Tourist Season (51 page)

“Don't you want to hear a war story?” Wiley asked.

“Shut up,” Keyes said.

“You want the boat? Then you've got to listen.
Politely.”

Keyes grabbed Wiley's wrist and looked at the watch. It was half-past five; they'd be cutting it close.

“A few years back, a little girl was kidnapped and murdered,” Wiley said, turning to Kara Lynn, his audience. “After the body was found, Brian was supposed to go interview the parents.”

“The Davenports,” Keyes said.

“Hey, let me tell it!” Wiley said indignantly.

The rain had slackened to a sibilant drizzle. Keyes tore a piece of plastic from Kara Lynn's makeshift poncho and sat down on it. He felt oppressively lethargic, bone-tired.

“Brian came back with a great piece,” Wiley said. “Mother, weeping hysterically; father, blind with rage. Tomorrow would be
Callie Davenport's
fourth birthday. Her
room is full of bright presents, each tenderly wrapped. There's a Snoopy doll from Uncle Dennis, a Dr. Seuss from Grandpa. Callie won't be there on her birthday, so the packages may sit there for a long time. Maybe forever. Her parents simply can't bear to go in her bedroom.”

Keyes sagged. He couldn't believe that Wiley remembered the story, word for word. It was amazing.

“A real tearjerker,” Wiley pronounced. “That morning half of Miami was weeping into their Rice Krispies.” He seemed oblivious of pain, of the thickening puddle of blood under his leg.

“Kara Lynn,” he said, “in my business, the coin of the realm is a good quote—it's the only thing that brings a newspaper story to life. One decent quote is the difference between dog food and caviar, and Brian's story about Callie Davenport was chocked with lyrical quotes.
‘All I want,' sobbed the little girl's father, ‘is ten minutes with the guy who did this. Ten minutes and a clawhammer.' A neighbor drove Callie's mother to the morgue to identify her daughter. ‘I wanted to lie down beside her,' Mrs. Davenport said. ‘I wanted to put my arms around my baby and wake her up...' ”

Keyes said, “That's enough.”

“Don't be so modest,” Wiley chided. “It's the only thing you ever wrote that made me jealous.”

“I made it all up,” Keyes said, taking Kara Lynn's hand. He was hoping she'd squeeze back, and she did.

Wiley looked perturbed, as if Brian had spoiled the big punch line.

“I drove out to the house,” Keyes said in a monotone. “I was expecting a crowd. Neighbors, relatives, you know. But there was only one car in the driveway, they were all alone ... I knocked on the door. Mrs. Davenport answered and I could see in her eyes she'd been through hell. Behind her, I saw how they'd put all of Callie's pictures out in the living room—on the piano, the sofas, the TV console, everywhere ... you never saw so many baby pictures. Mr. Davenport sat on the floor with an old photo album across his lap ... he was crying his heart out ...

“In a nice voice Mrs. Davenport asked me what I wanted. At first I couldn't say a damn thing and then I told her I was an insurance adjuster and I was looking for the Smiths' house and I must have got the wrong address. Then I drove back to my apartment and made up the whole story, all those swell quotes. That's what the Sun printed.”

“The ultimate impiety,” Wiley intoned, “the rape of truth.”

“He's right,” Keyes said. “But I just couldn't bring myself to do it, to go in that house and intrude on those people's grief. So I invented the whole damn story.”

“I think it took guts to walk away,” Kara Lynn said.

“Oh please.” Wiley grimaced. “It was an act of profound cowardice. No self-respecting journalist turns his back on pain and suffering. It was an egregious and shameful thing, Pollyanna, your boyfriend's no hero.”

Kara Lynn stared at Wiley and said, “You're pathetic.” She said it in such a mordant and disdainful way that Wiley flinched. Obviously he'd misjudged her, and Keyes too. He had saved the Callie Davenport story all these years, anticipating the moment he might need it. Yet it had not produced the desired effect, not at all. He felt a little confused.

Keyes said to Kara Lynn, “I had to quit the paper. I'd stepped over the line and there was no going back.”

“At least I hawk the truth,” Wiley cut in. “That's what this campaign is all about—dramatizing the true consequence of folly.” He struggled wobbly to his feet. He gained balance by clutching a sea-grape limb and shifting all weight to his left side. The other leg hung like a dead and blackening trunk.

