Tim Dorsey - Hammerhead Ranch Motel

“Hello? Hello? Anybody home?” asked Zargoza.

Serge snapped back to the present. “Sorry. I was in Miami.”

Zargoza took a step back and gave him a wary look, but they were interrupted by a loud mechanical noise. They both turned and looked up the inlet. It was a growing buzzing sound, high-rpm engines like dirt bikes. Or Jet Skis.

There were four of them. Lots of colors, expensive swimwear and shirts with designer markings. Luxury dive watches on their wrists even though they weren’t divers. Huge scuba knives strapped in spring-loaded scabbards on their calves even though they never had any use for them. They did doughnuts in their personal watercraft, accompanied by “Wooooooo!” and “Yahoooooo!” Then another flat-out run in formation across the mangrove flats and toward the jetty. A rapidly approaching jackass armada.

“No nautical training, no understanding or respect for maritime courtesy,” said Serge. “Everyone with a boat knows the unspoken code you live by. The waterways were the last refuge of honor.”

Zargoza nodded gloomily. “Now I know how the outlaw bikers felt when these dingleberries started showing up on Harleys.”

On the first pass, the Jet Skiers snapped two fishing lines. Then they had the courtesy to come back and snap three more. By the third pass, they had driven every fish out of the inlet. People on the jetty slammed down their poles. The Jet Skiers whipped around the end of the jetty, and only providence saved them from the submerged boulders they didn’t know existed. They ran over the swim ropes and through the family bathing area, forcing a mother to snatch her two-year-old out of a blow-up turtle and dive toward the beach. They passed between shore and the small boy in the swim mask with his head down in the water.

The Jet Skiers stopped up the beach and one pulled a small fabric cooler off his shoulder. He opened it and tossed beers to his buddies. They killed them fast and chucked the empties in the water.

“Did you see that?” said Zargoza. “They almost ran over that kid. And they littered.”

Serge walked over to a garbage bin and pulled out a few soda cans and filled them from the faucet at the fish-cleaning table. He walked back and rejoined Zargoza out on the rocks. They could hear the high whine of the engines on their return trip. The Jet Skis rounded the end of the jetty one by one.

“I love Florida sunsets,” said Serge. “Every time the sun goes down it gives me renewed hope for tomorrow.”

Serge made practice swings with his arm, gauging the weight of the can. He lobbed the aluminum cylinder in a practice shot and it splashed ten yards out from the rocks. “Now you try.”

Zargoza made practice swings of his own to get the feel.

Serge studied his stance and motion. He pointed at the Jet Skiers yelling and doing more doughnuts at the end of the inlet. “What’s happening to this country?”

“No sense of sacrifice,” said Zargoza. “They live right up to the edge of their means, buying Jet Skis they ride two days a year. Fancy cars, Rolexes, all show. They eat their seed corn.”

“In Texas, they have a saying for people like that,” said Serge. “Big hat, no cattle.”

Zargoza got ready with the soda can. He reached his arm back.

“Say, you hear anything about the cursed five million dollars that’s in the papers?” asked Serge.

Zargoza became unnerved and bricked the shot ten feet off target.

Serge walked over and grabbed Zargoza’s arm like a golf instructor, and he swung it in a slow pendulum to demonstrate technique.

“The mistake people often make is to try to add too much velocity. That way you lose accuracy,” said Serge. “What you want to do is put all your effort into aim. At the speeds they’re going, they’ll supply all the velocity you’ll need. Finesse it. Air it out in a nice arch like Rip Sewell’s old ephus pitch for the Pittsburgh Pirates.”

Zargoza reloaded with another can. The first Jet Skier approached, and Zargoza let it fly. The skier didn’t notice as it missed wide and long.

The next Jet Skier was about to go by. Serge tossed the can in a two-handed lob from between the legs-a basketball free throw out of the fifties. The sound was a sickening thud as the can broke across the bridge of the man’s nose and knocked him backward off the Jet Ski like a horseback rider hitting the bottom branch of a tree.

The jetty broke into laughter.

The other three Jet Skiers circled and grabbed their friend out of the water. One skier pulled him aboard, and then the other two moved toward the rocks where Zargoza and Serge stood. They went for their scuba knives. Zargoza produced a pistol, and the men beat a panicked retreat, leaving the fourth Jet Ski bobbing nose down in the water.

“You know,” said Zargoza, tucking the pistol back in his waistband and turning to Serge, “you’re a lot of fun to be around.”

“That’s because I’m a people person.”

Wild green parrots squawked and flew in circles against the bank of clouds that glowed orange and violet at dusk. They swooped in front of the condominium and settled atop one of the tall Washingtonia palms that lined the road, evenly spaced like streetlights.

Edna Ploomfield watched the parrots at sunset each evening from her back porch at Calusa Pointe. Or she watched the herons. Or the oystercatchers, kingfishers, skimmers, stilts and plovers that strutted at low tide.

But tonight she ignored them because she was being interviewed on Florida Cable News with Toto about her shooting of one of the infamous Diaz Boys.

“Tell us again how Toto handled all this,” said correspondent Blaine Crease.

“He was fine,” Ploomfield said in her little ol’ lady voice. “So then I went for the gun on the wall-”

“And where was Toto?”

“On the floor somewhere. So I grabbed the gun and spun-”

“What was Toto wearing?”

After the camera lights were turned off, Mrs. Ploomfield said good night and went into her kitchen and freshened up her scotch. She shuffled to her bedroom and set the glass on the nightstand. She climbed into bed, propped herself up with three pillows and watched a M *A *S *H rerun. She turned off the TV with the remote. Then she looked over at the lamp on the nightstand and clapped twice, and the light went out.

But unknown to Mrs. Ploomfield or anyone else at Calusa Pointe, there was a second clapper in the room. It was under her bed, wired to blasting caps and fourteen pounds of dynamite, and a millisecond after the lamp went out, Mrs. Ploomfield was blown straight up through the ceiling and into the condominium of the incredible shrinking mayor of Beverly Shores.

Z argoza was sitting in the bar behind Hammerhead Ranch when a tremendous explosion at the condominium next door rocked the place. Liquor bottles rattled and two wineglasses at the edge of the sink fell and broke. Zargoza remembered that two hours earlier he’d seen someone who looked vaguely like Rafael Diaz run out the back of Calusa Pointe and up the beach.

“Fuckin’ Diaz Boys,” Zargoza grumbled to himself. “I want those beepers out of here!”

Zargoza got up from the bar and went back to room twelve, where his boiler room operation was winding down from its dinner-hour fever pitch. He gathered his goons away from the telephones, and he half-sat against the side of his oversize desk. He read from a leather organizer, giving the day’s rundown of business and who wasn’t up to quota.

As Zargoza spoke, a bright red laser dot slowly traced along the wall behind him and settled on his forehead. The goon standing closest to Zargoza tackled him to the ground. Another ran to the window and peeked out. “It’s coming from one of the motel rooms.”