The Stingray Shuffle Page 12
Complicating matters was the language barrier. The Mierda organization was the only cartel that wasn’t Latin. It was Russian. Following the collapse of the Soviet Union, mobsters from Moscow and Leningrad flooded south Florida and the Caribbean, which was a good thing. It infused the region with fresh blood and new ideas. Plus, everything of value in the former republic was being dismantled with cutting torches, crated up and shipped to the West for quick sale. You could buy absolutely anything—suspension bridges, nuclear triggers. The Russians quickly became valued partners. But, as they say, ten percent of all college students graduate in the bottom tenth of their class, and the same held true for the new wave of criminals. Mr. Grande had to take what he could get.
The timing of that last phone call from Colombia was not good. What the hell did they expect him to do, buy a sub?
Wait, that’s it! Soviet subs were all over the place. The Cali gang had tried to buy one a couple years ago, but they had gone about it all wrong. Mr. Grande was Russian. He knew all the right people, where every pitfall lay. He wouldn’t make the same mistakes. What was a sub going for these days, anyway? Mr. Grande checked the Blue Book. Ski lift, styptic pencils, subatomic centrifuge…Here it is: Submarine, like new, never fired, five million dollars, firm. Call Yuri, afternoons. Hmm, thought Mr. Grande, that’s the same amount of money we lost in Florida. That sure would come in handy now.
Mr. Grande flipped open his address book, then picked up the phone.
The old man who had been driving the Oldsmobile regained consciousness in the middle of Collins Avenue. He moaned and grabbed his stomach and fought his way to his feet. The tropical shirts saw him staggering, and they steadied him by the arms and walked him over to the punk from the Jeep.
“Go ahead,” said the tallest.
The old man began kicking. “You ungrateful little prick! I fought in the Big One for you!…”
A phone rang.
The Mercedes’s driver pulled a cell from his pants. He cupped a hand over it and turned to his colleagues. “I have to take this.” He stepped onto the sidewalk and covered his other ear to block out the screaming.
“Mr. Grande, an honor, sir…. I’m sorry, but you’ll have to speak up. Miami Beach is pretty noisy this time of day…. I see…. I see…. No, that won’t be a problem…. Thank you for the opportunity, Mr. Grande. You won’t regret this….”
The driver closed his cell phone and turned back to the street. “We have to go.”
Police sirens grew louder as they piled back in the Mercedes and sped away.
The old man was still kicking when the cops arrived. The first officer realized what was happening and jumped out of the squad car. “No! Stop!” he yelled, running toward the old man and pulling his nightstick. “Here—use a baton.”
16
An astronaut in a pressure suit heard his own amplified, labored breathing as he slowly navigated his moon buggy over the treacherous terrain.
The buggy rolled past a man in a tropical shirt, banging the side of his handheld global tracker.
“What’s it say?” asked Lenny.
“The vector’s gone haywire,” said Serge. “Must be jammed by all the space transmissions here.”
“In a tourist attraction?”
“No, but the attraction is in the middle of a working launch complex, and next to a pair of classified Air Force installations.”
“What’ll we do?”
“We simply have to start canvassing,” said Serge. “There’s the gift shop.”
“You just want souvenirs.”
They pushed open the glass doors. No briefcase in immediate sight. Serge walked rapidly down the aisles, spinning display racks of pins, magnets and key chains. He picked up a stack of official launch photos and discarded them one by one: “Already got it, got it, got it, got it, got it…” He scanned the rows of personalized NASA coffee mugs, Adam to Zelda. “They never have Serge.”
“I think that last joint is wearing off,” said Lenny.
“Hang on. I just found something I don’t have.” He grabbed it off the wall, paid at the cash register and went into the rest room. He came out ten minutes later wearing a royal blue astronaut jumpsuit. “How do I look?”
“Babe magnet.”
“It’s not about sex. It’s about the human spirit,” said Serge, tucking his folded Life List in a zippered utility pocket on his shoulder.
“I thought it was about sex,” said Lenny.
