Someone stepped up next to Serge. A squat older gentleman with a cattle rancher’s hat, bolo tie and stubby cigar that he was more chewing than smoking.
“That’s my airboat!”
“It is?” said Serge.
“Gonna be. I scare away the others with my bold initial bids. Leave ’em pissin’ in their boots.”
“No kidding?” said Serge. “I scare ’em away with my ridiculously tiny bids.” He made a big grin.
The man studied Serge with tight eyes, then broke out laughing and slapped him on the shoulder. “I like you, boy!”
They looked at the airboat again.
“Mighty fine,” said the man.
“Yes, she is,” said Serge.
“I love the War on Drugs!” said the man. “Get more great shit since the forfeiture laws. They can take anything they want, not even due process.”
“Of course there’s due process,” said Serge. “This is America.”
“What are you, for drugs?” said the man. “Suppose you want proof, too.”
“Proof’s bad?”
“We’re talkin’ drugs, boy!”
Serge smacked a fist into his other hand. “Goddam the pusher-man!”
“ACLU technicalities!” The man removed his cigar and spit something on the ground. “But we’ve fixed proof. Here’s your new proof: A dog barks. Then they take whatever they want.”
“Barks?”
“This one family was ridin’ through Pasco County, and they had like ten thousand in cash when they got pulled over for a busted taillight, which may have been a busted taillight or maybe they looked a little too brown. Anyway, car’s clean as a whistle. So they bring the German shepherd over and he barks at the money, which may have been cocaine residue or maybe he had heart worms. Didn’t matter. ‘Well, we’re just gonna have to take that drug money away from you folks.’ Then they let ’em go. In the old days, that kind of arrangement would be called a bribe. Now it’s forfeiture. And if they want their money back, they have to hire an attorney because the law says the burden’s on them.”
“Doesn’t seem fair,” said Serge.
The man started laughing and slapped Serge on the shoulder again. “It ain’t!… Ha ha ha ha…”
Serge: “Ha ha ha ha…”
“Hoo.” The man pulled out a hanky and dabbed his eyes. “You ain’t thinkin’ of bidding against me, are you?”
“Lookin’ like I’m fixin’ to get a hankerin’ to.”
A final slap. “I like you, boy.” He walked away with his handkerchief.
Serge and Coleman headed over to the folding chairs in front of a small stage. They grabbed seats in the first row. Serge fanned himself with bid paddle number 142.
It was a furious auction, heated bidding, everything selling fast. Corvette, Indian motorcycle, forty-foot Scarab.
Coleman looked over his shoulder at the man in the cattle hat three rows back. “How much money you got?”
“Hundred dollars,” said Serge.
“That’s all?”
“It’ll be plenty.”
The auctioneer moved on to item thirty-two. “A beautiful Diamondback airboat. Only fifty hours on the engine. Who’d like to start the bidding?”
“Ooooo, me, me, me, me!” Bid paddle 142 waved frantically. “I bid a big one!”
“A thousand dollars?”
“A hundred,” said Serge.
“Sir, this is a very expensive boat.”
“That’s my bid.”
The auctioneer shrugged. “The bid is one hundred dollars.”
Booming laughter from the rear. Another bid paddle went up over a cattle hat. “Fifteen-thousand!”
The crowd gasped. Intimidated bidders lowered their paddles.
“…Going once, going twice, sold for fifteen thousand dollars!”
“Looks like you lost,” said Coleman.
“Got any more weed?”
“I thought you didn’t do drugs.”
“I don’t.”
Serge and Coleman hung around to the bitter end. Workers folded chairs and unplugged microphones. Winners paid with guaranteed checks.
A man in a cattle hat hung out the driver’s window of a Bronco, backing up to an airboat.
“Congratulations!” said Serge. “Let me give you a hand hitching that.”
“Mighty neighborly of ya.”
Serge set the clasp and hooked the chains. He waved toward the driver’s mirror. “You’re all set!”
Then Serge walked up next to a DEA agent in dark sunglasses. He leaned his head sideways and whispered.
The Bronco started pulling out of the lot toward U.S. 1.
“Freeze!” yelled the agent. “Turn the engine off and step out of the vehicle!”
“What in cotton-pickin’—”
They brought the dogs over.
Barking.
The agent reached in the airboat. “What’s this?” He held up a joint.
“That ain’t mine!”
“Unhitch it,” said the agent.
“I just bought it!”
“It’s government property now.”
“Excuse me,” Serge said to the agent. “You haven’t cashed his check yet or filed the title papers with the state.”
“So?”
“So under Florida law ownership hasn’t officially transferred. It never stopped being government property.”
“What’s your point?”
Serge raised paddle number 142 and smiled. “I was the next highest bidder. I’d like my boat now, please.”
“Who’s robbin’ this train?” yelled the man in the cattle hat. “You sumbitches give him that fuckin’ airboat, I’m writin’ my congressman!…”
The agent watched calmly from behind dark glasses. The noisy little dust devil in a cattle hat stomped in an angry circle. “I’ll have your badges!…”
The agent never moved. He spoke out of the side of his mouth to a colleague: “Give him the boat.”
“Thanks!” said Serge.
“Goddammit!” The man threw his hat on the ground. “You know who you’re trying to screw? You’re just a bunch of stupid fuckin’ hired thugs!…”
Serge tapped the agent on the shoulder. “I think you’re overlooking something.”
“What’s that?”
“While the airboat remained government property, it was hitched to the Bronco when the narcotics were found, which means under the forfeiture law the truck had become part of the smuggling continuum.”
The agent began nodding. “I wouldn’t mind driving one of those.”
The man in the cattle hat stumbled backward against the truck and spread his arms like a human shield. “No! Not the Bronco!”
“WOOOOOOO-HOOOOOOOO!”
The gang from the No Name Pub was up on the Bogie Channel bridge. An airboat raced toward them.
It zipped under the bridge. They ran across the road to the opposite rail as Serge came flying out.
“Yaba-daba-doooooooo!”
“…You should have been there,” said Coleman, leaning against the bridge railing. “It was priceless. They had to pry the Bronco’s keys out of the guy’s hands….”
The airboat made a tight turn in the middle of the pass, sending up a sheet of water. It whizzed back under the bridge.
Everyone ran across the road again. The airboat zoomed down the channel toward Spanish Harbor, Serge’s shouts becoming mere peeps in the distance.
“He sure seems happy,” said Sop Choppy. “Look at him go.”
Serge turned her around one last time near the viaduct and came back, idling through the man-made inlet at the fish camp. The gang trotted down the embankment for a better look. Jerry the bartender ran a hand along the polished wooden propeller with steel tips. “I wish I had an airboat like this.”
“Why’s that?” Serge hitched the Diamondback to the trailer line.
“Gentle Ben,” said the bartender. “Ever since I was a kid…”
Serge reached in his pocket. He worked a key off his chain and tossed it to the bartender.