The Pope of Palm Beach Read online

  “Woo-hoo!”

  “Holy shit!”

  “Look at all these big fuckin’ turtles!”

  Coleman squinted up the beach. “What’s that?”

  “Every denier movement has a few holdovers.” Serge watched as a gaggle of drunken young men staggered along the shore, erratically waving powerful flashlights.

  They formed a circle around one of the larger loggerheads, giggling, swaying off balance, chugging beer and shining their flashlights down in its eyes.

  “Frat boys again,” said Coleman. “I hate frat boys.”

  “Actually that’s an unfair judgment,” said Serge.

  “It is?”

  Serge nodded. “There’s no arguing that frat boys have had their share of miscues, but it’s become a lazy stereotype, and now every time a bunch of young white dickheads do something obnoxious, it gets blamed on frats. But when you break it down, the vast majority of the fraternity brethren aren’t into this kind of baloney because they’re too busy back at the universities’ laboratories perfecting the ultimate strain of grain-alcohol party punch for date rapes.”

  “When you put it that way . . .” Coleman stopped and pointed. “I think the guy on the end is peeing on the turtle’s shell. That’s really wrong when she’s laying eggs.”

  “I’m throwing it out there that it’s probably wrong in general.” Serge stood and dusted sand off his legs. “I can even understand those poor guys who steal the eggs for money, but this is off the meter.”

  “What are they doing now?” asked Coleman.

  The wind carried a slurring voice. “Lift up her ass! I want to see the eggs dropping.”

  Serge glanced left and right along the shore. It was growing late, and the last of the well-behaved nature lovers were leaving. He took a deep breath. “And I was planning a quiet evening.”

  He strolled down the sand to the raucous group. “Excuse me, gentlemen. I thought I would live my entire life without having to utter this sentence, but could you please put the turtle’s ass down.”

  “What are you, a cop?”

  “No, but I am in law enforcement,” said Serge.

  “If you’re not a cop, then what laws are you enforcing?”

  “The laws of nature.” Serge grinned. “Consider me one of Darwin’s elves.”

  “Fuck off, old man!”

  “In your culture I’m sure that’s the same as ‘glad to see you,’ because I’m glad to see you, too!” said Serge. “Now, if I could just borrow a couple minutes, because your frontal lobes aren’t fully developed yet, and I need to explain a few things.”

  One of the young men killed the rest of his beer and threw the can down with extra force, clanging it off the turtle’s shell. Then he shoved Serge hard in the chest, knocking him to the ground.

  “I wanted to sit anyway,” said Serge. “Long day. So I’ll keep it sweet. No peeing on the turtles, either . . . make that all wildlife collectively so it’s easier to remember. And the next is a subjective call, but someone has to make it: I’m eighty-sixing you from this beach.”

  “You’re banning us?”

  “Just for nesting season,” said Serge. “Don’t take it too hard. I got tossed from Jonathan Dickinson this afternoon, and that was for positive behavior.”

  “You son of a bitch!” Another, larger member of the group dove on top of Serge, twisting his arm behind his back. Several years ago the young man had been a wrestler in high school, and now he was the guy who talked about having wrestled in high school. He pinned Serge with a knee, then turned his head so it was facing the turtle. Coleman ran off and hid.

  The wrestler pushed Serge’s face hard into the beach and leaned close to his ear. “This is what you get for fucking with people like us.” He called over to his friends. “Go ahead and do that thing we were talking about.”

  They did.

  Serge screamed. “No, not that!”

  The others continued their activity as Serge wept in the sand. The wrestler leaned again. “See? See! This is what you get!”

  “I promise I’ll go away right now and leave you alone,” Serge pleaded. “Just stop, for the love of God! Clouds are covering the moon!”

  They didn’t stop. After the first turtle, the gang moved on to the next nest, and the next, working as a team to lift the massive turtles—mid-egg-laying—and turning them around so they’d be disoriented in the clouded night and unable to find their way back to the ocean.

