One of the businessmen pointed up at the evening newscast. “Look, it’s on again.”

  The tables became quiet. Someone asked the bartender to crank the volume.

  “What’s going on?” asked Serge.

  “Shhhhh. You’ll miss it.”

  “… Investigators were initially baffled by the bodies of two young men, who appeared to have been killed by giant constrictor snakes. While reports of large exotic pets being released into the wild are well documented, no confirmed fatalities have ever been reported. Complicating matters were severe facial injuries that couldn’t be explained by any known pets. Official spokesmen said the case was going nowhere until a break came, of all places, from a video anonymously posted on YouTube. The popular Internet site reported record-breaking hits until the video was taken down at the request of authorities, but not before our station was able to obtain a copy. The footage is too offensive to air, but it begins with a pair of so-called skinheads attacking a homeless man beneath an underpass near Jacksonville’s picturesque St. Johns River. The video then jumps to a predawn scene where the tables have been turned and the skinheads are under attack. Meanwhile, law enforcement has requested that anyone with information please contact them, but so far all the department’s anonymous tip lines have been swamped by callers registering support for the perpetrators …”

  The TV image switched to a police captain at a podium. “Two people are dead, and there’s at least one very disturbed person out there. So if you don’t have any pertinent information, please stop calling us and laughing.”

  The anchorwoman returned. “While this station continues to stand by its policy of not airing the graphic footage, our own science editor Mary Nelson is here to explain the physics of how the young men died. Mary? …”

  “Jennifer, I’m standing in the outdoors section of a local Home Depot. To the stable individual, everything here appears innocent and cheerful. But to a heart filled with malice, evil lurks beneath the begonias. I’m now holding up an unassuming garden hose. This is the type with small pinholes that collapses flat and was used extensively to irrigate lawns in the nostalgic days of old Florida before built-in underground systems became the rage. It was a pair of hoses just like the one in my hand that police have identified as the murder weapon and is now on sale for a limited time … Back to you …”

  “Thanks Mary … Later in this broadcast: It was supposed to be a fun outing, but in the end a bear lay dead and a father was thankful for his son’s remote-control helicopter …”

  The kamikaze opened a laptop on the table. “Check it out. I captured the video before they took it down.”

  The table gang got up and crowded around the notebook’s screen, showing grainy, low-light footage of two people wrapped ankle-to-shoulder in green hoses. They slowly crossed a lawn like inchworms.

  “… Now the Action Five business report. Brad?”

  “Jennifer, all area home improvement stores are reporting a huge run on garden hoses …”

  The loan consolidator: “Newspaper said they were in a race to get to the shut-off valve before the automatic sprinkler system came on and filled the hoses.”

  “So what?” said the fertilizer salesman. “How can water in those hoses hurt them?”

  “Can’t if they’re regular hoses,” said Serge. “But like the TV lady said, those are the special irrigation kind.”

  “Irrigation?”

  “Roll up flat,” Serge continued. “Hundreds of tiny holes. Stretch ‘em across a lawn, turn on the water, and they expand into thick round hoses spraying a light but high-coverage mist that results in a magnificently lush tropical landscape, unless they’re wrapped around skinheads, then it’s a landscape of justice.”

  “I remember those,” said a pharmaceutical salesman from Savannah. “My grandfather used them in the sixties.”

  “Very big in this state when I was a kid,” said Serge. “Evokes idyllic childhood memories, getting goose bumps stroking the hose’s sleek rubber skin the other night. I mean decades ago.”

  Someone pointed at the screen. “They made it to the valve. They’re trying to switch the lever with their noses.”

  “They’re bashing each other’s faces!”

  “Look at ‘em go!”

  “This is too sick to watch. Can you enlarge it?”

  “The sprinklers just came on! The hoses are expanding!”

  “They’re seizing up! … Ooooo …”

  “Jesus! Look at the blood flow from those head wounds!”

  “Why is it spurting so much?”

