by Carl Hiaasen
He retreated to his desk and practiced typing his new byline. He even experimented with different middle initials, just to gauge the effect: Richard A. Bloodworth, Richard B. Bloodworth, Richard C. Bloodworth and so on. There was something about having a vowel for a middle initial that struck Bloodworth as impressive, and he wondered if his mother would get upset if he changed his middle name from Leon to Attenborough.
Bloodworth was still mulling the notion an hour later when an editor handed him a police bulletin about some old lady who’d turned up missing from her Broward condominium. As he skimmed the police report about Mrs. Kimmelman’s disappearance, Ricky Bloodworth suddenly remembered something else Brian Keyes had whispered from his Demerol fog on the stretcher, something even odder than the business about the Slavic kidnappers.
“Ida is dead,” Keyes had told him.
Richard L. Bloodworth emptied his typewriter and started working the phones like a dervish.
13
Skip Wiley had a plan.
That’s what he told them—the Indian, the football player, and the Cuban—whenever they got restless.
Trust me, boys, I have a plan!
And he was such a convincing eccentric that they usually calmed down. Wiley overpowered them—even Viceroy Wilson, who thought Wiley would’ve made a righteous TV preacher. Of all Las Noches de Diciembre, only Wilson was absolutely certain of Wiley’s sanity. As much as he hated honkies, Wilson found Skip Wiley vastly amusing.
Jesús Bernal, on the other hand, was not amused. He thought Wiley was a reckless lunatic, and wasted no opportunity to say so. Bemal believed discipline was essential for revolution; Wiley, of course, believed just the opposite.
Usually it was Viceroy Wilson who was left to suffer the Cuban’s ravings because the Indian just ignored both of them. Without Wiley around, Tommy Tigertail invariably climbed into his airboat and roared into the Everglades without a word. Viceroy Wilson didn’t mind, as long as Tommy left the keys to the Cadillac.
On the morning of December 10, Skip Wiley was gone and the Indian had vanished, leaving Viceroy Wilson alone with Jesús Bernal. At Wiley’s instruction, the two of them were driving to Miami on an important mission.
“He’s loco,” Bernal was saying. “Did you see his eyes?”
“He just drank a six-pack,” Wilson reminded him.
“Crazy fucker. All this work and what do we have to show for it? Nada. Remember all the publicity he promised? NBC! Geraldo Rivera! Mother Jones! Ha!”
Jesus Bernal no longer spoke Spanish in the presence of Viceroy Wilson because Wilson had promised to kill him if he did. The mere sound of people speaking Spanish gave Viceroy Wilson a terrible headache. Opera had the same effect.
“The man’s got a plan,” Wilson said, “so chill out.”
“What plan? He’s a fucking nut!” Bernal nervously knotted the tail of his undershirt. “We’re all going to wind up in prison, except him. He’ll be at the Betty Ford Clinic while you and me do twenty-five at Raiford, getting butt-fucked in the showers.”
“Be a good experience for you.”
“Don’t tell me about plans,” the Cuban groused.
Viceroy Wilson slid Lionel Richie into the tape deck.
“Oh, man, turn the jungle drums down—” Jesus Bernal reached for the volume knob but Wilson forcefully intercepted his arm. “Okay, okay! Christ, take it easy.” Bernal couldn’t see Viceroy Wilson’s eyes behind the Carrera sunglasses; it was just as well.
“So tell me about Dartmouth,” Wilson said in a phony Ivy League tone. “Did you excel?”
“That wasn’t me, that was another Jesús Bernal. I’m a different person now.”
“Too bad,” Wilson said. “Tell me about the First Weekend in July Movement.”
“Never!”
Wilson chuckled dryly. He’d done a little checking at the Miami Public Library.
“Why’d they kick you out?”
“They didn’t kick me out, coño, I quit!”
Viceroy Wilson didn’t like the sound of coño, but he let it slide. He was having too much fun. He’d been waiting for this since the first time Jesus Bernal had flashed his switchblade. Jesús was a bully, his mean streak carefully rehearsed; Viceroy Wilson would have loved to play football against Jeśus Bernal. Just one play. Thirty-one Z-right.
“So tell me about the bombs.”
Bernal sneered.
