The Pope of Palm Beach Read online

  Dedication

  For Rusty and Cynthia Dades

  Contents

  Cover

  Title Page

  Dedication

  Map

  Prologue

  Part One Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Part Two Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  Chapter 41

  Epilogue

  About the Author

  Also by Tim Dorsey

  Copyright

  About the Publisher

  Map

  Prologue

  Palm Beach County

  The sun was going down behind the Big Burger when the alligator came flying in the drive-through window.

  It scampered past a milkshake machine and scattered teenagers working the french-fry baskets. The manager hung his head. “Not again.”

  The driver of a fourteen-year-old Honda Civic sped away from the restaurant and traveled south on U.S. Highway 1. He wasn’t mad at Big Burger. In fact he had never even eaten there, although now he wanted to someday. It was just another aimless afternoon that started when he spotted the three-foot gator sunning itself next to a golf course and threw a surf-casting net over it without understanding his motivation. The driver had previously used the net for fishing, but he recently began carrying it around in his car at other times for the broader possibilities. After the golf course, the driver stopped at a convenience store and stared at Slim Jims for a while before buying gum. He got back in the car with the captive reptile on the passenger seat and saw the Big Burger across the highway. And he thought to himself, Sure, why not?

  Thus continued the Florida epoch of fuck-it lifestyle decisions.

  The story of the alligator would make news across the country and overseas, but in Florida it wouldn’t even top the wildlife report because a body had just turned up in a nearby motel room with two live spider monkeys dancing on it. The chattering alerted police.

  The Honda continued south, past a man on a riding lawn mower twirling Philippine fighting sticks, then a strip club called the Church of the New Burning Bush that would soon lose its tax-exempt status.

  Back at Big Burger, customers finished clearing out of the dining area with free food and apologies. Employees loitered in the parking lot. A small gator with its mouth taped shut emerged under the arm of a state game official. Police got the Honda’s license off the surveillance tape, and two officers headed south with discussions of sports and alimony.

  A sea-green Chevy Nova drove by the fast-food joint, stereo on the Delfonics.

  “. . . Ready or not, here I come . . .”

  “Serge.” Coleman pointed out the passenger window. “What’s all the craziness at Big Burger?”

  Serge glanced over. “Gator. Next question?”

  Coleman cracked open a sweaty Schlitz, forgetting the already open one between his legs. “Where are we going again?”

  “The next stop on our literary pilgrimage of Florida.”

  “Oh right,” said Coleman. “Books. Reading. Ewwww.”

  Flick.

  “Ouch, you flicked my ear again!”

  “Cultural reinforcement,” said Serge. “Everyone comes to Florida touring beaches and bars, but few realize the rich literary heritage all around that people just drive right by every day. Their awareness begins and ends with Hemingway.”

  “Sloppy Joe’s Bar!” said Coleman.

  Flick.

  “Stop!”

  “It drives me batty that our most famous author won the Nobel Prize, yet we’ve reduced him to a logo on a line of tank tops, shot glasses and refrigerator magnets. What profound quote would Papa utter if he suddenly came back to life and saw what was going on?”

  “Uh . . .” Coleman strained in thought. “‘These new phones are the shit!’”

  Flick.

  The Nova rolled up to a red light between a police car and a lawn mower. Coleman lowered his joint below window level. “So what’s our next stop on this reading trip of yours?”

  Serge checked his watch. “We’ll have to hurry if we’re going to make it to the library on time . . .”

  Cars streamed into the parking lot from all directions. The lighted information sign in front of the Palm Beach Gardens Library: Book Signing 7 p.m.

  A green Nova found a spot near the back of the lot, and Serge and Coleman joined the rest of the patrons heading for the doors.

  Inside the community room, a grid of chairs filled fast. A long table stood along the back wall with a punch bowl and bags of Keebler cookies that produced low-range joy.

  When the time came, the library’s director made the introduction, and the audience broke into the kind of applause you’d hear at a ribbon cutting for a minor historical marker.

  The author took up a position behind the podium, greeted the crowd with a smile and cleared his throat. He opened a hardcover book and began reading:

  Chapter One

  My day had been exceedingly normal—which extended the streak to 9,632 normal days in a row—when the shotgun blast sent my life in an entirely new direction.

  That’s what shotgun blasts do quite well.

  Don’t ask me who I am right now, or if I’m dead. Even I don’t have the answer to that last one yet.

  It was 1989, just after midnight, down by the docks at the port. There was no moon, only the red and green running lights of vessels big and small navigating the narrow channels around Peanut Island.

  I remember riding my bike down there as a kid and watching the boats. Some came in from the ocean through the jetties of the Lake Worth Inlet, others up the Intracoastal, still more from the canals behind homes on Singer Island. It had always been a busy waterway, even at night.

  These were the days long before Homeland Security or DEA radar aircraft, and the Port of Palm Beach was still more than a bit lawless. Later some officials would go to jail for taking bribes.

