Tim Dorsey - Gator A-GO-GO

“Ramirez killed her?”

Serge shook his head again. “Like I said, you leave that to me.”

“Guillermo?”

Serge pulled the pistol from under his shirt for a tear-down mechanism check.

Andy remembered something, feeling the bottom of his own shirt and Ramirez’s Glock, which he’d concealed underneath in all the excitement. He decided not to bring it up. “What are you planning to do?”

Serge reassembled the gun. “I’m foreclosing on his karma.”

THE NEXT MORNING

Six A.M.

Dawn on the way. But still half-dark.

Headlights from pickup trucks bounded onto the construction site of a new downtown Miami condo.

The trucks stopped and doors opened.

Work boots, lunch boxes, hard hats.

A foreman began unfurling blueprints, then heard a sound that wasn’t supposed to be there. He looked back at his crew. “Someone leave that thing running?”

Seven A.M.

Crime scene tape, police, TV cameras.

The head of homicide arrived. “What have we got here?”

“One twisted bastard,” said the case detective. “Nobody hot-wires these things.”

They watched as paramedics passed what was left of Miguel out the hatch of a cement mixer.

“I’ve heard of death by a thousand cuts,” said the detective. “This was death by ten thousand blunt traumas. All minor enough to let him last for hours.”

“Wouldn’t he just roll around and get dizzy?”

“Most people might think, but the foreman explained that these trucks have blunt stirring blades to mix the cement-much like laundry dryers-and once the victim kept tripping and couldn’t get up, those blades continued lifting and tumbling him over and over.

“Who would do such a thing, let alone think it up?”

Eight A.M.

South of Miami. A Delta 88 sat in the driveway of a nicely kept hacienda with barrel tiles.

Only one person home.

The shower was running. A bottle of Jack Daniel’s hung in the soap caddy. A diluted pink mixture of water and blood swirled down the drain.

The leg wound had been a pass-through in the meaty part of the thigh, and another bullet had just grazed the right shoulder. That left two in his favored arm.

Guillermo screamed.

A twisted piece of lead bounced on a rubber shower mat. Guillermo hung tweezers from the caddy and grabbed the bottle of sour mash. Some went in his mouth, the rest over an inelegantly gouged-out wound. Another scream.

He set the bottle back and grabbed the tweezers again.

Drain water turned darker red.

Nine A.M.

Ice cubes fell in a crystal rocks glass, followed by two fingers of Jack Daniel’s. A first-aid kit lay open. Two pools of spilled whiskey on the dining room table and more dripping off Guillermo’s fingertips from the limp arm hanging by his side.

He cringed and gently eased himself into a chair at the table, gauze bandages bleeding through. Guillermo unwrapped the worst and tossed the wad in a trash basket next to his seat.

He reached in the first-aid kit and took another slug of whiskey, then tore off a fresh stretch of white tape with his teeth.

A Mercedes pulled up the driveway. The front door opened. Juanita hummed merrily, a bakery sack in her arms. The foyer filled with the aroma of just-out-of-the-oven Cuban bread. Then she smelled liquor.

Juanita came around the corner to the dining room, only seeing his back and the bottle. Uncharacteristic.

“Guillermo?” She slowly set the bag on a counter. “Are you… drunk?”

“Not yet.”

“Guillermo, I’m surprised…” She took a few more steps. “Oh my God! What happened to you?”

The bottle poured. “Ramirez double-crossed us.”

“He’s a dead man.”

“Right.”

“You’re in no condition.” She picked up the phone. “I’ll take care of this Ramirez. Almost makes me cry what he did to you.”

“No, I mean, ‘right,’ as in he’s already dead.”

She put down the phone. “You handled Ramirez?”

A boozy nod.

She patted him on the head. “Good boy… What about Andy?”

He shook his head. “There were like a million of ’em. I was ambushed.”

“You didn’t take care of Andy?”

“No, but I’ll find him.”

Another pat. “You rest.” She grabbed the phone again. “I’ll send someone else.”

“Who?”

She opened her mouth to say “Pedro,” then stopped. She thought of Raul. Stopped again. Miguel. A longer pause. “Is anyone left at all?”

“Just me.”

Juanita took a seat at the table and stared down in thought.

SIMULTANEOUSLY

A ’73 Challenger cruised south on Biscayne Boulevard.

Just Serge and Andy.

They crossed the intersection for the causeway to Bal Harbor. A skyline came into view.

“Holy smokes,” said Serge. “There’s more every time I come here, and that’s usually only months apart.”

Andy was in a funk.

“Andy”-shaking his arm-“are you looking?”

“Yeah, I’m looking. More what?”

“Condos under construction.” Serge stopped at a red light next to the Miami Shores Country Club. “They’re all over the dang place, blotting out the sun.”

“I thought those were office buildings.” Andy stared out the window at towering high-rises, most with unfinished upper floors. “They’re putting condos downtown?”

“Now they are. Almost outnumbering businesses.” His eyes moved north to south. “… Nine, ten, eleven…”

“What are you doing?”

“Counting construction cranes. I do it every time I’m here… thirteen, fourteen, now fifteen! Amazing. I still remember one of the local TV anchors joking that the city’s official bird should be the crane.”

“Fifteen are getting built at the same time?”

“Probably a couple less,” said Serge. “They glutted the market in the housing crisis. I’m betting work’s stalled on a few from lack of pre-sales. That’s how the Elbo Room was saved.” He aimed his camcorder out the windshield at the skyline.

“Serge, what are you doing?”

“I’m always in awe at the scale of those things.”

“How can you be so flip at a time like this? Talking about buildings and cranes when Guillermo is still loose.”

“You were just talking about them, too.”

“I was distracted.”

“Promised I’d take care of this.” Serge turned on the radio, Randy Newman. “That’s where we’re going now.”

Andy bolted up straight. “We’re driving to Guillermo?”

“Heck no.”

“Then where are we going?”

“Research. Putting an end to something requires thorough preparation and a killer sound track.”

“Why do I have to come?”

“ … Gee, I love Miami… ”

“After what you pulled yesterday, we’re joined at the hip.” Serge clicked off his video camera. “In the meantime, no sense fretting between stops. Enjoy the beautiful day!”

Andy pounded the dashboard in whining desperation. “Please…”

“It’s almost over,” said Serge. “Just a little longer.”

“It is over. Ramirez was the traitor. So now you can take me in.”

“Sometimes there’s more than one. We have to cut the snake off at the head. Then it doesn’t matter how many they got inside… Look! One of the cranes is starting to move!”

“ … every building’s so pretty and white… ”

“Serge!”

“Shhhhhh!” He grabbed his camcorder again. “It’s incredible how those things work. Ever watch Modern Marvels? ”

“No!”

“Check out that tiny guy fifty stories up in the glassed-in control cab. He’s just moving little levers…”-Serge panned down to a massive steel beam leaving the ground-“… yet able to lift tons of metal hundreds of feet into the air and place it precisely where he wants…”