Atomic Lobster (26 page)

THAT EVENING

T
he sky grew dark over the Gulf of Mexico. Passengers began filling the Nautilus Dining Room for the first formal seating. Moonlight shafted through portholes.

Serge was already planted in the middle of a large corner booth, napkin tucked into the neck of his life preserver. He chugged his third cup of coffee. Coleman finished another glass of champagne and signaled for the waiter. Not pictured: Rachael, shoplifting in the boutiques.

Others arrived at the booth. A wide polyester couple. Serge stood smartly. He elbowed Coleman.

“What?”

“Up!”

They shook hands. “Serge A. Storms, Tampa.”

“Vernon Haymaker, Muncie. This is my wife, Pearl.”

They sat. Serge sparkled with caffeine interest. “So, Vern, what do you do?”

“Plastic injection molding.”

“Really?” Serge leaned forward on his elbows. “That’s utterly fascinating! Would I recognize any of your work?”

“You know those little plastic scoops in powdered drink cans?”

“Yeah?”

“That’s us.”

“I use those! Small world!”

“Been there twenty-three years.”

“So you must own the company now.”

“No, I work on the line.”

His wife nudged him. “You don’t
just
work on the line.” She turned to Serge. “He watches the temperature gauges.”

“Good for you!” said Serge. “Very important position! Don’t listen to the talk behind your back. Remember that big plastic-scoop explosion in Thailand? Poor bastards blown out factory windows with scoops melted in their hair. Except the guy at the temperature gauges who was vaporized on the spot.” Serge held up an empty cup. “Waiter, more coffee.” He bent forward, lowering his voice. “Heard a few guys fell in the vat of molten plastic, but they didn’t throw out the batch. Just hushed it up and shipped the scoops out anyway. That’s why I stopped using scoops.”

More synthetic fiber arrived. Serge jumped up. “Serge A. Storms, sunny Tampa!…”

“Earl Pope, Newport News. This is my wife, Opal.”

“So, Earl Pope…Hey, I just realized we got an Opal and a Pearl at the same table! If the next couple has a Ruby, I’ll absolutely shit myself! What’s your line, Earl?”

“Post-sandblasting.”

“Post?”

“You know how they sandblast dry docks at the shipyards?”

“Of course.”

“Someone has to scoop up the sand.”

“That’s
you
?”

The next table: six eavesdropping men in tropical shirts.

“We’re not supposed to be this close. Violates protocol.”

“But it’s a once-in-a-lifetime chance to study his technique….”

Next table: Martha Davenport swelled with joy as she gazed out a dark porthole. “Just think, Debbie: That was the last sunset you’ll see single.” Trevor:
Just think, this is your last night a free man
.

Diagonally across the restaurant was another large corner booth. A single person ate a slab of meat with his hands. The waiters had
tried seating five different couples at the table, but they all suddenly lost their appetites. That was just fine with the lone diner. Tex McGraw methodically scanned the room. His eyes came to rest on a lean man with a napkin tucked in his life preserver.

“…Just a puddle by the time they finally got the sandblaster turned off,” said Serge. “Ooooh, here comes our food.”

Waiters arrived. Lobster for Serge, rib eye for Coleman. Two plates were placed in front of the others at their table.

“Serge,” Coleman whispered. “Everyone else got steak
and
lobster.”

Serge sawed his meat. “That’s right. They ordered two entrées.”

“Must be rich.”

“No, just seasoned passengers. It’s free.”

“Huh?”

“Coleman, this is a cruise.” He stuck a bite in his mouth. “All food’s included.”

“I don’t understand.”

Serge cut another piece of steak. “You can order six entrées if you want. They don’t give a fuck.”

Coleman fell back in the booth and put a hand over his chest. “What have I been doing with my life?”

OUTSKIRTS OF CANCÚN

A vintage station wagon with bad shocks pulled up beside a vacant building in the middle of the night. Tommy Diaz got out and sighed. “Here we go again….”

A minute later, two sets of armed men had automatic weapons leveled at each other.

“Doesn’t this ever get old?” asked Tommy.

“You lost the package!” said the tallest tunic.