  I heard a small Evinrude outboard approaching the docks, but saw no beacons. The growl of the motor grew louder. There was a yellow light—one of those lamps over the fuel pumps at the end of the soggy wooden pier—and it glinted off the barrel of a twelve-gauge.

  A shout: “Too late! Run!”

  Blam!

  The audience at the library formed a signing line that wrapped around the room. Books cradled in arms, anticipation.

  One by one they got their autographs.

  “You’re the greatest.”

  “Love the writing style.”

  “I’m you’re number one fan.”

  “Remember the time you tied a guy to the bridge in the Keys?”

  The author looked up. “That was actually Hiaasen.”

  “I’m so embarrassed.”

  “Don’t worry about it.” The author handed the book back, and the read
er ran away.

  The event wound down. The lights went off, doors were locked, and the last of the library staff drove out of the deserted parking lot.

  Hours later, a lone vehicle rolled quietly up to the curb by the front door. Guilty fingers reached from the driver’s window. They grabbed the handle of the library’s night deposit box, seeking to return a shopping bag of overdue titles under cloak of night.

  The driver fed volumes through the slot two and three at a time, until his shopping bag was half-empty. Then the door on the box wouldn’t budge. He rattled the handle again and again.

  “Damn, it’s full. Why don’t they empty these things?” He drove off like a thief.

  The library was dark and lifeless again, a syrupy red pool of blood spreading out from under the dripping book-deposit box.

  Part One

  Chapter 1

  September 5, 1965

  A lifeguard in short blue swim trunks slouched atop an old wooden stand. A silver whistle hung from his lips as he scanned the shore of the Atlantic Ocean. There was a teeming, splashing crowd in the water. Par for Labor Day weekend.

  The Chamber of Commerce was relieved. Hurricane Betsy had threatened to ruin the holiday, but now the Miami tracking station plotted it swirling well out to sea north of the Bahamas and, as they say, the coast was clear. It was one of the beaches that in earlier times always flew a storm-advisory flag, and today’s color was white. Let the money roll in.

  Beach umbrellas covered the sand like toadstools, and the breeze carried tinny-sounding music from dozens of newfangled radios called transistor.

  “. . . What’s new pussycat? Whoa-ooo-whoa-ooo-whoa-ooo . . .”

  “. . . Hang on Sloopy! Sloopy, hang on! . . .”

  “. . . Wooly bully! . . .”

  The lifeguard suddenly stood in alarm and blew his whistle three sharp times, aiming a stern arm. A group of children involved in horseplay knocked it off. This was back when authority meant something, and lifeguards got laid a little more. He sat back down in a suave slouch.

  Behind the lifeguard and the sand was Ocean Avenue. Avenue. Barely a street. A row of boxy cars sat in angled spaces at steel parking meters. A Rambler, a Skylark, a Fairlane, a Bel Air, a different Rambler. Across the road stood a modest line of short, flat-roofed buildings. One named the Beach Shop had a coin-operated scale out front that told your fortune, another was simply called Sundries, the next sold hot dogs that people ate outside on the kind of concrete benches and tables supplied by a company that also sold birdbaths. Advertising signs for Coca-Cola, Coppertone, the Palm Beach Post. A burnt-red panel truck for Wise potato chips arrived at the curb. Some of the people eating hot dogs wore dresses and dress shirts.

  The adults didn’t pay it much attention, but there was a small item along the avenue that fascinated all the kids. Rising up from one of the flat roofs was a tall pole and a contraption at the top consisting of three spinning, rounded metal cups. In meteorologic terms, an anemometer. Currently the sun sparkled off the cups as they rotated in lazy circles.

  A Mercury Montclair pulled up to a parking meter. The doors opened. Little Serge pointed skyward. “What’s that?”

  “A wind thing,” said his mother.

  “What’s it do?”

  “Measures wind.”

  “Why?”

  “People want to know.”

  “Why?”

  “Just keep up.”

  “Why do potato chips come in trucks?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “They’re not heavy.”

  “Will you keep up?”

  Little Serge took off sprinting.

  “Slow down! Come back here!”

  Soon the family settled onto the beach with blankets and an umbrella. Little Serge’s face appeared giant and distorted in the device he was holding to his eye.

  His mother looked down. “Where’d you get that big magnifying glass?”

  “From the house.”

  “Are you going through all our drawers again?”

  “Not now.”

  It was a small, middle-class town on the north side of West Palm called Riviera Beach. Residents reached the water by crossing a short drawbridge to Singer Island, named after a sewing machine heir. The shoreline ran south from the public beach, past the regal Colonnades Hotel, where the stars hid out in the working-class surroundings. Bob Hope, Jackie Gleason, the Stones. Anyone could stroll through the hotel, and most wouldn’t notice an unassuming local billionaire named John D. MacArthur, who conducted business daily from a table in the coffee shop.