They left the gift gantry and began combing the exhibits. It was a thorough, time-consuming search, from the IMAX theater to the walk-through space shuttle. The crowd was heavy, getting autographs from authentic NASA astronauts who were assigned public relations duty on a rotating basis. One of the astronauts zipped by on a replica moon buggy. A family from Minnesota flagged him down for photos. Other families stopped Serge in his royal blue jumpsuit, asking him to pose with their kids.
“Come on!” yelled Lenny.
“Hold up,” said Serge. “I cannot deny the children.”
They worked their way through the Gallery of Manned Spaceflight, taking a break to peer down into a dimly lit bulletproof display case.
“That moon rock looks awfully familiar,” said Serge.
“I need a joint,” said Lenny. “I’ll crouch down behind the lunar module.”
“I’ll stand guard,” said Serge.
Paul and Jethro stopped in front of the Astronaut Memorial with their Cocoa Beach travel guide and silver briefcase.
“I can’t take the stress anymore,” said Paul, gazing up at the polished granite monument. “We’ve got a whole twenty-four hours before our ship leaves.”
“Character is grace under pressure,” said Jethro. “Consider the early astronauts. Those were the days of giants, when destiny did not choose men, but men chose destiny.”
Paul and Jethro heard shouting in the distance. They turned and saw a security guard chasing two men—one in a royal blue jumpsuit—away from the Gallery of Manned Spaceflight. But the guard was in mall-cop weight range, and he quickly became winded and broke off pursuit.
Serge peeked out from behind a ticket booth. “I think we lost him.”
“I’m fairly sure I have the munchies now.”
Serge began gently rubbing all the official space patches on his shoulders and chest.
“Must have snack,” said Lenny, feeling his tongue with his fingers. “And beverage.”
Serge unzipped and rezipped the dozen utility pockets on his thighs, knees and forearms.
Lenny grabbed his throat. “Parched!…Can’t…breathe!…”
“Don’t embarrass me.” Serge zipped a pocket.
“Life…functions…terminating…”
“Okay, let’s get a bite.”
“Cool.”
They entered the Launch Pad Café. Lenny got a chili-cheese dog. Serge sat across from him in his jumpsuit, eyes closed, sucking on a foil pouch of astronaut ice cream.
“Serge…” said Lenny.
“Shhhh! Don’t talk. I’m having a moment.” Serge stuck the metallic pouch back in his mouth and squeezed it dry. He opened his eyes. “Okay, what is it?”
“Isn’t this the best chili-cheese dog you’ve ever seen in your life?”
“I’ve never felt comfortable about any cheese that comes out of a condiment pump.”
“I need another joint.”
“You’re too high as it is.”
“That’s what I mean,” said Lenny. “I need to smoke myself down.”
“It’s all in your head,” said Serge, unzipping a pocket and pulling out his Life List. “You have to learn how to master your quirks.”
Lenny chewed and pointed with his chili dog. “You left off with time travel.”
“Let’s see, what’s next? Ride Shamu, tend the Jupiter Lighthouse, dive the Atocha, perform my one-man salute to Claude Pepper at the Kravis Center, become a surf bum in Jensen, join the harvesting of the oysters at Apalachicola, take a billfish on flyrod, double-e
agle at PGA National, ride with the Blue Angels from Pensacola, deliver peace and justice to my Cuban exile community…”
“I didn’t know you were Cuban.”
“Lenny, my name’s Serge.”
“So you’re part of the Miami Mafia?”
“No, Tampa Cuban, different gang, much earlier. We’re the group that came up by way of Key West when they opened the cigar factories in the 1880s. My great-great-grandfather was the noble Juan Garcia. Used to be a reader in Ybor City.”
“Reader?”
“They sat in tall chairs and read stuff, newspapers, magazines, so the workers wouldn’t get bored rolling stogies. Then he started reading D. H. Lawrence, Lady Chatterley’s Lover. Production increased, but the owner didn’t like the idea. Then he bounced around a bit and ended up working the bolita games by the time of the big trouble.”
“What’s bolita?”
“The old Latin street lottery. Illegal but winked at. They put a bunch of numbered ivory balls in a sack and Juan would reach in and pick one. No way to cheat, right? Wrong. The crime bosses would tell Juan which number they wanted, and he’d freeze that ball in an icebox. At drawing time, he’d just feel around in the bag for the cold ball.”
