Serge hadn’t noticed that the bus was pulled over. The driver stood over him. “If you keep yelling, I’ll have to ask you to get off.”
“Sorry,” said Serge. “Can I play my guitar?”
“Do you yell when you play?”
“Not usually.”
The driver was already walking back up front. “No more yelling!”
Serge cradled his acoustic and began strumming. “…Mama don’t take my Kodachrome awaaaaaaayyyy-eeeee-yay….”
A GIANT EYEBALL rotated in the peephole of room 133 of the Royal Glades Motel. Coleman took a hit from the corner of his mouth. Still dark out there. Nothing but the sandwich shop across the street, where local teens had come along in the night and rearranged letters on the roadside marquee: 99¢ HAND JOBS.
Inside room 133, two days of Lifestyle Coleman. Fast-food sacks, roaches, matches, spilled trash cans, wet socks on lampshades, smashed potato chips in the carpet, fried chicken bones between the sheets, slice of pepperoni stuck to the mirror, bloody footprint on the dresser, pocket change in the bottom of the toilet, sink clogged with vomit, cartoons on TV.
Coleman’s eye stayed pressed to the door. Paranoid. Every time he thought he’d watched long enough for a clean escape… second thoughts. What if someone comes out of the office in the next minute? Then he’d watch another minute, and so forth. Coleman wanted to make sure his getaway was absolutely perfect; nothing as much as a hair out of place. The eyeball scanned the street again. Drugs finally made the decision. The roach had burned out; no reason to stay any longer. Coleman stepped back from the peephole and grabbed the strap of a duffel bag at his feet. He took a deep breath.
Now!
Coleman threw open the door and it banged against the wall. He took off running. Into a metal garbage can. They both went over with a crash. The can tumbled loudly across the parking lot. Coleman pulled himself up by a car door handle, activating the auto-burglar alarm. Whoop-whoop-whoop. “Shit!” Lights started coming on all over the motel. Bleary people walked onto balconies without shoes. The manager emerged from the office. Coleman dove in the Buick. He dropped the keys. He hit the horn. The car finally started. Tires squealed. Coleman patched out, running over the garbage can, which wedged under the bumper and sprayed sparks. The people on the balconies winced when the Buick’s undercarriage bottomed out at the base of the driveway, and they cringed again when Coleman made a hard left turn, sending the garbage can flying free and shattering the lighted roadside marquee in front of the sandwich shop.
Then he was gone. Quiet resumed. Motel guests trudged back to rooms. Some decided sleep was futile. Might as well get a leg up on driving. They began loading luggage. Two blue American Touristers went into the trunk of a brown Plymouth Duster with Ohio plates.
3
APB #2: the metallic green Trans Am
DARK AND DESERTED on the Florida Turnpike, the part of day you can’t quite put your finger on. No longer the night before, not quite the next morning. Even more off-balance if you’ve been driving some hours.
A metallic green Trans Am skirted the backside of Miami International, down through Sweetwater. The blackness alternated with pockets of light at the interchanges. The lights were the harsh orange shade found at businesses with barbed wire and surveillance cameras. They said: Don’t exit here.
Almost five A.M., but the driver didn’t know where her watch was. The strap had broken. She kept looking in the rearview. The Trans Am had a smoked T-top. Her legs had bruises.
The woman was petite, practically swallowed by the Pontiac. Twenty-eight years old, but her new skin, dimples and tiny features always got her carded.
The Trans Am passed a tollbooth sign that said to get seventy-five cents ready. A shaking hand rubbed makeup onto the bruised thighs. Her window went down. Change flew into a toll basket, and the Trans Am accelerated. The makeup compact flew into an oversized purse on the passenger seat, then she jerked the whole thing into her lap and rummaged. The handbag’s organizational system was shot, the entire contents dumped out and thrown back in twice already tonight. She found a cigarette, lit it with the car lighter and coughed. She had just un-quit smoking with the pack bought back in Delray. The nicotine slowed her rampaging imagination, but it couldn’t block the involuntary images: what she’d seen when she opened the bathroom door. And again at the second place. That’s what really shook her, besides all the blood. How on earth did they know about the second place? It meant she wasn’t safe anywhere. She looked in the rearview. No sign of the white Mercedes with tinted windows.
The Trans Am passed the Kendall exit and a blue info sign. She waited for a tanker to go by and slid over a lane.
The Snapper Creek Service Plaza was at Mile Nineteen. Nineteen miles till the end of the turnpike, then just two isolated lanes through mangroves as the mainland seeps into the part of the map with those spongy symbols before reaching the drawbridge to Key Largo.
Only a few vehicles at the plaza. An unattended Nissan with no tag. A security car with a sleeping guard in the driver’s seat and an emblem on the door of an irritable eagle and lightning bolts. A Peterbilt tractor-trailer, dark in the cab but the engine still on, along with hundreds of amber running lights that traced the entire outline of the truck in a manner that said someone was getting rich on amber running lights.
The Trans Am pulled into the space closest the building. The woman forced her legs out of the car. She walked stiffly to the pay phones, pushed coins in a slot and dialed an exchange in the lower Keys. “Come on!” Three no-answers at the last three service plazas. Now ten rings and counting. The exposure time out of the Trans Am seemed eternal. A car door opened. Her eyes shot toward the sound. The night guard smiled like a sex offender.
Thirteen rings, about to call it quits. A sleepy voice answered. The woman jumped. “Don’t hang up! It’s me!”
BELOW MIAMI, YOU’RE on your own. Dixie Highway slants across a hot, dusty wasteland of Mad Max predators, where the famous roadside “Coral Castle” is now ringed with razor wire, and copulating dogs tumble past the doors of Cash Advance Nation. Above all this, another world away, are the elevated lanes of the Florida Turnpike. A metallic green Trans Am raced south just before dawn until the lanes ended and twisted their way down to merge with U.S. 1. Welcome to Florida City, a franchised boomtown decided by automatic traffic counters and satellite imagery. Mobil, Exxon, Wendy’s, Denny’s, Baskin-Robbins and a continuous row of chain motel signs indicating that the cornerstones of the white race are free breakfast and AARP rates.
A maid pushed her cleaning cart and sang a merry Spanish song. Room doors opened; Middle America herded kids into cars. Lobbies filled with people grabbing Pop-Tarts and sticking paper cups under spigots. “The orange juice is out.” The sky grew lighter. The maid knocked. “Housekeeping!” The gas lanes at the food marts filled. “Pump five is already on (you idiot)!” College students with beer suitcases piled back into their Jeep Grand Cherokee and raced to the edge of the parking lot.