Tourist Season (23 page)

Keyes followed her until she stopped at the Bahamasair ticket counter. He hid behind a pillar, scouting for Skip Wiley.

“Want us to take over?”

Keyes wheeled around. “Jesus Christ!”

“Didn't mean to frighten you.”

It was Burt the Shriner.

“Where'd you come from?” Keyes asked.

“Right behind you. Ever since you came in.”

“And your pal?”

“He's around the corner. Keeping an eye on your lady friend.”

Keyes was impressed; these guys weren't half-bad.

“She's on her way to Nassau,” Burt reported. “Her ticket was prepaid.”

“By whom?”

“The Seminole Nation of Florida, Incorporated. Does that make any sense, Mr. Keyes?”

“I'll explain later.”

Keyes peered around the pillar at the Bahamasair counter, but Jenna was gone.

“Shit!”

“Don't worry,” Burt said. “James is close behind.”

“We're too damn late.” Keyes broke into a run.

Because of the phenomenal number of airplane hijackings from Miami, the FAA had installed sophisticated new security measures designed to prevent anyone with bombs, guns, or invalid coach-class tickets from entering the flight concourse. The most effective of all these security steps was the hiring of squads of fat, foul-tempered, non-English-speaking women to obstruct all runways and harass all passengers.

In tracking Jenna, James the Shriner made it no farther than Concourse G, where a corpulent security guard named Lupee pinned him to the wall and questioned him relentlessly in Portuguese. The focus of her concern was the fez that James was wearing, which she tore off his head and ran through the X-ray machine several times, mashing it in the process. In the meantime Bahamasair Flight 123 to Nassau departed.

“I blew it,” James apologized afterward in the coffee shop. “I'm sorry.”

“Don't worry,” Keyes said. “You didn't have a chance.”

“Not one-on-one,” Burt agreed. “Mr. Keyes, our information says that your lady friend is traveling alone.”

Somehow Burt had secured a printout of the passenger manifest (he wouldn't say how, and Keyes could only assume a fraternal Masonic connection with one of the ticket agents). With the Shriners staring over his shoulder, Keyes ran his finger down the passenger list. Wiley wouldn't be using his own name, nor would he settle for a simple Smith or Jones as an alias.

“Who are we hunting?” Burt asked.

“A very cunning fruitcake.”

“What did you say his name was?”

“I didn't,” Keyes said.

He found whom he was looking for, assigned to seats 15-A and 15-B:

“Karamazov, Viceroy.”

“Karamazov, Skip.”

Keyes crumpled the passenger manifest into a ball and disgustedly tossed it over his shoulder. The Shriners smoothed it out and studied the names.

“A real wiseass,” Burt said. “This friend of yours, he seems to be enjoying all this, doesn't he?”

“Sure looks that way,” Keyes grumbled, trying to remember where the hell he'd left his passport.

They found Skip Wiley snoring beneath a baby-blue umbrella on Cable Beach. He wore ragged denim cutoffs and no shirt. A pornographic novel titled Crack of Dawn was open across his lap. A half-empty bottle of Myers's rum perspired in a plastic bucket of ice, protected by the shade of Wiley's torso.

Brian Keyes removed the rum and dumped the ice cubes over Wiley's naked chest.

“Christ on a bike!” Wiley sat up like a bolt.

“Hello, Skip.”

“You're one cruel fucker.” Wiley reached for a towel. “Introduce me to your friends.”

“This is Burt and this is James.”

“Love the hats, guys. Sorry I missed the sale.” Wiley shook hands with the Shriners. “Pull up some beach and have a seat. Terrific view, just like on Love Boat, huh?”

Burt and James silently agreed; they had never seen the ocean so glassy, so crystalline blue. It truly was a tropical paradise. The cabdriver had said that one of the James Bond movies had been filmed in this cove, and from then on the Shriners had felt they were on a great adventure. They didn't know what to make of this fellow under the beach umbrella, but they'd already agreed to let Brian Keyes do the talking.

“Where's Jenna?” Keyes asked. He liked to start with the easy questions.

