The stillness in the apartment continued as a series of brilliant blue-white flashes filled the room. A delay followed the lightning, then the marching drum line of thunder.
Reevis noticed the clock was out on the stove. One of the flashes outside had actually been a transformer blowing. The power was out for real. Even more still now without the moving air of the central A/C. A smile. Reevis thought: If you’ve never sat in candlelight and heard rain hit a banana leaf . . .
They both quietly looked at the painting.
“It was storming that night, too,” said Brook. “The trees were bending in Key West.”
“Almost exactly a year ago,” said Reevis. “The last time we saw Serge.”
“I wonder where he could possibly be.”
Episode 3
Chapter 14
A New Day
There are parts of greater Miami where even crime doesn’t pay. These are the desolate, bombed-out sections of the metro area with few forms of life above the virus level. Deserted industrial lots and underpasses and rock pits all but abandoned to the lizards and Sterno bums and roaming dogs with visible ribs.
One such stretch sat in the small city of Hialeah near the Palmetto Expressway.
Only two businesses with the loose definition of commerce: a U-Grab-It auto-parts salvage yard and, next door, a squat concrete pillbox of an office that had been repeatedly painted over as it went from bail bonds to title loans to just painted over.
Only two sounds echoed across the steaming badlands: someone with a socket wrench cursing under the hood of a Plymouth, and Jimi Hendrix from the Electric Ladyland album.
The psychedelic guitar licks led back to the pillbox. All the windows had burglar bars, and steel plates covered the dead bolts. The single room inside was divided in two by a curtain of purple beads. A large clay ashtray from Tijuana brimmed with burned-down roaches.
Another roach singed the fingertips of a stubby, potbellied man in a Pink Floyd tour T-shirt featuring a prism and spectrum of light. Bald on top, with wild gray curls of hair on the side, going every which way over his ears like Allen Ginsberg. The T-shirt was too tight.
He cranked up the stereo.
“. . . ’Cause I’m a voodoo chile! . . .”
Time for the low-demand lawyer to rehearse opening arguments. There was a final, rapid toking on the roach as smoke rose toward an unbalanced ceiling fan. “Okay, focus yourself. I need to remember that, and then that, and the other thing. All right, I think I’ve got it . . .” A last big hit and he stamped out the end of the joint. “Ladies and gentleman of the jury, let’s get something out in the open right away because it’s what we’re all thinking about. Not by a long shot is this the crime of the century, and yet when you say ‘sex with a goat,’ you can’t help but vividly picture it, and then you can’t get the horrible image out of your head, and you unfairly imagine my poor client standing behind livestock . . . Shit, that’s way too visual. They’ll just picture it even more. Okay, how about this. Ahem . . . Ladies and gentlemen of the jury, society as a whole treats the goat rather badly. Can we at least agree on that point? . . . No, stop. That’s stupid. Maybe this: . . . Ladies and gentlemen, blah-blah-blah. Did you know that in certain regions of Nepal, the goat is used in . . . Fuck it.” He punched numbers on his cell phone. “Yeah, it’s me. Listen, dude, you really gotta plead this one out . . . No, I’m sure . . .”
He hung up, and the phone rang immediately.
“Ziggy Blade, attorney at law, citizen of the planet . . . Oh, hi, Brook. What’s up? . . . I can’t hear you . . . I still can’t hear you! . . . Oh, right, that’s Hendrix. I’ll turn it down . . . Where were we? . . . I’m just in my office working on opening arguments for a jury. It’s a myth that goats eat tin cans, but they do climb trees if at the proper angle . . . No, no, no, no, I’m not high, no, no, okay yes, just a teensy bit, but only to center my head for the trial . . . Advice? What type of case? . . . Uh-huh, uh-huh, uh-huh . . . What kind of drug residue on the cash? . . . Cocaine? Piece of cake. And I thought this was going to be a tough quiz. Miami Herald, 1985 . . . I realize newspaper articles can’t be introduced as evidence res ipso al fresco, so you federally cite Ninth Circuit Appeals Los Angeles 1994. Vast majority of all big-city bills test positive, higher in Florida. Takes as little as point-zero-zero-six micrograms . . . No, only a tiny percentage of the currency has been handled by traffickers. The rest is cross-contamination from ATMs and currency counters at banks. Remember how finely milled, weaponized anthrax got spread in 2001 from mail-sorting machines? . . . No, I didn’t take a special legal seminar. Everyone out on the street knows this stuff.”
The stoned attorney listened to profuse thanks from the Women’s Legal Aid Clinic.
“Just glad I could help,” said Ziggy, tilting his head back and dripping Visine into road-map eyes. “And if I may say so, Brook, it’s really good to hear your voice after all this time. How long has it been? Back in Key West with Serge? . . . No, I don’t have any idea where he is. You know that maniac—he’s liable to be anywhere . . .”
Meanwhile . . .
A silver Corvette drove extra slow around a quiet lake in western Volusia County.
“This is boring,” said Coleman.
“Just keep your eyes peeled.” Serge carefully scanned the side of the road. “I didn’t spend all my time rigging the car stereo up to that bullhorn for nothing.”
“Wait.” Coleman pointed. “I think I see one.”
Serge scooched up to the windshield. “You’re right.” He accelerated.
“We’re almost next to him,” said Coleman.
“Get ready with that bullhorn.” Serge pulled closer to the grass and a narrow footpath circling the water.
Coleman giggled. “Is he going to be surprised!”
“That’s the whole point,” said Serge, reaching for a knob. “This is all about unlocking inner potential.”
They had just about reached the jogger when Coleman aimed the bullhorn out his window, and Serge cranked the volume.
“. . . Eye of the tiger! . . .”
“Man, did he jump,” said Coleman.
“But notice how he’s moving faster?” Serge depressed the gas pedal to remain precisely beside the runner. “Just keep that bullhorn up.”
“. . . Eye of the tiger! . . .”
“He keeps glancing back at us,” said Coleman. “He’s running even faster now.”
“I have a gift for motivating people.” The Corvette continued alongside the runner. “There are a lot of openings today for life coaches.”
“Is that your new job for the next episode of Route 66?”
“This is just a vignette.”
“. . . Eye of the tiger! . . .”
“He just left the path and is racing down the bank,” said Coleman. “Now he jumped in the lake.”
“See? He was limiting himself to just running,” said Serge, “when it only took me a couple minutes to show him the possibilities of triathlons.”