“Brian, I don't know if you'll ever understand, but try. All that wretched grief the Davenports spent on their little girl is exactly what I feel when I think what's happened to this place. It's the same sense of loss, the same fury and primal lust for vengeance. The difference is, I can't turn my back the way you did. My particular villain is not some tattooed sex pervert, but an entire generation of blow-dried rapists with phones in their Volvos and five-million-dollar lines of credit and secretaries who give head. These are the kind of deviants who dreamed up the Osprey Club, idiots who couldn't tell an osprey from a fucking parakeet.”

Kara Lynn was amazed at Wiley's indefatigable fervor. Brian Keyes was not stirred; he'd heard it all before. Overhead the skies were clearing as the last of the rain clouds scudded west. On the horizon shone a tinge of magenta, the first promise of dawn. Time was running out and there was one last chore.

“Skip—”

“Brian, Kara Lynn, can you imagine the Asshole Quotient on this island one year from now? You'll need the goddamn Census Bureau just to count up all the gold chains—”

Keyes slipped the Browning into his belt. “Where's the boat, Skip?”

“I changed my mind,” he said peevishly. “You'll have to find it yourself. If you don't, we all go boom together. That's a much better story, don't you think?
Condo Island Blast Claims Three.”

“Try four,” Keyes said.

Wiley fingered his beard. His needle-sharp eyes went from Keyes to Kara Lynn and back. “What are you talking about?”

“She's here, Skip.”

“Jenna?”

Keyes pointed to the hardwoods.

“Jenna's on the island?”

“I thought we'd play some bridge,” said Keyes.

“Why'd you bring her!” Wiley demanded angrily.

“So we'd be even.”

Wiley said, “Brian, I had no idea you were such a mean-spirited sonofabitch.” He looked profoundly disappointed.

“Wait here,” Keyes said. Quickly he went into the woods.

“Did you know about this?” Wiley asked Kara Lynn.

“What're you so upset about?” she said. “It'll make a better story, right?”

Mulling options, Wiley nibbled his lower lip.

Keyes returned, leading Jenna by the hand. At the sight of her, Wiley's face drained.

“Oh boy,” he said in a shrunken voice.

“I'm sorry, Skip,” Jenna said. She acted embarrassed, mortified, like a teenager who'd just wrecked her father's brand-new car.

“She's a little shy,” Keyes explained. “She didn't want you to know she was here.”

“I ruined everything,” Jenna said. She gasped when she saw Wiley's mangled knee but made no move to dress the wound. Florence Nightingale Jenna was not.

Wiley looked at his watch. It said 6:07. Dawn came at 6:27 sharp.

“Skip's through tallcing,” Keyes said to Jenna. “He's said everything he could possibly say. Now all four of us are going to get aboard the boat and get the hell off this island before it blows up.”

Wiley kneaded the calf of his right leg. “I can't believe you actually shot me,” he said.

“I thought it might shut you up.”

“Just what the hell were you aiming for?”

“What's the difference?” Keyes said.

Kara Lynn had climbed the old homestead plot. The elevation was scarcely ten feet, but it was high enough to afford a view of the surrounding waters, now calm. A distant wisp of brown diesel smoke attracted her attention.

“I think I see the barge,” she said.

Keyes said, “What's it going to be, Skip?”

Wiley gazed at Jenna; Keyes figured it was about time for a big sloppy hug. They both looked ten years older than before, yet still not quite like a couple.

“There's a mooring at the north end, on the lee side, opposite the way you came,” Wiley said tiredly. “That's where the Mako's anchored up. You'd best get going.”

“We're
all
going,” Keyes said.

“Not me,” Wiley said. “You can't make me, podner.” He was right. The gun didn't count for anything now.

“Hey, there's an eagle,” Jenna said.

The bird was airborne, elegantly soaring toward the pines. It carried a silvery fish in its talons.

“Just look at that,” Wiley marveled, his eyes brightening beneath the Seminole bandanna. He took off his baseball cap in salute.

“It's a gorgeous bird,” Kara Lynn agreed, tugging on Brian's arm. Time to go, she was saying, step on it.

