Callahan’s Con

The discreet little bar that Jake Stonebender established a few blocks below Duval Street is simply called The Place. There, Fast Eddie Costigan learned to curse back at parrots as he played the house piano, the Reverend Tom Hauptman learned to tend bar bare-chested without blushing, Long-Drink McGonnigle discovered the margarita and several señoritas, and all the other regulars settled into comfortable subtropical niches of their own. Nobody even noticed them save the universe. Over time, the twice-transplanted patrons of Callahan’s Place attracted a pixilated collection of local zanies so quintessentially Key West that they made the New York originals seem almost normal. The elfin little Key deer, for instance—with a stevedore’s mouth; or the merman with eczema; or Robert Heinlein’s teleporting cat. For ten slow, merry years, life was good. The sun shone, the coffee dripped, the breeze blew just strongly enough to dissipate the smell of the puns, and little supergenius Erin grew to the verge of adolescence. Then disaster struck. Through the gate one sunny day comes a malevolent, moronic mastodon of a Mafioso named Tony Donuts, Jr. He’s decided to resurrect the classic protection racket in Key West—and guess which tavern he’s picked to hit first? Then, thanks to very poor accessorizing, Jake’s wife, Zoey, suddenly finds herself in a place with no light, no heat, and no air—and no way home. The urgent question of her whereabouts turns out to be a problem so complex that even the entire gang, equipped with teleportation, time travel, and telepathy, might not be able to crack it in time. And while all this is going on, Death himself walks into The Place. But this time he will not leave alone.