Nuclear jellyfish, p.1
Nuclear Jellyfish, page 1
part #11 of Serge Storms Mystery Series
Nuclear Jellyfish
by Tim Dorsey.
Money doesn’t talk-it swears. -BOB DYLAN
SOMEWHERE IN CYBERSPACE
Serge’s Blog. Star date 485.328.
First off, fuck the word blog. I hate it and all who use it. “Lol,” “imo,” “Today’s mood: Introspective yet spunky.” Shut up. The Internet was supposed to become the ultimate democratic forum. It did: Now everyone can be a porn star. Then there are those retarded blogs. It’s been said that inside every life is a fascinating book, or at least a chapter. Wrong. Some people don’t have a freakin’ semicolon, like that woman in Delray who blogs everything her cat does, and her cat even has a blog and every word is meow. But you have to play the hand you’re dealt, and I can’t exactly stand on street corners with a megaphone sharing Big Answers on Everything. That was my first choice, but a monkey wrench hit the works: a few itsy-bitsy little incidents. Murder is such a charged word. You know how some people fixate and won’t let things go? They’re called cops.
So I guess I should be thankful for the Internet. Especially since my newly launched travel advisory service demands the latest cutting-edge communication technology! Who better to guide you around my fine state? Right, I know what you’re thinking: “Serge, without delay, give me an example chocked with more value than I could expect to find elsewhere!” Okay, if you’re staying at a budget motel that has mandatory daily maid service, they have a meth lab problem. Or I can tell you how to extract yourself from the wrong bar with only a paper clip and a ballpoint pen. And if you’ve ever seen a motel room scanned with one of those ultraviolet semen cams, your head would never hit another pillow. Does William Shatner provide this kind of biting insight? I think we both know the answer. Before I debuted this blog, I applied to all the big established Internet travel sites, but they said they didn’t think their clients were interested in how to choose hookers who wouldn’t take all their credit cards. I said, “Look, you can spend the rest of your days shuffling through the website ghetto, or you can make the roaming gnome your bitch.” I think there’s something wrong with my phone because the line keeps going dead. So until I get proper sponsorship, I’m forced to put up my own wildcat site. Did I mention it’s totally free? What a bargain! Let’s get to it!
Serge’s definition of total happiness: Florida, a full tank of gas and no appointments.
Except all the jerks down here keep making appointments with me. What are you gonna do? Someone has to instruct them. But as I always say, if you love your work, it’s not really work. My psychiatrist disagrees of course, because she wants to medicate my ADD and OCD. I said, but those are the most important selling points on a travel writer’s resume. We notice everything: bridge weight limits, discarded rolls of carpet padding, bleached livestock skulls, plywood signs for pond demolition, bus stop benches advertising discount vasectomies, billboards for laser hair removal featuring chicks with mustaches, witty country church marquees where Jesus battles Satan with puns, dilapidated rural homes with a baffling number of disabled schoolbuses in the backyard, and malfunctioning brake lights on the car up ahead where the hostage in the trunk ripped out wiring. Then my shrink asks about manic depression. I say I’m never depressed. She says, what about when you beat up jerks? I say I’m happy then, too.
I decided to start this service because everyone is always coming up to me and saying, “Serge, you should start a travel service.” They actually say, “What the fuck’s your problem?” But I can read between the lines. I’m constantly seeing clueless Europeans with pasty legs stumbling around the wrong motels, and I shake my head. Yep, they’re going to get robbed. So I run up to them and say they’re going to get robbed. Then I say, not by me, put your hands down. Now they’re not thinking straight and don’t listen when I explain how to cut their homicide rate in half. But they’d already know that if they subscribed to Serge’s Florida Experience! (Free!)
From the Mailbag: “Hey, Serge, how did Florida become Dirtbag Central?” Because if you pass out in the snow, you die.
