Chapter Fifty-Three

MONDAY

Eight A.M.

Morning rush, downtown Miami.

Traffic crawled. Honking. People on phones, shaving, applying makeup.

Movement began at one of the high-rise condos under construction.

Sixty stories above Biscayne Boulevard, a worker sat in a small control booth with green-tinted windows. The booth slid along grooved tracks in the arm of a massive crane.

When the operator was in position, the booth stopped. A lever went forward.

Down on street level, a temporary fence with NO T RESPASSING signs surrounding the work site. A steel girder began rising from the ground.

Tied beneath the beam were two long stretches of thick rope that weren’t supposed to be there. The other ends trailed behind large piles of construction material and debris concealing the view to the road.

When the ascending beam reached the second floor, the rope pulled two people to their feet.

The feet left the ground.

Madre and Guillermo were three stories up before anyone noticed. Then everyone noticed. They screamed and waved at the crane operator, who smiled and waved back. People called police on cells; others ran along the fence, trying to find someone in a hard hat on the other side. The rest simply looked up in horrified shock.

Madre and Guillermo passed the fourth floor, hands tied behind their backs, kicking and wiggling at the ends of their nooses.

By the fifth floor, wiggling became spasmodic twitches. Madre went limp by the seventh, but Guillermo held on for two more.

The girder kept going up, higher than most of the neighboring buildings, which no longer blocked a stiff onshore wind at that height.

Word finally reached the crane operator. A level yanked back. The girder shuddered to a stop. Fifty stories above the boulevard-with magnificent views of Key Biscayne and South Beach, all the way to distant Fort Lauderdale-Madre and Guillermo swung side by side in the breeze.

Epilogue

GULF COAST OF FLORIDA

The Final Four.

Serge, Coleman, City and Country.

Not much had changed.

“Dammit, Serge! You said you were taking us to a fantastic resort!”

“Yeah,” added Country. “With an incredible pool.”

Serge innocently held out his hands. “What? You don’t like it?”

“This place?” said City.

“But it’s a historic mom-and-pop!” Serge looked up with a glow in his eyes. “The motel is one of the last shining examples of 1950s parasol architecture.”

“It’s in the middle of nowhere!”

“Actually between Fort Myers and Sarasota.”

“Same thing.”

“That’s why heritage survives! Developers haven’t had a chance to strip-mine this section of the Tamiami yet. Don’t you like the pool?”

“It’s hot,” said City, wading up to her stomach.

“I’m going back to the room!” said Country.

The door opened to number 31. Coleman was already there, after getting tossed from the pool for doing cannonballs.

“Make you a deal,” said Serge. “Watch the world-premiere screening of my spring break documentary, and I’ll take you to one of the best dinners of your life.”

The women looked at each other, then warily back at Serge.

“Swear?”

Serge held up two fingers like a Boy Scout.

“City,” said Country, pointing at a counter. “Grab the vodka. We’re going to need it.”

Everyone settled in with booze, snacks and joints as Serge hooked up the DVD player. He inserted a disc that had been edited and burned from a laptop. A thumb pressed the remote.

PLAY MOVIE

The show began. Students streaming into Panama City Beach, yelling out car windows, dragging coolers…

Two hours later, the TV showed a long-range shot of a giant crane hoisting a steel beam up into the downtown Miami sky.

Fade to black.

Serge hit pause.

He slapped his hands together. “What’d you think?”

“Have to admit,” said Country, “not as painful as I’d envisioned.”

“Still two hours of my life I’ll never get back,” said City.

“But it’s not over,” said Serge.

“You’ve got to be kidding.”

Serge aimed the remote.

PLAY

Large, white block letters filled the black screen.

EPILOGUE

Black dissolved to a sunny shore and a rolling montage narrated by Serge. The Eagles played in the background. The kids from Bahia Cabana waved good-bye and took off up A1A.

“… It’s another tequila sunrise…”

“Spring break finally ended, and the students returned north with a lifetime of stories to tell… Except one…”

A telephoto shot of a young man entering the lobby of the local FBI office, where Serge had dropped him.

“… Andy McKenna was reunited with his father at an undisclosed location and assumed a new identity.”

Four elderly women in leather leaned against the bar in the Iron Rhino Saloon.

“… The G-Unit established themselves as regular fixtures in the Florida biker scene, took up baking with an Internet brownie recipe, and were last spotted at a local planetarium for the midnight Sergeant Pepper’s laser show…”

A kiddie pool sat in a parking lot near Las Olas with a fully clothed man in the water.

“… Agent Mahoney recovered from his wounded leg and continued an indefinite leave for ‘needed rest’…”

Next: pandemonium in front of the shootout hotel, where Mahoney flashed a badge and limped away with a handle in his hand.

“… The department didn’t know it yet, but Mahoney would never return to active duty, instead opting for a well-funded fishing retirement, thanks to the contents of the briefcase Guillermo left in a hotel room…”

A dozen police cars screeched up to a downtown Miami construction site. A sixty-story crane slowly lowered a girder.

“… To this day, the double murder of Guillermo and Madre remains unsolved…”

As the girder came down, a growing crowd of onlookers watched from the street, including a homecoming queen from Indiana who ran crying up the sidewalk, followed by Johnny Vegas, pointing up in the air behind him. “But, baby, we don’t even know those people.”

The scene switched to a pair of incredibly sexy but angry women in the backseat of a ’73 Challenger.

“… City and Country became less annoying, learned to appreciate Florida’s history and enthusiastically accompanied Serge across the state on his never-ending fact-finding mission…”

The TV zoomed in on the vintage sign of their current motel.

THE END.

“You made that last part up,” said City.

“Audiences have to like the characters,” said Serge.

“What about dinner?”

“You promised!”

“And I keep my word,” said Serge. “Let’s go.”

“Where?”

He spread his arms and smiled almost as wide. “Church!”

“You lied again!” said City. “I knew we couldn’t trust you!”

“This is bullshit,” said Country. “You’re crazy if you think I’m eating free pancakes.”

“Have faith.” Serge grabbed his keys.

A quick drive up the coast to Tampa, and the foursome was soon seated in a magnificent dining room.

“Now this is a restaurant,“ said City.”I’ve never been in Shula’s Steak House before.”

“You really had us going with that church business,” said Country, reading the menu on the side of a football. “I can’t believe you actually came through.”

“But this is church,” said Serge.

A waiter wheeled over a cart with exquisitely marbled slabs of meat for them to select.

Serge made an S with his fingers and whispered, “Shula.”

“What?” said the waiter.

Serge winked.

An hour later, dinner came to a spectacular conclusion. Country set a napkin in her plate. “I’m stuffed.”