Cadillac Beach Read online

  Cadillac Beach

  a novel

  TIM DORSEY

  For Lee Barnes

  Too much is never enough.

  —MORRIS LAPIDUS

  Contents

  EPIGRAPH

  PROLOGUE

  In 1964 Three champion surfers committed the biggest jewel heist…

  1

  A bearded man in rags stood on the side of…

  2

  A large audience milled on the front steps of Jackson…

  3

  Six families rode a squirmingly slow, powder-blue gondola through a…

  4

  An endless procession of black sedans moved south on the…

  5

  Tony Marsicano was arguably the brightest member of the Palermo…

  6

  The yard was overgrown in front of the modest blue…

  7

  Mr. Vonnegut peeked out Serge’s pocket. An hour into the…

  8

  Tony Marsicano brought his own underboss when he came up…

  9

  Steve and Marlene Kensington of Lancaster, Pennsylvania, stood at the…

  10

  Tony Marsicano Sat cross-legged on a toilet in the second-floor…

  11

  A ’67 Mercury Cougar drove south on Collins Avenue.

  12

  Crowds lined the sidewalks and balconies of Biscayne Boulevard, ready…

  13

  Mom! we’re home!”

  14

  Tony Marsicano and Two-Tone Bob had a late celebratory dinner…

  15

  Four middle-aged men in Michigan State alumni jerseys strolled down…

  16

  Four elderly men in plaid pants and flat Scottish golf…

  17

  A black van with magnetic door signs pulled up the…

  18

  The fabulous Fontainebleau.

  19

  The four men had been drinking for some time. Serge…

  20

  Sergio Gonzales surprised the world tonight.

  21

  Everyone just calm the fuck down!” Serge yelled at the…

  22

  FBI headquarters, Miami, Florida. White shirts, black ties.

  23

  A team of valets rushed down the driveway of the…

  24

  Lou was in the diamond business. Quite by accident.

  25

  The college football teams were announced for the upcoming Orange…

  26

  FBI headquarters, Miami.

  27

  The gang was holding court in the lobby bar of…

  28

  Lenny and Mick Dafoe wheeled a stuffed shopping cart across…

  29

  Agents Miller and Bixby walked down a bright hallway. Visitor

  30

  Where the hell are we?” asked Lenny, leaning over the…

  31

  The shrill screams were unnerving. The gang stared in shock…

  32

  Four Michigan state alums sat at the bar in the…

  33

  Two Miami cultures are battling it out for the heart…

  34

  Saturday morning. A modest apartment on the 1400 block of…

  35

  Five A.M. the limo worked its way through silent, empty…

  36

  Six men in hats and guayaberas hunkered in Jake LaMotta’s…

  37

  A phone rang. A captain in green fatigues picked it…

  38

  A black stretch limo parked at Collins and Twentieth. Serge…

  39

  In the early sixties, Miami had the largest CIA field…

  40

  A small plane pulled a banner through the clear blue…

  41

  A small plane pulled a banner through the clear blue…

  42

  CIA station, Miami. Agent Schaeffer appeared in a doorway. “You…

  43

  It’s hard to categorize a place like Jimbo’s. It’s a…

  44

  Two dozen men in military uniforms sat around a conference…

  45

  Five, four, three, two, one—Happy New Year, 1965!”

  46

  Miami beach, the dead north end of the strip. A…

  EPILOGUE

  Curbside parking. Travelers sweating for reasons other than heat. Castanet…

  A NOTE ON THE TYPE

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  PRAISE

  OTHER BOOKS BY TIM DORSEY

  CREDITS

  COPYRIGHT

  ABOUT THE PUBLISHER

  Prologue

  I N 1964 THREE champion surfers committed the biggest jewel heist in U.S. history, knocking over New York City’s Museum of Natural History in a daring midnight burglary. They made off with scores of famous stones, including the Star of India, the world’s largest sapphire. Within days federal agents and local police tracked the trio back to Miami Beach. The sapphire and almost all the other priceless gems were recovered. Almost.

