm.” Give me a break! The guy’s a serial killer! At the very least, his punishment should be he doesn’t get to choose his own nickname. On the other hand, it’s better than the dumb stuff the media always comes up with. Like a few years back when they started finding those bodies in Yosemite National Park, and you guys called him something lame like “The National Park Killer.” Hey, there’s no law that says you can’t go back and improve a serial killer’s nickname, so here’s my gift to you, what he should have been dubbed in the first place: “Son of Yosemite Sam.”

  Finally: Why don’t you run bridge anymore next to the crossword? When did that stop? Personally, I hate the game and all who play it, but seeing those little hearts and clubs in the paper each morning was a reassuring cultural anchorage. Now I constantly feel off balance, like when you take a really sound nap in the afternoon and wake up just before sunset and for a brief, terrifying moment you don’t know what part of day it is: “Jumping Jesus! I’ve been drugged and kidnapped!” And you start checking for signs of anal violation. Know what I mean? Please run bridge.

  Dissatisfied in Tampa,

  Serge A. Storms

  AUGUST, MIDDLE OF THE SEASON,

  BETWEEN HURRICANES #3 AND #4

  Traffic was heavy on Tampa’s main north-south artery. Several cars were flying little satin flags declaring respective allegiance to the Bucs, Lightning or Gators. A unique flag snapped in the wind from the antenna of one vehicle: a large red square with a smaller black square inside. Storm warning.

  Bump. Ba-bump. Bump. Ba-bump…

  Serge and Coleman sat through one of those ultra-long, four-way traffic lights at the corner of Dale Mabry and Kennedy. Coleman was driving so Serge could practice his new electric guitar. It was a pawnshop Stratocaster. Serge just had to have a Stratocaster because he was going to be “like Clapton, only better.” He tuned the D string and began strumming unplugged.

  Coleman held his joint below window level. “What are you playing?”

  “Classic Dylan.” Serge cleared his throat and inflected the distinct nasal twang. “This is the story of the Hurricane…”

  Bump. Ba-bump. Bump. Ba-bump…

  Serge stopped. The tuning was off; he twisted a knob again. “Can’t tell how glad I am it’s hurricane season again. I’m so pumped! I relish preparing for each new storm the way other people get ready for big football games, especially the tailgating.”

  Coleman took a hit from the roach secretly cupped in his hand in a way that looked even more suspicious. “Why’s that?”

  “Because I love hurricanes!” He test-strummed a chord and twisted another knob. “Everything about them. History, science, the way the community bands together in the collective memory of a common experience, which stopped when we got Internet porn. As a bonus, TV provides gavel-to-gavel coverage from those insane weather reporters on the beach. What a scream! No matter how hard you try, you can’t stop watching. It’s worse than crack. I just surrender and sit there for hours, like when PBS runs those Labor Day marathons on bacteria.”

  Coleman looked sideways at Serge.

  “What?”

  “Nothing.” Coleman faced forward.

  “No, you were going to say something.”

  “Don’t want to judge. Just sounds like you’re hoping for tragedy.”

  “Easy mistake to make,” said Serge. “It appears ghoulish on the surface, but an obsessive interest in hurricanes actually saves lives. The more you know, the easier to react and recover.”

  “You’re saving lives?”

  “When am I not?” Serge tried another cord. “If only more people had my ungoverned curiosity. Some politicians should be going to prison for New Orleans. Remember when that FEMA wimp said he didn’t know that people were stranded at the convention center until Thursday? Imagine being so incompetent that your performance rockets a thousand percent if someone tells you, ‘Okay, stop absolutely everything else you’re doing and just watch a motherfuckin’ television.”

  “I want that job.”

  “You’re overqualified.”

  The light turned green. They drove. Serge’s hurricane flag fluttered in the breeze. “Nope, nothing would make me happier than if every storm this season obeyed my psychic commands and spun harmlessly out to sea.”

  Coleman stopped at another red light on the corner of Cypress. “How did you first get into hurricanes?”

  “Was imprinted as a kid by Charles Chips.”

  “The trucks that used to deliver?”

