Tourist Season (30 page)

It wasn't until much later, on the midnight flight to Haiti, that Jenna got up the courage to show Skip Wiley what had been done to his column.

“Bloodworth!” he gasped. “That wretched nematode!”

“It sure was a mean trick,” Jenna allowed.

“Sacrilege!” Wiley said, his brown eyes smoldering.

“But clever,” Jenna remarked. “Wouldn't you say?”

“Well, now it's our turn to be clever,” Wiley said, slipping the column into his jacket. “Jenna, as soon as we get to Port-au-Prince, send a message to Tommy back at camp. Have him Federal Express me the Nielsens from last New Year's Eve. And the Arbitrons, too, if he can get his hands on 'em.”

“What now, Skip?”

“Don't worry, darling, the strategy stays the same.” Wiley patted her knee. “Full speed ahead.”

From a bare-bulb warehouse off Miami Avenue, Jesús Bernal placed a phone call to the secret headquarters of the First Weekend in July Movement.

“El Comandante, por favor,”
he said.

From the other end came thick Cuban voices, the sound of chairs scraping, a door opening. The telephone clanged as if someone had dropped it into a steel drum.

“Hey!” Jesus Bernal said angrily.
“Oye!”

“Qué pasa, chico?”
It was the Mixmaster rasp of the comandante himself. In his mind's eye Jesus could picture the old bastard sucking on a wet cigar, his strained twisted fingers like a vulture talon clutching the receiver. Jesús Bernal could picture those mean brown eyes, narrowing at the sound of his voice.

“It's me,” Jesus said in Spanish. “Have you seen the newspapers,
Comandante?”

Proudly Jesus said, “I am famous.”

“So is Ronald McDonald.”

“I was expelled from the Bahamas,” Jesús declared.

“For what? Stealing coconuts?”

Jesús began to fume. “It is important work.”

“It is girl's play.”

“I bombed a Miami policeman!”

“You bombed his fucking feet,” the
comandante
said. “I read the papers,
chico.
All these years and you are still the worst bomber I ever saw. You couldn't blow up a balloon.”

After a pause, the old man said. “Tell me, who is this
El Fuego?”

“I am
El Fuego
,” Jesús answered.

The
comandante
cackled. “You are a shit-eating liar,” he said, again in Spanish.

Jesus grimaced. “All right.
El Fuego
is a powerful Anglo. He is also a crazy man, he wants to give Florida back to the Indians and the raccoons. He recruited me for the dirty work.”

“And to write the communiqués.”

“It is the one talent you seem to have.”

Jesus Bernal smiled hopefully. There was a long silence on the other end. He heard the sound of a match striking wood; the old man's damn cigar had gone out.

“The FBI has been asking about you,” the
comandante
growled. “It's a bad idea, you calling me.”

Jesus Bernal swallowed hard. “I want to come back to the movement. My work here is finished. This organization, it is not disciplined,
Comandante
. There is drug use ... and liquor. And the crazy man,
El Fuego
, he's always making jokes.”

“I'm not surprised. It is all very funny.”

“Please,
Comandante
, read the papers! Haven't I proven myself?”

“You bombed a fucking golf course,” the old man said.

“A vital strategic target,” Jesus countered.

“Cono!
A Russian freighter is a strategic target, but a golf course is ... a goddamn golf course. And these were not Communist soldiers you killed, they were rich Americans. I'm surprised Fidel himself didn't send you a medal.”

By now Jesus was trembling. His voice skipped like a teenager's. He cupped his hand over the mouthpiece so Viceroy Wilson couldn't hear him begging.

“Please,
Comandante
, I've committed many bombings, kidnappings, even murders—all in the name of The Cause. What must I do to convince you to take me back?”

“Do something serious,” the old man said, his chest rattling. “And do it right.”

Jesús Bernal slammed down the phone and cursed. He returned to the sawhorse where Viceroy Wilson was working, snatched a hammer, and started whaling on a two-by-four. The warehouse was hazy with sawdust and marijuana smoke.

“So you didn't get the job,” Wilson said through a mouthful of nails.

“I thought you didn't understand Spanish,” Bemal snapped.