“House hunting,” Wiley said. “I can't stand this goddamn hotel. Full of American rubes and geeks pissing away Junior's college fund at the blackjack tables. It's pathetic.” Wiley poured himself an iceless rum and cranberry juice. “How're the ribs, Brian?”

“Getting better.” Keyes was scouting the shoreline.

“Relax, he's not here.”

“Who?”

“Viceroy, that's who! So you can unpucker your asshole. I sent him on some errands because I wanted privacy. Now you show up with these burly bookends. ”

“They're friends of Theodore Bellamy.”

“I see,” Wiley said, scratching his head. “So we're here for vengeance, are we? Brian, I hope you explained to your companions that they are now on foreign soil and treading in a country that takes a dim view of kidnapping and murder. A country that respects the rights of all foreign nationals and adheres to the strictest legal tests for extradition.”

“Meaning what?” Burt demanded.

“Meaning you and your bucket-headed partner are on your way to Fox Hill Prison if you fuck with me,” Skip Wiley said, waving his rum glass. “I'm a guest here, an honored guest.”

This problem had occurred to Brian Keyes as soon as he set foot in Nassau. He had no idea how one would go about kidnapping Skip Wiley and hauling him back to Florida. By boat? Barge? Private helicopter? And if one succeeded, then what? No charges had been filed against Wiley in the States because no one, besides Keyes and possibly Cab Mulcahy, knew the true identity of
El Fuego.

“Did you kill Dr. Courtney?” Keyes asked.

“Ho-ho-ho.”

“Why'd you do it?”

“Please,” Wiley said, raising a hand, “we've been through all this.”

“You need help, Skip.”

“I've got all the help I need, Ace. Look, you're lucky I'm still talking to you. I gave you everything you'd need to turn the cops loose like a bunch of bloodhounds.”

“I lost the briefcase.”

“Swell, just swell.” Wiley laughed sourly. “Some fucking private eye you turned out to be. I will admit one thing: that was a great line you fed Bloodworth about Slavic crazoids in fright wigs. Just the right nuance of xenophobia.”

“I was hoping nobody'd believe it.”

Wiley's cavernous grin disappeared and his lively brown eyes hardened. “Tell your friends to take a stroll,” he said under his breath. “I want to talk to you.”

Keyes motioned to the Shriners and they trudged down the beach, glancing over their shoulders every few steps.

“So talk,” Keyes said to Wiley.

“You think I'm just a deranged egomaniac?”

“Oh no, Skip, you're completely normal. Every newspaper has at least one or two reporters who moonlight as mass murderers. It's a well-known occupational hazard.”

Wiley sniffed scornfully. “Let me assure you, my young friend, that I'm not crazy. I know what I'm doing, and I know what I've done. You're fond of the word murderer— fine. Call me whatever you want. Zealotry can be grueling, that's for sure; don't think it doesn't take a toll on the psyche—or the conscience. But just for the record, it's not my name that's important, it's the group's. Recognition is damned essential to morale, Brian, and morale is vital to the cause. These fellas deserve some ink.”

“But a revolution? Skip, really.”

“Revolution?—perhaps you're right; perhaps that's hyperbole. But Jesus and Viceroy are fond of the imagery, so I indulge them.” Wiley tossed his rum glass into the sand. “So there'll be no revolution, in the classic sense, but chaos? You bet. Shame. Panic. Flight. Economic disaster.”

“Pretty ambitious,” Keyes said.

“It's the least I can do,” Wiley said. “Brian, what is Florida anyway? An immense sunny toilet where millions of tourists flush their money and save the moment on Kodak film. The recipe for redemption is simple: scare away the tourists and pretty soon you scare off the developers. No more developers, no more bankers. No more bankers, no more lawyers. No more lawyers, no more dope smugglers. The whole motherfucking economy implodes! Now, tell me I'm crazy.”

Brian Keyes knew better than to do that.

Wiley's long hair glinted gold in the Bahamian sun. He wore a look of lionly confidence. “So the question,” he went on, “is how to scare away the tourists.”

“Murder a few,” Keyes said.

“For starters.”

