The Pope of Palm Beach Page 3

  Darkness fell, but it wasn’t night. Little Serge’s grandfather remained outside, lugging a sheet of plywood.

  “Dad!” Little Serge’s mom yelled out the front door. “Will you get in here!”

  “Just a minute.”

  “No! Look what’s going on out there!”

  He looked. So did Little Serge, standing on his tiptoes at the window. He’d been told not to go near the windows, but he was Little Serge.

  Earlier in the day, his grandfather had pulled the floor mats out of their car and was hosing them off when the news broke. The mats had been forgotten. Now they fluttered on the front lawn before lifting off like Arabian carpets and sailing toward the horizon until the two little dots disappeared.

  “Wowwwwww!” said Serge.

  His grandfather ran inside and slammed the door.

  “Where’s Little Serge?” shouted his mother. “Serge! Get away from that window! What did I tell you?”

  He scampered back to his designated spot in the hallway, the central-most location in the house.

  Hunkering began.

  It was the era of feckless optimism. Seat belts were optional, people smoked everywhere, and television hailed the miracle of DDT. Also, no evacuation-route signs. Hurricanes were just something you rode out. The hallway was tight quarters for the extended family: the little boy, parents and grandparents.

  One thing his folks were good at was not letting Serge worry. They got out the board games. “Little Serge, what do you want to play? Trouble? Chinese checkers? How about Candy Land? Candy Land’s your favorite.”

  “Monopoly,” said the child, sitting with a metal drum of Charles Chips in his lap that was almost as big as he was.

  “Really? Why would you rather play Monopoly than Candy Land?”

  “Money!”

  Serge rolled the dice and moved his tiny metal race car onto Baltic Avenue. “I want to buy a house.”

  They intentionally let Serge win.

  “Look at all my money!”

  Serge stuffed his mouth with potato chips. He stopped and looked around. Nobody else was talking. All paying attention to a transistor radio and the storm update from WJNO. Serge slowly packed more chips into his mouth. Something was wrong. They never let him eat so many potato chips. Then he looked toward his bedroom door. They weren’t making him go to sleep. Hurricanes are cool!

  Suddenly the power went out.

  “What’s going on?” asked the boy.

  “Nothing.”

  They lit candles. With the electricity gone, the wind outside howled even louder. Rain hammered the roof and small debris pelted the windows. One of the panes shattered.

  “What was that?” asked the boy.

  “Nothing.”

  Little Serge watched his dad and grandfather drag mattresses out of the bedrooms.

  “What are they doing?”

  “Hey!” said his mom. “Let’s get out the Ouija board!”

  His family was devoutly Catholic, but some loophole let them believe in the power of the Ouija. Serge and his mother used fingertips to move the plastic triangle and contact late uncle Homer, who reported back that everything was A-OK.

  Smash!

  A tree broke loose and hit the edge of the roof. His dad got up again.

  Potato chips filled a mouth. “What’s going on now?”

  “Just some noise.”

  And so on into the wee hours, radio reports, melting candles, yawns.

  Serge finished constructing a glorious stomachache. His young mind processed all the new info: nonstop games, bottomless chips, no bedtime, a bunch of stuff breaking outside, talking to dead relatives. This was the best day of his entire life.

  “Mom, when can we have another hurricane?”

  Chapter 3

  September 9, 1965

  Predawn workers in cherry-pickers repaired downed power lines, and city trucks cleared the roads of uprooted palms.

  Hurricane Betsy made official landfall in the early hours of the eighth before departing into the Gulf of Mexico. Its strength and surprise attack registered it as the first Atlantic storm to top a billion dollars in damage. That was 1965 dollars.

  A gloomy morning saw residents circling their homes to assess the havoc. Then they got busy with rakes and garbage cans.

  Others went down to the beach. It was standard procedure after a hurricane. Storms tended to change things. Chunks of shore might be missing. Other chunks were suddenly there. Hotel signs ended up on top of other hotels. You never knew.

