“Whatever the fuck,” said Rebel. “It’s a chair with a very high back and casters or wheels or a swivel base. You happy?”
Sop Choppy looked at the ceiling. “… Hmmm-hmmm-hmmm…
Rebel ignored him. “…Fernandez leans forward in the chair and bears down on the young man with that glare of his. The lieutenant tries to maintain eye contact, but he can’t. Fernandez sits back and folds his hands in his lap. He doesn’t say anything. The young guy’s really shaking now. Fernandez finally opens a drawer in his desk. He takes out a stopwatch and a gun. The new guy doesn’t know what’s going on. Fernandez braces his shooting arm on the edge of the desk and says in an unnervingly calm voice: ‘You have one minute to make me angry. Or you die.’ He clicks the stopwatch. This is the test. The kid is stupid with fear. Fernandez looks at his stopwatch. ‘You now have fifty seconds.’ The guy figures he better do something. He starts swearing at Fernandez, but he’s stuttering. Fernandez laughs. ‘I’ve been called worse. Forty seconds.’ The guy insults Fernandez’s mother. Fernandez laughs again. ‘I never liked her myself. Thirty seconds.’ The guy’s in a complete panic, sweat pouring down his face. Fernandez flicks the safety off the gun. ‘Twenty-five seconds.’ The guy’s head jerks around the room. ‘Twenty seconds.’ Fernandez cocks the hammer. ‘Fifteen seconds.’ The guy runs up to the desk. ‘Ten seconds.’ He picks up the model ship, races across the room and throws it out the fuckin’ window!”
“No!” said Coleman.
“Yes!” said Rebel. “Fernandez loses it. Starts screaming at the kid:
“The guy get his promotion?” asked Coleman.
“Yeah, he got his promotion all right,” said Rebel. “Fernandez prides himself on his word. Then right after, they cut him in half with a table saw.”
“A table saw?”
Rebel nodded. “Lengthwise.”
“I’m telling you he doesn’t exist!” said Sop Choppy.
“Does too,” said Rebel.
“Then how come nobody’s seen him coming or going?”
“He drives this big white Mercedes, but the windows are tinted.”
14
A BIG WHITE Mercedes with tinted windows drove past the No Name Pub. Air conditioning on 65. The suspension made it feel like the sedan was standing still. It was the S600 class with the massive V-12 engine, liquid-display global navigation system and a manufacturer’s suggested retail price of $122,800.
There were four men in the Mercedes. Actually five. The last one was in the trunk, pounding with fists.
Bang, bang, bang.
The driver tooted from a cocaine bullet and looked in the rearview. “He better not be fucking up the lining.”
All the men in the car wore bright tropical shirts. The one sitting across the front seat from the driver cracked open a Heineken. “Why didn’t we just shoot him back on the mainland? That way he couldn’t mess up your car.”
The driver whipped out a giant nickel .45 automatic and stuck it between the man’s eyes. “I told you! Because this is just like the beginning of
Not those stupid movies again. All the other men in the car knew what the Number One film was, and it was also how they finally realized that the driver had gone completely insane. The movie was what started the whole nickname business. Fernandez demanded you call him that or else.
It had been hard to tell for a while about the insanity thing. Between Fernandez’s original personality and the cocaine, he’d always been a nervous experience, even when he was working his way up as a deckhand unloading pot. Now that he was at the top of the organization and had more coke than he needed, it was beyond intolerable. There was never any conversation in the Mercedes that Fernandez didn’t start himself. Many trips were silent the whole way down the Keys, except for the near-constant tooting up that made them all tremble. One toot closer to pulling that big gun again.
The Mercedes crossed the bridge over Bogie Channel to No Name Key. Fernandez was leaned over snorting when the miniature deer wandered into the road.
The Mercedes maintained a steady sixty miles per hour. The guys glanced at each other. Fernandez was doing an extra-long series of toots, even for him. The man in the front passenger seat finally cracked and grabbed the dashboard. “Doug! Watch out!”
Fernandez looked up and slammed the brakes. Another car would have screeched to a halt, but the antilocks quietly eased the sedan to a stop a few feet from the unstartled animal. It trotted into the brush. The .45 automatic was back in the passenger’s face. “What did you call me!”
The passenger replayed his own voice in a loop inside his head. Shit, he’d called him Doug.
“I didn’t mean anything by it,” said the passenger. “Just the excitement. We were going to hit that deer.”
