Jim drove down a row of cars near the front of the store. “There’s a spot.”
Martha pulled a purse strap over her shoulder. “Let’s just go get the turkey.”
“I’ll get the bleach.”
“Not funny.”
“Only trying to lighten the mood.”
“Watch out!”
Jim cut the wheel, almost clipping four parked cars. A Delta 88 whipped by on the left and screeched around the corner.
“Jim! Go after him!” She pulled out a notepad and pen. “I only got the first three numbers.”
Jim parked instead and turned with understanding eyes.
“Oh, so take his side.”
“Martha, maybe it’s a dangerous person. Just like the Chevelle. He’s already demonstrated a reckless lifestyle. That’s a red flag.”
“And that’s why the authorities need to know. Start the car! He’s getting away!”
“You can’t stop every jerk in the city.”
“But if everyone else did their part.”
“Look, you’re right, he’s a menace. But now he’s driven out of our lives. The last thing we need to do is reel him back in. And we know nothing about him. He could be capable of anything for revenge.”
“You’re paranoid.”
“Martha, my job involves threat assessment. The odds are slim, but if we report enough people…”
“You and your red flags.”
“I love you.”
She opened her door. “I hate this time of year.”
A black Delta 88 came flying around the corner on MacDill Avenue. The driver wanted to make the traffic light, but it was a short yellow, and the sedan screeched to a stop just after it turned red.
A convertible Mustang pulled up alongside. Four frat boys with baseball caps on backward. The horn honked. One of the frat boys made a cranking motion with his hand for the driver of the Delta 88 to roll down his window.
The glass slowly lowered.
“Hey, asshole!” yelled the Mustang’s driver. “You almost hit us back there. Are you retarded or something?”
The door of the Delta 88 opened. A man in a uniform got out and approached the sports car. “I’m really sorry. My mother’s in the hospital and my mind’s been elsewhere-”
Suddenly the man nailed the Mustang’s driver in the jaw with a wicked sucker punch. Then he reached in and playfully pinched the driver’s cheek. “Advice for the day: Don’t fuck with people you know nothing about. I see you again, I’ll kill you.”
The man got back in the Delta 88 and sped off.
The Mustang remained stopped at the green light. Four shocked faces. One was crying.
W atch out!” yelled Coleman, grabbing the dashboard.
Serge cut the wheel. A Delta 88 screamed by. “Typical Tampa driver.”
Coleman relit his dropped joint. “Someone should report him.”
The Chevelle continued south on Dale Mabry Highway.
“I love this time of year,” said Serge, ejecting a bullet from his Glock and stowing it under the seat for safety. “Every time the weather turns cool in Florida, it subconsciously triggers deja vu memories of past holiday seasons.”
Coleman cracked a beer. “Like what?”
“Getting cool toys for Christmas. Even better, getting shit I didn’t like and blowing it up with firecrackers. My folks were always puzzled by the debris.”
“I blew up something I made of LEGOs.”
“That’s the primary use of LEGOs, even though they keep quiet about it.” Serge put his fingers together, assembling something invisible. “The interlocking blocks allowed flexibility of design so you can engineer a directional charge. Excellent demolition training, which was otherwise unavailable at that age.”
Coleman killed the beer and crunched the can flat against his forehead. “Ow, I think I cut myself… Any other memories?”
“There’s also the newer ones.” Serge handed him some napkins. “Like every year, newspapers run the exact same menu of holiday stories: family hospitalized for smoke inhalation trying to keep warm by barbecuing indoors, seven crushed in Black Friday shopping spree, needy family evicted from apartment just days before Christmas, moms arrested fighting over last Xbox, employees laid off just days before Christmas, car stolen from shopping center with all of family’s gifts in trunk, man dies watering Christmas tree with lights on, depression soars during holidays, evicted needy family gets holiday wish, hospitals warn about eating Christmas decorations that aren’t food, needy family’s hoax results in charges. It’s a special time of year.”
“Are we there yet?” asked Coleman.
“Just up ahead. I checked us into our new room before dawn while you were still unconscious at the old one.”
Coleman glanced at their surroundings, detecting a trend. Sports bars, Tex-Mex, bowling alleys. Strip malls offering tattoos, guns, and haircuts. Off-brand convenience stores with large ads for lottery tickets, Newport cigarettes, and Asian groceries. An unnatural concentration of personal-injury-attorney signs at bus stops. Gas stations selling fried poultry and hash pipes. The pimp-your-ride industry: auto-detailing, auto upholstery, window tinting, auto alarm. Grime-streaked apartment balconies full of dead potted plants, barbecues, and people banging on doors. Old mom-and-pop motel signs with patriotic motifs involving eagles, flags, military airplanes, and primitive rocket ships. And finally the sub-budget motels with no signs at all.
Coleman took another hit. “Where are we?”
“South Tampa.” Serge hit his blinker. “More specifically south of Gandy Boulevard, toward the air-force base. The closer you get to the base, the sketchier the highway. Here we are, a sub-budget motel with no sign, which is perfect.” He turned the wheel.
“Perfect?”
“The behavior of the guests at these motels is so erratic that our mission will go unnoticed.”
“What’s our mission?”
Serge pulled into a parking lot. “The story on the news a few days ago about the VFW hall. Not one of the holiday stories I mentioned, but since it’s during the season, it’s that much more despicable.”
Coleman opened his passenger door and tumbled onto the pavement. He popped back up. “Something tripped me again… What happened at the VFW?”
“The economy. There’s been a huge increase in desperate, low-end burglars ripping off heavy metal stuff right in the open and selling it for scrap.” Serge got out a key and headed for their room. “Chain-link fence, sheds, aluminum siding. One guy up in Pasco even used a cutting torch and took a span of guardrail from the expressway.”
“But we’ve done that. Remember our U-Haul full of metal garbage cans and spools of barbed wire?”
“I’m not saying it’s wrong. In fact it creates jobs far more aggressively than any stimulus package. I’d love to see a Discovery Channel special tracking the illegal hauls to the scrap yard, where it’s crushed, loaded on tractor trailers, driven to Pittsburgh, infusing capital into local diners, bars, and truck-stop hookers, finally reaching the foundry, where it’s smelted, shipped again to assembly lines in Terra Haute and Fond du Lac, which use the raw materials to manufacture new stuff to replace the shit we stole, then sending it back to Florida, creating more employment for contractors who have to reinstall everything before we take it again. A perfect, self-sustaining closed-loop domestic industrial model, minimizing dependence on foreign entities who mean us ill fortune.”
Serge opened the motel room door.
“Holy shit,” said Coleman. “Look at all the copper pipes and wires. You must have stolen all of this in the middle of the night.”
“The War on Terror never sleeps.”
Coleman high-stepped through the cluttered room. “But with all this copper, why are you upset about the TV
