The Stingray Shuffle Read online

  “There’s a bunch of cars stopped up there,” said Brandon. “Can you do a rooster tail?”

  “In my sleep,” said Cameron. He slowed and hit a switch, raising the pitch of the propellers, and a small geyser of water shot a couple feet into the air behind the boat.

  “This is going to be so great!”

  They didn’t go under the draw spans, instead picking a solid span three to the left. When they came out the other side, Cameron slammed the throttle all the way forward, and a giant rooster tail shot thirty feet in the air, up onto the bridge. Ninety gallons of salt water flooded the interior of a convertible BMW, killing the electronics and the engine.

  Cameron and Brandon looked back and saw the Beemer’s headlights flicker and go out. They were still giggling as they idled the yellow-and-white boat up to the seawall just past the bridge. That was the thing about Palm Beach—all the best off-limits places were wired tighter than Fort Knox. You couldn’t get near them from the street. A different story from the water.

  The brothers only banged the prow of their father’s boat into the seawall four times as they moored and climbed over the wall into the backyard.

  “You remember the beer?”

  “Yep. You remember the spray paint?”

  Brandon rattled the can in his right hand.

  Cameron pointed. “There it is!”

  “This is going to be so excellent!”

  It was a huge yard, and their target of opportunity stood alone in the middle. They stumbled across the grass and giggled some more and began spray-painting something ungrammatical about a rival fraternity sucking donkey dicks.

  They finished and stood there looking at the dripping paint. They felt empty. That’s it? This is as fun as it gets? They stood there some more, in case it would change, drinking and smoking, but no luck. Cameron got an idea. What if they broke something? That usually felt good.

  They climbed some stairs and smashed a pane in the back door. They found their way around inside from the moonlight coming through the windows. Brandon put a cigarette out on a century-old sofa. “What’s a train car doing out here anyway?”

  “Do I look like a fucking conductor? Here—help me break this.”

  Legs snapped crisply off the antique divan.

  “Let’s go get the baseball bats,” said Cameron.

  “Good idea.”

  They ran back to the boat. The brothers always took baseball bats with them in case they came across someone in traffic who needed a licking, but they also brought gloves and balls, on the advice of their attorney father, to disprove premeditation.

  They found some more Budweiser and decided it would be a good idea to bring that, too. Soon they had returned with the bats and beer, ready for a successful future.

  “Hold it,” Cameron said in the middle of the train car. He stopped and peed on something.

  “That was great! Watch this!” Brandon dropped his trousers.

  “You’re going to pinch a loaf?”

  Brandon nodded.

  “Radical!”

  Brandon finished his business and pulled up his pants.

  Cameron raised the baseball bat and smashed the arm off an Elizabethan chair.

  “Let me see that.” Brandon shattered the cherry top of a library cabinet, gold-edged books spilling. The end of the bat got stuck in the hole through the busted-up wood. He braced his left arm against the cabinet to free the bat. “Hold it a second. There’s something shiny in here.”

  He swept the rest of the books off the shelves, and Cameron helped him pull the shelving out. In back was a silver briefcase. They opened it up.

  “Holy God!”

  They picked up the briefcase and headed out of the train car.

  Brandon spun around. “What was that?”

  “What was what?”

  “I heard something.”

  “You’re imagining things.”

  “Up there.”

  They were in the sleeping compartment. The top bunk was down, holding a big pile of blankets.

  “I saw it move!”

  “I did, too!”

  The blankets shifted some more and a sleepy head finally poked out and looked around.

  “Dig it!” said Cameron. “Some old bum is sleeping in here!”

  “I hate bums!”

  “Get a job, bum!”

  Movement in a second bunk. Another head poked out. Then a whisper: “Serge, someone’s in the hideout.”

  “Look! There’s two of ’em!” said Brandon.

  “You know,” said Cameron, picking up his baseball bat and slapping it in an open palm, “they’re trespassing.”

  “That’s right,” nodded Brandon, slapping his own bat in his hand.

