Tim Dorsey - Hammerhead Ranch Motel

He turned the page and saw another story by Lippowicz about a frantic treasure hunt in Key West for a briefcase full of drug money. A giant headline: “The Five-Million-Dollar Curse!”

“AAAAHHHHHH!” Zargoza screamed and dropped the paper like it was on fire.

Panic turned to anger. Zargoza picked up the paper and shredded it, crunching the pieces into a ball and slamming it to the ground. “Fuck! Fuck! Fuck!”-spitting the words as fast as he could, losing breath, standing there shaking next to his lounger.

Tommy Diaz had terrible timing.

He drove up in a red Audi, and got out looking shaken.

“What’s wrong with you?” asked Zargoza.

“I almost ran over two guys duck-walking in your driveway!” said Tommy, sitting down on the side of the lounger next to Zargoza.

“You always were a shitty driver,” said Zargoza. He reclined again and closed his eyes. Minutes passed. Tommy looked at the patio around the loungers, wondering what the deal was with all the torn-up newspapers. Zargoza finally sat up again and faced Tommy.

“Do you have any concept of subtlety? Any aptitude at all for the soft touch? Is there a feather in that quiver of yours, or is it all sledgehammers and battering rams with you guys?”

“What do you mean?”

Zargoza threw up his arms.

They were distracted by a loud racket. Some hammering and a buzz saw. Both turned and looked out on the beach behind the Calusa Pointe condominiums next door. They saw a furious level of construction as if the Seabees were building a Coral Sea airstrip. Half the noise was coming from where a massive temporary stage was being erected. The rest of the noise was from people getting plywood ready for the hurricane.

“What’s that about?” asked Tommy, pointing at the lighting masts going up over the stage.

“It’s their stupid anti-immigration rally tomorrow,” said Zargoza.

Two workers hung a large cloth banner across the back of the stage. “Proposition 213: Because they just don’t look right!”

“Chowderheads,” muttered Zargoza. He grabbed the grapefruit juice and chugged the whole thing and wiped his mouth with the back of his arm.

Tommy Diaz didn’t say anything. He set a small object down on the cocktail table.

“What’s that?” asked Zargoza.

“It’s a beeper,” said Tommy.

“I know it’s a beeper, you dumb shit,” Zargoza said. “When I say ‘What’s that?’ I mean, what is it in the technical context of ‘Why should I give a flying fuck?’”

“It’s going to make us rich,” said Tommy.

“What? You’re putting up microwave towers?”

“No. We stole these. A whole semi full. When we unload them, we’ll make a fortune.”

“It has zebra stripes,” said Zargoza.

“They all have zebra stripes.”

“All?”

“All thirty thousand,” Tommy said proudly.

“Jesus, you got thirty thousand beepers with zebra stripes. How do you ever expect to unload them?”

“Because they’re Motorola,” said Tommy. “People want quality.”

“They don’t want zebra stripes.”

“Yes they do.”

“No they don’t! Maybe they want their favorite color, but not this nightmare. It’s hideous. Might as well be covered with 666s.”

“Maybe some people won’t like it, but there’ll still be plenty of other customers.”

“Look, you got only two markets for this thing,” said Zargoza, counting off on his fingers. “One, zoologists, and two, that hooker chick in Get Christie Love. That’s it. End of story. Fade to black.”

Tommy Diaz was crestfallen. “What am I gonna do with ’em?”

“That’s your problem,” Zargoza said as he lay back down and closed his eyes.

“Well, it’s kinda our problem. They’re all in room ten.”

Zargoza sprang up. “What!”

“Easy, easy. We had to get rid of the truck. It was bringin’ a lot of heat.”

“Bringin’ a lot of heat? As opposed to what? Dropping some kid through the roof of the aquarium?”

“We weren’t thinking right on that one. We were drinking and I got a little dizzy from the helium.”

“Jesus! You’re all over the papers. And if you go down, I go with you. You guys need to lay low for a while. Watch some cable TV. Catch up on Law & Order. You staying in room ten?”

“Can’t,” said Tommy. “It’s full of beepers.”

Zargoza’s head fell to his chest in frustrated exhaustion.

Tommy got a funny look on his face, like he was debating whether to say something. “You didn’t happen to come across five million dollars by any chance?”

“Five million? Are you kidding?” said Zargoza, and he laughed artificially.

“You wouldn’t hold out on us, would you?”

“Never!”

“Word on the street is it’s from the Mierda Cartel,” said Tommy.

“Mierda?” said Zargoza. “That means shit in Spanish.”

“Apparently they didn’t research the name well enough.”

They both lay back down on their loungers and closed their eyes. They were quiet a few minutes.

Tommy finally lifted his head. “I notice you don’t carry a beeper.”

Serge hunched over and turned a jeweler’s screwdriver, the last step in reassembling the homing signal receiver, which he was doing for the eleventh time in three days. He turned it on again. Nothing again.

“Dammit! What’s the deal?” He grabbed it in his right hand and smacked it on the writing table a few times. He stopped and waited. Still nothing. He had it over his shoulder, ready to fling at the wall, when the indicator lights began flashing and the beeper began beeping.

Serge looked out the window of room one. Zargoza was walking by on the sidewalk with a briefcase, every few steps spinning around in paranoia like a street crazy.

S erge ambled down to the jetty next to Hammerhead Ranch. A few dozen people fished at the end of the rocks, a wide mix of heritage and walks of life, getting along famously. A rapper with a Snoop Dogg T-shirt showed a skinhead how to tie off a new lure. Serge’s theory was that you could end the world’s troubles by going to the hot spots and handing out fishing poles.

He watched the people with saltwater casting rigs and buckets and stringers. Three men without shirts cast from the last rock of the jetty. Waves rolled in every minute, threatening to sweep them off. But there was a large tidal pool at the base of the rock, which sucked the waves down and blasted a spray high in the air in front of them.

To the left, on the beach side of the jetty, children and families played in the swim area, roped off with buoys. A small boy with a new dive mask was facedown in the knee-deep water, studying shells and schools of tiny translucent fish that changed direction abruptly and in unison.

Midway on the jetty, Zargoza had climbed down the boulders to the water line, where there were no other people, looking around nervously and jamming a metal briefcase in a cranny between the big rocks.

Serge arrived on top of the jetty without a sound and called down to Zargoza. “Nice weather.”

“Auuuuuhhhhh!” Zargoza yelled, jumping up in surprise. He put his hand over his pounding heart. “Don’t do that!”

“You’re the owner of the motel, aren’t you?” asked Serge.

“Who wants to know?” said Zargoza, climbing back up the boulders.

“I’m a guest. Room one.”

Serge smiled broadly and Zargoza didn’t like the looks of it.

The car thieves and Sid and Patty had been child’s play. But he hadn’t fully appraised this Zargoza cat yet. Might be a more worthy adversary. Serge decided to bide his time and draw the thing out in a war of nerves, maybe even use a little “rope-a-dope,” and his mind suddenly unanchored and floated back thirty-three years to Miami Beach, a young underdog named Cassius Clay going crazy at the weigh-in, pounding on Sonny Liston’s limo at the airport, then beating Liston like a rug at the Convention Center…