by Carl Hiaasen
García’s patience was frayed. He knew all about Jesús Bernal Rivera, born in Trenton, New Jersey, son of a certified public accountant and product of the Ivy League; a man who had never set foot on the island of Cuba.
“You’re a phony,” Garcia told him, “a pitiful phony.”
Bernal raised the stubby shotgun and placed the barrel against the detective’s right temple.
García pretended not to notice. He drove at a steady sixty-five, hands damp on the wheel. Bemal would never shoot him while the car was going so fast. Even with the gun at his head Garcia was feeling slightly more optimistic about his chances. For ten miles he had been watching a set of headlights in the rearview mirror. Once he had tapped his brakes, and whoever was following had flashed his brights in reply. García thought: Please be a cop.
After a few tense moments Bernal put the shotgun down. “Not now,” he said, seemingly to himself. “Not just yet.” García glanced over and saw that a crooked smile had settled across the bomber’s griddled features.
The Turnpike ended at Florida City, and the MG was running on fumes. Brian Keyes coasted into an all-night service station but the pumps were off and he had to wait in line to pay the attendant. He watched helplessly as the taillights of Al García’s car disappeared, heading toward Card Sound.
Catching up would take a miracle.
Keyes had arrived at police headquarters just as Jesus Bernal and Garcia were getting in the car. He had spotted the shotgun, but there had been no time to get help; all he could do was try to stay close and hope Bernal didn’t see him.
Everything was going smoothly until he’d checked the gas gauge.
Keyes hurriedly pumped five dollars’ worth. He ran back to the bullet-proof window and pounded on the glass.
“Call the police!” he shouted at the attendant. The man gave no sign of comprehending any language, least of all English.
“A policeman is in trouble,” Keyes said. He pointed down the highway. “Get help!”
The gas station attendant nodded vaguely.
“No credit cards,” he said. “Much sorry.”
Keyes jumped into the MG and raced down U.S. Highway One. He turned off at Card Sound Road, a narrow and seemingly endless two-lane lined with towering pines. The road ahead was black and desolate, not another car in sight. Keyes stood on the accelerator and watched the speedometer climb to ninety. Mosquitoes, dragonflies, and junebugs thwacked the car, their jellied blood smearing the windshield. Every few miles the headlights would freeze a rabbit or opossum near the treeline, but there was no sign anywhere of human life.
As the road swung east, Keyes slowed to check some cars at a crab shanty, then at Alabama Jack’s, a popular tavern, which had closed for the night. At the toll booth to the Card Sound Bridge, he asked a sleepy redneck cashier if a black Dodge had come through.
“Two Cubans,” she reported. “ ’Bout five minutes ago. I ’member cause they didn’t wait for change.”
Keyes crossed the tall bridge at a crawl, studying the nocturnal faces of the crabbers and mullet fishermen lined along the rail. Soon he was on North Key Largo, and more alone than ever. This end of the island remained a wilderness of tangled scrub, mahogany, buttonwood, gumbo-limbo, and red mangrove. The last of the North American crocodiles lived in its brackish bogs; this was where Tommy Tigertail had recruited Pavlov. There were alligators, too, and rattlers, gray foxes, hordes of brazen coons, and the occasional shy otter. But mostly the island was alive with birds: nighthawks, ospreys, snowy egrets, spoonbills, limpkins, parrots, blue herons, cormorants, the rare owl. Some slept, some stalked, and some, like the scaly-headed vultures, waited ominously for dawn.
Keyes turned off on County Road 905, drove about half a mile, and parked on the shoulder. He rolled down the window of the MG and the tiny sports car immediately filled with insidious bootblack mosquitoes. Keyes swatted automatically, and tried to listen above the humming insects and the buzz of the nighthawks for something out of place. Perhaps the sound of a car door slamming, or human voices.
But the night surrendered no clues.
He went another mile down the road and parked again; still nothing but marsh noises and the salty smell of the ocean. After a few minutes a paunchy raccoon waddled out of the scrub and stood on its hind legs to investigate; it blinked at Keyes and ambled away, chirping irritably.