“Come on, Jesus. I read where you were in charge of munitions.”
“I held the title of defense minister!”
“Yeah, that was later. I’m talking about 1978, June 1978.”
Bernal’s upper lip twitched. He stared out the car window and started humming “All Night Long,” drumming on his knee.
Viceroy Wilson said, “June 15, 1978.”
“Turn up the music.”
This is what had happened on the afternoon of June 15, 1978: Jesus Bernal manufactured a letter bomb which was meant to kill a well-known Miami talk-show host. This TV celebrity had been foolhardy enough to suggest that the United States should send emergency medical supplies to a rural province in Cuba, where a deadly strain of influenza had afflicted hundreds of children.
The talk-show host had actually made this appeal for Cuba on the air. In Dade County, Florida.
Jesus Bernal, munitions man for the First Weekend in July Movement, saw the talk show and flew into action. It had taken only two hours to fashion an inconspicuous letter bomb with gunpowder, C-4, glass, wire, gum, and blasting caps. He’d addressed the package to the talk-show star at the television studio, and put it in a mailbox at Southwest Eighth Street and LeJeune Road (the same intersection where, years later, poor Ernesto Cabal would peddle his mangoes and cassavas).
At 4:10 P.M. on June 15, 1978—ten minutes after Jesus Bernal had deposited the lethal package—the mailbox blew up. No one was killed. No one was injured. It wasn’t even a particularly loud explosion, by Miami standards.
Jesus Bernal knew he was in trouble. Frantically he’d telephoned seven Cuban radio stations and announced that the First Weekend in July Movement was responsible for the bombing. They all wanted to know: what bombing?
Two days later, on orders from above, Jesús Bernal had tried again. Another letter bomb, another mailbox. Another premature detonation. This time it had made the newspapers: Feds Seek Postal Prankster.
When Jesús Bernal had translated this headline for the comandante of the First Weekend movement, the old man had erupted in fury, waving the newspaper with a scarred and trembling fist. We are terrorists, not pranksters! And you, Jesús, are a maricón! Make another bomb, a big one, and kill the coño on TV ... or else. The comandante was a revered veteran of the Bay of Pigs, and was to be obeyed at all costs. Jesus worked swiftly.
It was the third bomb that made the pages of Time and U.S. News & World Report, where Viceroy Wilson read about it years later in the stacks of the public library. The third bomb was a delicate yet extremely powerful device that was meant to blow up a car. Jesus Bernal spent four days building the bomb in the kitchen of a Little Havana rooming house. He had personally transported the device to the television station, where he’d meticulously affixed it to a forest-green El Dorado which, in the darkness of the night, appeared identical to the one driven by the seditious TV talk-show host.
Unfortunately, the El Dorado was not identical; in fact, it was not the right automobile. The El Dorado that blew up on the Dolphin Expressway on June 22, 1978, actually belonged to a man named Salvatore “The Cleaver” Buscante, a notorious loan shark and pornographer who had often played gin with Meyer Lansky.
The headline the next day said: Anti-Castro Terrorists Claim Credit for Mob Hit; Feds Puzzle Over Cuban Connection.
Jesus Bernal immediately was expelled from the First Weekend in July Movement, and ordered at gunpoint to leave Florida. He spent ten miserable months in Union City before being recalled by the comandante, who had come to miss Bernal’s public-relations acumen. So what if he’d bombed the wr
ong guy? He got press, didn’t he?
Over the protests of almost all the First Weekend in July’s hardcore soldiers, the comandante had promoted Jesus Bernal to defense minister and bought him an IBM Selectric. From then on, the First Weekend was known for having the most impeccable press releases in the hemisphere. In his new role Jesus Bernal was an innovator: he even sent communiqués on embossed letterheads—italic for bombings, boldface for political assassinations. Even the most skeptical commandos had to admit that the kid from Dartmouth had style. Soon the First Weekend in July became the preeminent anti-Castro group in the United States.
In the summer of 1981, under Bernal’s inspired guidance, the terrorists launched an ambitious PR campaign to discredit Fidel Castro. Although this effort again won national publicity, it also led to Jesus Bernal’s second and final banishment from the First Weekend in July.
