16 Tiger Shrimp Tango Read online

  The last person left alone in the Merry Pranksters’ chat room was one such lurker. He read down through the entire evening’s activities and printed out a complete transcript.

  Then he logged off.

  Chapter Nine

  THE NEXT DAY

  Sunset. A black Firebird Trans Am pulled up to a pancake house on U.S. 1 just north of Hollywood.

  A lime neon sign said the establishment also made good pies. The tables in the windows were full of customers holding the kind of laminated menus that had big pictures of food to speed the process.

  Coleman crumpled a beer can against the top of his head. “Look at all those people eating breakfast at night.”

  “I love eating breakfast at night,” said Serge. “It means you’re calling the shots.”

  “With me it means I passed out and lost my watch.”

  “Coleman, you don’t wear a watch.”

  “Right.”

  The pair jumped out of their car.

  “Oh my God!” Serge placed a hand over his heart. “It’s what I’ve dreamed of my whole life!”

  A smiling man slapped the hood of a Corvette Stingray convertible. “You like?”

  “Hell yes!” Serge ran over and extended a hand. “I’m Serge.”

  “I’m Cid. Friends call me Uncle Cid, but I don’t know—”

  “Can I drive!” Serge hopped up and down like a first grader. “Can I? Can I? Can I?”

  Cid thinking, This is too easy. “Sure, get in.” He tossed the keys.

  Serge caught them on the fly and vaulted the unopened driver’s door. The sports car roared to life and sped away from the restaurant, where someone else was hiding in the alley with a planted pickup truck.

  “Uh, you might want to slow down a bit,” said Cid.

  “No, I’m fine.” They screamed through a yellow light.

  Cid gripped the dashboard. “Have you ever driven one of these before?”

  “Oh, many, many, many— No. But I’ve watched other people.” Serge gripped the stick shift and got both feet ready on the pedals. “Here’s what’s really fun about these babies. I’m skipping a gear now.”

  “What?”

  Serge hit the clutch and jumped from second to fourth with a gnarling sound that repair shops love to hear. They were pasted back in their seats like the upper stage of a Saturn rocket igniting.

  Serge tilted his head with a smile. “Ever seen Scent of a Woman? Al Pacino is this blind guy who doesn’t give a poo and bluffs his way into taking a sports car for a test drive. I love that movie!” He punched the gas. “Bet you never guessed I was blind. What color is this car anyway?”

  “You’re blind!”

  Serge wove back and forth over the center line.

  “Ahhhhhhhhhh! Stop the car! Stop the car!”

  “The car’s yellow.” Serge playfully punched Cid in the shoulder. “I was just joshin’. Don’t you remember I caught the keys when you tossed them? You should see someone about your nerves.” He floored the pedal, and they were flattened back again.

  “Slow down!”

  “I can’t hear!”

  “Slow down!”

  Serge skidded to a stop at a green light. Horns blared as speeding traffic swerved around. “I couldn’t hear with all the wind and the engine. What were you saying?”

  “Good Lord! Do you always drive like this?”

  “Of course not.” Serge accelerated again. “This isn’t my car, so it’s only proper respect to drive extra carefully.”

  Cid wiped his forehead. “I’d hate to see how you drive what you own.”

  “What?” said Serge, pointing in the rearview. “You mean that thing?”

  Cid twisted around and saw Coleman behind the wheel of the black Firebird, trailing a few lengths back. His head turned toward Serge. “What’s he doing following us?”

  “I don’t understand,” said Serge. “We always do that.”

  “You always have someone follow you when you’re taking a test drive?”

  “No, when I’m kidnapping someone.” Serge conscientiously checked his side mirror and hit a signal for a lane change. “That way my car’s conveniently right there to throw the hostage in the trunk, eliminating the always annoying foot chases through backyard clotheslines.”

  “Fuck you! Pull over right now!”

  Serge drove into a boarded-up gas station on the corner that was usually occupied by someone selling velvet rugs of Elvis, Malcolm X and kittens. But the rug people had knocked off early. The Corvette parked next to rusty pumps, and Coleman stopped behind it.