He started the MG and headed down 905 at high speed to blow the mosquitoes out of the car. He was driving so fast he nearly missed it, concealed on the east side of the highway, headfirst in a dense hammock. A glint of chrome among the dark green woods is what caught Keyes’s eye.
He pumped the brakes and steered off the blacktop. He slipped out of the sports car and popped the trunk. Groping in the dark, he found what he was looking for and crept back to the spot.
The black Dodge was empty and its engine nearly cold to the touch.
The two men stood alone at the end of a rutted limestone jetty, poking like a stone finger into the sea. A warm tangy wind blew from the northeast, mussing García’s thin black hair. His mustache was damp from sweat, and his bare arms itched and bled from the trek through the hammock. The detective had given up all hope about the car in the rearview mirror; it had turned off in Florida City.
Jesús Bernal seemed not to notice the cloud of mosquitoes swarming around his head. García thought: perhaps they don’t sting him—his blood is poisoned and the insects know it.
Fevered with excitement, Bernal’s face glistened in the water’s reflection. His eyes darted ratlike and his head jerked at each muffled animal noise from the woods behind them. In one hand Bernal clutched the sawed-off shotgun, and with the other waved a heavy police flashlight, lacing amber ribbons in the blackness.
Jesús was already contemplating the journey back to the car, alone. The shotgun probably would be empty by then, useless. He grew terrified just thinking about the ordeal—what good was a flashlight against panthers! He imagined himself imprisoned all night by the impenetrable hammock; at first disoriented, then panicked. Then lost! The sounds alone might drive him insane.
For Jesús Bernal was scared of the dark.
“What’s the matter?” García asked.
“Nothing.” Bernal ground his dentures and made the fear go away. “This is where we say adiós.”
“Yeah?” García thought it seemed an odd place for an execution. The jetty provided no concealment and the echo of gunfire would carry for miles across the water. He hoped a boat might pass soon.
Jesús Bernal fumbled in his khaki trousers and came out with a brown letter-sized envelope, folded in half.
“Open it,” he wheezed. “Read it aloud.” He aimed the flashlight so garcía could make out the document, which had been typed neatly. It appeared much longer than any of the communiqués from the Nights of December.
“What is this, you writing a book?” the detective grumbled.
“Read!” Bernal said.
García took his eyeglasses from a shirt pocket.
There were two identical sections, one in English and one in Spanish:
“I, Alberto garcía Delgado, hereby confess myself as a traitor to my native country of Cuba. I admit to the gravest of crimes: persecuting and harassing those brave revolutionaries who would destroy the dictator Castro, and who would liberate our suffering nation so that all Cuban peoples may return. With my despicable crimes I have dishonored these patriots and shamed my own heritage, and that of my father. I deeply regret my seditious behavior. I realize that I can never be forgiven for using my police authority to obstruct what was good and just. For this reason, I have agreed to accept whatever punishment is deemed fitting by my judge, the honorable Jesus Bernal Rivera—a man who has courageously dedicated his life to the most noble of revolutionary callings.”
García thrust the document back at Jesus Bernal and said, “I’m not signing it, chico.” He knew time was short.
“Oh, I think you’ll reconsider.”
&n
bsp; “No way.”
Garcia lunged forward, his arms reaching out for the shotgun. Jesus pulled the trigger and an orange fireball tore the detective off his feet and slammed him to the ground.
He lay on his back, staring numbly at the tropical stars. His head throbbed, and his left side felt steamy and drenched.
Jesús Bernal was a little wobbly himself. He had never before fired a shotgun, and discovered that he had not been holding the weapon properly. The recoil had hammered him squarely in the gut, knocking the wind out. A full minute passed before he could speak.
“Get up!” he told García, “Get up and sign your confession. It will be read on all the important radio stations tomorrow.”
“I can’t.” Garcia had no feeling on his left side. He probed gingerly with his right hand and found his shirt shredded and soaked with fresh blood. Jagged yellow bone protruded from the pulp of his shoulder. He felt dizzy and breathless, and knew he would soon be in shock.
“Get up, traitor!” Jesus Bernal stood over the detective and waved the gun like a sword.
