Gator A-Go-Go (5 page)

FLORIDA

A
1973 Dodge Challenger raced up the gulf coast on U.S. 19.

Coleman’s window was down, his head outside like a cocker spaniel. “Are the chicks from the videos going to be there?”

“By the thousand.”

“Cool!”

“Coleman, this is a serious documentary. We’re not interested in drunk babes flashing tits.”

“Serge, a space creature has taken control of your vocal cords.”

“Spring break is one of the most profound social influences Florida has given the rest of the nation. Because of our state, kids not only come here, but now flock to Mexico, the Lesser Antilles, even Colorado ski slopes. And it all started in a single swimming pool in 1935.”

Coleman hung farther out the window. “Show me your tits!”

“Dude, get a grip. There’s nobody around.”

“Spring break! Wooooooo! I’m Gertrude Schwartz! . . .”

Serge pulled him back inside by his belt. “Coleman, that’s seriously ripped, even for you.”

Saliva began stringing from Coleman’s mouth, pooling on his stomach.

Serge passed a Kleenex from his door organizer. “Thought you had that problem mastered.”

Coleman placed the tissue on his chest like a bib and handed Serge a dark-orange safety bottle.

Serge read the label:
GERTRUDE SCHWARTZ
. Then the contents. “Coleman, this is one of the most powerful narcotics known to man. How’d you get it? You’re not a woman.”

“
Dfjoiakl
—said I was her son—
msdffkdsflsd . . .
”

An hour later, Coleman’s head lolled on its neck swivel. “Serge, someone messed with that highway sign. Says we’re going north.”

“We
are
going north.”

“Who drives north for spring break?”

“People who want to travel back in time.”

“I thought we were heading to a beach.”

“We are. But time travel is the structure of my award-hoarding documentary,” said Serge. “Florida’s always had a love-hate relationship with spring break. First a community wants the money and rolls out the red carpet. Then they get rich and weary of hotel damage— ‘Yo, students: Thanks for the cash, now scram!’—deploying police harassment. So another city with a lesser economy says, ‘Hey, kids, why put up with that crap? We’ll treat you right.’ Then
that
place prospers and asks, ‘Why do we have to put up with this crap? Get ’em out of here!’ And so on.”

“How many times has it happened?”

“The history of spring break in Florida can be divided into three distinct epochs: Panama City Beach, the current party mecca; Day-tona Beach, which ruled the late eighties and nineties; and Fort Lauderdale, where it all began.”

“So we’re going to . . . ?”

“Panama City. I’m working my way back through time.”

“I thought this was about Florida.”

“What are you talking about? It
is
Florida. The Panhandle.“

Coleman tapped an ash out the window.”Then why’s it called Panama?”

“A rare relevant question. The city’s original developer, George West, bestowed the name because if you draw a line from Chicago to the Panama Canal, it runs through there.”

“That’s fucked-up . . . Serge, I see fish with nipples.”

“Weeki Wachee, home of the famous mermaid shows and one of the first roadside attractions in the state.”

“Real mermaids?”

“I wish. They just wear costumes and breathe from special tubes hidden in underwater rocks. Tourists watch from below-ground grandstands through giant windows . . . And from the only-in-Florida file, a classic newspaper photo three decades ago of mermaids on strike in full uniform, picketing along the side of the highway.”

A billboard went by:
SWIMMING OUR TAILS OFF SINCE
1947.

“You aren’t stopping,” said Coleman. “You always stop.”

“Not this place.” Serge shot photos out the window without slowing. “My mug shot’s probably posted in their ticket booths on the no-fly list. And just because I dove in the pool during one of the shows in a selfless attempt to save the attraction. Who knew they had big capture nets?”

“How were you trying to save it?”

“By spicing up their act as the Creature from the Black Lagoon—1954, filmed in Florida—which is why I dragged that mermaid to the bottom, but then I forgot which rock had the breathing tubes.”

“What happened?”

“Reached the surface just in time, but no thank-you, only another ‘We’re calling the police.’ That’s usually a good time for lunch. On the bright side, a disgruntled mermaid with Broadway aspirations chased me across the parking lot and asked for a lift. Hit it off right away. And the sex!”

