The Pope of Palm Beach Read online

  “It looks weird.”

  “Because it’s tasteful,” said Serge. “Like a modest English cottage, stucco, brick and cypress timber with curved wooden shingles, built 1926.”

  “Can we go inside?”

  “It’s not open to the public, but we can look in the windows,” said Serge. “Actually, we’re not supposed to, but there are certain things beyond our control.”

  Serge trotted across the yard with a thermos of coffee and pressed his face to glass. “You have to understand what this area was like back then. You say ‘Miami’ and everyone pictures a giant metropolis that’s been here forever. But in those early days it was virtually nothing, the kind of place that you drive through today and all you’d notice is that the speed limit drops for a couple minutes. Some hearty souls, however, knew paradise when they discovered it, and settled here on the edge of the bay.”

  “Looks dusty inside.”

  “That’s why you have to use your imagination engine,” said Serge. “It was a rare intersection of a magic time and place. I’m going to take a look. Engine on!” He closed his eyes a few moments. They flew back open. “Whoa! That was intense!”

  “Let me take a look,” said Coleman. He closed his eyes. “It’s just dark.”

  “That’s because you’re on the wrong channel,” said Serge. “In your case, the whole cable service is probably down.” His face returned to the window. “I’m getting chills. Right in there is where she wrote the opus, and I just conjured the image of Marjorie sitting at a desk typing away on her history-setting 1947 masterpiece The Everglades: River of Grass.”

  Coleman’s nose smudged the window. “Never heard of it.”

  Serge seized his pal by the front of his shirt. “What! It’s just the most important Florida book ever published! Changed the course of the entire state!”

  “Please let go.”

  “Sorry, I’m in a time flux right now, so the astral plane is unstable.” He took a sip of coffee. “It’s hard to conceive, but before Douglas, the common wisdom was that the Everglades were something that people needed to put a stop to.”

  “Why?”

  “It was considered a worthless, water-clogged waste of land.” Serge spread his arms expansively. “Plan after plan was floated to drain and fill the swamp so we could all stay in hotels and play golf. But Marjorie was the lone beacon. She stood in defiant opposition, beginning her book with a call to arms that this was the only Everglades we had in the whole world. I like books that tell everybody they’re wrong.”

  “What happened?” asked Coleman.

  “I’ll show you!” He took off running. “Back to the car! . . .”

  The Nova sped north into Little Havana and picked up Calle Ocho, the local designation of the Tamiami Trail.

  “There’s a pet store,” said Coleman. “Can we stop?”

  Ten minutes later, Serge turned west and drove along a canal. A cat toy was now suction-cupped to the windshield. It was plastic and pear-shaped, with numerous holes and a furry mouse inside. Jingle bells hung from the bottom. Coleman batted it around and drooled. The last landscaped neighborhoods dribbled off into the wildness of the Glades.

  They came upon an anonymous dirt road.

  “I love anonymous dirt roads! Anything can happen!”

  The Chevy sat still a half mile later. Wind and birds and a flat panorama untouched by the hand of man.

  “This is what I’m talking about!” said Serge. “The perfect place!”

  “The perfect place to smoke dope,” said Coleman. “Nobody messes with you.”

  “No,” said Serge. “I’m talking about Douglas’s legacy. Without her, we might be looking at outlet malls and laser-tag hippodromes. The cosmos rewarded Marjorie by letting her live to a ripe hundred and eight years.”

  “Wow,” said Coleman. “That’s older than being dead.”

  “You are an existentialist.” Serge broke out his camera as the sun began to set on the western horizon. Click, click, click. “The most excellent part is after dark when a whole ’nother world blooms.”

  It got dark. And loud. Insects, frogs, more birds.

  Jingle, jingle.

  “Coleman, what are you doing?”

  “Thinking like a cat.” Coleman exhaled an extra-large hit of pot into the cat toy. Then he quickly moved his hands, covering one hole after another. “Smoke’s coming out there . . . now there . . . now over here . . .” He put one of the holes to his mouth and sucked. “Now there . . . and there . . .” Sucking again. “Over there . . .”