“I didn’t lose the package. It was empty. There’s a difference.”

“Calling me a liar?”

“No. I’m just saying when we broke it open, there was nothing inside. You must have given us the wrong one.”

“There was no mistake.” The leader turned to the gunman on his left. “Right, Franz?”

“Right.” The gunman sneered at the Diaz Brothers, itching to waste them. “It wasn’t empty when it left here. I personally sealed it myself!”

The leader faced Tommy Diaz again. “I don’t believe you.” Suddenly he swung his Kalashnikov toward Franz. Bang.

The Diaz Brothers jumped back. “Jesus!” Tommy picked pieces of brain off his face. “You think
he
stole it?”

“No, that was about something else. I never liked him.”

“Look,” said Tommy. “Why don’t we refund your money and call it a day.”

“You lost our package!” The leader poked toward Tommy with the gun. “We want it back!”

“But it’s just a couple ounces of coke. I don’t understand the big deal.”

“That was our test run.”

“I know, I know,” Tommy said sarcastically. “First the test run, then if all goes well, major kilos follow and everyone gets rich. I’ve seen the movies.”

“You want to live? We want our package.”

“How about I just pay for the cocaine that’s so-called missing?”

The leader shot Franz in the head again.

“What are you doing?” said Tommy. “He’s already dead!”

“Can’t spare any more guys…. The package!”

“Okay, we’ll pay you
and
deliver another statue for free.”

“You’ve already fucked up two shipments. First, the guy at the train tracks. And now someone switched statues on you.”

“Not a chance. I followed it every step of the way. We recruited the unwitting mules just like I told you, then met the old ladies back at their apartment.”

“And there’s no way they could have bought a second?”

“I’m telling you—”

Rafael tapped his brother. “Tommy, I saw a bunch of the same statues in the ship’s store.”

Tommy jabbed him in the stomach.

“One last chance,” said the top tunic. “No foul-up this time. No mules. You personally make the delivery.” He signaled with a slight wave of his gun. A subordinate disappeared behind a crumbling stucco wall and returned with another wooden crate. He placed it at the Diaz Brothers’ feet.

Tommy looked down, then up. “How do we know your guys didn’t give us another empty one?”

The leader answered by placing a hand on a grenade hanging from his belt.

Tommy rolled his eyes.

A cell phone rang. The theme from
Bonanza
.

“That’s mine,” said a gunman on the end. He took it in another room.

“Well…” Tommy picked up the case and pretended to yawn. “Have to get up bright and early…”

The one with the cell phone rushed back into the room and spoke in an excited foreign dialect.

The Diaz Brothers looked at each other. What language was that? They faced the leader again and saw something for the first time: worry.

“What is it?” asked Tommy.

The leader composed himself. “Nothing that changes our plans.” He motioned toward another subordinate, who ran out of the room. Tommy’s head fell backward on his neck in openmouthed exasperation. The subordinate returned with a small leather bag and handed it to his leader.

“Shaving kit?”

“A bonus.”

He tossed the bag to Tommy, who unzipped it. Bank-bound packs of crisp, U.S. hundred-dollar bills. Tommy looked up. “Must be forty thousand.”

“Fifty,” said the leader. “Down payment.”

“For what?”

“Additional assignment. You complete it, there’ll be another hundred waiting when you get back.”

“But that’s more than the main job.”

“You’re going to have company on the ship.”

“Who?”

“Just received word from one of our informants. American agent. Foxtrot. Been a pest for far too long. Much trouble in Iraq during the first Gulf War. You eliminate him.”

“Hold on,” said Tommy. “I thought you were drug kingpins?”

“We are.”

“What were you doing in Iraq?”

“Uh, we ran a home-theater outlet.”

“Wait a second. You’re terrorists, aren’t you?”

“Want the money or not?”

“I guess.” Tommy passed the leather pouch to Rafael. “What are the details?”

“Our informant’s working on a name. We’ll get it to you at sea.”

“How?”

“The ship’s got an Internet café?”

Tommy nodded.

“The informant will put it up on our website.”

