“Lenny! Take it easy! It’s not going anywhere!”
Serge stuck his head out the side of the bed and looked up. The bed bucked again and tumbled him onto the ground.
The rocking stopped.
“Lenny? You okay?”
“I’m pretty thirsty now.”
“No kidding. You were going at it like Chuck Yeager trying to pull an X-15 out of a terminal spin.”
Lenny swung his legs over the side of the bunk and jumped down. “I’m completely awake now.” He went over and opened a dresser drawer and took out a baggie. “And I’m out of weed. We have to go get some.”
“I’m not going to a drug hole, especially not at this hour.”
“How about a restaurant or a lounge? I’m pretty good at connecting on the fly.”
“My choice?”
“Sure.”
“Then I have a historic place in mind.”
Lenny checked the Magilla Gorilla clock on his dresser. Almost one. “Is this place still open?”
“Not even hopping yet.”
Two dark figures came out of the ranch house and walked down the driveway toward the van.
Ivan reached over to the Mercedes’s driver seat and shook Vladimir’s shoulder. “Wake up!”
“Wha — what is it?”
“They’re on the move!”
The Benz fell in line six cars back as the van merged southbound on I-95. They passed the executive airport, then Oakland Park and Sunrise Boulevard, the van accelerating the whole time, changing lanes.
“Keep up with them!” yelled Ivan.
“I’m trying!” said Vladimir.
The van cut left across three columns of traffic and squeezed between a Dodge pickup and the median retaining wall.
“Lenny, we’re not in a lane anymore,” said Serge. “You can’t drive with your head below the dash.”
“Just a sec. My beer rolled under the seat.”
Ivan pointed. “They’re getting away!”
“Hold on,” said Vladimir. He floored it and passed a BP tanker on the right shoulder. The van suddenly accelerated again. It seemed to fake right, then shot to the left and into a tight space that briefly opened between a Lexus and a Probe GT. Then another jump left, swerving a couple times within the lane, braking fast and sliding right again, almost going up on two wheels.
“You’re losing them!” said Ivan.
“They’re just too good.”
The van fishtailed as it came out of a banking maneuver. A fierce spray of suds shot around the inside of the vehicle, covering the windshield.
“Lenny, I told you not to open the can. It was bulging.”
“I didn’t think it had been shaken up that much.” Shooting streams of beer hit both of them in the face.
“Get it out of here!”
Lenny cut off a honking Bronco and rolled down the window.
“They’re going for the exit,” said Vladimir. “Stay close.”
“They just threw something out the window…. It just exploded…” Vladimir swerved around it.
“Foaming diversionary device,” said Ivan, nodding with respect. “Israelis.”
The Mercedes swung back in time to take the same exit and made a skidding left turn through the yellow light at the bottom of the ramp. They stayed with the van when it turned on Federal Highway and again when it grabbed the St. Brooks Memorial Causeway. Then, suddenly, nothing.
“Where’d they go?” asked Vladimir.
“Shit,” said Ivan. “He’s probably heading for a meet in one of the beach motels. That’s standard.”
Vladimir raced up the bridge over the Stranahan River, then slowed as they coasted down the far side, everyone looking around. Rippled reflections of white condo lights in the Intracoastal Waterway. Red and green running lights from sailboats.
They came off the bridge. Vladimir pointed. “There it is! There it is!”
They pulled up the hotel driveway, got out and headed across the valet parking lot. Ivan walked up to the van and looked through the windshield at the valet ticket hanging from the rearview. “It’s for one of the restaurants, not the hotel, so that narrows it. Igor, Dmitri — you wait here with the van, in case they come back. The rest of you, follow me!”
The inside of the elevator was brass. Ivan and the others couldn’t place the Muzak as they rode up to the top of the hotel. The doors opened into the big revolving rooftop bar with a raised, obstructing bandstand in the middle. Ivan directed them to split into two groups and go in opposite directions to sweep the place. They met back up on the far side, empty-handed.
“This is the only restaurant left open. They must have stopped in a rest room or something,” said Ivan, taking a chair at one of the few empty cocktail tables. “We’ll wait.” He turned and looked out the window, down at his men waiting by the black van.
Serge and Lenny watched the numbers climb inside their elevator car.
“I thought it was going to be a new place,” said Lenny. “We come here all the time.”
“How can you get too much of Pier 66?” said Serge. “If it was good enough for Travis McGee.”
“I can’t believe they detained us in the security office like that just because you were taking all those pictures.”
“History-haters.”
The elevator doors opened as a cell phone rang at the Russians’ table. Ivan answered it. Serge and Lenny headed around the opposite side of the bar.
“Yes, we received the flowers, Mr. Grande…. That was a very thoughtful gesture…. No, still no sign of the money, but I’ve got this feeling….”
Serge and Lenny grabbed two chairs. Serge laid the briefcase on top of the cocktail table. “Now watch carefully. This was the infamous Sea of Hands Play.”
Serge used a finger to draw a diagram in the dust on the side of the metal case.
“The date: December twenty-first, 1974. But it seems like just yesterday. The stage is set. The Dolphins are leading twenty-six to twenty-one with thirty-five seconds left. Looks like they’re on their way to a third straight Super Bowl title. But they were about to get bitten by the Snake.”
“The Snake?”
“Kenny ‘the Snake’ Stabler, quarterback of the Oakland Raiders, a diabolical little shit from Mobile, Alabama.” Serge drew some more on the briefcase. “The clock is ticking. The Dolphins secondary is all over the mighty Fred Biletnikoff. Stabler has no place to throw. The Miami linesmen are closing. The heat is too much!…” Serge’s finger zigzagged in the dust. “The Snake lunges forward into the pocket and rolls left. But the legendary Dolphin defensive end Vern Den Herder stays with him, gaining fast from behind! Vern dives and tackles Stabler around the knees, and the Snake goes down! Dolphins win!”
“Wow,” said Lenny.
“But wait! What’s this?” said Serge, making an arc with his pinky. “As Stabler is halfway to the ground, he throws the ball toward the end zone. It could never even politely be called a pass. It was a desperation release, like someone flinging a bag of dope out a car window.”
“What happened?”
Serge drew three X’s and one O. “A trio of Dolphins surround the lone Raider receiver. Eight hands reach for the ball, the now famous Sea of Hands. But the two that come down with the pigskin belong to Oakland’s Clarence Davis…” Serge furiously erased everything on the briefcase fast with both hands. “…Touchdown! Oakland wins! The Dolphin Empire crumbles!”
He pounded the briefcase with his fists — “Why! Why! Why!” — then his forehead.
“Why! Why!…”
“So you were kinda into that game?” asked Lenny.
“Stabler might as well have stabbed me through the heart with one of the yardage poles!…Lenny?…Lenny, are you listening?”
“Why’s that guy at the bar looking at me?”