Sylvie's Cowboy: Cinderella In Reverse

CHAPTER 5: THE CARS

Thursday Morning

At the bustling commercial anchorage of Port Everglades, Harry Pace's familiar dove gray Mercedes Benz limousine squatted on the quayside. A red Ferrari with a vanity plate that read "SILVIE1" rolled up a shallow ramp onto a massive shipping pallet beside the Mercedes.

A few yards away, a mid-size ship of foreign registry was taking on cargo bound for another continent. A dockworker emerged from the driver's seat and secured the Ferrari to the shipping pallet. Overhead, one of the ship's herculean cranes hovered, prepared to lift the cars aboard the foreign freighter.

Several yards away, Dan Stern and a swarthy man in an Armani suit were reviewing and signing papers spread out on the hood of Dan's personal Bentley. Armani Man nodded at the cars and the papers. Dan folded the papers and handed them to the Armani Man. Armani Man lifted his briefcase onto the Bentley's hood and opened the case to reveal orderly bundles of cash. Dan had happily (and quickly) sold Harry's and Silvie's personal vehicles for an astronomical sum.

Dan motioned to the dockworker, who in turn motioned to the crane operator, and in seconds the Ferrari and Mercedes were hoisted high into the air.

Dan happily took possession of the cash-stuffed briefcase. While he was shaking hands with the Armani Man, however, Dan's face turned ashen. The red Ferrari had slipped its moorings and performed a swan dive off the wooden pallet into the ocean, spuh-lash! It sank out of sight.

On the ground, Armani Man followed Dan's horrified gaze to the foaming splash, the half-empty, swinging pallet, and the frantic dockworkers. As he watched, the Mercedes, too, began listing sickeningly to one side, then followed the Ferrari into Davy Jones' locker.

Without missing a beat, Armani Man retrieved his briefcase from Dan's arms and slapped the documents down on the Bentley's hood. Armani Man walked away with his money. Dan Stern stormed across the pier waving his arms, cursing at dockworkers and crane operators, and turning an unhealthy shade of crimson.

Inside the air-conditioned cab of the loading crane, its operator dialed a number and then spoke into his cell phone, "It's a goner." The crane operator listened to the other party's response, then patted his pocket and, smiling, said, "No, thank you, sir!"

Miles away, across the street from the Pace-Larrimore-Stern offices, a man in a yellow windbreaker, Stetson hat, and sunglasses hung up his cell phone and tossed an empty diet root beer can into a nearby refuse container. The Windbreaker Man leaned against a lamppost, watching the office building and chuckling in satisfaction.

Back in Port Everglades, after an hour of raving and threatening to no avail, Dan Stern was pulling away from the pier in his Bentley. Dan vented his anger and frustration into his cell phone. "You don't understand?! How can you not understand? You are the company's insurance agent. The car was a company car. It's a simple question: How soon can we get a settlement check on the loss?!"

Dan listened to the response of the insurance agent and, if possible, turned a deeper shade of crimson. "You did what!?" Dan shouted.

Dan held the cell phone away and stared at it as if it had sprouted venomous fangs. Brakes screeched, horns honked, and Dan narrowly missed a head-on collision. He tossed the cell phone into the car's floorboards, swerved off the road, and skidded to a halt.

With the car stopped, Dan leaned into the floorboards, picked up the phone, and put it again to his ear. "How could that happen?" he asked. "Geez!"

The insurance agent said something.

Dan responded with, "How could you cancel the insurance?!"

The agent said more.

Dan gritted his teeth and asked, "Well, wouldn't you get something that important in writing? Why would you-- Me! I didn't tell you to cancel it, you gold-plated doofus!"

The agent responded.

Dan growled, "Then you better find out who did!" He slammed the phone against its dashboard holder and pounded the steering wheel with his fist.

Miles away, across the street from the Pace-Larrimore-Stern offices, the Windbreaker Man strolled happily away from his lamppost, whistling "Your Cheatin' Heart."

An hour west of the pier and north of the offices, highway 27 stretched between canebrakes that rose like green tidal waves alongside the road. A battered Volkswagen Beetle convertible, top down, piled high with Silvie's luggage, rumbled and rattled toward wavy mirages shimmering over the sun-tortured asphalt. Three of the ancient bug's fenders sported bare body putty, testimony to repairs never completed.

Silvie Pace sat regally behind the wheel, looking wildly out of place in Dior scarf and Porsche Carrera sunglasses. She looked as incongruous as Princess Diana driving a mule-drawn wooden buckboard to Buckingham Palace.

Maude, the wrinkledpuppy, perched in Silvie's lap. There was not an inch of space for the poor dogelsewhere in the overburdened little vehicle