by Carl Hiaasen
“Fewer calories than you think,” she said, her green eyes sparkling through the wine crystal.
“You sure look great.”
“As soon as the granola bars are done, I’m leaving town,” Jenna announced.
Keyes said nothing.
“I’d ask you to stay for dinner, but I’ve got to catch a plane.”
“I understand,” Keyes said. “Where you going?”
“Wisconsin. T’see my folks.”
No hesitation; she had it all worked out. Keyes admired her preparation. If he didn’t know her so well he might’ve believed her. He tried to stall.
“May I have some wine?”
“Unh-unh,” Jenna said. “Better not. You know how you get.”
“Sleepy is how I get.”
“No, sexy and romantic is how you get.”
“What’s wrong with that?”
“Tonight it’s wrong.”
“It wasn’t wrong in the hospital, was it?”
“Not at all,” Jenna said. “It was perfect in the hospital.” She kissed him on the forehead; a polite little kiss that told Keyes his time was running out. She might as well have tapped her foot and pointed at the clock.
He stood up and took her hands. “Please help me.”
“I can’t,” Jenna said firmly. She looked him straight in the eyes, and Keyes realized that, for her, this was no dilemma. She wasn’t torn over loyalties. Skip Wiley came first, second, and third.
Keyes guessed how it must have started: a spark of an idea—maybe Jenna’s, maybe Skip’s—something mentioned over dinner, maybe even in the sack. A fantastic notion to turn back time, to drive out the carpetbaggers, to reclaim the land by painting it as treacherous and uninhabitable. And to do it all with sly tricks and egregious pranks—Armageddon, with mirrors. Wiley would have embraced the idea, embellished it, talked it to life, and made it all seem possible. And Jenna, having started the spark or at least fanned it, would have slipped back to watch her passionate genius turn the whimsy into reality—watching with love and amazement, but not paying quite enough attention. So that when the killing started, and she finally understood how far he had carried the scheme, there was nothing to do but let him finish. The alternative was betrayal: to destroy Skip and orphan this dream, the thing they had created together.
“Is he going to stop this craziness?” Keyes asked.
“I don’t think so,” Jenna said, looking away.
“Then he’ll be caught,” Keyes said, “or killed.”
“Oh, I doubt that.” She removed her headband and plucked off her tiny gold earrings. “I know Skip, and he’s way ahead of everybody. Even you, my love. Now, scoot out of here and let me pack. I’ve got a ten-o’clock plane.”
Brian Keyes retreated to the living room and sat dejectedly on the coffin-turned-coffee-table.
“What are you doing?” Jenna asked from the kitchen doorway. “Brian, it’s time to go.”
“Did you hear what happened today? Today it was a goddamn bomb. Three people blown to bits. You think that’s cute? The old Wiley sense of humor—you find bombs amusing?”
“Not particularly.” Jenna paused, frowning briefly, and something crossed her face that Keyes seldom had seen. Guilt, remorse...something. “Don’t jump to conclusions about Skip,” she said finally. “That shrink had lots of enemies.”
“This isn’t a game of Clue,” Keyes said. “Your boyfriend has become a murderer.”
“It’s not like you to get so melodramatic,” Jenna said impatiently. “Why can’t you just leave it alone? Get busy on your other cases and forget about it. You did your job: you found Skip. When he’s ready to come back, he will. That’s what I told Cab this morning, but he’s just like you. He thinks Skip has some kind of crazy death wish. Nothing could be sillier, Brian. I’m really disappointed in you guys.” She was twirling the headband on her index finger, and looking very self-assured.
“Brian, you’ve got two problems Skip doesn’t have.”
“What’s that?” Keyes asked, sensing defeat.
“Your ego and your heart.”
“Well, pardon me.” Now it was time to go. He didn’t have to take this Joyce Brothers shit from a woman who bakes her own granola bars..
Halfway out the door he turned and said, “Jenna, what about the other night in the hospital? What was all that?”
“That was a moment, Brian, yours and mine.” She smiled; the first soft smile of the whole evening. “It was one lovely moment, and that’s all. Why does there have to be more? Why do you guys think there’s always a Big Picture? Honest’ to God, Brian, sometimes I think the newspaper business fucked you up forever.”
