SS 18: Shark Skin Suite: A Novel Read online

  Serge was interrupted by a heavy scurrying sound across the floor. Mahoney looked down at the edge of his desk. Coleman crawled around the corner and glanced up with a grimace.

  “Don’t mind him,” said Serge, pouring another mug of coffee from Mahoney’s checkered thermos. “He just received a shipment of drugs from the Internet. I warned him you never know what you’re getting when you order off the Web.”

  Coleman emitted a panicked, scratchy whine, then spun around on his knees and scurried back out of sight.

  Serge chugged the second mug. “I found the box Coleman received in the mail and looked at him: ‘Dude, they’re pet meds. You have heartworms or something?’ But he just said, ‘Fuck it. I’m taking ’em anyway.’ And now we have this.”

  The scurrying sound disappeared down the hallway. The queen of diamonds flipped over.

  Serge slammed the empty mug on the desk. “When we arrived at your office, I got worried because this place was built before modern code enforcement, which means the window ledges are really low and Coleman could easily tumble out. But then I started thinking about the meds he got in the mail and it reminded me of a trick you can play on cats. It’s mean if you actually do it to animals, but it’s an act of mercy where Coleman’s concerned.”

  The scurrying returned from the hall. Coleman crawled back around the desk. Mahoney noticed he wasn’t wearing a shirt. A long strip of duct tape ran down the length of his back.

  “Serge, help!” said Coleman. “I’m stuck underneath something really low.”

  “You’re doing fine,” said Serge. “Just proceed as you are and you’ll be out from below it in no time.”

  “Thanks, Serge.” The crawling noise returned to the hall.

  “No window falls for Coleman today.” Serge stood and gathered his capture stick. “Well, snakes are a-waitin’ . . .” He scratched his temple with the end of the pole. “But I’m a kill-free animal lover, so what will I do with the hundreds of Burmese pythons I’m sure to nab?” He stopped scratching and grabbed his pith helmet off the hat rack. “Guess I’ll mail them back to Burma.”

  A black rotary desk phone rang.

  Mahoney let it ring at least nine times, as he always did, because an answered phone held finite possibilities. But a ringing phone was limited only by imagination, and Mahoney dreamed out loud: “Foggy piers, leggy dames, filterless cigarettes, brass knuckles, a lake being dragged, a villain with a monocle, a hooker trying to better herself with typing classes . . .”

  “Jumping Judas!” yelled Serge. “Answer the thing already! You don’t know how batshit that makes me!”

  Mahoney sneered and grabbed the receiver. “It’s your dime. Start gargling . . .”

  “Please, we need your help. Last Saturday night . . .”

  “The story had all the elements,” said Mahoney. “Sympathetic victim, ruthless grifters, juicy revenge angle. I snagged a fresh toothpick and chewed on the tearjerker until my pie hole had the taste of a stripper’s breath after a week’s run on the broken dreams end of Reno, and my guts twisted up like the inside of the same stripper’s stomach after the ninety-nine-cent sunrise special in a Hoboken hash house . . .”

  On the other end of the line: “What?”

  “We’ll take the case.” He hung up.

  Serge was waiting. “Are you going to tell me?”

  “Park the caboose.”

  Serge sat down again. Mahoney laid out the tribulations of his newest client.

  Serge leaped to his feet. “That son of a bitch! Where did this happen?”

  “Cigar City.”

  Serge ripped the duct tape off Coleman’s back, and they split for Tampa.

  SOUTHWEST FLORIDA

  An eighteen-foot fishing boat idled without wake down a canal that threaded between the backyards of some of the earliest ranch homes in the state.

  The couple in the boat were the Loseys. The name on the boat’s stern: THE LOW SEAS. Another day in retirement paradise. The couple chatted about an item in the morning paper on the death of an original Tarzan chimp near Orlando. They passed a home with a protest sign on its seawall: PICK ON SOMEONE IN YOUR OWN TAX BRACKET.

