He couldn’t have been more right.
APB #1: the brown Plymouth Duster with Ohio plates
BACK UP THE Tamiami Trail, a light grew brighter, the one Coleman had seen down the gravel road. The fire was really involved now. An Oldsmobile with a body inside.
A brown Plymouth Duster with Ohio plates sat nearby. The trunk lid went up. Hands in leather gloves placed a metal gas tank inside and slammed the hood.
The Duster began driving out the gravel road, branches scraping the windshield. Gravel became tar as the car turned onto the Tamiami Trail, leaving behind the burning Oldsmobile with the sticks of dynamite that soon sent a chute of flame and evidence skyward.
The Plymouth continued east. The driver could make out major power lines against the moon, the first wisps of Miami. A tiny traffic light flashed in the distance. It took ten minutes to get to it. The crossroads. The Duster made a lazy right, then a half-hour straight shot south through migrant tomato fields and palm tree farms.
It turned in the entrance of the Royal Glades Motel.
2
West Palm Beach, near the airport: five A.M.
A DOZEN POLICE cars with flashing lights filled the parking lot of a small brick medical complex that looked like a strip mall. There was crime tape and a sheet-covered body. Little numbered markers sat on the pavement next to each bullet. Evidence cameras flashed. The head detective was on the phone to the home of the police chief.
“I think we just solved that tourist robbery at the motel… no, not an arrest, a body… yes, the victims just made a positive ID….” He glanced toward the traumatized retired couple from Michigan clutching each other. The man had bandages on his chin and nose. “…No, I don’t think a press conference is a good idea right now…. I know you’re getting a lot of pressure from the mayor’s office because of the tourism angle…. Because I don’t think we know what we’re dealing with yet. Something’s not right…. Six bullet wounds… right, but they’re all exit wounds…. No, someone didn’t stick a gun up his ass or down his throat. The medical examiner has confirmed the trajectory. These are all straight through, three in the stomach and three in the back, like someone was firing a gun inside him. I’ve never seen anything like it….”
A uniformed officer approached the head detective, who covered the phone. “What is it?”
The officer told him.
“Thanks.” The detective uncovered the phone. “Sir, we have a second crime scene. Someone broke into one of the clinics in the medical complex…. Yeah, it’s related. I think we just figured out those exit wounds. You’re not going to believe this…. No, we definitely want to hold off on that press conference….”
The previous evening
A LANKY MAN in a flowing tropical shirt raced down Southern Boulevard on a ten-speed ultralight aluminum racing bike. He passed the airport, a steak house, a medical complex, some gas stations, budget motels…. Suddenly, his senses perked up. Something was out of place. He squeezed the brake levers on the handlebars.
A RENTED GRAND Am with its doors open sat in front of room 112 of the Golden Ibis Motel. Hank and Beatrice Dunn from Grand Rapids carried luggage inside. Beatrice began unpacking a suitcase on the sagging king bed. Hank locked up the car and went in the room. He hung the DO NOT DISTURB sign on the outside knob and started closing the door.
The door flew back open, knocking Hank to the ground. A burly man with sores and crazed, crack-head eyes ran in the room. “Where’s your money!”
Beatrice screamed. The man went to punch her.
Hank grabbed his arm from behind. “Don’t hurt us. We’ll give you everything.”
So he spun around and punched Hank. He was going to do more damage, but saw the wallet and jewelry on the dresser. Then he tore through a purse on the bed. When he was satisfied he had just about everything, he turned to Beatrice. “Give me your wedding ring!”
She clutched her hand to her chest. “No!”
Hank was still woozy on the ground with a torrential nosebleed, trying to get up. “Honey, give him the ring!”
“Shut the fuck up!” The man seized Beatrice’s arm and yanked on her finger. The ring didn’t budge. He pulled and pulled. No luck.
“It’s stuck,” said Beatrice. “I never take it off. Please!”
The thug unsnapped a leather holder on his belt and flicked open a jackknife. “It’ll come off now!”
“No!” yelled Hank, grabbing the man’s shirt from behind. He got another punch in the face and hit the floor again. The assailant turned back to Beatrice and forced her hand down on the sink counter for a cutting surface.
He heard a click behind him and felt something cold and metal against the back of his head. A new voice: “What do you say we let her keep the ring?”
The couple was dizzy from the swing of events. First the motel invasion and now this mystery man in a tropical shirt holding their assailant down on the bed and tying his hands behind his back with the cord from the curtains.
When he was finished, Serge jerked the man up off the mattress and turned to the retirees: “I just want you to know this isn’t what we’re about down here. I’m very sorry about the inconvenience. Welcome to Florida!”
Serge marched his prisoner toward the door.
“Uh, what are you?” Hank called after him. “Some kind of undercover cop?”
“No, a historian.”
THREE BLOCKS AWAY Serge was still marching his prisoner down a series of alleys. He had the gun in one hand and was walking his ten-speed bike alongside him with the other.
“That’s far enough,” said Serge. They were behind a medical complex. Serge went to work with a lock-pick set. “What’s wrong with you? When I was growing up, the criminals had a code. No kids, old people or cripples. Now they’re the first ones you guys go for.”
The back door of a clinic popped open and Serge flicked on the lights. He waved the gun, ordering the man inside.
The man looked around, confused. Serge reached in his pocket and pulled out a handful of bullets. He raised them to the man’s mouth. “Swallow these.”
“Fuck you.”
Serge held his hands out like scales, the bullets in the left, the gun in the right. “Your pick. Bullets are going in your mouth one way or the other.”
The man didn’t answer. Serge forced the barrel through his teeth. The man started yelling and nodding.
Serge removed the gun. “Good choice.” He fed the bullets one by one, even fetched a paper cup of water from the cooler when the going got rough after number three.
“That wasn’t so bad, was it?”
The man didn’t know what the hell was going on.
“Now come over here and lie down on this table.”
The man didn’t move.
“You were starting to cooperate,” said Serge, poking the gun in his ribs. “Don’t make this go worse than it has to.”
The man reluctantly lay down on the table. Serge pulled some extra curtain cord from his pocket and tied the man’s ankles. The table was narrow. It was on some kind of rolling track. Serge pushed the table until the man began sliding headfirst into a tight tube in the middle of a gigantic medical contraption.
“I know what you’re thinking,” said Serge, pushing the bottoms of the man’s feet until he was completely inside. “What the hell is this thing? Well, I’ll tell you. And it’s really amazing stuff. This is an MRI. That stands for Magnetic Resonance Imagery. Huge leap forward in medical diagnosis! And since Florida has so many old people, they’re conveniently located all over the place, lucky for me.”