“In 1977 we had a placekicker named Rivera,” Wilson said. “From Mexico, I think. Used to give Spanish lessons on the team plane. One Sunday in Kansas City the motherfucker missed four straight field goals inside the thirty and we lost the game. That night a bunch of us got together and called Immigration.”

“You had him arrested?”

“The next day at practice.” Viceroy Wilson shrugged. ‘Football's a tough sport, man.”

“So now you're going to tell Wiley I want out.”

“Naw,” Wilson said. “Not if you stay through New Year's. After that, I don't give a fuck what you do.”

“I'm thinking of starting my own group,” Jesus Bernal confided.

“What you gonna call it?”

“I haven't decided.”

“How about: The Ernesto Cabal Cabal.”

“Go to hell,” said the Cuban, still sensitive on the Ernesto issue.

“This new group,” Viceroy Wilson said, “what's the mission this time?”

“Invade Havana.”

“Naturally.” With switchblades, no doubt. Viceroy Wilson started hammering again. Every once in a while he'd step back to see how the thing was taking shape.

Tommy Tigertail sat on a blanket in the corner, beneath a somber daguerreotype of Thlocko-Tustenugee, Chief Tiger Tail. Tommy's eyes were open but unfocused; fresh from an Everglades passage, he had only just learned that Pavlov had been shot the week before in a beachfront swimming pool by the Fort Lauderdale SWAT team. Grief had robbed the Indian of all energy, and he had dropped his hammer and sat down in a trance. He feared it would be a night of dreams, when his fingers again would claw the wet bars of the dungeon where his great-great-grandfather had perished. On such nights Tommy's soul wandered, keeping company with his warrior ancestor. Tommy knew what would happen if his soul should not return from its journey by dawn: He would forever become part of his own nightmare, and never awake from it. This was the fate of many anguished Seminoles, whose souls suddenly fled in the night; for Tommy Tigertail, such a death would be infinitely worse than anything the white policemen might do to him.

“Look at that crybaby,” Jesus Bernal said, scowling at the heartsick Indian. “Somebody shot his pet lizard.”

“You shut up,” Viceroy Wilson hissed at the Cuban, “or I'll nail your nuts to your nose.”

Tommy Tigertail was the closest thing to a brother that Viceroy had found in the Nights of December. Between them was an unspoken bond that had nothing to do with the use of the Cadillac; it was a bond of history. In his post-heroin library days Viceroy Wilson had studied the Seminole Wars, and knew that Tommy's people had fought not just to keep their land, but to protect the runaway slaves who had joined them on the Florida savannas. The magnificence of that struggle was not lost on Viceroy Wilson; he knew Tommy would never give him up. Viceroy had never trusted anyone so completely.

Jesus Bernal sensed that it was unwise and perhaps dangerous to make fun of the Indian, so he changed the subject.

“I'm going to show the
comandante
a thing or two,” he said determinedly.

“That's cool,” said Viceroy Wilson, turning back to his work, “long as you wait till after New Year's.”

“We'll see about that,
negrito,”
Jesus said bravely, after Viceroy Wilson had cranked up the circular saw and could not possibly hear him.

Brian Keyes never thought of himself as lonely, but there were times when he wondered where all his friends had gone. As a rule private detectives are not swamped with party invitations and that part Keyes didn't mind; he wasn't a lampshade-and-kazoo type of guy. But there were nights when a phone call from any sociable nonfelon would have been a welcome surprise on the old beeper. It wasn't loneliness, really; aloneness was more like it. Keyes had felt it as soon as he'd quit the
Sun;
it was as if the quintessential noise of life had suddenly shrunk by fifty decibels. On some days the quiet tortured him; the office, the apartment, the stake-outs. Sometimes he wound up talking to the car radio; sometimes the damn thing talked back. Two years away from the Sun and Keyes still longed for the peculiar fraternity of the city room. It ruled your whole damn life, the newspaper, and even if it made vulgar cynical bastards out of everybody, at least the bastards were there in the empty times. Day or night you could walk into the
Sun
and find somebody ready to sneak out for a beer or sandwich. These days Keyes ate alone, or with clients so scuzzy he wanted to gag on the comed beef and rye.