  But the silent crowd that had lined up on the shore of Singer Island never expected this. They all just stared upward in openmouthed awe.

  During the early days of September, a 441-foot Greek freighter called the Amaryllis had sailed from Manchester, England, bound for Baton Rouge. During the height of the storm, the ship found itself literally fighting for its life down the coast of Florida. But safe harbor was just ahead. The crew reset their course for the Port of Palm Beach. Which meant reaching the Lake Worth Inlet and entering the jetties by the Pump House. The crew began breathing easier. Only a mile to go.

  A mile too far.

  If one ever needed to comprehend the power of a hurricane, the only requirement was to see how insanely far into the beach Betsy had driven the bow of the massive cargo ship. Which is what all the residents were now doing, loitering behind the old Rutledge Motel, staring up at this ten-story metal monstrosity that had freakishly altered their skyline.

  And while they were paralyzed in amazement, the weirdness intensified. They heard strange twanging sounds. Coming from the ship.

  “Look!” Someone in the crowd pointed up at the deck.

  Someone from the deck waved back. Then someone else, and another, until the whole railing was full of sailors and smiles. The crew was still on board. And playing Greek instruments. They might not have been so festive if they had known that international red tape would strand them on the ship another two months—except for a couple of sailors who secretly hopped ashore and ended up in Memphis. Go figure.

  But for now, it was a celebration of meeting new friends after not having sunk in a hurricane. An interpreter from the Coast Guard arrived. The bonding continued.

  So did the surprises.

  The ship’s enormity and placement produced more head-scratching consequences. It completely altered ocean currents and the angles of the frothing waves now breaking offshore. And while the crowd’s attention was focused on the deck, a teenager pointed in another direction.

  “Look!”

  What the hell?

  Nobody realized it at the time, but the youth culture all up and down the coast was about to experience a tectonic shift.

  At the rear end of the vessel, behind the giant exposed propeller, something new appeared.

  Actually someone.

  The tiny person stood up on a wooden surfboard and expertly rode the crashing waves down the ship’s waterline.

  “It’s the Pope!”

  Back to the Present

  “And here’s another sign of the End Times,” said Serge. “The ultra-rich now have something called a social media butler.”

  “How does that work?” asked Coleman. “A guy walks around with a cell phone on a silver platter?”

  “Who knows?” Serge hit the gas as they climbed another bridge in the Florida Keys. “But this whole plugged-in, scalable, wider-coverage-area, texting, sexting, Twitter-verse, twenty-four/seven lifestyle has gotten completely out of hand. The country is now brainlessly hurtling toward the day when our entire existence is spent lying in an alkaline-neutral sarcophagus bath capsule wearing a virtual helmet that uses eye movements to buy stuff on the hologram Amazon planet.”

  “What if you accidentally get something in your eye?” asked Coleman.

  “Then it’s another shopping spree where drones and hovercraft forklifts descend on your home with pallets of wind chimes, tube socks, badminton rackets, orthopedic neck pillows, turkey thermometers, ceramic Siamese cat
s, and you’ve just downloaded the complete works of Shakespeare and Kool and the Gang.”

  “I hate it when that happens.”

  “And I’m sure they have automatic locks on your bath capsule until you pay, the fuckers.”

  “Screw the rich.”

  “Except it’s unfair to lump all wealth together because it’s the American way. But I’m making the call right now: The ones with social media butlers are on the asshole side of the ledger. And what are they posting? ‘Messed over some of the little people,’ ‘Ignored the plight of others,’ ‘Gave lobster to my dog in front of the help and giggled,’ ‘Life is so hard looking at color swatches,’ ‘Traded a lobster for sex with the undocumented maid,’ ‘Fired my disgruntled social media butler for posting all the previous stuff.’”

  Coleman had his head out the window like a beagle.

  Serge looked over and compressed his eyebrows. “What, pray tell, are you doing now?”

  “The Seven Mile Bridge totally rocks.”

