The Stingray Shuffle Read online

  The man waved goodbye as Johnny and Bianca departed. “Have a safe trip.”

  Bianca gave Johnny a hickey as she slid off her panties. She looked over her shoulder at the little people in the distance and her stomach fluttered. She bit Johnny again. “You’re going to remember this the rest of your life….”

  The couple had just gotten the rest of their clothes off when they heard a tiny voice in the distance.

  “Range cart!”

  Bam. Bam. Bam. Bam. Bam. Bam.

  Bianca jumped off Johnny in alarm. “What the fuck was that?”

  Bam. Bam. Bam. Bam. Bam. Bam.

  A shower of dimpled balls pelted the range cart with the two naked people.

  “They’re trying to kill us!” yelled Bianca.

  “No, they’re not,” said Johnny. “It’ll just make it better. Come on, baby.”

  Bianca lost it, clawing at the inside of the protective cage like a drowning cat. “I have to get out of here!”

  “Don’t open that door!”

  She opened it, took a Maxfli in the forehead and fell back unconscious in Johnny’s lap.

  4

  Rush-hour traffic lurched along The Palmetto Expressway through hardworking Hialeah, past the horse track and industrial park. In the third warehouse off Exit 7, men in back braces pushed handcarts of brown boxes marked THE STINGRAY SHUFFLE through beams of exhaust-filtered sun, loading trucks and vans, which pulled out of the shipping bay toward the highway ramp.

  In a windowless room next to the dispatcher’s office, a young man scrolled down his computer screen. He stopped, hit print and waited for a sheet of paper to come off the inkjet.

  The supervisor’s office had windows, but they overlooked the loading dock and the men hoisting cases of bestsellers at one of the biggest book wholesalers in the Miami–Fort Lauderdale statistical hub. The young man stood in the doorway.

  “What is it?” asked the boss, staring at his own computer screen, squeezing a stress ball advertising a new stress-free-diet book.

  “I’m getting some strange sales figures on this one title.”

  “Down?”

  “Way up.”

  The young man handed his printout to the supervisor, who grabbed his reading glasses.

  “That is strange. You sure these are right?”

  “Triple-checked.”

  “Must be an explanation. Maybe a publisher’s promotion. Contest or something.”

  “Nope. Already called them.”

  “What about the author? Is he touring? Speak at a local college?”

  “Hasn’t been seen in years. Could be dead for all we know.”

  “Anything on Oprah?”

  The young man shook his head.

  “Maybe it’s one of these local book clubs. Look—see how the sales are all just at this one bookstore in Miami Beach, The Palm Reader?” He took off his glasses and set the page down. “That has to be it. Must be someone’s selection-of-the-month, and they’re all buying at this store.”

  “Three months in a row? The numbers are bigger than any ten book groups could account for. Besides, The Palm Reader is a dump. No self-respecting club would set foot inside with all the classier places nearby.”

  The supervisor scratched his head. “Then there’s simply a strong word-of-mouth pocket. The book’s taking off on its own.”

  “Sir, The Stingray Shuffle has been out eleven years.”

  “This is a crazy business. I’ve seen stuff out twenty years with nothing to show, then someone makes a movie and bang!”

  “There’s no movie.”

  “The point I’m making is you can’t account for consumer behavior. These things sprout at their own pace, the gestation of the pyramid progression, a classic equation of the hundredth monkey. Revenues are cruising horizontally along the X axis, then suddenly demand reaches critical mass and sales make the all-important vertical swing up the Y axis.”

  “Sir?”

  “Yes?”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “Making some money,” he said, picking up the phone. “Let’s call the other bookstores, see if we can’t help this thing along. And beat the other wholesalers while we’re at it.”

  The supervisor got the entire staff in on the act, and they canvassed the bottom half of the state, pushing the title, then working their way north. The stores were receptive. They could always send the books back if they didn’t sell. “Sure, we’ll take a few cases.” The title started moving in several markets. Not like at the first store, but respectably, and multiplied by hundreds of outlets, it began adding up to real numbers.

