Tourist Season (50 page)

The rain started again. It came in slashing horizontal sheets. Wiley covered his eyes and said, “Shit, I can’t run the boat in this mess.”

“Why don’t you wait till it lets up?” Kara Lynn suggested.

Her composure was aggravating. Wiley glared down at her and said, “Hey, Pollyanna, you’re awfully calm for a kidnap victim. You overdosed on Midol or what?”

Kara Lynn’s ocelot eyes stared back in a way that made him shiver slightly. She wasn’t afraid.
She was not afraid.
What a great kid, Wiley thought. What a damn shame.

They huddled under a sheet of opaque plastic, the raindrops popping at their heads. Wiley tied Tommy’s red kerchief around the dome of his head to blot the rain from his eyes.

“Tell me about Osprey Island,” Kara Lynn said, as if they were rocking on a front porch waiting for the ice-cream truck.

“A special place,” he said, melancholic. “A gem of nature. There’s a freshwater spring down the trail, can you believe it? Miles off the mainland and the aquifer still bubbles up. You can see coons, opossums, wood rats drinking there, but mostly birds. Wood storks, blue herons. There’s a bald eagle on the island, a young male. Wingspan is ten feet if it’s an inch, just a glorious bird. He stays up in the tallest pines, fishes only at dawn and dusk. He’s up there now, in the trees.” Wiley’s ancient-looking eyes went to the pine stand. “It’s too windy to fly, so I’m sure he’s up there now.”

“I’ve never seen a wild eagle,” Kara Lynn remarked. “I was born down here and I’ve never seen one.”

“That’s too bad,” Skip Wiley said sincerely. His head was bowed. Tiny bubbles of water hung in his rusty beard. It didn’t make it any easier that she was born here, he thought.

“It’ll be gone soon, this place,” he said. “A year from now a sixteen-story monster will stand right where we’re sitting.” He got to his knees and fumbled in the pocket of his trousers. He pulled out some damp gray newspaper clippings, folded into a square. “Let me give you the full picture,” he said, unfolding them, starting to read. Kara Lynn looked over his shoulder.

“Welcome to the Osprey Club … Fine living, for the discriminating Floridian.
Makes you want to puke.”

“Pretty tacky,” Kara Lynn agreed.

“A hundred and two units from two-fifty all the way up to a million-six. Friendly financing available. Vaulted ceilings, marble archways, sunken living rooms, Roman tubs, atrium patios with real cedar trellises, boy oh boy.” Wiley looked up from the newspaper advertisement and gazed out at the woodsy shadows.

“Can’t someone try to block it?” Kara Lynn suggested. “The Audubon people. Or maybe the National Park Service.”

“Too late,” Wiley said. “See, it’s a private island. After old man Bradshaw died, his scumball kids put it up for sale. Puerco Development picks it up for three mil and wham, next thing you know it’s rezoned for multi-family high-rise.”

“Didn’t you do a column on this?” she asked.

“I sure did.” One of Wiley’s many pending lawsuits: a gratuitous and unprovable reference to Mafia connections.

“Back to the blandishments,” he said, “there’ll be four air-conditioned racketball courts, a spa, a bike trail, a tennis complex, a
piazza,
two fountains, and even a waterfall. Think about that: they’re going to bury the natural spring and build a fiberglass waterfall! Progress, my darling. It says here they’re also planting something called a
lush green-belt,
which is basically a place for rich people to let their poodles take a shit.”

Kara Lynn said: “How will people get out here?”

“Ferry,” Wiley answered. “See here:
Take a quaint ferry to your very own island where the Mediterranean meets Miami!
See, Kara Lynn, the bastards can’t sell Florida anymore, they’ve got to sell the bloody Riviera.”

“It sounds a bit overdone,” she said.

“Twenty-four hundred square feet of overdone,” Wiley said, “with a view.”

“But no ospreys,” said Kara Lynn, sensing the downward spiral of his emotions.

“And no eagle,” Wiley said glumly.

He acted as if he were ready to leave, and Kara Lynn knew that if he did, it would be over.

“Why did you pick me?” she asked.

