At the FBI office in Queens, rumors swirled about the sudden shocking resignation of Andy Sheehan. Six months from a pension, why would anyone do anything except show up, punch the clock, and keep his head down? There had to be some dark secret, some scandal brewing. Sheehan cited personal reasons for departing and left it, officially, at that. The only person to whom he confided even a bit more information was his old friend Lou Duncan, who came in as Sheehan was in the midst of the brief, bleak chore of clearing out his office.
“I just don’t get it,” Duncan said. “You go to Florida full of piss and vinegar. You’re going to break a case that isn’t even yours and come back a conquering hero. Instead you come back with a tan and quit. What changed?”
“Everything.”
“That’s a little vague,” said Duncan.
Sheehan kept on with his clearing. Without looking up he said, “Okay, I met someone and I stopped being sure what I believed in. And I’m not even sure which happened first.”
“Met someone. Like, a woman?”
“We’re moving to Rome.”
“Italy or Georgia?”
“Italy. Unless she changes her mind again. It was going to be Havana, then Paris. She’s amazing, I’ve never known anybody like her.”
“Paris, Rome,” mused Duncan. “You without a pension. Guess she has some money, huh?”
Sheehan kept his eyes on his desk. “Rich uncle. Decent inheritance.”
Duncan said, “That’s good, because you lost your bet.”
“Bet?”
Duncan laughed. “You damn sure would have remembered if you won. You didn’t nab your man. You owe a hundred bucks to Catholic Charities.”
“Shit,” the tall man said. “You’re right. I do.”
In Key West, Benny opened up his rent-free gallery and took to wearing a tropic-weight beret that covered up his bald spot. His drawings sold for modest prices; some weeks nothing sold at all. Benny didn’t mind. He set up his easel in a space at the back and the hours just flew by.
The rest of winter passed, as did spring and summer. On a whim, Glenda had planted the death-threat coconut in a corner of the yard and it sprouted quickly in the soaking rains and steamy heat. By October the shoot was six feet tall.
Meg and Glenda kept in touch, and in November they talked about exchanging homes over Christmas. To the Bufanos, the lights and pageantry and bustling crowds of Manhattan at Christmastime sounded fabulous; to the Kaplans, a warm-weather break before the onslaught of another northern winter seemed divine. But at the last minute there was a complication. Glenda was in the middle of her first trimester and not feeling well enough to travel. She suggested that her friends come stay with them instead.
This worried Peter. What if the two cats didn’t get along?
“Last trip we faced live ammo,” Meg reminded him. “Now you’re worried about a cat fight?”
Glenda was persistent. “Please,” she urged. “Take back your old guest room. Have a real vacation this time around. No guns, no home invasions, no broken windows.”
Meg and Peter finally agreed.
On Christmas Eve, Glenda invited a couple of old friends to join them for a Feast of Seven Fishes. There was salt cod and shrimp, and of course there was cracked conch and conch fritters. Old Mel from next door told highly inappropriate stories of Yuletides spent in low bordellos. Bert the Shirt, his chihuahua nestled in his lap against the feared predation of the cats, reminisced about cooking holiday suppers in small kitchens with his wife, him darting back and forth shucking clams and breading flounder while she danced past him, usually singing opera, with steaming colanders of pasta.
There was another guest as well. He mostly hung back in conversation, not, it seemed, from shyness, but because he now understood that this was not his house and not his party. Frank Fortuna’s daughter was about to present him with a grandchild, and this simple wondrous fact somehow humbled him, resigned him not with rancor but relief to the ebb and flow of power in families and in life, called forth an unselfish tenderness that he had fallen short of acting on when he’d first become a father, back when he was so much younger. He brought gifts for everyone and hugged not only Glenda, but Benny also, when he left.
Meg and Peter stayed at the Bufano house until just after New Year’s. During that time almost nothing happened, and it was blissful. There was sun, there was beach, there was salt water still warm as skin from the high heat of summer. The only drama lay in watching Key West fill up for the tourist season, its streets and bars and porches swelling with visitors in loud shirts. Day by day, hour by hour, pale people flooded in by plane, by car, by boat, vast flocks heading southward and absolutely no one heading north.
Even so, there were places on the island that never seemed crowded, and one of them was White Street Pier. Meg and Peter rode there on bicycles every day an hour or so before the sun went down. This soon became more than just a habit; it took on the significance of ritual, the sanctity of a tradition.
