Nuclear jellyfish, p.12
Nuclear Jellyfish, page 12
part #11 of Serge Storms Mystery Series
Story rounded the breakfast nook, gun leading the way. The mechanical voices became even louder. But still no sign of their source. Weird. A few more steps. Even louder. It seemed to be coming from the sink. She slipped closer. Actually, beneath the sink.
Story gripped the pistol tight in her right hand, carefully reaching for a cabinet handle with her left. She quickly jerked it open, jumped back and took aim.
Serge and Coleman sat bunched under the sink with potato chips, flashlights and walkie-talkies, a pile of playing cards between them.
“Hey, Story,” said Serge.
Coleman raised his walkie-talkie “Go fish.”
Serge grabbed a card and looked up. “Would you mind closing the door?”
SILVER SPRINGS
Agent Mahoney unfolded three pages of printouts from the Internet. One had pictures. He held it up to a Holiday Inn lobby wall for comparison. Perfect match. He entered Denny’s.
The waitress arrived. Mahoney waved off the menu. “Just a cup of joe.” She left him seated in the last booth at the back of the restaurant, facing the door. He removed his fedora and placed it on the table next to a paper placemat.
Coffee arrived. Then a thin old man in checkered slacks. He stopped in the doorway and raised his stubbled chin to acknowledge the agent.
They were soon sitting across from each other.
“Mickey, how’s my favorite bartender?”
“Lumbago. You got my message?”
“No, it’s a big coincidence I’m sitting here.”
“Still interested in this Serge business?”
Mahoney stuck a wooden matchstick in his mouth.
The bartender looked around, then bent over the table. “Why don’t you just drop it. I have a bad feeling.”
“You seen Serge or not?”
Mickey shook his head. “I don’t even know what he looks like.”
“Then what was that message about?”
“Some wiseguy came around the bar asking about him, and I don’t think it was to send a birthday card.”
Mahoney angled his head to look around Mickey. “Who’s the suspicious mug sitting up front that keeps glancing back here.”
“Just John Travolta. Listen, I’m not kidding about walking away from this. In all our years, I’ve never had a feeling like this before.”
“What’s the lowdown on this snoop?”
“That’s what’s got me worried. No matter how bad this Serge character is, he can’t be anything like the guy who came around. You just get a vibe off some people.”
Mahoney fit his hat back on his head and stood. “Thanks, Mickey.” He opened his wallet and removed a twenty.
The bartender shook his head. “This one’s on the house,”
Mahoney put a hand on his shoulder-“They broke the mold, Mickey”-and walked out into the night.
3 A.M.
Story was propped up in bed with three pillows, editing a composition.
A door under the sink opened, and Serge spilled onto the tiles. He and Coleman headed for the door, flashlights in hand.
Story looked up from her paper. “Where are you going?” “To work.” The door closed behind them.
A half hour later, Serge jiggled a bent paperclip, easily popping the flimsy lock. He and Coleman crept through a rusty double-wide trailer on the edge of a cow pasture just west of 1-95.
They reached a bedroom. Serge clicked on his flashlight and aimed it at a sleeping face. “Wake up.”
Snoring.
Serge reached out with the flashlight and bonked a forehead.
“Ow!” A man shot up in bed. He turned and shielded his eyes against the blinding halogen beam. “What the fuck?”
“I’m the ghost of Christmas past.”
“Who?”
“Should have accepted my three-thousand-dollar offer,” said Serge. “It will soon look like the bargain of a lifetime.”
“Wait, I remember you. You’re so fucking dead!”
“Goodnight,” said Serge. The flashlight came down again, this time strategically harder. The transmission-shop owner went back to sleep.
One hour later, the shop owner awoke again with a splash of water in the face. He was lying down, but not on anything comfortable like a bed. In fact-his head looked side to side-where was he?
“You’re in the Ocala National Forest,” said Serge. “What a treat! So peaceful.”
The mechanic conducted a clockwise assessment of his various limbs, spread eagle. He began struggling furiously, but the wrist and ankle restraints didn’t budge a millimeter.
