Key Weird 01; Key Weird Read online

  Robert Tacoma

  Key Weird

  Key Weird #1

  2005, EN

  What do you do when you lose your possum ranch, all your money, and the Dalton Gang is on your trail? If you’re Taco Bob, you head for Florida and end up in tropical Key West hanging out with a collection of colorful and crazy locals, fishing for grunts, and avoiding Daltons. But there is never a shortage of trouble in paradise. A sexy cult leader hits town looking for a golden idol she is convinced holds psychic powers. She teams up with the aging owner of the local topless bar, who is looking for a fortune in Spanish treasure stolen from him years earlier. Taco Bob’s idyllic tropical lifestyle comes to an abrupt end and he finds himself lost in the Everglades swamps. But he is not as alone as he thinks, not with a hot cult leader, a cranky treasure hunter, and a mysterious old hermit in the neighborhood.

  Table of contents

  1: Lone Star Ranching for Taco Bob

  2: That Old Black Magic

  3: On the Road with Taco Bob

  4: Home Sweet Cult

  5: Panama City Welcomes Taco Bob

  6: Charlie Spider

  7: St. Augustine Pays Off for Taco Bob

  8: Carol in Charge

  9: The Last Chance Trailer Park

  10: Jeremy Hits the Road

  11: Taco Bob’s First Trip to the Everglades

  12: Highway Irregularity

  13: Taco Bob Sees the Keys

  14: The First Motel in Key West

  15: Carol

  16: Free Estimate

  17: The End of the Road for Taco Bob

  18: Jeremy Homes In

  19: Working the Tourists in Paradise – Taco Bob Makes a Friend

  20: Butch

  21: The Wisdom of Grunts Comes to Taco Bob

  22: Room 325-C Big Pelican Nice Lucky Motel

  23: Capt. Tony’s Has Some News for Taco Bob

  24: A Much Better Outlook for Taco Bob

  25: Checking on Jeremy

  26: Sam

  27: Life at the Snapper

  28: The Days of Treasure and Treasure Hunters

  29: Meet the Man

  30: Buried Treasure

  31: Butch’s Job

  32: Pirate Jim’s and Taco Bob

  33: Carol and Flying

  34: Treasure Check

  35: Carol and Sam

  36: Treasure Trouble

  37: Gretta

  38: Sam and Carol’s Meeting

  39: Daltons

  40: Mama Rosa

  41: Saying Goodbye to Taco Bob

  42: Ten Thousand Islands and One Stormy Night for Taco Bob

  43: Dreams for Taco Bob

  44: It’s a Small World for Taco Bob

  45: Miami PI

  46: Carol in Paradise

  47: Mr. Small, the Swamp, and Taco Bob

  48: The Watson Place

  49: A Tarpon for Taco Bob

  50: Out on the Water

  51: Meanwhile, Back at the Motel

  52: Unhappy Campers

  53: A Cozy Cabin Waits for Mr. Small and Taco Bob

  54: The House

  55: More Good-byes for Taco Bob

  56: In the Night

  57: Still More Leaving for Taco Bob

  58: Back

  59: Even More Leaving and Good-byes for Taco Bob

  60: Key West as Home for Taco Bob

  ∨ Key Weird ∧

  1

  Lone Star Ranching for Taco Bob

  “Hard work and easy rocking.”

  My ranch wasn’t always a lake. In fact, at one time it had been one of your more prosperous possum ranches in the Armadillo, Texas area. But due to a run of mighty poor luck involving Mother Nature and the government, I was down to my last few dollars, the name Taco Bob, and a soggy ranch house. With the way current events had been stacking up, I decided my best course of action would be to sit out on the front porch and have a short one while I tried to make sense of it all.

  I got settled good in my rocking chair and picked up my afternoon crossword puzzle. I needed a seven letter word for bad news that started with an ‘s’. I was giving that some thought when I noticed a county police car coming down the highway about a mile away.