Stepping off their bikes, kicking down their kickstands just like kids, they watched the locals with their fishing poles and bait nets, the distant sailboats moored out near the reef, and they savored, as human beings have forever, the ancient and still fresh suspense of the sun’s slow dive into the sea. When it touched the horizon they held hands and when it had settled beneath the faintly rippling surface they kissed. By the time their eyes were open again the western sky had paled to yellow-green and there was a coppery sheen on the ocean.
Praise for the novels of Laurence Shames:
“Funny, suspenseful, romantic, and wise…Shames is a terrific writer with real heart.”—Detroit Free Press
“Mr. Shames is at once literate and accessible, often hilarious and always on the mark.”—The Washington Times
“Expertly blends fast-paced action with colorful dialogue…Smart and consistently entertaining.”—The Chicago Tribune Book Review
“The clever premise is explored with delicious dark humor and healthy cynicism.”—The San Francisco Chronicle
“Funny, elegantly written, and hip.”—The Los Angeles Times Book Review
About Laurence Shames
Laurence Shames has been a New York City taxi driver, lounge singer, furniture mover, lifeguard, dishwasher, gym teacher, and shoe salesman. Having failed to distinguish himself in any of those professions, he turned to writing full-time in 1976 and has not done an honest day's work since.
His basic laziness notwithstanding, Shames has published more than twenty books and hundreds of magazine articles and essays. Best known for his critically acclaimed series of Key West novels, he has also authored non-fiction and enjoyed considerable though largely secret success as a collaborator and ghostwriter. Shames has penned four New York Times bestsellers. These have appeared on four different lists, under four different names, none of them his own. This might be a record.
Born in Newark, New Jersey in 1951, to chain-smoking parents of modest means but flamboyant emotions, Shames did not know Philip Roth, Paul Simon, Queen Latifa, Shaquille O'Neal, or any of the other really cool people who have come from his hometown. He graduated summa cum laude from NYU in 1972 and was inducted into Phi Beta Kappa. As a side note, both his alma mater and honorary society have been extraordinarily adept at tracking his many address changes through the decades, in spite of the fact that he's never sent them one red cent.
It was on an Italian beach in the summer of 1970 that Shames first heard the sacred call of the writer's vocation. Lonely and poor, hungry and thirsty, he'd wandered into a seaside trattoria, where he noticed a couple tucking into a big platter of fritto misto. The man was nothing much to look at but the woman was really beautiful. She was perfectly tan and had a very fine-gauge gold chain looped around her bare tummy. The couple was sharing a liter of white wine; condensation beaded the carafe. Eye contact was made; the couple turned out to be Americans. The man wiped olive oil from his rather sensual lips and introduced himself as a writer. Shames knew in that
moment that he would be one too.
He began writing stories and longer things he thought of as novels. He couldn't sell them.
By 1979 he'd somehow become a journalist and was soon publishing in top-shelf magazines like Playboy, Outside, Saturday Review, and Vanity Fair. In 1982, Shames was named Ethics columnist of Esquire, and also made a contributing editor to that magazine.
By 1986 he was writing non-fiction books whose critical if not commercial success first established his credentials as a collaborator/ghostwriter. His 1991 national bestseller, BOSS OF BOSSES, written with two FBI agents, got him thinking about the Mafia. It also bought him a ticket out of New York and a sweet little house in Key West, where he finally got back to Plan A: writing novels. Given his then-current preoccupations, the novels--beginning with FLORIDA STRAITS, which has been called a cult classic almost as often as it's been optioned for film--naturally featured palm trees, high humidity, dogs in sunglasses, and New York mobsters blundering through a town where people were too laid back to be afraid of them.
Having had the good fortune to find a setting he loved and a wonderfully loyal readership as well, Shames wrote eight Key West novels during the 1990s, before taking a decade-long detour into screenwriting and collaborative work. In 2013, he returned to his favorite fictional turf with SHOT ON LOCATION--a suspenseful and hilarious mix of Hollywood glitz and Florida funky.
TROPICAL SWAP, Shames’ tenth Key West novel, tells the riotous tale of a home exchange that sounds too good to be true, and is.
Works by Laurence Shames
Key West Novels—
Tropical Swap
Shot on Location
The Naked Detective
Welcome to Paradise
Mangrove Squeeze
Virgin Heat
Tropical Depression
Sunburn
Scavenger Reef
Florida Straits
Key West Short Fiction—
Chickens
New York Novels—
Money Talks
Nonfiction—
The Hunger for More
The Big Time
Tropical Swap (Key West Capers Book 10) Page 17