  An overcast summer morning in New York. A Friday. Midtown Manhattan, the nerve ganglion of the global publishing industry, and by noon everyone was consumed with the same crisis: how to beat weekend traffic heading out of town to the Hamptons after lunch.

  On West Fifty-third Street, at a sidewalk restaurant of obscure nationality and no prices, a man and a woman sat across from each other in identical business suits. A waiter in a red turban set a plate in front of each of them. They had ordered the same, pan-seared sponge on a bed of pollen.

  “Pepper?” asked the waiter.

  They nodded. The waiter twisted a metal tube over their plates.

  “Sir,” said the woman. “We have a sleeper on our hands. Just got the sales report yesterday. Red-hot—might even crack the Times bestseller list.”

  “Whose book? Allister? Byron? Sir Dennis?”

  She shook her head. “Ralph.”

  “Ralph!”

  The waiter held a pump bottle. “Moisture?”

  They nodded.

  “I didn’t know Ralph was even still alive.”

  “We’re trying to confirm that.”

  “When did we publish a new title?”

  “We didn’t. This is his last one.”

  The waiter put on safety goggles. “Blowtorch?”

  They nodded.

  “But his last book was ten years ago.”

  “Eleven.”

  The man shook his head. “This is a crazy business.”

  “No crazier than any other.”

  A troupe of midgets surrounded the table, Cossack dancing.

  “I just can’t get over it. I mean, Ralph! How did this start?”

  “A sales fluke out of Miami Beach. A bookstore called The Palm Reader, then it snowballed.”

  “The Palm Reader?”

  “One of those new crime and mystery specialty shops. A local wholesaler got wind of it and spread the word…”

  The waiter clapped his hands twice, and the midgets dispersed. “Dessert?”

  They nodded.

  “Okay, throw some money at promotions,” said the man, jabbing his sponge with a fork. “And find Ralph. We need to get him back on tour. Talk to his agent.”

  “He isn’t represented anymore, not that we know of.”

  “Try the last one.”

  The dessert hovercraft arrived.

  5

  The day Paul and Jethro found the five million dollars and took off across the state had started out pleasant enough. No rain in the forecast, the mercury hovering under eighty at the Lakeland airport, halfway between Tampa and Orlando. Two long lines of cars sat stationary in the eastbound lanes of Interstate 4, hundreds of traffic-jammed vehicles stretching endlessly over the gentle central Florida hills, all the way to the horizon.

  In the middle of the right lane was a blue ’74 Malibu. Jethro was driving, Paul in the passenger seat with an open briefcase in his lap, counting wads.

  “How much farther to the cruise ships?” asked Paul.

  “Eighty miles,” said Jethro. “How much money?”

  “Three million. A lot left. Hope there’s a ship leaving today.”

  “We can always put up in a motel. Nobody’s going to find us that fast. It’ll be weeks before they even realize anyone has found the money, and longer, if ever, before they connect it to us.”

  Five miles behind the Malibu,
a pink Cadillac Eldorado was stuck in the same lane.

  “What’s the global-positioning tracker say?” asked Lenny.

  Serge looked down at the beeping box on the seat beside him. “The briefcase is stuck in traffic, too. About five miles ahead.”

  The Cadillac held four people, two men in front, two women in back. Airbrushing down the side of the convertible: LENNY LIPPOWICZ—THE DON JOHNSON EXPERIENCE. One bumper sticker: REHAB IS FOR QUITTERS.

  “What’s the delay?” said Serge, grabbing the top of the windshield and standing up on the driver’s seat to see as far as he could. He plopped back down and punched the steering wheel.

  “Maybe a wreck?” said Lenny in the passenger seat, wearing a pastel T-shirt and white Versace jacket.

  “Should have known better,” said Serge. “Never take I-4 when you have to get anywhere.”

  A female voice from the backseat: “Can we have another joint?”

  “No!” snapped Serge. “No more dope for you!”

  Lenny passed a joint back.

  Serge threw up his hands. “I just told them they couldn’t have any more.”

  “Doper etiquette,” said Lenny. “Mellow out.”

