“Why not?”
“We just don’t.”
“I like the scratch-offs.”
“There are plenty of other places around here that still sell them.”
“But I want to buy some here.”
“I just told you, we don’t have any.” The clerk looked closer. “Do I know you?”
“Don’t think so.”
“Yes, I’ve seen you in here with the owner a few times.”
The customer looked up at a small black dome in the middle of the ceiling. “Is that a real security camera, or just a dummy?”
“It’s real. And I would like you to leave.”
“Hang up the phone.”
“Listen, asshole—”
A pistol with a silencer came out. The black dome shattered. “It was a dummy. Why did you lie to me?”
The clerk dropped the phone as he backed up and raised his hands. “Take all the money. It’s yours.”
“I already knew that.” He walked around behind the counter and crushed the dropped cell phone with the heel of a snakeskin boot . . .
. . . House lights went dark in bedrooms across the bedroom neighborhoods, and revolving red ones came on outside a convenience store on U.S. 1.
Before it was over, the street outside Mart-Mart was again full of police vehicles and TV vans. They found the body in the alley behind the Dumpster, hands tied behind the back. They needn’t wait for identification. The victim’s face had just been all over the news when he was paraded out of the convenience store in handcuffs just a few hours earlier. The ruling wasn’t official yet, but the cause of death would eventually be classified as asphyxiation from the victim’s head being completely wrapped numerous times with rolls of scratch-off tickets.
Chapter 24
Midnight
The vintage Florida-shaped sign was dark at the motel, which meant it was open.
Coleman dumped a bag of weed on the dresser of room four. “What are you looking at?”
Serge gazed out the window at the part of the sign advertising color TV. It was one of the old signs where each letter of the word color was a different color. Serge liked that every time. Then he looked back across the room at their own television with thirteen channels of black-and-white snow.
“Mmmm! Mmmm! Mmmm! . . .”
Coleman removed pot stems and glanced over his shoulder. “I think he wants to tell you something.”
“Almost forgot about him.” Serge returned to the center of the room and the aisle between the two beds, where a chair had been repositioned. In it sat a trim and tanned young man in a golf shirt. Not exactly by choice. Nylon rope fastened his arms and ankles to the chair with complicated nautical knots.
“You talking to me?” asked Serge.
The captive nodded anxiously.
Serge grabbed a corner of the duct tape and quickly ripped it off the mouth. There was a brief scream, but Serge didn’t even notice anymore.
“Please don’t hurt me!”
“Why would I hurt you, boss?”
“I, uh, well, I’m tied up.”
“That’s right, boss.” Serge whacked him upside the head with a rolled newspaper. “Being tied to a chair is a subtle hint that your day probably isn’t building toward the usual laugh track.”
“But why me? What did I ever do to you?”
“Gee, I wonder.” Serge placed a fresh stretch of duct tape across the mouth. “Concentrate hard, boss.”
Coleman began puffing up a spliff as thick as a roll of quarters. “I don’t think calling him boss will make him like you this time.”
“You can never allow jerks to take you out of your game.” Serge set a clipboard down and placed orange cones around the chair.
“Mmmm! Mmmm!”
“Shut the hell up!” Serge pressed the barrel of a pistol against the man’s nose. “Can’t you see I’m conversing!”
Coleman stuck his eye in the opening of an empty prescription bottle. “Serge, you got any more of your pills?”
“You know I never keep count of that junk.”
“Damn.” Coleman began going through a suitcase.
“Why do you take those things anyway?” asked Serge. “It’s my anti-psychotic medication, completely lacking in recreational value.”
“That’s where you’re wrong,” said Coleman. “One of the first rules of the drug culture: A pill is a pill.”
“Mmmmm!”
Serge violently ripped the tape off again. “What now!”
“Y-y-you take anti-psychotic medication?”
“Not for weeks, boss. Nothing to worry about.” Serge pulled something from his pocket. “Now, back to your obvious confusion about this little pinch you’ve found yourself in. Recognize this?”
“Uh, it’s pieces of a cell phone?”
“I smashed it pretty good, but that was post-mortem.”
“Don’t understand.”
“A couple days ago, we were in a bus-stop shelter to escape the rain, and you deliberately swerved your car to spray us with water.”
“I did?”
Another whack with the newspaper. “I can’t begin to emphasize how important that phone was to me. I could look up any Florida historical fact, retrieve photos of the most obscure landmarks, hover over the remotest scenic roads in three dimensions, receive ten parameters of live telemetry from weather buoys in the Gulf Stream, and I even heard a rumor it makes phone calls.”
“Wait a minute,” said the hostage. “You’re the guys I drenched? This is all about a wet phone?”
“I recognized your license plate when you crashed earlier tonight,” said Serge. “‘SCRW U’? So I’m guessing you’re a regular on the dickhead rodeo circuit.”
“It was just a joke.”
“I’m in stitches. Especially the part where you also drenched that mother and her kids.” Serge reached in the dresser and pulled out a plastic spray bottle. “But since you love the art of comedy, I’ve got a better joke.”
“W-what’s in the bottle?”
“Just harmless water.” Serge reached into the dresser again.
“Hey!” yelled the captive. “That’s my new Galactic Quadrennial XLZ5000 smartphone with Triple Vagueness Technology!”
“So it is.” Serge held the phone in one hand and aimed the spray bottle.
Squirt.
“No! Not that!” yelled the man. “I’ll give you anything!”
Squirt.
“Wait! Stop! Before it’s too late!”
“Why should I?”
“Because I have all my contact information in there.”
“My phone did, too,” said Serge.
“Yes, but . . . I’m important.”
Squirt, squirt, squirt, squirt . . .
“No! Stop! It burns!”
Squirt, squirt . . . “Hey, boss,” said Serge. “Did you forget to charge the battery today? The screen just went black.”
“Noooooooooo!” The man hung his head in sorrow. “You destroyed it. You’re mean.”
“Mean?” Serge picked up the pistol again and pointed at himself. “You will soon wax nostalgic for that kind of tenderness.”
“Okay, you got me back. You destroyed my phone.” The captive looked down at the rope around his chest. “We’re even now, so you can untie me.”
“You really are a comedian,” said Serge. “We’ve only begun your lesson.”
Coleman chugged a bottle of Old Crow. “Can I watch this time?”
“Don’t see why not.”
“Cool!” For the occasion, Coleman began constructing an even bigger spliff with a quilt of eight gummed-together rolling papers. “This is going to be so excellent!”
“But you might want to pace yourself,” said Serge. “This is going to take a while.”