“Glad you asked. Greely’s laying a preemptive foundation of local goodwill by giving to all these charities. The climax is this new community appreciation festival he’s sponsoring Saturday. Big shindig, free food, music, blahblah-blah — you know, the kind of event they advertise with vinyl banners over the road. The newspaper even published a schedule of all these celebrity appearances he’s going to make — limbo, parasail, get on stage to sing with one of the bands — trying to prove he’s a regular guy.”
“But Serge, what’s that got to do with us?”
The air cooled. A previously unseen cloud slipped across the moon. Serge rubbed his palms together. “I have a plan. Here’s what we’re all going to do….”
There was an ominous rustling again out in the dark brush. Serge stopped talking. People looked in the direction of the sound. Goose bumps.
The rustling grew louder. Then a final snapping of branches before a large form appeared at the edge of the woods.
“The Skunk Ape!”
“Hi, Serge.”
“Hi, Roger.”
“I smelled pizza.”
“A few slices left. Have at it.”
“Thanks.”
Serge crouched by the fire again. “Okay, here’s the plan.” He laid it out in detail. A role for everyone. Compartmentalized. Tight synchronization. He was just about finished when there was another rustling from the woods.
“What now!”
A naked woman popped into the clearing.
Bud Naranja jumped back in alarm. “That’s her! That’s the woman who kidnapped me!”
“Hi, Serge,” said the woman. “Been a long time.”
“I’m married now.”
“Damn.”
“What are you doing here?”
“I smelled pizza.”
“Roger’s got the last box.”
“Cool.”
Serge pulled a large envelope from his shirt, removing a stack of papers that he began handing out. “Here are your plans for our tactical operation at the Greely festival. Each is different depending on your mission…. And one for you and you, and one for you… Accompanying the plans is a separate homework assignment. It’s a scavenger list. Right after this meeting I want you all to go on your own Night Tour and find as many items as you can before dawn. Then we’ll meet at the address at the bottom for breakfast — if you make it! And one for you, and one for you… Each item must be touched for it to be considered an official find. Do not remove artifacts. Photos or tracing permitted…. And one for you, and one for you… Coleman, one of the vampires didn’t get one.”
“I see him.”
Serge held up the empty envelope. “Everyone got theirs?… Good. Gather round.” Serge put out his right arm, palm down. Everyone made a tight circle, placing their hands on top of Serge’s, like a college football team before a big game. “Bow your heads,” said Serge. “Almighty Father, please stop making jerks. Amen… Break!”
36
A GREEN-AND-WHITE sheriff’s cruiser flew east on U.S. 1. Walter had the microphone in his hand. “Ten-four, we’re rolling.” Gus hit the lights and siren.
A NAKED WOMAN walked down a dirt road on Sugarloaf Key. She was reading a piece of paper.
The woman approached the bat tower and placed her palm against the side. She grabbed a pen from over her ear and crossed it off the sheet. She wandered off into the darkness reading the paper.
A sheriff’s cruiser rolled slowly down a dirt road on Sugarloaf Key. Gus scanned with the search beam. They reached the end of the road, their spotlight sweeping across the base of the bat tower. Walter was on the radio. “…Nope, no sign of her.”
SERGE AND COLEMAN walked down another footpath from the clearing until they reached an opening on the water. Small waves lapped the shore. Coleman was carrying his flexible cooler. “I love Night Tours.”
“Give me a hand with the airboat.”
They sloshed into the water and dragged the hull off the sand. Serge held the boat steady a few yards from shore while Coleman climbed up into the high seat in back, grabbing a beer and stowing the cooler.
Serge thrust himself over the gunwale and settled into the low driver’s seat up front. He started the engine. The airboat zoomed away from the island with astounding acceleration. Serge gripped the control stick hard in his right hand, cheeks flapping in the high wind. Coleman was pasted back in his seat, sucking an aluminum can, rivulets of beer that had missed his mouth trickling upstream over his forehead windshield-style.
“You buckled in?” yelled Serge.
“What?”
“Good.” He made a sharp port turn around a mangrove point, catapulting Coleman into the water.
The airboat ripped across the flats. Serge tore up the channel on the windward side of Howe Key, then cut east, spraying water, making the wide pass between Raccoon and the Contents, yelling back over the deafening propeller.
“…Always wanted to do this, Coleman! Trace the historic route of Happy Jack and his merry band, the original Keys party animals! The books of the great historian John Viele bird-dogged me to the microfilm of the original Putnam’s and Harper’s articles from the 1850s. What a gang! Jolly Whack, Paddy Whack, Red Jim, Lame Bill, Old Gilbert and of course their leader, Jack himself. They drank whiskey and rum on the isolated north coast of Sugarloaf. When the booze ran out, they harvested vegetables and sailed to Key West to barter for more spirits. One problem: they started drinking on the way back and kept falling overboard….”
Serge tacked a gradual thirty degrees southwest, mangrove silhouettes all around. He skirted the Torch Keys, then Summerland and Cudjoe. The moon caught the white skin of the radar blimp tethered at five hundred feet. Serge opened the throttle wide for another screaming run across the flats.
COLEMAN WADED ASHORE on Big Pine and started walking up a deserted road. Headlights hit him. A station wagon stopped. The back door opened. Coleman got in with the vampires.
BIG FLOPPY SHOES slapped down a footpath on Coppitt Key. The trail led between a row of dirty headstones. Two men read checklists as they walked. Red rubber balls on their noses. Mr. Blinky stopped and fired up a joint. He handed it to Uncle Inappropriate, then bent down and touched one of the tombstones. He stood up and crossed it off his page.
The pair continued passing the joint as they strolled off into the darkness. On the other side of the cemetery, a sheriff’s cruiser rolled through the front gate.
Gus panned the searchlight across the tombstones. “What exactly did the dispatcher say?”
“You know, the usual. Some clowns in the cemetery…”
AN AIRBOAT BLASTED across the Great White Heron National Wildlife Refuge and slalomed through the Saddlebunches. Serge was in his element. “Over there,” he shouted. “Boca Chica, where the Navy jets touch and go. Used to have a historic dive. The men’s room door opened to the parking lot….”
The airboat straightened out and raced northeast, avoiding sandbars that were only visible on a map in Serge’s brain. He heard other boats now. Distant running lights from the fishing trawlers; no lights on the smugglers. Getting closer, skimming north of Stock Island, then the naval installations on Dredgers and Fleming keys. “Almost there, Coleman!…” A final cut due south through Man of War Harbor, on a dead bearing for the sparkling lights of Key West Bight.
Duval Street, Key West
DRUNK TOURISTS STAGGERED out of saloons, barefoot runaways begged on the sidewalk in front of St. Paul’s. A station wagon drove north through the intersection of Eaton. Five vampires read five sheets of paper.
“Let me off up here.”
The car stopped at the corner of Greene. Coleman got out. He stuck his head back in a window. “I think number eighteen is right over there. Serge takes me all the time.”