The Stingray Shuffle Page 15

Pavel tugged harder. Ivan covered the phone again. “What is it?”

  Pavel pointed again. Jethro and Paul were halfway across the highway with the briefcase, followed by two other guys they didn’t recognize.

  “That’s them!” yelled Ivan, dropping the phone.

  Three Russians ran out of the motel office.

  “We’re home free,” Jethro said as they reached the other side of A1A and the miniature golf complex. “Nothing can go wrong now.”

  Paul heard footsteps. He looked back and saw Serge and Lenny.

  “Run!”

  They sprinted for the Japanese footbridge over the lagoon by the driving range.

  Serge stopped and grabbed Lenny by the arm. He pointed at hole number five, the pink elephant on the surfboard. “Split up! You go that way! We’ll ambush on the other side!”

  “Right!” Lenny ran for the elephant, and Serge took a hard left at the T Rex.

  Jethro and Paul looked back as they reached the bridge. The two guys were gone, but now there were three others, way back, their colorful shirts visible through the trees. Jethro and Paul started up the bridge. Serge had made a complete circle and was closing fast on the far end of the span for the ambush, but Lenny was tired from all his pot smoking and had to sit for a moment on a plastic turtle.

  Jethro and Paul hit the crest of the bridge. Jethro was still looking back, but Paul faced forward again.

  “Aaauuuhhhhh!”

  Serge was charging full speed. Paul panicked. He threw the briefcase as hard as he could up in the air. They all stopped and watched it sail end over end, tumbling weightless at the top of the arc, reflecting in the sunlight, then falling again, over the bridge’s railing and splashing next to the scuba diver collecting golf balls.

  There was some yelling from behind a cluster of palm trees. Russian accents. “I think I saw them go over there!”

  Everyone started running again. Paul and Jethro continued down the far side of the bridge, away from the tropical shirts. Serge kept charging in the opposite direction, up the bridge, letting them pass, concentrating on the briefcase. He never slowed as he reached the top of the bridge, swan-diving over the railing into the murky lagoon.

  The scuba diver had mistaken the briefcase’s splash for a feeding alligator diving into the pond, and he surfaced and jerked his head around, standing at the ready with his bang stick. Just then, another big splash, some guy diving into the water next to him.

  “What the hell?”

  It had been a long footrace, and the Russians were spread out along the path according to endurance. Pavel was the fastest, the only one who had made it around the last bunch of palms at the base of the bridge in time to see Serge dive over the railing.

  The scuba diver stared dumbfounded at the rippling water where Serge had gone in. Serge stayed submerged for the longest time, and the diver started thinking he might have drowned. Just then, Serge broke the surface of the water with an irrepressible smile, holding the briefcase over his head like the Stanley Cup. “I got it! I finally got it!”

  From the top of his vision, Serge saw the fastest Russian dive off the bridge. “Uh-oh.”

  Boom.

  The Russian belly-flopped on the end of the upright bang stick, and a shower of red hamburger rained on Serge and the scuba diver.

  From down the path: “They went that way!”

  Serge grabbed the scuba diver by the arm and pulled him under the Japanese footbridge. He put a finger over his lips for the diver to be quiet as feet clomped across the wooden boards above. The footsteps faded. Serge looked up at the slits of sunlight coming through the bridge. “I think the coast is clear.”

  He looked back down, but the scuba diver was already scrambling up the far bank of the lagoon.

  Fog rolled in from the ocean. A deep steam horn sounded from across the dark, night water. A cruise ship headed for the Bahamas.

  Paul was not on it. He was strapped to a lawn chair at the deserted end of the Port Canaveral jetty.

  “Where’s the briefcase?” said Ivan.

  “I told you, I threw it in the lagoon!”

  Ivan backhanded him across the face. “We already checked. I’ll ask you again. Where’s the briefcase?”

  “That’s where I threw it!” said Paul. “Someone must have grabbed it!”

  Slap.

  “All we found was Pavel floating facedown, his lunch in the trees. Where’s the briefcase?”

  “I don’t know!”

  Slap.