“That’s because I used hurricane tie-downs. Had one guy almost get free, so I decided to spring for the best remedy money could buy.” He reached inside a bag. “Sometimes it’s expensive to be cheap.”
“What are you planning?”
“Take you back to transmission school. If you’re going to hang a shingle, at some point you need to actually start doing the work. Let’s see what we’ve got here …” Serge’s hand came out of the bag. It held a thick, three-foot-long corkscrew with a giant eye loop at the top. “Bought an extra tie-down to show you because visual aids always help my students retain their lessons.” Serge got on his knees and twisted the device into the ground. “Home Depot again. Love that place! People buy these to anchor their sheds and whatnot so hurricanes don’t turn them into aircraft, which means you might as well stop that flopping around …” Serge looked up at the Big Dipper. “… Found a nice, remote clearing. No trees for a hundred yards, which means you’ll have full sunlight tomorrow. The weatherman says it’s going to be a scorcher.”
“You’re going to leave me out here to die of exposure?”
“That would be sick.” Serge reached in his bag again and came out with duct tape. “What kind of person do you think I am?”
“Please, I’m begging you! I’ll pay the money!”
He peeled an edge of the tape from the roll. “Sorry, you threatened a family.”
“I won’t do anything to them! I swear!”
“Really?”
“Word of honor!”
“Hmmmm …” Serge tapped his chin, then ripped a long strip from the roll. “Don’t believe you.”
“Wait, I’ll-“
Tape covered the man’s mouth and wrapped several times around his head.
Serge stood over him and smiled. “Took the liberty of having Coleman follow us in your car. It would be incredibly impolite to leave you stranded way out here with no transportation.” He pulled a set of keys from his pocket. “Stay put. I’ll just be a sec.”
The mechanic heard a familiar car start. The engine grew louder: My God! He’s going to run over me!
The hostage closed his eyes and soiled himself. The engine reached a roar. Then it suddenly stopped. The shop owner opened his eyes and stared up at the undercarriage of his car a few inches from his face. He heard a voice from the side. Serge was lying on his stomach next to the vehicle, chin propped jauntily in his hands.
“See? I positioned it for total shade cover from tomorrow’s sun. And for the sake of irony-which tickles me pink-the transmission is right over you so you’ll have plenty of opportunity to study it. Well, at least the outside, which is about as close as you’ve gotten so far.”
Serge stood again. The mechanic watched sneakers walk around to the other side of the car.
“Coleman, I need to borrow your disposable lighter.”
“What for?”
“Just give it!”
Coleman tossed it over the roof. Serge snatched it out of the air and opened the driver’s door.
“If this was a movie, the camera angle would be somewhere near the floor of the car, looking up at Serge’s hand …”
“Serge,” said Coleman. “You’re doing it again.”
“Doing what?”
“Talking to yourself.”
“I was? What was I saying?”
“Something about a movie camera.”
“I thought the narration was just playing inside my head. Oh well … Serge’s hand reached, slow motion, as the camera zoomed on the 69-cent butane lighter being placed gently in the middle of the dashboard. Then the film sped back up as Serge slammed the door, and he and Coleman drove away in their 1971 AMC Javelin … Cut! Print!”
ROUTE Al A
A two-tone Javelin sped south on the part of the highway below St. Augustine that ran against the shore. The sky was gray, extra-choppy surf. Serge grooved on the perpetual rhythm of large, rolling waves that began doming hundreds of yards out and crashed into the beach with bursts of foam and salty mist. Ahead, a disciplined line of eight pelicans rode the stout wind, gliding along the edge of the road at a velocity only slightly slower than traffic. Serge passed them at window level, saluting eight times. They crossed the Matanzas River.
“Oh my God!” said Serge. “Look!”
A compound of white buildings appeared on the sea side of the road, like a small campus or research institute.
“Coleman!” Serge reached over and shook his shoulder. “Are you looking?”