Jenna hardly ever used the word “fuck.” Keyes figured she really must be agitated.
“Have a good trip,” he said. “Give your parents my best.”
“Aw, you’re sweet,” Jenna said. “You get some rest while I’m gone. Forget about Skip, forget about me, forget about the Big Picture. Everything’s going to work out fine.”
Ninety minutes later she left the house carrying a canvas travel bag and a tin of hot granola bars. She wore tight jeans, a loose long-sleeved blouse, and white heels. Her hair was pinned in a prim bun.
The drive to the airport was vintage Jenna—no recognition or regard for curbs, stop signs, traffic lights, or pedestrians. Brian Keyes kept a distance of two or three blocks, wincing at Jenna’s close calls. He had borrowed a rental car from one of the Shriners because Jenna surely would’ve recognized the MG, by sound if not by sight.
She parked in the long-term garage at Miami International. Slouching low in the driver’s seat, Keyes whizzed right past her and found a spot on the next level. He bolted from the car, raced down the stairwell, and caught sight of Jenna disappearing into the elevator. He ran all the way to the terminal building and waited.
Even in a crowd she was impossible to miss. She had a classic airport walk, sensual but aloof; men always moved out of the way to watch Jenna’s jeans go by, back and forth, a divine natural metronome.
Keyes followed her until she stopped at the Bahamasair ticket counter. He hid behind a pillar, scouting for Skip Wiley.
“Want us to take over?”
Keyes wheeled around. “Jesus Christ!”
“Didn’t mean to frighten you.”
It was Burt the Shriner.
“Where’d you come from?” Keyes asked.
“Right behind you. Ever since you came in.”
“And your pal?”
“He’s around the corner. Keeping an eye on your lady friend.”
Keyes was impressed; these guys weren’t half-bad.
“She’s on her way to Nassau,” Burt reported. “Her ticket was prepaid.”
“By whom?”
“The Seminole Nation of Florida, Incorporated. Does that make any sense, Mr. Keyes?”
“I’ll explain later.”
Keyes peered around the pillar at the Bahamasair counter, but Jenna was gone.
“Shit!”
“Don’t worry,” Burt said. “James is close behind.”
“We’re too damn late.” Keyes broke into a run.
Because of the phenomenal number of airplane hijackings from Miami, the FAA had installed sophisticated new security measures designed to prevent anyone with bombs, guns, or invalid coach-class tickets from entering the flight concourse. The most effective of all these security steps was the hiring of squads of fat, foul-tempered, non-English-speaking women to obstruct all runways and harass all passengers.
In tracking Jenna, James the Shriner made it no farther than Concourse G, where a corpulent security guard named Lupee pinned him to the wall and questioned him relentlessly in Portuguese. The focus of her concern was the fez that James was wearing, which she tore off his head and ran through the X-ray machine several times, mashing it in the process. In the meantime Bahamasair Flight 123 to Nassau departed.
“I blew it,” James apologized afterward in the coffee shop. “I’m sorry.
”
“Don’t worry,” Keyes said. “You didn’t have a chance.”
“Not one-on-one,” Burt agreed. “Mr. Keyes, our information says that your lady friend is traveling alone.”
Somehow Burt had secured a printout of the passenger manifest (he wouldn’t say how, and Keyes could only assume a fraternal Masonic connection with one of the ticket agents). With the Shriners staring over his shoulder, Keyes ran his finger down the passenger list. Wiley wouldn’t be using his own name, nor would he settle for a simple Smith or Jones as an alias.
“Who are we hunting?” Burt asked.
“A very cunning fruitcake.”
“What did you say his name was?”
“I didn’t,” Keyes said.
He found whom he was looking for, assigned to seats 15-A and 15-B:
“Karamazov, Viceroy.”
“Karamazov, Skip.”
Keyes crumpled the passenger manifest into a ball and disgustedly tossed it over his shoulder. The Shriners smoothed it out and studied the names.
“A real wiseass,” Burt said. “This friend of yours, he seems to be enjoying all this, doesn’t he?”
“Sure looks that way,” Keyes grumbled, trying to remember where the hell he’d left his passport.
