“Makes perfect sense now,” Steve said with authority. “Read all about it in the paper: the latest thing …” Everyone turned and waited.
“… Traveling businessmen secretly moonlighting as diamond couriers.”
“Diamond couriers?” said Henry.
“Little-known fact, but secret networks of highly trained couriers are crisscrossing Florida at all times. With the state’s insane growth, there’s more than enough work to go around, and they’ve started recruiting part-timers.”
“Don’t they use armored cars?” asked Ted.
“Sometimes.” Steve opened his wallet, removing an iridescent plastic card. “But you do the math: too many jewelry stores and not enough vehicles. Plus, those trucks are neon advertisements. So couriers go under the radar, no security, dressing down, the last people you’d ever expect, like Bill. Unfortunately, there’s also a secret network of professional robbery crews who know the deal, and it’s become a high-stakes game of cat and mouse from Pensacola to Key West.”
“But if couriers are undercover, how do the gangs find out?”
“Police theorize paid informants …” Steve tilted the shiny card back and forth in the light. “… People very close to the couriers, possibly the same line of work. Maybe even staying at the same hotels …”
Everyone at the tables hushed and leaned back. In their minds, Vincent Price played the pipe organ. Eyes darted from person to person in a round-robin of suspicion. Steve’s card found the perfect angle; a hologram appeared.
“When did you reach platinum?” asked Henry.
“Last week.” He began sliding it back into his wallet.
“Can I touch?”
“No.”
MEANWHILE …
Serge grabbed a briefcase from the Javelin’s backseat and opened it in his lap. Pockets brimmed with tourist pamphlets aggressively harvested from hotel-lobby racks, then alphabetized. Florida Theater, Fort Caroline, the symphony, the zoo …
Coleman cracked another beer. “When do we get to the part about making money?”
“We’re already there.” Serge pawed through flyers. “This is the perfect spot to take in all the bridges.” A digital camera sat on the dash, and Serge rotated it ten degrees at half-minute intervals for an overlapping panorama of time-lapse night shots. “I love bridges, and Jacksonville loves me! Hard to find more spans in one spot except Pittsburgh, but then you’re in Pittsburgh. Here we have seven bridges downtown alone, because of the mighty St. Johns, and even more downstream.”
“What about tunnels?”
“Love them too, but in the current climate of homeland security, authorities now frown on my tunnel routine of taking twenty photos while standing in the moon roof steering with my knees. I think they frowned on it before as well.” Serge hit the recline lever on the driver’s seat for the required bridge-appreciation angle, smiling as he scanned sparse evening traffic crossing respective west-to-east spans: Corporate climbers from skyline insurance buildings heading south to the suburbs after another late night at the office, rental cars and hotel shuttles driving down from the northside airport, Disney-bound families in minivans with New York and New England plates getting some last miles under their belts before putting up, a stretch limo full of non-limo people who’d pooled money for a birthday party, a windowless white van with ladders on top and magnetic licensed-contractor signs on the side.
Outside the Javelin, in Serge’s blind spot, an ominous shadow grew larger.
Serge raised his eyes toward old girders of the bridge they were beneath. He grabbed his travel mug off the dash and refilled from a thermos. “Now I’m milking the last few moments of simple pleasure.”
Coleman crumpled a beer can. “From what?”
“Lightbulbs. I can’t get enough of the bulbs.”
“Bulbs?”
“Blue. All along this bridge as well as the neighboring John T. Alsop built in 1941. Rare remaining treasure of a center-steel sensibility.”
“Why blue lightbulbs?”
“Monday Night Football.” Serge chugged his travel mug. “Jacksonville now has the Jaguars, and network people are always broadcasting nightscapes of whatever city they’re in before cutting to commercials. But downtown Jacksonville was about as hopping as the Andromeda Strain when everyone’s dead from an extraterrestrial virus. TV cameras might as well have been panning the dark side of the moon. A PR windfall from professional football was about to turn into national disgrace.”
“Dear Jesus,” said Coleman. “What happened next?”
“Genius struck!” Serge took another long pull of coffee. “Someone who will forever go unrecognized said, ‘Let’s put blue lightbulbs all over the bridges.’ It’s dark; they won’t see the rest of the shit. Shazam! For pennies on the dollar, they created the illusion of a modern civilization.”
“Wow,” said Coleman. “And all because of Monday Night Football?”
“Just a guess, but fuck it: I’m going with that anyway!”
“You’re at the party!”