  “That’s a given, but you’re acting really weird, even for you.”

  “Yooop, yooop, yooop, blaba, blaba, kareeeeee-nuck-nuck-nuck . . .” Coleman windmilled his arm out the passenger window. “Hey, Serge, I’m making the car go faster.”

  Serge gave another quick glance. “Did you take some kind of hallucinogen again?”

  “You don’t notice air until you’re going this speed. Then it feels like if Jell-O was a gas.”

  “Coleman!”

  “I only took half a dose . . . I think . . .”

  “You think?”

  “One of the side effects of good psychedelics is you can’t remember how much you took.”

  “What’s a side effect of bad psychedelics?”

  “You wake up in another time zone.”

  Communication broke down until they reached the Long Key Viaduct. Coleman pulled his head back inside. “Whew, glad that awful shit finally wore off.”

  “So you’re not going to take it again?”

  Coleman gave him an odd look. “You don’t know anything about drugs, do you?”

  “A blind spot that I have made peace with.” The Nova headed out over the water again. “And your trip recovery has perfect timing. We’re almost to my next order of business.”

  “Almost where?” Coleman cracked a beer to smooth out the transition like 120-grit sandpaper.

  “Remember that story in the news about this snotty little thirty-two-year-old brat who became president of a pharmaceutical company?”

  “Not yet.”

  “Well, his corporation bought another small pharmaceutical firm, which is no big deal. And they inherited the patents, including one for an anonymous drug that was taken for granted for half a century.”

  “Still no bells ringing.”

  “This jerk figures out that in rare situations, it’s a drug of last resort with no available alternatives. It fights a protozoa infection that is normally harmless in adults. But when a mother passes it to a newborn, the drug is a game-changer. This new young president correctly figured that parents of dying children are the most desperate customers of all, so he held their babies for ransom, raising the price of the medicine from twelve dollars a pill to seven hundred.”

  “Whoa!” said Coleman. “I remember that. I’ve got his face in my head right now. He’s mean.”

  “An understatement,” said Serge. “He even appeared on talk shows with stupid cowlick bangs, still smirking like he was proud and enjoying his celebrity, glibly asserting it was a brilliant business decision that he had no intention of reversing.”

  “What’s your next order of business?”

  “Reversing it.”

  “But how? We’re in the Keys.”

  “After going on TV, the backlash became too much in New York. He leased a place down here to lay low.”

  “If he’s in hiding, how do you know about it?”

  “Everyone knows about it,” said Serge. “Unlike other places, hiding out in the Keys depends not on secrecy, but the nature of Keys people. Protesters picketed the first day, but being Keys people, the tenacity to protest has the life span of a margarita.”

  Serge crossed the bridge to Upper Matecumbe and pulled over. “There it is.”

  “I don’t see it.”

  “That abomination of a beach mansion barely visible through all the vegetation.” Serge started the car again. “Luckily, I’ve already scoped it out.”

  “When?”

  “On the way down,” said Serge. “Remember me dropping you off at that bar?”

  “The Lorelei!” said Coleman. “Big Dick and the Extenders used to play there.”

  “So then I found my way down to the shore and flanked around behind his pad.”

  “Weren’t you worried he might call the police?”

  “He did call the police.” Serge pulled over again as the sun went down with fanfare. “The hyper-rich constantly try to run you off their beaches and deny Florida to the masses. But there’s a little-known Florida law: You can walk all the way around the state—even behind private resorts and mansions—as long as you stay below the line of the mean high tide.”

  “What’s that?”

  “It involves math, so let me do the talking if it comes up.” Serge walked back to the trunk. “Anyway, I was strolling along the sand at dusk and stopped behind his place to stare in the back windows.”

  “Why?”

