“No.”
“Get kicked by a horse?”
“No.”
“Handle a lot of plutonium?”
“No. Why do you ask?”
Ivan resumed walking to the room. He unlocked the door, and they dumped their stuff on the dresser.
“Go get him out of the trunk,” said Ivan. “You think you can handle that?”
Five minutes later, Ivan stood in his socks in front of the TV, looking for something with the remote and shaking a bag of sunflower seeds into his mouth. Then he remembered Igor was taking a long time.
Ivan opened the door and stuck his head out. “Igor?…Igor?…”
Igor hadn’t blinked for five minutes. His hands were bound, mouth taped.
Serge snipped away with heavy-gauge metal shears.
“It’s important to have the right tool for the job.” Snip, snip. “They’re Sears, you know. Lifetime guarantee.” Snip, snip. “Aren’t you just fascinated by the place we’re at?”
Igor didn’t blink.
“Me, too,” said Serge. “Cape Canaveral, from the Spanish for ‘cape of canes’ because of all the reeds the sailors saw. Say the name today, and people think modern, futuristic, space travel. Yet it also has one of the oldest histories of any place in the country.” Snip, snip.
Serge stepped back to inspect his work, then nodded to himself and began snipping again. “The cape jutted out so much, it became Florida’s most prominent navigational feature for early explorers. That’s why there are so many shipwrecks around here. Hence, the Treasure Coast.”
Serge switched to bolt cutters. Snap, snap.
“The area was mapped as early as 1502. The Spanish tried to establish their first settlement here, but the Indians were too savage, so they moved a bit farther north to a little place called St. Augustine. Isn’t that a fun fact? Did you know they had to bulldoze historic Indian grounds when they were building some of the launch pads? Talk about your symbolism overload.”
Igor finally figured out Serge’s plan and started screaming under the mouth tape.
“You’re right,” said Serge. “It was a tragedy. All kinds of archaeological opportunities lost.”
Serge snipped a few last times and stood up straight. “There!”
He reached down next to Igor’s leg and turned a key. A quiet electric motor came to life. “You realize you kidnapped my best friend. I saw you with that cage of scorpions. You weren’t exactly planning a Hallmark moment.”
Serge produced a pistol with a silencer, took aim, and shot out four floodlights in the distance. He picked up a concrete block and placed it in front of Igor’s feet, on a pedal. The electric motor grew louder, and Igor slowly pulled away from Serge.
“Don’t forget to write.”
Ten p.m. A homicide detective and the county medical examiner stood on a Japanese footbridge, interviewing witnesses. EMTs were down on the bank of the retention pond, zipping up Pavel’s body in a black plastic bag.
The detective took notes on a spiral pad. “And you say you were scuba diving in the pond for golf balls.” The detective looked up. “Is that actually a job?”
The diver nodded.
“And the deceased just came out of nowhere and jumped on the end of your bang stick?”
The diver nodded again.
“Hey!” the complex’s owner yelled over to the detective. “Can I open the driving range now? I’m losing a lot of money!”
The detective said it was okay.
“Go ahead!” yelled the owner. Twenty golfers began swinging.
They loaded Pavel’s body into the back of the coroner’s van.
“Range cart!”
The golfers dumped out the rest of their buckets and began swinging as fast as they could, dozens of balls clanging off the side of the cart. But other shots, which appeared to have found their mark, didn’t make much noise at all. With the floodlights shot out, the golfers couldn’t see that the driver’s protective metal cage had been cut away.
The police and medical examiner had to drop Pavel’s body off at the morgue and head right back to the driving range.
The detective wasn’t happy when he met the owner in front of the windmill. He pointed at the range. “They’re still hitting golf balls!”
“I have to make a buck.”
“This is a crime scene!”
“They’re not aiming at the cart anymore.”
“Tell them to stop!”
The owner stuck two fingers in his mouth and whistled toward the driving tees. “Hey! The police say you have to stop!” Most of them did, although some tried getting in a few last balls.
“Stop hitting!” yelled the detective. “What are you, children?”
The detective and coroner walked out to the two-hundred-yard marker and peeked in the range cart at Igor. The detective cringed. The coroner threw up.
The detective offered him a handkerchief and tapped the corner of his own mouth. “You got vomit.”
The coroner dabbed it.
“Other side.”
The EMTs carefully extracted Igor from the range cart.
The detective stared off in thought and shook his head. “What the hell kind of Goony Golf are they running here?”
A golf ball whizzed by.
Ivan sat in his motel bathroom with a cell phone.
“Calm down, Mr. Grande…. Please calm down…. Nobody feels worse about this than I do…. No, someone else has the briefcase now…. We’re still trying to find that out…. Look, I know this is a bad time to bring this up, but I need some more men…. I ran out…. What do you mean, what happened to the ones I had? They’re all dead…. Stop shouting…. Please stop shouting…. I’d like to point out that they died trying to recover your five million dollars…. Yes, that’s right, the five million I still don’t have…. If you can just send some more guys, I think we can wrap this up pretty quickly…. Okay, I’ll meet them at the airport….”
The next morning Ivan headed west on the Beeline Expressway, listening to books on tape. He took the exit for Orlando International and parked in short-term, then got on a moving sidewalk for the new airside. He found a seat and folded his hands in his lap.
A wide-body pulled up to the terminal. Ivan stood and walked over to the gate. Passengers poured off the plane. Couples embraced, children cried, others ran for the smoking area. Ivan got on tiptoe in the middle of the human stream, craning his neck for a better view, holding a white sign in front of him with both hands: MIERDA CARTEL.
Four men in tropical shirts walked up and introduced themselves. Dmitri, Alexi, Vladimir and Chuck.
“We’re on a tight schedule,” said Ivan. “We have to head to an address right now. Then drinks on me.”
Jethro was back in his room at the Orbit Motel, sitting on the foot of the bed. He had decided to end it like a man. There was no other choice. The money was gone and so was his little buddy. He had already read the grisly details in the paper. Jethro blamed himself. He drank straight from a bottle of George Dickel and muttered as he loaded the shotgun he had purchased at Space Shuttle Pawn for twenty-five dollars.
“If only I had not run like a coward, possibly I could have prevailed in the struggle and offered protection and comfort. Instead, I abandoned my faithful traveling companion. Men do not do such things. Not even dogs do such things….” He took another swig. “I am not even a dog. Where was my grace under pressure? There is no honor in this anymore. Just the burning sting of truth like a morning urination in Madrid. Galanos!”
He braced the butt of the shotgun on the floor and placed the other end in his mouth. He kicked off his right sandal and stuck his big toe in the trigger guard.
He pressed down with his toe.