MIDNIGHT

T
he SS
Serendipity
sailed deeper into international waters. The cloudless sky sparkled with an uncommon number of stars. Gaylord Wainscotting sobbed and weaved toward the stern. He passed a tipsy young man on a stool who whispered to the woman sitting next to him.

Slap.

Trevor rubbed his stinging cheek. He turned to the woman on the other side.

Slap.

In a piano bar several floors down, six men in tropical shirts: “Could you believe him at dinner?”

“That’s why he’s the legend.”

Serge walked behind their stools. “Let’s take the elevator.” They got out several decks up.

“What is this place?” asked Rachael.

“Why is everyone wrecked?” asked Coleman.

“Boulevard of Dreams,” said Serge. “The ship’s nightclub row.”

Eight layers of dance beat pounded from as many doorways. Strobes flashed through smoky windows and ricocheted around the promenade off everything shiny and fake. People staggered out the entrances of Rumors, Scandals, Attitudes, Teasers, Escapades, Seductions, and a sports bar with forty TVs, Champs. The air was
charged with the electric, anti-judgment excitement of sexual alliances made and broken in the time it took the roving mop-and-sawdust brigade to sop up unpleasantness.

Serge stepped over a puddle and dodged a careening Radio Shack substitute assistant weekend manager. Rachael discarded an empty souvenir cup. “Let’s stop in one of these places.”

“Can’t. Have to find Jim.”

“Fuck Jim. I want to dance.” She veered off into the throbbing magnetic beat of Club Nitro.

“Why do you have to find Jim?” asked Coleman.

“Tex McGraw’s on board.”

“How do you know that?”

“Saw him outside the cruise terminal.” Serge peeked in the sports bar. “But lost him before I could terminate.”

“Is Jim in there?”

“Just a bunch of guys in Pittsburgh jerseys…Where can he be?”

“Try his room?”

“By phone
and
I knocked in person, but the whole family’s out.” He started walking again. “Let’s check up top.”

They took the aft stairwell and emerged under a sky of brilliant constellations. “Wait up.” Coleman fell against a wall for an oxygen break. “Why don’t we look for Jim later. I want to go to a bar.”

“It’s a moral obligation.”

“That sounds boring. You told me how fun a cruise was.”

“Tell you what.” Serge held up a tiny LCD screen. “While we search for Jim, we’ll watch
Titanic
.”

“That’s even more boring. All those rich assholes in old clothes doing nothing.”

“Gets more interesting when the ship sinks.”

“Sinks? What are you talking about?”

“How about this? There’s a fuck scene.”

“Let me see that thing!”

Serge handed over the viewer. “Only if you understand that the sex is just a pretext to sneak history lessons in for people otherwise doomed to repeat it.”

They wound their way through scattered deck chairs.

Coleman pressed buttons. “Where’s the damn sex scene?”

“It all starts when Leonardo sees Kate Winslet about to commit suicide by jumping over the back—Oh my God! Coleman! Over there!”

“What?”

Serge took off in full sprint toward the end of the ship. “Don’t do it! Life is stupendous!…”

Ahead, a man stood on the wrong side of the railings, arms hooked backward over the top bar. He stared emptily into the ship’s foamy wake.

“Stop!…”

Without drama, the man let his arms go limp. He began tipping over for an inelegant dive into the black sea.

The man suddenly felt himself seized around the waist. “I got you!” yelled Serge. “Don’t worry! I won’t let go!”

Serge had to give it his all, but he finally managed to drag the depressed man back over the rails, where he flopped to the deck. Serge collapsed in exhaustion next to him. “They say suicide is a permanent solution to temporary problems—”

The man looked over. “You!”

“Gaylord?” said Serge. “What a coincidence! How are you liking the cruise?”

“My house!”

“I guess an apology’s in order.”

“I’ll kill you!”

“Maybe this isn’t the best time.” Serge left quickly toward the bow.

In the shadows, six floral shirts. “See those reflexes?…” They watched the pair cross the deck and vanish through automatic doors into the air-conditioned atrium.

Coleman grabbed a banister and looked down. “Zowza! How high are we?”

