The Pope of Palm Beach Read online

  “The fake beard, makeup, eyebrows . . .” said Chris. “Where’d you get all that?”

  Coleman poured beer into a funnel. “The Party Store has everything!”

  “Ignore him,” said Serge, leading her into the living room.

  “Good lord,” said Chris. “What happened to Kenny?”

  “He’s just excited about going back into print.”

  “He looks absolutely terrified.”

  Coleman drained the funnel. “There’s been a setback.”

  “He’s a little freaked out. Okay, a lot . . . But there’s a silver lining.” Serge broke into a grin. “I’ve always wanted to go on a book tour.”

  “You’re going to impersonate Kenny?”

  “Look at the guy,” said Serge, picking up a new remote control from the Party Store. “He’s not exactly audience-ready.”

  “That’s fraudulent,” said Chris.

  “Only if I’m stealing from him.” Serge worked levers on the control box. “But in this case I’m helping boost his circulation—”

  The phone rang, and it went through to the answering machine: “You’ve reached Guido Lopez. Please leave a message after the beep.” Beep.

  “Kenny, this is your attorney. Pick up. It’s urgent!”

  Serge grabbed the receiver. “Hello?”

  “Who’s this?”

  “Kenny.”

  “You don’t sound like Kenny.”

  “I have a cold. Who else would be answering this phone?” said Serge. “What’s up?”

  “‘What’s up?’ What the hell’s going on?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I just got a call from your old publisher,” said the lawyer. “He told me you submitted a new manuscript, and they’re overnighting me the contract.”

  “So sign it,” said Serge. “You have power of attorney. And put the money in the regular account.”

  “They said you’re going on a book tour?”

  “That’s right. I can’t wait! Getting my autographing hand limber now.”

  A long pause.

  “Hello?” said Serge. “You still there?”

  “We’ve worked together a long time, so may I be frank?”

  “Cool. Get your frank on.”

  “Our business is the strangest in my entire practice. And any practice I’ve ever heard of, for that matter. So over the years, I’ve kind of developed a picture. I get it. You’re a writer, but you’re not a public person. A lot of people aren’t. The sudden fame kind of blindsided you, and you became a recluse.”

  “Pretty much on the money,” said Serge. “What’s the problem?”

  “You do realize what this book tour will be like? Especially after you’ve been gone for so long,” said the lawyer. “I’m just surprised that you’d— . . . I’m just surprised. Thought I’d call to make sure everything’s all right over there.”

  “A-OK,” said Serge. “I’ve had an awakening. Anything else?”

  “Just that I can’t wait to read the new book,” said the attorney.

  “I’ll send over a signed copy. Later.” Click.

  “But Serge—” said Chris.

  “Hold that thought.” Serge ran outside, flicked open a pocketknife, and sliced the phone line. He dashed back in. “What is it?”

  “You don’t know anything about a book tour.”

  “Even better,” said Serge, pressing a button on his remote control that produced a whirring sound. “It’ll be a book tour like nobody’s ever seen before. Kenny is going to be so happy with his press coverage!”

  Chris pointed as something lifted off from the kitchen table. “What’s the drone for?”

  “Book signings.” Serge maneuvered the small craft around the corner and into the living room. “Weren’t you paying attention?”

  Chris raised her eyebrows. “I’ve only been to one book event before, but I think—”

  “Just a sec.” Serge’s tongue stuck out the corner of his mouth in concentration as he hovered his new toy over a lounge chair. “Kenny, check out your newest gimmick!”

  Bang.

  “Kenny shot down the book-tour drone.”

  Chapter 35

  That Night

  A green Chevy Nova sat in front of the twenty-four-hour copy shop.

  Serge approached a wall of private mailboxes. He stopped in front of them and stared at a little brass door, number 127. He clasped his hands. “Please, please, please . . .”