  The boat reached the end of the canal and throttled up the Caloosahatchee River. “I didn’t know chimps lived that long.” The river led to the Gulf of Mexico and many of the finest mangrove fishing grounds surrounding the islands of Lee County, home of Thomas Edison and the “World’s Largest Shell Factory.”

  More and more boats headed down the canals and merged in the tributary, which was spanned by several large bridges that connected Fort Myers to Cape Coral. Most local residents didn’t even know it, but Cape Coral is the largest city between Tampa and Miami, in terms of square miles, which was 120. Of greater note are its 400 miles of canals, more than any other city in the world, including Venice. Pet reptiles have gotten loose and multiplied.

  It was a planned city, designed to attract northern retirees with all those canals. About half the place was filled out by people who decided their golden years needed a boat. The rest of the city is still waiting. That’s mainly the west side, where platted streets have occasional houses between large fields. It’s also the part of town where the most well-known thoroughfare is called Burnt Store Road, lined with real estate signs selling fields popular among dirt bikers.

  The name of that street comes from the city’s rich history of real estate transactions. In 1855, a Seminole Indian chief called Billy Bowlegs saw land being cleared for American forts and settlements. Bowlegs was concerned that the government was about to evict his people. The government told him nonsense and kept saying, “Could you please move back a little more?” So the chief led a raid and burned down a trading post. Soon Indians had no land in the area. Bowlegs retired to Oklahoma.

  Today, property is still being seized in Cape Coral. Florida has the highest foreclosure rate in the nation—one out of every thirty-two homes—and Cape Coral is among the hardest-hit cities in the state. Many causes are cited. Subprime lending, underwater mortgages, housing bubble, “What was I thinking?” Then a new reason emerged. In theory, banks don’t want foreclosures because they lose money. Then the business model changed through federal bailouts and loose regulations that allowed bad risk to be sold off to government institutions. But mostly, banks knew how easily honest people can be frightened.

  Greed snowballed as only greed can. Banks began sending out notices at the first possible second under the law, then before the property was in default, then, screw it, to anyone they felt like. It’s surprising how many homeowners panicked and made disastrous decisions. Then again, maybe not. And it’s all true. The banks could get away with it because they eliminated the paper trail by enrolling in their own private electronic filing system, facilitated by politicians with fat new campaign contributions. True again. It’s why they’re called banks.

  So many documents were now moving around in the shell game that there weren’t enough financial employees to verify them as required, so they just recklessly signed them.

  Hilda and Vernon Rockford retired from Cedar Rapids because shoveling the driveway had lost its luster. Their Iowa home had been paid off years before from his job at the Quaker Oats mill. They rolled the sale of the house into their downsized villa in Cape Coral. Not a penny owed—their castle was free and clear. The Rockfords couldn’t have foreseen it at the time, but they were about to make headlines across the country. If you didn’t already know it actually happened, you wouldn’t believe it. The Rockfords certainly didn’t.

  It was a Tuesday morning. The house had a cheerful breakfast nook overlooking one of those countless canals. The Fort Myers News-Press lay open to college basketball scores. Orange juice. Hilda brought in the mail.

  “The Hawkeyes lost to Michigan State,” said Vernon.

  “That’s nice.” Hilda sorted envelopes and tossed non-essentials on the coun
ter like a blackjack dealer. AARP, free heating and air inspection, oil-change special, Stanley Steamer, a government-looking letter that was a scam, and the Saver’s Gazette newspaper with classified ads featuring used aquariums and discount treatment for diseased gums.

  “The Cyclones beat Drake.”

  “Why don’t the children write?”

  Hilda was about to discard another official-looking envelope, because they never did any business with the bank it came from, but something made her open it.

  “E-mail,” said Vernon.

  “What?”

  “The kids use e-mail now.”

  “Look at this.”

  “What is it?”

  “Just read.”

  Vernon pushed glasses up his nose. “Foreclosure?”