“Eight floors. Right back to where we started.” Serge looked over the edge at a tiny baby grand in the middle of the lobby. The piano was surrounded by a bar. Slap. Trevor moved a stool over.
Serge inhaled deeply. “I
love
atriums!” He paused to appreciate, eyes staring up at the geodesic glass skylight, then moving down, floor by floor, each a perfect circle, railings illuminated with multicolored fluorescent tubes. On the far side, a pair of glassed-in elevators, one going up, the other down. “Coleman! Let’s ride the elevators!”

“Where to?”

“Up and down a hundred times! It’s free!” He pointed toward the descending lift. “We can catch that one if we—Wait, we’re in luck!”

“What’s the matter?”

“In the elevator! It’s Jim! We found him! Excellent!…Oh, n o!” “Not excellent?”

“In that other elevator coming up. It’s Tex McGraw!…He doesn’t see Jim yet…. Come on, don’t look at the other elevator. Don’t look. Please don’t look…” The elevators passed each other. “He looked! He saw Jim! He’s frantically pressing buttons to stop the elevator and head back down. Coleman! We have to hurry!”

They dashed to the nearest stairwell, and Serge raced down three flights. He ran out to the atrium railing and looked up. McGraw’s elevator was in descent, one floor above. Serge looked down. Jim’s elevator neared the lobby. He ran back to the stairwell just as Coleman made his way out. “McGraw’s got to be stopped!”

Serge flew down two more flights and ran out to the railing again. McGraw was below him now, two levels above the lobby, where the other elevator had stopped. The doors opened; Jim got out.

Serge bolted back to the landing. “Coleman, where are you?”

“Up here.” His voice echoed down the stairwell. “Waiting for the elevator.”

Serge ran down more flights, then vaulted the last set of steps and tumbled into the lobby. He sprang up and ran out from behind the piano. Where was Jim? He looked back at the elevators. What the heck? Jim had changed his mind and gotten back in. The doors closed. McGraw watched Davenport pass the other way as his own elevator reached the bottom. Tex angrily mashed buttons and began ascending again.

“Oh, no!” Serge ran back around the piano.

Slap.

Trevor’s head swiveled. It came to a rest, looking in the direction of someone galloping up the stairwell. “I don’t believe it. That’s the fucker who attacked me in the closet at the party!”

Coleman stood at the elevators on the fourth deck. The doors opened. “Hey, Jim! It’s me, Coleman!”

Jim’s eyes widened and he quickly pressed the close button. “Jim!…” The doors shut. The elevator went up.

Coleman pressed his own button again.

The next elevator came. The door opened. Tex McGraw. Coleman stepped back. The door closed.

Serge ran up the stairs in the background. “Coleman! Come on!…”

“My elevator’s almost here.”

More footsteps. Trevor ran up the stairs. “I’ll kill that son of a bitch!”

Serge bounded onto the sixth level. He looked up and saw the bottoms of two elevators stopped on the next floor. McGraw was just getting out; Jim had already left the atrium and entered Boulevard of Dreams. Serge ran back to the stairs.

Moments later, a slow-motion four-way foot pursuit commenced past the nightclubs: McGraw advancing on Jim, and Serge advancing on McGraw, followed by Trevor, fueled with drink. The sound of the young man’s approach was masked by the demolition beat of Club Nitro.
“That bastard’s dead!…”

Tex started with what seemed an insurmountable lead, but the gap quickly closed.

“Perfect,” Serge said under his breath. “I can get to Jim in time, just as long as nothing crazy happens to slow me down. But I must remain completely focused like a laser. Not the slightest distraction. Easy now, eassssy…” He pulled his personal movie viewer from his pocket and turned on the
The Hunt for Red October
. “Oh my God, it’s the cook! Behind you!”

Behind Serge, Trevor charged the last few steps and planted his right foot to pounce.

Out of nowhere, a line of six tropical shirts formed a wall in front of him.

“Who the fuck are you?”

The answer came in fists.

Just as quickly as the shirts had appeared, they were gone. The party crowd stepped over a bloody and dazed Trevor lying across the Boulevard. Two security guards grabbed him under the arms. “Another drunk…”

Jim Davenport neared the end of the promenade and turned in the last door. He walked past a long line of TVs and took a seat in the back of Champs.