“You had mermaid sex?”

“Around the clock. Name was Crystal, like the river. Barely left the motel room for a week, but finally had to slow down when I started walking bowlegged. Then we broke up.”

“Why’d you break up with a mermaid?”

“Other way around. You know how women are? Mermaids are even worse. Started getting pissed that I always insisted she wear the costume to bed. Accused me of really being in love with it instead of her. I said, ‘Is that a problem?’ When chicks decide they’re leaving you, they really fly. At least I got to keep the suit.”

“Did you try it on?”

“Of course. How often do you get the chance? Except those things are pretty binding, and I had to cut a long slit in the tail to go shopping, but it turned out the stores didn’t want my business anyway.”

Onward. North.

Flea markets, RV parks, drive-through liquor barn, civil war reen-actment, sign beside a house selling Peg-Boards, direct-to-you outlets of preformed pools tipped up toward traffic. Sun umbrellas shaded roadside squatters hawking fresh produce, Tupelo honey, jumbo shrimp, salted mullet . . . Into Citrus County. Homosassa city limits. Serge jumped the curb and dashed into a visitors’ center.

Coleman ran after him. “Serge? Serge, where are you? . . .” Peeking through doors. “Serge? . . . There you are.” He looked around. “What is this place?”

A digital camera flashed nonstop. “The Florida Room at Homo-sassa Springs Wildlife State Park. Exhibit honoring my favorite artist, Winslow Homer.” Sprinting around the room, flash, flash, flash. “Painted these watercolors of local nature during vacation in 1904. And look! Here’s a page of the guest register he signed at the Homo-sassa Lodge!” Flash. “I could stay here forever! Back to the car!”

Farther north, Crystal River, swim-with-the-manatees country. Tour boats and dive specials and viewing platforms. Red-white-and-blue manatee statue in front of city hall.

“Coleman, did you know that hundreds of years ago, manatees were thought to be mermaids?”

“By who?”

“Pirates at sea too long.”
Bang, bang, bang.

Coleman turned around. “I think the guy in the trunk wants something.”

“Gerbil dispensers are probably empty.”

MIAMI

People in smartly pressed suits came and went through a high-security gate.

Inside the utilitarian government building, an anthill of movement and efficient activity. Phones rang, reports filed.

CNN was on. A repeat of the breaking story on the missing college student found alive in Massachusetts.

A case agent named Ramirez looked up at the TV.

Patrick McKenna’s face filled the screen.

“
. . . I don’t feel like a hero . . .
”

Agent Ramirez closed his eyes. “Oh, no.”

NORTH FLORIDA

A ’73 Challenger entered Levy County.

The tiny hamlet of Inglis. R
EDUCED
S
PEED
A
HEAD
. Serge tried to time a stoplight but lost.

He punched the steering wheel. “Life drains from my body at red lights!”

Coleman popped a can. “I use them to drink beer. Green lights, too.”

“Come on! Come on! . . .” He began unscrewing a thermos. “Hold the phone. I can’t believe it!”

“What?”

Serge pointed up next to the traffic light, where a green-and-white sign marked the cross street.

Coleman squinted. “Follow That Dream Parkway?”

“It’s a sign.”

“Yeah, metal. See them all over the roads.”

“No, I mean a religious one. God wanted that light to turn red, like a burning bush. From now on, I’ll never question the apparitions of the red lights.”

“What are you going to do?”

Serge hit the left blinker as the light turned green. “Follow that dream!”

The Challenger skidded around the corner. “There’s the chamber of commerce. They’ll have answers.” He pulled into the parking lot.

“Serge, it’s closed.”

“What the hell? The economy doesn’t stop on Sunday.”

Coleman burped. “Back there, I saw a—”

“Not now.” Serge grabbed his camera. “Maybe I can find answers through the office window with my zoom lens.”

“But, Serge—”

He was out of the car. He came back.

“Answers?”

“Only more questions.” He stuck a key in the ignition.

“Serge, what was that brown sign we passed racing around the corner?”

“Coleman, I’m trying to think!” He stopped and turned. “Did you say
brown?
”

“Yep. Big one.”

“Brown means information, which means God left another message on my machine.”

