Tourist Season (15 page)

Wiley held the hot mug to Keyes’s lips and let him sip.

“Brian,” he said giddily. “We’re gonna empty out this entire state. Give it back to Tom and his folks. Give it back to the bloody raccoons. Imagine: all the condos, the cheesy hotels, the trailer parks, the motor courts, the town houses, fucking Disney World—a ghost town, old pal. All the morons who thundered into Florida the past thirty years and made such a mess are gonna thunder right out again … the ones who don’t die in the stampede.”

Skip Wiley’s brown eyes were steady and intense; he was perfectly serious. Brian Keyes wondered if he was face to face with raw insanity.

“How are you going to accomplish this miracle?” he asked.

“Publicity, old pal.
Bad
publicity.” Wiley cackled. “It’s my specialty, remember? We’re going to take all the postcard puffery and jam it in reverse. The swaying palms, the murmuring surf, the tropical sun—from now on, Transylvania South.”

A postcard to end all postcards, Keyes thought.

“When I say bad publicity,” Wiley went on, “search the extreme limits of your imagination. Think back to some of the planet’s great disasters—the bubonic plague, Pompeii, Hiroshima. Imagine being tourism director for the city of Hiroshima in 1946! What would you do, Brian? Or think modern times: try to sell time-shares in West Beirut! Christ, that’s a tall order, but it’s nothing compared to what it’s going to be like down here when we’re finished, me and the guys. By the time we’re through, old pal, Marge and Fred and the kids will vacation in the fucking Arctic
tundra
before they’ll set foot on Miami Beach.”

Wiley was pacing before the fire, his voice booming through the copse. Viceroy Wilson sat impassively on a tree stump, Kleenexing the lenses of his sunglasses. Jesus Bernal swatted at gnats and moved herky-jerky in the firelight, tossing his knife at a tree. Tommy Tigertail was out there somewhere, but Brian Keyes couldn’t see him.

“Did you kill Sparky Harper?” Keyes asked Skip Wiley.

“Ho-ho-ho.”

The suntan oil, the rubber alligator, the tacky Hawaiian shirt. Keyes thought: Who else but Wiley?

“And Ted Bellamy, the Shriner?”

“I’m afraid he’s dead,” Wiley said, tossing a stick in the fire.

“What about the girl at the Seaquarium?” Keyes asked.

“Brian, settle down. We’re simply trying to establish credibility. Nobody took us seriously after the Harper episode. Jesus,
amigo,
get my briefcase.”

“My God, Skip, you’re talking about
murder!
Three innocent people—four, if you count Ernesto Cabal. You set him up, didn’t you?”

“It was Viceroy’s idea, to get rid of the car,” Wiley acknowledged. “He was your client, I know, and I’m sorry he killed himself. By the way, did you really stab his lawyer in the tongue with a shrimp fork? That was wonderful, Brian, I was so goddamn proud when I heard about it. Made me think you must’ve learned something, all that time sitting next to me. For what it’s worth, we had planned to spring little Ernesto when the time was right.”

“Es verdad,”
Jesus said, delivering the briefcase.

“Speak English, you shmuck,” Wiley snapped. He turned to Keyes, complaining: “The man was born in
Trenton
and still he’s doing Desi Arnaz. Drives me nuts.”

Jesus Bernal slouched away, pouting. Wiley opened the briefcase and said, “Might as well get the preliminaries out of the way. Pay attention, Brian.” Wiley held up a pair of plaid swim trunks. “Theodore Bellamy,” he said.

“I believe you,” said Keyes.

Next Wiley produced a crimson halter top. “Renee What’s-her-face, the Canadian girl.”

Keyes nodded blankly.

With both hands Wiley dangled a man’s silver necklace with a gaudy octagonal charm. “Sparky Harper was wearing this,” Wiley said, studying it in the firelight. “It says ‘Sunshine State Booster of the Year, 1977.’ Got his name engraved on the back. Be sure to point that out.”

Wiley dropped the articles into the briefcase and snapped it shut. “You’ll take this back to Miami, please.”

Keyes felt relieved. He’d been contemplating the possibility of dying out here in the swamp and not liking the idea at all, dead in his underwear and covered with bug bites.