García thought that if he could only get to his feet he might be able to run to the woods. But when he tried to raise himself from the gravel, his legs convulsed impotently. “I can’t move,” he said weakly.
Jesus Bernal angrily stuffed the document into his pocket. “We’ll see,” he said. “We’ll see about this. Are you prepared to receive your sentence?”
“Yeah,” Garcia groaned. “What the hell.”
Bernal stalked to the tip of the jetty. “I chose this spot for a reason,” he said, pointing the gun across the Atlantic. “Out there is Cuba. Two hundred miles. It is nearer than Disney World, Mr. Policía. I think it’s time you should go home.”
“I don’t believe this,” said Al García.
“Are you much of a swimmer?” Jesús Bernal asked.
“Not when I’m fucking paralyzed.”
“Such a baby. But, you see, this is your sentence. The sentence which—you have agreed—befits your treasonous crimes. Alberto García, maggot and traitor, I hereby command you to return at once to Cuba. There you will join the underground and fight the devil in his own backyard. This is how you will redeem yourself. Perhaps you may someday be a hero. Or at least a man.”
“How about shark food?” García said. Even with two good arms he was a rotten swimmer. He knew he’d never make it as far as Molasses Reef, much less Havana harbor. It was a funny idea, really. garcía heard himself laugh out loud.
“What’s so goddamn hilarious?”
“Nothing, commander.”
The detective began to think of his family. Dreamily he pictured his wife and his children as he had last seen them. At dinner, two nights ago. They all seemed to be smiling. He thought: I must have done something right.
He opened his eyes and turned his head to see the tops of Jesús Bernal’s moldy sneakers.
“Up!” Bernal cried. He kicked at garcía, once, twice, three times, until the detective lost count. They were not hard kicks, but diabolically aimed.
Bernal bent down until their faces were inches apart. “Get your stinking ass off the ground,” Bernal said, his breath sour and sickening.
Once more garcía tried to sit up, but rolled sideways instead. He nearly passed out as his full weight landed on his mangled arm.
Bernal resumed kicking and García rolled again, the limestone and coral digging into his flesh.
“Go!” Bernal shouted, prodding with his feet. “Go, go, go!”
Garcia landed in the water with a muted splash. The salt scoured his wounds and a sudden coldness seized his chest, robbing him of all breath. García did not know how deep the water was, but it didn’t matter. He could have drowned in a saucepan. Somehow he clawed to the surface and slurped air.
He looked up toward the jetty and saw Bernal’s stringy silhouette, the shotgun raised over his head in triumph. Jesús played the flashlight across the waves.
“You’d better get started!” he called exuberantly. “Head for Carysfort Light. It’s a good place to rest. By daybreak you’ll be ready to go again. Hurry, mi guerrero, onward to Cuba! She is not as far as you think.”
Garcia was too weak to float, much less swim. Hungrily he gulped breath after breath, but it was not enough. A marrow-deep pain began to smother his conscious thought, and he sensed himself slipping away. He paddled mindlessly with his good arm; he didn’t care that he was going in circles, as long as his head stayed above water.
“You look like a fool!” Jesus Bernal yelled giddily. “A fat little clown!”
Another gunshot split the night and Jesús Bernal commenced a curious dance, hopping like a marionette. In his deepening fog Al García thought: The idiot is shooting into the sky, like frigging New Year’s Eve.
Still another shot went off, and then more, until the crackles blended to a dull resonance, like a church bell. García wondered why he saw no firebursts from the mouth of the sawed-off.
Jesús Bernal’s queer dance became palsied. Suddenly he stopped hopping, bent over double and emitted a horrific wail. The shotgun and the flashlight clattered to the rocks.
But García himself was out of strength. His arm felt like cement, and his will to save himself evaporated under a warm wave of irrepressible fatigue. He was sliding downward into euphoria, away from all pain. The ocean took him gently and closed his tired eyes, but not before he saw a final shot shear the crown of Jesus Bernal’s head and leave him twitching in a heap on the jetty.
29
“Nice shooting, Ace,” Al García said feebly.