  Serge turned with a .45 automatic in his hand and a toothy grin. “Let’s take another test drive.”

  Serge and Coleman sat on the ends of their motel beds, intently watching TV.

  “That kid in the wheelchair is so cool,” said Coleman.

  “And what a voice,” said Serge.

  The show ended and Coleman packed a bong made from a motel room lamp. “Those Glee kids sure are something.”

  Serge grabbed the duct tape. “I already feel better as a human.”

  “They’ve taught me so much about understanding people who are different.” Coleman leaned over the bong with a Bic lighter. “What’s the duct tape for? There’s already some on his mouth.”

  “Yeah, but this guy’s working it loose with his tongue.” Serge walked over to the chair with the tied-up Corvette owner. “A lot of them do that. Just wastes tape.”

  Coleman exhaled. “He’s not earth-friendly.”

  Serge grabbed the edge of the gray strip and ripped it off.

  “Ahhhhhhh!”

  “I let you watch Glee with us, and this is how you repay me?” Serge bashed him in the head with the big roll of tape. “You’re letting those kids down . . .” He tossed the tape aside and walked to the dresser.

  Revvvvvvvvvvvvv . . .

  Coleman pointed with a beer bottle. “What are you doing now?”

  Serge ran an electric jigsaw through a piece of wood molding. “My latest project,” he said from behind safety glasses. “You and our contestant will soon be amazed.”

  He turned off the saw and smoothed his cut with eighty-grit sandpaper. Then he grabbed a portable drill and inserted one of those massive circular-boring attachments that they use on unfinished doors to create the hole for the knob.

  Revvvvvvvvvvvvv . . .

  Serge bored. Coleman scratched his butt. The captive’s eyes bugged out.

  Then prying with a crowbar. Hammering nails. Slicing balsa wood with an X-Acto knife. Cutting string with scissors. Dipping a small brush in a bottle of model airplane paint. Opening a package of thumbtacks.

  Coleman tossed the empty beer bottle toward the trash can in the corner, except it was the wrong corner.

  Serge opened another package and looked up at the sound of breaking beer-bottle glass. “You’re cleaning that up.”

  Coleman stared at Serge’s hand. “A piece of cheese?”

  Serge set it in place. “The final step to make my project operational.”

  “So now what?” asked Coleman.

  “Where’s Skippy?”

  “In my pocket.”

  Serge held out a hand. “Give him to me.”

  Coleman clutched his own hands over his right breast. “Stay away from Skippy! I know what you did last time I passed out and you took him in the pet store. That’s janitor interference.”

  “Custodial interference.” Serge gestured with his hand for emphasis. “Now give!”

  “No!”

  They began wrestling. Serge got Coleman in a headlock.

  “Let go of me!”

  “Not until you give me Skippy!”

  “Never!”

  They tumbled off the bed, and Serge performed a wrestling spin maneuver, capturing
Coleman in a half nelson.

  “Stop it!” yelled Coleman. “My arms are breaking!”

  Serge squeezed harder. “Then give me Skippy.”

  “Okay! Okay!”

  Serge released, and Coleman handed over the rodent.

  Serge petted the animal on the head, then lowered him to the floor. Skippy grabbed the piece of cheese and disappeared inside one of the motel’s walls.

  Coleman had a puzzled expression as he stared down at a perfectly rounded, semi-circular hole in the room’s baseboard that Serge had created. Over the hole, hanging by string from a thumbtack, was a tiny balsa-wood sign: HOME SWEET HOME.

  Coleman looked up at Serge. “It’s like one of those mouse holes in the cartoons.”

  “I know,” said Serge, placing the drill back in its carrying case. “Isn’t it great? When I was a kid I always wondered why I never saw one in real life. So I’ve wanted to make my own ever since but never got the chance because there wasn’t a mouse handy.”

  Coleman remained confused. “That was your new project? How does it help kill our hostage?”

  “It doesn’t.” Serge beamed with pride as he gazed down upon the hole, where Skippy stuck out his head and wiggled his whiskers. Serge tossed another chunk of cheese. The mouse grabbed it and disappeared again.

