“What?” He turned around. The Dobermans were almost on him. He blew the whistle. The dogs ran under a forklift.
In the unseen distance, wading boots sprinted away through the reeds, back toward a brown Plymouth Duster.
Coleman stuck the whistle in his mouth, climbed through the hole in the fence and wrapped his arms around a four-foot-tall chemical tank. He returned through the fence, tooting the whistle all the way, and slid the cylinder into the Buick’s backseat.
“We can go now,” said Coleman. He turned as the Dobermans were almost to the car. The whistle blew. They ran back through the hole in the fence.
Serge threw the car into gear and nodded. “So
“Dogs just don’t like me.”
THE BUICK FLEW south on U.S. 1. Serge accelerated across the drawbridge from the mainland to Key Largo. He looked at Coleman. “What’s the matter?”
Coleman scratched his arms. He glanced in the backseat. Then scratched again.
Serge grinned. “You can’t get in the tank, can you?”
“There were always other guys before. They had equipment.”
“What were you planning?”
“I don’t know. Maybe tap a little hole with a pick and a hammer.”
“Are you insane? Those things are highly pressurized. It’ll blow the pick right back through your forehead!”
“What about a really tiny hole?”
“You don’t know anything about physics, do you?”
“Will you help?”
The Buick pulled into a strip mall and parked at the first of fifty scuba shops on the island. The store was empty except for a single employee behind the cash register. The nineteen-year-old salesman had sun-bleached hair, a surfer’s tan and half-mast marijuana eyelids. He was totally stoked.
“Uh, listen,” said Serge, lounging against the counter. “We need some valve work on a tank.”
“No problem-o.”
“Except it’s not really a scuba tank. It’s for medical purposes.”
The salesman shook his head. “No oxygen tanks. I can’t work on anything flammable.”
“It’s not oxygen. It’s something else, but it’s inert.”
“What?”
“Why don’t I just show you?”
Serge and Coleman wrestled the tank into the store.
The salesman started giggling and pointing at them. “You dudes are gonna do nitrous!”
“Don’t worry, dudes. I do this all the time. One of my specialties.”
“How long?”
“Half hour. But it has to be cash. The owner’s kind of weird about this.”
Serge and Coleman killed time wandering the store. They gazed into a glass case of hulky metal wristwatches with five-hundred-foot crush depths. Coleman picked up a Speedo box. “So you’re really going to marry Molly?”
“Isn’t she special?”
Coleman opened the box and stretched the trunks in front of his face. “I just don’t see you two together.”
“There’s a soul-mate connection,” said Serge. “I can’t explain it, but she’s definitely the one.”
The Speedo ripped. Coleman stuck it back in the box. “What if she isn’t the one?”
“Then we shake hands, say no hard feelings, and I drop her some place with no phones for five miles. Word on the street is you need a big head start….”
They went in the back room. The salesman beamed proudly at his art. “Okay, you’re gonna love this. Easy connections, that’s my trademark. Here’s where your regulator goes” — he attached a rubber hose that ran to the mouthpiece in his other hand — “and this is your auxiliary port with universal mount.”
“What for?” asked Coleman.
“So you can fill other tanks. Regular scuba or the minis. You can’t take this giant thing to parties. Suggest you get one of those little emergency tanks we have. Fits in your pocket. Five minutes of air…” The salesman stuck the regulator in his mouth.
“Hey! Hey! Hey!” said Coleman. “That’s my gas!” He jerked the regulator away and stuck it in his own mouth.
“C’mon. This is a quality job,” said the salesman. “Gimme a bump.”
“All right, but just a little.”
A short while later, Coleman picked up the tank and stepped over the passed-out teen. They got back in the Buick and continued west. More bridges, Tavernier, Upper and Lower Matecumbe. They started across the Long Key Viaduct.
“Coleman, check this out.” Serge wiggled his finger inside a hole in the driver’s door. “I think I feel a bullet…. Coleman?”
Coleman was slumped against the far door with the regulator in his mouth, a puddle of drool on his shirt. Serge plucked the rubber mouthpiece from Coleman’s lips, and it came out with the sound of someone popping a finger in a cheek.
A minute passed; Coleman sat up. “What did you do that for?”
“There’s a bullet hole. I told you I didn’t break your window. Somebody was shooting at us. It shattered the glass, traveled across the car and lodged here.”
“Why would anyone do that?”
“I don’t know, but I’ve been getting an odd feeling lately that I’m being followed.”
“You’re imagining things.”
“How do you explain the bullet?”
“South Florida,” said Coleman. “Probably a stray from all the people shooting for reasons that don’t concern us.”
“Think so?”
