Tourist Season (10 page)

“If you scream, you’re dead.”

“I won’t, I promise.”

“Your name is Renee?”

She nodded; obviously they had her purse. “You can have all the money in my wallet,” she offered.

“We don’t want your money.” Viceroy Wilson slid one hand under her head and lifted it slightly off the pillow; with the other he held a cup of coffee to her lips. She slurped at it timorously.

“Thank you.”

“What’s your boyfriend’s name?”

Wilson put the coffee cup down. Renee LeVoux noticed that he had a pencil and a piece of paper.

“Why do you want to know?” she asked.

“We’re going to write him a letter. Tell him you’re okay.”

“Oh no!”

“Oh yes.”

Now there were two faces hovering over her, one black and indifferent, one thin and fierce. The thin man was sneering. He tore the blanket away and saw that Renee was dressed only in her panties.

“Don’t hurt me!” Renee cried.

The thin man brandished a shiny knife.

“Oh please no,” Renee cried.

The black man ferociously seized the thin man by the wrist and twisted his arm. The thin man yelped and the knife fell into the bedding.

“Hay-zoose, don’t ever try that shit again,” Viceroy Wilson said. He was thinking to himself: This is the problem when you work with Cuban lunatics. They can’t go five minutes without pulling a pistol or a blade. They couldn’t help it—it was something in their DNA molecules.

“Renee, my name is Mr. Wilson. This here is Mr. Bernal.”

Renee said, “How do you do?”

Wilson sighed. “We need the name of your boyfriend, and we need it now.”

“I’m not telling. I don’t want you to hurt him.”

“Girl, we don’t want to hurt him. We want to let him know what happened to you.”

Puzzled, Renee asked, “What
did
happen to me?”

“You’ve been kidnapped by a group of dangerous radicals.”

“God! But I’m nobody.”

“That’s true,” said Jesus Bernal, fishing through the bed for his blade.

“Why me? I’m just a tourist.”

“Did you enjoy the porpoise show?” Bernal asked.

Renee nodded apprehensively. “Yes, very much. And the trained whale.”

“Shamu,” Bernal said. “That’s the whale’s name.”

This guy was sickening, Wilson thought. He might even be worth killing someday.

“Did you ride the monorail?” Bernal went on mockingly. He wore a mean smile.

“No, David wanted to see the shark moat instead.”

Now we’re getting somewhere, Wilson muttered. “David who?”

“I won’t tell you!”

Wilson slipped one hand around Renee’s freckled neck. It felt soft and cool. He gave a sharp, tennis-ball squeeze; that was plenty.

“David Richaud,” Renee said, starting to sob. “R-i-c-h-a-u-d.”

Viceroy Wilson carefully wrote down the name. “And where are you staying?”

“At the Royal Sonesta.”

“Thank you, Renee, my sweet,” said Jesus Bernal, bobbing at the foot of the bed.

“Shut up and type,” said Wilson, shoving the paper at his companion. Bernal bounced over to the kitchen table and sat down at a portable electric typewriter.

Viceroy Wilson turned to his victim and said, “Do you believe that fuckhead went to Dartmouth?”

Jesus Bernal may have come to the cause with impressive credentials, but he was not highly regarded by Viceroy Wilson. Jesus Bernal had once held the title of defense minister for a rabid anti-Castro terrorist group called the Seventh of July Movement. The group was named for the day in 1972 when its founders had launched a costly and ill-fated attack on a Cuban gunboat off the Isle of Pines. In later years an acrimonious dispute had arisen over the name of the group, with some members claiming that the Isle of Pines attack had actually occurred on the
sixth
of July, and demanding that the group should be renamed. A compromise was reached and eventually the terrorists became known as the First Weekend in July Movement.

Throughout the late 1970s this organization took credit for a large number of bombings, shootings, and assassination attempts in Miami and New York. According to the Indian, Bernal was named defense minister chiefly because of his Ivy League typing skills. As Viceroy Wilson knew, one of the most vital roles in any terrorist group was the composing of letters to take credit for the violence. The letters had to be ominous, oblique, and neatly typed. Jesus Bernal was very good in this assignment.