16
They found Skip Wiley snoring beneath a baby-blue umbrella on Cable Beach. He wore ragged denim cutoffs and no shirt. A pornographic novel titled Crack of Dawn was open across his lap. A half-empty bottle of Myers’s rum perspired in a plastic bucket of ice, protected by the shade of Wiley’s torso.
Brian Keyes removed the rum and dumped the ice cubes over Wiley’s naked chest.
“Christ on a bike!” Wiley sat up like a bolt.
“Hello, Skip.”
“You’re one cruel fucker.” Wiley reached for a towel. “Introduce me to your friends.”
“This is Burt and this is James.”
“Love the hats, guys. Sorry I missed the sale.” Wiley shook hands with the Shriners. “Pull up some beach and have a seat. Terrific view, just like on Love Boat, huh?”
Burt and James silently agreed; they had never seen the ocean so glassy, so crystalline blue. It truly was a tropical paradise. The cabdriver had said that one of the James Bond movies had been filmed in this cove, and from then on the Shriners had felt they were on a great adventure. They didn’t know what to make of this fellow under the beach umbrella, but they’d already agreed to let Brian Keyes do the talking.
“Where’s Jenna?” Keyes asked. He liked to start with the easy questions.
“House hunting,” Wiley said. “I can’t stand this goddamn hotel. Full of American rubes and geeks pissing away Junior’s college fund at the blackjack tables. It’s pathetic.” Wiley poured himself an iceless rum and cranberry juice. “How’re the ribs, Brian?”
“Getting better.” Keyes was scouting the shoreline.
“Relax, he’s not here.”
“Who?”
“Viceroy, that’s who! So you can unpucker your asshole. I sent him on some errands because I wanted privacy. Now you show up with these burly bookends. ”
“They’re friends of Theodore Bellamy.”
“I see,” Wiley said, scratching his head. “So we’re here for vengeance, are we? Brian, I hope you explained to your companions that they are now on foreign soil and treading in a country that takes a dim view of kidnapping and murder. A country that respects the rights of all foreign nationals and adheres to the strictest legal tests for extradition.”
“Meaning what?” Burt demanded.
“Meaning you and your bucket-headed partner are on your way to Fox Hill Prison if you fuck with me,” Skip Wiley said, waving his rum glass. “I’m a guest here, an honored guest.”
This problem had occurred to Brian Keyes as soon as he set foot in Nassau. He had no idea how one would go about kidnapping Skip Wiley and hauling him back to Florida. By boat? Barge? Private helicopter? And if one succeeded, then what? No charges had been filed against Wiley in the States because no one, besides Keyes and possibly Cab Mulcahy, knew the true identity of El Fuego.
“Did you kill Dr. Courtney?” Keyes asked.
“Ho-ho-ho.”
“Why’d you do it?”
“Please,” Wiley said, raising a hand, “we’ve been through all this.”
“You need help, Skip.”
“I’ve got all the help I need, Ace. Look, you’re lucky I’m still talking to you. I gave you everything you’d need to turn the cops loose like a bunch of bloodhounds.”
“I lost the briefcase.”
“Swell, just swell.” Wiley laughed sourly. “Some fucking private eye you turned out to be. I will admit one thing: that was a great line you fed Bloodworth about Slavic crazoids in fright wigs. Just the right nuance of xenophobia.”
“I was hoping nobody’d believe it.”
Wiley’s cavernous grin disappeared and his lively brown eyes hardened. “Tell your friends to take a stroll,” he said under his breath. “I want to talk to you.”
Keyes motioned to the Shriners and they trudged down the beach, glancing over their shoulders every few steps.
“So talk,” Keyes said to Wiley.
“You think I’m just a deranged egomaniac?”
“Oh no, Skip, you’re completely normal. Every newspaper has at least one or two reporters who moonlight as mass murderers. It’s a well-known occupational hazard.”
Wiley sniffed scornfully. “Let me assure you, my young friend, that I’m not crazy. I know what I’m doing, and I know what I’ve done. You’re fond of the word murderer— fine. Call me whatever you want. Zealotry can be grueling, that’s for sure; don’t think it doesn’t take a toll on the psyche—or the conscience. But just for the record, it’s not my name that’s important, it’s the group’s. Recognition is damned essential to morale, Brian, and morale is vital to the cause. These fellas deserve some ink.”