  “Because I don’t like him. And I wanted him to see me.” Serge removed a gym bag and slammed the lid. “It had the desired effect. He finally notices, and I wave happily. He makes these angry motions for me to get off his property. I shake my head and continue staring, now with binoculars. So he comes storming down his back porch, screaming he’ll have me arrested. I explain the whole mean-high-tide thing, and he says, ‘We’ll see about that!’ He pulls out a cell phone and calls the cops. I watch the changing expression on his face as he listens to a second rendition of the high-tide rule, and his head is about to explode. He storms back inside yelling it’s ‘unfair,’ and I watch with my binoculars as he closes all the curtains in such a fury that he tears one of them down, and then he’s thrashing around with the curtain rod and the fabric, getting tangled and falling through a glass coffee table.”

  “But why did you want him to spot you in the first place?”

  “Calibrating his reaction dynamic to negative stimuli for my project. Assholes like him think they can always outsmart you, but in reality their arrogance is their weakness, and if you play it with finesse, they’ll follow the bait right into your hands. It’s an intricate project, with several compartmentalized steps, each requiring sequential timing. Luckily, this douche-canoe is bait-sensitive.”

  “Why do you need so many steps?”

  “I don’t, but each one has so many cool trivia facts that I just had to string them together for a domino effect.” Serge began hiking down a sandy path next to a hotel. “They’ve made such lifesaving strides in the field of biochemistry since I was in school.”

  The pair finally reached the shore and turned west. “Stay behind me,” said Serge. “Closer to the water the better.”

  “It’s kind of peaceful out tonight,” said Coleman.

  “And the stars!” Serge dropped his gym bag and unzipped it. “Can’t buy this slice of heaven. Here are your binoculars.”

  “Thanks.” Coleman turned toward the giant glass windows on the back of a mansion. “He’s walking around in a bathrobe at night. What’s that about?”

  “Panache.”

  “I’m calling him Panache Boy,” said Coleman, following the young man with his binoculars. “Panache sounds cool if you’re high. Panache, panache, panache . . .”

  “Okay, try not to ruin this.”

  “What’s he doing now?”

  “Noticing us.” Serge adjusted focus as the executive burst out the back door. “And here he comes now, right on bait-cue.”

  The young CEO marched down the dark beach. “You again!
What did I tell you about staying off my property?”

  “I remember,” said Serge, still using his binoculars even though the resident was only a few feet away. “And what did I tell you about the mean high tide? You should trim your nose hairs.”

  “I’ll destroy you! Your whole families!” yelled the young chief executive. “Do you have any idea who I am?”

  “Yes, why?” said Serge. “Forgot your own name?”

  “I’m Sterling Hanover, president of Medaxo Pharmaceuticals!”

  “Panache Boy,” said Coleman.

  “Get out of here! Both of you!”

  Serge and Coleman interlocked arms and square-danced at the edge of the surf, singing off-key: “The mean high tide, the mean high tide, everyone loves the mean high tide . . .”

  “Stop it! Stop it right now!”

  The pair switched arms and spun in the opposite direction. “. . . The mean high tide, the mean high tide, you’d kick us out if you could, but the law ain’t on your side . . . Why? Ohhhhhhhhh, the mean high tide, the mean high tide . . .”

  Sterling’s face became a deep red as he pursed his lips tight. “You’re going to get it now!” He turned and ran toward the mansion. “You don’t fuck with Sterling Hanover!”

  The pair picked up their binoculars.

  “What’s happening?” asked Coleman.

  “Looks like he’s trying to find something in a desk drawer.” A door slammed. “He’s coming back. We’ll soon find out.”

  Square dancing resumed. “. . . The mean high tide, the mean high tide . . .”

  Sterling returned to the shore, and the dancing abruptly ceased. The young man grinned wickedly. “What’s the matter? Not so chipper anymore?”

  “What’s with the Tasers?” said Serge.

  “One for each of you!” said Sterling, aiming with both hands like a cowboy movie. “I am so going to enjoy this!”

  “Serge,” said Coleman. “Part of your plan, right?”

  “I didn’t see this coming.”

  “What are we going to do?”

  “Don’t worry. He’s too much of a pussy to use them.”