He had been recruited to
Las Noches de Diciembre
after a bitter falling-out with his comrades in the First Weekend in July Movement. Actually Bernal had been purged from the group, but he never talked about why, and Viceroy Wilson had been warned not to ask. He tolerated Bernal, but he had no instinctive fear whatsoever of the Cuban. And he was getting awful damn tired of this macho switchblade bullshit.

“We’re moving out soon,” Wilson told Renee LeVoux. He bailed up the towel and started to stuff it back in her mouth.

“Wait,” she whispered. “Why did you tell me your names?”

Wilson shrugged.

“You’re going to kill me, aren’t you?”

“Not if you can swim,” Wilson said, inserting the gag. “And I mean fast.”

Renee’s eyes widened and she tried to scream. The more she tried, the redder she got, and all that came out was a throaty feline noise that filled the tawdry motel room. She tossed back and forth on the bed, fighting the ropes, trying to spit out the gag, until Viceroy Wilson finally said “Dammit!” and whacked her once in the jaw, knocking her cold.

Meanwhile, preoccupied at the Smith-Corona, the man writing for
El Fuego
began to type:

Dear Mssr. Richaud:

Welcome to the Revolution!

Four items of special interest to Brian Keyes appeared in the
Miami Sun
of December 6.

One was a lengthy front-page story about the jailhouse suicide of Ernesto Cabal, accused killer of B. D. “Sparky” Harper. One hour before the tragic incident, Cabal had complained of stomach pains and been transported to the infirmary, where he drank a half-pint of Pepto-Bismol and declared that he was cured. While confined to the clinic, however, Ernesto apparently had pilfered a long coil of intravenous tubing, which he smuggled back to his cell. No one checked on him for hours, until they found him cold and dead at dinnertime. Using the I.V. tube as a noose, Cabal had managed to hang himself, naked as usual, from a water pipe. The duty sergeant remarked to the
Sun
that it was difficult to make a really good noose out of plastic tubing, but somehow Cabal had done it. When asked why none of the other inmates on the cell block had alerted the guards to Ernesto’s thrashings, the sergeant had explained that the little Cuban “was not all that popular.”

The second item to catch Keyes’s attention (he was reading on a musty sofa next to the aquarium in his office, where he had spent the night) was the inaugural column of Ricky Bloodworth. The headline announced: “Miami Rests Easier as Harper Mystery Ends.” The column was a fulsome tribute to all the brilliant police work that had landed Ernesto Cabal in jail and driven him to his death. “He knew the evidence was overwhelming and he knew his freedom was over,” Bloodworth wrote, “so he strangled himself to death. He was nude, alone, and guilty as sin.” Then came a quote from the big redheaded detective, Hal, who said that the Harper case was closed, as far as he was concerned. “This is one of those rare times when justice triumphs,” Hal beamed.

Keyes noticed that there was no quote from Al Garcia. And there was no mention of the
El Fuego
letters.

The third article of interest was not very long, and not prominently displayed. The story appeared on page 3-B, at the bottom, beneath a small headline: “Police Seek Missing Woman.” The article reported that one Renee LeVoux, twenty-four years old, a visitor from Montreal, had been abducted from the parking lot of the world-famous Miami Seaquarium shortly before five P.M. the previous day. Incredibly, there were no witnesses to the crime. Miss LeVoux’s male companion, whom police declined to identify, had been knocked unconscious by a single blow to the back of the neck, and was of no help. Anyone with information about Miss LeVoux’s whereabouts was encouraged to call a Crime Stoppers phone number.

Brian Keyes made a mental note to find out more about that one.

Finally he spotted the one news item that he’d actually been looking for. Mercifully it was buried on 5-B, next to the advertisements for motorized wheelchairs.

The headline said: “County Lawyer Stabbed in Melee.” Splendid, Keyes thought ruefully, it made the final edition after all. Keyes wondered if the
Sun
had gotten the story right, and forced himself to read:

An attorney for the Dade County public defender’s office was assaulted Wednesday night at the Royal Palm Club.

