Tourist Season (37 page)

There was a pause; then Wiley laughed disbelievingly. “What do you mean
no?”

“I won't put the Nights of December on page one. I'll bury the story, so help me God.”

“You can't,” Wiley said, sounding vastly amused. “Don't you see, you're powerless. You can't ignore the news unless you're ready to forsake the public trust—and you're not, Cab. I'll bet on it. You're too honorable, too ethical, too everything. The integrity of that newspaper is sacred to you, probably the only thing sacred in your life. Diddling around with my column is one thing, but censorship's another. You wouldn't do it, not in a million years. You're at the mercy of the news, old friend, and right now the news is me.”

“Skip, I still run this paper,” said Mulcahy, his voice taut. He was choking the phone with both hands.

“And you do a swell job running the paper,” Wiley said. “But if you don't think I know how to make the front page after all these years, then it's your brain that's turned to Rice-a-Roni. Now I've really got to sign off. My schedule is extremely tight.”

“No, Skip, hold on just a second. I want you to please, please stop killing these innocent people—”

“Dammit, I haven't. Not one. Not innocent.”

“Just stop the murders, please. As a friend I'm begging you. The cops are going to figure it out and they'll track you down. Why don't you end this thing and turn yourself in. You need—”

“What do I need? Help? I need help? Come on, Cab, lighten up. Melodrama doesn't suit you. I've got to run.”

“Skip, if you hang up, I'm calling García. I'm going to give him your name, tell him everything.”

“Brian didn't explain the rules.”

“I can't go along anymore, threats or not. Bloodbath, my ass—I mean, what more can you do, Skip? You even blew up one of my reporters.”

“So you're going to put all this in the newspaper?”

“Absolutely.”

“Then do me a favor,” Wiley said seriously.

“What?”

“Make sure you run a good picture. I'm partial to the right-side profile, the one where I'm wearing the corduroy jacket. The dark brown one.”

“Yeah, I remember,” Mulcahy said dejectedly.

“What about Cardoza?”

“He's next on my list, after the cops.”

“S'pose he wants his New Year's column.”

“Don't even think about it,” Mulcahy said.

“Fine. Be that way. The paper's dull as dishwater.”

“I'll handle Cardoza,” Mulcahy said.

“I'm sure. But in the meantime, Cab, watch the heavens.”

“What do you mean?”

“Watch the heavens! Got that?”

“Yes,” Mulcahy said. He didn't like the sound of things. He would have preferred that Wiley not bother giving any more clues. “Look, Skip, why don't you call Brian?”

“He's busy nymphet-sitting.”

“Talk to him!”

“Nah.”

“Okay, then he wanted me to tell you something. He wanted me to tell you that it's hopeless, that what you're doing is sheer suicide. He wanted me to tell you that whether you know it or not, it's all over.”

“Ho-ho-ho,” Skip Wiley said, and hung up.

Right away Cab Mulcahy put in a call to Al Garcia, but the entire Fuego One Task Force was out in the Everglades on a tip. A deer hunter had stumbled into a fresh campsite that looked promising; García wasn't expected back in the office until morning. Mulcahy left an urgent message.

Next he tried Keyes, but Brian was gone too. There was a photo session out on the beach, Reed Shivers explained—the Orange Bowl queen at sunset. The languid look, very artsy. Keyes had tagged along to keep an eye on things; took the gun but not his beeper.

“Shit,” Mulcahy said.

Cardoza was strike three. The publisher was attending the Palm Beach premiere of a new Burt Reynolds movie. Afterward was a cookout at Generoso Pope's.

Cab Mulcahy fixed himself a pitcher of martinis, sat down with Mozart on the stereo, and waited for the telephone to ring. It was the lousiest Saturday night of his life, and it was about to get worse.