  I tried a sip of whiskey and took a quick count of the fingers on my left hand. During a recent stay at the county jail, I’d read this book called Dreaming for the Easily Led. The fella writing the book said you had to count your fingers a lot if you wanted to enter into the exciting and mysterious world of Lucid Dreams. Always willing to try something new, and not having much else to do at the time, I’d gotten into the habit of seeing how many fingers I had.

  When I looked up from my latest digit reconnaissance, it looked like the Sheriff himself taking the turn that would bring him down what was left of my driveway. I wrote the word down in the crossword.

  ♦

  My life has had its ups and downs, and up until a few weeks earlier I’d been enjoying the ride on one of the better ups for several years. A lot of hard work and a good dose of luck had me sitting on a nice ranch of prime possum pasture just as the blackened-possum craze was sweeping the country. It was a tough job keeping up with the little nocturnal marsupials, but the financial rewards made it worthwhile.

  In fact, things were going so well there for a while, I’d remodeled the big house, built a bunkhouse for the boys working on the ranch, and ever the entrepreneur, had even gotten into raising gators on the side.

  Just when it was looking like I had life by the tail, things started slipping away. It was small things at first. Like the locusts and late freeze wiping out most of the cornfields and vegetable gardens. Stuff like that.

  Then along came the tornado. Lost the big barn with most of the possums and my new bass boat that night. Tore up the house pretty good too. A few days later we’d just about got the roof fixed on the house, and what possums were left squared away, when the prairie fire came through. So that kept us busy.

  Lost the bunkhouse and the rest of the crops and what livestock was left that day. Probably would have lost the house in the fire as well if it hadn’t started raining. It was a good rain too. So good it kept raining all that night and the next day and busted the levee and flooded the whole area, mostly my ranch.

  Then the help all quit. Can’t blame ’em much though, hard to be a possum rancher when all the possums are gone and the ranch is under several feet of water.

  At that point I didn’t see how things could get much worse.

  That’s when the first of the metal drums came to the surface of the lake that looked like it had settled in for good over my ranch. The water started getting a yellow tinge to it, and was not smelling all that great either. Before long there were lots of drums floating around and the government sent some fellas in helicopters wearing those white spaceman suits to check ‘em out. Turns out, they were drums of toxic waste that’d been buried out there before I bought the place. The very same place I had got such a good deal on buying from the government.

  Then the Sheriff showed one day and said he had to put me in jail for running a toxic waste dump without a permit. I asked him how I was supposed to get one of these permits, and he said they stopped giving those out years ago. So it was off to jail and some light reading for me.

  Old Man Jennings in town got a son who forsook taking over the family moonshine business and run off to the big city to lawyer school. I got a hold of him, and after a few days and most of the rest of my money, he convinced the government I wasn’t the one been burying drums of toxic waste on the ranch several years before I bought it. So I was once again a free man, though severely financially challenged.

  ♦

  When the help all left, Hop Chong, the ranch coo
k, doctor, and bookkeeper, decided to stick it out a while longer. The little Chinaman came out of the house and stood there next to me as that big ol’ sheriff waded over from where he’d parked his car. I remained reclining in my rocker, steadfastly holding onto my drink, my crossword, and the knowledge that the sheriff ain’t ever come around with anything approaching good news. Hop was almost as stubborn as me, and said he was sticking it out ’til the bitter end, which looked like it had just walked up the front porch steps.

  “Morning, Taco Bob.”

  “Morning, Sheriff.”

  He gave my sole remaining employee, and good friend, a hard look and a nod. “Hop.”

  The little man always had him a case of the deep-seated resentment towards any kind of law enforcement personnel. I’d never asked, but I think it had something to do with a place called Tiananmen Square over there in China.

  Though he’d learned to speak a passable form of Texas English, Hop let loose with a long, fast, run of Chinese that sounded to me like it contained detailed comparisons of the sheriff and canine intestinal miseries.