  “Stop it!” cried Serge. “Anything you want . . .”

  . . . Up the beach near the sea oats, Coleman hid under cover of darkness. He took a purposeful step forward, then a hesitant step back, then forward, back, forward, back. Giving himself a pep talk: “Your best friend needs your help. I’m definitely running down there this time . . . Okay, definitely right now . . . Okay, this time on three. One! Two! . . . I’m really going to do it this next time . . .”

  Meanwhile, the drunken gang had moved far up the beach, leaving the wrestler alone to do as he pleased with Serge. He sneered sadistically. “Bet you didn’t expect this when you came down here to give us shit!”

  “Just one question,” said Serge, turning his face in the sand. “Do you have a favorite ball?”

  “What?”

  “Your balls,” said Serge. “You must have a favorite. I know you shouldn’t have favorites, like your children, but I secretly prefer my left. I call him Sparky. You should name your balls.”

  “Are you trying to be funny?”

  “I couldn’t be more serious. Which is your favorite?”

  The wrestler’s eyes snapped wide as he suddenly understood the question, feeling the barrel of a pistol up the leg of his shorts. He slowly rose off his victim.

  “That’s much better,” said Serge. “I used to wrestle, too. And you broke a fundamental rule: Always be aware of both your opponent’s arms.”

  “. . . Cowabungaaaaaaaa!!! . . .”

  Coleman charged down the beach, tripped over the turtle, and took a header in the sand.

  “Right on schedule.” Serge poked the wrestler in the ribs with the gun. “I need your help.”

  “That’s why I came.”

  “Get the shovel,” said Serge.

  “What shovel?”

  “The shovel I now keep permanently in the trunk,” said Serge. “I’m weary of having to buy a new one every time.”

  It grew even later. The beach was all theirs. The rest of the drunken confederation had dissipated into the sleepy, wandering remnants for which they are known.

  “I’m getting tired.” Coleman stopped to pull from a flask of bourbon.

  “I can’t do this alone.” Serge heaved. “They’re depending on us. Now come on.”

  The pair grunted as they shuffled and rotated slowly in a circle before setting the loggerhead back down, now aimed once again the correct way toward the ocean. Serge wiped his brow and looked behind, where the three turtles they’d previously assisted were now crawling back to safety.

  “There’s the next one,” said Coleman.

  They arrived to find flippers vainly flapping, and a turtle thinking, Where did all these sea oats come from?

  More grunting and shuffling before they waved good-bye to the departing turtle. The process repeated a half-dozen more times until all the molested animals were on their way home. The only ones that remained were those who arrived after the foolishness and were now at some stage of digging nests and depositing eggs.

  Serge and Coleman returned to where they had begun the night. “Our work here is almost done,” said Serge.

  “Great!” Coleman pulled a sticky shirt away from his chest. “Party time!”

  “I said almost.”

  “What’s left?”

  “Hand me the shovel.”

  Chapter 15

  1987

  The dogs sounded the alarm.

  Barking up a storm, all down the street. Big ones, little ones, in windows, behind fences.

  Darby and Kenny were playi
ng poker in the kitchen when they heard the racket. A hand of cards fanned out, aces high. “Sounds like mail’s here.”

  Kenny got up.

  Darby absentmindedly fiddled with his chips and discarded the jack of diamonds. He realized the house had been suspiciously quiet for longer than it took to get to the door and back. “Kenny! What’s taking so long? I got a hot hand here!”

  Kenny slowly turned the corner into the kitchen.

  “Jesus! You’re white as a sheet!”

  Kenny just handed Darby a padded envelope. He pulled out a new hardcover book with a glossy dust jacket depicting the Loxahatchee River.

  Florida Tarzan. Then Kenny’s name. A Novel.

  “They sent you an early copy,” said Darby.

