The Big Bamboo by Tim Dorsey

maybe I did. I haven’t had enough time to chart your demise. Guess what? Babe Ruth and Dizzy Dean posed right down there for advertising photos in 1934, holding the number cards they used before the odds board went electric…”
    The people got up and began walking down the stairs.
    “Oh, I get it!” Serge shouted after them. “Go ahead! Run from the past!”
    “I think you hurt their feelings,” said Coleman.
    “That was one of my mini-interventions.” Serge placed his hands behind his head and leaned back. “Let’s just relax and take this in.”
    Serge jumped up from his seat and moved down to the next one. Coleman got up and scooted over with him.
    Serge put his feet up again. “It was the golden era when pari-mutuels ruled. Horses, dogs, jai alai, celebrities, elegance. I love coming here.”
    “I didn’t know you gambled.”
    “I don’t. I hate gambling.”
    “Why?”
    “Because I’m good at math.” Serge got up and moved over another seat.
    Coleman moved with him. “But Serge, if you’re in such a hurry to visit all these movie places, why are we wasting time here?”
    “Because this grandstand is one of them.” Serge moved over again. “It’s where they shot Carl Reiner’s intro in the remake of
Ocean’s 11.
Except I don’t know his exact seat, so I have to sit in all of them. Otherwise, I’m just living a lie.”
    Coleman stood. “I’m going to place a bet.” Serge handed him a quarter. “Get me a newspaper.”
    Coleman came back a few minutes later,
Tribune
under his arm, walking extra slow not to spill the brimming cups of beer in each hand. He stopped and looked around.
    “Up here!” Serge waved from the top row.
    Coleman carefully climbed the stairs and set the cups on the ground. Serge took the newspaper and opened it. “What dog did you finally pick?”
    Coleman took a seat and picked up one of the cups. “I only had a few bucks left so I bet on beer.”
    “It’s a sure thing.” Serge flipped his paper to the metro section and folded it over. “Here we go. The Geriatric Rage Roundup.”
    Coleman had a beer-foam mustache. “What’s that?”
    “You know how the rest of the country is worried about the rage phenomenon? Aggressive driving, predatory kids, people going bonkers on airplanes?”
    “Yeah?”
    “So in Florida, it’s senior citizens. Everyone makes fun like they’re a bunch of doddering old farts, but nothing’s further from the truth. I don’t know the cause, but they retire to the Sunshine State and turn into killer bees. Super-irritable, attacking everything that moves. They scare the hell out of me.”
    Coleman took another big sip and wiped his mouth with his shirt. “But they seem so nice.”
    “Right up until shit’s on,” said Serge. “I see an old person, I cross the street.”
    “I haven’t had any problems,” said Coleman.
    “That’s because they mostly just fuck with each other. There’s been such an explosion in gray-on-gray crime that Florida newspapers need special roundup boxes to fit it all in. Like this item from West Palm Beach: chairs flying again at a condo meeting. And Sarasota: Police had to clear the shuffleboard courts with tear gas. And Fort Lauderdale: the daily cafeteria meltdown…. Oooo, this was a big one. Forty people involved. Half the retirees ran screaming, the rest jumped in the pile. Broken hips, heart attacks. They triaged in the dining room and took them to five different hospitals…”
    “How’d it start?”
    “Cops say some guy in the cafeteria line couldn’t make up his mind and got a bowl of Jell-O cubes mashed in his face. Here are the names and conditions and…Oh, my God!” Serge dropped the newspaper and took off down the stairs.
    Coleman chased after him. “What is it?”
    They ran across the parking lot and jumped in the Buick.
    “Serge, what’s going on?”
    Serge was busy screeching back onto the causeway and grabbing a cell phone from the glove compartment. He called information,