  “We’re going to teach you bums a lesson!”

  Serge raised his hand. “Pardon me, but I think you’re making a mistake—”

  “Shut up, bum! If you don’t have any respect for yourself, why should we?”

  “Yeah! You make us want to puke with your laziness, your begging on street corners…”

  “Your rude, unambitious, filthy lifestyle and your disgusting habits…”

  “Time out,” said Serge, sitting up and making a T with his hands. He pointed out in the hall. “Which one of you brought the dog in here?”

  “What dog? There is no dog,” said Brandon.

  “But there’s a big pile of shit on the floor,” said Serge.

  “Oh, that’s Brandon’s,” said Cameron.

  “Will you shut up, bum?” yelled Brandon. “You interrupted me! Now I can’t even remember what I was saying!”

  “You were talking about my disgusting habits,” said Serge.

  “Right!” said Brandon. “You sicken us! We don’t want your kind near our island!”

  “We’re going to make sure you two think twice before you ever break in here again!”

  The pair advanced and raised their bats.

  “Don’t even think of asking for mercy, bum!”

  They stopped. Brandon tapped Cameron. “Is that a gun in his hand?”

  Serge had their undivided attention. Brandon’s and Cameron’s eyes were open as far as they would go, their mouths taped. They were tied to straight-back chairs, wondering what all the pails were for—dozens of open buckets around their feet, filled with some kind of granular material.

  Serge sat on the other side of the room, legs crossed, reading a copy of Historic Railroader Monthly. He was a lot more clean-shaven and fit—and armed—than they had expected a bum to be.

  Serge looked up. “I hope you’ve learned your lesson.”

  They nodded quickly and hard.

  “And that lesson,” said Serge, “is that you never really know whom you’re fucking with, so best not to do it at all.”

  More nodding in agreement.

  Serge patted the briefcase on the floor next to his chair. “And thanks for returning this. The little sucker almost got away from me again.”

  He got up and walked over to one of the brick walls, gently touching the surface. “This is a pretty historic place itself. We’re out by the switching yards near the old West Palm depot. The mainland—I’m the local now. This used to be a major warehouse until they boarded it up twenty-five years ago. This room here was a giant humidor used to store cases of cigars that were boxcarred over from the factories in Tampa.” Serge ran his fingers along the doorframe. “It’s held up pretty well. The seals are in good shape. Except we’re not going to keep anything humid. We’re going to do the opposite.”

  He picked up one of the granule-filled pails so they could read the side: “DampRid.”

  “This stuff is incredible,” said Serge. “Sucks all the damn moisture out of the air. I mean all. If you reside in Florida, you can’t live without it. Until I found this stuff, my shower curtains were mildewed, the cabinets full of mold, all my album covers warped. But no more!”

  An empty five-gallon bucket sat near the door. Serge picked up one of the smaller pails of granul
es and tipped it slowly so the water that had collected in the bottom trickled into the larger bucket. He repeated the process until he had drained all the pails. Then he grunted as he hoisted the big bucket.

  “That sure is heavy,” said Serge. “I’ll be right back.”

  He dumped the bucket outside the room, then crossed the warehouse and opened a jimmied door to the street. Lenny was under a broken awning, toking a roach down to his fingertips.

  “Hi, Serge.”

  “How’s lookout duty?”

  “No problem except I’m almost out of dope, so I’m trying to conserve.”

  “That’s being responsible.” He went back inside.

  Serge repeated the pail-emptying exercise a dozen more times over the next twenty-four hours. He also drank two entire eighteen-packs of Perrier. Cameron and Brandon stared in terror as Serge knocked back another bottle and thumbed through his magazine. He set the empty green container on the floor. “You’re looking at me like, ‘Is he crazy or something, drinking so much water?’ No way—you have to make sure you take a lot of fluids in here or you’ll dehydrate, and you don’t want to die like that. It has a way of creeping up on you. Did you know that toward the end, you cry tears of blood?…Hey look! Here’s our train car!”—pointing at a photo in his magazine. “The one we were in last night. It’s called the Rambler. Bet you’re glad you got a chance to see it, huh?”