  Kenny stood in a trance, speaking monotone. “I can’t believe this is actually happening.”

  Darby laughed. “Maybe you should sit down before you faint.”

  A few minutes later, Kenny opened his eyes and felt an ice pack on his forehead. “What happened?”

  “You fainted.”

  Six months earlier, Darby had made a few phone calls, as promised. He knew someone, who knew someone else, who knew a writer, who knew an agent. Darby initially was able to get the book read as a favor. Then it wasn’t a favor. The writing stood on its own.

  So Kenny now remained frozen with the book in his hands, still in disbelief at the sight of his name on the cover. The phone rang.

  “Darby here. . . . Sure, hold on.” He covered the receiver. “It’s your publisher.”

  “Hello? . . . What? When? I guess, I mean I don’t know anything about that. Okay, just send me the information.”

  Darby studied the back of the dust jacket. “This is a good photo of you, fishing off the seawall in a little baseball hat. How old were you, nine?”

  “They want me to do a book tour,” said Kenny.

  “Well, look at you, Mr. Big Shot.”

  “They said it would just be a small one to start, but I don’t even know what a tour is.”

  “You sign your name a lot.”

  The book first came out as most firsts do—to a general yawn because he had no name recognition. Then the Palm Beach Post liked the angle of local history, and Kenny’s book review received especially large placement because of all the historical file photos that the newspaper used.

  The initial signings along the Gold Coast were unusually packed for a debut. Nobody anticipated how many people had grown up in the area and recalled the stories from their childhood. They wanted to know more.

  Kenny sat demurely at a table near the back of the bookstore. He blushed more and more as the line of customers came through.

  A real estate agent handed him a book. “I remember hearing all about Trapper on the playground . . .”

  Then a mother with two tots. “The rumors scared the heck out of me . . .”

  A grocery clerk. “My parents were suspicious about his shooting . . .”

  Auto mechanic. “I remember taking like ten field trips to that state park. I threw up ice cream once . . .”

  Bartender. “I love that character the Pope of Palm Beach. Is he based on anyone real? . . .”

  School nurse. “Are you married? . . .”

  Hours later the event wrapped up, and Darby patted his friend on the back.

  Kenny stuck pens in his pocket. “Are they all like this?”

  “You’ll find out.”

  Florida didn’t have an identity back then. No established regional culture or roots. Other states inflated with pride. Hoosiers, Yankees, Rebels, Cornhuskers, the Lone Star State, Live Free or Die, Great Potatoes. Florida was a food with little taste or smell, like iceberg lettuce or rice cakes, and its many residents subconsciously felt an emptiness of not belonging to something.

  Kenny had unknowingly struck a vein. He’d wrapped his mystery in a tapestry of universal childhood memories that only his state could have produced. Tropical storms, early rockets at Canaveral, cracking open coconuts, going barefoot in winter, water skiers at Cypress Gardens, dolphins at aquariums, seeing an alligator and not thinking it was special, going to the beach and it was no big deal, all those national game-show hosts bellowing: “You’ve won an all-expense-paid trip to Florida!” And kids watching the shows at home: “Why?”

  Other newspapers got wind of the fun little nostalgic book with real native tidbits. More reviews. The publisher expanded Kenny’s appearance schedule up and down the coast, from Jacksonville to Miami, then the other coast, Tampa to Naples.

  Then another accidental stroke. Publishers hadn’t yet begun producing “young adult” books, which meant young teens. No Harry Potter or Twilight or Hunger Games. Kenny’s simple, conversational style of prose bridged age groups before anyone was trying. Add in the elements of a mysterious bogeyman and secret treasure, and he soon had a hit with both parents and children.

  A landscaper with his daughter handed Kenny a novel to sign. “It’s the first book we’ve read together. We had a blast.”

  A mother and her son. “It’s the first book he’s read on his own. I can’t thank you enough.”

  A librarian. “Are you married?”

