Tropic of Stupid Page 3

  “See you in the tiki?” asked Katie.

  Serge strapped on his mesh backpack. “For the record, I just met him.”

  Traffic blew by on the Overseas Highway as the sun set in a blaze. A stout ocean breeze whipped palm fronds, both the live ones on the motel’s trees and the others on the tiki’s roof. The evening’s five-piece live band launched into Bob Seger.

  “. . . Ramblin’ gamblin’ man! . . .”

  Coleman quickly made himself a fixture on his stool, simultaneously working on a poor man’s boilermaker and directing the bartender’s attention to different bottles of booze.

  Serge finished station-keeping in the fabulous Room One and headed out to the blue-and-white Cobra to stow his diving backpack. He popped the trunk.

  “Mmmm! Mmmm! Mmmm!”

  “Oh, sorry,” said Serge. “Forgot you were in there. The gear will have to go in the back seat because I wouldn’t want to cramp your style. Need new duct tape?”

  “Mmmm! Mmmm! Mmmm!”

  “No? Great!” Slam.

  Serge entered the bar. He was the only customer pulling a hard-shell suitcase.

  “. . . Even the losers get lucky . . .”

  He commandeered an empty table and threw the lime-green luggage on top. Coleman ambled over with a glass in each hand and another clutched to his chest. “You’re back! Man, this is the greatest place!”

  Serge reached for a tiny key on a chain around his neck. “I must be getting old. Or maybe too excited about where we are.”

  Coleman upended one of the drinks. “Why do you say that?”

  “I completely forgot about the guy in the trunk.”

  “Don’t feel bad.” Guzzle. “I forgot about him, too.”

  “But it’s your job to forget stuff.” He stuck the key in the suitcase. “I’m losing a step.”

  “Aren’t you worried about him making noise and getting us discovered?”

  “Normally I would have conked him on the head,” said Serge. “But the band’s volume is effectively taking care of that.”

  “. . . You are a shooting star! . . .”

  Coleman waved the glass in his left hand, sloshing Maker’s Mark bourbon. “This is like freakin’ heaven!” He spun his face toward the rafters. “The monster of all tiki bars!”

  “Always has been.” Serge scribbled. “But the roof used to be lower, not much above our heads.”

  Coleman’s right hand sloshed Bombay. “Why did they change it?”

  “They didn’t. Hurricane Irma did,” said Serge. “It was the cataclysmic storm of 2017, projected to churn straight up the west coast through all the metropolitan areas. And it did, in a way, wrecking large parts of Naples, Fort Myers and the suburbs east of Sarasota and Tampa.”

  “Stop! Back up to the part about this bar! What happened?”

  “The place was supposed to be evacuated, but for some insane reason two guys stayed behind in one of the rooms, and when Hurricane Irma came ashore, it was daylight. They watched the storm spin off one of its many tornadoes, which danced across the parking lot before lifting the entire original tiki bar straight up into the sky like Dorothy’s farmhouse.”

  “Freaky.”

  “Please watch your beverages. I have archives here . . .”

  A tradition: Some of the staff noticed Serge’s new piece of luggage, and they slowly congealed, pulling up chairs around the table. “What now?” “Funky artifacts?” “Gravestone rubbings?” “View-Masters?” “That was a great magazine you showed us last time.” “Wasn’t that 1906?”

  “Gets even better this time. Gather ’round.” Serge flipped the lid on his cushioned hard-shell, revealing four brown leather slipcases. Each held six to eight periodicals, and all the cases sported the gold embossed seal of the National Geographic Society.

  “Here’s your 1906,” said Serge. “And I raise you with a 1921 and a ’22, both of fishes off Florida, then a 1927 of the first published underwater color photos, taken in the Tortugas, and another from ’47, which, if you compare it to the 1927 issue, you’ll notice they’re short one island, which was erased by the Labor Day Hurricane of 1935 . . .”

  The evening ended early so everyone could go diving again in the morning. Coleman was the last one out on the dance floor, gyrating bare-chested with stomach flab rolls, twirling his shirt over his head. “Woooo!”

  Serge gently packed up his suitcase. His pal staggered over and crashed into the table.

  “Will you watch it?” said Serge.

  “What do you want to do now?”

