Tim Dorsey - Hammerhead Ranch Motel

“I wasn’t talking to you!”

Serge climbed in the backseat and grabbed Lenny in a full nelson.

“Where were we?” Zargoza asked the clerk.

“Number twelve, chicken skin on a stick.”

“Can I substitute cole slaw for the mashed potatoes?”

Lenny broke free from Serge and leaned out the car again. “Ho Chi Minh my chicken skin!”

“I’m getting the manager,” said the speaker.

Zargoza floored it through the drive-through, snapping off a sideview mirror.

“Goddammit!” he yelled as the car bottomed out onto U.S. 19. “I was hungry, too!”

They headed back across the Howard Frankland Bridge and took West Shore down to Gandy.

A red Audi with tinted windows pulled alongside at a stoplight.

Zargoza looked over. “Twats!”

“What is it?” said Serge.

“Those damn Diaz Boys!”

The light turned green and both cars patched out and drag-raced all the way to Bayshore. At the red light, the Audi’s tinted windows went down and shotguns appeared.

“What’s this about?” Zargoza shouted at Tommy Diaz.

“Safety inspection,” said Tommy. “You wouldn’t mind if we checked your trunk, would you? We’ve been hearing rumors. Beemers sometimes have expensive loose objects back there that could create a hazard.”

“Sure,” said Serge. “But you’ll have to race us for the opportunity.”

“We don’t need to race. We have the guns.”

“You also have the tiniest balls this side of the squirrel family,” said Serge. “I was thinking of cutting ’em off and feeding ’em to my poodle as a new between-meals treat, since they’re not too filling.”

“Don’t ya just love this guy!” Zargoza called out the window.

Tommy Diaz was in a barely contained rage. “Okay, we’ll race! First one down to those psychedelic fish at the bridge to Davis Islands!”

“Hold on,” said Serge. He turned to Zargoza. “You got that opium pipe?”

“Sure,” said Zargoza. He handed the pipe to Serge and cranked up “Free Ride” on the stereo as he gunned the engine. Tommy Diaz gunned his engine, too.

Serge leaned out the window. “Peace pipe,” said Serge. “Anyone for some good opium?”

“Back here,” said Rafael Diaz, reaching out the passenger window behind the driver. He hung way out the door to take the pipe from Serge. Just as their hands met, Rafael noticed one end of a set of fur-lined handcuffs around Serge’s hand. Serge quickly clasped the other end around Rafael’s left wrist. He turned back to Zargoza. “Hit it!”

“Roger!” Zargoza floored the gas. Screaming came from the other car and Tommy gave it the gas, too.

The cars stayed tight as they wound along the waterfront route, Serge smiling, Rafael ashen and whimpering. Zargoza intentionally drifted the BMW to the left, and Tommy Diaz mirrored his moves. Zargoza popped the left wheels up on the grassy median. Then he had the whole car in the median, doing fifty, and kept drifting. Tommy Diaz was forced to drift with Zargoza unless he wanted to lose Rafael. Serge laughed like a lunatic, but the other car had gone silent.

Zargoza drifted left until he had forced the Diaz car onto the median as well. This was the same median where city leaders had decided to move a series of abstract modern sculptures, and the next one coming up was a jumble of sharp pieces of round metal, a giant serrated Slinky. Now the other car came alive again, pointing ahead and screaming, begging with Serge. Rafael was more than halfway out the window, and the others held him in the car by his legs.

Just a few seconds to go. Serge casually got out the key.

“Whoops,” he said, and jerked forward like he’d dropped it. He smiled and showed he still had the key. “Just kidding.” A second left. Serge turned the key and he and Rafael shot apart. The two cars parted high-speed around the sculpture, Zargoza ending up on the wrong side of the median in the oncoming lanes. He swerved around a taxi and jumped the next median, crossing back in front of the Diaz Boys as both cars raced around a hard left curve, then a right, neck and neck. Tommy Diaz gunned it and took the inside as they went into the last turn. Zargoza opened it up and passed him as they went by the psychedelic fish.

