by Carl Hiaasen
Following the flop of Skantily Klad, NED AND JANET BUNTERMAN separated. Ned partnered with the Jorgensens to purchase a thirty-acre vineyard in Mendocino County, while Janet moved in with her tennis instructor. The Buntermans continue to jointly manage their daughter's career, such as it is, and will make occasional paid appearances on her television show.
MAURY LYKES was indicted for income-tax evasion and fled to Bangkok, where he purchased a popular tourist hotel and introduced topless karaoke. He was later attacked and dismembered in his fern garden by the enraged father of a young cabaret singer named Linga Li. The savage crime received so much publicity that an enterprising Chinese music producer signed Linga to a long-term recording contract. Her first album, to be released throughout Asia on her eighteenth birthday, will be dedicated to "my dear Uncle Maury."
After the incident at Pubes, LUCY AND LILA LARK terminated their association with Cherry Pye and the Bunterman family. The twins' publicity firm continues to thrive, rejecting all but the most recklessly unspooled celebrities. Most recently, the Larks have consented to represent a well-known star of action films who nearly garroted himself during a vigorous act of autoeroticism on the D train in midtown Manhattan. The sisters are said to have scored an exclusive interview for their client on an upcoming edition of 60 Minutes, when he will reveal to Lesley Stahl a dark, gut-wrenching childhood secret that the Larks are now composing, and tweaking for maximum buzz.
The part of the deviant surfer was completely edited from the final cut of Quentin Tarantino's much-anticipated Blister Beach. Infuriated, TANNER DANE KEEFE fired his manager and legally changed the sequence of his name to DANE KEEFE TANNER. After their calamitous date at Pubes, he never contacted Cherry Pye again. On the advice of a barmaid, he switched chemical dependencies from hydrocodone to oxycodone, and took up free weights. He is now working on a Showtime miniseries about the Battle of the Little Bighorn in which he plays the role of Kyle, General Custer's loyal but headstrong groom.
After failing nine consecutive urine screens, METHANE DRUDGE was fired by the Poon Pilots and replaced on tour by the longtime drummer from the heavy-metal Canker Crew. Frantic to salvage his rock career, Drudge pleaded with the Lark sisters to become his publicists, but they turned him down. He fled the L.A. scene to join an obscure peyote cult, and was later found dead and half-eaten by coyotes in a homemade sweat lodge on the outskirts of Las Cruces, New Mexico.
The man who killed JACKIE SEBAGO was apprehended after the unusual murder weapon was traced to a Miami dive shop equipped with video cameras in the parking lot. A surveillance tape revealed the license number of the hit man's rental car, and the Avis Company helpfully supplied his driver's license information. Upon his arrest, the killer immediately ratted out WILLIAM SHEA, the person who'd hired him, and whose travel agent had failed to get him an upgrade from coach to first class. While Shea currently awaits trial for Sebago's murder, he and the other investors are aggressively suing the dead developer's estate to recover their stake in the Key Largo town-house project, which remains red-tagged and abandoned to this day.
After solving the Sebago homicide, DETECTIVE ROB REILLY received a commendation and a handsome glass paperweight from the Monroe County Sheriff's Office. He has kept an open file on the person he believes to be CLINTON TYREE, a former governor of Florida, and has returned several times to the remote campsite on North Key Largo. There is no sign of recent habitation.
* * *
Asserting that its home-owner policies don't cover bacterial contamination of household appliances, the Gulfstream Insurance Co. refused to buy a new washing machine for D. T. MALTBY. The ex-lieutenant governor of Florida eventually lost his house at the Ocean Reef Club to his fourth wife, who divorced him in favor of a local fishing guide. Maltby moved back to Tallahassee, slipped into renal failure and on his deathbed told friends about the harrowing visitation by Clinton Tyree. They all thought he was delirious.
RUBEN "WHADDUP" COYLE was cut from the Miami Heat after wrecking another leased Jaguar convertible. Unable to find work in the NBA, he moved to Athens and is now playing point guard for Olympiacos, one of the top basketball teams in Greece. He is not allowed to drive a car, or drink ouzo on game nights.