“You said there was trouble?”
“One Friday he thought they said thirty when they actually said thirteen. Froze the wrong ball. It got ugly. They had stacked their bets, and a fortune was lost. They decided to ice him.”
“They shot him?”
“No, they stuck him in an icehouse. One thing about Cubans—we love our irony.”
“Froze to death,” said Lenny, nodding. “I hear it’s like going to sleep.”
“What about you?” asked Serge. “Any interesting background?”
“Not really,” said Lenny. “Born in Pahokee. Family never kept up with their roots, so I didn’t hear much. Did a little bit here and there. Worked in an airline parts depot in Opa-Locka because I got to fly around the country for free. I’m a Jets fan but the games aren’t broadcast here, so I’d fly up to La Guardia or Newark every Sunday to watch them in the airport lounge and fly right back after the game. Then one Wednesday I’m at the airport here. I’m driving the parts van on the edge of the runway and I hear yelling. ‘Stop him! Stop him!’ I see some guy in a silk shirt and gold chains running from a Cessna being chased by a Jack Webb type. So I blocked him off with my van at the corner of a building. The guy reaches in his pants. I think he’s going to blow me away, but he pulls out a kilo bag and throws it at my window and it explodes in this white cloud and I can’t see anything. The federal agent tackles the guy from behind and his face comes through the cloud and smashes up against my window, a big blood streak where his nose hit the glass and dragged down. The agent cuffs him and starts yelling his head off, punching the guy in the liver: ‘Don’t…you…ever…make…me…run!…’ They haul the guy off and he’s shouting that he’ll come back and get me, and the other employees said I should leave town, so I head to Broward and get a job cleaning the inside of cop cars because of all the drugs you find where handcuffed suspects stuff them in the backseat crack. I moved again when my dad died and the will gave me a little condo they used to rent out in Kendall. I was up visiting some friends in Georgia one weekend, and I’m coming home at sunset on a Sunday and the other side of I-95 is jammed with cars heading north, barely moving. But there’s absolutely nobody on my side of the highway. I mean nobody. I must have driven a hundred miles without seeing another car. And the people crawling along in the northbound lanes are pointing at me. I’m thinking, That’s odd. Is there something going on I don’t know about? But I dismiss it and keep going. I get to my neighborhood and it’s ghost town. Even the twenty-four-hour convenience stores are closed, plywood on the windows. Now I’m thinking, Okay, something’s definitely up. I turn on the TV, and they’re talking about this Hurricane Andrew. I try to find some sports or cartoons, but every channel is the hurricane. So I figure screw it—I’ll go work on my car. Which is real drudgery unless you’re high, so I’m out there at midnight laying on the ground, blowing a fat one and draining my oil pan, and the wind starts to pick up and I begin getting this sideways rain under the car, really hard, stinging like hundreds of little pins. But I’m thinking it’s just really good dope. A fence picket tears loose and hits the car, then something else breaks the passenger window. I finally put two and two together—can this Hurricane Andrew be what all the hoopla’s about? I make a mental note to start reading the papers. I head to the house, but there’s no power and my sliding glass doors have buckled, but luckily I’ve got two twelve-packs in the fridge. So I sit down and start drinking. But after a while it’s not fun anymore. With the sliding doors down, there’s way too much wind in the room, and everything’s flying around and hitting me. I start to take a real beating. My beer can collection, CDs, Playboy videos. I’m getting my butt kicked by my own shit. I don’t need it. I say, Fuck this, and I go out in the stairwell. It is one of those sturdy concrete jobs with a padlocked storage area underneath for bicycles and lawn mowers. I crawl in there with the rest of my beer and a radio and a candle. I’m not sure exactly when I passed out, but the next morning the only thing left standing was that stairwell. The insurance company paid for everything, and I spent the money on a six-month kick-ass cocaine party. I’ve never had so many friends. Then I was living in my car for a while. I got like a million parking tickets, and I was towed once while passed out in the backseat. They must not have noticed me. I woke up, climbed over into the front and drove out of the towing yard when they opened the gate for one of the trucks. Did you know you can get all your parking tickets canceled just by mailing in your death certificate? Doesn’t matter how many you have—they erase every one. But after I died three times, they got really upset. So I had to leave town again….”
