Hurricane Punch Page 11

  The girl stirred with a loud snore.

  “Just pooped,” said Serge. “That was the plan. I poured it on at the end because I’ve got a lot on my mind and didn’t want to chat afterward.”

  The room flickered, then stayed bright.

  “Power’s back!” yelled Coleman. “TV! We’re going to live!” Coleman sat at the edge of the bed with the remote and clicked the set on. A research ship lowered a large egg into the sea. “What’s this show?”

  Serge sat next to him. “Looks like the end of The Mogul.” Neville Gladstone waved farewell and went searching for the coelacanth off Madagascar in a bathyscaphe.

  The next program started, and Coleman raised the remote.

  “Stop,” said Serge. “I want to watch this.”

  “Welcome to a special edition of Hard Fire. I’m your host, Colin Becket….”

  “Don’t tell me,” said Coleman. “Another of your boring political shows?”

  “No, Meet the Press is a boring political show. This is a runaway news truck.”

  “…To night we have a special guest, the Reverend Artamus Twill, leading candidate in the Thirteenth Congressional District on the Gulf Coast of Florida….”

  “Always a plea sure, Colin.”

  Coleman got an odd look. “Do you hear a banging sound?”

  “I hate this show already!” said Serge.

  “Want me to change it?”

  “No!…I can’t believe this guy’s going to be one of our next congressmen.”

  “How can you be so sure?”

  “Reverend, what do you think your opponent has against God?”

  “I’m praying for him.”

  Serge hung his head.

  Coleman looked around. “I’m definitely hearing a banging sound.”

  “…To what do you attribute your tremendous groundswell of support?”

  “It’s a grassroots response to the pro-death lobby attacking my faith with anti-family smear tactics. This country won’t stand for that kind of meaningless labeling.”

  Serge punched the air in anger. “I can’t believe this shit still works!”

  Bang, bang, bang. Coleman began walking around the room. “You don’t hear that?”

  Serge was on his feet now. “The worst of it is that this guy has no experience whatsoever. All he’s ever done is write a bunch of books for the Divide America industry and compulsively gamble away the royalties.”

  “In case our viewers don’t know it, you have quite a bit of experience, writing such bestsellers as My Courageous Journey followed by A Virtuous Life: My Journey Continues and your latest, How Other People Should Behave….”

  “The ones I really blame are journalists…” said Serge.

  Coleman twisted his neck. “Where is that sound coming from?”

  “…The media lets these yahoos hijack the language so that intolerance and bullying are now ‘values issues.’”

  “…I understand you’re polling quite high on values issues.”

  “America wants someone who will stand up to the radical homosexual agenda.”

  “Which brings us to our next guest, speaking in opposition…”

  “All right, finally we get our say,” said Serge. “Usually our side self-destructs because we can’t play the word game as well. But this Twill asshole is so completely mean and wrong, there’s no way we can lose in the court of public opinion.”

  “…In rebuttal to the same-sex-marriage ban, we welcome Graham Espy, regional field coordinator, Fear the Queer Action League….”

  Serge began banging his forehead on top of the TV. “No! No! No!…”

  Bang, bang, bang.

  Serge stopped banging his head. “Do you hear that banging sound?”

  “That’s what I’ve been trying to tell you.”

  “Sounds like it’s coming from over there.” They turned and looked at the closed bathroom door. The sound got louder.

  “Whoops,” said Serge. “How could I have forgotten?”

  “Can’t believe he stayed out this long.”

  “I conked him pretty hard.” Serge opened a suitcase, removing scissors and rolls of duct tape.

  “They won’t be able to call me a copycat this time.”

  “What are you going to do?”

  “My comeback special.” Serge went to the corner and dragged a two-hundred-gallon boat cooler across the carpet. He opened the lid. “Five bags of ice left. Perfect.”

  Thirty minutes later a bound and gagged price gouger was crammed into the bottom of the insulated chest. “I knew he’d fit the second I saw this thing in the pickup. Coleman, ice.”

  Coleman handed him a bag. Serge ripped it open and poured cubes in an even distribution on top of the hostage. “Can you believe your luck? It’s another Free Ice Day!”