  A new Mercedes drove up, with dealer stickers still in the windows, headlights slicing through the fog, shining in Paul’s eyes. Igor got out and unlocked the trunk. He took the blindfold off Lenny and dragged him to the front of the car.

  “Where’d you find him?” asked Ivan.

  “Hiding in the windmill.”

  “Any sign of the fat one with the beard?”

  Igor shook his head. He tied Lenny to a second lawn chair next to Paul.

  “Where’s the briefcase?”

  “I never saw the briefcase,” said Lenny. “Can I go?”

  “Sure thing,” said Ivan. “And would you like some cab money?”

  Lenny smiled. “Yeah.”

  Slap.

  “We can do this all night,” said Ivan. “I don’t have to be anywhere.”

  “I do,” said Lenny.

  Slap.

  “Let me pull his pants down!” said Igor, holding up a cage of scorpions.

  Ivan smacked the cage out of Igor’s hand. “What is wrong with you? I mean it! You’re not normal!”

  Igor pointed at the ground. “They’re getting away! Give me a piece of paper or something to scoop them up.”

  Slap. “Forget about the scorpions!”

  Igor rubbed his sore cheek. A foghorn blared. “Is that a cruise ship?”

  “Probably,” said Ivan. “They go out of here all the time.”

  “Ever been on one?”

  “What?”

  “Ever taken a cruise?”

  “A couple times.”

  “I heard you can eat all you want all the time, that they keep refilling the buffet twenty-four hours.”

  Ivan stared at him.

  “Do they really do that? If they do, that’s a pretty good deal.”

  Ivan put a hand to his own temple and closed his eyes. “Don’t talk anymore. I have a headache. Just turn the car around and we’ll stick them in the trunk and handle this later at the motel.”

  “You got it.” Igor hopped back in the Mercedes and started the car.

  Ivan cupped his hands around his mouth and yelled over the engine: “Remember, you have trouble with English…R is for—”

  Igor ran over Paul.

  “…reverse.”

  Igor put the car in reverse and backed over Paul. He got out and walked around the front of the car. “Is he okay?”

  “Absolutely. Ready to dance all night.”

  “But he looks dead.”

  Slap.

  “He is dead! You ran over him! Twice!”

  Igor picked up a crumpled lawn chair and tried to unbend it, then turned quickly. “What was that?”

  “What was what?”

  “That noise. I heard something.”

  “We’re outside in a park. There’s a million squirrels and birds.”

  Igor stepped forward and peered into a palmetto thicket. “I could have sworn I heard someone.”

  Two Russians still alive. Ivan and Igor. They drove back to the motel in silence.

  “What do you want to eat?” asked Ivan.

  “I don’t know. Something different.” Igor turned on the radio.

  “It’s after midnight. We only have so many options.”

  Igor thumbed through his CD wallet. “But we always go to the same place.”

  “It’s a good place.”

  Mosquitoes buzzed around fluorescent lights. Outdoor speakers played faint Muzak. A deep, rhythmic pounding came up the street, quiet at first, but getting louder. A white M
ercedes Z310 came around the bend on A1A. The tinted windows were down, Igor’s head bobbing.

  “…Everybody Wang Chung tonight…”

  Lenny tried to adjust his eyes in the jet-black trunk. He screamed and he banged. The car came to a stop and Lenny listened carefully. The engine turned off. Lenny started screaming and banging again.

  The trunk lid suddenly opened, bright light. Lenny shielded his eyes.

  “Seven-Eleven,” said Igor. “What do you want?”

  Lenny crunched his eyebrows in thought. “Jumbo dog…no, chicken salad. And a cookie. But if they don’t have chicken, don’t get the tuna—”

  The trunk lid closed.

  Ivan and Igor hit the chips rack, then the beer case. Hiding Paul’s body in the underbrush hadn’t been easy, and they still had quite a bit of blood on their shirts, but no more so than the other customers.

  “Coors good?” asked Ivan.

  “It’s all right.”

  “You want me to get it or what?”

  Igor scanned the rest of the display. “Have you had the new Killians with the pressurized ball in the can for real draft taste?”