  A dozen large diamonds remain missing to this day.

  IN 2004 A phone rang in the back of a limo. A salesman answered. A tag on his jacket: HI, I’M DOUG.

  “Yes, dear…. Yes, dear…. No, dear, no, I haven’t been drinking….” He looked at the bourbon in his hand like a bloody knife and set it on the wet bar, as if she might see through the phone. “Ice cubes? No, that wasn’t ice cubes you heard…. I told you, I’m not drinking…. I swear I’m not…. Not a drop…. Maybe I’m technically drinking…. Yes, dear—I mean, no, dear…. I’m sorry, dear….”

  The other salesmen in the back of the limo mocked and giggled. “Yes, dear. No, dear.”

  The man on the phone swatted the air in front of them for quiet. “No, dear…. No, that was the other guys…. No, they weren’t making fun of you. They’re making fun of me…. What did they mean by ‘whipped’? They’re just saying I’m working hard and really tired…. No, they are not bad influences…. I do not always get in trouble every time I’m with them…. That’s just twice…three times…. You’ve made your point…. We’re on the way to the airport right now…. We’re picking up Dave, then straight back to the hotel for the training conference…. Right, no lap dances this time…. I promise I’ll call…. I promise…. I said I promised…. I’m pouring out the rest of the drink right now….” He held an empty hand in the air and turned it over. “I did so really pour it out…. Look, I gotta go…. I really gotta go…. I love you, too…. What do you mean, ‘You do not’?…Okay, and I’ll remember to call…. Bye.”

  He hung up. They were all staring at him.

  “What?”

  “Jeee-zusss!” said Keith, who weighed three hundred pounds and still had lipstick on his cheek from the lap dances. They all wore the same plastic-straw convention hats: UNITED CONDIMENTS.

  “Doug, man, you’re going to have to do something about that ball and chain,” said the one with the RUSTY name tag. He handed Doug his drink back. “And the first thing you need to do is kill that right now!”

  The limo sped west across the causeway toward the sparkling Miami skyline. Water all around, harsh orange sunlight in the haze. A departing Carnival cruise ship out the left windows, passengers waving at the world in general. To the right, private islands, armed guards, yachts, helicopter pads. Rusty grabbed the bottle of Kentucky sour mash by the neck and refilled glasses. They passed the port, huge cranes dipping into freight ships, hoisting steel cargo boxes filled with coffee beans, wicker furniture, uncut cocaine in pre-Columbian statues and heat-expired stowaways.

  A fourth name tag. BRAD. He raised his drink in toast: “We’re wild and crazy guys
!”

  Three glasses upended in unison.

  Keith clenched his face and shook off the afterburn, then opened watering eyes. “That was great!”

  Brad pointed at Doug. “You didn’t drink yours.”

  “We’re all supposed to do it at the same time,” said Rusty.

  “It’s the rule,” said Keith.

  Doug looked at his melting ice cubes. “I think we should slow down. It’s only nine in the morning. And we haven’t been to bed.”

  The causeway tapered into a bridge. Up they went, the downtown financial buildings to the south, blinding glass and bright white concrete, the postmodern condos on Brickell, the ancient Everglades Hotel, Freedom Tower, Bayside market.

  “Are we going to have to ban calls from his wife?” said Brad. “It’s like she’s here in the damn limo with us. That’s the whole point of these conventions.”

  Rusty was de facto leader of the group, having the big ketchup-packet accounts. He grabbed Doug’s knee with his right hand. “We all have to go through our little acts at home to keep the peace. But now we’re on the road.”

  The others nodded.

  He squeezed Doug’s knee harder. “Now, show her!”

  Doug raised the glass and grimaced. Down the bridge now, splitting the American Airlines basketball arena and the Herald Building, the freeway passing over the mole-people below on Biscayne Boulevard, families in rental cars locking doors and running red lights.