  Finally the island came to an abrupt halt at the jetty. The jetty marked the edge of the Lake Worth Inlet and the entrance to the port. Just a golf-ball shot across the inlet, but an economic galaxy away, was another jetty guarding the north end of Palm Beach. The Breakers, the Kennedys, Worth Avenue, Gucci, Rolls-Royce, Swiss bank accounts.

  They were always dredging the narrow inlet between the two islands because of the deep-drafting cargo ships making their way into the Port of Palm Beach. This required a rusty sand-transfer station. But there was no way that eyesore would be placed anywhere near all that old money on Palm Beach. So back on Singer Island, just behind the jetty, stood a giant, two-story-tall metal drum with a crane-arm extending out over the water. It didn’t have an official name. But the surfers called it the Pump House.

  The surfers.

  What a pain. At least to the establishment. The Pump House was the favorite word-of-mouth spot to catch waves along Florida’s east coast, and the water was always full of boards. Which also meant surfing riffraff illegally climbing the Pump House’s crane-arm to dive into the water. Or surfing the inlet through heavy ship traffic. Or paddling all the way across to make landfall behind a Palm Beach mansion, triggering a law enforcement response like the invasion of Normandy.

  But this day nobody was on the crane-arm because a police car was parked nearby to prevent nonsense. Then the cop left and the crane filled up again with kids. Jump, jump, splash, splash. The jumping stopped. Everyone silently turned from the Pump House to gaze out at the end of the jetty.

  Shafts of light from heaven appeared—actually just a cloud break, but there might as well have been angel harps. A faded yellow board turned around, and a leathery man stood up. The next wave lifted him leaning forward, focused and fearless, toward the beach.

  The kids along the beach barely blinked as the surfer executed cut after cut, each swish shudderingly close to the waves crashing and spraying off the jetty’s jagged boulders that nobody else dared near. But that’s what it took for the maximum ride and, unlike the youth watching from shore, the veteran surfer had the instincts of years in these waves that averted peril. Then he hung ten—that would be toes—off the front of the wooden longboard before the waves tamed near the beach and he gently eased up into the sand.

  The kids gathered around as the surfer nonchalantly picked up his board, a coveted Yater Spoon. They peppered him with questions, praise. “That was incredible.” “You’re the greatest.” “Can you teach me your cutback?” “Should I ride goofy foot?”

  The surfer stopped and held court. He always had time for the kids. His skin was bronzed and prematurely aged, but his eyes were clear and hazelnut. He wasn’t muscular, because nobody worked out with weights back then, though his stomach was marble. They said he almost looked like Sandy Koufax, but not quite. On his left shoulder, a tattoo of an anchor and a ribbon indicated service on the USS Iowa. Gunner’s mate, Pacific theater, shelling the Japanese on the Eniwetok Atoll. He never talked about the war. The vintage of the tattoo meant he was now long in the tooth as surfers go, almost forty-three. To the kids, that was practically, well, dead. If the man had been any other adult, he would have been irrelevant. But this guy was the legend.

  Word of his conquests leaked down into every local schoolyard, and the teens now surrounding him had been hearing the stories long before picking up their first board.

  The surfer had been riding
this coast since he was their age, often the only one in the water. And that was cool. The wartime experience had turned him into a spiritualist and a reader. Hermann Hesse, Aldous Huxley, The Dharma Bums. He developed a worldview that people complained too much.

  “Are you going back out?” asked one kid.

  “What wax do you use?”

  “What’s the tattoo mean?”

  “Nothing important,” said the surfer. “And don’t you go getting one.”

  Then he noticed a smaller boy behind the others, not talking, arms clutched into himself. Alone in the crowd.

  “You back there,” said the surfer. “What’s your name?”

  “Me?” Quickly looking behind himself to find nobody. “Uh, Kenny.”

  “Kenny, how’s your surfing?”

  “Getting better.”

  The bigger boys began laughing, and they weren’t laughing with him.

  “Kenny,” said the surfer, “how ’bout you and me go out and ride the next one together?”

  The laughter stopped.

  “Really?” said Kenny.

  “Sure, come on.”

  It was another of the surfer’s life philosophies: always look for those not being included, and include them.

  The gang on the beach quieted again as the asymmetrical pair began paddling back out along the jetty.

  “Wow, Kenny gets to ride the Pump House with the legend.”

  “How cool is that?”

  “Someday I want to be just like the Pope.”

  Most of the kids didn’t know the surfer’s first name, which was Darby. But his last name really was Pope. They all simply called him by his nickname.

  The Pope of Palm Beach.

  A black Dodge Dart left the Pump House and headed north on Singer Island. The car’s roof rack held two surfboards. The Pope approached the public swimming area, then hung a left onto Beach Court, the shortcut back to the Blue Heron Bridge and the mainland.

  A police car sat on the shoulder near a stop sign, watching for kids patching out. “Hey, Darby,” the officer called out his open window. “How’s it going?”