Tim Dorsey - Hammerhead Ranch Motel

Zargoza stared at him. “Where do you get this stuff?”

Serge stared back. “Doesn’t everybody know that?”

A half hour later they were in Ybor City. Serge was quickly out of the car again without warning.

“I wish he’d stop doing that,” said Zargoza.

“Best not fight it,” said Lenny, watching xenon strobe flashes light up the street around the corner at Café Creole. “When he’s in his zone, you get out of his way or you get trampled.”

Serge jumped back in the car, all smiles.

“What this time?” asked Zargoza. “Indian shell mound?”

“Don’t be silly,” said Serge. “The geology’s all wrong. That used to be the old El Pasaje restaurant, where José Martí stayed last century while planning to kick some butt in Cuba. He’s my role model… This is also where the Buffalo Soldiers went on their rampage. Remember them? The highly decorated military units? They were staying in Tampa, getting ready to ship out to Cuba for the Spanish-American War. Elsewhere they were received like heroes, but here the innkeepers and bar owners discriminated against them ’cause they were black. Here they are, ready to go fight for America, and these locals are acting like bozos, so the Buffalos tore the place apart. Good for them.”

“Are you set? Can we go now?” Zargoza said rhetorically.

“Ooops,” said Serge. He was out of the car again, running across Ninth Avenue and up Fifteenth Street, and Zargoza was forced to follow slowly in the car.

“I give up,” said Zargoza.

“Be glad you weren’t his parents,” said Lenny.

“Good point.”

Serge leaped back in the car and Zargoza looked at him without speaking.

“Cigar factory established by city namesake V. Martínez Ybor circa 1885,” said Serge. “Recognized it from an old Burgert Brothers print.”

“I’m putting a shit-stop to this,” said Zargoza. He reached down by his left side, throwing a switch that activated the BMW’s child-safety locks.

They drove off and Serge played with the radio. A jazz station, an all-night Lightning hockey postgame show, and Blitz-99.

“Hey, boys and girls, this is Boris the Hateful Piece of Sh-AHH-OOOO-GAH! reminding you that the big vote on Proposition 213 is only days away…”

“That’s that stupid anti-immigration amendment again,” said Zargoza. “Everyone’s pissed ’cause we’re going bilingual.”

“Doesn’t anybody study history anymore?” said Serge. “ Florida was colonized by Spain. English is the foreign language here.”

“I’m counting on you! Vote yes on Proposition 213!…Because they smell funny!”

“What kind of trip is this guy on?” asked Lenny.

“Not sure,” replied Serge. “We may have just slipped through some kind of white-trash worm-hole in the time-space continuum.”

Zargoza glanced again at the backseat. “I been meanin’ to ask: What’s with the Miami Vice getup?”

“I’m the Don Johnson experience.”

Zargoza laughed again. “You look more like James Woods.”

“It’s not look. It’s heart.”

“Okay,” said Zargoza, humoring him. “Show us some heart.”

Lenny cleared his throat in the backseat. “Listen, pal! I don’t do this for kicks! It’s a job, and when it’s over, I walk as far away from it as I can!”

Serge and Zargoza snapped their heads toward the backseat. “My God,” said Serge. “It’s him.”

They drove randomly around Tampa Bay, admiring the views.

“Face it, Rico, we’re just small-time players in a high-stakes game, where the rules are made by people we can’t touch!”

Serge directed Zargoza up Fifty-sixth Street until they came to an uneventful honky-tonk.

“What’s so great about this place?” asked Zargoza.

“Keep it in your pants,” said Serge.

They went inside and the place was dead. Idle dart boards and pool tables. One drunk chick swayed slowly by herself on the dance floor to a country song about lost love and lice.

Serge ordered drafts for Lenny and Zargoza and a mineral water with a twist for himself. Serge drained the water in one pull and slammed the glass down. “Kill those,” he said. “We’re on the move,” and he ran out the door.

Back in the car, Serge told Zargoza to go north and hang a Louie on Busch Boulevard.

They pulled into a lounge that was an afterthought to the package store. A dive on a resigned stretch of the boulevard. Only two other people and an unidentified smell. The side door was open to the humid night. Yellowish crime light in parking lot and a fresh wreck up the street that was closing two lanes, the ejected body still in the street. A cop squatted next to it and felt for a pulse.

Serge ordered drinks again, but this time Zargoza declared he would not be rushed.

“No problem,” said Serge. “We’ve arrived.”

“Arrived where?” said Zargoza.

“You’ve just completed the Goodfellas tour of Tampa,” said Serge. “Remember the Martin Scorcese movie? The part where Robert DeNiro and Ray Liotta got arrested in Tampa? In the movie they threatened a guy with a gambling debt by dangling him over the lion fence at the Tampa Zoo, which was actually the Lowry Park Zoo. That was Hollywood. In reality, they kidnapped him from that last bar we were at, pistol-whipped him in the car on the route we just took, dragged him into this place and stuffed him in that storage room”-Serge pointed across the bar. “It was October eighth, 1970.”

Lenny leaned over and whispered to Zargoza: “He has incredible recall.”

“How do you know all this?” asked Zargoza.

“The zoo scene didn’t feel right, so I pored through the microfilm morgue at the library. I found the clips from the original case. There they were, defendants Henry Hill and James Burk.” Serge snapped his fingers for effect. “DeNiro’s and Liotta’s characters in Goodfellas. All the facts were identical except instead of the zoo there were these two bars. The names of the lounges had changed but I was able to track them down through old city cross-indexes.”

Serge jumped off his stool in excitement and made a sweeping gesture with his right arm. “Scorcese put Tampa on the map!” Then his expression shifted. “Come to think of it, really wasn’t a very positive light.”

He rubbed his chin. “You know what would make a better movie? All the people getting killed over the five million dollars that’s floating around in a briefcase.”

Zargoza spit up his drink, and Serge handed him a napkin.

“I gotta hit the can,” said Serge.

He was gone awhile. Zargoza went looking for him.

“What are you doing?” shouted Zargoza, walking out in the parking lot, finding Serge messing around by the Beemer’s trunk.

“You had a little wax buildup.” Serge buffed a spot with his elbow. He smiled; Zargoza squinted back. Lenny came out and the three got in the car.

“Where to?” Zargoza asked.

Serge knew Tampa after midnight. Not the nightclubs. The rest. When he was having one of his spells, he would go until he dropped, so places with quirky hours were essential. The print shops, the study halls at UT and USF, all-night fishing spots, the Dale Mabry coffee shops, the cafeterias in the Tampa General and St. Joseph ’s maternity wards, the twenty-four-hour post office at the airport. He listed the options out loud.

“Anything else?” asked Zargoza.

“There’s the three-day nonstop revival,” said Serge.

“We do need grace,” said Zargoza.

“I have sinned,” said Serge.

They pulled off the causeway into a sea of cars parked outside an auditorium bathed in floodlights. Inside, the show was in full swing, the man on the stage talking fast, stiff-arming people in the forehead, knocking them over. His burly assistants/bouncers worked the crowd with collection baskets. Zargoza hung back at the rear of the hall, but Serge grabbed Lenny by the arm and made for the stage, to be healed.