“Serge, what are you doing in the creek wearing only your underwear?”
“Baptizing myself.” Serge dunked his head in the water, then threw a fist in the air.
Coleman turned around. “I think the restaurant just opened.”
“Excellent.” Serge climbed out of the creek and headed for the Yearling. “I could go for some vittles.”
“What about clothes?”
“Oh, right. That was almost another episode of having to talk fast on my feet.”
Moments later . . .
“Whoa,” said Coleman. “Look at this old place.”
“Couldn’t you tell that from the outside?”
“But that was like funky, broken-down old. This is . . .”
“People drive right by and never have any idea all this is inside.” Serge ran a hand along a railing. “Dark varnished wood like a hunting lodge, giant library of antiquarian books, stretched-out alligator hide on the wall above the vintage Coca-Cola machine, old hotel mail slots, more country antiques in the dining room, the bare-bones stage where legendary Willie Green served up Delta blues on slide guitar and harmonica . . .”
Coleman grabbed Serge’s arm. “The sign over that door: ‘The Cooter Shell Lounge.’ Can we go in?”
“Absolutely,” said Serge. “Then I can show you all the ancient southern college football pennants, probably from 1952 when this place opened.”
They grabbed stools. Double whiskey and a bottle of water arrived.
“We’d like some food,” Serge told the bartender.
“I’ll get you some menus.”
“No need.” Serge waved a hand over his head. “Already know what we want. Cooter. For both of us.”
“How would you like that cooked?”
“I don’t even know what it is,” said Serge. “Just tell the cook that I got a fever, and the only prescription is more cooter. You may go.”
Coleman looked around in the dim light at more rows of books and a movie poster. “Man, they’ve got stuff by that Rawlings chick all over the place.”
“Because they know their history.” Serge drained his water. “And few realize how Marjorie was wired into so many Florida icons like the Kevin Bacon game. They just think she was this bucolic scribe. But you know how the Ripley’s Believe It or Not Museum in St. Augustine is in an old castle?”
“I liked the shrunken heads and the grandfather clock made from three thousand clothespins.”
“Before it was Ripley’s, it used to be a hotel run by Rawlings and her husband.”
“I don’t believe it,” said Coleman.
Serge shrugged. “Believe it or not. They also bought a cottage on Crescent Beach, and her husband ran the nearby Dolphin Restaurant at Marineland, one of the state’s earliest roadside attractions. They also managed my favorite feature of the park, a since-bulldozed-and-forgotten classic Florida watering hole called the Moby-Dick Lounge, where Hemingway once pulled a stool up to a bar shaped like a whaling ship.”
Coleman chugged his bourbon. “Rawlings made Florida her bitch.”
“You’ve broken new ground in literary criticism.”
Coleman slammed his glass down hard. “So what’s the deal with that nightmare about Felicia getting whacked?”
“Could you maybe ramp into the subject a little more gently?”
“But you said you’d tell me when we got in this restaurant about how the new Master Plan involves your revenge.”
“That I did.” Serge raised a finger to order another water. “Remember when we were back in Miami last year, and I met Felicia, who was working for the consulate of Costa Gorda?”
“Yeah, but she never did anything to anyone. Why’d they kill her?”
“Politics was involved in every level of a nefarious web that got her taken out. It became a complex espionage game of musical chairs, until there were no chairs left and she was left standing. So while I’m working on my new detective career, I’ve got my feelers out. Mahoney, too.”
“I thought you and Mahoney were fighting scam artists.”
“Correct again,” said Serge. “But you hear things along the way, and I’ll never rest as long as this stone is in my shoe.”
“Didn’t you rest after killing that big campaign organizer out in the Gulf?” asked Coleman. “The one you blamed for her death?”
“I expected the usual wave of peaceful satisfaction, but my stomach had this burning ball of acid,” said Serge. “He was just a middleman; I want the hand on the gun.”
“How can Mahoney help?”
“He’s in the perfect position to pick up chatter since establishing his own intelligence connections. After the CIA learned he was retired law enforcement with a physical business address on the sketchy side of Miami, they started paying him a thousand dollars a week to run a dummy front corporation.”
“What does he do for that?”
“Just calls the CIA number in the phone book once a month, and the people listening in think he’s an actual front company, diverting attention from the real fronts.”
Coleman scratched his head. “I’m confused.”
“That means it’s effective.” Serge stared up at a vintage felt pennant for the Crimson Tide. “And Mahoney just might be loosening the jar lid.”
“How’s that?”