  Private mailboxes had a legitimate use: Some parcel companies won’t deliver to a regular U.S. postal box. The rest of the time these boxes fell in the same category as offshore accounts and safety deposits, when people needed to keep their private affairs private. Certain things weren’t meant to be delivered to a home with the wife and kids and especially search warrants.

  A middle-aged man stepped up to Serge’s left. He quickly looked around before inserting a key and removing several Social Security checks for people he wasn’t. He quickly left the store. Another man stepped up on Serge’s right. He glanced around and opened a box containing a plain brown package of DVDs titled The Golden Shower Girls, Vols. 16 and 17. He ran away. Serge kept his eyes on 127. “Please, please . . .”

  His hand inserted the key.

  “Crap.”

  “What’s the matter?” asked Coleman.

  “Only more junk mail.” He tore open envelopes in succession. “An advance copy of Kenny’s new book is supposed to arrive. I’ve been counting down the hours every day, but instead I just get offers for life insurance, credit-card balance transfers and gift baskets from Vermont.”

  Serge sorted the unwanted matter on a table.

  “What are you doing now?”

  “The same thing I always do.” He licked a flap. “Junk mail is a scourge on our nation with an astronomical opportunity cost because everyone has to waste time going through it all since there could be an actual bill in there somewhere. And if you simply toss the whole pile in the shit can, you’re in trouble. Most people just accept the oppression, but I’m fighting back!”

  “How?” asked Coleman.

  “Notice all this paper nonsense that’s clogging up my life right now?” He folded pages. “Most of it comes with prepaid return envelopes, so I just cram it all back in and off it goes. See how they like it. Now they have to waste time opening my envelope until they realize they’ve been had.”

  “And they also paid the postage?”

  “Ain’t irony grand?” He licked another flap. “The problem is so bad that it reaches out and fucks with my life when I’m not even getting junk mail. I’ll go to a bookstore and be reading a magazine at the racks, and I’m trying to quickly flip to critical knowledge not available elsewhere, but I can’t quickly flip because my progress is impeded by those subscription postcards that are stuck loose in the pages.”

  “There’s like five in every magazine,” said Coleman.

  “They all fall to the floor,” said Serge. “And now more time is sucked out of my existence having to pick them all up, because my personal contract with society requires me not to leave a trail of subscription cards. By then, I’m steaming under the collar.”

  “What do you do about it?”

  “I start going through all the magazines, even ones I would never read with articles like ‘You Ate a Cupcake? Burn It Off with These Sex Tips!’ Until I’ve collected a hundred prepaid cards, and right in the mail they go. Then my inner child is centered again.”

  Serge grabbed all the newly sealed envelopes and headed to the counter.

  “You missed one back there,” said Coleman. “The gift baskets.”

  Serge shook his head. “Vermont is good people. They get a pass . . .”

  The next night, Serge stood at the wall of mailboxes. A man ran off with a letter from his mistress. Serge inserted the key.

  “Son of a bitch!”

  “Junk mail?” said Coleman.

  “A double whammy,” said Serge. “No novel and this garbage. That�
��s a hypergolic combustion of my demons. But I’m taking my game to the next level!” He began tearing open the flaps as before. “It was staring me in the face the whole time. The prepaid envelopes are not weight specific. They’re just prepaid, so the senders have to cough up the dough for whatever comes winging back at them.”

  “What are you putting in the envelopes?”

  “Large galvanized washers and flat pieces of scrap metal,” said Serge. “They think they’re playing with children?”

  The next night. A hand turned a key on door number 127.

  “Motherfu—!”

  “Junk mail again?” said Coleman.

  “The gloves are off,” said Serge. “Until now I’ve been playing nice under Queensberry rules, just wasting a little of their time and postage fees. Not anymore.”

  “What are you putting in the envelopes today?”

  “I’m not. I’m taping the postage label to this big box of rocks. Then they’ll have to reevaluate their entire belief system.”

  They came back to the mailboxes night after night. Only more disappointment and cursing. Until . . .