  Serge dumped the remaining four bags, then knelt next to the cooler. “All right, here’s what’s going to happen….” He cleared a little hole in the ice and whispered. Cubes began popping into the air from panicked thrashing. Muffled cries were silenced by the closing lid. Serge then wrapped the cooler innumerable times with the tape. He stood and rubbed his palms impishly. “Now it’s in the hands of science.” He grabbed a towel and began wiping down the room for prints.

  “That’s your comeback?” said Coleman. “You’re going to freeze him to death?”

  “Please,” said Serge. “A first-grader could think of that.”

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  LANDFALL PLUS SEVEN

  The storm was gone. Havoc remained. Young eyes fluttered open in an economy motel room near St. Augustine. A head of matted blond hair rose and looked around.

  “Serge?…Coleman?…”

  She checked the closet and bathroom, then the parking lot. The H2 was gone. “That bastard!” She returned to the room. “What’s this?”

  The two-hundred-gallon cooler looked familiar, but where’d all the duct tape come from? She placed a hand on the lid. That’s odd—warm to the touch. She peeled up the end of a gray strip and began unwrapping.

  TAMPA BAY TODAY

  Top of the morning. A newsroom waking up.

  Agent Mahoney had an appointment. He tapped fingers and checked his vintage Mickey Mouse watch. Ten minutes early. He looked around the empty conference table. Nobody but the tour group. More tapping. The washable map of Florida showed a downgraded hurricane passing through Gainesville. The Party Parrot walked by with a cup of coffee.

  Editors began trickling in. Metro Tom arrived with two reporters, Jeff and Justin, who took seats on each side. More editors in a bunch. Stragglers filled out the remaining chairs. Finally the maximum editor. “Let’s get started…. What’s that?”

  A blue-and-red cardboard envelope sat in the middle of the table.

  “Jeff got another letter,” said Mahoney.

  “He FedExed it?”

  “Must have been in a rush.”

  “What’s it say?”

  “He’s upset we let the ‘other’ killer pick his own nickname, and because we stopped running bridge on the crossword page.”

  “What?”

  “Gibberish,” said Mahoney. “He’s unraveling fast, so we have to move faster.” The agent pulled several sheets of paper from his briefcase. “After our last meeting, I took the liberty of composing the secret message for Jeff to reestablish contact. You can insert it in tomorrow’s classifieds. I made copies for each of you.”

  The agent passed them around the table…

  RIDING lawn mower, 72", good cond., low miles, 14.5 hp Briggs eng. $2,500 obo. If you’re the killer, please write or call Jeff McSwirley at (813) 555-7392 for lunch or dinner. Not seeking commitment. I like walks on the beach and Turner Classic Movies. Pets OK.

  Metro Tom fell back in his chair. “I don’t even know where to begin. When Jeff first told me about this, I thought maybe you were playing some kind of joke on me.”

  Max handed his sheet to an assistant. “Get this in the next edition.”

  “No.” Met
ro Tom extended a protective arm across McSwirley’s chest. “I’m not going to let you put one of my reporters in that kind of jeopardy.”

  “I’m sorry to hear you don’t like your job,” said the maximum editor.

  Justin piped up. “I’ll do the interview.”

  “Let him do it,” said McSwirley.

  Tom and Max in harmony: “No!”

  “We’ll have a SWAT team standing by,” said Mahoney. “And I’ll be using my ninja cloaking technique, never more than ten feet from Jeff.”

  “You’ve both lost your minds,” said Metro Tom.

  “Listen,” said Max, “we’re just as concerned for his safety as you are. So Agent Mahoney and I have devised a fail-safe backup plan to get him right out of there if anything starts to go wrong.” He turned to Jeff. “First sign of trouble: Run.”

  “That’s it?” said Tom.

  “You want him not to run?”

  “I don’t want him to go at all!”

  “He’ll be wearing one of our bulletproof vests from the photography department,” said Max. “Actually, bullet-resistant. We got a break on the price.”

  “You really don’t get it,” said Tom. “You have no idea what you’re dealing with. I had Justin look into the background of this Serge…. Justin, tell them what you learned.”