  Serge got up and paced like a cheetah. “Actually, we’re lucky to have that car at all. In 1935, the Florida East Coast Railway sold it off to the Georgia Northern Railroad, along with a bunch of other stuff. Henry would have turned in his grave. They used the Rambler a few years and sold it again, and it eventually disappeared. When people finally realized its historic value, it was nowhere to be found.”

  Serge stopped walking and fanned himself with the magazine.

  “Damn, it’s hot in here!” Then he smiled. “But it’s a dry heat.”

  By the fourth day, there wasn’t any more movement from the two young men. They were technically still alive, able to hear and understand, but that was about it. Serge had moved them up to the top of the warehouse, out on the flat pebble roof, where they now lay naked on top of two ultrareflective silver survival blankets. Serge walked to the edge of the roof and looked down; Lenny was still on lookout, helping a bag lady cross the street. Serge went back to his captives.

  “You didn’t actually think I was going to let you die of dehydration, did you?” said Serge, wearing mirror sunglasses and a Miami Dolphins umbrella-hat. “I’m not that kind of guy.”

  He sat back down in his lawn chair and tried to find something good on his beach radio. “WPOM ruled when I was in puberty here, Alice Cooper, ‘School’s Out for Summer’ and everything, right up until someone got the bright idea to make it all-news…. WPOM, get it? West Palm? Damn, that’s clever!”

  Serge had a little cooler and a canvas beach bag beside his chair. He reached in the bag and pulled out a bottle of Hawaiian Tropic, squirting it on his arms and rubbing. “The key isn’t just the sun-protection factor, but also how well it blocks UV. The opposite would be, say, coconut cooking oil, which would accelerate the sun’s effects….”

  The two men listened intently, their nostrils filling with the aroma of coconuts coming off their chests.

  “You know, I never finished telling you about the Rambler. Sorry for leaving you in suspense. When we last left our tale, it had vanished from the face of the earth. Then, in 1959, they tracked it down miles from the rails, out on a Virginia farm where it was up on blocks, beaten all to hell, being used ironically enough as a tenant farmer’s house. Must have been a tear-jerking sight, like when those kids found E.T. near death by that creek. Years later, they located the original wheel trucks in Tennessee—talk about your detective work!—and with a lot of time and TLC, they restored it to original condition. So I’m sure you can understand my emotional reaction to all the vandalism, banging my head like that on the side of the car when I saw the graffiti. You wouldn’t have any idea who would do such an inconsiderate thing? It would have to be someone with a really low IQ, judging by the syntax and the reference to Equus asinus genitalia….”

  Serge glanced at his wristwatch. “Whoa! I almost forgot. Time to add more salt….”

  He picked up an extra-large blue Morton’s canister, walked over to the men and began sprinkling.

  “You know what they say: ‘When it rains, it pours.’”

  The medical examiner stepped out of the autopsy room and removed his surgical mask.

  The homicide investigator got up from a chair in the hall and walked over. “What the hell happened to those two poor kids? The bodies must not have weighed an ounce over eighty pounds.”

  “Seventy,” said the examiner.

  “I had six cops lose their lunches back there when we found ’em,” said the detective. “What kind of a monster…?”

  The examiner pulled off his latex gloves. “I wouldn’t have believed it if I hadn’t seen it with my own eyes. I always knew it was theoretically possible, but I’ve never actually heard of it being done to humans.”

  “Are you gonna tell me or what?”

  “Someone literally turned them into jerky.”

  23

  A white Mercedes Z310 cruised down US 1. Ivan was driving, pulling sandwiches from a fast-food sack in his lap. “Who had the cheddar melt?”

  “Here,” said Alexi.

  Vladimir leaned forward from the backseat and tapped Ivan on the shoulder. “Did you know there’s a disproportionate incidence of autoerotic strangulation among hockey players?”

  “What?”