  “Coleman!”

  “I got the mouse’s tail!”

  Jingle, jingle.

  Serge stared. “Are you finished, Tinker Bell?”

  “Look,” said Coleman. “Here comes the moon.”

  “And here comes some headlights.”

  “Who do you think it is?” asked Coleman.

  “Probably a fellow nature lover,” said Serge. “There’s no other reason to be out here.”

  The headlights turned off, and so did the engine. A moonlit silhouette got out. The moon hit another silhouette: a naked woman on a Playboy bumper sticker.

  “I don’t think he saw us.” Coleman held his joint down to conceal the glowing orange tip. “What’s he doing?”

  “Not sure,” said Serge. “He’s going around to the back of the pickup truck.”

  They watched for clues at a range of a hundred yards, but none arrived.

  “Now he’s getting back in the truck and leaving,” said Coleman.

  “When someone comes out to such a remote area and only stays a few minutes, it usually isn’t a constructive activity.” Serge started up the Nova and slung dirt as he sped to the spot where the other vehicle had parked. He leaped out with a flashlight, scanning the watery nests of reeds and bulrushes.

  He seized his heart and jumped back. “Dear God and all the saints!”

  “What is it?” asked Coleman.

  Serge grabbed his friend for balance. He lowered his forehead onto Coleman’s shoulder and began to cry.

  “Easy there, buddy.” Coleman patted the back of his head. “It can’t be that bad.”

  Sniffles. “It is! Just look!” Serge raised his head and aimed the flashlight again. “Asbestos, biomedical waste, and—yikes, I didn’t see that before!”

  “What is it?”

  “Computer and cell-phone batteries!” Serge bent down. “That means heavy metals! Cadmium, lead, mercury, chromium, manganese, zinc, all leaching into the delicate food chain!”

  “A turtle just crawled on top of a battery,” said Coleman.

  “Nooooooo! . . .” Serge splashed down into the water and picked up the critter, tossing it a short distance. “Live long and prosper.”

  Then a boomerang mood swing. Serge jumped back in the Nova, and Coleman ran alongside until he could lunge in.

  “What’s the plan?” said an upside-down Coleman on the passenger side.

  “He’s got a head start, but there’s only one route back to Miami and we’ve got miles of swamp to make up ground.” The needle arced across the speedometer. “Keep your eyes peeled for a pickup.”

  “How will you know which one?”

  “Oh, I’ll know.”

  The Nova blazed east on the Tamiami. There was such a differential in velocity with the other cars in their lane that the approaching red taillights almost seemed like oncoming traffic. Serge whipped around each motorist in turn.

  Coleman watched them go by. “Serge, you’re freaking out every driver you’re passing.”

  No answer. Eyes low, locked on the back end of the next vehicle.

  A Ford pickup.

  “Hey, Serge, there’s the Playboy bumper sticker.”

  He never slowed, blowing by the truck. Then he slowed, and slowed some more. Checking the rearview.

  “What are you doing?” asked Coleman.

  “Making him go around. I need him on my driver’s side.”

  The pickup pulled out into the oncomin
g lane. Its driver let off the gas as he passed, in order to let Serge know how he felt about matters.

  “Look,” said Coleman. “He’s giving you the bird.”

  Serge simply aimed a pistol out the window and shot the front tire.

  Chapter 20

  1989

  The sight of the shotgun spoke silent volumes.

  Darby studied the man’s dilated pupils, fidgetiness and sniffles. He clearly had been dipping into his own product. It’s hard enough reasoning with a psychopath, but add chemicals and it’s a fool’s errand.

  “Stand up, goddamn it!”

  Darby raised his hand. “Okay, okay . . .”

  . . . Back in the police car. Officers balled up wax paper from their sandwiches and poured the dregs of their coffee out the windows.

  “Oh shit! . . . Roger, look!”

  “Hector’s got Darby and that other guy,” said the officer in the passenger seat. “What the hell is he thinking?”