 

One of Sparky Harper's only legacies was the annual pre—Orange Bowl Friendship Cruise. Each year, on the Saturday evening before the Monday parade, a large contingent of visiting dignitaries, politicians, VIPs and wealthy tourists set sail from the Port of Miami for a two-day junket to Freeport and Key West. Sparky Harper had inaugurated the Friendship Cruise as a goodwill gimmick, and also as a secret favor to one of his ex-wives' brothers, who ran a lucrative catering firm for the cruise lines. For the first few years, the Orange Bowl queen contestants had been invited along on the cruise, as had all the Orange Bowl football players. However, the Chamber of Commerce quietly discontinued this policy in the late 1970's following an unseemly episode involving a lifeboat, a young beauty queen, and three University of Oklahoma sophomore linebackers. Once the beauty contestants and the football players had been banned from the ship, Sparky Harper had found himself with loads of empty chairs and four hundred pounds of surplus Gulf shrimp. It was then he had gotten the idea to invite journalists—but not just any journalists: travel writers. Sparky Harper and the Greater Miami Chamber of Commerce adored travel writers because travel writers never wrote stories about street crime, water pollution, fish kills, beach erosion, refugees, AIDS epidemics, nuclear accidents, cocaine smugglers, gun-runners, or race riots. Once in a while, a daring travel writer would mention one of these subjects in passing, but strictly in the context of a minor setback from which South Florida was pluckily rebounding. For instance, when huge tracts of Miami Beach began to disappear into the ocean, leaving nothing but garish hotels at water's edge, a decision was made to hastily build a new beach out of dredged-up rock, shells, and coral grit. Once this was done, Sparky Harper mailed out hundreds of impressive aerial photographs to newspapers everywhere. Sure enough, many travel writers soon journeyed to Miami and wrote about the wondrous new beach without ever mentioning the fact that you needed logger's boots to cross it without lacerating the veins of your feet. As a rule, travel writers wrote only about the good stuff; they were A-okay in Sparky's book. So, with the endorsement of the Chamber of Commerce, in 1980 Sparky Harper invited fifty travel writers from newspapers all across North America to come to Miami during Orange Bowl Week and sail the Friendship Cruise. Of course, 1980 was the year of the Liberty City riots and the Mariel boatlift, so only nine travel writers showed up, several of them carrying guns for protection. The following year the turnout was much better, and the year after that, better still. By the time of Sparky Harper's death, the Friendship Cruise was widely regarded by American travel writers as one of the premier junkets in the business.

This year the Chamber of Commerce unanimously had voted to dedicate the event to Sparky Harper's memory. On the night of December 29, four weeks after Sparky's murder, a crowd of 750 gathered at the Port of Miami and listened as the mayor of Miami read a brief tribute to the slain public-relations wizard. Afterward the crowd streamed up the gangplank and boarded the SS Nordic Princess, where an orgy of eating and drinking and banal joke-telling commenced.

The SS
Nordic Princess
was a sleek cruise liner, and nearly brand-new. Built on a fiord in Norway, she was 527 feet long and carried a gross tonnage of 16,500. She had seven decks, four hundred cabins, two heated swimming pools, five restaurants, eight bars, a spa, a library, a bowling alley, fifty slot machines, and a video arcade. There was also a branch of Chase Manhattan on the gambling mezzanine. The
Nordic Princess
was served by a crew of three hundred, mostly Dominicans and Haitians, with a few obligatory white Englishmen to serve as bell captains and maître d's.

Many of the passengers on the Friendship Cruise had never before sailed on an ocean liner. One of them was Mack Dane, the new travel writer from the Tulsa
Express.
Dane was a spry and earnest fellow in his mid-sixties who had spent most of his newspaper career trying to cover the oil industry. As a reward for his thirty-two years of service (and also to get him out of the way to make room for a young reporter), the Express had “promoted” him to the travel beat. The Orange Bowl was his first assignment, the Friendship Cruise his maiden voyage.

Like most of the guests aboard the Nordic Princess, Mack Dane was tickled to be in Miami in December. He had just spoken to his daughter back in Oklahoma and learned that there was three feet of fresh snow and a wind chill of forty-two below, and that the dog had frozen to the doorstep.

As the ship glided out of Government Cut, Mack Dane found his way to the top deck and strategically positioned himself near a tray of fresh stone crabs and jumbo shrimp. Christmas lights were strung festively from the ship's smokestacks, and a live
salsa
band was performing a medley of Jimmy Buffett tunes in a fashion that no one had ever dreamed possible. A strong breeze blew in from the ocean, pushing clouds and a promise of light rain. Mack Dane grabbed another banana daiquiri. He was having a grand time. He wondered if any of his fellow travel writers were young and pretty.