Wiley turned to look at her. “Because you’re perfect,” he said. “Or at least you represent perfection. Beauty. Chastity. Innocence. All tanned and blond, the golden American dream. That’s all they really promise with their damn parade and their unctuous tourist advertising. Come see Miami, come see the girls! But it’s a cheap tease, darling. Florida’s nothing but an adman’s wet dream.”

“That’s enough,” Kara Lynn said, reddening.

“I take it you don’t think of yourself as a precious piece of ass.”

“Not really, no.”

“Me, neither,” Wiley said, “but we are definitely in the minority. And that’s why we’re out here now—an object lesson for all those bootlicking shills and hustlers.”

Wiley crawled out from under the plastic tent and rose to his full height, declaring, “The only way to teach the greedy blind pagans is to strike at their meager principles.” He pointed toward the treetops. “To the creators of the Osprey Club, that precious eagle up there is not life, it has no real value. Same goes for the wood rats and the herons. Weighed against the depreciated net worth of a sixteen-story condominium after sellout, the natural inhabitants of this island do not represent life—they have no fucking value. You with me?”

Kara Lynn nodded. She still couldn’t see the big bird.

“Now,” Wiley said, “if you’re the CEO of Puerco Development, what has worth to you, besides money? What is a life? Among all creatures, what is the one that cannot legally be extinguished for the sake of progress?” Wiley arched his eyebrows and pointed a dripping finger at Kara Lynn’s nose. “You,” he said. “You are, presumably, inviolate.”

For the first time in the conversation, it occurred to Kara Lynn that this fellow might truly be insane.

Wiley blinked at her. “I’ll be right back,” he said.

This time she didn’t move. Wet and cold, she had come to cherish the meager protection of the plastic shelter. Wiley returned carrying a short wooden stake. An orange plastic streamer was attached to the blunt end.

“Survey markers,” Kara Lynn said.

“Very good. So you know what it means—construction is imminent.”

“How imminent?” she asked.

“Like tomorrow.”

“Tomorrow’s the groundbreaking?”

“Naw, that was Christmas Eve. Purely ceremonial,” Wiley said. “Tomorrow is much more significant. Tomorrow’s the day they start terrain modification.”

“What’s that?”

“Just what it says.”

Kara Lynn was puzzled. “I don’t see any bulldozers.”

“No, those would be used later, for contour clearing.”

“Then what do they use for this ‘terrain modification’?” she asked.

“Dynamite,” Skip Wiley replied. “At dawn.”

Kara Lynn thought she might have heard him wrong, thought it might have been a trick of the wind.

“Did you say dynamite?” she asked.

“Eight hundred pounds,” Skip Wiley said, “split into three payloads. One at the northwest tip, another at the southeast cove. The third cache, the big one, is right over there, no more than twenty yards. Can you see it? That galvanized box beneath those trees.”

From where she sat Kara Lynn saw nothing but shadows.

“I … I don’t … “ She was choking on fear, unable to speak. Hold on, she told herself.

“They do it by remote control,” Wiley explained, “from a barge. We passed it on the way out, anchored three miles off the island. You were asleep.”

“Oh … “ The plan was more terrible than she had imagined; all the stalling had been futile, a wasted strategy.

“They have to do it at dawn,” Wiley went on, “some kind of Army Corps rule. Can’t bring boats any closer to the island because the blast’ll blow the windows out.”

He ambled to the campfire and stood with his back to her for several moments. His naked cantaloupe head twitched back and forth, as if he were talking to himself. Abruptly he turned around and said, “The reason for the dynamite is the coral. See—” He kicked at the ground with his shoe. “Harder than cement. They need to go down twenty-four inches before pouring the foundation for the condo. Can’t make a dent with shovels, not in this stuff … so that’s why the dynamite. Flip of a switch and—poof—turn this place into the Bonneville flats. Eight hundred pounds is a lot of firecracker.”

Kara Lynn steadied herself just enough to utter the most inane question of her entire life: “What about me?”

Wiley spread his arms. “No life forms will survive,” he said in a clinical tone. “Not even the gnats.”

“Please don’t do this,” Kara Lynn said.

“It’s not me, Barbie Doll, it’s progress. Your beef is with Puerco Development.”

