Tim Dorsey: Hammerhead Ranch Motel

A green Jaguar crested the hump of the Gandy Boulevard Bridge heading across the bay from St. Petersburg to Tampa. A few fishermen worked nets and rods on the old Gandy Bridge, now closed down, running alongside the new span. The illuminated red letters of “Misener Marine” glowed on the shore and reflected in the choppy midnight water.

Two men sat in the front seat of the Jag and one in the back.

“What do you think? Should they tear down the old Gandy or leave it up for a jogging trail?” asked the front passenger.

“I don’t jog,” said the driver.

“Sake of discussion.”

“Leave it up, I guess.”

“Why don’t you take your arm in from the window and roll it up?”

“You cold?” asked the driver.

“No, I don’t want you trying to signal the police or other drivers.” He pushed the six-inch barrel of the.44 Magnum into the driver’s ribs.

“Look, you got the wrong guy. I sell insurance. Check my wallet. Check the glove compartment.”

The driver certainly looked like the insurance type. Conservative, neat black hair in a business cut. On the handsome side, a rough-hewn Burt Lancaster type. Light acne scarring, but only enough to add character. Five-eleven, one-eighty. White oxford shirt rolled to the elbows, now soaked in sweat, and an awful maroon tie with flying squares all over it.

“Fuck you, Fiddlebottom. You owe us fifty grand. That coke had been cut. You think we’re stupid? You think we didn’t have someone inside in Opa-Locka test purity? Fifty grand. That’s the cost of a ten-point step.”

“I got kids! A wife! Will you look at that wallet? You’re making a mistake. You got me mixed up with someone… Look, I won’t tell anyone. You’ve got me scared to death. I’ll just be happy to get out with my life.”

“Which ain’t gonna happen!”

“I’ll give you fifty grand myself.”

“Hell no. Fifty K is nothin’ to the boss. But you shit on him. He wants you to stop using his oxygen. We’re gonna take you out by the port. You don’t give us any trouble, we’ll do you a favor and put two in the back of your head. You won’t feel a thing. You fuck around, we shoot your knees, then we’ll do the rest slow with knives. All above the neck.”

They were coming off the bridge.

“Slow to thirty-five and stay in the left lane,” said the passenger.

“We turning left?” asked the driver.

“No. I don’t want you to sideswipe a parked car or a pole. You’re starting to get desperate, and I know what’s going through your head. Maybe thinking you’ll hit something and I’ll fly into the dashboard and lose my gun. Well, if I don’t get you, Lou back there will.”

The driver looked over his right shoulder. Lou, the silent one, smiled. He had the perfect angle on the driver, aiming a.45 automatic that lay sideways atop the back of the passenger seat.

“We had a guy try to crash us once,” said the front passenger. “Veered for a mailbox. We saw it coming and Lou popped him behind the ear. We hit the box and got banged up pretty good, but we laid the guy over in the front seat to cover the bullet hole. When everyone rushed up to the car, we yelled for an ambulance. All they saw was this guy and a lot of blood. What’s new? Blood in a friggin’ accident? By the time the paramedics turned him over and saw the entry wound, we’d disappeared. So whatever’s going through your mind, you won’t be fast enough.”

The driver shook visibly.

“I’m telling you, you got the wrong guy. This is a horrible mistake. I want to see my family again!”

“Don’t lose it on us,” said the passenger. He jammed the barrel harder into his ribs. “Don’t fuck up now, Fiddlebottom.”

“You know what model Jaguar this is?” asked the driver.

“What?”

“You know what model this is?”

“How the hell should I know? It’s your car.”

“That’s right, it is.”

They approached the light at West Shore Boulevard.

“Just shut up,” said the passenger, growing annoyed.

“You should have taken me in your own car instead of carjacking me. You don’t know anything about this Jag.”

“I said, shut up!”

The driver turned and stared the passenger straight in the eyes. The passenger started to get angry but something gave him the creeps. “What’s wrong with you! Watch the road!”

The driver didn’t speak right away. While staring at the passenger, the driver saw everything he needed with peripheral vision. He imperceptibly turned the wheel to the left. He smiled and said in a calm voice, “We only have one air bag.”

When the passenger heard the horn, the oncoming cement mixer was only feet away.

The last thing the passenger heard: “You shouldn’t have called me Fiddlebottom.”

The passenger went through the windshield and into the grille of the truck. Lou, recently of the backseat, only made it halfway out the windshield behind his buddy. His moaning was a faint gurgle, the lacerations superficial, the internal injuries mortal.

The Jag’s driver awoke from unconsciousness and shook his head to clear the fog. He pushed away the deflating airbag. His white oxford was splattered with blood. He checked quickly-not his. He sighed. “I have got to get out of the cocaine business.”

He saw two police officers rushing toward his door, and he started crying. They told him to stay still-they’d have the door pried open in no time. He looked up at them through tears. “I was carjacked!”

The Diaz Boys didn’t exactly outlive everybody. There was this one other guy.

Harvey Fiddlebottom kept telling himself he had to get out of the cocaine business.

Since the salad days of the 1980s, Fiddlebottom had branched out into the comparatively harmless fields of wire fraud, election tampering and stolen car parts. But his voracious greed-streak kept bringing him back. Fiddlebottom had mixed luck in the trafficking business. His deals regularly went awry. On the other hand, he always came out alive.

He sat by the pool at the Hammerhead Ranch Motel and read a newspaper article about another shipment of cocaine intercepted on I-75. To Fiddlebottom, it was a hundred-thousand-dollar loss. Goddamn the Diaz Boys! He had let them talk him into it again. He threw the paper down in disgust.

“I’ve got to get out of the cocaine business!”

Harvey Fiddlebottom’s name belied his brutality. He hadn’t always been a tough guy, but his name made it inevitable. It had that certain musical texture that invited daily butt-kickings from his classmates. By senior year they had created a monster. Violent threats, school hall beatings, weapons charges. After his expulsion, Fiddlebottom decided he needed a fresh start, a bigger gun and a new name. It had to be a special name. Something to command respect, strike fear. One word, like Cher. He grabbed an old city map of Pensacola and read down the street index until he found something he could live with. He filed the necessary papers with the county clerk. The former Harvey Fiddlebottom walked out of the courthouse, puffed up his chest and strolled back into life a new man. The new man swore he’d kill anyone who called him by his old name. From now on, he would only answer to Zargoza.

Zargoza got into the drug business in the mid-1980s. The Diaz Boys needed a mole for a piece of disposable real estate. Tommy Diaz had gone to Tampa High School with Zargoza and remembered his brutal tendencies from senior year. Banging taunting kids’ heads into walls. Now that was style.

They knocked on the door of his second-floor apartment on grimy Hillsborough Avenue. Zargoza opened up shirtless, wearing blue boxer shorts with smiling sharks, hair uncombed, eyes not ready for the light of day, gun in hand.