Serge threw the Challenger in reverse and squealed backward a hundred yards. He stared at the sign, then at Coleman.

“Why are you looking at me like that?”

“He speaks through you.”

“Cool.” Coleman switched to his flask. “What’s this dream parkway jazz about anyway?”

“The sign reveals all.”

Serge got out and stood fervently before the sun-faded paint. At the top, a rust-streaked logo of an old-style movie camera. Below: Elvis spent July and August of 1961 in this area filming his ninth major motion picture
Fo//ow That Dream
. . . The main set was located 5.8 miles ahead at the bridge that crosses Bird Creek.

Serge dashed back to the car. Coleman dove in after it began moving.

They sped west through Crackertown.

The odometer ticked under Serge’s watchful eye. “. . . Based on the novel
Pioneer, Go Home!
by Richard Powell . . .”

Coleman pointed at the running camcorder on the dashboard. “I thought this documentary was about spring break.”

“It is,” said Serge. “In the movie, Elvis plays Toby Kwimper, whose family drives to Florida and homesteads on the side of the highway. Presley was such a force of nature, he created his own spring break. Plus another righteous Florida footnote: One of the film hands from Ocala brought his eleven-year-old nephew to the set, and he was bitten by the Elvis bug, dedicating his life to rock ‘n’ roll. That child? Tom Petty!”

The odometer reached 5.7.

“Is that the bridge?”

“Elvis lives!”

The Challenger skidded to a stop on the tiny span. Serge got out with his camcorder, filming the surrounding marsh. “Coleman, there’s much to do. We must get down on that bank and fashion a bivouac like the Kwimpers’ from available natural materials. Then I’ll buy a guitar and rehearse the theme song while you round up extras from the day-labor office. Nothing in the universe can make me waver until this mission is complete.”

“What about the guy in the trunk?”

“Or we can do that.”

MEANWHILE . . .

A
British Airways jumbo jet cleared the Dolphin Expressway and touched down at Miami International. The control tower had to-the-horizon visibility for minimum landing separation. Minutes later, another transatlantic from Berlin. And Rome. And Madrid. Then the domestics, Minneapolis, Phoenix, Nashville.

The cadence of swooping turbines rattled the inside of a tiny bar on the back of an ill-stocked package store with Honduran cigars and a bulletproof Plexiglas cage for night sales that was so thick it was like looking at the cashier through an aquarium.

Only four customers in the late afternoon. Guillermo and his boys. The bar sat just north of the airport on the side of Okeecho-bee Boulevard. The interior was dark, choked with cigarette smoke from insufficient ventilation, which consisted of an open back door on a windless day. Out the door: roosters and roaming dogs pulling wet clothes from laundry lines. Beyond that, an unassuming drainage canal that began a hundred miles away near Clewiston, cutting south through a million sugarcane acres, then the Everglades, past western quarries and jumping the turnpike for a perfect, man-made straight diagonal shot through Hialeah, eventually assuming natural bends when it became the Miami River before dumping into Biscayne Bay.

The connectivity of that waterway could stand as a spiritual metaphor for the irreversible series of events Guillermo and his colleagues were about to set in motion, but that would just be shitty writing. Before coming to the lounge, they’d fished the bullet from Miguel’s shoulder with tweezers and tequila. Not a bad job of swabbing the wound. Now Miguel wanted more tequila, and Guillermo wanted quiet as the TV over the bar went
Live at Five
from the so-called Lottery Massacre in West Perrine. When the report finished, Guillermo asked the bartender to change the channel. There it was again. And the next channel. Guillermo exhaled with relief. He’d been worrying that they had jumped the gun and removed ski masks too soon in their rush out the door. Another channel, CNN taking the south Florida fire-fight to the nation. But still no surveillance footage of the assailants, because the low-grade convenience store couldn’t afford real security cameras and went instead with decoy boxes and blinking red lights.

“We lucked out,” said Guillermo.

“Tequila,” said Miguel.

BIRD CREEK

Serge stood in the middle of the bridge with coils of white rope. He threw one end over the west side and the other over the east.

“What are you doing?” asked Coleman.

“Making a guitar.”

Serge walked twenty yards and tied monofilament fishing line to the bridge’s railing. Then he went forty yards the other way and tied another.