“Don’t leave me here,” she said, just shy of a beg.

“Darling, how could I save you and not save that magnificent eagle? Or the helpless rabbits and the homely opossums, or even the lowly fiddler crabs? It’s impossible to rescue them, so I can’t very well rescue you. It wouldn’t be fair. It would be like … playing God. This way is best, Kara Lynn. This way—for the first time in nineteen pampered years—you are truly part of the natural order. You now inhabit this beautiful little island, and the value of your life is the same as all creatures here. If they should survive past dawn, so shall you. If not … well, maybe the good people of Florida will finally appreciate the magnitude of their sins. If Osprey Island is leveled in the name of progress, I predict a cataclysmic backlash, once the truth is known. The truth being that they blew up the one species they really care about—a future customer.”

Kara Lynn was running low on poise. “The symbolism is intriguing,” she said, “but your logic is ridiculous.”

“Just listen,” Wiley said. From a breast pocket he took another clipping and read: “ ‘Officials in South Florida estimate that adverse publicity surrounding December’s tourist murders has cost the resort area as much as ten million dollars in family and convention trade.’“ Wiley waved the clip and gloated.
“Not
too shabby, eh?”

“I’m impressed,” Kara Lynn said archly. “A month’s worth of killing and all you’ve got to show for it is one dinky paragraph in
Newsweek”

“It’s the lead Periscope item!” Wiley said, defensively.

“Terrific,” Kara Lynn said. “Look, why don’t you let me go? You can do better than this.”

“1
think not.”

“I can swim away,” she declared.

“Not all tied up, you can’t,” Wiley said. “Besides, the water’s lousy with blacktip sharks. Did you know they spawn at night in the shallows? Aggressive little bastards, too. A bite here, a bite there, a little blood and pretty soon the big boys pick up the scent. Bull sharks and hammerheads big enough to eat a goddamn Datsun.”

“That’ll do,” said Kara Lynn.

Something rustled at the edge of the clearing. A branch cracking in the storm, she thought. Skip Wiley cocked his head and peered toward the sound, but the hard rain painted everything gray and hunched and formless. The only identifiable noises were raindrops slapping leaves, and the hiss of embers as the campfire died in the downpour.

Wiley was not satisfied. Like an ungainly baseball pitcher, he wound up and hurled the survey stake end-over-end into the trees.

The missile was answered by an odd strangled peep.

Wiley chuckled. “Just as I thought,” he said, “a wood stork.”

Just then the thicket ruptured with an explosion so enormous that Kara Lynn was certain that Wiley had accidentally detonated the dynamite.

When she opened her eyes, he was sitting down, slack-jawed and pale. The red kerchief was askew, drooped over one eye. Both legs stuck straight out, doll-like, in front of him. He seemed transfixed by something close at hand—a radiant splotch of crimson and a yellow knob of bone, where his right knee used to be. Absently he fingered the frayed hole in his trousers.

Kara Lynn felt a surge of nausea. She gulped a breath.

Brian Keyes moved quickly out of the trees.

His brown hair was plastered to his forehead; rain streamed down his cheeks. His face was blank. He was walking deliberately, a little hurried, as if his flight were boarding.

He strode up to Skip Wiley, placed a foot on his chest, and kicked him flat on his back. A regular one-man cavalry! Kara Lynn was elated, washed with relief. She didn’t notice the Browning in Brian’s right hand until he shoved the barrel into Wiley’s mouth.

‘“Hello, Skip,” Keyes said. “How about telling me where you anchored the boat?”

Wiley’s wolfish eyes crinkled with amusement. He grunted an indecipherable greeting. Keyes slowly withdrew the gun, but kept it inches from Wiley’s nose.

“Holy Christ!” Wiley boomed, sitting up. “And I thought you were dangerous with a typewriter.”

“You’re losing blood,” Keyes said.

“No thanks to you.”

“Where’s the boat?”

“Not so fast.”

Keyes fired again, the gun so close to Wiley’s face that the charge knocked him back down. Wiley clutched at his ears and rolled away, over the sharp corrugated coral. The bullet had thwacked harmlessly into the stucco rubble of the old cabin.