  “What do we do?”

  He turned to the comics. “Throw it away. It’s a mistake.”

  Two weeks later: “We got another notice from the bank. What’s going on?”

  “Throw it away.”

  And so forth. Until they found the sheriff’s notice on their door.

  HIGHWAY 27

  Bass fishermen stood atop the hurricane berm skirting the southern shore of Lake Okeechobee.

  “How did you sink the boat?”

  “I thought the bilge plug was in. Let’s drink beer.”

  “Okay.”

  They climbed down the grassy incline as a ’76 Cobra raced by with an empty coffee thermos on the dash.

  “Here’s another fun fact,” said Serge. “Miami security companies began selling thumbprint-recognition pads for access to vaults, but they had to stop because executives were getting their thumbs cut off. Not a big selling point . . . I’ve decided I need a T-shirt gun.”

  Coleman packed a bowl. “You mean those things at sporting events?”

  “I’ve never understood the phenomenon, but everyone absolutely loses their minds whenever they see someone pull out a T-shirt gun. It’s a universal constant that transcends all cultural divides: Republicans, Democrats, rich, poor, glassblowers, Inuit Indians, Motown nostalgia acts: They all pay a fortune for their tickets and sit nicely dressed and civilized. Then the dudes with the T-shirt guns come out and everyone gets that crazy red demon glow in their eyes, ready to tear arms out of their sockets and dive off balconies for three dollars of cotton. On the other end, the guys with the guns are in complete control of the crowd and get a God complex, teasing them, faking shots and making thousands of screaming loons sway left and right with their slightest move. And yet nobody but me can see the potential, like the next time the rest of the world is giving America a bunch of shit, our president just goes before the UN General Assembly and busts out a T-shirt gun. Problem fucking solved.”

  “That would rule.”

  “I need a T-shirt gun.”

  They reached Tampa two hours later and pulled up to a shopping center. Serge knew that there were cops and then there were mall cops. It only took four hundred dollars of Mahoney’s expense money to score a copy of the surveillance video, and only ten more to buy the pawned VCR that had been sitting for eight years with the toaster ovens.

  Coleman waddled across the budget motel room with an armload of beer and pork rinds. He dropped down on the end of a bed. “What movie we watchin’?”

  Serge inserted the tape and pressed play. “It’s a documentary. Death of an Asshole.”

  The video opened with the view of a parking lot outside a multiplex cinema. People came and went in black and white.

  “This is boring.” Coleman chomped with his mouth open. “Where are the good parts?”

  “Just saw one.”

  Coleman leaned forward and split his pants. “Where?”

  Serge reversed the tape, starting again in slow motion. “Right there. The guy pretending to smoke a cigarette when he’s actually checking out the inside of that Volkswagen Beetle . . . Come on, come on, please be in the frame. Come onnnnnnnn . . .”

  “What do you want in the frame?”

  “The car he came in . . . Yes! There it is. That black Lexus.” Serge pressed a button. “Now come to Papa . . .”

  “Why are you fast-forwarding?”

  “Because I already know the rest of the story and just want to watch the ending.”

  On TV, people walked in comical fast motion, like old newsreel footage of the 1919 World Series. Finally Serge noticed something on the screen and switched the tape to super slo-mo.

  Coleman leaned closer to the tube. “What are we looking for?”

  Serge ignored him. “Still too dark . . .”

  The Lexus pulled out of its parking slot and made a patient left turn.

  “There it is! The license plate.” Serge hit pause. “Perfect. They drove under that crime light in the lot, knocking out the shadow.”

  Serge wrote down the number.

  “Now what?”

  “Time to spend a little more of Mahoney’s cash.” He picked up the phone. “It’s Serge. I need a plate run for name and address. Here’s the number . . . Yes, tomorrow will be fine.”

  Coleman changed the channel to cartoons. “I didn’t know you could call and get info off a license plate.”