Hold the phone. Speaking of passing out, Coleman wants to give a travel tip. “Don’t buy any coke from Rico. It’s stomped on.” Coleman, that’s not a travel tip … No, it’s not… No, I won’t help you get your money back … Anyhoo, where was I? Weirdness. Florida has such a rarefied per capita concentration that CNN might as well be the local news. Some guy shoots a Wendy’s manager over their three sauce-packet limit; alligator attacks naked guy on crack doing backstrokes in retention culvert; driver falls out of car at forty-five miles an hour opening door to spit; smuggler makes it through airport security with monkey under his hat. And if something does happen in another state, it’s just a matter of time for the Florida shoe to drop. You say some criminal Rhodes scholar stole Crystal Gayle’s tour bus in Tennessee? Gee, where on earth might he head next?
Today’s Tip: A three sauce-packet limit is wrong. But pulling a gun is just as wrong. Go to Arby’s instead. They understand packet dynamics.
Back to the Mailbag! … Uh-oh. It’s Agent Mahoney. “I’m going to get you.” What a broken record. Mahoney blames me for everything, especially the stuff I’ve done. To compound it, there’s been a recent spike in businessmen mugged at hotels by highly organized crews. And now someone’s going after the robbers. So Mahoney naturally thinks it’s me, just because I happened to be at all the same places at the same time. I wish it was me (lol).
Mahoney, Mahoney, Mahoney … maybe that explains this nagging sensation I’ve been having lately, like something really bad’s about to happen. Can’t quite put my finger on it. And I’m not the superstitious type, which is why I don’t like superstitious people. They’re bad luck. But everyone’s number eventually comes up, and I’ve already skated through more than my share of tough jams. So just block it out. Enough negative thoughts! I hate them. They suck. They piss me off. If they were people, I’d get a Chainsaw and … You’re still doing it. Have to bear down. Concentrate: Appreciate God’s gift of this beautiful day where the Florida sun is shining and my gas tank’s full. Now I’m so happy I could burst! Off we go!
JACKSONVILLE
Midnight
Two young men walked along the bank of the St. Johns River, sporting shaved heads, sleeveless T-shirts and bituminous eyes that proudly announced: MINIMUM WAGE 4 LIFE. They gripped baseball bats halfway up the barrels.
“I hate fuckin’ bums.”
“So where are they?”
“Supposed to be a bunch of them right around here.”
“Just like fuckin’ bums.”
There had been a light rain, and warm mist rose from the road. Work boots slapped across glistening tar and splashed through moonlit puddles. They approached the underpass of the Fuller Warren Bridge.
“Where the hell are those damn bums?”
“Hold up.”
“What is it?”
“Over there.”
“Where?”
“Shhhhh. Get your camcorder ready …”
A two-tone 1971 AMC Javelin with split upholstery sat in darkness and trash beneath a downtown bridge over the St. Johns River.
“Theories abound concerning the phenomenon of the nation’s trash elite inexorably percolating down to Florida like industrial toxins reaching our aquifers …”
A beer can popped. “You’re doing it again.”
Serge wrote furiously in his notebook. “Doing what?”
“Talking to yourself.”
“No I wasn’t.” More writing. “… This travel writer places his money on time-release scumbag DNA …”
Coleman burped. “You always talk to yourself and then say you’re not.”
“I am? Really? That’s embarrassing.” He leaned over his notebook. “… The scumbag genetic factor is like hereditary blood disease or male-pattern baldness. At progressive age milestones, a series of rusty, chain-link twists in the double helix trigger a sequence of social tumors: Buy a pit bull, buy an all-terrain vehicle, get a DUI, sponsor a series of blue-ribbon slapping matches with your wife in the middle of the street, discharge a gun indoors, fail to appear in court, discharge fireworks indoors, get a DUI, forget where you put your Oxy-contin, crash your all-terrain vehicle into your pit bull, spend money to replace missing front teeth on large-mouth-bass mailbox, get stretchered away by ambulance for reasons you don’t remember, appear on COPS for a DUI, run out the back door when warrants are served and, in a trademark spasm of late-stage dirtball-ism, move to Florida …”
Serge finished the transcription and turned to a fresh page. There was a period of silence in the two-tone Javelin (orange and green) sitting under the Fuller Warren Bridge. Then, a crunching of wax paper. A soggy tuna sandwich appeared. A travel mug of cold coffee came off the dashboard.