McGraw reached the doorway of the sports bar and stopped. A wicked smile crept across his face. Jim was cornered. The ex-con headed inside, savoring each step. Someone spiked a football on one of the TVs; a roar went up.

Serge arrived at the entrance. McGraw was only a few steps ahead, walking extra slow, and Jim was at the far end of the bar. Plenty of time to make his move…. One, two,
three!
…Serge charged.

Someone jumped off a chair and onto Serge’s back. He beat Serge upside the head with a plastic beer bottle and clawed his eyes.

“You bastard!” yelled Wainscotting.

“Get off me!” shouted Serge.

Gaylord bit Serge’s ear.

“Ahhhhhh!” Serge swatted back over his shoulder. He began spinning, but his passenger held on. They went faster and faster. The centrifugal force pulled Gaylord’s legs straight out behind him. A few more dizzying revolutions and they flew apart. Gaylord sailed into a wall, and Serge flipped backward over a table of beer pitchers. He struck his head violently on the floor, stared up at the ceiling and thought he was in Connecticut.

Six tropical shirts rushed over. They raised Serge into a sitting position. One of them held up three fingers. “How many?”

“Tuba.”

McGraw turned around at the sound of the commotion. Whatever it was, it was over. He directed his menace back to Jim. Tex in
creasingly relished the idea of performing the task bare-handed. Snap his neck? Slam nose cartilage into his brain? Thumbs through eye sockets? His twisted grin grew larger with each sadistic image. He squared his feet on the fifty-yard line painted across the middle of the bar’s floor and cupped his hands around his mouth:

“Jim Davenport!”

Jim turned. Immediate recognition. He jettisoned off his stool and began backing up on rubber legs. Tex savored how each slow step forward heightened the terror in his adversary.

Someone at the bar turned to a friend in a black-and-yellow Afro wig. “Did someone just call that guy Jim Davenport?”

“I heard it, too.”

Tex stepped right up to Jim. Hot, rancid breath. “Ready to die?” Jim’s knees began buckling.

The man in the wig spun his stool toward the man at the rear of the club. “Yo! Jim Davenport!”

Jim looked over at the bar.

The men in Pittsburgh jerseys gave each other a quick look. “Is it possible we attacked the wrong guy?”

“Let’s find out…. Hey! Jim! You live on Lobster Lane?”

Jim was in such a state of terror, he didn’t even realize he reflexively nodded yes.

“It’s Jim Davenport!” the Afro yelled to the other football fans at the bar. “Get him!”

They jumped off stools and stampeded past Tex. Jim shielded his face as the first fan took him down with a flying tackle, and the rest formed a fumble pile on top of him. Tex was fit to be tied. He wanted to kill them all, but the bar’s security staff poured in, dressed like referees and blowing whistles. One threw a yellow flag; the rest began pulling apart the drunken tangle.

McGraw’s face was crimson with rage as he was forced to accept the inevitable: Retreat. He started walking backward, swearing he’d get Jim at the very next opportunity. He felt something pointy and cold in his back.

“Let’s take a walk,” said Serge.

“Do you have any idea who I am?”

“Someone who’s hard of hearing.” Serge jabbed the knife a half inch, piercing Tex’s jacket and producing a trickle of blood.

They left.

Coleman entered Boulevard of Dreams. “Serge? Where are you?” He stuck his head in Club Nitro and saw Rachael at the bar. She’d spent the last two hours drinking, smoking and breaking balls. The man on the next stool whispered.

Slap.

Trevor climbed off the stool, and Coleman climbed on. “Hey, Rachael.”

“Oh, fuck.”

Coleman waved for the bartender. An umbrella cocktail arrived. He pulled a cherry off the stem with his teeth. “Rachael, can I ask you a personal question?”

“No, I will not suck your dick.”

Coleman look down into his drink. “Okay, let me think of another one…. Wait, I got it. Do you think, like, any of your friends might consider, you know, going out with a guy like me?”

Rachael exhaled a deep Marlboro drag toward the ceiling. “I can say this with complete confidence. Every woman I know would rather drive burning spears through her own eyes.”

“So I have a chance with a blind girl?”