Two tourists stood at the rail and waved at the tiny figures of snook fishermen out on the jetty. Mack Dane watched the tourists for a few minutes and decided to interview them for his story. They looked like a reasonable couple.

“The Gilberts,” they said warmly. “Montreal.”

Sam Gilbert was about forty years old. He wore pale yellow slacks and an expensive toupee that was having a rough go of it with the wind. Other than that, he was a handsome-looking gentleman with a pleasant smile. His wife appeared to be in her late thirties. She was dressed in a tasteful beige pantsuit, a sheer silk scarf tucked around her neck. Her hair was so unnaturally blond that it was attracting fireflies, but other than that Mrs. Gilbert looked like a friendly and decent person.

“This your first cruise?” Mack Dane asked.

“Yes,” Mrs. Gilbert said. “We had to book four months in advance. This is a very popular trip.”

Mack Dane told them he was a travel writer, and a guest of the Chamber of Commerce.

“You didn't have to pay?” Mrs. Gilbert said.

“Well, no.”

“What a great job,” said Sam Gilbert.

“First trip to Miami?” Mack Dane asked.

“Right,” Gilbert said. “We're here to see the Irish stomp the Huskers.” Notre Dame was playing the University of Nebraska in the Orange Bowl football game on New Year's Day. According to many sportswriters, the game would determine the national collegiate football championship.

“I don't like football,” Mrs. Gilbert confided. “I'm here for the sunshine and shopping.”

“We just bought a winter home in Boca Raton,” Sam Gilbert said. “Not a home, actually, a condominium.”

“Sam's a doctor,” Mrs. Gilbert explained.

Mack Dane felt like another drink. The Nordic Princess was out to sea, rocking ever so lightly in the northeast chop. Behind her, the skies of Miami glowed a burnished orange from the sodium anticrime lights.

“So it's safe to say you're really enjoying this trip,” Mack Dane said.

“Oh yes.” Mrs. Gilbert noisily attacked a stone-crab claw. Mack Dane wondered if she'd considered removing the shell first.

“Put in your article,” she said, “that Dr. and Mrs. Samuel Gilbert of Montreal, Canada, are having the time of their lives.”

Sam Gilbert said, “I wouldn't go that far.”

“Mr. Dane, could you do us a favor? Could you take our picture?”

“Sure.” Mack Dane put away his notebook and wiped his hands on a cocktail napkin that was decorated with the seal of the State of Florida. Mrs. Gilbert handed him a small thirty-five-millimeter camera with a built-in flash and built-in focus and built-in light meter.

The Gilberts posed arm-in-arm against the rail of the ship. Sam Gilbert wore his doctor face while Mrs. Gilbert kept reaching up and fiddling with his toupee, which, in the strong wind, had begun to resemble a dead starling.

Mack Dane squinted through the viewfinder and tried to frame the Gilberts romantically, with the lights of Miami shining over their shoulders. At first it was a perfect picture—if only there'd been a full moon! Then something went wrong. Suddenly Mack Dane couldn't see the Gilberts anymore; he couldn't see anything through the camera except a white light. He figured something broke on the focus.

But when he took the camera away from his face, Mack Dane realized that the white light was real: a beam piercing down from the heavens. Or from something in the heavens. Something that hovered like a dragonfly high above the SS
Nordic Princess.

“A helicopter,” Mack Dane said. “A big one.” He knew the sound of a chopper. He'd flown them lots of times out to the oil rigs.

The Gilberts craned their necks and stared into the sky, shielding their eyes from the powerful search beam. The other partiers crowded together, pointing. The
salsa
band took a break.

Mack Dane said, “It's coming down.”

The helicopter did seem to be descending slowly, but it was no longer in a hover, it was flying in a slow arc. Trailing behind the chopper was a long advertising banner.

“This is really tacky,” Sam Gilbert said.

Mack Dane put on eyeglasses and turned in circles, trying to read the streamer. In four-foot letters it said: “AVAST AND AHOY: WELCOME TO THE REVOLUTI—”

“Revoluti?” puzzled Sam Gilbert.

“Maybe it's a new perfume,” said his wife.