Which is why he came to enjoy guarding Kara Lynn Shivers. The first couple days she'd treated him with the same frostiness and suspicion she held for most men, but gradually she had warmed up. The less they talked about the beauty-queen racket, the happier Kara Lynn seemed. She was good company, nothing like Keyes had expected. It seemed a miracle that she had emerged from the cloying parentage of Reed Shivers so independent, unspoiled, and classy. It also was amazing that her sense of humor had survived, as had some soft and thoughtful edges. Talking to Kara Lynn was so easy that Keyes had to remind himself that this was not prom week, it was a serious assignment, and the package did not include true confessions. He was getting paid a small truckload of money to do one job: deliver Kara Lynn Shivers safe, pristine, and magnificent aboard the queen's float.

Two days after Christmas, five days before the big parade, Kara Lynn came downstairs wearing a sassy lemon-yellow tennis skirt and a matching knit vest. She handed Brian Keyes one of her father's expensive boron tennis rackets and said, “Come on, Marlowe, we're going to the club.”

Keyes wasn't in a clubby mood. He'd spent a second straight morning at the airport, watching Customs in case Wiley tried to slip through. As usual, Miami International was a zoo—and there'd been no sign of Skip.

“I'm beat,” Keyes told Kara Lynn. “Besides, I'm lousy at tennis.”

“Not with those legs,” Kara Lynn said. “Now, come on.”

They took her VW. It was only a ten-block ride, a winding circle around the Coral Gables golf course. Keyes drove. In the rearview, two cars back, was a Cadillac Seville with tinted windows. It was the worst tail job Keyes had ever seen—if that's what it was. On an open stretch Keyes coasted the VW and the Caddy backed off by half a mile. Then it turned off and disappeared.

Kara Lynn was very cool; she hadn't turned around once.

“Do you have your own gun?” she asked casually.

“It's in the trunk.”

“There is no trunk.”

“There is too,” Keyes said, “in the MG.”

“Brilliant,” she said. “How much did you say they were paying you?”

Keyes gave her a that's-very-funny look.

“Who do you think was following us?”

“Maybe nobody. Maybe the bad guys.”

“They wouldn't try anything now, not before the parade.”

“Who knows,” Keyes said. “We're dealing with a special brand of fruitcake.” He pulled into the clubhouse parking lot.

Kara Lynn asked, “How are you going to play tennis in those ratty sneakers?”

“Badly, I'm sure.” The shoes weren't the worst of it. Keyes was wearing raggedy cutoff jeans and a Rolling Stones concert T-shirt.

“Take my arm,” Kara Lynn said, “otherwise they'll think you're a caddy.”

Keyes dragged himself around the tennis court for a solid hour, volleying like a madman, all speed and no finesse. His stitches throbbed constantly and his right lung was on fire. The only thing that kept him going was the long-legged sight of Kara Lynn rushing the net, her lips set intently, cheeks flushing pink, blond hair shimmering with each step. When it came to tennis, she was a very serious young lady. Nothing fancy, no power to speak of, but clean precise strokes. Tricky, too.

She beat him 6-4, 3-6, 7-6. A drop shot got him. He made a valiant stab, but wound up straddling the net. He was too exhausted to feel embarrassed.

Afterward Kara Lynn led him into the clubhouse lounge. Keyes took a quick survey and concluded that he was the only person in the whole joint without an alligator on his shirt. Even the bartender had one. Keyes thought he'd died and gone to Preppie Heaven.

Several fragrant young men stopped Kara Lynn for a peck on the cheek. Kiss, kiss. Howya doing. Looking great. Bye now. Keyes himself got a few curious stares.

“You ever see
Goodbye, Columbus
?” he said to Kara Lynn when they sat down. “I feel just like the shmuck in that movie, and you're the Ali MacGraw part.”

“Oh please.”

“It was before your time. Forget about it.”

“I like the Rolling Stones,” Kara Lynn volunteered.

“Yeah?”

“Your T-shirt's pretty pitiful, but the Stones are all right.”

She ordered a club soda. Keyes asked for a draft.