Nuclear Jellyfish LP A Novel Chapter One Jacksonville Midnight. Two young men walked along the bank of the St. Johns River, sporting shaved heads, sleeveless T-shirts and bituminous eyes that proudly announced: minimum wage 4 life. They gripped baseball bats halfway up the barrels. "I hate fuckin' bums." "So where are they?" "Supposed to be a bunch of them right around here." "Just like fuckin' bums." There had been a light rain, and warm mist rose from the road. Work boots slapped across glistening tar and splashed through moonlit puddles. They approached the underpass of the Fuller Warren Bridge. "Where the hell are those damn bums?" "Hold up." "What is it?" "Over there." "Where?" "Shhhhh. Get your camcorder ready . . ." A two-tone 1971 AMC Javelin with split upholstery sat in darkness and trash beneath a downtown bridge over the St. Johns River. "Theories abound concerning the phenomenon of the nation's trash elite inexorably percolating down to Florida like industrial toxins reaching our aquifers . . ." A beer can popped. "You're doing it again." Serge wrote furiously in his notebook. "Doing what?" "Talking to yourself." "No I wasn't." More writing. ". . . This travel writer places his money on time-release scumbag DNA . . ." Coleman burped. "You always talk to yourself and then say you're not." "I am? Really? That's embarrassing." He leaned over his notebook. ". . . The scumbag genetic factor is like hereditary blood disease or male-pattern baldness. At progressive age milestones, a series of rusty, chain-link twists in the double helix trigger a sequence of social tumors: Buy a pit bull, buy an all-terrain vehicle, get a DUI, sponsor a series of blue-ribbon slapping matches with your wife in the middle of the street, discharge a gun indoors, fail to appear in court, discharge fireworks indoors, get a DUI, forget where you put your Oxycontin, crash your all-terrain vehicle into your pit bull, spend money to replace missing front teeth on large-mouth-bass mailbox, get stretchered away by ambulance for reasons you don't remember, appear on COPS for a DUI, run out the back door when warrants are served and, in a trademark spasm of late-stage dirtballism, move to Florida . . ." Serge finished the transcription and turned to a fresh page. There was a period of silence in the two-tone Javelin (orange and green) sitting under the Fuller Warren Bridge. Then, a crunching of wax paper. A soggy tuna sandwich appeared. A travel mug of cold coffee came off the dashboard. "Serge," said Coleman. "What did you mean before, 'We're on stakeout'? We're not police." "Common mistake everyone makes, like the Constitution's reserve clause for states' rights. Just because cops do it, doesn't mean we can't." Serge took a sip from the mug. "This is our new job." Coleman finished unwrapping the sandwich. "I thought our new job was visiting hotels to fill out checklists for that travel website." "And on every hotel listing, there's a section called 'local things to do.' " "I'm not sure the websites want to send their customers under bridges at night in dicey parts of town." "That's my offbeat niche: I give the ¬people what they want before they know they want it." "But your new boss specifically said no more offbeat reports." "Everyone does what their bosses ask, and that's precisely why you need to distinguish yourself from the herd." Serge killed the coffee. "I stun them into paralyzed respect with my withering insubordination. First impressions are important." "They usually call security." "Because I made an impression." Coleman checked one of his pants pockets, then another. He pulled out his hand and raised the twisted corner of a Baggie to his eyes. "Where'd it all go? Did mice chew through here? Oh well . . ." He bent over. "Thought you'd outgrown that." "What do you mean?" "Everyone now knows coke is fucked up. You had an excuse for a while, because our hypocritical government lost all credibility by lumping pot in with crack to court the weed-bigot vote. Meanwhile, congressmen crammed all orifices with huge wads of cash from tobacco and liquor lobbies. But who would have guessed they were actually right about that stupid white shit?" Coleman raised his head and sniffled. "I just do a little bump now and then so I can stay up and keep drinking beer." "For a second I thought you weren't being productive." Coleman's head suddenly snapped to the side. He pointed out Serge's window. "What was that?" Serge turned. "What?" "Something moved under the bridge." Serge returned to his notebook. "Nothing's there. You're hallucinating again." Coleman squinted a few more seconds, then shrugged. He stuck his tongue inside the empty bag and reached under the seat for another Schlitz. "We need to make some money." "That's what I'm doing now." Serge flipped a notebook page, stopped and tapped his chin with a pen. "I need travel-writing tunes." He reached for his iPod, synched it with an RF transmitter to the Javelin's radio and cranked the volume. " . . . Fly high, oh, Freebird, yeah! . . ." Coleman rewrapped his tuna sandwich. "You've been listening to Skynyrd all day." "We're in Jacksonville. I'm required to listen to Skynyrd." "Why? Skynyrd's from Alabama." Serge began punching the steering wheel like a speed bag. "Everyone thinks they're from Alabama! They're Floridians! Apocryphal motherfuckers . . ." "Okay, okay, they're from Florida." Coleman set a wax ball on the dashboard. "I don't know this stuff like you." Serge pointed at the ball. "You're messing up my horizon." "The sandwich is soggy." "Soggy's better." "Fuck that shit." "Your little chestnuts complete my life." "So Skynyrd's really from Florida?" "Too many of our state's native accomplishments are credited elsewhere. First Skynyrd and Alabama, then everyone thinks the Allman Brothers are from Georgia." "They're not?" "South Daytona Beach." Serge flipped down the sun visor and gazed up at a photo attached with rubber bands. "You sure keep looking at that picture a lot." "I think I'm in love for the first time in my life." Nuclear Jellyfish LP A Novel . Copyright © by Tim Dorsey. Reprinted by permission of HarperCollins Publishers, Inc. All rights reserved. Available now wherever books are sold. Excerpted from Nuclear Jellyfish by Tim Dorsey All rights reserved by the original copyright owners. Excerpts are provided for display purposes only and may not be reproduced, reprinted or distributed without the written permission of the publisher.