  Justin beamed in the newfound spotlight and opened his notebook. “Incredible stuff. Goes back a decade. Serge A. Storms, actively sought as a ‘person of interest’ in at least a dozen homicides….”

  “At least,” said Mahoney.

  “…Police have been close many times, but he always manages to escape. Meanwhile there’ve been sightings all over the state, from the Keys to Jacksonville. He ran a tour ser vice in Miami, worked on the governor’s campaign and delivered a commencement address at USF.” Justin looked up. “Apparently they didn’t do the proper résumé check.”

  “But with all that visibility, how is it possible he hasn’t been caught?” asked Max. “The odds must be incredible.”

  Mahoney took a swig of mud coffee. “He beats the odds by being so crazy he doesn’t even know there are odds. At any given moment, one out of five stupid criminals is still at large by sheer luck. And Serge isn’t stupid. He usually slips away in plain sight, camouflaged with utter confidence. Remember the ray-gun fight in Star Wars when R2-D2 and C-3PO stroll unscratched across the spaceship’s hallway through intense crossfire? That’s Serge, except he’s the one with the guns.”

  “You see now?” said Tom. “Is that what you want to send one of your reporters up against?”

  “We’re all aware of the hazards in this business,” said Max. “Everything is done to minimize physical risk, but we also have to weigh the other side.”

  “What other side?”

  “Sweeps week.”

  A cell phone rang. The theme from Dragnet.

  “That’s mine.” Mahoney reached into his pocket. “Hello?…What!…Where did this happen?…I’m on my way right now.”

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  ST. AUGUSTINE

  Serge cradled a hard black sphere the size of a grapefruit. He shook it vigorously. Liquid sloshed inside. He turned it over and held it to his face. He didn’t like what he saw. He began shaking it again. He turned it over again. More disappointment.

  “Serge,” said Coleman, “why’d you buy an Eight Ball?”

  “My religious journey. I now have eternal faith in its power.” He closed his eyes and shook it again. “Almighty Eight Ball, can you put me in touch with the one true living God? I have some suggestions.” He stopped shaking and turned it over: Try again later.

  “What happened?” asked Coleman.

  “Busy signal.”

  Coleman looked around the interior of the tiny, dark booth. “Serge?”

  “What?”—shaking the ball.

  “Why’d we come to confession?”

  “Religious journeys begin at your roots, and I was raised Catholic.” He turned the black orb over again. “I’m hedging my bets in case this Eight Ball business is as stupid as I’m starting to suspect.”

  “But you just said you had eternal faith.”

  “You have to say that in every religion even if you’re not sure. It’s like a job interview. ‘I promise I’ll work hard’—but who knows? Both sides understand that.”

  “What I don’t understand is how you can just pop back into confession. You haven’t been Catholic for years.”

  “You never stop being Catholic. It’s like the Mafia or Amway. And when you finally return, the first place you’re supposed to go is confession.”

  Coleman shifted his weight. “This is starting to hurt. Why do we have to kneel so long?”

  “It’s part of the torture package, like Guantanamo, so they get a full confession.”

  Coleman fidgeted again. “How much longer?”

  “Hang in there.” Serge had his ear to the wall. “The guy on the side’s got a long list, but I think he’s almost done…. Jesus, I can’t believe some of the shit I’m hearing.”

  Coleman put his own ear to the wall. “What’s ‘bestiality’?”

  “Shhhh! Here’s the sentencing…. What! Ten Hail Marys? That’s an outrage!”

  “It is?”

  “Quiet,” said Serge. “I think he’s coming.”

  THE OTHER SIDE OF TOWN

  A local 911 operator had fielded the hysterical call from an economy motel. “Slow down. I can’t understand you….”

  Six minutes later, the room was crawling with police. A young girl sat on the curb outside, clutching herself tightly. A cop filled out a report.

  She wiped her nose. “Fountain of Youth.”

  “No, not where you work,” said the officer. “Your name.”

  Inside: photo flashes, evidence bags, disgust. Someone took scrapings from a scorch mark on the wall. Detectives sported large perspiration stains on the backs of dress shirts from leftover hurricane humidity. The hom i cide chief dabbed his forehead and stared down into the open cooler. “That poor girl’s messed up for life.”