“But a revolution? Skip, really.”
“Revolution?—perhaps you’re right; perhaps that’s hyperbole. But Jesus and Viceroy are fond of the imagery, so I indulge them.” Wiley tossed his rum glass into the sand. “So there’ll be no revolution, in the classic sense, but chaos? You bet. Shame. Panic. Flight. Economic disaster.”
“Pretty ambitious,” Keyes said.
“It’s the least I can do,” Wiley said. “Brian, what is Florida anyway? An immense sunny toilet where millions of tourists flush their money and save the moment on Kodak film. The recipe for redemption is simple: scare away the tourists and pretty soon you scare off the developers. No more developers, no more bankers. No more bankers, no more lawyers. No more lawyers, no more dope smugglers. The whole motherfucking economy implodes! Now, tell me I’m crazy.”
Brian Keyes knew better than to do that.
Wiley’s long hair glinted gold in the Bahamian sun. He wore a look of lionly confidence. “So the question,” he went on, “is how to scare away the tourists.”
“Murder a few,” Keyes said.
“For starters.”
“Skip, there’s got to be another way,”
“No!” Wiley shot to his feet, uprooting the beach umbrella with his head. “There... is... no... other... way! Think about it, you mullusk-brained moron! What gets headlines? Murder, mayhem, and madness—the cardinal M’s of the newsroom. That’s what terrifies the travel agents of the world. That’s what rates congressional hearings and crime commissions. And that’s what frightens off bozo Shriner conventions. It’s a damn shame, I grant you that. It’s a shame I simply couldn’t stand up at the next county commission meeting and ask our noble public servants to please stop destroying the planet. It’s a shame that the people who poisoned this paradise won’t just apologize and pack their U-Hauls and head back North to the smog and the blizzards. But it’s a proven fact they won’t leave until somebody lights a fire under ‘em. That’s what Las Noches de Diciembre is all about. ‘Cops Seek Grisly Suitcase Killer’ ... ‘Elderly Woman Abducted, Fed to Vicious Reptile’ ..
. ‘Golf Course Bomb Claims Three on Tricky Twelfth Hole‘ ... ‘Crazed Terrorists Stalk Florida Tourists.’” Wiley was practically chanting the headlines, as if he were watching them roll off the presses at the New York Post.
“Sure, it’s cold-blooded,” he said, “but that’s the game of journalism for you. It’s the only game I know, but I know how to win.”
“The old hype button,” Keyes said.
“You got it, Ace!” Wiley slapped him on the shoulder. “Let’s go find your funny friends.”
They walked up Cable Beach. Keyes sidestepped the wavelets but Wiley crashed ahead, kicking water with his enormous slabs of feet. He cocked his head high, chin thrust toward the sun.
“If you hate tourists so much,” Keyes said, “why’d you come here, of all places?”
“Sovereignty,” Wiley replied, “and convenience. Besides, the Bahamas is different from Florida. The A.Q. here is only forty-two.”
A.Q., Keyes remembered, stood for Asshole Quotient. Skip Wiley had a well-known theory that the quality of life declined in direct proportion to the Asshole Quotient. According to Wiley’s reckoning, Miami had 134 total assholes per square mile, giving it the worst A.Q. in North America. In second place was Aspen, Colorado (101), with Malibu Beach, California, finishing third at 97.
Every year Skip Wiley wrote a column rating the ten most unbearable places on the continent according to A.Q., and every year the city editor diligently changed “Asshole Quotient” to “Idiot Quotient” before the column could be published. The next day Wiley would turn in a new column apologizing to his readers because he’d neglected to count one more total asshole, that being his own editor. And of course Wiley’s editor would immediately delete that, too. After a few years it was obvious that even Skip Wiley couldn’t get the word asshole into the Miami Sun, but the whole newsroom looked forward to the annual struggle.
“The great thing about the Bahamas,” Wiley was saying, “is that they don’t let the tourists stay. Trying to buy property here is like trying to get a personal audience with the pope. Damn near impossible without the right connections. So, Mr. and Mrs. Mickey Mouse Ears from Akron can come and tinkle away all their money, but then it’s bye-bye, leavin’ on a jet plane. Punch out at immigrations. Too bad they didn’t think of this system in Florida.”