“Saw Bloodworth’s column,” Wiley said. “What a hack.”

“He’s not in your league, that’s for sure.”

“He’s a dim-witted gerbil who can’t write his name.
Strangled to death
is redundant, doesn’t he know that?” Wiley fumed. “If it’d been you, you would have put it together two days ago. You’d have connected everything—Harper, Bellamy, Renee. Hell, you would have printed our letters.”

“And you would have loved it,” Keyes said.

Wiley wasn’t listening. “Brian, I know you’ve still got good police sources. What do you hear?”

Viceroy Wilson edged a little closer. He was always interested in cop news.

“Metro homicide closed the Harper case when Ernesto died,” Keyes said. “As for the other two, a big zero. Missing persons, that’s all.”

“Damn!” Wiley exploded. “Those silly shitheads have got murderous terrorists on the loose and they don’t even know it! See what I mean about credibility, Brian? What do we have to do? Tell me, Viceroy, you’re the historian. Did the SLA have this problem?”

“Naw, they had Patty Hearst,” Wilson replied laconically. “Got plenty of ink. Maybe we can brainwash us some famous white bitch.”

“Si,”
said Jesus Bernal, digging his knife from a gumbo-limbo tree. “Pia Zadora!”

Wiley sat cross-legged in front of Keyes. “See what I’m up against,” he muttered.

“Skip—or is it
El Fuego
now?”

“Skip is fine.”

“Okay, what do you want from me?”

“We need a witness,” Wiley said momentously. “Someone impeccable. Someone who can go back to Miami and attest that we are legitimate, that we’re deadly serious. Brian, we want
recognition.
We want the police and the press and the politicians and the tourist board to take us seriously.”

“In other words, you want your names in the paper?”

“The Nights of December? Yes. Mine? No. Not until the time comes.” Wiley leaned closer. “If you go back and tell the cops about me, it would complicate our plans. Jeopardize everything. Now, should you decide to play Boy Scout and spill the beans, fine. But if you do, Brian, you’ll deeply regret it. All hell will break loose, and what’s happened so far—the kidnappings, Sparky Harper, the rest—is gonna
seem like Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood.
You understand what I’m saying? If I should pick up the
Sun
tomorrow and see my face, then me and my comrades shift into overdrive. Moderation goes out the window. And then I’m afraid some folks you and I both know, and care about, are going to wind up suddenly deceased. We’re talking massacre with a capital M.”

Keyes had never seen Wiley so grim, or heard his voice so leaden. He wondered if Wiley meant Jenna, or Cab, or friends from the newspaper.

“Brian, if we do things my way, on my schedule, the violence will be minimized—I promise. If all goes well, in a few weeks the whole truth can be told. But not now—it’s too early. My name would be nothing but a distraction, a liability to the organization. So my role here—well, let it be our little secret for a while. The rest of the saga is yours to tell. In fact, that’s why we invited you here. Can I offer you some softshell-turtle stew?”

Keyes said: “Let me get this straight. I’m supposed to go back to Miami and scare the shit out of everybody.”

“Exactly,” Wiley said.

“With what, Skip? A halter top and a dime-store medallion?”

Wiley shook his head. “Those are just freebies for the cops, old pal. No, the most significant thing you’ll carry back to civilization tomorrow is
testimony.”

Keyes was getting tired. His arms ached, his wrists hurt, and invisible insects were feasting in his crevices.

“Okay, Skip, I’ll go back and tell the cops that a gang of crazed radicals dragged me out of a canoe, tied me to a tree, and gave me tea that tasted like goat piss. Is that what you want?”

“Not quite,” Wiley said. The smile was thin, the eyes cheerless. “We want you to go back and tell everyone that you witnessed a murder.”

Keyes went cold.

Wiley stood up and smoothed his pseudo-African smock. “Tommy! Jesus! Viceroy!” he called. “Go get Mrs. Kimmelman.”

The morning actually had started off well for Ida Kimmelman. The arrival of the Social Security checks was always a good omen, and then her sister called from Queens to say that Joel, Ida’s youngest nephew, had finally gotten into law school. It wasn’t a famous law school—someplace in Ohio, with two names—but Ida went out and bought Joel a card anyway. Basically he was a good young man, a little disrespectful perhaps, but deserving of encouragement.

