Tim Dorsey - Hammerhead Ranch Motel

While they discussed the case, a corporal walked around the conference table with plastic fast-food sacks, placing a child’s Happy Meal, complete with toy prize, in front of each top official. The embattled and paranoid chief of police looked around the room at a Who’s Who of Tampa ’s power structure. He looked down at the Happy Meals in front of them and thought: This is political-someone in the department is trying to make me look like an idiot. The officials discussed legal and strategic options and made a decision. They would let the suspects go and keep them under surveillance.

The surveillance team, however, lost Joe and Sammy in the heavy traffic of TV and radio vans following the suspects, so they had to break off and track them on live TV back at police headquarters. Outside the command room, a disgruntled police major slipped a corporal a hundred-dollar bill for making the chief look like an idiot with the Happy Meals.

After nightfall, when the news helicopters returned to the airport, Joe and Sammy were kidnapped outside a convenience store in Dunedin by a van with TV news markings. Inside were their new friends from Daytona Beach, the Diaz Boys, three brothers and a cousin.

“Hey, you’re really drug smugglers!” Sammy said as the men gave them injections of sodium pentothal.

They drove to a motel room, where Joe and Sammy were tied to tropical chairs. The men made drinks and got the hockey game on TV. Under the truth serum, Joe and Sammy told them about the police interrogations. A man arrived with a deli tray and chips.

“Did you go by the wedding rental shop?” asked Tommy Diaz.

“I forgot,” said Juan Diaz, still holding the platter of cold cuts and cheeses.

“Better get going before it closes,” said Tommy.

“How come I always have to go?” asked Juan. “It’s because I’m the cousin, isn’t it? The rest of you are brothers, so it’s always ‘Send Juan to do it.’”

“Absolutely not,” said Tommy.

“You know who I feel like?” said Juan. “Norman Durkee.”

“Who the hell’s Norman Durkee?” asked Rafael.

“You don’t know, do you?” said Juan. “He was the guy in Bachman-Turner Overdrive whose name wasn’t Bachman or Turner.”

“He just played piano,” said Tommy Diaz. “The piano guy never counts. In concert, they’re always way over on the side in the dark, with the guy who plays those tall bongos and the three chicks singing backup.”

“What about Rick Wakeman from Yes?” countered Juan. “Or Keith Emerson from Emerson, Lake and Palmer?”

“Those were keyboard-dominated bands,” said Tommy. “BTO was wall-of-sound guitar.”

“Excuse me?” Sammy interrupted. “Is this a Latin thing?”

Everyone glowered at him, including Joe Varsity.

“Sorry,” said Sammy. He grinned nervously, then made a straight face.

Tommy turned back to Juan. “What are you talking about? You’re one of us! Your name’s Diaz, too! We’re the Diaz Boys!”

“Yeah, but it could be the Diaz Brothers. Like in Scarface! I know that’s what you’ve really always wanted. Like the Garcia Brothers and the Rodriguez Brothers. You only let me in the group because you felt sorry for me and you promised my mom.”

“Where do you get these ideas?” said Tommy. “You’re family!”

Tommy gave Juan a big hug and kissed him on both cheeks. “I don’t want to hear any more of this foolishness. Now get going before the wedding shop closes.”

Juan wiped a tear and smiled and rushed out the door.

As soon as he was gone, Rafael Diaz said, “Let’s get rid of that guy. Then we can finally be the Diaz Brothers.”

“I can’t,” said Tommy. “I feel sorry for the guy and I promised his mom. Besides, he runs all the errands.”

“Can we at least change the s to a z?” asked Rafael. “We could be the Diaz Boyz.”

Tommy Diaz looked at Rafael like he had an extra nose. “Okay, follow me carefully. We smuggle cocaine. We don’t sing fuckin’ doo-wop.”

Juan Diaz returned from the wedding shop in thirty minutes with a giant box of deflated balloons and a floor-standing tank of helium. Everyone drank heavily watching the hockey game. They untied Joe’s and Sammy’s hands so they could eat roast beef sandwiches and drink beer. There weren’t enough chairs so Juan had to sit on the cooler because he was the cousin, and he complained about having to get up every time someone wanted a beer.

“It’s because I’m the cousin, isn’t it?”

“Nonsense!”

They all cheered when the Lightning scored the go-ahead goal in the third period. After the game, Florida Cable News’ Blaine Crease appeared on TV at the top of the Sunshine Skyway bridge.

“…And this is where the bloody trail of the Keys Killer came to an end, where he jumped to certain death and was swept out to sea in the powerful currents at the mouth of Tampa Bay…”

Crease stopped to pull a folded piece of paper from his pocket.

“…Just before he decided to take his own life, the notorious murderer wrote an exclusive letter to me, Blaine Crease…”

Crease put on reading glasses, held up the letter and began reading:

“‘Dear Mr. Crease, You report too many depressing stories. More happy news, please. Warmly, Serge A. Storms.’”

Crease dramatically whipped off his reading glasses. “Obviously the rantings of a seriously deranged mind!…”

Tommy Diaz and the others started filling balloons with helium, tying them off and letting them float up to the low ceiling.

The men took turns inhaling helium and talking funny.

“I didn’t know drug smugglers were so much fun,” said Sammy, hair disheveled and head bobbing from the injection. “I thought you’d be mad at us.”

“No, we’re not mad,” Tommy said and took a hit of helium.

“So, you’re not going to kill us?”

“Oh no,” Tommy said like Donald Duck, “we’re still going to kill you.”

One of the men went outside and got two beach loungers from the patio next to the pool. They tied and taped Joe and Sammy into the loungers and attached a hundred balloons to each.

“Hey, what are you guys doing?” asked Joe Varsity.

Nobody answered. They kept tying on more balloons and taping Joe and Sammy more securely to the beach loungers.

“Okay, this is starting to not be funny anymore,” said Joe.

More balloons.

“Are you trying to make us blimps?” asked Joe. “It’ll never work. You can’t lift a person up with regular party balloons.”

Just then, Sammy floated away from his handlers. His hands were tied to the sides of the lounger, and his nose mashed up against a hanging lamp.

“Stop clowning around,” snapped Tommy. “Get him down from there.”

Sammy wasn’t coming out of the drug as quickly as Joe, and he giggled as they retrieved him.

“I heard about this before,” Sammy told Joe. “Some guy up in Georgia was laid off at a factory. So he got loaded at his daughter’s wedding and tied a bunch of balloons to a cot and grabbed a leftover bottle of champagne and took off. He brought a frog gigger with him to pop balloons one at a time when he wanted to come down.” Sammy turned to the Diaz Boys. “You’re gonna give us giggers, right?”

“No giggers,” said Tommy, not looking up, tying off another balloon.

“What’ll happen to us?” Joe asked from the outskirts of panic.

Sammy answered. “We’ll go up real high and black out from lack of oxygen and then die. Or the balloons will explode from the low atmospheric pressure and we’ll crash and die. Even odds which will happen first.”

Joe started crying.

“I hear Tampa Bay is beautiful from the air at night,” said Sammy.

Tommy Diaz cracked the front door to the room, stuck his head out and looked both ways. “Coast is clear.”