  “Fun fact,” said Serge. “Most people think constrictor snakes-and now irrigation hoses-kill prey through strangulation, when death actually comes from high blood pressure. CNN’s Dr. Sanjay Gupta calls it the silent killer.”

  The hotel robbery crew was divided into two groups: talent and muscle. Talent was thinning out. The muscle took the form of the Jellyfish/Eel’s personal bodyguards, who were required when the gang locked horns with another crew in a turf dispute and won a messy, decisive victory. There was little chance of the rival faction reconstituting, and they weren’t very tough anyway, but why take the chance?

  Muscle had the stomach-and voracious appetite-for violence. Talent didn’t. Several had been shanghaied from the remnants of the capitulated gang. Their hallmarks were tedious preparation, stealth and intel, which helped avoid any contact with the marks, who were never harmed. Consummate gentleman bandits.

  Muscle had a more inelegant approach.

  Talent wore overalls, and right now four of them stared down at the precedent-setting deviation of an unconscious salesman and maid on the room’s tiled entryway.

  A light knock at a door. Everyone knew who it was.

  “Answer it.”

  “I’m not going to answer it.” Another quiet knock.

  “Someone has to answer it.”

  “So you answer it.”

  “Damn.” The one with the false GARY stitched over his pocket forced himself toward the door on licorice legs. He checked the peephole from habit and undid the chain.

  Two massive bodyguards pushed their way inside, followed by a taller, thinner person in a brown leather jacket. A glowing blob peeked out the neckline of his dark T-shirt.

  Two trailing bodyguards covered the flank. They made a last visual recon of the hall before coming inside and bolting the door.

  The Eel squatted and felt the victims’ wrists. Weak pulses.

  He stood back up. He never spoke loudly, never had to. “They get a look?”

  “No, I mean, the guy. We jumped him immediately. I don’t know. He- … I think the maid can identify us.”

  Moaning from the floor.

  Without fanfare or urgency, the Eel slowly slipped his hands into leather riding gloves that matched his jacket. Then he grabbed a lamp off the dresser, snapping the plug out of the wall, and brought the base down hard, over and over, striking both heads with a series of stomach-churning thuds that started with a thick resonance and eventually became squishy. One of the overalls ran in the bathroom and hugged the toilet.

  The Eel set the lamp back. “Where are the stones?”

  “C-c-couldn’t find them.”

  “Check the light switches?”

  Energetic nodding. “Just like you said.”

  An intimidating pause. He held out a palm. “Screwdriver.”

  One of the gang practically fell over himself fishing a slot-head from a toolbox and slapping it into a gloved hand. The Eel went to the wall. “Check this one?”

  More nodding.

  He unscrewed the faceplate. Nothing there. Then he unscrewed the switch itself, carefully removing the mechanism and letting it hang from two copper wires. He reached into the back of the junction box and retrieved a small white envelope. The contents emptied into a leather palm. The gang stood stunned at the sight of a dozen near-flawless Peruzzi-cut diamonds in the two-to-four-carat range. He gently poured them back into the envelope.

  “How’d you know those were there?”

  “Our inside source,” said the Eel. “Same info I gave you.”

  “But we just thought you meant the faceplates, not behind the switch.”

  “That’s the problem. You thought.”

  “I’m really sorry. I’ll do anything to make it up-“

  The Eel raised a hand that received prompt silence. “Mistakes happen. We got the diamonds so no harm done… Get your shit…”

  “Oh, thank you! It’ll never happen again!” The maintenance man with the stitched name turned and closed the lid on his toolbox. He was so unnerved by the roller-coaster events that he never realized what came out of his mouth next: “You won’t be sorry, Jellyfish …”

  The lamp came off the dresser again.

  Wham, wham, wham, wham …

  The others jumped back.

  Seemed like it would go on forever … Wham, wham, wham …

  Finally, the Eel was done. A previously white maintenance uniform was now red. A bodyguard stepped forward with Kleenex and wiped specks from his boss’s cheeks.