  “I don’t know about you,” said Serge. “But the band just quit for the night, so I need to go back to our car’s trunk and deal with noise control. Same old, same old.”

  Coleman plopped down in a chair. “You said we’re on Ramrod Key?”

  “Used to be called Roberts Island.”

  “What’s a ramrod?”

  “The plunger for a Revolutionary War–era muzzle-load rifle.”

  “How’d they get the new name?”

  “Another shipwreck.” Serge grabbed the suitcase’s handle. “Nobody knew how to sail back then.”

  Chapter 3

  Palm Beach

  The television’s remote control was so complicated that it had its own screen. A finger pressed a button.

  A TV flashed to life. Not just any TV, but the latest curved 110-inch ultra-high-definition that almost nobody could afford.

  Here’s what came on:

  Seagulls gliding above a sunrise over the Atlantic. Children playing Little League. A church letting out. A grandmother knitting. Students graduating high school. A bride throwing a bouquet over her shoulder. A father teaching his daughter to ride a bicycle. A cocker spaniel licking a laughing baby’s face. A flowing American flag. And then, almost as an afterthought, three handsome men in tailored suits walking slow-motion up the courthouse steps in downtown West Palm Beach.

  Finally, the trio froze as a company name shimmered across the screen.

  Reinhold, Nash & Sparrow, Attorneys-at-Law. Personal Injury.

  A finger pressed the remote again, pausing the commercial. A roar of applause from the audience. In its midst, three men smiled and accepted pats on the shoulders.

  Then back to live action. White-gloved caterers circulated with silver trays of champagne flutes and hors d’oeuvres that involved bacon, water chestnuts and sprigs of green. Outside at the curb, boys in white shorts snatched keys off a portable valet stand and ran to fetch six-figure cars.

  Chatter at the cocktail party was high on the decibel needle, partly due to alcohol, partly because there were nearly two hundred people.

  Sounds like a lot, but it wasn’t remotely a tight fit in the twelve-thousand-square-foot house, an all-white post-modern assemblage of blocks and glass. Lots of glass. For the view. It sat on the western shore of the island of Palm Beach, and the twinkling nightscape over Lake Worth was dizzying. It’s what had drawn a number of guests out back onto a lawn that looked like it had been tweezered by the grounds crew from Augusta National. Evenly spaced royal palms. A fountain with a statue of the Greek god Poseidon, trident and all.

  The evening wore on.

  Chatter and laughs became looser. The steadiest people were the catering staff, militantly poised as they arrived with more trays. The help was under a firm edict: Do not speak unless asked a question. But they couldn’t help listening: whining about taxes, complaining about domestic servants, tips on offshore banking, upcoming tennis engagements, what to name a new yacht, griping about how poor people were screwing them. Oh, and they loved the new security team with the metal detection wands that screened all the caterers each time they entered or left the house.

  Thank Mother Jones magazine. It was just a few miles away in the same county, back in 2012, that presidential candidate Mitt Romney spoke at a $50,000-a-plate Boca Raton fundraiser. Allegedly he had been rude to a bartender on the staff, who proceeded to secretly film some comments about people of lesser means, and the video fo
und its way onto the magazine’s website, causing quite the row. So now most staffs had to sign draconian non-disclosure agreements. And in a few cases, like with the service company running the show tonight, the employees also had to submit to the airport-style security wands in case someone tried to sneak in a banned cell phone. It helped put the guests at ease. They also enjoyed the indignity of the process.

  In the wee hours, a tipsy socialite crawled atop the grand piano and reclined like Lauren Bacall.

  That was the signal for the law partner named Nash to take a seat and show off his skills tinkling the ivories. And not too bad, but the voice was a few notes off Sinatra.

  “. . . I did it my way! . . .”

  Then a call for an encore of the TV ad. It began playing on a perpetual loop. More drinking, which did what drinking does. Two guests were going at it on the granite sink top of one of the nine bathrooms, and a pair of caterers were doing the same in the next. The party was such a success that it required reinforcement. A handful of employees were dispatched on an emergency run for more supplies. They arrived back at the front door, out of breath, with fresh cases of liquor and finger food.

  “Hold it,” said a security guard.

  “Seriously?” said a caterer, using a knee to shift the weight of a box of booze. “We were just here.”