The memory cards containing the Star Island photographs of Cherry Pye were ruined by her own vomit, and in any event had attracted no interest from book publishers. BLONDELL WAYNE TATUM, also known as Chemo, gave up bodyguarding celebrities after that chaotic night on South Beach. The money paid to him by Maury Lykes was misspent on a series of experimental dermatological procedures that failed to improve his tragic facial appearance. Afterward, the doctor who performed the technique--known as "extreme laser brasion"--vanished from his Coconut Grove clinic and was never found. Chemo worked as an eviction specialist for several Florida banks until the real-estate market turned around, when he returned full-time to the home mortgage business.
Police never found out who shot BANG ABBOTT, or why. A photograph of the wounded paparazzo being borne away on a stretcher was published on page three of the National Eye, accompanied by a caption reading: CATFIGHT CASUALTY--Photog felled by sniper after Cherry's wild SoBe slapdown. Abbott underwent five hours of emergency surgery to repair bullet damage in his lower intestinal tract. Because of its problematic location, the entry wound was left open and a tube was inserted to serve indefinitely as a drain. Two days after the shooting, while still in the ICU, Abbott scribbled out a personal check to FREMONT SPORES for the sum of two hundred dollars, which was hand-delivered by TEDDY LOO. Abbott recovered from his injuries, although it was many months before he again picked up a camera. Today he rents a small studio in Culver City, where he specializes in portraits of toddlers, prom couples and small pets. He is also available for corporate functions.
ANN DELUSIA became a star, though on her own terms. She chose People over Us Weekly, Details over Vanity Fair, Larry King over Mario Lopez, Ellen over Tyra, Kimmel over Leno, Tribeca over Sundance, ICM over CAA, and Revlon over Garnier. She still doesn't employ a stylist, publicist or bodyguard. In interviews she speaks pensively of her time as Cherry Pye's secret double, and always expresses compassion for the troubled singer. Ann steadfastly refuses to discuss what occurred while she was held captive by a "deeply disturbed fan" who'd mistaken her for the pop singer. She never brought criminal charges against Claude Abbott, and never publicly identified him. Three book publishers offered contracts in the mid-six figures, but Ann turned them down because they all insisted on pairing her with a ghostwriter. She also declined promising roles in films by Judd Apatow and the Coen brothers because she'd previously committed to appear in a Pedro Almodovar project about three women hang gliders who become stranded on Gibraltar during a tsunami. She hasn't seen Skink since their motorcycle ride on the night Abbott was shot, although she occasionally speaks with JIM TILE, who reports that the former governor is in a good place.
A NOTE ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Carl Hiaasen is the author of eleven previous novels, including the best-selling Nature Girl, Skinny Dip, Sick Puppy, and Lucky You, and three popular children's books, Hoot, Flush, and Scat. His most recent work of nonfiction is The Downhill Lie: A Hacker's Return to a Ruinous Sport. He also writes a weekly column for The Miami Herald.
THIS IS A BORZOI BOOK
PUBLISHED BY ALFRED A. KNOPF
Copyright (c) 2010 by Carl Hiaasen
All rights reserved. Published in the United States by Alfred A. Knopf, a division of Random House, Inc., New York, and in Canada by Random House of Canada Limited, Toronto.
www.aaknopf.com
Knopf, Borzoi Books and the colophon are registered trademarks of Random House, Inc.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Hiaasen, Carl.
Star Island / by Carl Hiaasen.--1st ed.
p. cm.
eISBN: 978-0-307-59438-9
1. Women singers--Fiction. 2. Paparazzi--Fiction.
3. Florida--Fiction. I. Title.
&n
bsp; PS3558.1217573 2010
813'.54--dc22 2010022584
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously. The author's use of names of actual persons, places, and characters are incidental to the plot, and are not intended to change the entirely fictional character of the work.
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