“Guitar?” Coleman looked around. “Where?”

“The
bridge
is the guitar.“ Serge tested a hitch knot.”Elvis deserves only the biggest.”

“But how can a bridge be a guitar?”

“Just a matter of proportion. The tones of an instrument’s strings are determined by their thickness.” Serge pointed. “That braided, inch-thick nylon would be the E string”—he turned—“and the fishing line is—let me think. Treble scale. ‘Every good boy deserves fudge’— probably G.”

Serge ran to the end of the bridge and down the bank.

A horn-honker lay in the mud, gagged, hands behind his back.

Serge grabbed two discarded crab traps and splashed out into the shallow creek. He stacked them beneath the bridge.

Ten minutes later, the hostage stood on top of them.

“That rope gives you balance,” said Serge, clamping a D-ring. “Which is important because you definitely don’t want to fall off those crab traps.”

Coleman stood knee deep with a Pabst. “No noose?”

“Been there, done that.” Serge crouched and stretched fishing line. He looked up at his captive. “Remember: The traps are everything. If you can stay balanced on them long enough, someone’s bound to find you. If not, they’ll still find you, but you won’t like it.”

Coleman crumpled his empty can and pointed. “What are those for?”

Serge knotted lines through crab trap wires. “Refreshment.”

The hostage stared in front of his face at a pair of gerbil dispensers hanging from the underside of the bridge and inserted through his mouth gag.

“Well, time to run.” Serge stood and smiled. “Gotta follow that dream!”

MIAMI

Transcontinental flights continued thundering over a bar next to Okeechobee Boulevard.

Miguel got deeper into the tequila.

TV still on CNN.

The bartender started changing the channel to Marlins spring training.

“Stop!” shouted Guillermo. “Keep it on this.”

The bartender withdrew his arm and went back to his own drink.

Guillermo leaned for a better look at the screen, now into the next segment from the cable channel’s Boston affiliate.

“
. . . I don’t feel like a hero . . .
”

Below the interviewee’s face: H
ERO
P
ATRICK
M
C
K
ENNA
.

“So that’s what he goes by now.”

“Who?” asked Raul.

“You’re too young to remember,” said Guillermo. “Son of a bitch looks exactly the same.”

“What are you talking about?”

“Quiet.” He flipped open his cell and dialed. “. . . Madre? . . . It’s me, Guillermo . . . No, there aren’t any complications from our business meeting . . . You’re not going to believe this. Sitting down? . . . Because I just found an old friend.”

HIGHWAY 98

A ’73 Challenger blazed north on the desolate stretch with scarce traffic lights. Otter Creek, Chiefland, Fanning Springs, Perry, through forested hunting country—Woody’s Famous Cajun Boiled Peanuts— and west into the Panhandle.

Coleman burnt his fingertips on the nub of a joint. “Are we there yet?”

“Almost. Just have to make one more stop at a police station.”

“Police station?” The roach went out the window. “Are you nuts?”

“Don’t worry—it’s not open anymore.” Serge crossed his fingers. “If it’s there at all.”

Another reduced-speed zone in Carrabelle. Serge scanned the side of the road. “There it is!” He parked at the curb and handed Coleman his video camera. “Film this.”

“A phone booth?”

“Not just any phone booth. The world’s smallest police station. I’m getting inside—shoot me through the glass . . .
Help! Help! I’m innocent! It was the one-armed man!
. . . That’s enough.”

Through Apalachicola and Port St. Joe, past a roadside display with replaceable numbers:

O
NLY
89 D
AYS
L
EFT
T
ILL
H
URRICANE
S
EASON
.

A series of bone-rattling roars over the car.

Coleman looked at the ceiling. “What the hell was that?”

“The sign we’re almost there.” Serge pointed through the windshield at a cluster of tiny specks disappearing out over the gulf. “Fighter jets from Tyndall Air Force Base.”

They caught the first whiff of spring break in Mexico Beach. Students in front of a convenience store, cracking open Budweiser twenty-four-packs and draining melted cooler water on the ground.

“Regular unleaded is going back up
again?
This seriously cramps my lifestyle,“ said Serge.”Remember when gas was four dollars a gallon?”