  “And you left.” The guard ran his detecting wand over each of them. “Okay, you’re good to go in.”

  “Unbelievable.”

  “I heard that!” the guard yelled as they disappeared into the kitchen. Then he glanced around surreptitiously, and pulled out his own phone . . .

  One of the guests staggered up to Nash. “But the commercial doesn’t say anything.”

  “It’s not supposed to.” The lawyer smiled. “That’s how it works.”

  “He’s right,” said another guest. “I talked to some ad guys, and they say it’s pure genius. People project onto it what they want, and it’s all positive . . . What is this? The twentieth ad?”

  “Twenty-sixth,” said Nash.

  A whistle. “Must cost a fortune.”

  “Two fortunes,” said Nash. “The best production values money can buy.”

  The guest was right. The ads had made the attorneys local celebrities, and now strangers were stopping them on the street to have pictures taken with them. TV is magical that way. Everyone loved the commercials.

  Almost everyone.

  “I hate those fucking commercials,” said a guest double-fisting champagne glasses on the back lawn.

  “Shhhh!” said his friend. “They might hear you.”

  “I couldn’t care less. I hate the whole law firm.”

  “Then why do you come to these parties?”

  “Because I have to do business with these assholes.” He drained one of the glasses, then the other. “It’s just not fair. Those ads are starting to taint the jury pools. As soon as those jerks walk in the courtroom, it’s like movie stars have arrived on the red carpet.”

  “TV has that odd effect,” said the friend. “See someone on the tube enough times, and then meet them in person and it’s belly up. Go figure the human psyche.”

  “They can blow me.”

  “You really should keep your voice down. I hear they’re actually skilled litigators.”

  “The best. That’s why it’s so unfair.” One of his glasses fell to the ground, and he grabbed a new one from a passing caterer. “Our insurance company has some of the most experienced number-crunchers in the business, and they head off ninety-nine percent of trials with the smallest cash settlements. But all that goes out the window with these guys. They get at least double the normal offers, just so we can avoid those awestruck looks in the jurors’ eyes . . .”

  His friend reached out for the glass in his other hand. “I don’t think you really need that drink.”

  The caterers packed up, and the valets loaded their key-ring stand into the back of a panel truck. Just the three law partners were left, sitting out back by the water with cigars and cognac.

  “It doesn’t get any better,” said Nash.

  “We finally have everything we always wanted,” said Reinhold.

  Sparrow puffed his stogie. “I want more.”

  Chapter 4

  South Florida

  A blue-and-white 1970 Ford Torino Cobra approached the SunPass transponder lanes at one of the southernmost tollbooths in the country. Twin royal-blue sport stripes ran over the muscle car’s roof and down the turbo hood scoop to the front bumper.

  “Hot damn!” Serge slapped the steering wheel with the hand that wasn’t taking photos out the window. “I love these trademark curved canopies over the toll lanes here. I become like Pavlov’s dog and start drooling. Figuratively, not like what you’re doing.”

  “Why?” Coleman wiped his mouth and cracked another Schlitz between his legs.

  “Because those canopies tell me the Rickenbacker Causeway is coming up. I love the Rickenbacker! I always get tingles when I head out the bottom of Miami and across the bay, first to tiny Virginia Key, which still holds sway with that now-vintage gold geodesic dome over the dolphin tank at the Miami Seaquarium. I still can’t get my head around the fact it’s now almost seventy years old.”

  “That’s more than a century.” Coleman burped.

  “And on the left . . .” Serge made the sign of the cross. “Former site of Jimbo’s, the ramshackle eclectic smoked fish and bocce court compound, which was filmed as an eerie Everglades outpost in the inaugural season of Miami Vice. R.I.P.”

  “I remember that place.” Coleman scratched an armpit. “I fell off the dock.”

  “And in the middle of a big magazine model shoot no less.” Serge crested the bridge. “That’s what made Jimbo’s authentic. Its milieu was so crusty that it crossed the axis into glamour. I will never understand the fashion industry.”

  The Cobra eased off the gas, touching down on an island and racing through a corridor of coconut palms and sea grapes. Camera still out the window.

  “Crandon Park!” Click, click, click. “It’s what makes Key Biscayne so special, dangling down out here in the Atlantic, the north and south ends totally nature-protected parks, and in between a tiny community. But what a community! . . .” Serge cut the wheel hard and wound his way west on Harbor Drive to a tiny side street.