“Yeah, buildings.” Coleman stared back down, diagnosing the engineering flaw in his makeshift, toilet-paper-tube bong that was flaking apart in a bowl of water. “All that work for one shitty hit.” He pulled limp pieces of cardboard from his mouth.
“Someone’s fixing up Marineland!” Serge let off the gas. “She’s saved from the executioner! Where’s a parking space?”
Story punched the back of his seat.” You’re not stopping!”
“Of course we’re stopping. It’s Marineland, the world’s first ocean-arium, 1938.” He hit a turn signal for the parking lot and grabbed his camera.
She hit the seat again. “Keep driving! I told you I have an appointment at the dance club. Someone in this car has to make money.”
“You can strip anytime-“
Swat.
“Ow!”
“I am not stripping.”
“Okaaaaay, we’ll keep going. But just this once because I hate people who miss appointments.” Serge stepped on the gas and snapped a quick photo as they went by. “But hit me one more time …”
“And you’ll what?”
“I’ll… stop someplace and take lots and lots of pictures.”
The Javelin continued south. Beverly Beach, Flagler Beach, Ormond-by-the-Sea. Sparsely populated miles of unruined view. More waves, fried-fish shacks, sea oats, and an old beach shop with colorful, inflatable rafts stacked out front, except today they were lashed tightly to a post, flapping in the near gale.
The sky grew darker. Coleman switched to joints. “Thought this was the Sunshine State.”
“Point?” said Serge.
“It’s been an odd-looking week. First all that smoke from those forest fires in Georgia. Then cloudy every other day.”
“I dig it,” said Serge. “These rare gray afternoons evoke a sweet, childhood melancholy in my soul, like when it rained in kindergarten and we had to stay inside and do crafts with library paste and pipe cleaners and buttons, and I made the best project in the whole class, an ultra-powerful rubber-band zip gun, but the teacher gave me a zero because I got her in the eye with a button.”
The road entered a strip of vintage seaside amusement. Arcades, gondola rides, short space needle, tunnel under the boardwalk for people to drive out onto the sand. And a sign:
WELCOME TO DAYTONA BEACH
Serge looked up the road and hit his blinker. “I have to make a stop.”
“No!” shouted Story.
“It’ll be lickety-split. Already know what I want.”
Just past the 7-Eleven stood a large building with racing flags. The Javelin pulled into the parking lot of a NASCAR souvenir superstore.
Serge worked quickly through the aisles, avoiding usual knick-knack distraction by holding palms to the sides of his eyes like blinders. He bypassed officially licensed key chains, bobble-heads and Zippo lighters, finally arriving at a giant display of full-size magnetic door signs with the stock-car numbers and fonts of all the most popular drivers. He grabbed a pair with the giant number “2.”
The cashier rang him up. “You’re a Kurt Busch fan?” i,
“No, I came twice.”
Serge returned to the parking lot and slapped his magnets on the sides of the Javelin. They continued down A1A.
“What’s that place over there?” asked Coleman. “Looks like a giant ship.”
“Supposed to.” Serge grabbed his camera. “The venerable Streamline Hotel, grande dame of old Daytona, where people lined the rooftop to watch auto races when they used to hold them down here on the beach.” Click, click, click. “I’ve often toyed with the idea of living there.”
“Don’t you mean ‘stay’?”
Serge shook his head. “I’m fascinated by the concept of people who live in hotels. Like Howard Hughes’s top-floor place in Vegas, or that rich old woman who spent years in a suite at The Breakers.”
They stopped at a red light. A carload of race fans pulled up beside them. Someone from the other vehicle noticed the magnetic sign on the Javelin and pumped a fist out the window. “Wooooooo! Kurt Busch!”
Serge pumped his own fist. “Wooooooo! I came twice!” Coleman looked back at the hotel. “What’s that smokestack-looking thing on top?” “The bar.” “Can we stop?” “No!” yelled Story.
Serge looked in the rearview at the hotel lobby’s original wraparound glass. “After the races moved out to the speedway on the other side of town, people forgot about the Streamline. Now the rooms are bargain rate, even though it’s a priceless opportunity to live in the magnificent 1940s.”
