Hammerhead Ranch Motel
Hammerhead Ranch Motel is a novel by Tim Dorsey published in 2000. It continues the story, started in Florida Roadkill, of blithe psychopath Serge A. Storms and his pursuit of five million dollars in cash hidden in the trunk of a car. The book is non-linear, with some scenes occurring at the same time chronologically but told out of order with later scenes.
 US First edition cover | |
| Author | Tim Dorsey |
|---|---|
| Country | United States |
| Language | English |
| Series | Serge A. Storms |
| Genre | Crime novel |
| Publisher | William Morrow (US) & HarperCollins (UK) |
Publication date | 2000 |
| Media type | Print (hardback & paperback) |
| Pages | 354 |
| 813.54 | |
| LC Class | PS3554.O719 H36 |
| Preceded by | Florida Roadkill |
| Followed by | Orange Crush |
One set of characters is a group of commissioners from Bern, Switzerland, lured to Tampa as part of the city's real-life (and historically unsuccessful) bid to host the 2012 Summer Olympics.
Plot summary
Like the previous novel, Hammerhead Ranch Motel begins in media res, with two murders and one apparent suicide, the events leading up to which are eventually explored in the remainder of the novel.
Serge A. Storms succeeds in tracking down the car with the briefcase containing $5 million in the trunk, and steals it while its drivers, Sean and David, have gotten out of the car to watch the progress of a wildfire. Later, he checks into the Hammerhead Ranch Motel in Tampa Bay to lay low, but his car is stolen by a trio of car thieves. The Motel's owner is a gangster named Zargoza (who legally changed his name from Harvey Fiddlebottom). Over the next few days, the briefcase changes hands several times, from the car thieves to the petty criminals who overheard the thieves bragging about finding it, to a pair of hapless college students hired by the thieves to drive their car across the state, to Zargoza's sometime-partners, the reckless Diaz Boys, and finally Zargoza himself.
Several of these handlers are tracked down and killed, either by Serge or the Diaz Boys, but only Serge follows the trail to Zargoza. After determining that the briefcase is no longer in the trunk of the car, Serge drives it to the top of the Sunshine Skyway Bridge, torches it with a Molotov cocktail, then leaps from the bridge with a parachute and dressed in a Santa Claus outfit (the act mistakenly seen as a suicide in the prologue). On the same night, one of the college students plunges to his death after being interrogated by the Diaz Boys, onto the glass roof of the Florida Aquarium.
The gruesome nature of the recent deaths drives Zargoza nearly insane from paranoia, and he changes the hiding place of the briefcase several times. Deciding that a more subtle approach is required with Zargoza, Serge partners with a Don Johnson-impersonator named Lenny Lipowicz, who owns a real moon rock from a 1970s space mission. The two befriend Zargoza and the trio spend several weeks touring Florida tourist attractions, with Serge waiting for Zargoza to let slip where the briefcase is.
Three subplots intersect with the main story and lead up to the novel's climax:
- City and Country, two young women from Alabama, are on the run after a girl accidentally stabbed herself to death in their presence, with the steak knife she was snorting cocaine from. Believing themselves suspect in the woman's death, City and Country steal her car and flee to Florida, where they meet Serge and Lenny, quickly becoming addicted to Lenny's pot and Serge's bottomless supply of Florida history and trivia.
- Aristotle "Art" Tweed is falsely diagnosed with a terminal illness (a practical joke by the bored teenage daughter of an employee at his local hospital) and, after meeting a Hemingway impersonator named Jethro Maddox, decides to redeem himself by killing the worst bully he can find. At first he targets "Boris the Hateful Piece of Sh**", a Tampa shock jock leading the public outcry in favor of Florida's newest anti-immigration legislation, but Serge kills Boris first after the latter's lewd advances against City and Country. Meanwhile, the hospital's insurer hires a private investigator named Paul to track down Art and inform him about the hoax.
- The crew of an Air Force C-130 Hercules based at Keesler Air Force Base tracks the development and progress of Hurricane Rolando-berto in the Gulf of Mexico. The Air Force's attempt to liaise with the local media goes disastrously wrong when anchorman Blaine Crease, riding in the plane over the hurricane's eye, insists on pitching a cylindrical weather sensor out of an open hatchway while being filmed, which causes his network's beloved mascot, "Toto the Dancing Weatherdog" to leap after the "stick" and out the hatchway to plummet to his death.
When the hurricane unexpectedly changes direction and makes landfall at Tampa, all the characters are trapped inside the Hammerhead Ranch Motel. Zargoza's "fall guy", a washed-up rock musician named C.C. Flag, believing that he's about to be arrested for his complicity in Zargoza's crimes, takes a young boy hostage, but Art saves the boy and Flag is disabled when Jethro, whose participation in "The Flying Hemingway"'s skydiving stunt left him stranded in a tree, crashes through the Motel's roof and lands on him. Both Flag and the local community's xenophobic mayor, Malcolm Kefauver, are blown out to sea by the hurricane. Serge and Zargoza finally confront each other over the money, but Country protects Serge by shooting Zargoza, who dies before Serge can convince him to confess where the money is hidden. Art learns the truth from Paul and is befriended by the attractive single mother of the boy whose life he saved.
Watching the post-hurricane news, Serge sees the briefcase in the possession of Paul, leaving Tampa with Jethro, who happened to witness (from his tree perch) Zargoza hiding the briefcase for the last time. Serge frees Lenny from a local chain gang and, with City and Country in tow, takes off after the money once again.
Johnny Vegas
Several of Dorsey's novels features one or more failed attempts by his recurring character, Johnny Vegas, to finally lose his virginity. In this novel, Johnny has traded in the Cigarette boat he was using in Florida Roadkill, and instead trolls for available women in a Porsche convertible.
- He succeeds in luring an aspiring model, who gives her name as "If" into his car, and is about to have sex with her on the passenger seat, while the car is parked at the top of a bridge, only to be interrupted when she notices Serge torching his car and jumping from the bridge, an act mistaken by all the onlookers for a suicide. To cap off his failure, while they are watching from the bridge rail, a semi truck flattens his Porsche.
- He picks up a spokesmodel in South Beach and, in order to be absolutely sure of success, drives her to a motel in Everglades City, only to be interrupted by a rash of wildfires that forces them to evacuate, in spite of his fervent wish to remain and complete his conquest.
- Johnny rents a room at the Hammerhead Ranch Motel for himself and his latest date, but she is so terrified by the noise of the hurricane that she locks herself in the bathroom.
- The novel's epilogue features three separate failures by Johnny:
- Johnny is hiking in a park with an avid bird-watcher, when he mistakenly insults her by comparing her unfavorably to girls with tattoos, not knowing she has one;
- Johnny unexpectedly gets another chance with If, who asks him to be her date for a local broadcast journalism awards banquet, with a promise of sex after she wins; the evening is ruined when a disgruntled former state safety employee who witnessed Serge's jump from the bridge shoots at the copy editor who composed the headline that led to his firing.
- Johnny is so frustrated that he beats up the gunman on camera; later he is picked up in a bar by a statuesque blonde who thinks he's a hero and offers to sleep with him, but (based on her reference to the film The Crying Game and the fact that Johnny's "losing streak" remains unbroken in the following novels) is hinted to actually be a man in drag.