Torpedo Juice Read online

  TIM

  DORSEY

  TORPEDO JUICE

  For Jack Simms, Jerry Brown, and Ruth Brittin

  CONTENTS

  Epigraph

  Acknowledgments

  Prologue

  They found the body crucified upside down on the side…

  Part One

  1

  It was another typically beautiful morning in the middle of…

  2

  A dozen police cars with flashing lights filled the parking…

  3

  Dark and deserted on the Florida Turnpike, the part of…

  4

  The inside of the ’71 Buick Riviera smelled like grease-smoke.

  Part Two

  5

  The gang hunkered atop tall stools. A stuffed bear in…

  6

  The no name Pub’s screen door flew open.

  7

  The sun rose on a viciously humid morning at the…

  8

  A pair of Monroe County sheriff’s deputies stood in the…

  9

  The petite woman sitting in the rear of the No…

  10

  A ’71 buick riviera sat in the parking lot of…

  11

  A loud crash.

  12

  Serge combed his hair as he drove. He pulled up…

  13

  The petite woman took off her sunglasses for the first…

  14

  A big white Mercedes with tinted windows drove past the…

  15

  The gang in the No Name Pub gave up trying…

  Part Three

  16

  PSSST!…

  17

  A TV reporter stood on the edge of U.S. 1.

  18

  Serge stared in the bathroom mirror, admiring his torn and…

  19

  This is eyewitness five correspondent Maria Rojas outside the Miami…

  20

  A ’71 buick riviera crossed the bridge to Upper Matecumbe…

  21

  A white jaguar with a blue tag hanging from the…

  22

  Deputy Walter St. Cloud arrived at the sheriff’s substation for…

  23

  A police siren ripped through the starry night, island to…

  24

  Sunlight streamed into the trailer. Brenda’s eyelids fluttered.

  25

  Serge was a wreck. He paced back and forth at…

  26

  Serge had slept all night in his white tux. At…

  27

  Another traffic jam in Marathon. The airport crowded with people.

  28

  The honeymoon was a corker.

  29

  The no name pub’s screen door flew open.

  30

  The cocaine use was clearly out of control. He’d called…

  31

  During the first few weeks of wedded bliss, Molly asked…

  32

  The night wore on. Only a few fishermen left on…

  33

  Captain Florida’s log, star date 385.274

  34

  The morning sky was threatening a slight drizzle. The local…

  35

  Serge was in the living room of the love nest,…

  36

  A green-and-white sheriff’s cruiser flew east on U.S. 1. Walter…

  37

  Captain Florida’s log, star date 736.973

  38

  The front door opened. Walter looked up from the coffee…

  39

  Dawn broke over the Florida Keys. It began like any…

  40

  A sheriff’s cruiser returned to the substation on Cudjoe Key.

  Epilogue

  The quiet time just after sunset in the Florida Keys.

  A Note on the Type

  About the Author

  The critics

  Other Books by Tim Dorsey

  Copyright

  About the Publisher

  This is funny.

  —“Doc” Holiday’s last words, 1887

  Acknowledgments

  Gratitude is due once again to my agent, Nat Sobel, and my editor, Henry Ferris. I also owe another round of thanks to Michael Morrison, Lisa Gallagher, Debbie Stier, and David Brown.

  Prologue

  T HEY FOUND THE body crucified upside down on the side of the bat tower.

  “Cut! Cut!” said a man in a director’s chair.

  “What’s the matter?” asked someone holding a script.

  “It’s starting to rain. Cover the equipment.”

  HOWDY. I’M YOUR NARRATOR.

  In literary classes, I’m what’s referred to as the “omniscient narrator.” Yeah, right. Truth is, I’ve been drinking. We were supposed to start this book several hours ago, except the weather’s been cruddy. All the big stars are back in their trailers eating catered food. But does the narrator get a trailer? What do you think?

  I’ve been waiting it out in the No Name Pub. That’s on Big Pine Key, two hours south of Miami. Actually not all the stars are snooty. Coleman’s been here awhile. Whoops, I wasn’t supposed to say anything…. Screw it. You’ll find out soon enough. Yes, Coleman’s back. Remember the big supporting player a few books ago? He went and pulled a McLean Stevenson and left the series when he thought he had this big movie career. Then Hollywood put that notion out like a cheap cigar, and he came back around begging for work. But his character had already been killed off. What were they going to do? I’ll tell you what they did. They hatched some crazy gimmick to resurrect him, a stupid idea if you ask me, but nobody ever does. That’s typical. I’ve been loyal through seven books, dropping polite hints about a little on-screen time. Nothing big, just a few lines. But no, I’m “far too valuable in my current role.” Then the prodigal boob comes home and they fall all over themselves writing him back in…. I shouldn’t blame Coleman. It’s not his fault. It’s “The Suits.”…So Coleman’s here with me, and this is the thing about Coleman: You can’t just be sociable and party a little bit with him. It’s either avoid him like the plague or you end up in the eye of a complete fiasco. Like now. He’s still trying to get me to take these pills. Even he doesn’t know what they are, but he’s already taken like five. We’re getting nothing but glares. First he broke those glass mugs. Then he fell into the rack of cue sticks that went rolling under the pool table and he crawled in after them saying he was sorry and was going to fix everything until they pulled him out by the legs and told him to just go back and stay at the bar…. What’s that, bartender? Another beer? What the heck, weather ain’t going to clear, so there’s no way they’ll restart today…. What now, Coleman? Geez! Okay, okay! If you’ll stop bugging me, I’ll take one of those pills. No, not three—one!…All right, down she goes, chase it with a little brewski and…