  “Come on! We’re fogging up the door!”

  Coors it was. They moved on to the deli. Ivan grabbed the first sub he saw. Igor picked up three in succession, put each back. He waved at the cashier. “Are these salads fresh?”

  “Made this morning.”

  “What time?”

  Ivan grabbed a salad and jabbed it in Igor’s stomach. “Take it and let’s go!”

  They dumped their purchase on the counter. The cashier began ringing.

  “The slot for the little bags of croutons was empty,” said Igor. “I don’t think I should be charged full price for the salad.”

  “I have to charge what the label says.”

  “But I didn’t get my croutons.”

  “We’re out.”

  “I know.”

  “All I can do is void it.”

  Ivan smacked the back of Igor’s head again. “Pay the man and get in the car!”

  Further into the night. A1A became deserted, the last decent people straggling home. Traffic lights cycled through their colors with no cars. Next shift. A hooker rode to work on a bike with a banana seat. A police cruiser slowly rolled by, shining a search beam down each alley. A pack of wild dogs came out from behind a muffler shop, fighting over a large piece of unidentified meat, scattering when headlights hit them and a Mercedes turned into the parking lot of the Orbit Motel.

  Ivan and Igor carried plastic convenience store bags to their room. The dogs took off down the street after a banana bike.

  “I don’t know why you’re in such a grouchy mood,” said Igor.

  Ivan stopped walking. “Did your mother, like, fall down several flights of stairs when she was pregnant?”

  “No.”

  “Get kicked by a horse?”

  “No.”

  “Handle a lot of plutonium?”

  “No. Why do you ask?”

  Ivan resumed walking to the room. He unlocked the door, and they dumped their stuff on the dresser.

  “Go get him out of the trunk,” said Ivan. “You think you can handle that?”

  Five minutes later, Ivan stood in his socks in front of the TV, looking for something with the remote and shaking a bag of sunflower seeds into his mouth. Then he remembered Igor was taking a long time.

  Ivan opened the door and stuck his head out. “Igor?…Igor?…”

  Igor hadn’t blinked for five minutes. His hands were bound, mouth taped.

  Serge snipped away with heavy-gauge metal shears.

  “It’s important to have the right tool for the job.” Snip, snip. “They’re Sears, you know. Lifetime guarantee.” Snip, snip. “Aren’t you just fascinated by the place we’re at?”

  Igor didn’t blink.

  “Me, too,” said Serge. “Cape Canaveral, from the Spanish for ‘cape of canes’ because of all the reeds the sailors saw. Say the name today, and people think modern, futuristic, space travel. Yet it also has one of the oldest histories of any place in the country.” Snip, snip.

  Serge stepped back to inspect his work, then nodded to himself and began snipping again. “The cape jutted out so much, it became Florida’s most prominent navigational feature for early explorers. That’s why there are so many shipwrecks around here. Hence, the Treasure Coast.”

  Serge switched to bolt cutters. Snap, snap.

  “The area was mapped as early as 1502. The Spanish tried to establish their first settlement here, but the Indians were too savage, so they moved a bit farther north to a little place called St. Augustine. Isn’t that a fun fact? Did you know they had to bulldoze historic Indian grounds when they were building some of the launch pads? Talk about your symbolism overload.”

  Igor finally figured out Serge’s plan and started screaming under the mouth tape.

  “You’re right,” said Serge. “It was a tragedy. All kinds of archaeological opportunities lost.”

  Serge snipped a few last times and stood up straight. “There!”

  He reached down next to Igor’s leg and turned a key. A quiet electric motor came to life. “You realize you kidnapped my best friend. I saw you with that cage of scorpions. You weren’t exactly planning a Hallmark moment.”

  Serge produced a pistol with a silencer, took aim, and shot out four floodlights in the distance. He picked up a concrete block and placed it in front of Igor’s feet, on a pedal. The electric motor grew louder, and Igor slowly pulled away from Serge.

  “Don’t forget to write.”

  Ten p.m. A homicide detective and the county medical examiner stood on a Japanese footbridge, interviewing witnesses. EMTs were down on the bank of the retention pond, zipping up Pavel’s body in a black plastic bag.