They both hit the brakes, skidding into the parking lot at the boat launch, and everyone jumped out and drew guns. Zargoza aimed a shotgun across the hood of the BMW and tossed a pistol to Serge.

“You fucking sons of bitches!” yelled Tommy. “Cocksuckers of whores!”

“Easy now,” said Serge. “You’re mixing your metaphors.”

“We should kill all of you!” said Tommy.

“Hey, guys,” said Lenny. “It looks like I’m not needed here. I’m free to go, right?”

Everyone: “No!”

“Shit-eating dogs!” said Tommy.

“Yeah, yeah, yeah,” said Serge, he and Tommy pointing guns in each other’s faces a foot apart.

“Open the trunk!” said Tommy.

“You lost the race,” said Serge. “Bite me.”

“The race is under protest,” said Tommy.

“You think this is NASCAR?” said Serge.

“Interference with another driver.”

“No way,” said Serge. “These are Ben-Hur rules.”

Nobody spoke for a solid minute, guns still leveled.

“Next time!” snapped Tommy, and he started walking backward to the Audi. The other Diaz Boys followed his lead, and they slowly climbed inside, still aiming guns.

Tommy started the engine. He began pulling away and stuck his head out the window. “You’re dead! You’re all fucking dead!”

“No, you’re the ones who are fucking dead!” shouted Zargoza.

“No, you’re fucking dead!” yelled Tommy, pulling into traffic.

“No, you’re fucking dead!”

“You’re dead!”

“You’re dead!”

“You are!”

“You are!”

“Fiddlebottom!”

“Don’t call me that! It’s Zargoza!”

“Fiddlebottom!” yelled Tommy, his voice trailing off in the distance.

“Come back here-I’ll kill you!”

Some guns were fired in the air as the Audi disappeared around a bend.

Serge turned to Zargoza. “I take it there’s some history here.”

“Fuckin’ tradition,” said Zargoza. “We’ve been racing for years. Before that we were in a bowling league, but they won’t let us play anymore.”

“Go figure.”

Shortly after Serge and Lenny had set up their bunker in room one, City and Country showed up at Hammerhead Ranch, unable to find the two guys they were supposed to meet from Daytona. They considered it a plus.

City and Country loved Hammerhead Ranch the second they drove up. Between the beach and the open-air bar and the pool and freezing air-conditioning in the room, they had everything they needed for a much-needed vacation.

They didn’t leave the motel grounds for the first two days except to walk across the street to the Rapid Response convenience store. Actually it was more of a run. They were barefoot, and the sun had turned the pavement to hot coals. It started out: Wow, this hurts a little, and then, How fast can I move and still be ladylike? By the time they hit the shaded sidewalk in front of the store, they were both in gangly, loping gallops, and when they got inside they made fun of each other.

It was a regulation Florida convenience store. A man talked to invisible people at the newspaper boxes as a drug deal occurred by the car vacuum. There was a quiet aridness to the place, like a dusty tumbledown gas station with a squeaky metal sign swinging in the sagebrush outside Flagstaff, except with a row of bright beach rafts out front. No shortage of crap inside, either. Inflatable rings with horsey heads, umbrellas, sunscreen, novelty cans of Florida sunshine, suggestive postcards, beach towels with unicorns and Panama Jack and Jamaican flags, and a tall spinning rack of paperbacks next to the Great Wall of Beer. City opened the cooler and stuck her face in with eyes closed, and a cloud of frosty air fogged the glass. City grabbed a four-pack of passion fruit wine coolers. The clerk looked seventeen with fresh row crops of acne. A healthy self-image prompted him to shave his skull, grow a goatee and tattoo his neck with barbed wire. He installed what looked like tiny trailer hitches in his pierced eyebrows and smoked sub-generic cigarettes.