Mitchell P. Klein, 26, was standing at the bar when he was suddenly attacked by another patron, police said. The assailant pulled Klein’s hair, ripped at his clothes, and tried to choke him, according to witnesses. As Klein attempted to break away, his attacker threw him to the floor and stabbed him in the tongue with a salad fork, police said.

The suspect, described as a well-dressed white male in his early thirties, escaped before police arrived. Witnesses said the man did not appear to be intoxicated. Klein was taken to Flagler Memorial Hospital, where he was treated for minor injuries and released early this morning. Due to oral surgery, he was unavailable for comment.

Careless reporting, Keyes grumbled, as usual.

For one thing, it hadn’t been a salad fork, but one of those dainty silver jobs designed for shrimp cocktails and lobster. Second, he and Mitch Klein hadn’t been standing at the bar; they were sitting in a booth.

Still, it
had
been a reckless gesture, something Skip Wiley himself might have tried. Keyes wondered what had gotten into him. Was he finally losing his grip? Assaulting an officer of the court in a nightclub, for God’s sake, in front of a hundred witnesses. He couldn’t believe he’d done it, but then he couldn’t believe what Klein had said as they were talking about Ernesto’s suicide.

“The only reason you’re upset,” Klein had said, “is that the case is over, and so’s your payday.”

This, after Keyes had told him all about the
Fuego
letters, all about Viceroy Wilson, all about Dr. Joe Allen’s opinion that Ernesto Cabal was the wrong man. After all this—and four martinis—Mitch Klein still had the loathsome audacity to say:

“Brian, don’t tell me you really gave a shit about that little greaseball.”

That was the moment when Keyes had reached across the table, seized Klein by his damp curly hair, and deftly speared the lawyer’s tongue with the cocktail fork. No choking. No ripping of clothes. No grappling on the floor. There was, however, a good bit of fresh blood, the sight of which surely contributed to the later embellishments of eyewitnesses.

Keyes had gotten up and left Mitch Klein blathering in the booth, the silver fork dangling from his tongue, blood puddling in the oysters Bienville.

And that had been the end of it.

Now, the next morning, Keyes was certain the cops would arrive any minute with a warrant.

Actually it turned out to be Al Garcia, all by himself.

He knocked twice and barged in.

“What a pit!” he said, looking around.

“Why, thank you, Al.”

Garcia sullenly peered into the murky fish tank.

“Don’t smear up the glass,” Keyes said.

“Those are the ugliest guppies I ever saw,” Garcia said.

“They’re catfish,” Keyes said. “They eat up the slime.”

“Well, they’re doing a helluva job. It looks like somebody pissed in this aquarium.”

“Anything’s possible,” Keyes muttered. He lay on the sofa, the newspaper spread across his chest. Garcia picked it up and pointed to the article about Mitch Klein.

“Did you do this, Brian?”

“I got mad. Klein went to see Ernesto yesterday and told him the case was locked. Told him he didn’t have a chance. Told him to plead guilty or they were going to charbroil him. Ernesto wanted to fight the charges but Klein told him to quit while he was ahead. Ernesto was going nuts in jail, all the queers chasing him. He had that incredible tattoo on his joint. The one I told you about.”

“Fidel Castro.”

“Yeah,” Keyes said. “Well, some maniac tried to bite it off one night in the shower. Thought if he chomped off Ernesto’s dick, it would kill the real Fidel in Havana. Witchcraft, he said. Somehow Ernesto got away from the guy, but he was scared out of his mind. He said he’d do anything to get out of jail. So when Klein told him he’d better plan on twenty-five to life, I guess Ernesto figured he was better off dead.”

“But Brian—”

“Why didn’t that cocksucker Klein talk to me before he went over to the jail? That case wasn’t locked, no way. You know I’m right, Al.”

“All I know,” the detective said, “is that we’ll never know. You gotta calm down, brother.”