  The sheriff started fingering the snap on his holstered firearm, and Hop’s hand was easing down into his apron, where he was known to keep a rather formidable butcher knife. I lit up my best smile.

  “So what brings you out to my humble abode on this beautiful day, Sheriff?” Just as I said that, there was a rumble of thunder and it started raining. The sheriff broke off the stare-down going on between him and Hop. The Man cleared his throat a good one and gave his squeaky leather cop belt a quick adjustment.

  “Taco Bob, by the power vested in me by the great state of Texas, I’m here to inform you that your ranch has been condemned and pronounced unsafe for human occupation. This here means y’all gotta git!”

  Due to the recent rapid spiral of events down life’s toilet, this didn’t surprise me much. The bright side being I didn’t see how anything could be much worse.

  Hop, however, who was still giving the sheriff the evil eye, took the news a little hard and commenced to growling. He started showing some yellow teeth through the snarl, and had his hand all the way down in his apron. The Sheriff kept talking while backing down the steps.

  “Y’all got ’til tomorrow morning to vacate these here premises.” He slogged on back towards his cop car in the rain, then stopped. “I almost forgot to tell you. The Dalton Gang broke out of prison this morning!”

  That was the thing that could be worse.

  ♦

  The next morning, Hop had his stuff all packed in the same big suitcase he had when I first laid eyes on him sitting there on the porch all them years earlier. I gave him a ride into town where he was going to be staying with some kin and we said our goodbyes like real men, then got all teary-eyed and hugged big.

  Which left me with a pickup truck, some camping and fishing stuff, a few clothes, and the rest of my life. I decided to leave town for a while, since things hadn’t been going all that swell in the recent past, and the immediate future seemed likely to involve a visit from the Daltons. I was thinking Florida; figured I might at least have a little better luck with the weather down there.

  ∨ Key Weird ∧

  2

  That Old Black Magic

  Years earlier, at the same time Taco Bob had first seen a Chinese gentleman named Hop Chong sitting on his front porch, a young woman in northern California sat down on a rock. It was a dreary day, and it looked like it might start raining again any minute.

  The young woman, whose name at the time was Tula, didn’t remember how long she’d been sitting on the rock. She might have blacked out for a minute or two. Normally, Tula didn’t sit on rocks, especially wet, dirty rocks, but she was drunk enough she’d had to sit somewhere, right then.

  Her party buddies were still in the tavern, way over there across the parking lot. A neon sign glared at her from above the door – The Busted Gut. Tula vaguely remembered coming outside to get some air; all the smoke in the bar was making her sick. Or it could have something to do with the coke she’d snorted, or the fact they’d been bar hopping for ten hours.

  Something smelled rotten. The rock, not her. She smelled sweet – and it was the heavy sweetness of Calvin Klein mixing with the rock smell that made her stomach quake. Fighting back nausea, she got unsteadily to her feet. She had to go home. Now. Where was her ride? Devon what’s-his-face with the red Cougar had driven.

  She staggered back to the tavern to find Devon and tell him to take her home NOW.

  With wet rock crud smeared on the ass of her designer jeans, she navigated the dark, smoky bar with as much dignity as she could. She found her friends sitting at a table in the corner, laughing and pointing at her.

  Screw ‘em; who were they? Cindy always looked like she’d caught her hair in a fan, Devon had the fashion sense of a primate, and Lane was hung like a mouse.

  She stood unsteadily before the table of giggling people, and with all eyes upon her, she said, “I want to go ho – ” and barfed all over the table and everyone sitting at it.

  ♦

  The next afternoon, after coffee and orange juice and another nap, she picked up the book her roommate Jenny was always talking about, and started to read. This was the book that changed her life. Sorcery. Magical powers, mysterious spirits, all that. She could do this – well, she could learn to do it. At least some of it. Maybe if she got good enough, she wouldn’t have to be nice to people anymore or work an actual job. Not to mention, anyone into that kind of stuff would need to wear all kinds of sexy sorceress clothes, and that was pretty cool too.