  Serge gleefully thrust a package in the air. “I can’t believe it finally arrived!” He opened the padded mailer and removed a book with a bright, Day-Glo cover of orange and green. Tropical Warning. He flipped it over.

  “Hey,” said Coleman. “That’s a picture of you in a fake beard.”

  “Let’s get moving.” Serge stuck the book under his arm. “I can’t wait to show this to Kenny. Is he going to be happy! . . .”

  . . . Eight hundred miles away, an employee sat perfectly still, staring into a cardboard mailer.

  “Rocks?”

  Serge was full of vinegar when he practically crashed through the side door of the bungalow. “Kenny! Kenny! You’ve got to see this!” He sprinted into the living room to find the author as usual in the lounge chair with a rifle. No reaction or movement.

  “Check out the cover!” shouted Serge. “You’ll be famous again!”

  Kenny had the million-mile stare. He slowly lowered his eyes and shortened their focus.

  “Pretty snazzy, eh?” said Serge. “And look at the dashingly handsome gent on the back cover!”

  Kenny looked. Then with equal slowness, he set the rifle down next to the chair and stood up.

  “You’re walking!” said Serge. “Good for you! That’s a great sign! All it took was seeing your name on a novel again!”

  Serge followed the author as he deliberately rounded the corner into the kitchen. “Remember when you didn’t want me to do this and went batty? But I said it was for your own well-being? Aren’t you happy now that you listened to me? Well, not really listened because you didn’t have a choice—but happy that I forged ahead? Isn’t this super! . . . Kenny? Kenny? . . .”

  Kenny calmly and quietly got down on his hands and knees. He opened the cabinet doors under the sink, crawled inside and closed them.

  “What’s he doing?” asked Coleman.

  “Probably so happy that he needs privacy in case he becomes emotional . . . Come on, Coleman!” Serge led him outside to the car and opened the trunk. “We need to make the advance preparations. The next big step is Publication Day! All authors love Publication Day. If you think Kenny is emotional now . . .”

  Chapter 36

  Publication Day

  When Serge awoke each morning, there was never any middle ground. No period of grogginess or covering his head with a pillow or hitting a snooze button. His eyes opened once, big, full—Hooray! A new day!—and his feet were on the ground in full gear.

  This particular morning, even more so. It’s Publication Day! He ran through the house. “Kenny? Kenny, where are you? It’s Publication Day!”

  He found Coleman sprawled in front of the bookcase. “Get up!”

  “Huh?”

  Serge jerked him to his feet and grabbed his hands so they could dance in a circle, ring-around-the-rosie. “It’s Publication Day! It’s Publication Day!”

  Coleman: “Wooo.”

  Serge dropped his friend’s hands. He fished an empty toilet-paper tube out of the trash and used it as a small megaphone. “It’s Publication Day! It’s Publication Day!” He lowered the tube. “I have to find Kenny! This is all about him!” He sprinted from room to room, closet to closet, until he wound up kneeling in front of the sink cabinets. He opened the doors. “Kenny, there you are!” He leaned closer and put the cardboard tube to his mouth: “It’s Publication Dayyyyyyyyyy!”

  Kenny reached out and closed the doors.

  Serge grabbed his keys. “Coleman, we’re on the move!”

  The Chevy Nova raced south on U.S. 1 as Serge hit the newsstands, collecting local papers from Miami to Palm Beach. He knew from experience as a reader that papers like to time their book reviews with the date of publication.

  “Coleman, check it out!” Serge’s fingertips became ink-stained as he savagely tore through the pages. “Kenny made most of them! That’s an omen.”

  “Made what?”

  “Book reviews! You know, like when a newspaper says a book is ‘amazingly horrible,’ and the publisher puts out a press release with excerpts: ‘The New York Times calls it ‘amazing.’ Except these are all genuinely positive.”

  Back in the car, racing to a bookstore that wasn’t open yet. The employee in charge of unlocking the front doors saw Serge outside bouncing up and down.

  A key turned, and Serge flung the door open. “It’s Publication Dayyyyyyyyyyyyy!”