  “You know my personality type,” said Serge. “I can’t take boredom. And I especially can’t take some kind of huge holdup where you don’t know what’s going on!”

  One of the women offered the lit joint over Serge’s shoulder. He pushed it away. “Just give me a ballpark of how long the wait is! I don’t care if it’s four hours—I need something I can mentally whittle on, compartmentalize, break down and digest. Or give the reason. Let me know what the hell’s going on! This out-of-the-loop, can’t-seethe-front-of-the-line shit is making me crazy!” He punched the steering wheel again.

  “Look,” said Lenny. “I think they’re starting to move up there.”

  They both leaned forward and watched closely. They sat back again.

  “Sorry. Just an illusion,” said Lenny. “Heat waves from the road.”

  The backseat: “Ahem…can we have, like, another joint? It’ll be the last one. Promise.”

  “See what you started?” said Serge. “They’re hooked.”

  “How was I to know?”

  Serge turned around and put his arm over the back of the driver’s seat and stared at the women, City and Country, college-age babes from Alabama. “You say you never got high in your life until last week? Not a single time until Lenny turned you on back at Hammerhead Ranch?”

  The women nodded, one hitting a roach clip, the other holding her smoke.

  “At least try to be a little more discreet. We’re in a convertible.” Serge turned back around and hit the steering wheel again. “C’mon!”

  “Must be a wreck,” said Lenny.

  “It would have to be a ruptured tanker of liquid phosgene to take this long. Otherwise, they’d already be sweeping up glass.”

  “What do you think?”

  “It’s I-4. Take your pick,” said Serge. “I’ve seen sinkholes, armed assaults, forest fires that flushed wildlife into traffic. And then there was the cow.”

  “The cow?”

  “There was this one cow. She liked to stand alone all day up to her tits in the middle of this little lake off the side of the road.”

  “That was a driving problem?”

  “Everyone slowed down and watched. They thought she was in trouble. Hundreds called the highway patrol, wanting them to send a rescue helicopter with a canvas sling harness and a winch.”

  “Did they?”

  “No. There was nothing wrong. But the calls kept pouring in and tied up all the emergency lines. So the highway department put up a sign, one of those big mobile things on wheels, a bunch of flashing orange light bulbs that spell out stuff like RIGHT LANE CLOSED AHEAD. Except this one said, THE COW IS OK. True story.”

  “What happened?”

  “Made everything worse. Everyone slowing down to watch.”

  Lenny nodded, then pointed ahead at the stationary lines of cars. “Might as well turn the engine off and save gas.”

  “And put The Club on.”

  “I’ve been meaning to ask you,” said Lenny. “How come you always put your Club on backward, with the lock facing the dash?”

  “Fuckin’ kids—they stick machine screws in the lock and yank the mechanism out with dent-pullers. But they don’t have the necessary clearance if I reverse the bar. The things you have to do to survive in this state.”

  A BMW blew by in the breakdown lane and kept going, passing the entire line of cars and disappearing over a hill.

  “That’s the fourth guy who’s done that since we’ve been here,” said Lenny.

  “It’s just not right,” said Serge.

  “We could do that, too, but we don’t,” said Lenny.

  “Because rules are important,” said Serge. “Otherwise, everything starts breaking down.”

  The backseat: “Um, do you think we could have, you know, another…”

  Lenny passed a doobie back.

  “If we’re going to be here much longer, I’ll have to occupy my mind,” said Serge. He turned off the Cadillac and walked to the rear of the car.

  “What are you doing?” asked Lenny.

  “Getting my toys.” He opened the trunk, removed a gym bag and got back in the driver’s seat. “I bought you a present.” Serge pulled something out of the bag. He could have easily handed it across the seat to Lenny, but he threw it, the way guys have to.

  Lenny dropped it on the floorboard.

  “Nice catch.”

  Lenny picked up the red-and-white canister. “Cruex? What are you trying to tell me?”

  “No, you dingleberry, unscrew the bottom.”

  Lenny struggled to figure out the can, twisting with everything he had. “You know what a dingleberry actually is?”

  “I’ve heard the rumors,” said Serge. He reached over. “Here, let me.”