The truth was that Joel, as most of Ida’s blood relations, couldn’t stand her. They had all been fond of Lou Kimmelman, a sweet little fellow with a teasing sense of humor, but for years the clan had puzzled over how Lou could put up with Ida’s tuba voice and her incredible charmlessness. Around the apartments the same was true: Lou was popular and pitied, while Ida was barely tolerated.

When Lou finally passed on, the social invitations dried up and the fourth-floor bridge club recruited a new couple, and Ida Kimmelman was left all alone with her dog Skeeter in apartment 4-K at Otter Creek Village. Somehow the U.S. government had overlooked Lou Kimmelman’s death and continued to mail a $297.75 Social Security check every month, so Ida was making out pretty well. She’d bought herself a spiffy red Ford Escort and joined a spa, and every third Tuesday she would drive Skeeter to Canine Canaan and get his little doggy toenails painted blue. Of course Ida’s Otter Creek neighbors disapproved of her extravagance and thought it tacky that she boasted of her double-dipping from Social Security. Ida knew they were jealous.

She was truly ambivalent about Lou’s death. On some days she felt lonely, and guessed it must be Lou she was missing. Who else had shared her life for twenty-nine years? Lou had been an accountant for a big orthopedic shoe company in Brooklyn. He had been a hard worker who had saved money in spite of Ida; Ida, who’d never wanted children of her own, who was always scheming for a new car or a tummy tuck or a new dinette. When it came time to retire, the Kimmelmans had argued about where they would go. Everyone on the block was moving to Florida, but Ida disliked everyone on the block and she didn’t want to go. Instead she wanted to move to Southern California and make new friends. She wanted a condo on the beach in La Jolla.

But Lou Kimmelman had been a shrewd accountant. One painful evening, two weeks before the shoe company gave him the traditional gold Seiko sendoff, Lou had sat Ida down with the Chemical Bank passbooks and the Keogh funds and demonstrated, quite conclusively, that they couldn’t afford to move to California unless they wanted to eat dried cat food the rest of their lives. Reluctantly, Ida had accepted the inevitability of Florida. After all, it was unthinkable not to go
somewhere
after your husband retired.

So they’d bought a small two-bedroom unit at Otter Creek, three doors down from the Seligsons, and Lou Kimmelman soon became captain of the fourth-floor shuffleboard team and sergeant-at-arms of the Otter Creek Homeowners’ Association.

One thing Ida Kimmelman didn’t miss about Lou, now that he was gone, was how he’d sit there in his madras slacks and blinding white shoes, watching TV in their new living room (which was hardly big enough for a family of squirrels), and ask, “Now aren’t you glad we moved down here after all?”

Lou Kimmelman would say this three or four times a week, and Ida hated it. Sometimes she’d wonder bitterly if she hated Lou, too. She’d squeeze out on the balcony, which was actually more of a glorified ledge, and gaze at the parking lot and, beyond that, the emptiness of the Everglades. In these moments Ida would imagine how great it would be to have a town house on a bluff in La Jolla, where you could sip coffee and watch all those brown young men on their candy-colored surfboards.
That
was Ida Kimmelman’s idea of retirement.

Instead she was stuck in Florida.

After Lou died, Ida had gathered all the bankbooks and E. F. Hutton statements and got the calculator to add up their worldly possessions—only to discover that Lou Kimmelman, damn his arithmetic, had been absolutely correct. Southern California was no more affordable than Gstaad.

So Ida laid her dream to rest with Lou, and vowed to make the best of it. Never would she admit to her Otter Creek neighbors that her unhappiness was anything but a widow’s grief, or that sometimes, especially during Florida’s steambath of a summer, she longed to be back up North, in the city, where one could actually walk to the grocery without an oxygen tank.

December, with its cooler nights, wasn’t so unbearable. The snowbirds were trickling south and the condominium was a much livelier place than in August, when nothing moved but the mercury. Now Otter Creek Village slowly was awakening, soon to be clogged with other couples who’d discovered Florida as long-ago tourists or honeymooners and returned to claim it in their old age.

The center of social life was the swimming pool. Not much swimming took place, but there was a lot of serious floating, wading, and talking—by far the most competitive of all condominium sports.