“Check it out, Andy.” Serge looked down at the sidewalk and old inlaid blue-and-white ceramic tiles: INTERNATIONAL SWIMMING HALL OF FAME. “I’m getting tingles.”
Andy stood next to Serge, staring down with a pained expression of desperation as his pocket silently vibrated.
“You need to loosen up.” Serge slapped him hard on the back. “I know you’re thinking something utterly horrible might happen any second, but I have the same feeling all the time and it doesn’t stop me from being a happy chipmunk. Let’s go inside!”
Serge signed the guest book with bold calligraphy. They had the place to themselves as he gave the group his whirlwind A-tour. “… Here are Buster Crabbe’s medals and trophies… life-size mannequin with a creepy wig of Duke Kahanamoku, father of modern surfing… Mark Spitz… Rowdy Gaines… 1935 seashell plaque honoring Katherine Rawls, the greatest swimming sensation of her day, who trained here…” Students rushed to keep up with Serge’s unbroken stride. “… Esther Williams’s movie poster… 1958 photo of the Casino Pool with Mediterranean bathhouse… and finally the piece de resistance-check out this glass case. Those are Johnny Weissmuller’s five gold medals from the 1924 and ’28 Olympics in Paris and Amsterdam. Imagine that! Tarzan’s coolest shit! And nobody knows it’s just sitting here in this fabulous empty museum, which should be mobbed but isn’t because they don’t have any rides. Let’s get the hell out of here!”
“But, Serge”-Joey held up his watch-“We’ve been here less than two minutes. And we only stopped running when we got to the gold-medal case.”
“That’s right. I like to turn it into a ride.” Serge ran out the door.
Despite their age advantage, the kids had to hustle. They jumped back in vehicles as Serge left the parking lot. He raced fifty feet and parked in another.
The kids pulled into adjacent slots. “We drove ten seconds just to park across the street?”
“It isn’t about parking. It’s about hallowed earth.” Serge dropped to his knees and placed a palm on the hot tar. “This is the exact birthplace of spring break, where they paved over that first pool. A moment of silence. That’s too long.” He flipped down the pickup’s tailgate and hopped into the kiddie pool, reclining with arms hooked over the inflated edge. “Who wants to join me?”
Students stared at Magic Marker on the side: THE CASINO.
“Andy?” said Serge.
He jumped and swung the phone behind his back. “What?”
“Get in here! The water’s great!”
“I don’t really feel like-”
“Andy!”
“Okay.” He hid his phone on top of the pickup’s front left tire and climbed over the side of the pool in shorts.
Serge pumped his eyebrows. “How do you feel?”
“Stupid.”
“All the best things in life feel stupid at first. I think Dahmer said that.”
A police officer approached the pickup on foot. “Excuse me?” Serge turned. “How may I help you, officer?”
“I’m not saying what you’re doing is wrong. But what
“Resurrecting our state’s lost heritage!”
“Why do you have a kiddie pool in the back of a pickup?”
“Because if I set it up on the ground, that would be unusual.”
“Are you okay?”
“Excellent! You’re standing on sacred ground,” said Serge. “This was the original site of the Casino Pool, birthplace of spring break. So existentially any pool set up on this spot becomes the Casino, like this one. Under new management. Tarzan, Amsterdam, Colgate. I drank a lot of coffee today.”
The officer had seen everything but this extended the list. “Well, you’re not disturbing anyone and…”-he craned his neck to survey the pickup’s bed-“… I don’t see any beer cans or drugs, which is a welcome change, so I guess there’s nothing else here for-… Are you trying to signal me?”
“Me?” asked Serge.
“No.” The officer pointed. “Him.”
“I was just scratching,” said Andy.
“The heartbreak of psoriasis,” said Serge.
The officer tipped his cap. “Have a nice day.”
A few blocks north, other students with beer on their minds ran across A1A toward a convenience store.
The first jerked the door handle.
Bolted.
“That’s weird.”
They cupped hands around their eyes and pressed them to the glass. “I don’t see anybody.”
“The lights are on.”
“Damn.”
In the back room, Guillermo sat at a surveillance monitor and rewound a tape. It was a split screen: the view from behind the register, and another outside toward the gas pumps, in case of drive-offs. On the desk in front of Guillermo lay a sheet of paper with the location and time of a cell phone purchased with a credit card.
Guillermo stopped the tape and pressed play. Customers buying cigarettes and scratch-off tickets. The digital time record in the top corner was two hours early. He hit fast-forward. People comically scurried around with coffee, hot dogs and Alka Seltzer. The white numbers at the top of the screen flipped rapidly until they approached the time on Guillermo’s printed record. He hit play again.
A young man bought a cell phone with a credit card.
Guillermo froze the image. “So that’s what Andy McKenna looks like now.”
He unfroze the video and watched the other side of the screen. The youth climbed into a pickup with a Florida Gators bumper sticker.
Guillermo ejected the tape and took a wide step around a slick of blood spreading from the store’s owner.
Serge slapped the water’s surface in the kiddie pool. “Who’s the next lucky winner?”
Cody climbed up.
“Are you digging it? I’m digging it!” Serge reached over the side of the pool for his plastic specimen jar and dipped it in the water. “I’m saving this sample forever!… Who’s next?”
Students continued swapping places. Andy walked around the front of the pickup and grabbed his phone off the tire. He pressed buttons.
“Agent Ramirez?”
“Andy, where are you? I’ve been driving up and down A1A!”
“No. It isn’t safe.”
“You’re less safe where you are.”
“You don’t understand Serge. There’s no telling what he’s capable of if you show up.”
“Think he might be with Guillermo?”
“At first I wondered, but now I’m sure he’s not. He thinks he’s protecting me. Which I’m beginning to believe is even more dangerous.”
“Why do you say that?”
Serge stood behind the pickup with a map of Florida rolled into a cone like an old-style megaphone. “Swim! Swim! Swim!…”
Two students in the water. “Serge, our bodies are longer than the pool.”
“Swim! Damn it!…”
“I hear yelling,” said Ramirez. “Is everything okay?”
“No. Listen, you coming to me is out.”
“What do you suggest?”
“Think I can slip away later. Then we’ll meet. It’ll eliminate any unpredictable confrontation with Serge.”
“Just tell me when and where.”
“I saw this place yesterday…”
Serge raised the paper megaphone. “That’s it! Keep swimming! Tonight we’ll shave all your hair and come back