“Skip, come with us,” Keyes urged.

“Or what? You gonna shoot me again?”

“Of course not.”

Wiley said, “Forget about me, pal. I'm beginning to like it here.” He held out his arms and Jenna went to him. Wiley kissed her on the forehead. He touched her hair and said, “I don't suppose you want to keep a one-legged lunatic company?”

Jenna's eyes, as usual, gave the answer. Keyes saw it and looked away. He'd seen it before.

“Aw, I don't blame you,” Wiley said to her, “the bugs out here are just awful.” He patted her on the butt and let go.

To Keyes he whispered, “Help her pick out a new coffee table, okay?”

“Skip, please—”

“No! Go now, and hurry. These radio-controlled devices are extremely precise.”

Keyes led the two women across the clearing. Jenna trudged ahead woodenly, but Keyes and Kara Lynn paused at the crest of the homesteader's hill. They looked back and saw Wiley in the clearing, leaning against the rusty flagpole. His arms were folded, and on his face was a broad and euphoric and incomprehensible grin.

“Hey, Brian,” he shouted, “I didn't finish my story.”

Keyes almost laughed. “Not now, you asshole!” The guy was unbelievable.

“But I never told you—they called.”

“Who?”

“The Davenports. They phoned the day your piece ran, but you were already gone.”

Keyes groaned—the bastard always wanted the last word.

Anxiously he shouted back, “What did they want?”

“They wanted to say thanks,” Wiley hollered. “I couldn't believe it! They actually wanted to say thanks for butting out.”

Keyes waved one last time at his old friend.

Lost forever, his odyssey now measured in minutes, Skip Wiley swung a ropy brown arm in reply. He was still waving his cap when Brian Keyes, Jenna, and Kara Lynn Shivers disappeared into the buttonwood.

 

They found the trail and, ten minutes later, the mooring where the outboard was anchored. The tide was up so they had to wade, skating their feet across the mud and turtle grass. Jenna lost her footing and slipped down, without a word, into the shallows. Keyes grabbed her under one arm, Kara Lynn got the other. Together they hoisted her into the boat.

The engine was stone cold.

With trembling fingers Keyes turned the key again and again. The motor whined and coughed but wouldn't start.

“You flooded it,” Kara Lynn said. “Let it sit for thirty seconds.”

Keyes looked at her curiously but did what he was told. The next time he turned the key, the Evinrude roared to life.

“Dad's got a ski boat,” Kara Lynn explained. “Happens all the time.”

Keyes jammed down the throttle and the Mako chewed its way off the flat, churning marl and grass, planing slowly. Finally it found deeper water, flattened out and gained speed. Already the rim of purple winter sky was turning yellow gold.

“How much time?” Jenna asked numbly.

“Three, four minutes,” Keyes guessed.

They had to circle Osprey Island to reach the marked channel that would take them to safety.

“Brian!” Jenna blurted, pointing.

Keyes jerked back on the stick until the engine quit. The boat coasted in glassy silence, a quarter-mile off the islet. They all stared toward the stand of high pines.

“Oh no,” Kara Lynn said.

Keyes was incredulous.

Jenna said, “Boy, he never gives up.”

Skip Wiley was in the trees.

He was dragging himself up the tallest pine, branch by branch, the painstaking, web-crawling gait of a spider. How with a smashed leg Wiley had climbed so high was astonishing. It was not a feat of gymnastics so much as a show of reckless nerve. He hung in the tree like a broken scarecrow; ragged, elongated, his limbs bent at odd angles. From a distance his skull shone three-toned—the russet beard; the jutting tanned face; the alabaster pate. In one hand was Tommy Tigertail's red bandanna—Wiley was waving it back and forth and shrieking at the top of his considerable lungs; plangent gibberish.

“Brian, he wants us to come get him!”

“No,” Keyes said, “that's not it.”

It was sadder than that.

The object of Wiley's expedition was perched at the top of the forty-foot pine. With its keen and faultless eyes it peered down at this demented, blood-crusted creature and wondered what in the world to do. As Skip Wiley advanced, he brayed, flailed his bright kerchief, shattered branches—but the great predator merely blinked and clung to its precious fish.