  “On three,” said Rusty. “Three!”

  Doug slammed his drink back. Part of it went the wrong way, and he made the wide-eyed expression of someone who’d just backed over three Harleys at Daytona.

  The guys: “Hooray!”

  Rusty poured again. “That calls for a drink.”

  Doug fidgeted nervously. He looked out the back window at the rising sun scattering light through faded blue girders of a stacked interchange. He turned around; his glass was full again.

  Keith was tearing apart his wallet. “Somebody stole my money!”

  “When?” asked Brad.

  “I’m not sure. I just know I had a whole bunch of twenties, and now they’re all gone.”

  “You idiot,” said Rusty. “You spent them at the strip joint last night. I mean, this morning.”

  “Maybe a couple, but I couldn’t have gone through all of it. Someone ripped me off!”

  “Right, and someone ripped you off in New Orleans and Nashville and again in Houston. It’s a regular crime wave.”

  “Exactly,” said Keith, turning his pants pockets inside out.

  “How come none of the rest of us gets ripped off?”

  “That’s what makes it so baffling.”

  “It’s not baffling; it’s exquisitely simple. Every time we go to a strip joint, you get stopped at the exotic-dancer roadblock and they make you pay the stupidity tax. In your case it’s quite steep.”

  “Chauffeur!” yelled Brad. “Turn up the radio. And go faster!”

  The driver twisted the knob on Lenny Kravitz and hit his blinker. The black stretch waited for a Ferrari to blur by, then accelerated into the obnoxious lane of the Dolphin Expressway.

  The next round was waiting. “On three…”

  Drinks went down. Keith called off the search for his missing money and began making flatulence sounds with his hands and otherwise clowning around for the amusement of the gang, because it was his job, being the fattest. Rusty held the bottle of sour mash to the skylight. “It’s empty.”

  “Covered,” said Brad, pulling an emergency fifth from a satchel of trade-show mustard samples. He began spilling as the limo approached the Miami River and angled up a drawbridge over a low-drafting Haitian-bound sloop full of stolen bicycles.

  “On three…”

  “We should slow down,” said Doug. “We’ll be too drunk to make the training seminar.”

  The others laughed.

  “What’s so funny?”

  “We’re not going to no dipshit seminar,” said Rusty. “‘Making the Most of Face Time.’ Fuck face time!”

  “We’ll get in trouble,” said Doug.

  “Didn’t you ever go on senior skip day?” asked Keith.

  “No.”

  “Well, you’re with the varsity now,” said Rusty. “Drink up.”

  The limo eased into a toll booth.

  “…Are you gonna go my way…”

  “How much farther to the airport?” Brad yelled over the music.

  The driver turned down the radio. “Five minutes.”

  “Hey, there’s the Orange Bowl,” said Doug. He fell back in his seat and saw Keith pull a burlap gunnysack from his briefcase.

  “What’s that for?”

  They laughed again.

  “Time we got even with Dave,” said Keith.

  Brad pulled coils of braided nylon rope from a shopping bag. “He’s going to get a surprise at the airport.”

  “What are you guys planning?” said Doug. “This looks like trouble.”

  “All those little practical jokes Dave keeps playing on us…” said Keith.

  “Exploding ink pens, loosening the lids on salt shakers, buttering toilet seats,” said Rusty.

  “Leaving phone messages to call back a new customer, Mr. Lyon…” said Brad.

  “…And it’s the phone number for the zoo,” said Keith. “Payback’s a bitch.”

  Doug trembled. “I have to call my wife.”

  Rusty grabbed the cell phone away from him and tossed it to Keith, who tossed it to Brad.

  A GUARD WAVED the limo through a gate at the executive airport on the west side of Miami International.

  “I have a bad feeling,” said Doug.

  The stretch rolled across the tarmac in the morning sun. Fuel trucks, guys with orange batons, a flight tower.

  “There it is!” said Rusty.

