He produced three small metal canisters. “Ever get a bunch of dust in your laptop’s keyboard? Drives me crazy!” said Serge. “But luckily most computer stores sell these cans that contain compressed air to send those little dust bunnies scurrying.”
Into the bag again. This time three plastic containers came out. “And these are empty pump spray bottles that you can get at any drugstore. Mainly women use them to spray shit in their hair, so that’s why they’re foreign territory to us men. But if you’re a dude, simply remember they work just like perfume bottles: When you press the little pump button on top, the liquid inside is transformed to a fine mist in accordance with the Venturi effect, named after Italian physicist Giovanni Venturi, who derived complex equations for fluid transfer in different diameter channels. Who would have thought it would lead to spray-on butter? . . .”
Serge cut and snipped and taped and twisted for half an hour. Then a last tap with the butt of a screwdriver. “There.” He stood.
Coleman looked up from the moaning transmission shop. “You’re done? We’re leaving?”
“Yes and no,” said Serge. “We are leaving, but I have to come back later and activate this sucker.”
“I don’t understand.”
“We need to let it set and cure awhile until it’s ready. Like letting a fine brandy breathe.”
Coleman hopped off the bed. “Can we go to a bar?”
They headed down the elevators and Coleman popped a beer. “So did the guy guess right with the cigars? It’s what I would have picked.”
“So would most people, and that’s exactly why you don’t pick the cigars.”
“But, Serge, you always give someone a way out,” said Coleman. “And everything else on the table was a deadly weapon.”
“The revolver was unloaded.”
“Pretty clever.”
“I even had it turned toward him so he could see the empty chambers, but he was too busy freaking out.”
“Some people are just naturally nervous.”
Chapter Twenty-Four
FORT LAUDERDALE
The three A.M. repeat of the eleven o’clock news just closed with word of a strike by another dating bandit, this one a more mature woman going for the Hope Lange look from the sixties smash-hit television series The Ghost and Mrs. Muir. The news report noted that the show also starred Charles Nelson Reilly.
The kitchen was dark except for the glow of the TV and a laptop screen on the table next to a mug of coffee and a bottle of bourbon. The computer had surfed to an Internet chat room devoted to fake DEA agent Rick Maddox.
Eyes leaned close to the screen. An index finger tapped the scroll button down through recent posts.
D.L. in D.C.: “I’m killing that son of a bitch if I ever find him!”
Mango Mark in West Palm: “Not if I find him first!”
Pirate Fan in Pittsburgh: “I can’t believe he actually had me shaking the whole time I was on the phone. Said importing illegal Oxy carried a ten-year sentence. I’ve never even seen Oxy.”
Wasted in Margaritaville: “Same thing happened to me. Thought I was going to stroke out!”
Pirate Fan: “At least he didn’t take you for a grand!”
Wasted in Margaritaville: “No, two grand!”
Djgherbr Smith: “Hey everyone, I was able to unblock his bogus 202 area-code number, and found he’s moving south from Tennessee.”
Choco-holic: “That was last week. He’s in Florida now.”
Shitless in Seattle: “I tracked him to Miami.”
Mets Fan: “You got him confused with the real DEA agent who lives in Miami. He had his name stolen by this fuck-head.”
Shitless in Seattle: “I know that. But the fake guy’s going there, too.”
Pirate Fan: “Did anyone see where we shut out N.Y. tonight?”
Mets Fan: “Stay on subject. Is this asshole really in Miami?”
Lucy Skrooz-Alot: “I can confirm that. Hired a private investigator. He thinks the fake agent is going to the city where the real agent works as a smoke screen to throw us off, because he must be reading our bulletin board.”
The Fluffer: “Lucy, can you e-mail me your picture?”
Lucy: “Drop dead.”
The Fluffer: “Check your handle, slut.”
Mets Fan: “Everyone cool out. Lucy, what else did your PI say?”
Lucy: “That’s all. I ran out of money to keep him on retainer.”
Wasted in Margaritaville: “I’m willing to pitch in to get him back on the case. Anyone else?”
Djgherbr Smith: “Count me in.”
Choco-holic: “Me, too.”
Shitless in Seattle: “Make it four.”
Pirate Fan: “Hell, why not?”
Mets Fan: “Let’s do it! And while we’re at it, what do you say we all take a relaxing warm road trip south.”
Djgherbr Smith: “I’m game.”
Choco-holic: “I’ll go.”
Shitless in Seattle: “Wouldn’t miss it.”
Wasted in Margaritaville: “I’m already here.”
The Fluffer: “Is Lucy going?”
Lucy: “Not if Fluffer’s going.”
Mets Fan: “Lucy, ignore him. What’s the name of your private eye? . . .”
Brook Campanella tossed back a shot of whiskey at her kitchen table, and scrolled down through the message board until finally arriving at Lucy’s answer. She got out a pen and wrote a name.
DAWN
The police initially thought it was a duplicate call.
Made sense because of the record volume at the 9-1-1 center. The Merry Pranksters had struck again, this time a luxury high-rise resort on Biscayne Boulevard. And they had graduated from practical jokes to grand theft. Cleanup crews were still sweeping porcelain from the street, and insurance adjusters took photos of parked cars with toilet lids through windshields.
The cops had been back and forth to the hotel all night—from the initial naked, extinguisher-foamed chaos in the street to the later discovery of all the burglarized rooms—and now dispatch handed them another urgent request to return to the resort.
Seconds after arriving again on the seventeenth floor, it became clear the call was no duplicate.
An extremely late guest, tied and gagged in a chair, sat with his head slumped lifelessly to the side.
“Holy Mother, what happened to this poor guy?” said the first sergeant on the scene. “And what the hell are those weird things on the floor?”
The room grew in popularity. First the detectives in suits, then evidence techs, the medical examiner and finally the precinct captain, with gold braids on his visor and shoulders, to manage damage control because of all the satellite-TV trucks in the street.
“Nobody says a word of this to anyone. All statements will come from community relations at headquarters. Understood?”
Nods around the room. Then back to work.
The captain strolled over to the medical examiner. “What have we got here?”
“Cigars,” said the examiner, working with tweezers and a clear bag.
“I know they’re cigars,” said the captain. “I meant, do you think we’ll get lucky and be able to extract the killer’s DNA so we can close this case fast? I hear just a little saliva on a cigar—”
“Doubt there’s any DNA here.” Tobacco remnants fell into a bag that was sealed and signed.
“Then why are you starting an evidence chain?” asked the captain.
“Because it’s a murder weapon.”
The captain did a double take. “Come again?”
“This is what the killer used.”
“I don’t— What?”
“That’s a normal reaction.” The examiner opened another bag. “It’ll take a long explanation because this required a bit of technical expertise. But these definitely did the victim in.”