  “They’re being marched down to the end of that dock with a shotgun. This can’t end well.”

  “What do we do?”

  “What can we do? If we run out there we risk showing that we’re involved.”

  “He just jabbed Darby in the back again with the gun.”

  The cops continued observing as the Pope and Kenny stood side by side at the very end of the pier with their heels hanging over the edge, hands in the air. Staring down the shotgun.

  “There’s one thing we can do.” The officer leaned and hit a couple of switches. A rack of red-and-blue lights came on with a single whoop of the siren.

  The man with the shotgun turned and gave the officers the finger.

  “That is bad.”

  At the end of the dock, Darby watched his captor flip off the cops, then saw the shotgun swing back around.

  Reckoning.

  Some people freeze. Others kick in with magnified focus. Darby saw everything in slow motion. Tunnel vision. All sound dropped out in his ears except a high-pitched ringing.

  As the thick barrel was almost back to him, Darby spun. His right hand swatted the barrel aside, then both hands shoved Kenny hard off the end of the pier.

  Blam!

  Kenny had just surfaced in the dark water when Darby’s body splashed next to him. The Pope was facedown, the blast clear through him with a large red circle in the back of his shirt. Kenny’s eyes almost popped out of his head. A brief yelp of a scream before he covered his mouth.

  “Get that other guy! We can’t leave a witness!”

  A hail of bullets from a half-dozen guns raked the water without aim. Kenny dove back under. He didn’t know the port anywhere near as well as Darby, but he’d been spending enough time there to know how the piers and docks met and curved and formed the best hiding spots for someone in his situation.

  He held his breath until reaching the dark overhang of the next pier, cutting himself on barnacles as he clung to a piling.

  Bang, bang, bang, bang, bang, bang . . .

  “Stop it!” Their leader waved both arms in the air. “Knock it off!”

  The guns went quiet and they all looked at Hector.

  “Do you see him?”

  They shook their heads.

  “Then what are you shooting at?”

  “Uh, the water.”

  The gang looked over the side of the pier into a light chop. A dead snook bobbed to the surface.

  “Brilliant,” said the leader. “You prevented a fish from testifying . . . No more shooting unless you see him. You’re just making noise, and we need to be able to hear his splashing.”

  They stopped and listened. Kenny remained still.

  Both cops were out of their car now, sprinting down the pier. “Fuck me! Hector, what have you done!”

  The leader turned around. “Took care of something you should have. Do we not pay you enough? Do you not understand that letting a couple of DEA agents in here is not compatible with our business?”

  “DEA agents? Are you insane?” The officer pointed at the body floating out into the channel. “That’s the Pope.”

  “The Pope?”

  “His nickname. Darby. Everyone knows him.” The officer grabbed his head with both hands. “You’ve just brought the world down on all of us.”

  “Is he someone important? Politician? Connected businessman?”

  “No, a retired welder who used to surf,” said the officer. “But everyone liked him.”

  “You’re telling us we should be scared because people liked him?”

  “You don’t know this town,” said the other cop. “Why did you have to shoot him? He was just sitting out there minding his own business.”

  “Wait, back up. You knew he was sitting out here watching our whole operation?”

  “He could be trusted. It was Darby.”

  Hector tightened his lips in frustration. “We’ll continue this most enjoyable conversation later, but right now we have a more immediate problem. A witness got away, and your well-timed interruption is helping him escape.”

  It was. Kenny silently slid through the water, pylon to pylon, and dog-paddled along the seawall in the stretches where there was nothing to grip. Behind him, search beams swept the water, and someone hung over the side of the pier, shining a flashlight into the space where he’d first been. But now Kenny was so far away that not even the wind could carry the sound of their voices, and the distant flashlights were like fireflies.

  “See anything?” asked Hector.

  “Nothing.”

  “Spread out. Take the dinghy.” Hector pointed. “He couldn’t have gotten up past the marina or we would have seen him. Head south!”