“No.”

“They made a windfall, then deliberately pulled back before we mustered sufficient motivation to wean ourselves off the black heroin. I predicted at the time they’d ratchet it back up again and here we are. Ever see those oil assholes testify before Congress?”

“Is that where, like, on TV nothing’s moving?”

“I’d love to get my hands on just one of them for some private testimony.”

Finally, they were there. Stuck in traffic. Kids on the sidewalk moving faster than cars. Small planes flew over the beach, pulling banners for drink specials and the Geico cavemen.

Coleman grunted as he struggled to open Gertrude’s prescription bottle again.

“Having problems?”

He passed the vial to Serge. “It’s childproof.”

“Here you go.”

“Thanks.” Coleman popped a tablet in his mouth like a peanut. “Which one’s our hotel?”

“Right up there. The Alligator Arms.”

BIRD CREEK

A dozen police cars parked every which way on a tiny bridge in Levy County.

A corporal looked over the side. “Isn’t this where they shot that Elvis movie?”

The detectives arrived.

“Where’d you find him?” asked the lead investigator.

The corporal pointed. “Top half above the navel washed up in those reeds . . .” He turned. “Tide took the rest downstream.”

“What’s with
those
people?”

They looked toward a Buick with Mississippi plates and a damaged grille, where another officer consoled a retired couple on vacation.

“Pretty shaken up,” said the corporal. “Claim the rope just came out of nowhere.”

“Rope?” said the detective.

“Wrapped across the front of their car, and they pulled it to the end of the bridge until it finally snapped and the Buick spun out.”

“Is it connected to the homicide?”

“Our forensic guy’s still working on it.”

“Where is he?”

“Under the bridge.”

The detective examined a frayed piece of fishing line tied to the railing. “What the hell are we dealing with?”

The forensic tech climbed up the bank in rubber boots. “Think I got it solved.”

They waited.

Boots squished across the bridge. “Rope was wrapped around his stomach and held in place with a D-clamp so it wouldn’t slip.”

“You saying
rope
cut him in half? How’s that strong enough?”

“More than enough,” said the tech. “Human body’s some of the most fragile material on the planet. This was like wrapping a string around a banana and pulling the ends. Banana slices right in two.”

“That’s disgusting,” said the detective.

The corporal looked back at the Buick. “But what’s with those people saying the rope came out of nowhere?”

“That was the trigger,” said the tech.

“Trigger?” asked the detective.

The tech nodded. “This is where it gets . . . fancy.” He swept an arm behind him. “Whoever’s responsible wired the bridge like a giant guitar.”

The corporal nodded. “Death by Elvis.”

“This isn’t for your amusement,” said the detective.

“Sorry.”

The tech pointed down. “Killer looped the rope in a complete circle over the bridge’s railings and down to the victim, with the extra coils I mentioned around his stomach. But he left enough slack so the part across the top of the bridge just lay unobtrusively on the ground where a driver wouldn’t notice it or give a second thought. That’s how it came out of nowhere.”

“How
did
it come out of nowhere?”

“This is a pretty remote road,” said the tech. “Dead end. Almost no traffic, but a car passes by every now and again. That’s where the fishing lines come in, tied to the crab traps the victim was forced to stand on under the bridge.”

“That’s weird.”

“Gets weirder. The assailant was thorough, didn’t know which direction the next car would come from, so, twenty yards on each side of the big rope, he stretched clear, hundred-pound-test monofilament lines across the bridge at radiator level, invisible to motorists.”

“Starting to sound like the roadrunner and coyote show.”

“Fitting analogy,” said the tech. “The thick nylon rope would remain flat on the road as long as the victim stayed on top of the traps. Then a car comes along, hits the fishing line he doesn’t see, jerking the traps out from under the deceased, dropping him in the water, pulling the rope tight around his waist, which suddenly jerks the rest of the rope up off the roadway—again, to radiator level—just as the car reaches it and . . . two halves of a banana.”

“Holy Jesus,” said the detective.

“What are those things in your hand?” asked the corporal.

The tech looked down at gerbil dispensers. “Haven’t figured that part yet.”

The detective stared across the marsh. “What kind of monster is out there?”