Steve gestured excitedly.
“Looks like he’s making up for lost time.”
“Act inconspicuous,” said Serge. “Whatever you do, don’t attract the least bit of attention.”
“How do I do that?”
“Like me. Pretend you’re looking at this rack of tourist .pamphlets …”
Crash. The goons looked.
“… Or knock the whole thing over.”
“Don’t worry.” Coleman got on his knees. “I’ll pick ‘em all up.”
“No time. They’re on the move.”
The goons left Steve behind. Serge and Coleman followed them to the fifth floor.
“Think that’s their room?” asked Coleman.
“Not the way they’re buttering up the maid and patting their pockets in the universal lost-key signal.”
“She’s letting them in.”
“Must be the next mark,” said Serge, picking up the pace. “Keep walking by the room or they’ll get suspicious.”
“Is this the beginning of your revenge?”
“Remember the end of the first Godfather movie during the baptism?”
“It ruled! All those guys killed in a row. My favorite was the dude who got a bullet through his glasses.”
“What I’ve got planned will make that look like The Bridges of Madison County.”
FIFTEEN MINUTES LATER
The burglary “talent” had thinned to the point that bodyguards were pressed into service, and the art of the silent search gave way to Attila the Hun.
“Find anything?” asked one of the goons, smashing a phone on the nightstand.
“Not yet,” said the other, flinging a dresser drawer against a wall. “The stones have to be here somewhere.” Smash. Numbered phone buttons flew.
Knock-knock.
They spun.
“Who the hell’s that?”
“Maybe the guy came back early.”
“You idiot. He’s not going to knock on his own door.” He set the phone chassis down. “Just be quiet and whoever it is will go away.”
Knock-knock-knock.
They stood still.
Knock-knock-knock.
A whisper: “He’s not going away.”
Knock-knock-knock.
“He will.”
Knock-knock-knock.
“Dammit.”
“You better check the peephole.”
Knock-knock-knock.
A goon’s eye went to the small glass hole.
“See anyone?”
The man at the door shook his head. He pressed his eye closer for a wider field of vision, not noticing the flattened end of a brown paper bag sliding under the door.
“See anyone now?”
“Nope.”
Suddenly, a muffled pop outside the door. The man looked down, pants leg splattered with shaving cream. “Son of a bitch!” He opened the door and lunged, expecting the prankster to be hightailing it down the hall.
Instead, the end of an emergency canal-survival tool landed between his eyes.
He reeled backward, hands over his bloody face. “Fuck!”
Serge’s other hand held a chrome automatic. “Down on the floor! Both of you! Hands behind your back!”
The two-tone Javelin sped through Indiantown on the Bee Line Highway. Deeper into the state, into the night. They were riding the new moon. No illumination but stars and the Javelin’s high beams, occasionally reflecting off mystery wildlife eyes in dense thickets of cabbage palms.
Coleman strained to see above the beams. “Serge, there’s nothing out here.”
“Everything’s out here,” said Serge. “Nature’s what it’s all about, but our people have been brainwashed into thinking that life is a cell phone against your head and the TV on a beer commercial with hot chicks.”
“It isn’t?”
Serge reached over and lightly tapped the top of Coleman’s head with the window punch.
“Ow!” He rubbed his skull. “What was that for?”
“Debriefing you.”
Two lights appeared in the distance. Serge grabbed a lever on the steering column, popping down to low beams.
“Serge?”
“That’s me.”
“I don’t like being tied to my seat with a boat-trailer strap.”
“I say this with complete sincerity: It’s you.”
An oncoming poultry truck passed precariously close on the narrow two-laner that slanted across the state, connecting West Palm Beach with Lake Okeechobee. Serge clicked back to high beams. “When you say Florida, everyone thinks the coasts. But inland, there’s an entire ‘nother world to appreciate. The Highwaymen picked up on this, and before them the Tin Can Tourists.”
“Who were they?”
“Started as a loose movement of noble people from up north, who appreciated the state for its intrinsic magnificence and began driving down way before all the motels and tourist attractions. Many slept roadside in tents and bathed in rivers. Others soon began towing small aluminum campers. The first official group coalesced in 1919 at Tampa’s DeSoto Park.”
“What’s the name mean?”
“Subject to debate. Some consider it a sobriquet for those shiny campers, while others think it’s because many of the original visitors cooked soup in tin cans placed on radiator caps.”
Coleman turned around in his seat. “There’s that banging sound again.”
“Note to self: soundproof trunk.”
“What are you going to do with those two dudes we grabbed in the motel room?”
“Serve up a feast of inland Florida splendor. With a side order of revenge.”
The Javelin’s red taillights blew through a junction at the county line. A vulture took flight. Coleman’s joint glowed. “So, like, if there weren’t any theme parks, then these Tin Can guys drove down here just to hang around doing nothing?”
“Coleman, that’s my whole point. They came purely for spiritual communion with our rapidly diminishing natural beauty, perfectly happy to just sit out among pristine tributaries, marshes, prairie vistas, upland hammocks. To enjoy it today, people think they need Mickey’s Upland Hammock Flume of Terror and Alligator Jug Band Jamboree.” Serge grabbed a slender book off the dash.
“What’s that?”
“Audubon field guide to identify flora and fauna. A must if you’re going to dig inland Florida,” said Serge. “People have no idea all the critters that roam these parts.”
Bang, bang, bang, bang.
Coleman turned around again. “I think they want out.”
“Their wish will soon come true.” Serge stuck his head through the driver’s open window and looked up at constellations. “Let’s see how many I can name. There’s Gemini, Pegasus, Ursa Major and Minor, Benny the Truculent Dry Cleaner.” He brought his wind-blown head back inside. “Couldn’t have picked a better night to reenact the Tin Can lifestyle.”
“Serge! Watch out!”
But Serge had already seen it. A husky dark form dashed across the road. Serge swerved right.
From miles of back-road experience, he knew its mate could be right behind. Sure enough, a second, smaller form exploded from the underbrush. Serge slalomed the other way.
“Jesus!” said Coleman. “What the hell was that?”
Serge handed Coleman the field guide. “Page three-seventy-four.”
“You know it by heart?”
Bang, bang, bang.
Serge glanced back at the trunk, then the field guide in Coleman’s hands. “That gives me an idea.”
OKEECHOBEE COUNTY
Serge leaned into the Javelin’s open trunk with a tape measure. “Stop flopping around or I won’t get your right size. Trust me: You definitely don’t want the wrong size …”
“Serge,” said Coleman. “I’m getting tired.”
“Just keep digging.” Serge slammed the trunk and let the tape measure zip itself shut. He grabbed his own shovel and opened a low, rickety wooden gate in a barbed-wire fence. They began digging side by side. Every few minutes, Serge stopped and extended his tape measure into each of the two holes. All around them: nothing but peaceful darkness, trees bending in the wind. The only sign of human life nearly a mile away.