  Kenny reached a ladder on the seawall. He looked up and recognized the back of the welding shop where he and Darby had just been sitting in those plastic chairs. He had to get up that ladder. He would be exposed, but just an indistinguishable dark form. As long as he moved slowly enough so they couldn’t detect human movement. He began slithering up the rings, water dripping off into the basin. One painstaking inch at a time.

  The perfect plan. Except now there was a boat coming toward him, flashlights hitting the water and the seawall. Now Kenny was on deadline. The clock ticked down faster than he expected, and the high-powered search beams were just feet away on the seawall, about to hit him. No more time for stealth, exposed or not. He scrambled over the last few rungs and threw himself flat onto the concrete dock next to the plastic chairs.

  “Did you hear something?”

  “Kill the engine! . . .”

  Kenny controlled his breathing as the boat drifted below, flickers of errant light shafting up over the seawall and hitting the back of the welding shop.

  “Okay, keep going . . .”

  The boat started up again and motored away. Kenny rested his head on the dock in relief. He wasn’t out of the woods yet, but the initial, full-force panic of evasion had dissipated enough to reveal a vortex of emotion. Kenny lay there, his head swirling downward into a dizzying whirlpool of sadness, confusion, guilt, self-doubt and then . . . rage. To this day, Kenny wouldn’t be able to tell you why he did it, but a notion of revenge was probably in the mix. His eyes rose from the pavement, and they saw the leather satchel, the one Hector had set down when he first threatened them with the sawed-off. He wasn’t sure what was in it, and it wasn’t about greed. Didn’t matter. Whatever the contents, it was important to Hector, and losing it would piss him off.

  Kenny jumped up, grabbed the handle, and took off down the docks.

  Back at the boat ramp, the police officers begged Hector to collect his men and clear out. Maybe Darby would float somewhere else and it would be off them.

  “Are you brain-dead?” said Hector. “There’s a witness out there to the murder, and in case you’re behind on the law, they’ll hang you along with us. Plus, we have to move all this coke into the van and . . .” He was forgetting something. Not for long. “The money! The satchel!” His head snapped toward those cheap plastic cha
irs a hundred yards up the port. “It’s gone!” Then, raising his eyes, he saw the dark form of just such a bag sail over the chain-link fence at the dry docks, followed by the silhouette of Kenny hopping the top and running away with it.

  Hector looked around to find he was alone with the cops—all his guys out on search patrol in the dinghy. He jumped down into the shrimp boat and grabbed the radio. “Get back here! He’s on land! He has the satchel!”

  “On our way.”

  But Hector was losing critical time waiting for the gang to return. He swung toward the cops: “Go kill him!”

  “We’re not killing anybody,” said Roger. “We all need to calm down and clean up this mess and get out of here.”

  Hector pulled a bullet snorter from his shorts, and snorted.

  “That’s less than advisable,” said Roger.

  Hector sneered at the cops. “You worthless pieces of shit!”

  “Now it’s time to seriously calm down . . . And stop with the coke.”

  “You did this! You did all this,” said Hector, gesturing into the tidal current taking away the Pope. “And my money! Millions!”

  “Bullshit,” said Roger. “This size load? There’s no way that bag could hold that much cash.”

  “Bearer bonds.” Those would be untraceable certificates, about the size and look of diplomas or stock documents with eagles and lions, payable to whoever showed up. They were known as the best way to skirt whatever someone wanted to skirt. Big in Switzerland.

  Flashlights chaotically swung in all directions as the dinghy arrived back at the boat ramp. “You wanted us for something?”

  “You morons! He got away!”

  “Where?”

  “Right where you were at the dry docks! With my money!”

  “Want us to go back out after him?”

  “Duh!”

  They jumped in the minivan and screeched out.

  A while later, they returned.

  “Well?”

  The driver got out and shook his head. “No sign of him anywhere. We followed his wet footprints until they dried up, then fanned out and checked every possible place he could hide. Even looked in spots if he backtracked.”

  “Son of a bitch!”