“I mean hook up with any new accomplices?” “No one comes to mind.”
“Think hard. Recently meet anyone by so-called chance? Somebody you might even be traveling with?”
“Nope.” Serge’s eye glanced involuntarily toward Story’s table.
Serge’s Blog. Star date 574.385.
Holy Cow! How could I have forgotten? A whole bunch of stuff happened before this. It all started three weeks ago. I knew I had a feeling something wasn’t kosher-because it wasn’t! Turns out Mahoney’s right about my memory. Here I am bopping along, seeing this chain of events a certain way. But then I just recalled all this other earlier jazz that explains everything! Sorry about that. My mind tends to jump around a bit. Usually it’s from subject to subject. But sometimes it hops around in time. And it can be especially challenging if the time dislocation is fractured, like when part of me ended up in the Bronze Age, and another part in a rerun of She’s the Sheriff. And I’m congratulating these bearded dudes on their spears and helmets, but they just point and say, “Who’s that?” And I say, “She’s the sheriff.” And time’s definitely tricky if you get pulled over by a cop who never studied Einstein. This was years ago, before they wanted to question me for all those, well, you know. Anyway, the officer is writing me a ticket, saying I ran a red light and was speeding. I said, Exactly! That’s why it’s only fair you let me off with a warning. I explained that matter and energy bend the universe, and the closer an object gets to the speed of light, the more time slows down. So by speeding, I was actually trying to obey the law, accelerating in order to stretch out the yellow light. Of course, for it to work, you need to be traveling 186,000 miles a second, and I was driving an old car. Wouldn’t listen. Cost me $200.1 digress again. See what I mean? But I think I’ve got this memory glitch ironed out: Everything that’s happened up to now on this trip-let’s call it Part One. And all the crazy stuff I just remembered that went on three weeks before, we’ll call Part Two, which is a superlong flashback that takes place entirely before Part One. Then, when we’re back up to speed, we’ll return to the present in Part Three. Got it? Comprende? … Good, because that cop wouldn’t be able to. I’m still pissed. But no sense dwelling on the past. Time’s a-wastin’. Tick-tock, tick-tock …
AMELIA ISLAND
A two-tone Javelin sat in an empty motel parking lot at the northeastern corner of the state. Only one occupant.
Coleman reached over from the passenger side and hit the horn.
A second-floor door opened. Serge stepped onto the balcony buttoning his tropical shirt. A woman appeared from the room. Latin bombshell, jet-black hair, beauty mark, all hips. She grabbed Serge roughly by the collar and yanked him back for a final, deep kiss.
Serge trotted down the stairs with a zippered pouch and hopped in the driver’s seat. They cruised south across the island.
“Finally!” said Coleman.
“I’m here now.” Serge blew through a yellow light. “What’s the problem?”
“I’ve been bored for an hour while you were having all the fun.” “What? Back there?” Serge wiped lipstick off his mouth. “That wasn’t fun. That was business.” “What kind of business?” “Can’t tell you.” “Why not?”
“Part of my secret plan.” “What’s in the zippered pouch?” “Can’t tell you.” “I’m out of beer.”
Serge pulled into a convenience store. “Here’s your pharmacy.” Back at the just-departed motel room, a Latin bombshell opened a closet door and sat in front of a small table. She pulled the cover off a vintage 1941 Zenith Trans-Oceanic. Switches flipped. Tubes glowed inside the shortwave. The woman opened a notebook, pulled a heavy steel microphone toward that pair of full, fiery lips, and began in a melting voice: “Ninety-seven, twelve, one-thirty-two, sixty-eight…”
A couple miles up the road, Coleman ran out of the convenience store with a cardboard suitcase. “Beer, sweet beer!”
They pulled out again, two small flags flapping atop the front fenders, like it was the governor’s motorcade, except…
“Serge,” said Coleman. “I don’t recognize either of those flags.”
“Because I had to draw them myself. I love Amelia Island! Two centuries ago this was an international Dodge City.” Serge fit an odd-looking baseball cap on his head and pointed at the left side of the hood. “That green cross was the flag of the creatively named free republic of the Green Cross. Can you believe there once was an independent nation right here on this island?”
Coleman ripped open the twelve-pack. “That’s almost interesting.”
“One of the most bizarre underdog stories in state history,” said Serge. “This crazy Scottish soldier of fortune named MacGregor convinced fifty-five guys to attack Spain. It was the kind of thing frat boys concoct when only suds are left coming out of the kegs. Even stranger, it worked.”
“How’dthey do it?”