  “But we did all that shopping,” said Coleman. “I thought you were coming up with another genius way to whack a dude.”

  “Killing jerks isn’t the only reason for home-improvement stores.”

  “It’s not?”

  Serge resumed packing up his tools.

  “So what’s going to happen to Skippy now?” asked Coleman.

  “I’ve released him back into the wild,” said Serge. “He’s now a free-range mouse.”

  Coleman pouted. “He was my pet.”

  “Coleman, if you love something, set it free.” He turned to the captive. “You and I aren’t quite there yet.”

  Coleman cracked another beer. “You’re not going to kill this asshole after all?”

  “Didn’t say that.” Serge punched the captive with brass knuckles. “You stole from my client in your car-sale scam. Tell me where the money is!”

  The man spit out a tooth. “Eat shit and die!”

  “If that’s how you want to play it, Uncle Cid, if that’s really your name.” He wrapped his mouth in tape again.

  “Serge, did you say ‘Uncle Cid’?”

  “Yeah, some made-up name.” Another punch. “Who knows what it means?”

  “I do,” said Coleman.

  Serge turned. “What?”

  “It’s code.” Coleman took another hit. “Uncle Cid. Cid. A-cid. Acid.”

  “You’re higher than a bastard.”

  “No really. All the heads know this.” Coleman exhaled again. “When you want to have a big LSD party with a giant bowl of spiked punch, you get on the phone. But because the fuzz might be listening, you say you’re having Uncle Cid over that night. And sometimes a bunch of college kids would hold an open LSD party for all who knew. They’d put a classified ad in the student paper with an address for Uncle Cid.”

  “Since when do you read college papers?”

  “Just the classifieds,” said Coleman. “For Cid parties.”

  Serge turned around. Punch.

  “Why are you still hitting him?” asked Coleman. “His mouth is taped and he can’t tell you where the money is.”

  “To be honest, it’s now more about the hitting than the money.” Serge swung hard again with a meaty thud on skull. “But I just know I’ll get grief from Mahoney.”

  “Why? You cracked this case for him.”

  “Yeah, but in all the movies, you’re supposed to get the money back.” Serge rubbed his sore hand. “Except I’m fairly confident that his client will be equally satisfied with the results I have in mind . . .” Punch, punch, punch. “. . . But I have to at least go though the motions so next time Mahoney asks, I can honestly say I tried. You’re a witness.” Punch, punch, punch.

  “Serge, his face is a bloody mess. It’s making the duct tape peel off.”

  “He’s abusing our landfills.” The tape removed much easier this time, and Serge crumpled it into a ball. “You ready to listen to reason? Tell us where the money is or else!”

  “Or else what?”

  Serge reached in the duffel bag. “Or else this!” He removed a giant iron corkscrew and slowly twisted it in front of the hostage with diabolical drama. Then raised his eyebrows. “Pretty scary, eh?”

  “I have no idea what the hell you’re doing.”

  “Oh, realllllllllly.” Serge paced methodically with hands behind his back. “Then how about . . . this!” He swiftly whipped out a small galvanized pipe and held it to Cid’s face.

  “What’s that?”

  Serge shrugged and tossed it on the bed next to the hurricane tie-down. “I think it’s used for showerheads.”

  “You’re insane!”

  “That’s the last straw,” said Serge. “I’m not letting you watch Glee anymore with us.”

  He roughly blotted the blood on Cid’s face and wrapped more duct tape.

  “Look!” said Coleman. “Skippy’s back! He’s running over to me and up my leg.”

  “That’s the second half of ‘If you love something, set it free.’ ” Serge carefully examined the corkscrew. “If it comes back, you know it’s yours.”

  “I can keep him?” Coleman hugged the mouse to his cheek. “Skippy!”

  “And for his happiness, I now have the equipment and skill set to instantly whip up a custom mouse hole in any motel room. But be prepared: The day will finally come like in all those tearjerker animal movies when he won’t leave the mouse hole, and you’ll just have to let go as the credits roll.” Serge tucked the pipe and corkscrew back in his duffel bag. “Coleman, what do you think? Is it dark enough outside yet?”

