Overseas Liquors has the coolest 1950s neon signs in all the Keys. Red and aqua. It also has one of the few basements, if you want to call it that. Four feet deep, hewn into the limestone; you have to stoop over the whole time. The access door is an unassuming square panel on the bottom of the wall behind the cash register that looks more like a cabinet. They keep the liquor stock down there. Once upon a time, they also used to rent cheap rooms in the back of the bar over the basement. If you go in the basement today, there’s a diamond-shaped grid of bare alarm wires under the ceiling boards. The reason is the Overseas Eight.
Gus was the nearest deputy when the call came in. He found the store’s front door unlocked. His flashlight beam worked its way along a shelf of vodka bottles, then across the room to the dust-covered liqueurs. Nothing. Until he looked over the counter. A facedown body hung halfway through the basement access. He pulled his service revolver and crept around the counter. He got down on one knee. The flashlight and pistol were together in his hands to form a single unit. He shined over the body and through the opening into the basement.
The dispatchers told Gus to slow down; they couldn’t understand him. He was hyperventilating. “…Seven bodies. Maybe eight.”
Squad cars arrived. And kept arriving, until the whole shift was there. The laughter wouldn’t quit as the last of the passed-out burglars was dragged from the building. One of the tenants in the back of the store had sawed through the floor. Burglary wasn’t intended. He didn’t even know there was a basement. Sometimes he just started drinking and liked to saw stuff. Word of the discovery quickly spread on the bum telegraph. Dark figures converged from all directions. At its peak, twenty-nine people were crammed in that basement. Most grabbed as many bottles as they could and fled, but eight decided to party on the spot, like rats finding tasty poison in a fake cheese wedge.
Gus knew he’d never hear the end of it. That’s why he didn’t mind staying behind in the parking lot to start the report. He flicked on the dome light and scribbled to get a difficult pen to write. That’s when the Camaro doing a hundred on U.S. 1 flew through the guard rail. It scattered a row of news boxes and clipped the nose of Gus’s cruiser before wrapping itself around a cement light base. Gus saw the ejected driver, and jumped from the cruiser. His feet went out from under him and he slammed to the ground, sending up a fine white cloud. Gus stood and dusted himself.
The parking lot was full of patrol cars again. This time the day-shift commander was called in from home. Then an evidence team from Key Largo and federal agents with latex gloves, who collected ruptured cocaine packs that had spilled from the Camaro’s blown tires.
“Of all the dumb-ass luck!”
“That idiot’s going to get a drawer full of commendations for sure!”
He did. Bunches of them. Plaques and ribbons and shiny medals, one for each politician who got to shake Gus’s hand in a separate ceremony for the newspaper photographers. Not that Gus’s nonactions were particularly heroic, but his colleagues knew what the rookie didn’t. Funding for the War on Drugs was based on volume of press clippings. Thanks to Gus, Monroe County shot up forty-seven budget positions.
After all the headlines, Gus became too valuable for patrol duty. They made him the department’s token liaison with the multiagency state and federal task force fighting the war on South Florida’s flank. That way they could have a local face at the press conferences to ensure all the hometown media ran the story on the great work of the multiagency state and federal task force.
And darned if Gus didn’t do it again!
Everyone was thinking cocaine back then, watching for big, rusty foreign-flagged mother ships beyond territorial limits offloading to supercharged go-boats. Profits were so insane that the kingpins began sending shotgun waves of vessels at the overwhelmed Coast Guard. At least a couple had to make it. Then word came. A Liberian freighter expected off Fort Lauderdale any day now. Time to ship Gus to Key West.
He was assigned a low-probability scag investigation on the north end of White Street. This was before heroin came back. If he got lucky, he might collar a dime-bag peddler.
Gus tried all kinds of disguises but nothing worked. Sometimes suspects would smile and wave at Gus as he sat in his car outside a motel. Another time a bum walked up as Gus reclined on a bench, dressed like a tourist.
“You’re a cop, aren’t you?”
“No.”
“The people you want are on the other side of the motel. Room fourteen.”
“How do you know that?”
The bum opened a thrown-away paper sack and popped half a conch fritter in his mouth. “I’m homeless, not stupid.”
The next day, a bum waved flies off a half-eaten crab cake. A red Maserati pulled up to the motel. A man in khaki slacks went in room fourteen. He came out with a pillow.
“I’ll take that.”
The man turned and noticed the bum for the first time. He’d never seen one before with a gun and a gold badge hanging around his neck.
Just like that. Nine ounces of heroin. Another round of commendations and photo ops. The “Serpico” business started.
Gus was promoted to the Narcotics Abatement & Deterrence Squad, an elite commando unit that went in with black uniforms, face paint and flash-bang grenades. He was the lead agent through the back door of a Mexican restaurant moving brown tar in south Miami. Gus’s body armor had been rated to stop most tactical rounds. It didn’t do as well when they tipped four hundred pounds of metal kitchen shelves on you. In the movies, he would have flung the racks aside and yelled, “You’re under arrest!” In reality, this is what Gus said: “Ow, my back.”
The publicity photos got even wider play because they were from the hero’s hospital bed. Rehabilitation was slow and incomplete. They offered Gus a desk job, but that would have meant… a desk job. He might as well sell shoes. Gus eagerly accepted a demotion back to deputy and took an assignment in one of the Keys’ smaller substations. Years went by and pounds went on. Instead of commendations, his personnel file swelled with reminders about the department’s fitness guidelines. Gus never complained.
If only he could make another big case.
20
A ’71 BUICK RIVIERA crossed the bridge to Upper Matecumbe and hit backed-up traffic. People in orange vests waved them into a field used for ad hoc parking.
Serge and Coleman walked across the grass until they came to a large array of flea-market tables. Stereos, computers, TVs, Japanese cameras, German binoculars, video equipment, night-vision goggles, parabolic directional eavesdropping microphones.
“I love DEA seizure auctions!” said Serge. “Coleman, where are you?…”
“I’m tired of walking,” said Coleman, trying out a personal treadmill until Serge yanked him off. The tables ended, giving way to the big stuff in the back of the field near the water. Motorcycles, sports cars, boats.
Serge stopped and put a hand over his chest. “She’s beautiful!”
There it was, like a mirage, radiating shafts of energy. Serge quietly approached and stroked it like a newborn. An eighteen-foot Diamondback fuel-injected 454 horse crate with the Stinger 2.09:1 gear reduction. “I’ve wanted one of these ever since 1967!”
“But you were just a kid,” said Coleman.
“That’s when Gentle Ben first aired on CBS. The coolest show: game warden tooling around the Everglades in an airboat, his son rescuing a cub from the evil hunter Fog Hanson, the bear growing into a lovable giant that helps the family out of complex situations.”