  The Eel looked at the remaining trio of overalls, frozen in the realization that they were next. Instead, the lamp flew into a corner. “Now clean all this up. And next time follow instructions.”

  A bodyguard opened the door and held out his arm for them to wait as he made another visual sweep. All clear. They filed out and headed up the hall, passing room after room. On the other side of one door: rapid, clipped conversation.

  “Who’s your favorite astronaut?”

  “Frank Borman. His first lunar circumnavigation healed national wounds of 1968,” said Serge. “Yours?”

  “John Young.”

  “Good choice. He and Story Musgrave co-hold the record of six space flights.”

  “Except Musgrave’s were all shuttle. Young did it the hard way…”

  “Two Geminis …”

  “And two Apollos,” said Story. “Oh yes! Including a moon walk. Fuck me! Faster! Fuck the shit out of me!”

  Serge thrust like a jackhammer. “Where have you been all my life?”

  “Don’t stop! Oh God! Don’t stop!”

  “Okay, original Mercury astronaut Deke Slayton finally made it into space on 1975’s joint Soyuz mission …”

  “Harder! Faster! I’m coming!…”

  Serge increased his rhythm. “What made you change your mind about me?”

  “Back at the bar, you defended my honor. No man’s ever done that … Oh God! I’m coming again! I’m coming again!…”

  Coleman cracked a beer in a dark corner. “I had the G.I. Joe with the space capsule, but I blew it up with firecrackers.”

  Story panted and raised her head. “What the hell’s he doing in here?”

  “You know how some guys think of baseball players to prolong ejaculation?”

  “Yeah?”

  Coleman crashed into the sliding glass balcony door. “Sorry …”

  Serge thrust again. “That’s why he’s here.”

  “Make him leave.”

  “Coleman …” said Serge.

  Coleman grabbed a joint from over his ear. “I’ll be on the balcony.”

  Fifteen minutes later, Serge rolled off her in utter exhaustion.

  Story fought to catch breath and wiped sweat off her face with a bedsheet. “That was incredible. I’ve never been with anyone like you! Must have had a dozen.”

  Serge stared at the ceiling in a religious trance.

  “You okay?”

  He spoke in a flat robotic monotone. “I can’t believe it. I actually came twice. There is a God.”

  “You’ve never come twice before?”

  “No, I’ve come more than that, but it took a long night of love-making with extended intermissions to reload the howitzer. But this time they were three minutes apart without stopping. Until now I thought the cosmos had sentenced me without parole to The Guy’s Curse of One.”

  “Yeah, I thought you were losing it a little there in the middle.”

  “That was after the first. But I didn’t want to say anything because you seemed to be having such a good time.”

  “What made the difference?”

  “Guess our space conversation. Whew! After sex like that, there’s one thing I love to do!” He rolled over and reached for the drawer on the nightstand.

  “I didn’t know you smoked … Well, I guess if you’re ever going to smoke, it’s after sex …”

  “Oh, I don’t smoke.” Serge removed a small plastic device from the drawer and held it to his eyes.

  Story got a puzzled look. “You like to look at View-Masters after sex?”

  Serge hit the lever. “I actually like to look at them during sex, but it’s been met with near-universal criticism.” , I

  “Let me see that…”

  He handed it to her. She clicked the lever through black-and-white stereographic images of the Overseas Highway. “Wow! These are fantastic! Must be sixty years old!” Click, click, click. “I hope you have more …” Click, click …

  Serge stared at the ceiling again. “Love has come to town.”

  “And here’s a super-early one of Sloppy Joe’s.” Click. Click. Click.

  Serge looked sideways on the pillow. “If I’d only known, I’d have been smashing all kinds of noses into bars.”

  Click, click. Story kept her eyes to the viewer and held out a hand. “Another reel!”

  NEXT MORNING

  An AMC Javelin raced down A1A and took a small, low bridge across the Tolomato River. It turned south on San Marco Avenue. Serge alternately glanced out the windows and down at his cluttered lap: glossy eight-by-ten satellite photos, View-Master reels, vintage postcards in protective plastic cases.