  Serge grabbed the can and twisted off the bottom, revealing a secret compartment.

  “Cool,” said Lenny. “A stash safe.”

  “I bought it at Spy vs. Spy.”

  “What’s that?”

  “A new chain that sells a bunch of espionage and counterespionage stuff, but it’s really a toy store for guys—useless gadgets men can’t resist. Night-vision scopes, walkie-talkie pens, voice-activated bomb-disposal robot/beer caddy…”

  Lenny stuffed a baggie of pot up the bottom of the can. “Why’d you have to pick Cruex?”

  “Had a friend who went to college in Boston. His roommate was from Colombia, and during spring break, the roommate says, ‘Hey, why don’t you come visit back home with me?’ My friend says sure. It’s a legitimate visit—no drugs or anything—and he’s coming back through Miami, and Customs goes ape. What’s an Anglo kid doing on vacation in Bogotá? They rip his luggage apart, make him take a laxative and shit on a clear toilet in front of all these people…”

  “They actually have clear toilets?”

  “The government does. But they seem to be the only ones who want them. I think that speaks volumes. Anyway, get this—they grabbed my friend’s can of shaving cream and sprayed some out and tested it.”

  “That’s spooky,” said Lenny.

  “Drugs are spooky,” said Serge. “But jail is spookier. That’s why I got you that can. Use it and stay free, my friend. Shaving cream is one thing, but nobody wants to mess with a guy’s Cruex. DEA, Customs—they don’t get paid enough.”

  Serge removed another canister from his bag and began shaking it. A metal ball rattled inside.

  “Spray paint?” asked Lenny.

  “Spy spray paint.” Serge got out of the car and walked back to the rear bumper. He bent down and sprayed the license plate.

  “What are you doing?” asked Lenny.

  “The paint’s clear, reflective,” said Serge, rattling the can again. “Standard technique for operatives attending state dinners in case any spies try to photograph license plates in the
parking lot of the embassy while you’re upstairs stealing files. The clear coating reflects any flash photography, and all the spy will see when he gets his pictures back from the drugstore will be a bright, all-white license plate, completely blank.”

  Lenny rubbed his chin. “Is this a problem you anticipate us having?”

  Serge climbed back in the car and pointed up the road toward Orlando. “It also works on those new cameras the state installed to catch people running tollbooths. I’m tired of paying these motherfuckers every time I want to go see a shuttle launch.”

  Serge pulled something else from the gym bag. A few little poles covered with spikes.

  “What are those?”

  “Stop sticks,” said Serge. “Police use them at roadblocks to puncture the tires of fleeing suspects.”

  “Why do you need them?”

  “To throw out the window in case the police are chasing me,” said Serge. “Two can play this game.”

  Serge casually tossed the sticks over Lenny’s head, out the right side of the car, and began rooting around again in his bag. “Let’s see—what else do I have in here?…”

  Pow, pow, pow, pow.

  A new set of Michelins blew out on a Corvette racing by in the breakdown lane, and it cascaded down the embankment.

  “…Here we are.” Serge removed a heavy egg-shaped object wrapped in orange silk. “My ace in the hole.” He carefully folded back the silk to reveal a scored olive-green metal hulk—an antique hand grenade.

  “Is it live?”

  Serge nodded.

  “Also get that at Spy versus Spy?”

  Serge shook his head. “eBay.”

  A chorus from the backseat: “We’re hungry.”

  “Again?” said Serge.

  “Why don’t you drive to a restaurant or something?” asked Country.

  “Good idea,” said City. “Drive us to a restaurant.”

  Serge turned around and pointed at the empty boxes in their laps. “You just ate. You both got the jumbo taco salad.”

  They looked down at their shirts and hands covered with grease, shredded cheese and strands of lettuce. Country looked up. “We’re still hungry.”

  “I’m feeling like barbecue,” said City.

  Serge gestured around them at the sea of parked cars boxing them in, then searched for any hint of understanding in their bloodshot eyes. “Fuck it! Never mind!” He turned back around and sat silent a minute. He smacked the inside of the door. “What can be taking so long?”