“Skip, there's got to be another way,”

“No!” Wiley shot to his feet, uprooting the beach umbrella with his head. “There... is... no... other... way! Think about it, you mullusk-brained moron! What gets headlines? Murder, mayhem, and madness—the cardinal M's of the newsroom. That's what terrifies the travel agents of the world. That's what rates congressional hearings and crime commissions. And that's what frightens off bozo Shriner conventions. It's a damn shame, I grant you that. It's a shame I simply couldn't stand up at the next county commission meeting and ask our noble public servants to please stop destroying the planet. It's a shame that the people who poisoned this paradise won't just apologize and pack their U-Hauls and head back North to the smog and the blizzards. But it's a proven fact they won't leave until somebody lights a fire under ‘em. That's what Las Noches de Diciembre is all about. ‘Cops Seek Grisly Suitcase
Killer' ... ‘Elderly Woman Abducted
,
Fed to Vicious Reptile' ... ‘Golf
Course Bomb Claims Three on Tricky
Twelfth Hole‘ ... ‘Crazed Terrorists Stalk Florida Tourists.'”
Wiley was practically chanting the headlines, as if he were watching them roll off the presses at the New York Post.

“Sure, it's cold-blooded,” he said, “but that's the game of journalism for you. It's the only game I know, but I know how to win.”

“The old hype button,” Keyes said.

“You got it, Ace!” Wiley slapped him on the shoulder. “Let's go find your funny friends.”

They walked up Cable Beach. Keyes sidestepped the wavelets but Wiley crashed ahead, kicking water with his enormous slabs of feet. He cocked his head high, chin thrust toward the sun.

“If you hate tourists so much,” Keyes said, “why'd you come here, of all places?”

“Sovereignty,” Wiley replied, “and convenience. Besides, the Bahamas is different from Florida. The A.Q. here is only forty-two.”

A.Q., Keyes remembered, stood for Asshole Quotient. Skip Wiley had a well-known theory that the quality of life declined in direct proportion to the Asshole Quotient. According to Wiley's reckoning, Miami had 134 total assholes per square mile, giving it the worst A.Q. in North America. In second place was Aspen, Colorado (101), with Malibu Beach, California, finishing third at 97.

Every year Skip Wiley wrote a column rating the ten most unbearable places on the continent according to A.Q., and every year the city editor diligently changed “Asshole Quotient” to “Idiot Quotient” before the column could be published. The next day Wiley would turn in a new column apologizing to his readers because he'd neglected to count one more total asshole, that being his own editor. And of course Wiley's editor would immediately delete that, too. After a few years it was obvious that even Skip Wiley couldn't get the word
asshole
into the Miami Sun, but the whole newsroom looked forward to the annual struggle.

“The great thing about the Bahamas,” Wiley was saying, “is that they don't let the tourists stay. Trying to buy property here is like trying to get a personal audience with the pope. Damn near impossible without the right connections. So, Mr. and Mrs. Mickey Mouse Ears from Akron can come and tinkle away all their money, but then it's bye-bye, leavin' on a jet plane. Punch out at immigrations. Too bad they didn't think of this system in Florida.”

“Florida's not an island, Skip.”

Wiley hopped over two Bahamian children who were wrestling in the water. His gravelly, melodic laughter mixed with their giggles and carried into the surf.

“Don't you think this has gone far enough?” Keyes asked.

“I was waiting for you to say that,” Wiley said, marching ahead. “Mr. I'm-Only-Trying-to-Help, that's you. A real killjoy.”

Keyes stopped walking. The blue water curled over his tennis shoes. “I hate to see people die, that's all,” he said to Wiley.

“I know you do,” Wiley said, looking back. “So do I. Believe it or not.” He didn't need to say any more. They were both remembering little Callie Davenport.

Up ahead a crowd of bathers gathered noisily in a circle under some slash pines. Keyes and Wiley heard the sound of men shouting and, in the distance, a siren.

Keyes thought of Burt and James and started running, his sneakers squishing in the sand. Wiley put on a sudden burst of speed and caught him by the arm.

“Wait a minute, Ace, better let me check this out.”

On the fringe of the melee Keyes counted four Bahamian policemen, each wearing a pith helmet and crisp white uniform. They carried hard plastic batons but no sidearms. Wiley strolled up and started chatting with one of the cops; he came back with the bad news.