“Then why don’t they charge more?” asked Coleman.
“Because who besides me wants to live in the forties?”
In one of the Streamline’s upstairs windows, a guest stood with a coffee mug of Irish whiskey. He stared across the ocean with narrow eyes beneath the brim of a rumpled fedora. His tie had a pattern of dice and roulette wheels. Agent Mahoney’s gaze went from the sea down to traffic below on Al A. A two-tone Javelin sat at a traffic light. Mahoney looked back up at the Atlantic and raised his mug. “Where can he be?…”
TWO MILES AWAY
Sea fog was thick as an unusually dim sun set over the ocean. Tide rolled in with a frothy chop. Couples bundled in sweaters against the nippy breeze and strolled along the mean-high-water mark. Hovering gulls cawed. Seaweed tangled around a row of PVC tubes anchoring an array of unattended surf-casting rods. Someone in headphones swept a metal detector over the sand. He stopped and dug up a rusty bicycle chain, studied it curiously, then reburied it.
North of the boardwalk, a column of upscale hotels and resorts had begun a ferocious sprout, but someone had thought to save the historic band shell. In the southeast corner of the nearest hotel, a light went on in one of the upper suites. A silhouette appeared behind the drapes. Below on the beach, a man in headphones rested the metal detector against his leg and raised a pair of binoculars.
The shadow moved back and forth behind the curtains. The man on the beach counted floors up the side of the hotel. The shadow disappeared from the window. The light went out.
The man with the metal detector grabbed a small Motorola two-way radio from his pocket. “Blue?”
“Blue here …”
“This is red. He just left. Fifteenth floor, southeast corner.”
“Sure the room’s clear?”
“Saw it with my own eyes. I’ll be in the bar to make sure he doesn’t come back up.”
Five minutes later the lighted numbers over the elevator ticked up to “15.” Doors opened. Men in maintenance overalls walked quickly down the empty hall, followed by a cluster of bodyguards around a taller man in a leather jacket.
Normally, the Eel would never let himself be caught within ten miles of a job, but there had been a recent pandemic of screw-ups. They neared the suite at the southeast corner. The first to reach the door set his toolbox on the ground. He removed a small electrical device the size of a garage opener and plugged a wire into the side. The wire’s other end attached to a thin strip of metal that he ran through the room’s magnetic card scanner. They went inside.
The search was silent and swift. At least in the beginning. They went straight for the bottom left dresser drawer and flipped it over on the bed. That’s where their inside information said the courier always taped his packets of stones.
They stared at bare wood.
“Maybe he changed drawers.”
Out came the rest.
“Well?” said the Eel.
The maintenance men shook their heads and slowly stepped backward.
The Eel’s eye-bulging face turned deep crimson. “What kind of ignorant fuckheads do I have working for me?”
“But that’s every drawer. You’re here. You saw it-“
“Son of a bitch!” The Eel marched forward and flicked open a ridiculously large switchblade.
“Please! No!-“
A two-way radio squawked.
The Eel punched a wall. “What now?”
“Blue? Are you there? This is red. Come in …”
The Eel’s eyes signaled a temporary reprieve. One of the maintenance men grabbed the radio. “Blue here. We copy.”
“There’s trouble …”
MEANWHILE …
The Javelin rolled past a drive-in church and turned onto Van Avenue. Serge parked at the curb in front of a quaint ranch house, tastefully landscaped. He raised his camera.
“Dammit!” said Story. “You’re going to make me late!”
“Relax.” Click, click, click. “A travel professional always builds in a time cushion.”
“That’s what you said up the road at the other place. I only agreed because I thought it was going to be your only photo stop.”
“That’s right, it was. Seabreeze High School, where they played their first gigs. But this is the Allman Brothers childhood home.” Click, click, click. “It’s your fault.”
“Mine?”
“You know what kind of person I am. How could you expect me to be so close to the cradle of southern rock and not get sucked into its gravity well? Gregg and ‘Sky Dog’ Duane probably skateboarded right on this very street.”