  “They’d drop off those giant, yellow-and-brown-speckled metal tabernacles of potato-chip goodness,” said Serge. “Another casualty of progress.”

  “What’s that got to do with storms?”

  “Hurricane Betsy, 1965, Riviera Beach. Had a can all to myself, practically as big as me. It’s how my parents bribed my hyper little butt from running around the house near the windows getting blown in.” Serge tuned another string. “Ate the whole thing in the hallway while wind howled and candles burned down and a tree crashed through the garage roof. After that, hurricanes and Charles Chips went together like tonsillectomies and ice cream.”

  Another stoplight. Serge released the tuning knob. “There we go…. From the top. One and-a two and-a…This is the story of the Hurricane….”

  Bump. Ba-bump. Bump. Ba-bump. Bump. Ba-bump…

  “Why’d you stop playing?” asked Coleman. “I was getting into it.”

  “That sound’s drowning out my song. Where’s it coming from?” Serge stuck his head out the window and looked up at the sky. “Are we being bombed? Is a building under demolition?”

  Coleman pointed at the rearview. “I think it’s that car back there.”

  Serge twisted around. “Where?”

  “Coming up from the last light.”

  “Can’t be.” Serge rolled up his window. “That’s at least a half mile. How is it possible?”

  The other car grew bigger in the back window.

  Bump. Ba-bump. Bump. Ba-bump…

  Their whole vehicle shook. Metal seams hummed. Coleman tightened his grip on the vibrating steering wheel. “How far?”

  “Two hundred yards and closing.”

  The other vehicle pulled up in the next lane and stopped at the light.

  BUMP. BA-BUMP. BUMP. BA-BUMP…

  Serge and Coleman turned to see a sunburned man with a shaved head, Fu Manchu and Mr. Clean gold earring.

  “What kind of car is it?” yelled Coleman.

  “Datsun,” shouted Serge. “Standard package: Gothic windshield lettering, chain-link steering wheel, fog lights, chassis glow tubes, low-ride tires, thousand-watt bazooka amplifier, and those shiny, spinning hubcaps that glint in a manner saying, ‘I have no investments.’”

  Coleman grabbed his cheek. “I think I lost a filling.”

  “It’s untuning my guitar.” Serge’s voice warbled as he gestured toward the next lane with an upturned palm. “The Death of Courtesy, Exhibit Triple-Z.”

  The light turned green. Squealing tires and smoke in the next lane. The Datsun raced four blocks and skidded up to another light. Serge and Coleman took their time. The music pounded louder again as they approached the intersection.

  “I haven’t heard this song before,” said Coleman. “The only words I can make out are fight the oppression and pump that pussy.”

  “He’s getting on my final nerve.”

  “But I thought you liked rap music.”

  “When it’s played by rappers. The genre organically sprang forth from a culture of adversity and fortit
ude. I can respect that. But it also fucked up some Caucasian DNA and spawned an unintended mutant.”

  “Mutant?”

  They eased up to the light and Serge tilted his head. “The Hip-Hop Redneck.”

  “Now that you mention it, I’ve been noticing them in disturbing numbers.”

  “They should work on their own sound.”

  “What would that be?” asked Coleman.

  “More cowbell!”

  “If he’s going to play so loud, why does he have the windows down?”

  “It’s his mating call.” Serge rolled down his own window and waved. “Excuse me?”

  The other driver couldn’t hear him.

  “Excuse me!”

  The driver looked around and noticed the passenger in the next car.

  “Yoo-hoo!” shouted Serge. “I sure would appreciate it if you’d crank down the tunes. I believe I speak for the bulk of society…. No, not up, down…. Down! Down!…That’s up again!…”

  Serge rolled his window shut. He faced forward and counted to ten under his breath.

  Coleman leaned and looked across Serge. “He’s giving you the finger.”

  “Just ignore him. The light’s green. Drive.”

  Coleman started to go. “But you never ignore guys like that.”

  “My psychiatrist says I must learn to walk away from this kind of negativity. So I focus on enjoying the future he’s limited to.”

  Coleman glanced across Serge again. “He didn’t patch out this time. He’s staying right with us…. Now he’s yelling something about your mother.”