The linchpin of the campaign had been a “letter” from a renowned Swiss doctor reporting that President Castro was dying of a rare venereal disease transmitted by poultry. The malady supposedly was manifested by a number of grotesque symptoms, the mildest of which was drooling insanity. Of course the Swiss letter had been invented by none other than Jesus Bernal, but the document was accepted in Miami so unquestionably, and with such patriotic fervor, that Bernal decided to unleash it in Cuba as well. He hatched a daring scheme and persuaded the comandante to donate $19,022—a sum which, sadly, represented the entire treasury of the First Weekend in July Movement.
Not surprisingly, Jesus Bernal picked the first weekend of July in 1981 as the time of attack: the weekend Fidel would finally fall. In Little Havana, the air filled with intrigue and jubilation.
But not for long. On July 4, 1981, a low-flying DC-3 cargo plane dumped six metric tons of anti-Castro leaflets on the resort city of Kingston, Jamaica. The townspeople were baffled because the literature was printed in Spanish; only the words Castro and syphilis seemed to ring a bell among some Jamaicans. One of the leaflets was shown to the island’s prime minister, who immediately cabled Fidel Castro to express sorrow over the president’s unfortunate illness.
Later, under scornful grilling by the comandante, Jesús Bernal admitted that no, he’d never studied aerial navigation at Dartmouth. Bernal argued that it had been an honest mistake—from thirteen thousand feet, Kingston didn’t look that different from Havana. Then Jesus had flashed his trump card: a copy of the New York Times. Three paragraphs, page 15a, in the International News roundup: Tourist Bus Damaged by Falling Air Cargo.
But the comandante and his men were not mollified: Jesus Bernal was purged forever from the First Weekend in July Movement.
“I know all about the bombs,” Viceroy Wilson said as they drove to Miami, several years later. “You’re just doing this to redeem yourself.”
“Ha! I am a hero to all freedom fighters.”
“You’re a pitiful fuck-up,” Wilson said.
“Look who’s talking, goddamn junkie spook.”
“What you say?”
Thank God the music was up so loud.
“Nothing,” Jesus Bernal said. “You missed the damn exit.” He was getting mad at Viceroy Wilson. “You never even said thanks.”
“Thanks for what?” Wilson asked from behind his sunglasses.
“For slicing that guy back in the swamp when he tried to strangle you.”
Wilson laughed. “A mosquito, man, that’s all he was.”
“You looked pretty uptight when that mosquito grabbed your neck. Your eyeballs almost popped out of your chocolate face, that little mosquito was squeezing so hard.”
“Sheee-iiit.”
“Yeah, you owe me one, compadre.”
“You’re the one should be thanking me. You been waitin’ your whole Cuban life to stab somebody in the back and now you did it. Guess that makes you a man, don’t it? Say, why don’t you call up your old dudes and see if they’ll take you back.” Viceroy Wilson grinned nastily. “Maybe they’ll make you minister of switchblades.”
Jesús Bernal scowled and mumbled something crude in Spanish. “I spit on their mothers,” he declared. “If they got on their knees I wouldn’t go back. Never!”
This was a total lie: Jesus Bernal yearned to abandon Skip Wiley’s circus and rejoin his old gang of dedicated extortionists, bombers, and firebugs. In his heart Jesus Bernal believed his special talents were being wasted. Whenever he thought about Wiley’s crazy plan he got a sour stomach that wouldn’t go away. Somehow he couldn’t visualize the masses ever mobilizing behind El Fuego; besides, if Wiley had his way, there’d be no masses left to mobilize—they’d all be heading North. These doubts had begun the day Ernesto Cabal hanged himself; guilt was a deadly emotion for a stouthearted terrorist, but guilt is what Jesus Bernal felt. He didn’t feel particularly good about feeding strangers to crocodiles, either. It wasn’t that the Cuban sympathized with gringo tourists, but Wiley’s peculiar method of murder did not seem like the kind of political statement Las Noches de Diciembre ought to be making. And if nothing else, Jesús Bernal considered himself an expert on political statements.
“This is the place,” Viceroy Wilson announced.
Great, thought Jesús Bernal. He wished Wiley would just let him alone with the typewriter and plastique.
Wilson parked the car in front of a two-story office building on Biscayne Boulevard at Seventy-ninth. A sign out front said: “Greater Miami Orange Bowl Committee.”