  “Most people can’t, just because it’s illegal,” said Serge. “But with enough money, there are all kinds of hotlines around this state.”

  Chapter ELEVEN

  BROOK

  Ms. Campanella completed her law degree in record time at an unprestigious commuter college. She aced the bar exam and celebrated in her apartment with a frozen dinner and a video rental. The next week she joined a local legal aid center, which paid squat. But her dream had come true; she got her first case. They gave it to Brook because it was supposed to be easy.

  Three months later, Brook stood on the edge of a commercial parking lot wearing a smart blue pantsuit put together from thrift stores, which was standard attire for the lawyers in her center. The office provided affordable assistance to moderate-income residents fighting the crushing gears of power and bureaucracy. They battled VA cases and untangling wills that people thought they could write themselves.

  Brook checked her watch and stared across the parking lot. On the intersection’s other three corners stood a Shell station, a Walgreens and a walk-in clinic. Her mind drifted back to the day she first met the Rockfords. They took her to the breakfast nook.

  “I don’t understand it,” said Hilda. “We haven’t even set foot in that bank.”

  “There was never a loan on this house,” said Vernon. “We paid in full up front.”

  “The letters kept coming,” said Hilda.

  “What did you do with them?” asked Brook.

  “Threw ’em out,” said Vernon. “We don’t know from those people.”

  Brook took shorthand on a legal pad. “And that’s when you got the notice from the circuit court clerk that they had filed against your home?”

  Hilda nodded. “The same day the sheriff tacked that thing on our door. And since it was now an official county government document . . .”

  “Certified mail,” added Vernon.

  “ . . . we figured we better call and explain it was all a big mistake,” said Hilda. “They said they would check into it.”

  Brook continued writing. “Then what happened?”

  “The notices kept coming. Except these new ones now stated how many days until we had to move out. Then the sheriff came.” Hilda’s hands started shaking. “We kept calling, and they kept saying they would check. It’s like nobody was talking to each other.”

  Brook underlined the last part. “Did you ever send them anything in writing?”

  “No, we just phoned them because it was a mistake and we’re honest people.”

  Brook thought—but didn’t say—honesty doesn’t count. She removed papers from her briefcase. “I’ll need y
ou to sign some documents giving me power of attorney and access to financial records.”

  Vernon signed first. “Will this ever end?”

  Hilda went next. “It’s made us sick with worry.”

  “You can stop worrying now.” Brook slid the papers back into her attaché and stood. “I’ll take care of everything.”

  Brook had reason for confidence. She’d done homework before visiting the couple: County records showed no mortgage liens and an unclouded title. But there was the matter of a ticking clock. The Rockfords had relied so much on phone calls and trust in fellow man that they’d let the eviction train roll down the tracks until it almost reached the station. The young lawyer still had a couple days to file a last-second opposition to the proceeding, which meant working through the weekend at home in sweatpants.

  The following Monday, Brook collected the final pieces of notarized evidence that a closing company had screwed up a mortgage on the next block and transposed street numbers. The verifying bank officers were under a monthly foreclosure quota and just scribbled their names again without verifying.

  Since eviction was set for the following Friday, an emergency hearing hit the docket. A bored attorney stood on one side of the courtroom—annoyed that someone had the gall to fight a slam-dunk eviction and eat into his afternoon tennis time. He cavalierly opened a file of inaccurate documents.

  Brook had the correct ones. They both gave their folders to the judge, who took all of ten minutes before removing his glasses and glaring at the bank’s lawyer. “Anything else in that briefcase that might actually be accurate?”

  The air went out of the attorney. “I request a continuance.”

  “Okay, sell me,” said the judge, holding up the fruits of Brook’s research. “If I grant a delay, what exactly do you plan to introduce to refute this?”

  “I would, uh, need to confer first with house counsel—”

  “Denied. First American Bank will pay attorney and court costs, and a cease-and-desist order will be filed forthwith.”