  A forensic tech came over. “Looks like they wiped down the room.”

  “Damn. No prints.”

  “I wouldn’t say that just yet. They wiped the room, but they didn’t wipe what they wiped it with.” He looked toward the dresser.

  “You can lift prints from a bath towel?”

  “Long shot, but there’s this new computer program that subtracts fabric patterns. I hit it with the light.” He waved a handheld violet fluorescent tube. “Something’s there. I called for an epoxy vapor kit.”

  A man in a rumpled fedora entered the room and flashed a gold badge.

  “Who the hell are you?”

  The badge closed. “Agent Mahoney. Tallahassee.” He walked to the cooler. “Well, well, if Serge isn’t back to his old tricks.”

  “You know who did this?”

  “I’d bet your pecker on it,” said Mahoney. “Signature technique.”

  “We don’t even have a cause of death yet, let alone technique.”

  “I already know the cause of death,” said Mahoney.

  “You barely looked at the victim.”

  “I knew before I looked at him,” said Mahoney. “From the contents of this room.”

  “You’re full of shit,” said the detective in charge. “I got six veterans in here, and everyone’s stumped.”

  “That’s right,” added another agent. “Nobody’s ever seen a freezing victim look like that before. We’re still waiting for the M.E. to take a blood sample.”

  Mahoney leaned down for closer inspection. “Going to be kind of difficult.”

  “Why do you say that?”

  “Because he didn’t freeze. He cooked.” Mahoney stood back up. “Hard to draw blood, but plenty of juices. You can carve him like a Thanksgiving turkey.”

  “You’re wearing out your welcome,” said the lead investigator. “Shoot straight or get the hell out of here.”

  Mahoney moved acros
s the room. “Got to hand it to you, Serge. One of your masterpieces, regular Mona Lisa.”

  The detective was red-faced. “How did he do it?!”

  Mahoney picked up a piece of brown plastic. “Know what this is?”

  “MRE bag. From a military meal. National Guard’s been giving them out.”

  “They’re all over the room,” said Mahoney. “Fifty or sixty.”

  “So they ate a lot. So what?”

  Mahoney tossed the bag aside. “If I know Serge, he told the guy right before he closed the lid: ‘Just wait for the ice to melt.’ When you pull him out of there, you’ll find dozens of activated chemical heaters at the bottom.”

  The detectives began buzzing. Mahoney leaned against the dresser. “Dang, it’s hot in here.” He wiped his face with a bath towel.

  CONFESSION

  Serge and Coleman heard a wooden panel slide shut on the far side of the priest’s compartment, then another slide open in front of them. An ominous silhouette appeared on the thick cloth screen. “Yes, my son?”

  “Okay, I think I remember, but you might have to feed me a line here and there.” Serge made the sign of the cross. “Bless me, Father, for I have sinned. Yada-yada-yada. It’s been thirty-three years since my last confession. Wait—thirty-four. I remember because you guys gave me fifty Hail Marys just for touching myself. And it was incidental contact, too. Remember when you were ten years old and you’d get a woody for no reason? I was in my bedroom putting the finishing touches on a one-thirty-second-scale Spitfire, when all of a sudden: ‘Hello! Look who’s making a guest appearance. I better check it out.’ But Father Cabrini wouldn’t listen and threw the book at me—we called him the Hanging Priest. I said enough of this nonsense. That was thirty-four years ago. Then, later on, I read where Father Cabrini got arrested! Turns out the whole time we’re getting maximum penance, he’s playing ‘beat the bishop’ with Jimmy O’Toole—”

  “Son!”

  “Oh, sorry. That slang’s probably offensive in here. Heard it from George Carlin—he busts me up! I’ll use ‘spank the monkey’ or ‘burnishing the German helmet.’ Fair enough? I just turned forty-four, so I thought I’d give this outfit another chance. But I’m beginning to get the picture that little has changed. Father Cabrini gave me fifty Hail Marys—and that was in 1973 Hail Marys. Then you let that last guy off with ten. He diddled a cocker spaniel, for heaven’s sake!”