Serge was staring with his mouth open.
“Serge?”
“What?”
“Why are we here?”
“That’s an awfully big question, Lenny. I guess if you believe in God, it’s a little easier. If not, you might have to go with the unified field theory.”
“No, I mean, why are we here right now? Why did we come to this place? I forget.”
“We came here to…” Serge stopped. “Why did we come here?”
Serge and Lenny looked at each other, then at the ground, then back at each other, scratching their heads, looking off in the distance, across the concourse, where two men walked toward the exit with a silver briefcase.
Serge and Lenny looked at each other: “The briefcase!”
They jumped up and took off after the men, rounding the corner of the building and sprinting through the Rocket Garden, giant silver and white tubes towering skyward all around.
“That’s an Atlas. Had a sixty percent fail ratio before John Glenn climbed in. This is the suborbital Redstone that took up Shepard and Grissom…”—Serge breathing hard, not breaking stride—“…and the big one is the incredible Gemini Titan, an ICBM converted for human flight. Pulled some serious Gs off the pad…”
They made it to the car and patched out. Serge grabbed the tracking device. “It’s working again! Must be because we’ve left the complex!”
Serge was driving now, pushing the Cadillac across the causeway, accelerating as they rounded A1A by Port Canaveral. “Take the wheel.”
“Man, I’m way too fucked up to drive, especially from the passenger side.”
But Serge had already let go and was pointing the tracking device out the side of the car. Lenny began steering with his left hand.
The tracking signal grew stronger. Serge aimed it at each passing building. “…There’s the Durango steak house, formerly the Mousetrap. Legendary astronaut hangout. If those walls could talk…. And there’s the Econo Lodge, which used to be the Cape Colony Inn owned by the Mercury Seven. There’s still a little commemorative sign out back by the oriental restaurant….”
“Who’s your favorite astronaut?” asked Lenny.
“Major Healy.”
“Ah yes, the master thespian from I Dream of Jeannie, a very strange TV show,” said Serge. “The one that always made me wonder was The Flying Nun. Think about it. There was actually a prime-time show on a major network about a nun whose hat made her fly.”
“They did a lot of drugs back then,” said Lenny.
“That might explain the Sid and Marty Croft stuff, but this idea was brain-dead on arrival. I would have loved to have sat in on that pathetic pitch meeting. I mean, what the fuck were they rejecting? The wacky yet sexually frustrating escapades of the disembodied-head-in-a-jar sharing an apartment with three voluptuous flight attendants?”
“I’d watch that show,” said Lenny.
“I’m in the wrong business.”
They passed the Orbit Motel. The tracking signal went nuts. Serge stomped the brake pedal with both feet, leaving a big cloud of dust and burned rubber as the convertible screeched to a halt in the middle of the road.
A Mazda honked and swerved around the Cadillac. “Asshole!” The driver gave them the finger but quickly retracted it when he saw Serge slamming an ammunition clip into the butt of a .45.
“Let’s hit it,” said Serge. They turned around and headed back toward the Orbit Motel.
17
There was trouble brewing elsewhere in the United States. Which could mean only one thing. It would eventually come to Florida.
This time, Nevada. The caked desert changed colors five times after sunset, from burnt orange all the way to an eerie purple. A horned lizard lay belly up on a rock and blinked.
A towering sign with a thousand colored bulbs came on, a man in a cowboy hat holding up a big gold nugget. Some of the bulbs flashed on and off, making the cowboy wave at cars.
The Gold Rush Hotel stood outside Reno. Way outside. Just desert and cactus and cattle skulls. It was out on the highway toward California, designed to catch the people coming in, who couldn’t wait to get to Reno, and those leaving, who hadn’t learned. There were slot machines at the reception desk, a slot machine in each booth of the restaurant, and long lines of clanging machines against the walls in the Sapphire Room.