“Serge,” said Coleman. “What did you mean before, ‘We’re on stakeout’? We’re not police.”
“Common mistake everyone makes, like the Constitution’s reserve clause for states’ rights. Just because cops do it, doesn’t mean we can’t.” Serge took a sip from the mug. “This is our new job.”
Coleman finished unwrapping the sandwich. “I thought our new job was visiting hotels to fill out checklists for that travel website.”
“And on every hotel listing, there’s a section called ‘local things to do.’”
“I’m not sure the websites want to send their customers under bridges at night in dicey parts of town.”
“That’s my offbeat niche: I give the people what they want before they know they want it.”
“But your new boss specifically said no more offbeat reports.”
“Everyone does what their bosses ask, and that’s precisely why you need to distinguish yourself from the herd.” Serge killed the coffee. “I stun them into paralyzed respect with my withering insubordination. First impressions are important.”
“They usually call security.”
“Because I made an impression.”
Coleman checked one of his pants pockets, then another. He pulled out his hand and raised the twisted corner of a Baggie to his eyes. “Where’d it all go? Did mice chew through here? Oh well …” He bent over.
“Thought you’d outgrown that.”
“What do you mean?”
“Everyone now knows coke is fucked up. You had an excuse for a while, because our hypocritical government lost all credibility by lumping pot in with crack to court the weed-bigot vote. Meanwhile, congressmen crammed all orifices with huge wads of cash from tobacco and liquor lobbies. But who would have guessed they were actually right about that stupid white shit?”
Coleman raised his head and sniffled. “I just do a little bump now and then so I can stay up and keep drinking beer.”
“For a second I thought you weren’t being productive.”
Coleman’s head suddenly snapped to the side. He pointed out Serge’s window. “What was that?”
Serge turned. “What?”
“Something moved under the bridge.”
Serge returned to his notebook. “Nothing’s there. You’re hallucinating again.”
Coleman squinted a few more seconds, then shrugged. He stuck his tongue inside the empty bag and reached under the seat for another Schlitz. “We need to make some money.”
“That’s what I’m doing now.” Serge flipped a notebook page, stopped and tapped his chin with a pen. “I need travel-writing tunes.” He reached for his iPod, synched it with an RF transmitter to the Javelin’s radio and cranked the volume. “… Fly high, oh, Freebird, yeah!…”
Coleman rewrapped his tuna sandwich. “You’ve been listening to Skynyrd all day.”
“We’re in Jacksonville. I’m required to listen to Skynyrd.”
“Why? Skynyrd’s from Alabama.”
Serge began punching the steering wheel like a speed bag. “Everyone thinks they’re from Alabama! They’re Floridians! Apocryphal motherfuckers …”
“Okay, okay, they’re from Florida.” Coleman set a wax ball on the dashboard. “I don’t know this stuff like you.”
Serge pointed at the ball. “You’re messing up my horizon.”
“The sandwich is soggy.”
“Soggy’s better.”
“Fuck that shit.”
“Your little chestnuts complete my life.”
“So Skynyrd’s really from Florida?”
“Too many of our state’s native accomplishments are credited elsewhere. First Skynyrd and Alabama, then everyone thinks the Allman Brothers are from Georgia.”
“They’re not?”
“South Daytona Beach.” Serge flipped down the sun visor and gazed up at a photo attached with rubber bands.
“You sure keep looking at that picture a lot.”
“I think I’m in love for the first time in my life.”
Coleman leaned for a closer view of a smiling woman in a NASA pressure suit. “But it’s just that crazy astronaut.”
“So?”
“So she’s a basket case. Got obsessed with some rival babe, filled a tote bag with tools, and drove like twelve hours straight through the night to kidnap her at the Orlando airport.”
“Exactly.” Serge took the photo down and kissed it. “This chick’s focused.”
A dark form stepped out from behind a bridge pylon. It slowly approached the Javelin from the driver’s blind spot.
Coleman looked down at his lap. “Serge?”