  The employee was practically trampled. Coleman stumbled in behind.

  “Is that a beer?” asked the man with the keys.

  “No,” said Coleman. Glug, glug.

  “It’s here! It’s here!” Serge’s excitement echoed through the empty store. “And right on top of the new-release pyramid facing the door.” He snatched a copy and caressed the dust jacket. “It’s beautiful.”

  Coleman stuck the empty beer can on top of an autobiography. “I thought you already got a copy.”

  “It’s different in a store.”

  “Are you buying it?”

  “No, let’s rock! More stores! . . .”

  . . . Serge burst into the bungalow and ran for the living room. “Kenny, it’s Publication Day! You should see your book in all the stores! Aren’t you excited?”

  Kenny sat still in the lounger with his unfocused stare.

  “Okay, you’ve been around this block before, so the excitement is a little diluted. But I’m seriously stoked!” Serge began singing Foreigner. “‘Feels like the first time’ . . . I have to start rehearsing my speech for your first book signing tonight. You sure you don’t want to come see yourself? . . . All right, there’ll be other events.” He grabbed pages off a table and ran from the room. “Esteemed customers . . .”

  Meanwhile . . .

  The warehouse was empty, because it was Sunday.

  Some people like to go in to the office when no one else is around. Easy to think.

  Salenca propped his feet up and opened the pages of El Nuevo Herald, the Spanish-language version of the Miami paper. He always started with the comics, then whatever was going on with the Dolphins, in season or out. After that: Surprise me. Today’s paper would not disappoint.

  He read about unrest in the Middle East, unemployment in the Midwest, and the undead at a zombie convention in Fort Myers. He flipped to the lifestyle section, and found a bright orange-and-green image in the middle of the books page. He read the review. He was about to turn the page when he went back and read it again. Specifically the description of the plot that didn’t reveal any spoilers. He set the paper down and stared out the window of his office at an empty floor where people made fake credit cards the rest of the week. He picked up the paper again.

  Salenca was confident his hunch was wrong, but also certain he had to check. Back in 1989, he was just a seventeen-year-old kid getting paid more than he dreamed to unload whatever he was instructed to from dark boats on the Miami River. H
e hadn’t personally been involved with what had gone down up at the Port of Palm Beach, but he’d heard the stories. Everyone had.

  A manicured hand with a gold watch snatched car keys off the desk, and Salenca drove across town to the nearest chain bookstore. He and his toupee went inside and found the orange-and-green book in the new-release display. He went home and opened the cover. Salenca didn’t actually have to read the book, just skim the main points of the plot and details at the port. His hunch continued gaining credence until he read enough to seal its certainty. He grabbed his keys again.

  Afternoon came in Little Havana. Which meant four old men in straw hats sat around a table in a public park playing dominoes. Salenca arrived and pulled a chair up next to the one with the oxygen tank. He whispered in his ear. The old man turned with a curious look. Salenca just set the book down in front of him. The author’s bio said he currently resided in Riviera Beach.

  The oxygen man may have been frail, but even after all these years he crisply recalled telling that cop that he would die of old age before he ever forgot. And now, thanks to Salenca, he had beaten the clock. He gave Salenca a slight nod, all that was needed.

  Permission.

  That Evening

  Serge and Coleman and Chris arrived at the Delray Beach bookstore ahead of time. Early birds were already waiting.

  “Can I take a selfie?”

  “Sure! Just let me finish my coffee!” Glug, glug, glug. He pressed the corner of his beard back in place and smiled.

  Twenty more selfies, and then someone with two heavy shopping bags. “I brought all of your old books, several copies. Didn’t know how many you would sign, because some of the other authors . . .”

  “Are fuck-sticks!” said Serge, helping unload the bags. “I’ll sign them all! Obsessive behavior is underrated!”

  The next person glanced around. “This is for you.” He furtively placed something in Serge’s hand.

  “What’s this?”

  “A couple joints, for all the reading pleasure you’ve given me.”