Florida Roadkill: A Novel by Tim Dorsey

Author:Tim Dorsey [Dorsey, Tim]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Tags: Fiction, Library, Humorous, Humorous fiction
Publisher: HarperCollins
Published: 2006-02-16T06:00:00+00:00

A thirty-six-year-old auto mechanic took seventeen kilos home from Cockroach Bay, pried up the floor-boards in his lawn mower shed, dug a hole five feet down and dropped them in. They sat untouched for three years. During that time the mechanic developed a constellation of facial ticks, stayed home more than the average house arrest, cultivated a malignant strain of dandruff, and became therapeutically dependent on quick-release anti-anxiety medication. In the middle of one night in 1987, the third in a row without sleep, the mechanic dug up the bricks and talked to them until dawn. That’s when he poured gasoline on the bricks and himself. His neighbors said the fire left nothing but a five-foot crater.

Twenty-four bricks went to a twenty-three-year-old bachelor, a rising advertising executive in a flats boat with power trim, jackplate and twice the horsepower he would ever use. Unlike the mechanic, the ad exec broke out his stash immediately, and the party lasted until early December. The stuff ended up on every level, nonporous surface in his apartment. At first it was only his close, trusted friends. That lasted two days. Then it was open to secretaries, clerks at the mall, every neighbor in his complex and people off the street. The occupancy of his one-bedroom unit never dipped below fourteen. The incident was featured in an article in Business World magazine when it took down the entire ad agency, which experienced a rash of unplanned pregnancies, white-collar accidents requiring emergency-room treatment and absenteeism that eventually spiked at 92 percent. The executive moved back in with his parents in Ohio.

A refrigerator repairman from Wimauma named Zach had never even seen cocaine in his life. Now he was staring at two hundred grand of the stuff, piled on top of the VCR in his single-wide trailer on the edge of a cow pasture. After two days he thought, what the hell, a little dab’ll do ya. He tore a hole in the middle of one brick and sniffed at the little spot of white at the end of his index finger. Then snorted harder. He found a straw in the utensil drawer and stuck it in the torn hole in the brick. The sheriff’s department received predawn complaints of someone riding a cow down State Road 674.

Since the mid-seventies there have been numerous published studies all involving a box holding a bunch of mice, a wedge of cheese and a pile of cocaine. In all the studies, the mice eventually stayed up round the clock doing the coke until they were found starved to death next to the untouched cheese.

Zach was the human version. He left the trailer less and less, until he stopped leaving at all. He ordered out for pizza and Chinese, then ceased that. His entire daily routine consisted of snorting coke and peeking out windows. Coke-thinking told him it was a good time to clean all his guns.

Deputies approaching the trailer at night saw shafts of TV lights flickering out dozens of bullet holes in the front of the residence.

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