  Back at the bungalow, the phone rang. Kenny grabbed it. “. . . I see. I see . . .”

  Darby was arranging fly-casting lures in a shadow box when Kenny came into the room. “Who was it?”

  “My publisher wants a bigger tour.”

  “Where?”

  “It involves airplanes.”

  Two weeks later, Kenny returned from a regional tour of the Southeast. He tossed his suitcase in the corner.

  Darby rearranged an album of old surfing photos. “How’d it go?”

  Kenny just stood. “Weird. My biggest dream was just being able to hold a book and see my name on the cover.”

  “What was so weird?”

  “Guys offered me joints, and women offered sex.”

  “Casual or committal?”

  “Both.”

  “Welcome to your new life.”

  The phone rang. “Hello? . . . I see, I see . . . When? . . .”

  Darby smiled at a photo of a much younger Kenny on the beach. “Who was it?”

  “My publisher. They want another book.”

  “So write one.”

  “They want it in six months. How am I going to do that? You saw how long the first took.”

  “You better get crackin’.”

  “I think I’m in over my head,” said Kenny. “I don’t even have a story.”

  “I’ve got a million,” said Darby. “Go over to the bookshelf. Fourth row . . .”

  Kenny returned with an antiquarian history volume. “WPA Guide to Florida?”

  “Published 1939, with a nice frozen-in-time section on Riviera Beach,” said Darby. “We used to be nicknamed Conchtown, because this was first settled by families of Bahamian fishermen known as Conchs who squatted on the south end of Singer Island at the beginning of the century, then settled proper in the 1920s from Fifteenth to Twenty-First Streets in a community called Inlet Grove. The cool thing is it was all documented by a trio from the WPA including eminent Florida writer and historian Stetson Kennedy, except the WPA chose not to publish it.”

  “What a shame.”

  “Except I have a bootleg copy.”

  “No surprise there.”

  “Second shelf . . .”

  Kenny flipped through a stack of xeroxed pages beginning with a poor photo reproduction of two small children walking toward a five-and-dime along a hot, empty gravel road that would become Dixie Highway. “This is so cool! . . . But how is this my next book?”

  “It was pretty lawless back then. Make up a mystery, and I’ll supply the heritage.” He got up with his cane.

  “Where are you going?”

  “To show you where they used to live a few streets over in primitive wood frames like this one. Are you coming? . . .”

  Conched Out hit the shelves. Parents and kids read together. Another book tour.r />
  Kenny covered the phone. “They want another book.”

  “Write what you know,” said Darby. “Make it a surfing book.”

  “Why would they be interested in that?”

  “They will if it’s a murder mystery. Have some young surfing kids figure it out.”

  Hang Ten was released, complete with histories of the Pump House and the Amaryllis, where they found the dead body in the first chapter.

  More autographs. More readers.

  “I remember when that ship went aground . . .”

  “I got fined for surfing the inlet . . .”

  “Are you dating anyone? . . .”

  Fame did what fame does. Feeds on itself. Kenny made the rounds of book festivals, spoke in schools, commanded a fee as a keynote speaker on the rubber-chicken circuit. He did drive-time radio shows by phone from his motel, and appeared on spunky morning-TV programs between dieting tips and fashion no-no’s. His publisher was now flying him all the way to California.

  “Do you want to go out for drinks with us afterward? . . .”

  “Do you need a research assistant? . . .”

  “Can you write my biography? Everyone always tells me my life would make a great book . . .”

  Kenny arrived back from the airport and immediately plopped down on a couch in the bungalow. “I’m exhausted. I never knew it would be like this.”

  “Be careful what you wish for,” said Darby.

  The Present

  A shovel flung sand high into the night.

  A solitary endeavor. Coleman was too stoned and Serge too impatient. “Fine, I’ll dig it myself. Just wait back by the sea oats and make sure our friend doesn’t try anything funny.”

  “But what if someone comes along and spots us, like a cop?”