  …How much time has passed? And why is my head laying like this on top of the bar? Got to sit up straight—summon the will. Come on, you can do it. There. Mission accomplished…. Who’s that waving at us from the front door?…You got to be kidding! They’re actually going to start again? Now?…I am so screwed! There’s no way I can pull this off. Where are my breath mints? Freakin’ Coleman. He doesn’t go on for several pages. They’re waving for me again. Coming, just give me a minute. What the hell am I going to do?…What’d you say, Coleman? Are you sure? I just take this other pill of yours, and it will counteract the first one as well as all the beer? Damn, what a fix…. All right, gimme that thing. Coming!…

  A-hem. So far so good. Nobody notices I’m bent. But that second pill better kick in soon. I guess this would make me what professors call the “undependable narrator,” except that’s usually some schizo character using first-person voice-over who’s
supposed to be the sympathetic detective, but in a hairpin twist is revealed as the psychotic killer dressed in drag and suffering stress-induced blackouts. Man, am I fucked up. What the hell was I just talking about? That second one’s kicking in like a mother. I remember my place now. That undependable narrator guy? Well, that’s not me. I won’t steer you wrong. It’s going to be hard enough as it is. This story’s a mess. But it’s about the Florida Keys, which means it’s a documentary. And frig some fancy setup. Let’s slice through that elliptical fogbank of piffle right now! Here’s the conceit: And if you haven’t driven down to the Keys, you’ll just have to take my word on this. But you know how if you are driving down to the Keys, the people in all the other cars are freaks? Everyone flying down U.S. 1 for a million different reasons, and all of them are wrong. And the ones who don’t look like freaks—they’re the worst. Because that’s the thing about the Keys: Nobody is who they seem to be. It’s the perfect place to hide out and reinvent yourself. And that’s the story. Got it?

  What?…Oh, right, the plot. Okay, mixed in with all the freak cars is one very important plot car—a white Mercedes with tinted windows. That’s the key to everything. Remember sea monkeys when you were a kid? Doesn’t have anything to do with this book, but my brain is starting to fizz. The crew is giving me weird looks—need to wrap this up fast, get the hell out of here. So I was supposed to tell you in this prologue what balls to keep your eyes on, and I just did. Cross that off the list. There’s lots of other cars and buses and boats and planes racing south, too many to count. Hey, that’s the Keys. Every day the entire island chain is this Idiot’s Gumball Rally. Get used to it. Just pay attention to that white Mercedes and you’ll be fine. It all starts with this massive traffic jam on U.S. 1. Wait, no, it starts when they find a body. But right after that there’s this big tie-up clogging everything. You guessed it—Coleman again. He didn’t mean to cause it. Trouble just seems to find him like he’s some kind of big trouble-type thing like a magnet or something. What are those twinkling lights? These beautiful bugs are circling my head. Let me catch one and inspect its bioluminescent ectoskeleton. Ho. Wha—? Blubbrsg. Shnbeb? Gfhljlsm. Lijloiejlkme…

  Crash.

  “Cut! Cut!…What the hell happened to the narrator? He passed out…. Coleman!”

  “I didn’t do anything. He was fine a minute ago.”

  “Wonderful…Where’s the backup narrator?”

  “Right here.” A young man in a starched dress shirt ran over with a pack of stapled pages.

  “You’re on.”

  “I am?” He nervously rustled pages and talked to himself. “This is what you’ve been waiting for. Get your head in the right spot. Narrator, narrator, narrator…”

  “What are you waiting for? This is costing us money!”

  “Okay…”

  THEY FOUND THE body crucified upside down on the side of the bat tower.

  Two Monroe County sheriff’s deputies got the call. Gus and Walter. The green-and-white cruiser rolled down a bumpy dirt road on Sugarloaf Key, coming around a bend in the mangroves until an old wooden tower came into view.

  In 1929, a real estate developer named Richter Perky decided to make a killing on Sugarloaf, about fifteen miles from Key West. The only thing standing in the way were the mosquitoes. Millions of ’em.

  But Perky had an angle. He erected a giant, gothic wooden tower covered with cedar shingles. It was hollow. Perky planned to fill the inside with bats, which were known to come out at night and feed voraciously on the insects. The tower’s interior contained a series of ascending louvers coated with bat guano, just the way Perky had heard they liked it.

  On the appointed day, thousands of bats arrived in cages. They were released under the tower’s open bottom. And flew away, never to be seen again.

  Three-quarters of a century later, the tower still stands anonymously on an isolated part of the island. No historic plaque or anything else to identify the enigmatic structure that has been described as a bladeless windmill. Now there was a guy nailed to it.