“Comb your hair,” Wilson grumbled.
“Shut up.”
“You look like a damn Marielito.”
“And you look like my father’s yard man.”
The lady at the reception desk didn’t like the looks of either of them. “Yes?” she said with a polite Southern lilt unmistakable in its derision.
“We’re here about the advertisement,” Viceroy Wilson explained, shedding his Carreras.
“Yes?”
“The ad for security guards,” Jesús Bernal said.
“Security guards,” Wilson said, “for the Orange Bowl Parade.”
“I see,” said the Southern lady, warily handing each of them a job application. “And you both have some experience?”
“Do we ever,” said Viceroy Wilson, smiling his touchdown smile.
When Brian Keyes awoke, the first thing he noticed was a woman on top of him in the hospital bed. Her blond head lay on his shoulder, and she seemed to be sleeping. Keyes strained to get a glimpse of her face, but every little movement brought a fresh volt of pain.
The woman weighed heavily on his chest; his ribs still ached from the surgery. Keyes stared down at the soft hair and sniffed for fragrant clues; it wasn’t easy, especially with the tube up his nose.
“Jenna?” he rasped.
The woman on his chest stirred and gave a little hum of a reply.
“Jenna, that you?”
She looked up with a sleepy-eyed hello.
“You sound just like George Burns. Want some water?”
Keyes nodded. He let out a sigh when Jenna climbed out of bed.
“Where’d you get the nurse’s uniform?”
“You like it?” She hitched up the hem. “Check out the white stockings.”
Keyes sipped at the cold water; his throat was a furnace.
“What time is it? What day?”
“December 10, my love. Ten-thirty P.M. Way past visiting hours. That’s why I had to wear this silly outfit.”
“You’d make a spectacular nurse. I’m getting better by the second.”
Jenna blushed. She sat at the foot of the bed. “You looked so precious when you were asleep.”
Keyes shut his eyes and faked a snore.
“Now stop!” Jenna laughed. “You look precious anyway. Aw, Brian, I’m so sorry. What happened out there?”
“Skip didn’t tell you?”
She looked away. “I haven’t talked to him.”
Keyes thought: She must think I’ve had brain surgery.
“What happened out there?” she
asked again.
“I got knifed by one of Skip’s caballeros.”
“I don’t believe it,” Jenna said.
Pausing only for gulps of water, Keyes related the sad tale of Mrs. Kimmelman. For once Jenna seemed to focus on every word. She was curious, but unalarmed.
“That poor woman. Do you think she died?”
Keyes nodded patiently. “I’m pretty sure.”
Jenna stood up and walked to the window. “The weather got muggy again,” she remarked. “Three gorgeous days with a little winter, and then poof, Sauna City. My folks already had three feet of snow.”
“Jenna?”
When she turned to face him, her eyes were moist. She was trying to keep it inside, trying to recoup like the magnificent actress she was.
“I’m s-s-so sorry,” she cried. “I didn’t know you’d get hurt.”
Keyes held out his hand. “I’m all right. C’mere.”
She climbed back into bed, sobbing on his shoulder. At first the pain was murderous, but Jenna’s perfume was better than morphine. Keyes wondered what he’d say if a real nurse walked in.
Jenna sniffed, “How’s Skip?”
“Skip’s a little crazy, Jenna.”
“Of course he is.”
“Slightly crazier than usual,” Keyes said. “He’s killing off tourists.”
“I figured it’d be something like that. But it’s not really murder, is it? I mean murder in the criminal way.”
“Jenna, he fed an old lady to a crocodile!”
“He sent me a Mailgram,” she said.
“A Mailgram?”
“It said: ‘Dear Jenna, burn all my Rolodex cards at once. Love, Skip.’”
Keyes asked, “Did you do it? Did you burn the Rolodex?”
“Of course not,” Jenna said, as if the suggestion were preposterous. “The message obviously is in code, which I haven’t yet figured out. Besides, he keeps the Rolodex inside that darned coffin, which gives me the creeps.”
Keyes grimaced, not from pain.
“Look at all these tubes,” Jenna said. “There’s one in your chest and one up your nose and another stuck in your arm. What’s in that bottle?”