“What?”
“I don’t want to wear a diaper anymore.”
“Then don’t drink so much beer. We always have to pull over while I’m doing research.”
“Ever since you heard of that batty astronaut-“
“Don’t talk about my woman!” Serge replaced the photo and flipped the visor back up. “Besides, if I can wear a diaper, so can you.”
“But why are you wearing a diaper?”
“Maturity,” said Serge. “I’ve always wanted to be an astronaut, but my psychiatrist taught me to accept things I cannot change.” He wiggled into the driver’s seat with a plastic crinkling sound, then looked out the window at the stars and smiled. “This may be the closest I get to going into space.”
INTERSTATE 10 CORRIDOR
Toby Keith on the juke. Expense-account martinis covered several cocktail tables that businessmen had pushed together in a smoky motel lounge called the Pirate’s Cove. The decor was saddles and spurs and branding irons. The sign remained a lasting testimony that pirates don’t sell drinks in north Florida, and cowboys don’t sell enough for a new sign.
Swinging saloon doors creaked; a familiar face rolled luggage into the cove.
“Steve! Get over here, we saved you a seat!”
“It’s now Sh-teve.”
“Sh-teve?”
The adjoining tables were inhabited by a race of subterranean, combed-over business travelers with the physiques of water balloons resting on something flat. They racked up massive 41-cent miles and a gold-card number of hotel nights due to very good or very bad marriages. The chair they’d saved was at the head of the first table because the rest of the gang lived vicariously through Steve’s sex stories. They were all false, of course, but the guys believed him since he was the youngest and the best looking of the bunch, which was beyond relative and little coin in the realm of getting any.
“Why ‘Sh-teve’?”
“Babes dig it. Still spelled the same.” He plopped down and looked back toward the swinging doors. “Did you check out that piece of ass at the reception desk?”
“Couldn’t miss. Looks like she’s still in high school.”
Steve leaned back arrogantly.
“Don’t tell me you did her.”
“A gentleman doesn’t talk.”
“Come on!”
“Okay, first I grabbed her ears …”
They were an hour east of Tallahassee, just off I-10, in the state’s Spanish-moss belt girding the Georgia line. The nearest dots on the map were Live Oak, Madison and Shady Grove. It was a modest but sanitary motel, kept to chain standards, that went up quickly when economy at the exit ramp exploded with a convenience store and fast-food franchise that did morning biscuits right.
The lounge side of the property sat in the shadow of the highway overpass, and long-haul truckers rumbled by at such an acute angle as to suggest landing aircraft. Beneath the bridge’s eastern berm stood the lighted motel marquee-WELCOME DIVERSIFIED CONSOLIDATORS - and below that, someone in a dishwashing hairnet manipulated a twelve-foot telescoping aluminum pole to capture black plastic letters. He left the WELCOME up and changed the rest to DATA IMPLEMENTERS. The WELCOME had an off-putting slant in the middle because they were short on L’s and flipped over a 7. The largest conference room had a fire-marshal capacity of eighteen.
The gang in the hotel bar-like all gangs in all hotel bars-had a universal familiarity. Some was the result of actually knowing each other, traveling identical job circuits and enrolling in the same reward-points program. The rest had never met but recognized their own kind. Like Darin and Frank.
“I’m Darin, he’s Frank. Join you?”
Another table slid over.
“What’s your line?”
Frank removed a plastic straw convention hat. “World Congress of Data Implementers.”
Someone pointed at the military ribbons on Darin’s jacket. “What are those?”
“Seven straight quarters, most data implemented.”
“Nobody can touch Darin,” said Frank. “They call him the terminator.”
Beer bottles clinked. A toast to data.
Frank turned to Steve. “Who are you with?”
“Southeast Rare Coins. Finished a show in Tallahassee, getting a leg up on Jacksonville tomorrow. I’m Sh-teve. This is Ted and Henry.”
“Nice to meet…”
“Saw the billboards,” Frank said respectfully. “That big expo with the stamp collectors.” Ted winced.
Henry made a silent, slashing gesture across his throat with a finger.