  Gus parked the sheriff’s cruiser near the base of the tower. The deputies got out and looked up.

  “I may be ill,” said Walter.

  “I know him,” said Gus.

  “You do?”

  Gus nodded. “Drug smuggler named Hendry. Indicted yesterday. Was in the papers.”

  “Who would do such a sick thing?”

  “Who do you think? His employer. That’s why nobody can ever pin anything on him. Never leaves any witnesses.”

  “You don’t mean…” Walter stopped short.

  “Don’t tell me you’re afraid to even say his name.”

  “No, but some people are.”

  “Not that stupid urban legend again.”

  “They say he’s gone completely insane, especially since he started using that nickname…you know…”

  “What?”

  “Okay, I am afraid.”

  “That’s silly.”

  The medical examiner arrived, along with a small fire truck, because it had ladders.

  “I’ll tell you something else,” said Gus.

  “What’s that?”

  “We’re about to have a whole lot more bodies. There were a bunch of other names in that indictment.”

  Walter looked up again. “Nobody knows what he looks like. He stays hidden in that secluded place out on No Name Key. They say if you ever see him, you die.”

  “More myth,” said Gus, helping prop one of the ladders against the side of the tower. “We’ve got hundreds of hermits like that way back in these islands who haven’t been seen in years.”

  “Yeah, but this one’s running a drug empire. It’s like he’s a ghost. How does he come and go without anyone seeing him?”

  “He drives this big white Mercedes, but the windows are tinted.”

  Part One

  1

  I T WAS ANOTHER typically beautiful morning in the middle of the Florida Keys. People were drunk and people were screaming.

  Patrons from the roadside bars heard the commotion and carried drinks outside to watch the routine mess on U.S. 1, the Nation’s Highway, 2,209 miles from Fort Kent, Maine, on the Canadian border, to the tip of Key West.

  The road was snarled to the horizon in both directions. Standard procedure: midmorning congestion, then the chain reaction of rear-enders from inattention. Now a parking lot.

  Drivers honked, shouted obscenities, turned off their engines and popped beers. A Mercury overheated and the hood went up. Ninety-nine degrees.

  Two sheriff’s deputies stood at the window of their air-conditioned substation on Cudjoe Key. Veterans Gus DeLand and Walter St. Cloud. Drinking coffee. It was the beginning of the shift, the part where they were supposed to review the latest bulletins on all the serial killers and mass murderers heading their way.

  Gus looked out the window with his hands on his hips. “We’ve got to do something about that road.”

  “I’ve never seen a crucifixion before,” said Walter, holding a ceramic cup covered with swimsuit models. “Check out this new mug. I got it in Vegas. When you pour a hot beverage in it, like coffee, the bathing suits disappear. I don’t know how it works.”

  The fax activated. Gus headed toward it.

  He came back reading the all-points bulletin. “…Brown Plymouth Duster, brown Plymouth Duster, brown Plymouth…”

  “What are you doing?” asked Walter, holding a coffee mug at eye level.

  “Mnemonic device. Possible serial killer heading this way…. brown Plymouth Duster, brown…”

  The fax started again.

  Gus came back with another piece of paper. “…Metallic green Trans Am, metallic green Trans Am, metallic green…”

  “I brought one back for you, too.”

  “…Trans Am…What?”

  “Coffee mug.” Walter set it on Gus’s desk. “Figured you might need it since you’re divorced.”

  Gus stuck the mug in a bottom drawer.

 
“Aren’t you going to use it?”

  “I’m not sure it’s appropriate in the office. But thanks for thinking of me.” Gus held up the second APB. “Spree killings in Fort Pierce. Six dead and counting. They got a partial license.” Gus began repeating a number.

  Walter set his mug down on the first APB, making a round stain. “So, busy day already. Crucifixion, traffic jam and now two serial killers on the way.”

  “No, the second is a spree killer.” Gus handed the fax to Walter.

  “What’s the difference?”

  “One’s in more of a hurry.”

  “They always come down here.”

  “And blend right in.”

  “How’s that?”

  “Just look at ’em all out there,” said Gus. “Hell-bent to lose their minds in Key West. A psychopath would be the quiet one.”

  “But it doesn’t make sense,” said Walter. “They’re on the run, and this is the ultimate dead end. What are they thinking?”

  “Who says they’re thinking?”

  THE LOGJAM STARTED at Mile Marker 27 on Ramrod Key, feeding on itself for an hour. New arrivals flying down the Keys in convertibles and motorcycles and pickups pulling boats, getting closer to Key West, anticipation busting out of the cage, coming upon stalled traffic way too fast.

  It quickly backed up over the Seven-Mile Bridge. People with to-go cups of warm draft stood in front of the Overseas Lounge and watched a Chevy Avalanche sail into a Cutlass, knocking the next six cars together like billiards, a half dozen airbags banging open like a string of firecrackers. Three minutes later, the audience outside the Brass Monkey saw a Silverado plow into a Mazda, the twenty-two-foot Boston Whaler on the pickup’s trailer catapulting over the cab.