“I hate that damn gun.” Brian Keyes had needed six rounds from the Browning to put a bullet where he’d wanted. His hands still tingled from the shots.
“Which hospital is nearest?”
“Homestead,” García said, shivering. “Call my wife, would you?”
“When we get there.”
“I’m pissed you didn’t tell me about your pal Wiley.”
“He said he’d kill lots more people if I did.”
Garcia coughed. “It couldn’t have been much worse than it was.”
“Oh no? You saw what that bomb did to the John—now imagine the same thing at the parade, with all those kids. A holocaust, Al. He seemed capable of anything.”
“You shoulda told me anyway,” García said. “Shit, this hurts. I’m gonna sleep for a while.” He shut his eyes and sagged down in the passenger seat. Soon Keyes could hear his breathing, a weak irregular rasp.
Keyes drove like a maniac. Droplets of salt water trickled from his hair into his mouth and eyes; he was soaked to the skin. García’s blood dappled his shirt and pants. As he wheeled the MG back onto Highway One, a sharp pain pinched under his right arm. Keyes wondered if he had torn open the old stab wound while carrying García piggyback through the hammock.
The trip to Farmer’s Hospital from Key Largo took twenty minutes. Garcia was unconscious when they arrived at the emergency room, and was immediately stripped and taken to surgery.
Keyes telephoned García’s wife and told her to come down right away, Al had been hurt. Then he tried Jenna. He let it ring fifteen or twenty times but no one picked up. Was she gone? Hiding? Dead? He considered driving up to the house and breaking in, but it was too late and he was too exhausted.
He made one more phone call, to Metro-Dade Homicide. He told them where to find Jesús Bernal’s body. Soon the island would be crawling with reporters.
Keyes looked up at the clock and smiled at the irony; two-thirty in the morning. Too late to make the morning papers.
The phone jarred Cab Mulcahy from his sleep at seven-thirty.
“I got a message you called. What’s up?” It was Cardoza.
Mulcahy sat round-shouldered on the edge of the bed, rubbing sleep from his eyes. “It concerns Skip Wiley,” he said fuzzily.
He told Cardoza about Wiley’s criminal involvement with the Nights of December, omitting nothing except his own knowledge.
&nb
sp; “Goddamn!” Cardoza exclaimed. “Maybe that explains it.”
“What?”
“Wiley sent me a New Year’s column yesterday but I damn near tossed it out. I thought it was a fake, some asshole playing a joke.”
“What does it say?” Mulcahy asked. He was not surprised that Wiley had ignored the chain of command and appealed directly to the publisher. Skip knew how much Cardoza loved his stuff.
Cardoza read part of the column aloud over the phone.
“It sounds like a confession,” Mulcahy said. It was actually quite remarkable. “Mr. Cardoza, we have to write about all this.”
“Are you kidding?”
“It’s our job,” Mulcahy said.
“Making a blue-chip newspaper look like a nuthouse—that’s our job?”
“Our job is printing the truth. Even if it’s painful and even if it makes us look foolish.”
“Speak for yourself,” Cardoza said. “So what exactly do we do with this column? It’s not the least bit funny, you know.”
“I think we run it as is—right next to a lengthy story explaining everything that’s happened the last month.”
Cardoza was appalled. In no other business would you wave your stinky laundry in the customers’ faces; this wasn’t ethics, it was idiocy.
“Don’t go off half-cocked,” Cardoza told Mulcahy. “I heard on the radio that the whole gang is dead. I assume that means Mr. Wiley, too.”
“Well, tonight’s the big parade,” Mulcahy said. “Let’s wait and see.”
Cardoza was stunned by the revelation about Skip Wiley. Of all the writers at the paper, Wiley had been his favorite, the spice in the recipe. And though he had never actually met the man, Cardoza felt he knew him intimately from his writing. Undoubtedly Wiley was impulsive, irreverent, even tasteless at times—but homicidal? It occurred to Cardoza that a newspaper this size must be riddled with closet psychopaths like Wiley; the potential for future disasters seemed awesome. Expensive disasters, too. Lawyerly-type disasters.