  The detective took notes on a spiral pad. “And you say you were scuba diving in the pond for golf balls.” The detective looked up. “Is that actually a job?”

  The diver nodded.

  “And the deceased just came out of nowhere and jumped on the end of your bang stick?”

  The diver nodded again.

  “Hey!” the complex’s owner yelled over to the detective. “Can I open the driving range now? I’m losing a lot of money!”

  The detective said it was okay.

  “Go ahead!” yelled the owner. Twenty golfers began swinging.

  They loaded Pavel’s body into the back of the coroner’s van.

  “Range cart!”

  The golfers dumped out the rest of their buckets and began swinging as fast as they could, dozens of balls clanging off the side of the cart. But other shots, which appeared to have found their mark, didn’t make much noise at all. With the floodlights shot out, the golfers couldn’t see that the driver’s protective metal cage had been cut away.

  The police and medical examiner had to drop Pavel’s body off at the morgue and head right back to the driving range.

  The detective wasn’t happy when he met the owner in front of the windmill. He pointed at the range. “They’re still hitting golf balls!”

  “I have to make a buck.”

  “This is a crime scene!”

  “They’re not aiming at the cart anymore.”

  “Tell them to stop!”

  The owner stuck two fingers in his mouth and whistled toward the driving tees. “Hey! The police say you have to stop!” Most of them did, although some tried getting in a few last balls.

  “Stop hitting!” yelled the detective. “What are you, children?”

  The detective and coroner walked out to the two-hundred-yard marker and peeked in the range cart at Igor. The detective cringed. The coroner threw up.

  The detective offered him a handkerchief and tapped the corner of his own mouth. “You got vomit.”

  The coroner dabbed it.

  “Other side.”

  The EMTs carefully extracted Igor from the range cart.

  The detective stared off in thought and shook his head.
“What the hell kind of Goony Golf are they running here?”

  A golf ball whizzed by.

  Ivan sat in his motel bathroom with a cell phone.

  “Calm down, Mr. Grande…. Please calm down…. Nobody feels worse about this than I do…. No, someone else has the briefcase now…. We’re still trying to find that out…. Look, I know this is a bad time to bring this up, but I need some more men…. I ran out…. What do you mean, what happened to the ones I had? They’re all dead…. Stop shouting…. Please stop shouting…. I’d like to point out that they died trying to recover your five million dollars…. Yes, that’s right, the five million I still don’t have…. If you can just send some more guys, I think we can wrap this up pretty quickly…. Okay, I’ll meet them at the airport….”

  The next morning Ivan headed west on the Beeline Expressway, listening to books on tape. He took the exit for Orlando International and parked in short-term, then got on a moving sidewalk for the new airside. He found a seat and folded his hands in his lap.

  A wide-body pulled up to the terminal. Ivan stood and walked over to the gate. Passengers poured off the plane. Couples embraced, children cried, others ran for the smoking area. Ivan got on tiptoe in the middle of the human stream, craning his neck for a better view, holding a white sign in front of him with both hands: MIERDA CARTEL.

  Four men in tropical shirts walked up and introduced themselves. Dmitri, Alexi, Vladimir and Chuck.

  “We’re on a tight schedule,” said Ivan. “We have to head to an address right now. Then drinks on me.”

  Jethro was back in his room at the Orbit Motel, sitting on the foot of the bed. He had decided to end it like a man. There was no other choice. The money was gone and so was his little buddy. He had already read the grisly details in the paper. Jethro blamed himself. He drank straight from a bottle of George Dickel and muttered as he loaded the shotgun he had purchased at Space Shuttle Pawn for twenty-five dollars.

  “If only I had not run like a coward, possibly I could have prevailed in the struggle and offered protection and comfort. Instead, I abandoned my faithful traveling companion. Men do not do such things. Not even dogs do such things….” He took another swig. “I am not even a dog. Where was my grace under pressure? There is no honor in this anymore. Just the burning sting of truth like a morning urination in Madrid. Galanos!”