“…Always wanted to do this, Coleman! Trace the historic route of Happy Jack and his merry band, the original Keys party animals! The books of the great historian John Viele bird-dogged me to the microfilm of the original
Serge tacked a gradual thirty degrees southwest, mangrove silhouettes all around. He skirted the Torch Keys, then Summerland and Cudjoe. The moon caught the white skin of the radar blimp tethered at five hundred feet. Serge opened the throttle wide for another screaming run across the flats.
COLEMAN WADED ASHORE on Big Pine and started walking up a deserted road. Headlights hit him. A station wagon stopped. The back door opened. Coleman got in with the vampires.
BIG FLOPPY SHOES slapped down a footpath on Coppitt Key. The trail led between a row of dirty headstones. Two men read checklists as they walked. Red rubber balls on their noses. Mr. Blinky stopped and fired up a joint. He handed it to Uncle Inappropriate, then bent down and touched one of the tombstones. He stood up and crossed it off his page.
The pair continued passing the joint as they strolled off into the darkness. On the other side of the cemetery, a sheriff’s cruiser rolled through the front gate.
Gus panned the searchlight across the tombstones. “What exactly did the dispatcher say?”
“You know, the usual. Some clowns in the cemetery…”
AN AIRBOAT BLASTED across the Great White Heron National Wildlife Refuge and slalomed through the Saddlebunches. Serge was in his element. “Over there,” he shouted. “Boca Chica, where the Navy jets touch and go. Used to have a historic dive. The men’s room door opened to the parking lot….”
The airboat straightened out and raced northeast, avoiding sandbars that were only visible on a map in Serge’s brain. He heard other boats now. Distant running lights from the fishing trawlers; no lights on the smugglers. Getting closer, skimming north of Stock Island, then the naval installations on Dredgers and Fleming keys. “Almost there, Coleman!…” A final cut due south through Man of War Harbor, on a dead bearing for the sparkling lights of Key West Bight.
DRUNK TOURISTS STAGGERED out of saloons, barefoot runaways begged on the sidewalk in front of St. Paul’s. A station wagon drove north through the intersection of Eaton. Five vampires read five sheets of paper.
“Let me off up here.”
The car stopped at the corner of Greene. Coleman got out. He stuck his head back in a window. “I think number eighteen is right over there. Serge takes me all the time.”
“Thanks.” The station wagon turned left. Coleman began walking east toward the string of bars along the harbor. All had doors open to the night air. Turtle Kraals, Half-Shell. Coleman entered Schooner’s and took a seat overlooking the big dock that ran parallel behind the restaurant. He ordered a rumrunner and opened his wallet to the family photo section stuffed with bar coupons.
Coleman had just finished his drink when a deep aviation drone came across the water, growing louder and louder until a silver airboat appeared out of the night. The boat pulled sideways up to the dock as Coleman trotted down the steps behind the bar.
Serge unbuckled his seatbelt and reached down for the mooring rope. “Coleman, get up on the dock and tie us off.” He turned and threw the line to Coleman, who wrapped it around a cleat.
Serge climbed out of the boat, and they headed off on the Night Tour.
In the parking lot at the end of the pier, headlights came on. A brown Plymouth Duster.
SERGE LED COLEMAN on a crooked path until he stopped and sat on a curb between the water and the end of Lazy Day Lane.
Coleman tried to get a wet lighter going. “Why are we stopping here?”
“There’s Jimmy’s secret studio, number twenty-two on the scavenger list. I want to see who gets it first.”
“What studio?”
“That plain, white-washed building with no signs. Looks like an ice house.”
“Buffett really records there?”
“Yeah, but nobody’s supposed to know,” said Serge. “I staked out the place two years ago when I heard they were about to start the new album. Sure enough, these fancy cars start pulling up, people looking around suspiciously before ducking inside. I recognized Fingers and Utley and Mac and finally Bubba himself. I figured that was my chance.”
“Chance for what?”