  “Holy cow,” said Coleman. “Look at all those shoppers at that big freakin’ mall made of old stones.”

  “How many times do I have to tell you to keep the joints down!” said Serge. “And it’s not a mall. It’s Castillo de San Marcos, the massive four-hundred-year-old masonry fort-“

  “-to protect St. Augustine inlet as part of Spain’s early coastal defense.” Story looked back down at her history text. “Coquina rock quarried from Anastasia Island. And it’s three hundred years old, not four. The first century they used a series of wooden battlements.” Serge’s heart went pitter-pat.

  Coleman exhaled another huge hit out the window. “You know all those new malls that are made to look old? And how instead of inside, all the store entrances are outside, and everyone walks around fake brick courtyards getting sweaty, and you can’t find a place to park for shit unless it’s a mile away, and by then you forgot what you came to buy and now just want a taco, but have to settle for elephant ears at the county fair until the guards smell your weed behind the Tilt-A-Whirl, and you’re exhausted by the time you escape back to the parking lot and decide to go to the mall. I am really, really high.”

  “Just keep that joint down.”

  “I want to buy something,” said Coleman. “You sure it’s not a mall?”

  “Fairly certain.” Serge held an encased, circa 1960 postcard up to the windshield for roadside comparison. “Ever seen that commercial about your brain on drugs?”

  “I love that commercial.” Coleman fired up another number. “It’s a scream if you’re toasted. ‘Look, my brain’s an egg!’ I’m hungry. Do we have any eggs ?”

  “I’m trying to concentrate,” said Serge.

  “I’m trying to study,” said Story.

  “I’ll look for eggs,” said Coleman.

  The riverfront road swung south onto Avenida Menendez. Tourists jammed sidewalks and narrow alleys. A horse pulled a carriage of Norwegians with disposable cameras. Coleman toked; Story highlighted her textbook; Serge held up a postcard. Nothing matched. He checked the satellite photo and clicked through a View-Master reel. No hits. “I could swear it’s around here somewhere.”

  “We just passed a place with eggs.”

  “I’ve definitely driven too far.” Serge made a U, retracing his route north.

  Coleman pointed out the window again. “Now I know where we are. There are those giant cats that scared the piss out of me last time.”

  “The Bridge of Lions,” said Serge.

  “But they’re just statues made of stone. Why was I so scared?”

  “You were on mescaline.”

  “That would do it,” said Coleman. “Once the phone rang and it was after dark before I came out from under the bed.”

  “Coleman!” snapped Story, gesturing with annoyance at the book she was trying to read.

  “Sorry.” He turned to Serge. “What are you looking for?”

  “Site of the famous Monson Motor Lodge.”

  “What’s that?”

  Story clapped her book shut in frustration. “Martin Luther King Jr. was arrested during a sit-in at the Monson.” She reached for her organizer and a term-paper rough draft. “June 11,1964.”

  “Resulting publicity broke a House filibuster,” said Serge. “Paving the way for passage of the historic Civil Rights Act.”

  “Senate filibuster,” said Story.

  Serge adjusted his underwear to accommodate the growing bulge.

  Coleman tapped an ash. “So what’s with the postcard and photos?”

  “The Monson was demolished, but I was able to get this old postcard of the motel off eBay, which I triangulated to within a three-block range with my vintage View-Master collection. Then I went on Google Earth at the library and hovered over the resulting target zone looking for landmarks.”

  “Find anything?”

  Serge unscrewed the top of a thermos. “They razed the motel, and never in a million years would I have recognized the new one. Except they kept the original pool and built around it. Must have been cost prohibitive to rip it out.” He tapped a kidney-shaped spot on the satellite photo. “The configuration is distinctive, and it’s the only pool on the strip that sits up against the sidewalk, just off the west end of the last palm tree-lined median strip.”

  “So why can’t you find it?”

  Serge chugged straight from his thermos and threw up the other hand. “That’s what I don’t understand.”