  Vladimir sat back in his seat. “If you pass out, there’s still a chance you can come back to life, right?”

  Ivan glanced at Vladimir in the rearview, then back at the road. “Who the fuck did they send me this time?”

  A hand with a sandwich came up from the backseat, next to Ivan’s head. “I asked for no pickles.”

  Ivan slapped it away. “Just keep your eyes peeled for a pink Cadillac. A pimp saw them pulling out of the old train depot.”

  Serge was driving south on US 1 again. Actually Lenny was driving; Serge was just sitting in the driver’s seat.

  “My arm’s getting tired,” said Lenny, steering from the passenger side.

  “Just a few more pictures,” said Serge. “I can’t believe how much has changed. The Dairy Belle’s still here, but not much else.” Click, click.

  Lenny tried lighting a joint with his free hand but couldn’t get it going. The car began swerving.

  Serge lowered his camera and looked over. “What the hell do you think you’re doing?”

  “What?” said Lenny, taking the joint out of his mouth.

  “You’re driving, for Chrissake!”

  They ran a yellow light, followed by a white Mercedes.

  “Where are they going?” asked Dmitri.

  “That’s what we’re trying to find out,” said Ivan.

  “They keep changing lanes for no reason.”

  “Classic evasion tactic,” said Ivan.

  “Woah!” said Lenny. “I almost hit that bus. I think I’m too high to drive.”

  Dmitri snapped pictures of the Cadillac with a spy camera. “Did you see how he angled around that bus?”

  Ivan nodded. “Must have been trained by Israelis.”

  Lenny reached under the seat and yanked a Bud off a plastic ring. “I need a beer to level out.”

  “That’s where Indian River Citrus used to be,” said Serge. Click, click, click.

  “Those two poor bastards back at the depot,” said Lenny, shaking his head. “On one hand, I feel sorry for them. On the other, we almost lost the briefcase. Did you really have to kill them like that?”

  “They handled the briefcase.”

  “But only for a second.”

  “I told you it was cursed.”

  Lenny took a swig of beer, wiped his mouth with the back of his arm and looked up at the sky.
“What a great place to live!” The car swerved.

  Click, click, click. “That’s where the Publix used to be, and that’s where they tore down the bazaar tower, and they closed Spanish Courts over there and…oh my God!…”

  “What is it?”

  Serge focused the camera. Click, click. “They bulldozed the porn theater!”

  “You’re nostalgic about a porno joint?”

  “No, but it used to be the regular Main Street theater back in the sixties when I was going to parochial school. That’s where the nuns took us to see The Sound of Music when it first came out.”

  “You were taught by nuns?” said Lenny.

  Serge nodded. “That’s how I became an altar boy.”

  “Wait a minute. Hold the fuckin’ phone. You were an altar boy?”

  “Good one, too. Right up until I was defrocked.” Click, click, click. “There was absolutely no reason for them to expel me from the program like that.”

  “This is explaining a whole lot,” said Lenny. “Now it’s all starting to make sense.”

  “It was Easter Mass, and we were wearing all those heavy vestments, the cassock and surplice. There were extra stage lights, and the place was packed—really hot. I had never fainted before, so I didn’t know what it felt like. I’m kneeling on the side of the altar ready to ring the bells and everything starts getting dim, and I’m wobbling around on my knees like a duckpin. Then it goes completely black. I’m right on the verge of fainting but for some reason I didn’t. The conditions were just perfect so I remained on that cusp, semiconscious and upright, but lights out. I’m just a kid—what do I know? I think some kind of miracle is going on. I feel around the ground and push myself to my feet and face the congregation. They say the priest was in the middle of the consecration when I raised my arms in the air and yelled, ‘I’m blind! God has made me blind!’ Then I fainted in the Easter lilies.”

  The Cadillac sailed through the intersection at Okeechobee Boulevard, then Southern, Lake Worth, Lantana, Hypoluxo, down into Boynton Beach, Delray Beach, Deerfield Beach.

  “Lenny, you’re from this area. Know any good safe houses?”