  “Why are you slowing down?” asked Coleman.

  Tires pulled to the curb. “There it is! There it is!”

  “What? Big houses?”

  “It looks different now, but the ghosts still haunt.” Serge swept an arm out the window. “At 490 Bay Lane, Nixon bagman and confidant Bebe Rebozo held court, and the president became enamored with the island and purchased his so-called Southern White House at 500 Bay Lane—”

  Bam, bam, bam!

  Coleman turned around in his seat and looked toward the trunk. “It’s that guy again.”

  Serge’s head sagged. “I can’t tell you how tiresome that gets. You can only turn up the radio so loud.” He reached under his seat for a tire iron. “Wait here. I won’t be long.”

  Coleman watched as Serge exited the car and popped the trunk. Wham, wham, wham. The trunk closed. Serge got back in. “Where were we?”

  “The president.”

  “Right!” The Cobra pulled away from the curb. “Between these houses you can catch a glimpse of what’s affectionately been dubbed Nixon Beach.”

  “I’m seeing a lot of boats near shore.”

  “It’s a Saturday. Just wait . . .” He drove at barely above idle speed.

  They began hearing music drifting in off the water on a breeze, louder and louder.

  “. . . I . . . want to rock and roll all night! . . .”

  “Holy shit!” said Coleman. “There’s now a million boats! Look at all the bikinis! All the booze! Someone just fell overboard! It’s off the hook!”

  “It’s the infamous Nixon Beach sandbar,” said Serge. “Who would have thought that Tricky Dick’s lasting legacy would be wild
weekend flotillas so bacchanalian that they’re chronicled on YouTube?”

  “Can we go?” asked Coleman. “Please?”

  “We’re going someplace even better.”

  “Count me in!”

  A few minutes later, a few miles south, the Cobra rolled toward a guard booth in the middle of the road.

  “Coleman, open the glove compartment and hand me the book.”

  “This thing? What is it?”

  “Only my new bible.” Serge set it in his lap as they neared the shack. “It’s changed my life. And I owe it all to the state’s foremost keepers of the flame.”

  “Who’s that?”

  “Why, our Florida park rangers, of course!” Serge held up the book. “A few years back they launched an over-the-top program and began selling these spiral-bound faux-leather green albums.”

  “Looks small.”

  “But it packs a wallop.” Serge thumbed pages. “This is their passport book, where you can collect official stamps for the state’s more than one hundred and seventy parks. I’ve already visited most of them, but that was before the book, which requires me to come back. The sly devils.”

  A smiling ranger came to the window as the Cobra eased to a stop. “Good afternoon, fellas.”

  “And a glorious afternoon back at you!” He displayed a card from his wallet. “This is my annual pass, so no fee coming from this car. That’s the way it goes when you foolishly offer a volume discount to someone of my personality composition. I feel like I’m actually making money! . . . And this, as I’m sure you’re well aware, is your passport book, you wily fiends! I mean that affectionately. It promotes such a bonding human transaction: I hand over the treasured book from my sweaty, eager palms, and you in turn get to pull out your little ink pad and super-authority stamper. Don’t you see? It empowers us both. I only have one quibble. Check out these two opposing pages. The Skyway Fishing Pier in Tampa Bay is a state park, but look at this ridiculousness. The guy stamped the wrong page, the one for Egmont Key. And he stamped it upside down. I said, ‘You just fucked up my whole book!’ He shrugged and said sorry. But you know why this happened? Because that park is the only one where a real ranger doesn’t stamp your book, but instead some dude behind the fishing counter selling bait is issued the sacred ink pad. I mean, they don’t let just anyone be notary publics. Actually they do, but you understand what I’m getting at. Then I ask him where’s his stamp for Egmont Key, which they also have because it takes a ferry to get to the island in the mouth of the bay where there’s no office. And he pulls it out—upside down again—but luckily I was on high alert and threw my hand over the page just in time, and he stamped the back of my hand, and I said, ‘Whoa! Give me that thing before you hurt yourself.’ And he just shrugs again and passes it over, which I know is a major security breach that you’ll now be required to report for investigation, but citizens can only be pushed so far. Right? Staying with me? . . .”