  “I’d say it’s pretty dark.”

  Serge grabbed the bag’s handle. “Let’s rock.”

  Chapter Ten

  MIAMI BEACH

  All quiet on the nineteenth floor of a luxury resort hotel on Collins Avenue.

  Three A.M.

  People spoke in whispers and hushed tones inside suite number 1901. All eight of them. It was the gang’s first team effort. Up until now, they had always worked solo, receiving assignments from their leader. Totally firewalled. Nobody knew anyone else’s action, to minimize damage in the event someone was captured and flipped for the prosecution.

  Sitting on the edge of one bed were Gustave and Sasha, the dating bandits, and some others we haven’t met yet. Leroy and Short Leroy, who took out fraudulent mortgages; Tommy Perfecto, head of the burglary crew that struck while others kept their targets busy, Puddin’-Head Farina, the king of the obituary scam; and Pockets Malone, who sold hole-in-one insurance.

  Standing before them was the brains of the operation, South Philly Sal, who was from Miami. He did financial backgrounds and surveillance on all the marks before making the final decision and dispatching his henchmen to ply their trades. He looked around.

  “Where’s Uncle Cid?”

  “Don’t know,” said Tommy Perfecto.

  “What do you mean you don’t know?”

  “I was waiting in the pickup truck behind the pancake house like we always do, but he never came back from the test drive.”

  “Dammit, we need all hands,” said Sal. “That idiot’s going to shave the size of the score.”

  The score.

  Sal wouldn’t have otherwise risked penetrating the firewalls, but this one was too tasty. He got the idea from the Internet, literally tripped over it while lurking in a chat room. He stood and faced the rest of the gang. “You’ve read the transcripts?”

  They nodded, holding packets of stapled pages from the Merry Prank
sters’ last online meeting.

  “Good, so you know how they work.” He pointed at the room’s TV, where a laptop had been wired into the auxiliary port and now displayed a webcam view that included their hotel’s entrance.

  “What now?” asked Short Leroy.

  “We wait and watch,” said Sal. “That’s the beauty of this. The television gives us all the intel we need as everything unfolds, from our targets’ location to police response.”

  Gustave raised a hand. “Are we working with the Pranksters on this?”

  Sal grinned. “They don’t have a clue. Which is the cherry on this sundae. Not only are they cracking the safe open for us, but once the authorities figure out what happened, they’ll get the blame. Nobody will be on our trail . . .”

  If only I could pick up their trail,” said Serge.

  “Whose trail?” asked Coleman.

  “The Corvette guy wasn’t working alone. Mahoney’s client said an accomplice helped steal the car, and I’m guessing the tentacles reach much farther. Possibly a large organized gang preying on the most vulnerable. That really pissed me off.”

  “What else pissed you off?” asked Coleman.

  “When I open a website and music I didn’t ask for suddenly starts playing. And now the burden is on me to remember how to mute the computer.”

  “Yeah, what the fuck is that about?” said Coleman.

  “Someone forcing their musical taste on me, like I don’t get enough of that in Florida traffic.”

  “It’s just too much to take,” said Coleman. “And then they expect you to get a job.”

  Serge turned. “Coleman, what does any of this have to do with not getting a job?”

  “It has everything to do with it.”

  “No, it doesn’t,” said Serge. “You always try to work into our conversations why whatever we’re talking about is a reason to stay unemployed.”

  “It’s worth a shot.”

  The black Firebird left the city behind and rolled down an unlighted country road.

  “. . . And another item from the growing file of people who voluntarily wear dunce caps,” said Serge. “You’ll be talking cordially to someone and make an offhand reference, ‘I recently read where—’ and they’ll cut you off and say, ‘Oh, I don’t read’ . . . This is a tragedy on so many different levels. First, because they don’t read, they don’t know enough to keep it to themselves. Next, and this is the most amazing part, they use a demeaning tone like I’m the stupid one for wasting time with books.”