  A whispering Lear made a ninety-degree turn on the runway and taxied to the chocks. The chauffeur swung the limo toward the passenger door, where they were flipping down the stairs.

  Rusty tapped the driver on the shoulder. “No, pull around the back of the plane.”

  “What?”

  “We want to surprise him with the limo and everything.” He handed the driver a twenty. “Just do it.”

  The Lear’s door opened. A man in a dark double-breasted suit stepped onto the top of the stairs. He stopped and smiled as Miami hit him in the face. Palm trees, warm breeze, sticky sense of desperation. He raised a McDonald’s soda cup and sipped through a straw.

  From the back side of the plane, they could only see the fold-down stairs; nobody getting off. “What’s he waiting for?” said Rusty.

  “Open the door quietly,” said Keith, gripping the mouth of the gunnysack.

  The man from the Lear finished savoring his first breaths of paradise. He took another sip from his soda cup and started to descend the stairs, the idling jet turbines winding down.

  When he got to the bottom, he heard a slapping drumroll of clumsy, drunken footsteps. Before he could turn around, a sack went over his head and down to his hips.

  “This is a kidnapping, motherfucker!”

  The man thrashed, but the gang was too strong, even hammered. They hustled him to the limo and shoved him in back.

  Brad slammed the door behind them.

  The chauffeur turned around. “What the hell’s going on?”

  “Don’t worry,” said Rusty. “We know this guy. It’s a practical joke.”

  “Surprise!” said Keith, pulling off the gunnysack.

  “That’s not Dave!”

  “He’s got a gun!”

  Bang, bang, bang.

  “I’ve been hit!”

  “Grab it!”

  Rusty dove for the pistol. The two men struggled, crashing into a box of prison-grade relish trays. Convenience-store coffee stirrers went flying. Somebody got bit, hair yanked.

  Bang, bang.

  Rusty jumped back and stared in awe at the gun in his hand like it was some kind of Star Trek
future-weapon. Smoke filled the rear of the limo.

  “What the fuck’s happening back there!” yelled the chauffeur.

  Brad winced, grabbing his shoulder, blood running between his fingers and down his wrist.

  “You okay?” asked Rusty.

  Brad nodded.

  Doug and Rusty waited a moment, then leaned toward their motionless victim, lying on the floor of the limo in a bed of nondairy creamer, two red stains spreading across his chest.

  The chauffeur was turned around in his seat now, kneeling and stretching for a better view. “Jesus Christ! Do you know who that is?”

  They shook their heads.

  “Tony Marsicano!” yelled the chauffeur. “Oh, my God! Fuck! Fuck! Fuck!”

  “Who’s Tony Marsicano?” asked Doug.

  “Fuck me!” shouted the chauffeur. “You’ve just killed us all!”

  Rusty gestured gingerly with the gun. “It was an accident! I just went like this….”

  Bang.

  “You shot him again!” yelled the chauffeur.

  “It’s got a hair trigger or something.”

  A side window shattered. Keith fell forward lifeless with a gunshot in his back.

  “Where’d that come from!” screamed Brad.

  “Sniper!” shouted Rusty, pointing at the roof of the small executive terminal. The chauffeur threw the limo in gear and hit the gas.

  Men in black suits and mirror sunglasses poured out of the terminal, guns drawn. Some ran after the limo, others toward a waiting sedan.

  More gunshots. The salesmen ducked. An opera window shattered, glass spraying their hair. An unsuspecting fuel-truck driver with Walkman earphones came around the corner of a hangar on the jet’s back side, choking off the limo’s escape. The chauffeur stomped the pedal all the way, aiming for an opening of light between the truck and the plane. The limo’s right quarter panels scraped down the side of the tanker; the left edge of the limo’s roof ground sparks along the underside of the jet’s fuselage. The chauffeur punched the limo through and pumped the brakes out of a fishtailing slide on the runway. The chasing sedan tried to stop but spun out, slamming sideways into the fuel truck.