Looking the part in a decade other than your own doesn’t always have to be a production. Time travelers often overdo it on dressing up for trips, and the 1980s are a fashion rabbit hole. I prefer to select a single item to suit the era and leave the rest alone. That’s why the pitstop to my place here in 2019 only involved ditching my hoodie and pulling a jean jacket from the closet. I had to have something to hide my gun.
My Stinger 1911 was now resting comfortably in the shoulder rig beneath the jean jacket. Some decades require more fashion, some more firepower. The ’80s required both.
As I was preparing to leave the apartment again, a text showed up on my phone.
<<< Come for dinner tonight? I’d like an update.
It was Isla Phillips. I texted back.
>>> What time?
<<< Eight. Bring wine.
>>> I’ll be there.
I waited for a response slightly longer than necessary, then shoved the phone into my pocket.
The jump back in time wasn’t bad. I showed up in a private parking garage I knew was secure.
A thunderstorm had come through. Street signs and tree limbs were still dripping. I cruised the streets of 1984 St. Pete with a wary unease.
The city had two reputations in the ’80s. One was God’s waiting room, a sleepy borough of retirees and ex-somebodies living out their golden years in peace and quiet. That rep was only the façade. Some of those old timers were ex-gangsters. Some were current gangsters. Drug planes did scud runs across the Gulf of Mexico on the regular, evading radar and dropping cocaine in Tierra Verde, a peninsula destined to become the home of the rich and powerful.
St. Pete had a direct line to New York, and 1984 was a similar gateway to the next millennium for all manner of ill-gotten gains. So I kept an eye out.
Waldo managed to snag a destination date and time when the Mercedes G-Class SUV rolled through the time gate, but he didn’t get me a location. That was problematic. Still, there are only so many places in this city that you can park a shipping container concealing an illegal temporal portal.
And I had time on my side.
It was 8:33 p.m. outside the train yard. I waited forty minutes and didn’t see a thing. Then it was 8:33 p.m. on the Tierra Verde causeway. I gave that almost an hour before jumping back again. At 8:37 I was parked on Eighth Ave Southeast watching the south side of the Albert Whitted Airport and a barge in the Port of St. Petersburg. Two birds, one stakeout. I got lucky.
The Mercedes SUV pulled out of the port gates, cruised past me and headed up First Street. My ride-along camera was low on juice but I was able to sync with it. The view from the side-view mirror soon showed rain-slicked streets and pink neon. They were headed for the dangerous part of town.
In the next thirty years, Downtown St. Pete would be gentrified. Movie theaters and restaurants, high-end shopping and money. But not yet. In ’84 you didn’t come downtown unless you wanted drugs or trouble. The SUV was out of place here so I wasn’t surprised when they pulled into a U-Haul storage facility and a few minutes later a ’78 Buick Skylark rolled out. Squinty and Neck Folds, my acquaintances from outside the Phillips’ house, were now clearly visible through the untinted windows.
Switching cars had lost my extra eyes, so I tailed the Skylark the old-fashioned way: a few cars back and playing it casual. They cruised past rows of dive bars till arriving at a place called Annihilation. The motif was apocalyptic and patrons outside could have been extras on a Mad Max film. Young punks in studded leather jackets and sporting colorful Mohawks drifted in and out of a cloud of cigarette smoke. In the parking lot, a trash can was on fire.
Squinty and Neck Folds climbed out of the Skylark and were met with dirty looks from the punk set, but they entered a side door without hassle. I parked the Boss in a back alley in front of a sign that said ABSOLUTELY NO PARKING EVER! then instructed Waldo to jump the car thirty minutes into the future. It vanished.
Let the meter-maid try to ticket that.
I strolled up to the nightclub and was met with hostile glares. There was a bouncer at the door but he didn’t bother to ID me. Stepping inside was like huffing an exhaust pipe. Most of the twentieth century smelled like an ashtray but here I could barely see the walls. The lighting was all neon and black lights and it seemed the owners had saved on decorating by simply hitting everything with a sledgehammer. Any surface that wasn’t rubble was covered in band stickers and graffiti.
I pulled my sunglasses from my pocket and activated them before slipping them on. I looked like a D-bag walking around a bar wearing sunglasses in the dark, but they came with twenty-second-century night vision and lit up the haze for me.
It still took ten minutes to locate Squinty. Neck Folds must have gone to the head.
Whatever business they had was brief. I was there in time to watch the bartender slip Squinty a metal shot glass and a business card. He looked like he was waiting for a tip but Squinty ignored him. Bartender curled his lip and walked away.
Squinty studied the card, then drank the shot while he waited on Neck Folds. He then pocketed the card and the shot glass.
Odd.
Kleptomaniac?
When Neck Folds got back from the John, I’d started recording via my sunglasses. He repeated the process Squinty had used. Bartender gave him a card and a shot. This time I noticed he’d pulled the metal shot glass from a different shelf than he was using for his other patrons. Neck Folds likewise drank the shot and kept the shot glass, tucking it into the inside pocket of his jacket.
A puzzle. I was intrigued.
Squinty and Neck Folds headed to the back of the bar and disappeared into a hallway. I followed. I took it slow and peeked around the corner. The hallway had private booths blocked off by curtains. All the curtains were closed. Whichever one Squinty and Neck Folds had gone into, they’d done it fast enough to dodge me.
I cruised the corridor, listening to any sound that made it over the music. I pushed aside a few curtains and discovered two couples in states of undress and was cursed out by several more. No gun thugs. It was only at the end of the row that I found something promising. When I pulled aside the curtain, it showed a booth without upholstery. A chain was strung across the access and a sign on the table read CLOSED FOR REPAIR. The table was indeed damaged, a third of it missing, but it hardly seemed notable considering the state of the other decor.
But Squinty and Neck Folds were nowhere to be seen.
Their two shot glasses were upended on the table.
Fascinating. This was a game I wanted to play.
I walked back to the bar and leaned on it. The bartender wandered over.
I stared at him, pushed my sunglasses up to my forehead so he could see my eyes. I was about to speak when he gave me a nod.
He turned and reached for a shot glass. He poured me some Mariachi Añejo and slid it and a business card across the bar. He then pulled a rocks glass from a stack, added a large ice cube and stuck a lime on the edge. He set that in front of me and wandered off to serve other customers.
Curiouser and curiouser.
I picked up the business card. It looked unexceptional. The name read THE LAST NIGHTCLUB and listed a phone number. On the back was a stamped jumble of letters. Furrowing my brow caused my sunglasses to slide down my forehead and land on my nose again. I poured the tequila into the rocks glass and sipped it while I studied the back of the card.
It wasn’t a word jumble. My guess was a substitution cipher. Where was the key?
I turned over the metal shot glass and peered at it over the rim of my sunglasses. When I angled it toward one of the black lights, it revealed an addition sign, the number four, and the words BOTTOMS UP.
Aha.
I worked out the business card cipher on a napkin, simply jumping four positions in the alphabet for every letter. Then I pressed my sunglasses back into place against the bridge of my nose.
The result was TEN THIRTY FIVE PM EST. It didn’t list a location or date. I left a ten-dollar bill on the bar and walked to the back corridor again. I dodged a staggering drunk and made my way to the empty booth. I slid the curtain closed and studied the position of the two shot glasses Squinty and Neck Folds had left behind. I replaced theirs with mine.
Bottom side up.
I set my chronometer for ten thirty-five eastern, yesterday. Then I jumped.
Then I regretted it.