  With the firm resolve that comes easily to the young and hungover, Tula swore she’d devote her life to the study of mysticism and the occult and never take drugs or drink again. Well, maybe not as much anyway, no sense in getting weird about it. She would read every book ever written on her new field of interest as well as fully investigate clothing options that would help her look and feel the part.

  A few weeks later she’d read through the good parts of at least three books on sorcery and the occult, and figured she had a handle on the stuff. She quit her job as cashier at the local Safeway, and packed her new collection of mostly black lacy clothes, black nail polish, black lipstick, and assorted charms, crystals, and talismans. She made for Los Angeles in her aging Volkswagen to find some cool witch’s covens, or sects, or something to hang out with.

  ∨ Key Weird ∧

  3

  On the Road with Taco Bob

  “Somewhere there’s a fish with my name on it!”

  It’s a special kind of feeling when everything you own is in the back of a pickup truck and you’re heading down the road with no particular plans. I was trying hard to find the upside to my current situation, and decided the only thing good about losing everything you worked so hard for, is you pretty much lose the responsibilities too. So I felt like I was starting out with a clean slate as I left the Lone Star State, time to think about my next move in the great game of life.

  After a few hours of driving and thinking, occasionally checking behind me for Daltons, I’d worked up a considerable thirst. Seeing billboards every few miles for a place on the Alabama-Florida border saying they had the coldest beer in the south might have had something to do with it. I decided to take on the responsibility of investigating such a wild claim myself, as a public service.

  I finally found the place, and as advertised, it was right on the water, the very top of the Gulf of Mexico to be exact. A big place, looked kinda like a collection of well-worn roadhouses and honky-tonks pushed together. I got the truck parked behind a convenient dumpster, and ambled in.

  It was right there on the state line all right. In fact, there was a big yellow dashed line running smack down the middle of the floor inside and across the bar. One side was done up with Alabama flags and a bunch of stuff about some bear football coach. The other side of the yellow line was plastic pink Flamingos and palm trees. Both sides had the usual collection of stuff stuck
on the walls and ceilings: autographed snapshots of people no one knew, old license plates, weird beer bottles, bumper stickers, and an assortment of ladies undergarments. I gawked on across the last few feet of Alabama and grabbed the first barstool in Florida. It was still early, but the place was already filling up. I got the attention of the cute gal behind the bar wearing a Florida Gators T-shirt.

  “Afternoon, stranger. What’ll ya have?”

  “Afternoon. I’d be mighty proud to try one of those Coldest Beers in the South I been reading about the last hundred miles or so.”

  While she was attending to that, I did a little more gawking around. At a table nearby, some greasy, grubby types, who looked like they belonged to the shiny motorcycles parked neatly out front, were having a lively exchange on gas mileage and mullet throwing. In amongst the construction workers and fisherman was a sprinkling of tourists with the requisite cameras and sunburned knees. A couple of well-formed young women in bikinis came gliding through the bar with a well-practiced saunter. The biker’s conversation took a sudden swing to female anatomy, starting with the chest area. My beer arrived.

  “Here ya go, stranger.”

  “Thanks. What’s all this going on over here?” I gestured towards the other side of the bar with one hand while directing a frosty mug towards my face with the other.

  “Mullet throwing warm-ups. We got a big game coming up with New Orleans next week. Big rivalry, been going on for years.”

  She said something about a big stink last year involving a sandy mullet in a field goal situation, but the sensation of pouring cold beer down my road-parched throat had momentarily shut down all other sensory input. Then I noticed the big, tanned fella sitting next to me, on the Alabama side, was looking my way, smiling.

  “So is that the coldest beer, or what?”

  “If it ain’t, it’s close enough for me.” It took me a couple beats to get that out. The beer was so cold, it took my breath away.

  “They got special computerized refrigeration going on, gets beer as cold as possible without actually freezing.”